Author's Notes: This is not a happy tale. Seven chapters await the reader who chooses to follow along. There are elements of SS/NM and LM/NM, and the timeline moves around from chapter to chapter/scene to scene because that was the format I chose for telling this story.
(I've written SS/NM and SS/LM before, so if you're interested in those one-shots at all, they're entitled One Day and Everlasting Disclosures and are available to read under this account).
Lastly, without your thoughts, it isn't worth sharing, so please leave a review as you read. It will let me know if there's interest in this twisted tale (or not). Also, a big thank you to Vino Amore for looking over each chapter for me!
Warnings/Triggers: Violence, Sexual Content, Self-Sabotage, and the usual Dark AU!disclaimers apply. Rated M for these reasons.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is copyrighted to and belongs to JK Rowling. I'm just playing in her sandbox and own none of her associated characters. Artwork is credited to Snapesmort on DeviantArt.
Depravity
By CRMediaGal
Chapter 1
"Why is it that we don't worry about a compass until we're lost in a wilderness of our own making?"
—Craig Lounsbrough
March 1997
Narcissa saw the spark of hunger flicker across that pair of soulless eyes that made her heart freeze—that unmitigated lust that can so easily befall even the shrewdest of men—well before the individual slithered in for his claim. "You owe me," he whispered, his words hot and threatening against her throat.
"I hate you," she snarled and turned her face away, unable to mask her disgust. He smelled of an ill mixture of sweat and fumes, of too many hours spent hovering over a handful of steaming, stiflingly hot cauldrons.
Long, spindly fingers latched around the smallness of her waist and held her still, whilst a bony thigh shoved itself snug in between her legs, already wet from the exchange of magic; of the remaining fragments of his soul binding itself to her. She hadn't expected to be so affected by the act to the extent that she had shuddered, even emitted a small moan of pleasure as the magic—his magic—ensnared and encased her.
Bellatrix hadn't heard her the first time, and she wasn't here to witness the fifth; or was it the sixth or seventh? Thank, Fuck All.
"That makes two of us," he chuckled into her ear, his laughter a ghostly chill gliding over her goose-pimpled flesh.
Emitting the smallest of pressure, he pinned Narcissa, hard, against a wall. There was nowhere to glance but into his cold eyes, though she would have much preferred a black hole—a nothingness; a void—to the same hollowed irises she was forced to stare into. They weren't eyes she wished to reacquaint herself with. Not here, not now.
Narcissa held her breath and her poise, her jaw set firmly and her mouth purposely closed to him. Her captor sought to upset that balance by gathering the bottom hem of her dress and pulling it up to her waistline, whispering a bit of wandless magic that left her legs exposed to the cruel draft sweeping through this lit-deprived room.
Shadows. Shadows everywhere. It was appropriate to conceal; to hide.
Narcissa gasped and raised her chin. She wished she hadn't and that his ears hadn't picked up on her brief bit of weakness. It only offered him further control in these situations and she despised relinquishing that to this man. His gross ability to fell her with a touch—a simple stroke of skin on skin—left her appalled as much with her feeble will as with his exhaustive talent for tearing down her walls.
Two calloused fingers drove their way inside her laced knickers and twisted at her damp folds, spreading her legs with a few delicate swerves of his thumb upon her clit. Narcissa hissed, enraged, and clasped onto his shoulders, digging her nails into his coat with all of her physical might. Her hands might be incapable of inflicting much pain on their own, but she could provide him with the jolting vibrations of her rage as her magic flowed through her fingertips.
He seemed rather empowered by her revulsion. Exercising more force, he curled his fingers about until he located the spot—her ultimate weakness—and dipped them forward and back to meet each of the witch's reacting thrusts. She moaned and squirmed, unable to stop herself, utterly helpless to what had begun as a tingle and was now making her stomach quench.
She loathed this man for awakening her needs but responded anyway, desperate for more friction. She yearned to be touched—she hadn't been touched in an age—and he bloody well knew it. He knew everything; or so it would seem. Another box ticked off of a growing list of bases for abhorring the man.
"Tell me you're not enjoying this," he growled and flicked his wet tongue over her earlobe.
That challenge sent a spark down Narcissa's spine. "I'm not enjoying this," she countered, her tone clipped.
It was futile to withhold any feeling in her voice, however, though she made to hide the small gasps that escaped her by sucking and nibbling at his neck. Her heated lips pressed against his pressure point. His reactive moans gave way to full body trembles and deep sighs neither could successfully squander.
"Liar," he spat and suddenly pulled at her locks, forcing her glare.
Narcissa clutched at his back and wrapped her legs around his trim waist, heaving herself upward. Her breasts depressed as she forsook the fight from within that had been trying—and failing—to resist him.
"Prove that I'm enjoying this," she breathed, her fingers coiling around pieces of his lank, greasy hair, much of which clung to his face. "Prove. It."
He raised her provocation with a low, promising growl. Uttering more wandless magic, his trousers dropped somewhere around his ankles, showcasing the wizard's grossly pallid, lightly furred legs in the rainy, grey light streaming across the windows. He rammed Narcissa against the wall. Her head pounded in protest, but their rhythmical beats were quickly drowned out by several defining gasps and exclamations as he slipped inside her with reckless abandon. There was nothing gentle about him, and yet, she craved that ferocity. There was nothing delicate or comforting in this act.
Narcissa's hands grasped uselessly at limp, black hair, at a sharp jawline, at a horribly gaunt and angular face that, at times, appeared more animal-like than human. She didn't care.
This man was grotesque and hideous to the eye but set her insides on fire and bathed her in warmth and a false sense of security. His fingers were like flesh-eating poison upon her skin, but she relished how they were making her body sing. His breaths were like lethal fumes against the flush of her cheeks, and yet, still she craved more; to breathe in every ounce of him. And she hated herself for it.
She found his lips and latched on, dousing them in a series of greedy kisses. "Severus," she chanted his name again and again. How she detested his physical being but loved how fragile his name resonated on her tongue. "Severus..."
He wouldn't say her name in return. He hadn't since their first time. That had been a 'mistake', one which Narcissa was determined to see him break. She yearned to hear him utter it back. She needed to lose herself in feigned emotional protection, of which he was seemingly too proud to provide her, even out of pity, though she desired none of that either. Only truth. And the truth lay somewhere in between, cloaked in darkness.
"Severus," Narcissa panted. She kissed the pointed tip of his nose, sucked on his bottom lip. He bore his teeth. "Say it."
"No—"
"Say it," she implored, grinding her hips faster.
"You're nothing to me," he insisted. He nipped at her breasts and threw her hands above her head, fastening them securely to the wall.
That wouldn't do. It wasn't enough. "I hate you!" she screamed as she finally came, losing, for several precious seconds, all sense of borrowed time and the decrepit space in which their bodies had sought solace in each other.
It was only as her orgasm subsided that Narcissa felt Severus shudder in her arms and rapidly pull out before they were finished. Slowly, she raised her head, which had collapsed against his shoulder in exhaustion, and unfurled her legs from around him. Every part of her ached. He helped to place her carefully back on solid ground but neither could look one another in the eye—at least, not at first. They rearranged their rumpled garments and flattened pieces of hair stuck to their perspiring foreheads. Narcissa smoothed out the wrinkles in her navy blue dress, catching Severus's fingers re-buttoning his trousers. Fingers that were infested with dry ink beneath perfectly smooth nails; masterful hands that had completely and utterly undone her.
"I know," he suddenly spoke, belated, ruffling the silence.
Narcissa met his gaze, as dangerously elusive as it ever was. Pieces of hair were strung across his dark eyes, his expression hard and indiscernible. Was he as appalled as her? Was their mutual hatred mounting? She often thought yes; other times...she wasn't so certain.
She swallowed down the bile creeping up the back of her throat. "I believe my debt has been paid."
Even in darkness the smirk that spread across his hawk-like features sickened her. "For now," he concurred softly. He ran a finger across her swollen upper lip. She shivered and he dropped his hand. "You know your way out."
With that, he turned on his heel and exited from what was his personal study, his dragon-hide boots creaking along the wooden floorboards and echoing his emotionless departure like a lingering bee sting. Narcissa watched him go, silent and composed, without offering him a parting word of her own.
As desperate as she had been to avoid these premises earlier, Narcissa felt a sudden paralysis overtake her body. His dismissal had been calculated and savage, but not at all surprising to her. She could be just as ruthless and removed with him at times, after all, and she was accustomed to how this power play of theirs came and ceased. This game was beyond perilous, and yet, she had been a willing participant in its folly to this point and could fault no one but herself for whatever the ugly outcome may be.
Yet, Narcissa didn't want to leave this place—or him—and the overriding guilt that plagued her every time she came to this dreadful conclusion seemed to stress the bolts on her coffin further and further shut. She swallowed, wanting to be sick. Her crotch was sore and her legs were wobbly but, somehow, she forced one foot in front of the other, crossed the study to the main corridor, and fled.
Darkness greeted her like an old friend, with a single lit candle hovering to guide her way out. Perhaps that was the saving grace in all of this mess; that spared others of their damning secrets and lies: everything was in shadow. Hidden. As it should be.
Narcissa stepped from the front door into the pouring rain, disregarded conjuring a drying charm that might ease her journey home, and Disapparated. From a second story window, Severus took a long drag from a lit fag, watching as Narcissa's silhouette disappeared into the night. An exhaust of tobacco smoke billowed from his nostrils and receded into the air, whisking away a few lingering thoughts with it.
'I hate you.'
'I know.'
A/N (cont.): Thank you for reading. Reviews are always greatly appreciated.
