Author's Note: From the phrase "survived while everything around them burned" in a fic tree. Set in the Great Hall, after the last battle, in Book 7.
The arched ceiling of the Great Hall echoes with hopeless, quiet sobs. They surround him: the orphaned, the widowed, the ones left behind. Lucius leans down, resting his head on the table, and listens.
But beneath the table, he holds his wife's hand.
Somehow, miraculously, they've done it again. They've survived, while everything around them burned. He keeps choosing the wrong side, again and again, like a gambler who doesn't know when to fold. He loses every hand, hemorrhaging money, gambling everything, but somehow he's still at the table.
Then, a whoop, amongst the sound of crying. Someone celebrating the battle well fought. The enemy slain. The mark of a dead man, like a brand, is etched in his skin forever, and he sits here with the people who killed him.
His breath hitches, and her hand tightens on his. He can't lift his head to face her.
The celebration is quickly muffled, in the face of so much death, but he can hear them as they pass behind him. The footsteps pause, and he hears the intake of the breath. The stunned silence, as they notice Death Eaters in their midst. He pulls his hand loose, tugging his sleeve down, and hunches his shoulders.
Narcissa sits stiffly beside him. She keeps her back straight, despite the wreck of a husband at her side, and stares back until they move on, and it's this that shames him most of all.
She bends her head next to his. "We have our son," she whispers. "We have each other." Blonde hair hangs down into his vision, and he can feel her strength beside him.
The vise around his heart does not ease. In this place of grieving, he doesn't know what to feel. What to do. It's not his loss, or his victory.
"We can begin again," she insists, and her nails dig into his leg hard enough to make him gasp.
He lifts his head. He opens his mouth to speak, but it's Draco that he sees. His son, as lost as he feels. As stained as the father. As marked.
Finally, he knows what to feel.
Lucius reaches across her and grabs his son's hand too. Draco starts, then huddles closer to hear.
"We can start over," he says. His voice is cracked and rasping. He focuses, and tries again.
"We'll help them start over. We rebuild, together, and earn our pardon."
"Do you think it will work?" Draco asks.
The agonized hope in Draco's eyes is enough to make his heart crack. "Yes," he says, firmly, and wants to believe.
Narcissa's hand closes over their two, and he looks up into her pale blue eyes at last.
"We can survive anything," she says, smiling, and he believes her.