Chapter Twenty One

A/N: No reviewers.

Narcissa was vaguely aware of a stream of light beside her head, and after a few moments, she slowly opened her eyes, trying to fight the throbbing pain pounding in her skull as she did so. She had never known such pain in all her years, and yet she could not remember for the life of her why she was lying in such a condition.

She remembered a little of the previous night, or what she thought to be the previous night, but not a great deal at all. She recalled worrying for Lucius, and the point at which she had Apparated away in the gardens. She remembered desperately searching for her husband, and the relief that she had felt when she saw him. She had begun to run towards him, and then… nothing.

Blinking her eyes several times, the blonde finally came to recognise the room she lay in as her own bedroom at Malfoy Manor. She had not noticed the resemblance at first, merely concentrating on her pain and confusion, but now that she had thought of it, it was utterly clear. Her location immediately made her question her aching head. 'Where is Lucius?'

Immediately, Narcissa began to panic, her breathing increasing to an unhealthy rate in only a second or two. The very last thing that she remembered was tumbling through the raging crowds of fighters from both sides, searching for the husband she knew to be battling just like the others. She had seen him, she remembered that, locked in fierce combat with a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and he had seemed to be fighting a losing battle at the time. What if he had been injured? What if he had been arrested? What if he had been...

Immediately, the woman began to panic. She felt tears prickle at her eyes, but held them back, even though there was no one there to see her. 'I have cried enough over the past few months.' she told herself harshly, clamping her eyelids tightly together. 'And if what I think has happened really has, then I should save my tears for a time when I'm really going to need them.'

Suddenly, the door opened widely, and through it swept Lucius himself, his usual grace and elegance tainted by the circles beneath his eyes and the creases in his shirt. For a moment, the first second that he saw her awake, he seemed to hesitate in the doorway, but, as if awakening from a trance, he soon shook his head and crossed the room in a few short strides, wrapping his arms tightly around his wife and resting his cheek on her golden hair.

"Oh, thank goodness you're alright." the blonde man sighed, his voice so quiet that it would be inaudible to anyone but Narcissa. Subtly, almost unnoticeably, he rocked her back and forth in his arms, something that he had always done to calm her, and the woman appreciated this gesture more than she could say. "For a while, I thought..."

"I'm fine, Lucius. There is no need to worry any further about me. I'm fine." she told her husband. She was not actually convinced that this was the truth, but luckily, years of growing up with overly inquisitive family members had taught her a thing or two about acting, and Lucius did not spot the falsehoods in her words. This was unusual, as normally, he knew her so well, but the man was concentrating so closely on having his wife back with him that nothing else really caught his attention.

But then she noticed something in the Malfoy patriarch's manner, something in his smile that was just a fraction too forced. Suddenly, a shiver ran down Narcissa's spine, and her hands began to tremble. 'Something is wrong,' she suddenly realised. 'Something is very, very wrong.'

"Lucius, what is it?" she asked quietly, once she had summoned the courage to do so. Lucius raised his eyes to meet hers at the sound of her voice, but there was a deep sadness there that he could not hide. At the sight of the heavy emotion that weighed down the pools of grey she looked into, the blonde woman's face fell further, and quickly, her husband hung his head, trying with all his might to avoid the tears that his wife was blinking back. Her voice much heavier, Narcissa spoke again, just one word, yet the begging in her tone was clear. "Lucius?"

Raising his head reluctantly, Lucius heaved a sigh, the breath quivering, as if he were trying to hold back tears himself. This was worrying for his wife. It was an extremely rare occurrance that the Malfoy man would give into tears in the presence of his love, and he would never do so if the reason was not breaking him from the inside. Alarm bells had already been ringing in her mind, but now the sound was deafening.

"Lucius, tell me, please. You're scaring me." she confessed, her hands trembling as she reached out towards him. The moment she made this movement, her husband took her hand in both of his own, bringing it up to his lips and holding it there for a little while. Eventually, Narcissa pulled away, and Lucius realised that he would have to tell her the truth.

Afraid that he would break down into sobs should he try and speak the revelation himself, the man reached behind his back and produced a piece of parchment in an envelope. The envelope was addressed to both Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy, and had already been opened, judging by the clear swipe across the top of it that could only have been a letter knife.

The shakes in her hands were far beyond tremors now, and the piece of paper moved quite clearly up and down as she held it. Not wanting to keep herself in this state of knowledgeless misery, she pulled the piece of parchment from inside the envelope and unfolded it carefully, her crystal eyes darting quickly across the page the moment its writing was exposed to her.

It took just a minute or two for Narcissa to complete the letter, a further minute for her to have read it twice over. However, it was only after the third reading that the woman finally allowed the tears to fall from her eyes, landing droplet by droplet on the page, running the ink together and blurring many words into one nonsensical blurr. 'It does not matter.' she told herself. 'Nothing does anymore.'

And Lucius looked on at the side of the bed, watching as all of his wife's dreams, his dreams, turned to dust before their eyes.

A/N: Please review! By the way, the contents of the letter will be revealed in the next chapter, but until then, what do you think has happened?