They had a quiet supper without Felicity, enjoying the familial company with no façade, however thin, to put on, and then Lucius went with Draco to his room to ensure everything had been packed as it should for a quick return to school after the World Cup. Sitting on his son's bed, watching him refold shirts neatly as ordered, Lucius could not bear up to the idea of changing his life. However much Draco loved his heritage, and his seeming right to bully whoever he wished, he didn't understand what it would mean to truly be a Death Eater's son. He didn't know that he would be next, and that his pale arm, just beginning to show the signs of growing into adulthood, would be seared with a wound that could never heal.

"Is that good enough?" Draco asked in a huff, indicating the still untidy trunk.

"If it doesn't all fit on Thursday, it'll be your head and not mine when your mother wants us out the door." Lucius touched his fingers to his lips and then pressed them gently against Draco's temple. "Good night, son."

"I'm not going to sleep," Draco countered.

"No, but I am."

But that wasn't true. Lucius did not sleep for a moment that night, and when Narcissa saw him in the morning, all puffy and dark-eyed, he attributed it to a final cup of tea he knew he should have skipped after lunch. In reality, he had laid beside her all night, feeling the tingles on his left arm as one feels unwelcome ants crawling along you to their destination.

There was no joy in it – his so-called friends had urged him to join them after he lost Narcissa and Draco in the crush of people going down the stadium steps. Avery in particular squeezed Lucius's arm through many layers of fabric, and smiled a nasty smile.

"You've felt it, Lucy. We're going to go do something for old time's sake."

Lucius turned back as best he could, seeking some guidance from Narcissa. There she was, with Draco just behind, close enough only to yell.

"Go have a drink!" she laughed. She had not understood his telegraphed desire. "Draco wants to go see the vendors again."

And then Avery pulled him into an exit at the next landing, and there was no more choice.

He felt so conspicuous walking around after the Dark Mark had reared. People scurried away from him, even as he did his best to relax his face pleasantly and let his arms swing in an unthreatening way. It didn't occur to him to act as frightened as they were.

Narcissa was asleep when he returned to the tent; with a light step, he undressed and joined her.

"Where the fuck were you?" she whispered as soon as he laid back on the pillow. "Draco was out there looking for you."

"Why did you let him?" Lucius replied.

"I saw those floating Muggles and I figured there was nothing left to lose, or hide. If he wants to run around causing trouble, I can't stop him. It's in his blood."

Lucius's heart fell. Narcissa was usually not so dismissive, or sarcastic. He had wounded her.

"I only watched," he ventured to her. "I promise you that."

"That's childish behavior, Lucius, no better than Bellatrix when she was just 17. Being a spectator doesn't make it less so."

"Can we…I'd rather talk once he's back at school."

Narcissa flipped over at that, propping herself up on her elbow.

"You want to wait nearly a week to talk about this?"

Lucius stared back at her, still laying down fully with his hands clasped on his chest. She thought he was delaying the conversation about the Muggles only. She still did not suspect the deeper motive.

"You're right, Cissy. I let Avery and them pull me along when I could have easily turned around."

"You were wearing a hood."

"Handed to me, I swear. You know I wouldn't risk carrying such a thing around."

"And the Mark –"

"That was not me, Narcissa, and I don't know who it was. We were long dispersed."

Narcissa fell back, and Lucius chanced to turn and place a hand at her waist.

"I should have stayed nearby. I missed talking about the match with Draco, and I left you two alone. I still make the old mistakes because I'm still the person you loved back then."

She turned away, but did not move his hand.

"You were out there, weren't you?" Draco asked his father eagerly at breakfast. Narcissa had been "dressing" for nearly an hour, and they were gaining on being the last people at the campground.

"Where?" Lucius replied, his back to his son as he neatly toasted his bread with his wand.

Draco's eyes lit up, but he said nothing. A second later, something nearly brained Lucius flying past his head. It was Narcissa's handbag, summoned neatly onto her arm.

"Lucius, where on Earth are the elves?" she asked as she unclasped the bag and rummaged through it.

"I'm going to summon them when we leave. There's no reason to be disturbed by them cleaning up."

"Then summon them now. I need to get out of this stuffy place."

Draco had rarely seen such a display between his parents, and for once genuine discomfort motivated him to run and gather his bag together.

"I've been ready all morning," he said, going to his mother's side, where she smoothed his hair and kissed him on it.

"Of course you have, darling. Why don't we go Apparate and see your father at home."

They walked out of the tent, with Draco glancing back at his father in disbelief. Lucius heard the crack a moment later, and let himself sink down to the floor.

Things warmed up slightly the following week, although Lucius would find himself alone in bed in the morning, and then go downstairs to see the newspaper already in disarray across the breakfast table. There was a flurry of shopping for things Draco had forgotten, or that he simply desired, and then they went to dinner not once but twice at the Black's.

The stillness, then, when they returned home from King's Cross was startling.

"I need a bath," Narcissa announced into the silence of the entry hall. Her eyes were red, and he knew better than to ask to join her as he once might have.

Instead Lucius went to the sitting room and sat at the writing desk there. He stared at a blank piece of parchment as if something would come out of him, some sudden poetry that could explain to her what would happen to them. At great length he picked up the quill, and managed to write The Dark Lord, and then stopped, blotting the page. He crumpled it up and threw it away, slumping backwards into the chair. It was nearly dark, and he didn't have the energy to light candles.

Narcissa appeared in the doorway, holding a lamp, long after it had gone completely shadowy in the room. She was still in a dressing gown, her face bare and her wet hair braided tightly.

"Tell me the truth now," she said, and he could not do anything but gesture to the sofa and join her there.

"I won't go until he calls for me," Lucius tried to rationalize once the facts were laid out. "I promise you that. And then perhaps he won't ever call us, perhaps he won't even –" But he had to stop after a glance at Narcissa's face. She looked as if she was trying not to bite her tongue off. "You hate me."

"I wish I did. Then it would be easy."

"I wish I could make an escape for you. But he will come for all of us; I'm sure he'll be displeased I wasn't imprisoned."

They still had only the one lamp for light, and Narcissa kept her eyes averted and her head tilted away from his.

"He doesn't care about me," she whispered. "Or Draco. If he is displeased it would be because of you. My parents and I, we could hide him, hide ourselves…"

"You would…you would want that? To take Draco away from school, to never see me again?"

Narcissa lifted her eyes to his, her eyebrows pushed tight together. "No, I would not want any of that. But I did not want the Dark Lord to return, either."

They only knew how to go bed together. Lucius walked with her back to their bedroom, and there was no mention of any separation. In the morning, things were the same. He thought maybe he had dreamed her declaration of displeasure. She even kissed him at breakfast.

"You may be right," she announced to him suddenly as they drank tea on the terrace. "He may never come, and I could not destroy us like that for something that may never happen. I was so afraid once of Draco having no father. At least I can make sure that will never come to be."

So that is how they came to be fully dressed, laying clung together on top of the bedclothes one June evening. The days before had seen letters flying between himself and Severus and Avery and all the others. They had all begun to feel splitting pain that left them nearly unable to sleep running down their arms. The Greys had heard cryptic murmurings from Wormtail; Barty Crouch was dead. That morning, Lucius had shown Narcissa his Mark. It was alive.

"You're sure it will be tonight, though?" she asked him repeatedly throughout the day. He had gathered his old Death Eater robes, the ones he had long since promised had been thrown away, into a pile on the bedroom armchair.

"The Task tonight is not a coincidence. It's not a coincidence at all, I think now, that Harry Potter could even have been selected for the Tournament. He will reappear tonight."

And so they waited, Narcissa weeping and Lucius falsely stoic, for the world to end.