Lucius Malfoy grimly adjusted his robe before glancing at his wife before setting aside the small flask that he'd drained dry only moments before.
Narcissa was still sleeping as he prepared for what must be done, hiding the fear behind the mask he had maintained for over a decade with what to others must appear to be an almost cold indifference.
There were some oaths that he would not, nay could not, break no matter the cost it might have. He had no doubt that there would be no return from this...
...This insanity that the Lord he had sworn himself to threw himself in his foolishness.
He had managed to avoid the confrontation in the Graveyard and the later massacre that came to London.
However, he had seen the results with his own eyes, something that he would otherwise have been incapable of comprehending and still felt a tinge of doubt towards the reality of those events.
Lord Voldemort had spoken of his belief in what was happening.
Every year those descended from the impure grew in numbers as more and more of their spawn entered the sacred halls of Hogwarts while the purebloods seemed to remain static at best with the losses that last war created reducing their numbers for a time.
It was a threat to their life, to everything they held dear.
The mudbloods, descendants of those who long ago attempted to stomp out magic were now winning in a different way.
He once believed in that cause, and in fact still did, but that belief was matched by another.
When he met that thing that walked in the form of a child just a few years ago, he had felt something he'd never felt before rending his thoughts with icy talons.
Now, all hands were called to face that thing that others might call a boy if they had never encountered such an abomination, much less met the gaze that seemed but as pools of freshly spilled blood.
Reaching down he picked his mask from its place upon his dresser and turned to his wife, allowing himself but a moment to experience what would be one last moment of humanity as his fingers traced her jawline before he was gone from the room.
A brief motion brought him pause as he reached for the floo powder in the dressing room and then he felt his body seize up before he fell and let the cold dark take his conscious thoughts away, but one word escaped his lips, barely audible over the clatter of the mask falling to the stonework.
"Draco?"
The one in question turned away from the form of his father as he returned to his room.
"I'm sorry father," he commented in an almost wistful tone, "I know what you were planning, but I know who you would be up against."
A pause as his hand moved sharply in a spell to put the open flame upon that hearth out.
"I will not let your choices damn me, nor mother."