The soft silver light trails wistfully around him. His fingers brush gently through its hazy form and it's almost as if she's here with him; surrounding him, comforting him, and he know he's doing the right thing, saving him for her. His eye close and he can almost hear her voice. Tears involuntarily spring to his eyes and an invisible weight is lifted.
A sharp intake of breath cruelly brings him back to reality. A wave and the silver doe is lost in the wind, bringing the room back into familiar darkness. Narcissa Malfoy stands a few feet away. Her eyes wide with shock, disbelief and a slight touch of pity.
Anger floods him and he rises, striding quickly away from her knowing stare, flight rather than fight. She is not a stupid woman, she has the common knowledge, she knows what she has seen and in turn he knows that this is it. Everything he has worked towards is finished, they will come, and they will kill him, and so he waits.
Days slowly, agonisingly turn into weeks, and weeks into months until he realises that no one is coming for him. He resumes his duties as normal, does as he's asked, speaks when he needs and everything stays the same.
Narcissa Malfoy hasn't told anyone what she's seen. He'd know by now if she had. He's weary and grateful and angry at himself and her, all at the same time. Why is she doing this? Why is she drawing out the inevitable?
And then he sees her as they pass each other in the hall, and suddenly he knows. Her eyes spark with a silent knowledge and he cannot tell if it's courage of cowardice that keeps her quite, silences those thin pursed lips of hers. She bows her head slightly, and it's barely noticeable, but he sees and it's clear, blatantly obvious, that she will stay silent and for a second he allows himself to think that perhaps there is the a chance that she understands and that maybe he is not so alone after all.