The official letter was so impersonal, so cold; it just told her that her husband was dead with their condolences. She knew that they didn't really send their condolences; it was what they had to say.
The boy who had brought the letter had also said he was sorry. He didn't look very sorry, though. Lucius had probably hurt his family in some way. He had left as quickly as he could, but when he was almost halfway down the long path he had run back and knocked again.
Narcissa had opened the door grudgingly. She just wanted to be alone to cry and remember her husband. What the boy said, however, changed her mind.
"Mrs. Malfoy," he gasped out because the path was very long, "Mr. Potter said to tell you that your husband screamed out right before he died, 'Tell my wife I love her.'"
Narcissa didn't care how Potter had found out what Lucius had said; she just cared for the words. They played over and over in her head, a beautiful song.
As she cried into her pillows, as she told Draco the horrible news, as she stood under the pouring rain at the funeral, as she saw Scorpius graduate, as she mourned the fact that her husband wasn't there to greet their first great-grandchild, as she lay on her bed ready to meet him-she remembered the words.
They told her that life was still worth living, that she had something to go on for, that her husband would be waiting for her at the Room of New Deaths and she wouldn't have to hurry to catch him. He would wait there for her so they could build their house in Paradise together.
So when she looked around for him after she died and couldn't find him she was surprised. She went to ask the angels where he was and they told her he was in Hell. She screamed and threw herself into the fiery pits. She swam past millions of people, including people she knew, like Bellatrix or Rita Skeeter, being tortured, the flames burning her arms. Finally she found Lucius and her screams stopped.
She dropped into the circle of fire that surrounded him and hugged him, held him to her. He put his arms around her tiredly. They were weak. And she carried him out of there, into another place that was neither Paradise or Hell.