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If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too. -'If' Rudyard Kipling “There’s no sense in waiting for Him.”
Lucius leapt from the armchair. The silky voice had startled him from his uneasy contemplation of the embers. His eyes sought out the source through the heavy shadows, throat tight with a terror he would never admit to.
“Narcissa,” he breathed, muscles loosening in momentary relief before returning to the dull bundles of tension they’d held before. Angry at himself for showing such weakness, he sank back to perch uncomfortably on the edge of the armchair in as smooth a movement as his aching muscles would allow. The words his wife had spoken hadn’t registered their meaning in his mind, and had his expected visitor arrived, he realised he wouldn’t have needed to search the room for confirmation. “What are you doing up?” He struggled to smother the waver which had become so much a feature of his voice over the past year.
“I could ask the same of you,” Narcissa’s voice held all the smooth confidence that a Malfoy’s should. He hated her for it. “Except I already know,” she finished, gazing intensely down her nose at him.
Lucius swallowed, forcing the saliva down his tight throat. “You should get back to bed,” was his only answer, voice a whisper.
There was a harsh silence and Lucius could feel her eyes sliding over his now unfamiliar, wane form. He stared into the embers. The heat was foreign against his skin. His hand curled into a fist as the silence lengthened, unbroken by the footsteps that should have sounded her departure.
“I will not return to bed alone, Lucius-“
“-Woman!”
“-I have gone to my bed alone for more than a year!” her voice was like ice, but even after a year of separation, he could still detect that edge of pain she’d never quite been able to hide from her voice when truly upset. “Do not ask me to do so again.” It was a command and it made something in his core tighten.
He pressed the skin of his fingers against the cold metal that topped his cane. It felt like validation to have it back in his tight grasp again. Grounding. He wasn’t sure he’d have managed sitting upright without it clutched against his flesh.
He couldn’t leave the chair. No. He would wait. He would be ready for this judgement. He would meet his punishment with head held high, like a Malfoy. He’d disgraced his family enough. If he was to die, he would not allow the Malfoy honour to die with him. Narcissa would understand. She had always understood.
“I will not go back to an empty bed while you sit down here, in the cold, staring at dying embers.” Her words echoed through the large room. The fire issued a crackle and spat a spark onto the expensive carpet at his feet.
His jaw tightened. The carved snakes, twisted on either side of the fireplace sneered at him where they once had smirked. Now, their emerald eyes glinted at him with mocking mirth. He could feel the gazes of a hundred Malfoys of the past, weighing down on him from the portraits circling to the ceiling above. He had tried though; tried his hardest, but portraits were unforgiving and snakes did not concern themselves with human trivia.
No matter how intimidating the room, he knew that the bedroom that now lay abandoned upstairs, would only be worse. Luxurious comfort could at any moment be replaced by torturous agony; the false security would twist to a naked helplessness. Such voluptuous softness as would no doubt be found deep in Narcissa’s embrace would morph into a stinging venom. Better to remain here, in the cold and the dark. Keep the bones that were more used to hard stone away from soft feather down.
Abruptly, his mind, which had learnt to wander unhindered in Azkaban was keenly aware of Narcissa’s presence. She was almost unwelcome; he had become so used to being alone.
“I will find no rest,” he whispered, realising the need to explain himself.
He heard her footsteps advancing across the stone expanse between them. His body tensed further. He feared her touch; feared harming her delicate sensibilities should he shy away, and feared what she might awaken in him again with simple contact.
“He may not even come tonight.”
The hard edge had disappeared from her voice and he could feel her behind him. He almost felt the air shift to make space for her hand as it moved to alight softly on his bony shoulder. He held steady, but the shiver that ran through him at her tenderness was unavoidable.
“He may,” he countered, his voice gaining a little more strength and assurance from her contact. “And I will not be dragged from my bed like some Muggle to the slaughter.” He spat the words.
Narcissa moved around to kneel before him, her skirts rustling. Her hand dragged, agonisingly slowly from his shoulder, down to his wrist. Every inch of his skin where she touched tingled even through the thick layers of silken and cotton robe. Her eyes looked up at him, dampened and filled with something that was not quite pity; closer to distress- but utterly for him. He was able to accept her... distress, but pity would have been a step too far for his already broken pride.
“You spent a year in Azkaban for him-“
Lucius stood sharply. Her hand fell from his wrist as he moved away from her. “Do not be so naive as to think that his anger will have eased.” He looked out into the shadows of the room, deep into the darkness where the light from the meagre embers could not reach. “You know as well as I that Azkaban’s walls are the only reason I still breathe.”
His words were not what she wanted to hear, her silence told him as much. His legs were weak; on the point of shaking beneath him, but he stood on. His head however, felt far too heavy for his neck to raise from the ground to its once lofty position; which now only felt awkward and unnatural. Instead, his eyes scanned the broken stone floor.
“You have been away from me for too long... my Lucius.”
His eyes slid closed as she spoke his name just as she always had, like nothing had changed. His now frail body, curled into itself at the suggestion that laced her words. He had feared her manner towards him upon return. How long would she blame him for putting her and Draco in such danger? She had gone along with it in the beginning; loved the power of being married to one of the most influential Death Eaters to stand at the side of the Dark Lord. It had all seemed very grand back then. Upon His return, she hadn’t been so sure. He’d always argued to himself that what had happened hadn’t really been his fault.
“If it hadn’t been for your power playing and bloody pride we wouldn’t be here right now!” she screamed at him.
“You wanted it too, Narcissa! Don’t try to fool me! I remember perfectly well how you begged me to get this thing burned onto my arm!” he tore his sleeve upwards, ignoring the ripping of expensive threads to bare his Dark Mark to her gaze. She hated it now. He knew.
Narcissa could no longer stand to look at the Mark that had brought upon them so much disaster, rather than the glory it should have done.
“It should never have gone this far!” she cried.
Maybe now, after a year spent in almost absolute solitude, rattling around Malfoy Manor with no one to latch on to, had given her time to think. The Dark Lord’s anger might not have muted within a year of his absence, but his wife’s was an entirely different matter. Or perhaps, she simply felt he’d been punished enough?
This time, the sound of her footsteps was muted by the heavy thread of the rug beneath them, but it was filled with a promise; one Lucius was unsure he sought. The heat of the fire at his back was replaced by a different kind.
“Its time you remembered me, Lucius,” Narcissa purred. Pressure against his back was the press of her hands, over jutting blades of bone poking through his paper-thin skin, up and over his shoulders they roamed, trying to find familiarity in old ground that had changed so much. They curled there; rubbed sensuously as they remembered their way, altered it to the new shape of his body.
He took a shaking breath. “I thought of you every day,” he whispered in a moment of uncharacteristic transparency.
“You’ve become too accustomed to loneliness,” she soothed, pressing herself to his back.
Lucius’ heavy eyes slid closed in something like contentment, stinging dimly in pleasure at the unexpected relief from the light. Narcissa had always been better with her hands than her mouth. Before, even the brush of her fingertips across the bare skin of his arm would have sent him into a flurry of heat. With his eyes closed, everything faded away but the press of her fingers and the warmth of her sympathetic palms. Their heat snaked from his shoulders, retracing the path chosen on the ascent, before parting to slither enticingly around his thinned middle. Her fingertips found more bone and sinew that she was accustomed to and he could sense the tightness of her lips as she realised just how much the man he knew had wasted away. He could sense her thoughts. How much of his mind remained? Her fingers though, did not falter as her thoughts did, and they confidently turned him to face her.
“You’ve spent too long in the dark, surrounded with cold stone,” her dark eyes spoke up to his icy grey ones. Vowels were elongated, soft so it seemed as though she sang him the words. Her familiar body pressed to his, her scent surrounding him awoke a deep nostalgia in his gut, so much that he almost choked on its sweetness. Fingers, sliding over his sides, across his ribs opened him to her. He felt himself awakening beneath her hands. “It’s time you felt something warm beneath you again...” she hissed. Her hands were in his hair, sinking into once-silken strands with the ease of long practice, right to the scalp. Her fist closed and she twisted. Something unlocked inside Lucius and he allowed his head to be guided downwards. He could feel her breath upon his face and he opened his eyes to meet her hooded ones.
He covered the last of the distance himself with his new-found confidence, grown from her touch, pressing his broken lips to her plumped ones. Lucius’s arms slid around her and she pressed closer though his embrace remained hesitantly slack. The kiss was, at first, unnaturally chaste, but Narcissa showed a great deal of restraint, allowing him to take his time. He could tell; she felt like she stood on cracking ice as his lips pressed to hers in a way she’d never felt before. Like he valued her. Narcissa reciprocated, caution at first in this new venture also.
Lucius would have been surprised; if he’d had the capacity to notice. Narcissa had never been one to not take precisely what she wanted, and after a year apart from him- it wouldn’t have entered his wildest dreams that she might have sated herself with another- certainly the precise thing she wanted was to be taken and pleasured again and again and again. But now, there was a certain kind of wizened appreciation that lay between them.
Though Lucius was not fool enough to think that the old Narcissa had disappeared completely; romantic kisses were wonderful but soon grew bland no matter how pioneering they might be. As Lucius pressed his lips to hers, each time with the same disbelieving contentment that had embodied his responses from the moment she’d touched him, she without warning, opened her mouth and nipped his lower lip between her teeth. The response was immediate. A moan escaped from between his newly parted lips, almost a mewl, brows lowered in pained perfection. He pressed closed, locking their hips together and Narcissa momentarily recognised a flash of the old Lucius.
Narcissa used the hand still fisted in his hair to pull him down and into her mouth and before long she had coaxed his tongue to meet her own.
He had forgotten how she had kissed. Like a woman driven mad by desire. He took every inch of her mouth, tasting her with his tongue and still she wanted more. She made him burn inside like he never thought he would again. She drove every thought forcefully from his mind until there was nothing left but her and wanton dreams.
He felt the swell of her breasts against his chest and his mind travelled to the too-thick lace encasing them. How easily it could be ripped from her shaking body. His hand dipped, with this exact intention. Narcissa noticed, and her own hand moved to tug insistently at the folds of his shirt.
Skin was suddenly bared, and Lucius felt the chill of the room against his chest now that the fire had died down. The bedroom seemed decidedly more inviting now, and pulling Narcissa close to him, he focused on the feeling of soft sheets against his skin in the rooms above. As the fire darkened and fizzled to nothing in the distance, the pair were pressed closer together still as they were torn through the ether to the bedroom above, pressed against from all sides.
The sheets were warmer than he had imagined, and the journey had been more uncomfortable than he was used to, but it had been a while. Still, their kiss had not been broken.
He pressed himself into the body beneath him, feeling her against him. His shirt was discarded to the side and he dipped his head to take a hard nipple between his lips. Narcissa ripped her long fingernails down the alabaster skin of his back, scratching her ownership there as Lucius tongue twisted its way over her chest. She shouted out her pleasure, arching into him as she bared her teeth.
He nipped at her neck as he felt her feet pushing the clothing off his thin hips. He growled and grabbed her by the waist, pulling her to. Insistent hands tore away the delicate lace of her dress further, until a swish of his hand had the clothes sliding from her body.
Narcissa pulled them together again, and both groaned in bliss as their naked bodies met each other in a heated embrace. A single piece of lace hung from Narcissa’s shoulder where his hasty hands had been too frantic to catch. She could feel his hardness pressing against her lower stomach. Their mouths met again in open-lipped ecstasy as she slid her legs apart, allowing his body to slip between her thighs. She tightened them around him again almost immediately, as though afraid to lose him to the Dementors again from her very embrace.
One hand pressed against her cheek, feeling her soft skin against his now-callused hands. He trailed fingertips down the length of her body, pausing to gently circle a nipple and before rubbing roughly over it. She arched into his hands, her heels digging into the small of his back, pushing his hard length against herself.
Her own hand found its way all of a sudden to the rounded globes of his ass, where it squeezed just as his own long fingers delved inside her, flicking torturously over a spot that made her vision swim.
His face nuzzled into her neck as she yelled a hoarse cry of pleasure and sunk her teeth into the vulnerable skin of his neck. He grunted, and in the first elegant movement he’d achieved in a year, he replaced his hand with his pulsing length and drove hard into her in one sweeping movement.
Their screams harmonised in a perfect and melodious cacophony of gratification.
Narcissa’s hands pressed at either side of his spine, holding him still inside her. Swelling with every gulp of air she took, her breasts were dusted in the warmth of his own panting breaths. His hands held her head now, on either side, cradling her beneath him. Dark brown met cold grey and paused.
Lucius saw a smile like he’d never seen break across the usually harsh plains of Narcissa’s face.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered.
Lucius regarded her closely, considering taking the comment incorrectly, before his lust-addled brain reminded him that Narcissa had never been the best with her mouth. He understood what she intended to say; somewhere deep in the back of his mind.
He thrust into her, not attempting a matching response and allowing the need that seemed to burn over every inch of skin to convey his own emotion.
His teeth ground together in the pleasure of her warmth wrapped around him. He traced the curve of her neck, her head thrown back in ecstasy as he continued to move inside her, thrusts beginning to gain a rhythm now. Her hand slid into his hair and he moaned low in his throat. She captured it in her mouth.
“I am glad to see you found something... to occupy your time...”
The icy, unnatural voice cut straight through to Lucius’ spine and he froze, bile rising in his throat. He didn’t dare look up; in fear of seeing what he knew was there.
“...while awaiting my arrival.”
The twisting voice seemed still to hiss the words even after the originals had evaporated into darkness.
Lucius forced himself to look up; to not acknowledge his Master would surely bring even further dire consequences. He sat in shadow, no more than darkness Himself, though thicker and somehow heavier than the surrounding gloom. He had chosen the wing-backed arm chair, 1810, that sat only a few feet from the bed. Lucius attempted to speak, but the bile in his throat stopped him from even squeaking a sound. All he could think was how long has He been there.
He took a breath and swallowed the lump of terror. “my lord...” he rasped, barely above a whisper. He felt Narcissa’s nails drawing blood on his back.
“Do not let me interrupt,” He said His words smooth but His voice rough and low. Only His eyes, empty of anything but humiliating mirth. He gestured ethereally with His hand towards the bed.
The room had lost all its warmth, and Narcissa’s body had gone rigid with terror beneath him, uncomfortably tight around him. Her eyes were clenched shut, face turned away.
Lucius met His eyes.
“Do not make me repeat myself.”
His tone didn’t leave it open to debate and Lucius knew in that moment that to try to challenge the command would be suicidal, no matter how humiliating. He sensed that humiliation was going to become a close friend to him in the coming months. But Lucius wanted to live, because somewhere, deep in some untouched part of him, someplace secret that not even the Dementors had reached, he believed there was still a chance of redemption.
Using the sliver of pride that he had left, which Narcissa had only just awoken in him moments before with her lingering touches; he shifted across her, doing his best to cover her quivering body with his own. The Dark Lord did not fail to notice.
“How gallant, Lucius.”
The words were mocking, but he could hear the lingering fury and disgust beneath them. He was certain he would meet those defining qualities of his master head-on later.
“She will have her turn.” His whispering voice hissed the words like a poison.
Lucius bit down hard on his lip, not only at the implication, but at the scratching of Narcissa’s nails along his back.
Lucius tried to clear his mind, to not think about it and simply move, but with the eyes of the Dark Lord on him everything seemed all too stuck in reality. Narcissa’s choked back sobs, shaking beneath him made the sick feeling in his gut intensify, but with a grind of his teeth, he forced himself into action, gently pushing into his wife again with none of the desire he’d exhibited moments before.
Every thrust seemed a marathon, a test of his will as the small of his back crept with disgust. Without looking, he could sense the smile twisting over the thin, pale lips of the Dark Lord. What must have been a choked whimper borne of distress crept from between his teeth. He forced the stinging feeling behind his eyes back, squeezing them shut. But the now itchy rubbing of the bedclothes against his skin infuriatingly tethered him to the moment and the whimpering of Narcissa below him, only pain being drawn from her now that the fire of the moment had been brutally extinguished.
The icy cold of the room brought out goose bumps along his exposed body, but a cold sweat covered him from proud head to pointed toe.
Covering Narcissa as best he could, he brushed a strand of hair from her face, no longer able to stand her features twisted in pain beneath him. Never in his life had he hurt her. He didn’t intend to start now, whether the Dark Lord commanded it or not. At his touch, her eyes hesitantly opened to his own. Her nails released their hold ever so slightly in his flesh.
On and on he went until he was sure there would be no end. All of his muscles seemed on fire with pain now instead of passion, and His cold eyes burnt into his bare flesh like naked agony.
He dropped his face to Narcissa’s neck and fell still. His muscles ached with exertion with no pleasure to spur him on. He waited.
A point trailed down the dip of his spine, trailing shivers behind it. Cold and hard, he could sense the power radiating from the object. Yew, shaped and coloured like bone, with the tail-feather of a phoenix implanted in its core. In the hand of its Master it pulsed with an aching to harm. He could feel on his skin where it had touched beginning to burn, deep and low. The tip, only touching lightly, tickling almost, traced along the small of his back and slowed as it traced obscenely along the cleft of his ass.
“Disappointing,” came the low voice of his master. “No wonder you have only one child.”
Anger would have risen in his gut if he could have thought beyond the path of the Dark Lord’s wand. His eyes remained locked on Narcissa’s. He couldn’t bring himself to look behind him.
“Perhaps...” He began thoughtfully, continuing the path of His wand down the back of Lucius’ over-sensitive thigh, “I should... show you how it’s done.”
Lucius felt the rush of air as the wand was flicked, but before he could even consider the implication, he was thrown from the bed and across the room. Everything went spinning, and all sense of gravity seemed lost. He held his breath. The ground came rushing up to meet him, and meet him it did with a merciless thump. The breath he’d been holding was knocked from his lungs. His momentum rolled him further and his back hit the stone wall.
Pain spread through his back like wildfire, and he curled in on himself, willing the wave to dissipate. He coughed harshly and pushed himself up on one arm, eyes flying to the bed, his head in a whirlwind of terror as it deciphered precisely what the Dark Lord intended to do.
He was already on top of her, and Narcissa let out a screech like Lucius had never heard before. It had him leaping to his feet before he could think what he was doing, and travelling two large, stumbling steps towards the bed.
The wand of yew and phoenix feather was pointed at him before he could slide to a stop and he hit an invisible wall, conjured in the thin air before he felt hot bonds of invisible magic twisting their way around his naked body and lifting him, straining against them into the air.
He struggled, unable to help himself as he watched Narcissa writhe in terror beneath the Dark Lord, cloaked in smoke and darkness astride her. The more he struggled the tighter the burning restraints grew, and the hotter until they began to sear his ashen skin.
“Please!” he allowed the choked yell to stutter from his lips, lost in the panic of powerlessness as he looked on. “My Lord!”
He never thought he would beg, but the sadistic smirk that twisted the snake like face of the Dark Lord into a visage of torture and terror awoke in him things he did not recognise as belonging to him. Foolishly he continued to struggle, shouting as the tightening air around him grew hotter still against his burning skin.
Lucius knew; he understood that His intention was not to harm Narcissa; that was simply a side-effect. Lucius knew that everything was done for his own benefit, and no matter how much he knew that he was playing into the Dark Lord’s pleasures, he couldn’t help but struggle and shout. His master knew his trade well.
Narcissa’s scream as He entered her was unearthly. Lucius’ echoed hers, but this time their voices met in horrific discord. He ground his teeth together, no longer feeling the pain from the burning bonds, too caught up was he in the infinite terror that pasted itself across Narcissa’s features. The Dark Lords face was sneering pleasure, but Lucius wondered whether a creature so unearthly could even feel sexual gratification; surely the only joy He was taking from the encounter was the horror He was causing. His movements were unnatural, slinking and slow one moment and shunting and sharp the next.
Lucius could struggle no longer. His body had lost all of the strength it had once brimmed with in the hellhole of Azkaban, and such adrenaline-fuelled exertion could only last for so long before his energy burnt out to nothing. To dying embers. He relaxed against the bonds, saved from desperation only to be swallowed by desolate despair.
He shook his head, unable to voice the words any longer as the first tears finally dampened his pallid cheeks. He could taste nothing but blood from where he’d bitten his lip and all his eyes could see was the beauty of his wife being plundered by a demon. A demon that he answered to. His already guilt-wracked mind began to convulse at the understanding that her pain was his own doing. His failure choked him, causing further tears to play a macabre relay down his face.
He shut his eyes, sensory overload making the decision for him, but within moments, a tearing force ripped them open again to the same horrific sight, only worsened by its momentary absence from view.
“Pay attention, Lucius,” He rasped smoothly, “I am teaching you a lesson you will not want to forget.” Regardless of His activities, He spoke as though He sat over afternoon tea, His voice level and unstrained. He wasn’t even out of breath. Did He breathe?
Lucius eyes were forced to follow the Dark Lord’s skeleton fingers tracing over his wife’s supple breasts, following the same paths his own had ghosted with affection earlier that night. Over her lips, brushing her cheek, which Narcissa seemed to dislike even more than the intimate region of her chest. Lucius began to go numb, as his breath caught in his throat and his vision grew blurry. His Master thrust forwards, one last, final time, whether He emptied himself or whether it was simply an obscene finale to the horrific display, no one but Narcissa and He were to know. He rose from the bed, ghost like and with a wraithlike grace. His eyes still raped her. Paralysed for several moments, she simply panted, each breath a wheezing whimper of tortured distress, until she shuddered and curled around herself. She rolled to her side, back to both men, shaking silently.
From the corner of his eye, Lucius watched Him approaching, but he could not tear his eyes from his wife, even though they had now been released from whatever curse they had been under.
It was the feeling of an ice cold finger trailing over his bony ribcage that snapped his eyes to the snakelike creature before him.
They had told him, in the beginning, that his awe would turn to disgust and his respect would morph to terror for his new master. They were wrong; certainly he had become terrified, and everything that he had seen that night had disgusted him to the point of vomiting. But still, he was overawed.
The Dark Lord flattened His emaciated hand to Lucius’ side. “You have failed terribly.” Lucius’ heard the two meanings of the sentence, loud and clear, even through his panic-swilled mind.
He sucked in a breath, the air wheezing through his chest. “Yes, My Lord.”
The Dark Lord moved, beginning slowly to circle the still-suspended Lucius, like cornered prey. His freezing hand trailed around every inch of the powerless wizard’s naked form. Lucius was held too tightly to even shiver, and now that his attention was not so thoroughly diverted, he realised the air that bound him was growing boiling hot. Another millimetre tighter and his skin would begin to crackle.
“I failed you, My Lord,” Lucius struggled on, his voice still barely a whisper, but His snake-like ears could hear every syllable. “But it was my failing alone... I alone should be punished.”
It was a bold statement. Lucius knew the moment it had come from his semi-parted lips. His mind was too distracted to be able to think through his sentences pro-actively. He awaited the response, sweat beading on his forehead, dampening his upper lip. Narcissa let out a whimper and he couldn’t suppress the twitch that ran through him. The cords of air tightened once more, and the sickening smell of searing flesh began to permeate the freezing air. He caught his lip between his teeth and bit down as hard as he could, but the grunt of pain that escaped his lips was too sweet, and began a flood of keening wails too voluminous to staunch. His entire body began to shake in agony as the invisible bonds seared red welts in his flesh in punishment for moving. His throat was raw, but the yells tore up from his guts and by the time they reached his mouth they proved far too powerful to stop.
Tears of agony blurred his vision, but he saw the dim shape of his Master raise his hand, and the unstoppable burning began to ease. Strips across his stomach, criss-crossing over his chest, slicing along his back bubbled as they cooled, crackling. His throat could no longer house his pain, and wavering whimpers were the only thing able to be vocalised now.
Even Voldemort had tired of his screams: He who normally sought the melody of agony.
“You punish yourself enough, Lucius. I have not yet even begun.” The Dark Lord spoke no word of a lie, Lucius knew.
His Master slithered past him, heading towards the empty fireplace a black hole that half swallowed the room. Seemingly without signal from Him, Lucius merciless bonds retreated and dropped him bodily to the floorboards. He was unable to manage even a grunt as his face met the unforgiving wood. Broken breath escaping his lips sent miniscule droplets of clear water scattering from him; his tears. They had left their icy trails the length of his body to drip from the tips of his toes to the ground, soon to be mixed with blood.
Lucius’ eyes stared unseeingly beneath the bed, terror twisting in his gut like a snake as his mind flickered across the mindless tortures that were favourites of the Dark Lord’s. He didn’t notice the earring that Narcissa had lost months ago, glistening in the darkness. All he could sense was the presence of the Dark Lord behind him.
Short, snowy white hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The expanse of his back, already welted with angry red seemed too large and naked to be exposed to such undeniable wrath. The Dark Lord was staring into the absent flames seemingly lost in thought. Lucius would know when the red eyes turned on him. They would sear through his flesh just as violently as the bonds of air had. Though they would leave no mark.
The prolonged silence in the room seemed to stir Narcissa from whatever cathartic coma she’d forced her mind into, and she stirred from her foetal position on the bed. Her stricken posture and lowered head spoke of what she had suffered and as Lucius heard her shifting slowly, he could sense her fears, the terror of what she might see when she looked behind her. He tried to make some noise, some movement to assure her he still lived, but he couldn’t bring his body to endanger itself like that when in such close proximity to the epitome of darkness in the world.
“I am thinking of killing your son.” The words were spoken simply, regardless of the choking fear that wrapped itself around Lucius Malfoy’s heart. Tight to the point that he was sure he couldn’t breathe. To the Dark Lord, his comment seemed to have carried little weight, a passing thought. The slithering wraith, however, knew exactly what he had said.
Lucius rushed to push himself to his feet; his knees at least. Every inch of his skin ached as he moved, stretching across his shifting muscles and fatless bones. “No, My Lord…”
A wand tip was pressed to the back of his neck, and his muscles stilled instantly. He was caught, in limbo, halfway to his knees. Narcissa was halfway off the bed, her tattered dress pulled around her.
“It was not a question.”
|| Dobby ||
He was surprised when without issue, he appeared in the third drawing room of Malfoy Manor. Dobby had been certain, that the moment he had packed his spare pillowcase, his new diary and his single sock, that Dobby’s Masters would have placed new wards around the Manor to ensure that Dobby’s runt-like body would never make it back inside in one piece. Of course, the Malfoys were far too proud to even consider that a House Elf of all things might cause them harm.
Dobby’s hands met his mouth as he sniggered quietly to himself. Dobby glanced around the room. The third drawing room was always empty. Dobby had spent most of his time ironing in the third drawing room, and as far away from Master Draco as Dobby could make it while staying in the grounds. The room hadn’t changed since Dobby had been there last, and the dust that layered the surfaces was appalling.
Dobby offered a wince to the state of the room, before skipping behind a long, green leather sofa, and skirting around the edge of the wall to the doorway. Dobby wiggled his toes against the floorboards; Dobby had gotten used to wearing trainers. They would have been far too noisy to wear tonight, banging along wood and squeaking across marble.
Dobby’s memory was perfect, and Dobby took the quickest path up the servant’s staircase from the back kitchen into the second library. Master Lucius always used the third library, and the second was reserved for Master Draco. Dobby knew there was no chance of him being caught in the second library.
The carpeted floors up here were much more welcoming to Dobby’s frozen toes. Dobby flitted to the door on the far side that led out into the main corridor of the Manor House. As he reached it, he shivered. Dobby could feel the darkness in the house. Dark it had been before, yes, but not like this. Dobby wanted to wash his skin clean of the air. They had warned him; yes Remus Lupin had warned him of what he faced, but Dobby knew the importance of what he could achieve by using Elf magic. With a grimace, Dobby used all his weight to pull the door open a mere inch. The hallway beyond was dark and silent. If Dobby had still been working here still, never would a corridor have been unlit in the house. Dobby slid his meagre body through the small gap offered and scuttled into the darkened corridor. None of the portraits would be able to see him now; none of them could give Dobby away in the darkness.
Ears flapping as he ran, Dobby’s springing toes carried him down the endless corridor in no time at all, meeting no resistance on the way. Reaching the top of another staircase that spiralled downwards, Dobby halted, beginning to claw at his skin. The darkness had grown heavy instead of concealing, and he wanted nothing more than to disappear back to the warm Burrow with a click of his fingers. Dobby thought of Harry Potter, and grinding his teeth together, Dobby took another couple of dogged steps forward.
Voices. He could hear voices now. A trembling female's voice that sounded all too like the Mistress’s. But the Mistress’s voice never sounded like that. The other was a horrible smooth and yet rasping murmur. Dobby could sense the darkness pulsing from that room in floods. He took a deep breath and slipped into the shadows to hide himself. Dobby realised with a jolt that it was the Master’s room that the voices came from, and wondered where the Master was. Dobby swallowed hard, trying not to think that it was probably He Who Must Not Be Named in the room with the Mistress. Dobby tried not think of why her voice shook, or why the Master’s voice was absent. No matter how horrible they had been, Dobby wouldn’t wish the wrath of He Who Must Not Be Named on anyone.
Dobby began to find the air too heavy to breathe, and the darkness too cloying. Dobby worried that he would have to leave and not complete his oh so important mission for Remus Lupin. Even the darkness around him seemed to squirm in discomfort, the very walls tense behind him. Dobby sank to the ground in his hiding place and curled around himself, trying to think of trees and air and clean, dust-free surfaces.
And then, all of a sudden, the darkness lifted, and everything became calmly silent and still. Dobby could still feel it, feel Him, somewhere else in the house, but further away now. Dobby couldn’t think about Him until he was safely back with Remus Lupin, for now Dobby would see just what was going on in his Masters’ house.
Dobby scampered up to the doorway, throat tight with worry at what he might see. Chewing on his leathery lip, Dobby ducked his head around the edge of the ornate, black doorframe. The sight that met his eyes was too sickening to look at for longer than a second.
The sight of the man who was once his Master, lain crookedly and unnaturally twisted on the floor, bare to the freezing air was alarming enough a sight. His long hair was tangled around him, tattered and matted with blood and dirt. Red welts covered his body, along with endless trembling that shook his body from head to toe; the after effects of the Cruciatus Curse when properly performed; with real hate. Streaks of crimson blood lashed the floor, dribbling from his fingers where the nails had torn away from the skin as he had scratched in agony at the floor. The only illumination came from faint starlight in a moonless sky that trickled feebly through the large bay window. The strange, ethereal white light made the substance that trickled over Malfoy’s upper thighs, mixed with his own blood, look magical, when really its meaning was all too sickening to comprehend.
Dobby’s large, green eyes watched as the Mistress knelt beside the broken body of her husband, now almost unrecognisable and drape the cool bed sheets across his burning, exposed body with a care that Dobby had been sure she could never possess.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Narcissa pressed her thin, chewed lips together. The icy air that blew in off the sea bit at the welts she had already ripped there with her own nervous teeth. Her eyes searched the horizon inland. A few hundred metres lay between them and a steep bank, which appeared to be topped by tall grasses that waved mockingly at her in the strong breeze. It was difficult to tell in the dark, and the moonlight that seeped between their fronts gave them a ghostly glow that made her flesh creep. She pulled her heavy cloak more tightly around her, suspicious. She had no idea where they were.
“This is insane!” Draco spat into the sand. “We cannot run from Him. You’ve always taught me that! And now you bundle me out of the house in the middle of the night and apparate here with an Elf!”
Another strong gust buffeted her, sending strands of hair, turned greasy with stress and sweat twisting around her face. An irritable hand brushed them away with derision and she sighed, but her exhale shook nervously, ribs twitching. She had no answer for her son.
She knelt, uncaringly pressing her ripped tights into the damp sand and touched her palm to his forehead. It was clammy and hot to the touch, yet the rest of his skin was as frozen as her eyes. She had covered him as best she could back in the bedroom, her own body aching, and her mind fluttering in panic. The knowledge that He could have appeared any moment and halted their daring escape in its infancy had haunted her every movement. The possibility didn’t bear thinking about. They were free of that mausoleum now; it was no longer their home. Free and yet trapped on this bitter beach, hemmed in by unrelenting winds, awaiting the return of a House Elf. This would never be spoken of.
“Mother, let’s go now. We must go back!” he yelled over the growing wind. “How can you think we’ll survive running?”
She pulled the open folds of the loose white shirt together at his chest, trying to cover the freezing flesh and hide the horrendous red welt from her eyes. She had seen too much horror; she could barely look at him for fear of breaking herself. The dark cloak at least held some warmth for the unnaturally vulnerable body lying at her feet but it was far from enough.
“I’m going. If you won’t come then so be it!”
Narcissa looked over her shoulder to her son, almost lost, panting in the sand. “He will kill you if you return without us Draco.” She was glad her voice hadn’t betrayed her inner turmoil.
“Then come with me. He need never know!”
“Look at your father, Draco!” she screamed, unable to contain it any longer. “This is only the beginning. If we stay, we will all be killed within the month, if we’re lucky! I would have thought you’d have been the last person who wanted to stay in that… tomb of a house after everything that’s happened.”
She glanced back up to the bank of grasses, but there was no sign of anyone. She would only wait a few more minutes. This had been a bad idea anyway.
At that precise moment she heard a voice carried on the wind, gruff and grunting. Her teeth ground together and her hand shifted closer to the wand concealed in her cloak. She could see them now, shapeless forms cutting through the eerie moonlight. The grass bowed to them both, one a House Elf and the other large and imposing. The two began to make their way down the bank, and she couldn’t help her hand straying to the safety of her wand. “Get behind me,” she ordered.
Adrenaline still coursed through her blood, rich and intoxicating. For a moment, she tore her eyes from the advancing pair and glanced over her husband’s battered form. He remained unmoving in the swallowing sands, errant strands of hair, glowing silver in the moonlight brushed across his face. She couldn’t bring herself to brush them away. She sucked in a breath, hoping the heavy scent of seaweed in the air would somehow ground her and bring her strength. She’d always loved the sea. She could see it in Lucius's eyes sometimes. Her own eyes fastened sharply back on the two, and she allowed a modicum of relief to wash over her that at least Dobby had only brought one.
“Don’t move.” The instantly recognisable voice of Alastor Moody was carried to the waiting witch on the wind. She couldn’t help the feral growl that rose in her throat. The man halted five yards from where she knelt in the sand. Even in the faint moonlight she could see his enchanted eye flicking searchingly between her and Lucius at her feet.
Dobby waited beside the wizard, strangely still and silent. His posture was neutral, unlike the usual cowed hunch the Elf adopted.
“Well now, what exactly is this about?” the wizard asked her pompously, leaning in a show of casual nonchalance upon his staff. “What could possibly have humbled the mighty Malfoys?”
Narcissa couldn’t help it. Rage shoved her to her feet, her wand torn from the folds of her cloak and aimed at the chest of the obnoxious beast. It was only a threat, and Moody didn’t take the bait, remaining unmoving. It was the unexpected pop that sounded beside him, as the form of unobtrusive Dobby morphed suddenly into the shape of an all too familiar woman.
“Nymphadora!” she yelled, but the name was taken on the wind.
“Drop the wand, Narcissa,” the girl ordered. “You came to us remember.”
“Such betrayal,” she hissed, glaring down her wand at he traitorous niece.
“Did you seriously think I’d come down here to meet you with the sole help of a House Elf? Now drop it!” Moody ordered again, his staff now pointing threateningly towards her. All three standing on the beach knew that Tonk’s physical deception was not the betrayal that Narcissa spoke of, but before she could speak again, a rattling gasp rose from the body at her feet. Her wand arm instantly dropped and she knelt again, as though remembering why she had come.
As Narcissa knelt there on the beach, she was certain that she had never felt quite as lonely, or as desperate as she did now. In her so-far illustrious life she had never needed to bow the knee to any witch or wizard. Now the crossroads had come, and she stood upon the brink of a decision, that could determine between life or death, never mind wealth or poverty. They were caught in the middle of a war; one to end all wars. She had just found they had chosen the wrong side.