The Lost Ones
SUMMARY: Voldemort is rising in power for the first time, and is starting to make steps to ensnare the young Slytherins. It is Lucius' fifth year, and he and Narcissa must navigate the changing political climate while maintaining their relationship. Meanwhile, Severus arrives at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and must choose between his friendship with the muggleborn Lily, and the darker forces which seek to influence him. AU.
A/N: There is established Lucissa in this story- they have already started dating. I have adjusted things here or there, including ages. There will be no graphic sexual content, but there is a slight trigger-warning for abuse at various instances throughout this story [as not all of our young Slytherins have the best of upbringings]. This [and Of Serpents and Stones] is my first story in a while, and I will hopefully get better as I continue writing, so I apologise for any issues this early on.
Two wizards sat, side by side, in a darkened room in the city of Chartres, separated by the crackling fireplace. Across from them sat a man cloaked and hooded, shrouded from their view, but the glimmer of his eyes could be seen and, in that moment, they seemed close to a shade of red, before fading away to dark brown. An observer who was not 'in the know' would probably have assumed that that man was a vampire, or some such creature. He certainly resembled one, for the skin that anyone could see was pale, and he had a kind of lure about him, an aura that made others follow. Perhaps it was that he managed to seem both regal and commanding without completely trying, or perhaps it was that his tone of voice gave no chance for argument. Either way, there was something enticing about him, and something rather frightening all the same.
The men across from him were not especially frightening. Both were over the age of forty, and both looked relatively normal other than for the fact they were wearing cloaks. One was also pale, but not as pale as the man they were meeting; his hair was a shining silver that tumbled freely down to his mid-back, though he had few marks of age upon his fair and noble features. Fair was, for that gentleman, perhaps an understatement, beautiful would have been more apt as a descriptor. The other to his right was no great beauty by comparison, a much smaller man with brown hair to his shoulders that was greasy and the colour of mud, with likewise murky brown eyes that bore little warmth within them.
Their mysterious commander smiled, and it was a shark's grin before devouring prey, rather than a pleasant and friendly expression. "The fact that you two are willing to join my side is neither of surprise nor consequence to me. I expected as much, and so I should. I was, after all, most tolerant of you both when we were at school together, was I not? Did I not protect you with my influence, and with the power I even then had over our weak-minded professors?"
"You did, my Lord," the silver-haired man spoke up. The other stayed silent, perhaps not knowing what to say, or whether he had leave to speak at all. It was a pity, really, in the eyes of the hooded man, that someone so skilled at the creation of curses and the torture of innocents was such an incredible dullard. The other, the sly old fox, was almost too intelligent for his own good.
His wits will not protect him, should he displease me. "I did. Therefore, I think it is right of me to expect a little loyalty in return." He gave a laugh, and it was high and rather cold, like a bitter breath of the north wind in winter. "So why, Abraxas, do you still resist me? Your son is now fifteen years of age. He is of age to serve me, and would be most useful within my ranks, what with the gifts that you both share, and his academic excellence that he has thus far displayed."
"Please, my Lord," the man named as Abraxas bowed his head. "Lucius is just a boy. If we could have just a year more-"
"Crucio!" The silver-haired man collapsed to the floor, his limbs giving horrid short jerks as he screamed and writhed in response to the agony his Lord's curse provided. It was, however, over as quickly as it had begun. "Abraxas," the other man's voice turned so gentle despite the torture a moment prior, so tender, that he couldn't help but turn towards him like a still-loyal dog seeking the affection of an often cruel and displeased master. "Abraxas, I do not wish to hurt you, but you give me no choice. Are we not friends, you and I? I wish to welcome your son into my family. I wish to give him greatness. Do you not wish for your son to achieve greatness?"
The Dark Lord's hand reached up like a snake ready to strike, and Abraxas jerked backwards, a trickle of blood forming at the corner of his lips. No strike came, no more pain, just cold fingers against his cheek in a measure of affection that he couldn't, as much as it revolted him to be left this grovelling wreck, help but lean towards. Affection so rarely came to him now, and there was enough human left in him to crave it.
His Lord's thumb reached down, and wiped away that drop of blood. For a moment his hand stayed in place, and Abraxas forced himself to kiss it.
"After everything I have done for you," the Dark Lord murmured, "you recoil from me. I find that disappointing, Abraxas, very disappointing." He turned to their companion. "As for you, Lestrange, you are a pillar of my new community! Your sons both serve me willingly. You shall be rewarded."
"Thank you, my Lord."
He seemed to smile. "Hopefully, Lord Malfoy will see the error of his ways soon enough, and his son will join our ranks at last. If not…well." The threat didn't need to be uttered for it to be there. Abraxas swallowed as his eyes glinted red once more, and this time, they stayed that way.
—
"What did he say?" A heady scent of Freesia filled the room as Abraxas slumped out of the floo and onto his bed, not even awake enough to kick his boots off before he sank down into the quilting. He felt the warmth and softness of once-dear fingers upon his shoulders, and tiredly leaned back into Lucretia's touch, even though he knew that he shouldn't, that he shouldn't love her and shouldn't trust her, that any love she had for home flew away a long time ago when ambition took over.
How tragic, how stupid, that he never stopped craving her approval.
"He wishes to turn our son into one of his murderers." Perhaps a little too blunt of him, but it was his true feeling nonetheless, and Abraxas did not like to speak in lies unless it suited him to do so, and he would- a failing of his almost certainly- not seek to lie to her.
His forthrightness was not appreciated regardless, and it won him a slap. His cheek stung where she had hit it, and turned red. "You should watch the way you speak." Her tone was, as ever, cold towards him to the point of callous disregard. It was perhaps the perfect irony; he had married a woman known for her beauty and her grace, a woman of intelligence, and eloquence, and high-birth, a woman who should have been- and most reckoned to be- utterly perfect as a match for him. Her skin was milky white, her hair of brilliant gold falling in gentle curls around her lovely heart-shaped face, her eyes of cerulean blue, matched by the silken gown she had elected to wear this evening, which clung to her voluptuous body in all of the right places and still made him desire her as much as he feared her. She was like belladonna, she was beauty and poison, and she was his wife.
"Because of your hand, or his?" He knew he was sounding petulant. "You debase yourself to being a common muggle by striking me, insult yourself in order to insult me."
Another slap, and with this one, she drew her nails slowly across his cheek thereafter and left scratches in their place. "If my husband does not do his duty as head of this family, and keep our interests in check as he should, then I have right to take him to task for it. You are weak, and I regret the day I pledged myself to you."
He closed his eyes, ignoring the sting of pain as best as he could. "Do you also regret our son?"
"He is a means to an end." She shrugged her shoulders. "As are you."
He lay back, sighing heavily. "Naturally," he muttered. "I expected nothing better from you. You don't have a heart that isn't of stone."
"Isn't that how you like me?" Her manner became almost coquettish, as she threw herself down beside him. "Fact of the matter is, Abraxas, I am doing what you have so far seemed unable to. Certainly, you can blackmail and manipulate like the best or worst of them, but I haven't seen any true steel out of you. Steel is what we, and the Dark Lord, need, so steel I must show. Don't you understand yet, or can your minuscule brain not grasp the importance of your position now? The ministry is eating out of your hand! Dumbledore can say nothing against you! This is our hour, and I am merely ensuring that all goes to plan." If that meant the sacrifice of their only son, then so be it.
"You tell me it is our hour, entice me and then insult my intelligence." He turned tiredly away from her. "Leave me be. Go to any one of your lovers and whisper your toxic words to them instead."
"I only have lovers because you refuse to do your duty there, too." She stood, and sauntered out. "Such a disappointment to me, and to your father. You'll bring this house falling to ruin around you, before the end."
He ignored her parting shot, burying his face in the pillow, and dousing the candle, and trying to sleep.
—
Hearing his mother's laughter down the corridor finally turn quieter and quieter until it was gone altogether, Lucius stopped pretending to be sleeping. The full moon's light streamed gently into the room through his drapes, and he crept to his window, lifting it up and peering out into the warm August night. His father's room showed no light, the candles had been extinguished. No sound from the human servants of the manor could be heard, either, and clearly his mother and her lover- whichever one she had decided to bring up to the manor shame his father with more obviously- had also gone to bed at last. He allowed a small grin to come to his face, and tied his hair back securely with a green slip of ribbon, before he jumped lightly out, and made the slight drop onto the roof of the outhouse, scattering a few broken edges of tile. Another short jump and he was down, racing across the manor grounds until he reached the anti-apparition wards, and disappearing.
He shouldn't have been able to apparate yet, it was not a skill that one was meant to learn until seventh year, but he didn't particularly care for any ministry or school consequence. He had already been named a prefect, after all, and that would not get revoked unless he had done something truly terrible, which he, at that moment anyway, had no intention to do.
He reappeared in the silent central London back-alley, and hopped neatly over the gate, before wrapping his hand around a pebble and casting it upwards. It bounced off of a window in the dark, and a figure in a long white gown crept out onto the balcony, as Lucius grinned from ear to ear. "What light through yonder window breaks?" He quoted, ripping off one of the roses from the garden bushes, and offering it up to her. "It is the east, and Narcissa is the sun!"
She gasped, and then burst into giggles, which she quickly pressed her hands to her mouth to hush. "Why are you here?" She whispered down to him. "If Auntie Walpurga catches you-"
"She won't. It wouldn't be the first time I've had to make my disappearance quickly." He seized a hold of the vines that grew up alongside the drainpipe. "May I have entry, my Lady, to your chambers?" He glanced up at her, and, as always with anything, he awaited her permission before trying to proceed. So different, she thought, from other boys, who would try to take what they want without a thought to how she felt about anything, who treated her like she was nothing but a silver trophy or a pretty little flower, to wear as they pleased and then cast aside.
He, however, he was different. A blush coloured her cheeks before she could stop it, and she shook her head, before laughing again at his silly romantic ways and his audacity in approaching her so late in the night. "You know you may. I couldn't deny you anything." Not with the way his eyes went when he was unhappy; like the eyes of a kicked puppy. Not, too, when he was half of the time the only one to truly pass her the time of day in the corridor, most others either made eyes or ignored her for sake of not having to deal with Bellatrix. She despised her sister sometimes, for making everything that should be so uncomplicated all the more difficult.
"I rather hope you could," he said then, as he sprung lightly up between the vines and the drainpipe, "for nobody, not even lovers, should agree all of the time."
"And are we lovers?" She asked, and she held out her hand to him, her blush deepening as he pressed it to his lips, before climbing up gracefully over the railing to land beside her.
"Depends if you still want to be, after I risked life and limb- or rather, the fury of my mother and your aunt- to reach you in the middle of the night." He was hopeful, and she could see that, she could see his eyes taking on that puppy-ish look that she loved so dearly, and she took his face in her hands most tenderly and kissed him chastely on the mouth and on the cheek and on the forehead. He beamed.
She brushed a strand of his hair back behind his ear, and then smiled in return. "Of course I want to be with you. However, we'll have to tone it down in school. Mother has some strange idea that I'm going to marry one of the Rosier boys, and that you shall marry Bellatrix."
He made a face. "I shall most definitely not, I assure you. I don't like Bella, and your mother knows that."
"What we like doesn't always seem to matter, does it?" She lead him inside, and settled down on her couch, hugging her knees. "I suspect mother will say I am to marry one of the Rosier boys whether I like it or not, and I am to treat him, when I do, like a wife should. Never mind that I am fifteen, and even barbaric muggles do not always start talking about marrying off their daughters at fifteen any more."
"We could marry?" It was, in his mind, a way out of the problem, and so they could at least both be with someone they liked.
"Your father would kill you and your mother would kill me. Maybe at seventeen. If I'm already Mrs. Rosier by then, I could always arrange to be a convenient and very tragic young widow."
He barked out a laugh, before, hearing a shift in the pitch of Lord Black's rumbling snores in the next room, stifling it swiftly into one of Narcissa's cushions. "Would we run away afterwards?" He asked her, trying to look serious. "Elope to that little wizarding community near Gretna Green. Marry there, then spend the rest of our lives using our parents' money to run from the law. Until, eventually, they forget about us, and we settle down somewhere-"
"-And have ten children!" Narcissa burst into another gale of giggles, and tucked her head against his shoulder.
"Ten? Merlin, we're not Weasleys." He looked scandalized at the very thought.
"I am a Black, though. There's rather a lot of us."
"You sounded more like a Black when you were contemplating murder." He showed her a playful grin, and then she launched herself at him in a faux-attack, and they must have been making rather a lot of noise, because there started to be footsteps down the hall.
Narcissa's eyes opened wide. "Run," she said, and he didn't need telling twice, darting out of the window and moving quickly down the vines. The door slammed open, but luckily, it was only Andromeda, her mousy hair touselled and her eyes bleary from sleep. "Meda!" Narcissa made an impressive false yawn. "I think I was dreaming."
Her sister was, unfortunately, the sort of person whom nothing ever escaped. She rolled her eyes, yawned, and trundled back towards the door. "I won't tell them he was here." Small mercies, that there was still some measure of loyalty in her family.
Narcissa breathed a sigh of sheer relief, shut and bolted the door behind her, and then dashed to the window again, gazing back out, but he had already gone. Sighing in a manner that was rather happy, she slipped back into bed, and pulled the covers tight up around her, and dreamed of a time where she wouldn't be under threat of being Mrs. Rosier, fabulously wealthy and fabulously unhappy, and instead was free to be herself…and with him.