Suddenly she had to move. Narcissa practically jumped up from the chair, frantically calling house elves to her assistance. The creatures, not accustomed to her issuing so many orders (for most of the time when she was home she occupied herself with her memories) blinked numbly but when she threatened them they sprung to action. The Malfoy Manor, while still presentable to company in most of the main rooms, had fallen to a general state of disrepair without Lucius's presence. She didn't care enough to order the house elves to dust the furniture in the rooms that she didn't use, and most of them were too afraid of her family to risk taking initiative. No more. She wouldn't have Lucius returning home to anything less than perfection.

With the house elves busy tending to the house, she turned her attention to herself. She made her way to the mirror on her vanity, studying her reflection critically. She looked tired. That much couldn't be helped, as she hadn't slept well since Lucius was captured. Her eyes were cooler, more wary of the world at large than ever before. She had to trust that that would change as well when Lucius taught her how to smile again.

Smile. Merlin but it had been forever since she had done that. It was so easy when it had been the two of them or she and Draco, to smile. She had had a hundred different smiles then, a million. Lucius once teased her that she even smiled at him when she was angry, though he said it reminded him of a she-lion barring her teeth. Then they'd make up and he'd tuck her hair behind her ears and she'd moan so low it sounded like a soft feline purr.

Narcissa shook her head. She had to stop living in the past. That was how she survived without Lucius, blocking out the current day and feeding on the past pleasures, but now that he was returning she too had to return to the present. Hastily she brushed her hair, leaving it down because she knew her husband liked it. Next she stepped out of her gown, the gray one that matched her disposition since Lucius's imprisonment, and changed her lingerie for the black ones that Lucius had gotten her for his last Christmas as a free man. After debating on which gown to wear she settled on a blue one she had been planning on wearing to a gala with Lucius shortly before he was captured.

Her hand flew to her mouth as a strangled sob came out. Now that he was coming home, it was hitting her harder than ever how much he had missed, how much she had missed him.

"No." She said the word audibly, and was appalled at her shaking voice. It was now nearly three. Lucius could come home at any moment and here she was crying and falling to pieces. She would be strong for her husband, she would be his powerful wife, she would…

She would be all of those things just as soon as she could breathe. It took her ten minutes to make her breaths come in their normal pattern rather than the ragged cadence of tears, and then she wiped her face. In a daze, she repaired her grief's damage, clearing away the tear marks, putting on a hint of makeup, and composing her face into neutrality.

"Mistress…" She turned sharply, startled. Her personal house elf, a timid thing named Teensy, was standing just to her right, wringing a dirty wash rag in her hands, clearly afraid of earning her wrath. "Teensy and Twink finished cleaning the kitchen…" Narcissa nodded, cutting off the house elf. She trusted that the creatures were frightened enough of her and Lucius to obey.

"That will be all Teensy." She blinked, surprised at how much like her old self she sounded. She felt so out of control, like a child playing at being a grown up. This was all going all wrong, but that didn't matter. Lucius was coming home. He'd fix it all.

Before she could dismiss Teensy another elf appeared, this one looking even more terrified than the first. "Mistress…Master Lucius. Master Lucius has returned."

"Where?" She demanded, wide eyed and suddenly unprepared. She had been waiting for this for so long, and yet suddenly it seemed that she didn't have enough time to prepare, that she should do a million thing before seeing him again.

"Blink just saw him walking from the apparition boundary."

Acting on instinct and not on rational thought, a luxury she allowed herself so infrequently, she ran. Narcissa Malfoy, lady of Malfoy Manor, previously Narcissa Black, youngest daughter of the most ancient and noble house of Black, hitched up her skirts and raced down the stairs and out of the manor.

And then she saw him. She froze, wondering if it was a dream, a hallucination. He continued to walk toward her, looking every inch the same man he had been before, save for the tight worried line of his lips and the apprehension in his eyes. He should be smiling, they both should, but that was a minor detail. He was here now, alive and whole and all was well.

Except that it wasn't. The hard lines of resolve on his face frightened her. Never had he looked so closed to her before. "Narcissa.." His voice sounded hoarse, as though he hadn't used it much recently. Mentally she began thinking of potions, honeyed tea, anything to fix that and distract her from the matter at hand. "Come…we have much to discuss."

As her hand settled in its rightful place in the crook of Lucius's elbow, she got the feeling that this wasn't right at all. Somehow she knew that he was about to drop a bombshell, one that would change her life forever, and there was little she could do other than hang on, keep up her strong neutral mask, and pray for the return of normalcy.

Lucius was home. That had to be a good beginning at the very least. Didn't it?