Chapter Ten

A/N: Thank you to cecilee, NimbusCentaur and MarianaNM for reviewing.

As the sun began to set in the sky, the Great Hall of Hogwarts finally began to submit to the darkness it had been denying since so early that day. The floating candles had been destroyed, and so had the majority of the torches on the walls, meaning that the night could no longer be barred from the place they had all once called home. Everything was ruined. Almost everything was gone.

Amidst the chaos of fallen debris and grieving families, the Malfoys sat huddled together beside what would have been the Ravenclaw table. Houses did not matter anymore. They were too broken to keep old prejudices alive, and too isolated to differentiate too vastly between their fellow witches and wizards. If they kept their heads down for now, they may just succeed in remaining out of prison.

Narcissa Malfoy, in person, had never been so thankful in all her life. Kingsley Shacklebolt himself, the new Minister for Magic, had approached them in person to say that neither Draco nor Lucius would be prosecuted for being a Death Eater, as both of them had defected during the War, and had not fought in the final Battle.

The mark that Voldemort had left on the Wizarding World could quite plainly be seen from any direction glanced at. The rubble had fallen at the hands and feet of His giants, the Light side slain at the wand of His Dark followers, and the world outside had been devastated by his fruitless quest for power.

Despite all of the terror and despair that filled the air of the Great Hall, the celebrations were just as evident, if not more, than the pain of loss in the fight to achieve it. 'There are people in this war who have suffered far more than I have done.' Narcissa reminded herself, wrapping her arms even tighter around her son than she had done before, simultaneously leaning back into her husband's warm embrace. 'I merely need to be thankful for what I have kept, rather than focusing on all that has been taken from me.'

Of all the people in all of the world, the blonde found her thoughts drifting in the direction of her sister. Not the one who had been felled by her wand, but of the other, who had been turfed from their home when she had been only seventeen years old, Narcissa only a month from turning fifteen. It had been a hellish time for the dark haired woman of late, or so her sister had learned from the Daily Prophet, and from various other sources that she had once had. Her husband had been taken by Snatchers, relatively early in the war, and the Malfoy woman was certain that she had seen her Metamorphmagus daughter and her werewolf husband lying among the dead. She had once despised Andromeda from leaving her alone, that much was true, but she would not have wished that pain on her worst enemy, let alone on her own family. It was the cruellest thing that could ever have been.

When she began to rise from her perch on the bench, Lucius stopped her with a hand clasping around her wrist, not firmly enough to hurt her, but firmly enough to keep her in place. True, he did not truly have the old Pureblood prejudices left in his mind, as he had seen pure, half and Muggle-Born blood spilled that day, but currently, the man did not want his wife anywhere out of his line of sight, for fear that others in the castle had not had the same courtesy to abandon their old preconceptions as the Malfoy family had done. Not wanting to make her husband uneasy, Narcissa once again sat down, resting her head on his shoulder, while clasping her son's hand in hers.

"We were so lucky." she whispered, just loud enough that the two blondes on either side of her could hear. "We could have been killed today, all of us, by either side. We could have been slaughtered by Potter's followers, for standing behind the Dark Lord, and yet we could have been murdered by those who were our own, because of the treason I committed in the forest."

There was another sentence that she would have said, but Lucius stopped her the moment she opened her mouth again, pressing two fingers gently to her lips. "Narcissa, this was not your fault. You did what you felt was right to be done, for the safety of our family. Nothing has happened to us, we are all perfectly fine. Do not blame yourself for this battle. It was not our war to fight."

"I know that it wasn't." she informed her husband, her voice still only a little louder than it had been the first time she'd spoken. "But I still feel that I should have done more, that we should have done more, to stop them from taking over."

In truth, neither Lucius nor Narcissa was sure of whom she spoke, the Light side or the Dark, when she said that they should have prevented their takeover of the school, and neither of them truly cared. They were now neutral, and did not class either side as their enemy, so it was of no consequence who they should have stopped. The battle was over and done with, and the Malfoys had no one left to fight.

Or so they had thought.

"Mrs. Malfoy?" came a questioning voice from behind the family. Upon hearing her name, Narcissa turned, immediately making to stand.

"Minister." she responded, upon seeing that she was addressing the new Minister for Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, flanked by two Aurors. "How can I help you?"

"I'm afraid, Mrs. Malfoy, that you will need to come with us." the first Auror said, stepping forward in a way that, for some reason, made the blonde feel uneasy.

"I'm not sure that I quite understand." she told the man, in a quiet voice, seething a little as she noticed the slight stammer in her voice. She was utterly confused, that much was true of both herself and her family, but that did not excuse, in her mind, a slip of the manners that had been drilled into her as a child. However, the words that followed made her world stop turning.

"Narcissa Cassiopeia Malfoy, I am arresting you for the murder of Bellatrix Lestrange."

A/N: And so it ends! This is the end of So Close, and Still So Far, but the sequel, Trial and Error, will be up in a couple of weeks. Please keep an eye out, and review my last chapter!