Rating: G
Characters: Lucius, Harry and Draco

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Severus was coughing again.

Lucius Malfoy sat against the wall at the back of his cell, listening with a sort of detached anxiety. It had started just as it always did, with an occasional sporadic hack. And just as they always did, the spasms had come longer, harsher and more frequently over the course of several days (he thought. Impossible to say what day it was, or how long he had been sitting here, listening to Severus' lungs tear themselves to shreds.) When he wasn't coughing, the other man was holding nonsensical conversations with people who weren't there. Bad sign.

He had heard it happen to enough fellow Death Eaters since his imprisonment to know that it could be expected to stop very soon, now. He also had some idea what state his old friend must be in, though he had only seen it once--the warden, in an unprecedented show of generosity, had permitted him to visit Narcissa briefly, hours before the same malady had claimed her life. His beloved Narcissa, burning with fever, wasted to a shell of her former self; her lips blue with oxygen starvation, eyes glazed and unresponsive. To this day, he wasn't certain she had been aware of his presence.

Unbidden, his mind served up an image of Severus in the same condition, and he couldn't help but wince. A lifetime ago, for the few years they'd shared at Hogwarts, he had been the scrawny little kid's protector. Later, he had sponsored him into the ranks of the Death Eaters. Though somehow they had wound up on opposite sides of the war, Lucius was pragmatic enough not to hold a grudge--especially since they'd both landed in Azkaban, apparently never to emerge. (So much for truth, justice, and solidarity among heroes.)

Taking responsibility for Severus was an old habit, and it pained Lucius now to listen as the younger man fought to draw breath, and to know that there was nothing he could do.

An unusual sound drew his attention toward the heavy iron-bound oak door of his cell. Disturbances inside Azkaban Prison were rare, and generally put down very quickly--but now shouts echoed through the corridors, and rather than cutting off abruptly, as he would ordinarily expect, they were growing louder.

Curious--and somewhat relieved at the distraction--Lucius slowly got to his feet and shuffled toward the door, peering through the narrow gap through which his meals and the little light permitted to him passed.

He stepped back hastily an instant later, as something passed before the door--a Something which was very large, and very Dark; something that distorted the air around it and anything it passed near. He rubbed irritably at his eyes, which had weakened far too much already without such an unaccustomed challenge, and took another look.

A man was walking past the door. Not one of the guards, he thought. An escaped prisoner? He opened his mouth to call out to the unknown figure, but the words caught in his throat as it passed before the dim torch directly across from his door, framing a profile so familiar and beloved he would have known it anywhere--ten years' separation notwithstanding.

"Draco," he choked out, hardly daring to believe it could be true.

The young man stopped and swung round, casting about for the source of the sound. "Hello? Who's there?" he hissed, sounding understandably alarmed.

"Here, Draco. In the cell. It's me. It's--" He swallowed suddenly, throat aching, recalling a time when Draco would not have had to ask who had called his name.

The young man approached the door slowly, torchlight filtering through his fine white-blond hair, illuminating it like a halo in one of those old Muggle windows. "...Lucius?" he whispered hesitantly, peering through the narrow slit, disbelieving. "Father?"

"Yes, son. It's me. But what are you doing here? What can you be thinking, child? This is Azkaban Prison, not the bloody Restricted Section! If you're caught in this place, they won't bother to take the next poor dead sod out of his cell before they--"

And here he stopped. For another figure had come round the corner, demanding in a harsh undertone to know what was the bloody hold-up; Lucius caught a glimpse of dark hair in wild disarray, and torchlight reflecting off spectacles, and then it all fell into place.

"Ah," he said quietly. "I understand. You've come for Severus." A feeble flicker of hope for himself died a-borning, even as hope of another sort was born. "Good...it's about time someone took him out of here. The damp's settled in his lungs. He's not got much time left."

Draco shook his head, and Lucius noted with irritation that the boy's eyes had started to leak. "Father--we did, yes, but I hadn't even thought to hope that--we've got to get you out of here!"

Freedom. The thought was beyond tempting--it made his entire body reverberate with longing.

But a few doors down, he could hear Severus, rambling on at his hallucinated visitors...

Lucius shook his head impatiently. "Don't be ridiculous. You'll be fortunate on a historic scale if you can break one of us out, let alone two. Go on, don't waste time talking to me."

"But--"

With a snarl, Lucius shoved his arm through the slit, ignoring both the sudden excruciating pain in his overextended shoulder joint, and the burn as rough wood scraped the skin from his arm. He caught Draco by the back of the neck and pulled him up to within inches, eyes locked, silver and steel, and spoke harshly and rapidly. "But nothing. Now you listen to me, boy. It is no fault of yours that I'm in this place, and it is not your responsibility to get me out. You made the right choice. You picked the winning side. You are the last of the Malfoys, and the last Black of any account whatsoever. And you are going to take your godfather--who also chose correctly, and damn those who left him to rot here--out of this hellhole before it kills him!

"And once outside, you will walk away and never look back. Do you understand me?"

Draco choked back a sob, but nodded. Lucius held him for one moment longer--the closest they would ever come to a last embrace--and then released him, drawing his arm back through the slit with a slight irrepressible groan.

"His cell is three doors to the left. Good luck, son. Now go!"

As Draco turned reluctantly away, drawing his hand across his eyes, Lucius met the thoughtful gaze of his companion--and for the first time in many years, the trademark Malfoy smirk stole across his face.

"And Draco. Don't turn your back on Potter. There's a good deal more to that one than meets the eye."

Potter nodded once, acknowledging the unspoken compliment, and followed Draco down the hall.

Lucius listened as the distant shouts continued (the guards were being led in completely the wrong direction, the idiots), and smiled faintly to himself at the sound of thuds and loud clangs down the hall--a door being pried off its hinges.

The coughing stopped. The once-silky voice, now thick and gravelly with illness and disuse, spoke--and this time, was answered.

At last, the silence of Azkaban was restored. And Lucius Malfoy returned to his place against the wall, settling in for what promised to be a remarkably peaceful night.

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Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated characters and concepts are the property of J.K. Rowling. These stories are fan tributes to her works, and generate no profit of any kind. No challenge to the intellectual property rights of Ms. Rowling, or any other author or artist whose works may be mentioned herein, is intended or implied. Story archived by permission of the author.