Lucius Malfoy tossed and turned in his sleep, a low moan escaping his lips. He had contracted the smallpox somewhere in the damp, dark recesses of Azkaban prison; now he was deathly ill, delirious from the raging fever that had set in the previous day. Healers had been sent, but the fever held on through their best efforts to contain it.

He was vaguely aware of the presence of his wife and occasionally his son. Most of the guards stayed away from his cell, afraid of the disease that in the Wizarding world there was no cure for. Narcissa sat by her husband's bedside whenever the Healers would allow it. She was not sure why she did it; every particle of her Slytherin mind screamed that she would bring the disease home to their son and they would all die. Still, something else deep down inside her would not allow her to leave the man she loved to die. And she did love him, whatever anyone else said. She did not show it in public or outside the privacy of their chambers in the Manor but it was true. Lucius was her husband and she would not abandon him to the dubious mercy of the guards and the other prisoners.

Draco was, for the most part, kept away from his father and from Azkaban altogether. No matter what the disease, it always carried off the children faster than the adults. And if it was slowly eating away at Lucius, a fully-grown, powerful wizard, God only knew what it would do to his fifteen- year-old son.

Voldemort was not overly concerned with his fallen deputy's fate. Despite the fact that Lucius had been slated as Voldemort's right-hand man this time around, the Dark Lord had left the Malfoy Lord to die. When Lucius cried out from the pain of the Mark's burning, Narcissa could only wonder how long it would be before Voldemort put a price on her husband's head for his consistent failure to report for meetings, no matter how sick he was. The Dark Lord was not a forgiving man, if he could even be considered human anymore. The other prisoners had escaped, therefore Lucius, by Voldemort's standards, should have gone with them, regardless of the fact that he could not even stand on his own, much less manage a dangerous escape from prison.