It took several days before Lucius could stay awake to do anything more than eat and stumble to the bathroom. He couldn't lower into the bath, and he couldn't stand steady long enough to shower. Even when he was awake, he didn't contribute to any conversation between his son and wife, and he couldn't keep his eyes open. There was a blinding pain wrapped around his brain that no potion could touch. Narcissa wrote to Severus, who wrote back short, regretful notes that he could not be spared, assuring her that Lucius would recover with rest. She knew, reading between the lines, that if things were different, he would be in the hospital. She and Draco sat in the dark with him, staring at nothing. Eventually he was able to tolerate opening the curtains when the sunlight was indirect, and he could brace himself against the shower wall to try and relax under the hot water. It was some comfort to be able to send Draco away with this small bit of progress in his mind.

Once they were alone, Narcissa just stayed with Lucius in bed. She abandoned her novels; he had no desire to drink. The Dark Lord had taken his leave of them and she had given up her wand to Draco. There was nothing left. They barely spoke, and they barely moved.

"I would lay here and die with you if it weren't for Draco," she admitted one afternoon. "I would send away the trays…"

She knew the sentiment wouldn't shock him. It was obvious that everything was breaking down, that neither of them were imagining a future anymore.

"I want it to end too."

"We should send him away. Send him to your mother."

"It's not possible now. We have to watch him. He'll be out of that school forever soon, and it'll be easier."

"Easier to do what? Watch him wither away too?"

"I don't know, Narcissa. It feels easier when he's here, that's all."

There was a pile of second-rate wands on the banquet table, and no time to mindfully choose. Lucius ran his hand through the air over them as if he would sense the right choice, and Narcissa picked the first one she saw that looked about the same size as her own. The marching orders were altogether as vague as this process; go to Hogwarts, willing to die.

"I wish he was here," Narcissa whispered to Lucius in the last moments they had alone while dressing. "If he was here, the three of us could surely get away now while no one is watching."

"We'll find him, Cissy. I'm sure he'll come out looking for us. And then it'll all be over."

But they had misimagined the scene that would await them. The sky was alight with endless curses, fire, monsters hurtling around the castle towers and breaking down stone walls at the entrances. As soon as they found a high point in the forest to see it from, Narcissa moaned as if in physical pain, and Lucius had to catch her from falling to her knees, which almost toppled him too. At the exact moment he most wanted to take her somewhere safe and hidden and sit with her until he could think of one single thing that would give them a chance to get to Draco, his Mark burned uniquely hot.

"Don't try to fight, Cissy, please," he whispered into her ear. "He wants me to come to him, but I will come back. I will be here, and so will Draco. Maybe he has Draco. Just sit here," he led her up to a towering, wide tree with human sized divots between its roots, "and ignore everyone."

She let him settle her on the ground, but as he was about to step away she seemed to come suddenly back to her senses, and she grabbed up at his sleeves. "Lucius, you must beg for him. Just do it. What's the point in not?"

He swallowed hard and nodded his head. "Yes, I was – I don't imagine myself doing anything else."

She couldn't do as told; once she was alone Narcissa began advancing with the crowd, albeit at the very rear of it all, back where silence almost reigned again. If anything changed, if an easy path appeared, or by some miracle she could see Draco –

But they were going very slowly, and she didn't have a broomstick or the strange power of being able to fly under her own power as she had sometimes seen her sister do. Eventually she heard that a bridge had been destroyed, and after that the surge seemed to stop, to try to change course, and she wished she was where Lucius had left her and would be able to find her again.

A hand grabbed hers, and she swiveled, hopes rising, until she realized that it was such a familiar touch because it was Bellatrix, in a high color and almost smiling. "Come on, Cissy, he's going to come out here with us. Come to the front. I've just been with him and you'll never guess who he killed –"

People pushing around them in the crowd stopped her from finishing her sentence, and Narcissa was glad when her sisters hand was dragged out of her own. Still, she followed listlessly in the direction Bellatrix had gestured, and once the clearing opened up, she saw Lucius just outside the ring of firelight, and hurried to his side.

"You did not do what I asked of you," he said in a low voice, very firmly taking one of her hands between both of his.

"And you didn't think I would," she replied. She glanced up at him and saw that his eyes were red and watering. "What's wrong?" He only shook his head and stayed focused on the Dark Lord. "Draco?" He shook his head again, just as Harry Potter appeared from the black.

When she felt the hard beating of his heart, the heady rush of her quickly drawn and wild plan made her want to roll him over and put his head in her lap as she would do for Draco. She wanted to wipe the dirt off his face and mend his glasses. She wanted to pull him up with her and show the Dark Lord that he could not, as many times as he had tried, become more than a man. But she settled for the silently agreed upon playacting, running back to Lucius and watching in disbelief as the living boy managed to somehow stay so dead.

There was no way to communicate anything to Lucius, other than to hold his hand as she would have either way. Even though he didn't know what she had done, he thought they had achieved their goal of getting into the castle, and that was enough. He was still walking stiffly, and by the time the procession reached the castle courtyard, the two of them had fallen towards the back. Lucius made to push them up farther, but she held him back, shook her head, and indicated that his head should dip down to hers.

"You must use your wand," she said in the barest whisper, "only in self-defense, or for Draco."

And then it began.

Lucius found the strength to run when they saw Draco in the Great Hall mixed in the chaos with his classmates. His clothes were tattered, and there was soot mixed with blood on his face, and he fell into his mother's arms as if she was catching him from fainting, limp and finished. They were near the head table, battles raging behind them, and Narcissa turned at the screeching sound of her sister's voice just in the moment that she was killed, and Voldemort's furious cry split the air. She pulled Draco back hard, sliding them out of view behind a column where they slipped to the ground and she wrapped herself over him. Lucius, unable to crouch, stood above and rested a hand on her head. They couldn't see; they didn't want to.

Narcissa began to realize something as Harry and the Dark Lord debated on, both of their voices rising and the tension growing more and more constricting: the face she had not seen. Not in the Great Hall, not in Voldemort's victorious ranks. Not fighting for either side. Bellatrix had said something to her, she was about to reveal some shocking news…Lucius had been crying…

I killed Severus Snape three hours ago…

The hand on her head tightened – the only gesture he could make to her. One gasping breath escaped her before she could control herself and press her forehead harder against Draco, and before she could even understand it, as she was still imagining a barely grown Severus weeping in her lap over Lily Evans's pregnancy, there was more.

…and after I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy…

Narcissa felt any animosity she had for Molly Weasley melt away. She wanted to stand up and kill him herself.

"No," she whispered into Draco's hair. "Never."

In that one moment of silence, after the earth shattering roar, she was sure her bet had failed. She had learned over years that nothing good could happen anymore, and she was ready to stand up and grab her son and run as fast as they could away from there, to a place where they could Apparate away and then leave the country, and gouge out his Mark and try to live safely, even if they had nothing. But Lucius had seen it, he had been too curious not to lean forward slightly and watch, and he was slumped back against the wall, breathing heavily but somehow obviously relieved of a burden in a moment's time. Draco was unfurling his long legs and standing, and he easily leaned into his father and embraced him willingly for the first time in years.

"Come on, Cissy," Lucius said, reaching down. "Come help me sit down."

It did not hurt her particularly to see Bellatrix's body. It was strange, to think of the way they had held hands just an hour before, exactly the same way as they had always done in girlhood with no second thought, but Bellatrix had not been that girl for decades, and there was no better place for her to be now; she would not want to live without her master, anyway. It pained Narcissa more to see her niece, a stranger to her, laid out with her husband, when she knew Andromeda was home alone with their baby. She was a beautiful girl; the warm, round features that had always stood Andromeda apart from her sisters looked calm and resigned in death, and she and Remus were ringed by mourners. All five of them were dead now, she reflected. All five boys who had formed such a protective ring around Lily Evans. When she was in the midst of raging over a werewolf being allowed to teach her son, Severus, even after all the torment, had sworn to her that Lupin was the best of them.

Severus…

She knew she couldn't cry there. They had not earned the right to mourn the heroes.

"I don't think it would be right of us to just go," Narcissa wondered aloud in a low voice. The sun was fully illuminating the hall, and they had all eaten their fill of breakfast. Lucius was beginning to slump forward into the table, head propped on his fist. The three of them had placed their wands conspicuously on the table in front of them, almost out of reach, waiting for someone to interrupt their breakfast and disarm them and read the warrant, but nothing was done. Occasionally she would notice one person arrive at a table and relate, in a whisper, something to those gathered there, and then everyone would quickly turn and look at them, at Narcissa specifically.

"I'm going to go pack my trunk," Draco announced. He half-stood and leaned over and took the wand his mother had brought with her, leaving her with her own. "If there's anything left of it."

The flutter of movement seemed to draw new attention to them, and before Draco had even disappeared into the corridor, Horace Slughorn was beside them, patting a wincing Lucius on the back obliviously.

"These are some stories I'm hearing told, Narcissa."

"One story, Horace. A very little one in the scheme of it all." She glanced across the crowd; the cluster of professors he had peeled away from was observing the conversation with drawn faces.

"All the same, all the same." He finally looked down and actually considered Lucius. "But what's wrong with my old star student?"

"Dust up. A few weeks ago." Lucius did not lift his face, but Horace could not be deterred from stooping down and examining him.

"If that beating was given by who I think it was, you had better go on to the Hospital Wing."

"We couldn't possibly –"

"I'll take you. Up you go. Draco will find you, if that's what you're worried about!"

That was not what Narcissa had been worried about, although the mention of it put it on her list. She had assumed they were going to be if not detained, cautioned, and set apart from good society. Likely once again stripped of their wands, surely not welcomed to do anything other than leave. The Hospital Wing, likely full of more tragic injuries than the ones being nursed in the Great Hall, was an imposition to say the least.

Slughorn and Narcissa walked Lucius between them. Lucius focused on his pain while Narcissa very purposefully focused only on him, and Slughorn beamed around the room and called out greetings and babbling praise. When they made it out, the castle entryway was a very welcome cathedral of fresh air and quiet; Narcissa felt Lucius sag slightly as he let go of the pretense of minimizing his limp.

The respite did not last, however, as voices rounded a corner and they were confronted by the ragged trio of teenaged heroes. The Weasley boy immediately gripped the girl around the shoulders and turned her to walk the other way; that was understandably a wound that was likely never to be healed. But Harry stood his ground, rolling his wand between his fingers at his side, and considered them openly. After a moment passed, he reached into his jacket and took out Draco's wand, and handed it to Narcissa, and then spoke.

"Thank you. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't done that."

Narcissa's neck was burning. "It's embarrassing that that's all it was."

"It doesn't matter. You knew he would have killed you for it."

Again she tried to shrug it away. Lucius squeezed the shoulder his armed was draped over. "We know what you did for Draco," he said after clearing his throat. "We don't deserve –"

"I didn't want anyone to die," Harry interrupted. "Not even…" After a pause in which he blinked and looked down at the floor, Harry's eyes turned meaningfully to both of them, but seemingly especially at Lucius. "You were friends with Professor Snape. You were kind to him."

Lucius could only incline his head at the words, and when he did a shudder ran over him. "I have to lay down," he said. "I'm sorry."

Narcissa slipped his arm away and helped him regain his balance, and then gestured for the two men to go on as Harry stayed planted, obviously aiming at something else.

"He was such a sad little boy," she said to his previous point. "Both of us were naturally drawn to him. There was a time when he lived with us."

"You're all he had, then, besides Dumbledore. His parents are dead, aren't they?" She nodded, and he went on, growing almost frantic. "I need someone…there are all these things that need to be done for him. A funeral and a grave and things."

"You're just a boy," she said, even though it sounded stupid after that night. "Someone else will worry about all that."

"I know, but... I'm worried that no one else will care like I do. Even the professors, they don't really understand. They didn't like him. I could barely find out if they had gone to get his body yet. I made them put it – him – in a classroom alone. I know they'll be respectful, but I don't think they're listening seriously to me. About everything he did."

"Ok." She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she stopped herself. "I'll tell Horace they shouldn't do anything without consulting us. I'll tell him we'll pay for it. We would have, anyway. I mean if it had happened normally."

They seemed to agree to go their separate ways at that, but at the last second Narcissa turned and called out. "You know, I realize now that Severus was my only friend for much of my life. He did very many kind things for me…he watched Draco as much as he watched you. If you ever want to know more about him, I would be happy to tell it."

Harry nodded. "I think I owe him that."

"But you go rest now. Let us worry about him. Go back to your friends."