She was relieved to approach the cubicle and see Lucius's Death Eater garb discarded in a pile on the floor. Her own robes were weighing heavily on her, and when they had a moment of privacy she intended to slip out of them and be free, even if it meant walking away in a slip.

Lucius was on his side in a hospital bed with his bare back, mottled purple and yellow with bruises, exposed to Madame Pomfrey, who was running one hand down his spine while pressing her wand firmly into his shoulder blade.

"I can help him," she said to Narcissa as if Lucius weren't there, "if he stays a few day. There won't be better help at St. Mungo's yet. But I can't make promises he'll ever be completely the same. There are fractures that have already started healing strangely."

"Yes, of course. Thank you."

"Are you comfortable like this?" the matron asked, bending over him to see his face. Narcissa couldn't hear his response, but Madame Pomfrey drew herself up and told him it was all right to stay like that, or roll onto his back if he wanted to, although he needed to ask for help to do anything more. Then she left them, drawing the curtains around the bed closed.

The Hospital Wing was actually much better than the Great Hall, contrary to Narcissa's worries. It was not too crowded, and the cubicles were obviously muffled with magic for privacy, as the activity and conversations they could hear but not see sounded very far away. There was one catch though, the one she had been bracing for: two aurors had stood by the doors when she walked in, unobtrusive but a clear statement nonetheless. Horace's primary mission had been to pull them into captivity.

"I don't like the thought of you and Draco going back to the Manor without me, as things are," Lucius said as she sat down in the chair beside him. "Someone came and told me they've already sent aurors over, and I told them to feel free to take their time. They can't make it feel any worse than it already does. But I don't want you to be there and have them feeling like they can bother you with questions or point fingers. "

Narcissa had considered this as well in her brief walk back to him. Their home had been turned inside out and overrun with the worst kinds of memories. She tried to envision herself ever hosting a party in their grand drawing room again…impossible.

"We'll go to my parents'. Merlin, they'll be a mess over Bellatrix. I wonder if they already know…but we'll both rest easier there, for now. Maybe he'll actually sleep, away from all that strangeness. Did they tell you anything else?"

"He just wanted to know what I could tell them about the wards, and if anything was jinxed, things like that. I didn't recognize him. He said someone else would come have the real talk soon."

Narcissa fussed with his linens and his hair for a moment, trying to make herself bite her tongue while he was still so hurt. But it was no use. The dam was broken and everything was already flooded, and ruined. "I can't wait any longer to ask you about Severus, Lucius."

"I never expected you to wait."

"I didn't want to have a fit in front of everyone when Bellatrix was lying right there, in case they misunderstood. But I need to know if you saw him."

"Yes, Cissy, I was with him, briefly. I was actually…" There he squeezed his eyes shut tight, and took a deep breath and held it. "I was with the Dark Lord, and he told me to fetch Severus. He didn't tell me why, but now I know…and it was me…"

Narcissa took his hand and squeezed, and leaned closer to him. "You know he was going to do what he had decided to do either way."

"I know. But I should have thought twice that he even asked it of me, when it would be so easy to just summon him. It did take me a while, limping around in the dark and with everything in disarray."

"Tell me what he said. Please."

"We just spoke as we always have. He told me I shouldn't be out in my condition, and I asked him if he thought I had a choice. I asked him about Draco and he told me that he knew McGonagall would still do her best to protect all of the students. He asked where you were –" At this, Narcissa had to press her face down into the bed beside him, "and I told him what I had asked you to do. He rolled his eyes and asked me if I really believed you would listen to me. And we clasped hands as we always did, and he went away."

They stayed like that, in the hazy, white silence, holding on to one another, for a long time as Narcissa cried. She thought of how close she had come to dying while giving birth to Draco, of Severus as a boy flinching away from her cousin in the Great Hall, the meals she had eaten with him alone in the townhouse. His brief, cryptic confession to her and her alone that he was not exactly who he seemed. The night at Spinner's End…

"I knew," Narcissa said into the mattress. "Not everything – not even close to everything. But he told me once that Dumbledore was right to trust in him and get him out of Azkaban. And it made me cold to him for a long time. I was mad at him because you weren't free. I was angry that he would come back to our home and keep deceiving you, and I only let it go because I needed him, I needed the help he gave me…look at everything he did, every person he saved while he was so unhappy…and I thought less of him…"

It took time for her to quiet again, with Lucius gently tracing his thumb back and forth across her forehead.

"But you knew," she finally asked. "When I saw you again in the forest, you knew he was dead."

"Yes. He couldn't leave it alone. He had to show me, and Bellatrix, and a few others. He called us and made us look at what could become of his servants. If he could do it to Severus, surely anyone…and it was sickening. I will never unsee it. I was going to tell you…" he paused and stared away from her with his brow knit, as if on the brink of something dangerous. "If something had happened to Draco, I was going to tell you that we had to give up. We were never going to get the life we were promised. I was wrong about it, all this time. We would have been his playthings forever." Now it was his turn to choke back tears. "And I dragged you into it, both of you. Draco will have that awful Mark forever. And I encouraged Severus, when he was so eager to find a family, and I had everything. He would have done anything I asked of him, and I let him…"

"Let's stop now," Narcissa soothed him, although her voice was still bloated too, and her nose was running, "you have to get well, and this day has already been so long. Let's see if I can find Draco, and then maybe we can eat again. Let's try to be calm for him."

It was Kingsley Shacklebolt who came to them eventually, as he had come to her the first time. If it had not been so embarrassing, she would have pointed out the repetition. Now he was the Minister for Magic. When he first arrived and started interviewing them, she could not understand why a man in his position, on such a day as that, would be doing the same menial work he had done 15 years earlier, but as he went on, she realized that they were the only lucky ones. No one else was being excused and healed amongst the victors and sent home. It was not that there was to be no punishment; a council would be convened and Lucius would appear before them, and Draco and Narcissa would have their own interviews, and some sentence would be distributed, but no one would go to prison. Harry Potter, Shacklebolt told them in a tone that made it clear that he was struggling to agree, had vehemently insisted that he believed their loyalties had long changed but they had been unable to free themselves, and no one was going to argue with Harry.

Narcissa and Draco only got out of the castle as the sun was setting, and had long missed the opportunity to break the news to her parents about their most beloved daughter. Druella's sobbing was oppressive, and Narcissa was infuriated by the way Cygnus seemed to brush away any mention of their granddaughter as he stood, mouth locked tight, behind his wife's chair. Narcissa metered out half an hour of compassion, and then drew Draco away upstairs to make up a room for him.

"Will you be able to sleep?" she asked him as she selected a quilt out of the chest at the foot of the bed and shook it out. He was sitting in a spindly little chair that was paired with a writing desk, his elbows resting on his knees. "I can get you something out of the medicine cabinet."

"I'm so tired of that," he replied. "If I can't sleep from the tiredness alone, I'd rather stay awake."

"I understand. I'm just worried about you." His sleeves were slightly rolled up, and she could see the faded gray thing his Mark was becoming just peeking out. "Are your things ok? Your pajamas and everything?" His trunk was still just inside the door and unopened as the elves had left it.

"It wasn't too bad in the dungeons. The dormitories were untouched."

Narcissa had finished her task, but she didn't want to leave him there. It was just a little bedroom, papered in dark wallpaper and lit by flickering lamps, tucked up at the top of the house, cozy and very familiar to her, but a flight of stairs between them felt like an expanse of ocean. She would go down to her own old room, but to repurpose one of her sisters' for him on that night seemed bizarre. "Your father used to stay up here before we were married," she told him, her hand on the doorknob. "He insisted the bed was too short, even though I know it's the same as all the others. He was teasing me." Getting no reaction, she went on. "When he was in prison when you were a baby, we stayed in my room, with your crib in the corner. I couldn't stand to be away from you. It's hard for me to be away from you now."

"Hopefully it won't be so scary now."

She was watching him carefully as he studiously looked at the carpet. Since the battle had ended, he had not broken down the way she and Lucius had, although it had taken him several hours to pack his trunk and reappear at Lucius's bedside. Perhaps he had already napped, and mourned, alone.

"Don't be afraid to come downstairs and wake me if you need to. And please try to sleep in."

She wanted to force a hug upon him, wanted one for herself, but she made herself step out into the hall instead.

Narcissa was weary in her bones, weary as she lifted her arms to finally wash the smell of smoke out of her hair and weary in her mind as she sat, wrapped in a bathrobe with the belt knotted severely tight, at her own old desk and withdrew a piece of parchment. She could not wait, even if it would be unwelcome and even if she could barely lift the quill. There were few things that were open to her now that had been closed before, and this was the one she wanted the most. She began, and the words flowed out of her quill as quickly as they always had decades ago.

Dear Andromeda…