Author's Notes: Written for Cheeky Slytherin Lass's 24 Hour Pairing Challenge on the HPFC Forum, with the pairing Lucius/Narcissa, and the prompt "Narcissa is tired of feeling like the other woman when Lucius clearly loves his peacock more". As such, this story contains bestiality.
)O(
There were white feathers in Lucius's hair.
He slept with his back to his wife at night, and Narcissa could see the bits of soft, white down caught between blonde strands. She picked them out and rolled them between her fingers until their little fibres were matted, and she boiled with anger.
Lucius had insisted upon filling their grounds with albino peacocks when they moved into their manor, and Narcissa should have guessed immediately that his interest in them was not so innocent – no one who simply thought that peacocks were regal and handsome would have had such a glint in their eye and a look of rapture on their face when they suggested buying two dozen. Narcissa had been silly and naive then. But how could she blame herself – what woman would have expected her husband, who she had always thought most ordinary, to have such a particular interest in peacocks?
She would probably never have noticed, had she not been compelled to go strolling in the gardens one sunny afternoon. Narcissa ordinarily stayed inside on such bright days, for the sun hurt her eyes and she worried that it would darken her skin, but some combination of loneliness and perhaps a dash of woman's intuition had compelled her to go walking on that particular day.
She often wished that she could forget that day, and go back to her former state of blissful ignorance, for now, whenever she looked at her husband, the image she was seeing was of him kneeling on the ground with a mass of white feathers underneath him.
Narcissa had frozen and stared when she saw him. He was whimpering as if he was in pain and rubbing his hips backwards and forwards, and she couldn't quite see what he was rubbing against. At first, she though that he was crying over something and convulsing with emotion, but the longer she watched, the more she thought that his position and movement and the sounds he was making seemed less like tears and more like...
She still shuddered to think of it.
But even the frightful experience of seeing her husband rutting against something in broad daylight was nothing compared to what she felt when she realized exactly what that something was.
At first, all she could see beneath her husband's rolling hips was something fluffy and white. She thought that it was a pillow.
A pillow! If only!
But then – oh, then! Narcissa could still remember the sinking, twisting feeling in her stomach when she had realized – the fluffy white thing moved. It rustled and shifted, and then a neck appeared, poking up from under her husband and looking around as if it was surprised to find itself in this position.
Narcissa had almost screamed. She clapped a hand over her mouth and stared directly into the eyes of one of Lucius's precious albino peacocks as it stared at her, and she stared back. Lucius, for his part, barely seemed to notice the peacock's movement, and certainly didn't notice the presence of his wife not ten feet away behind him. He continued rubbing against the taciturn peacock until he shuddered violently and slumped over it.
Narcissa fled. When she next saw Lucius, she must have gaped at him, for he asked her what was wrong, and if something was bothering her.
There was a small white feather clinging to his trousers.
At first, Narcissa had felt only disbelief. She tried to deny what she had seen to herself, tried to think up an explanation – any explanation. But at night, when Lucius was asleep, she carefully unfolded and shook his robes and watched bits of white feathers fall from them, then got back into bed and found yet more feathers in his hair, and as hard as she tried, she couldn't think of any good reason that her husband should be so covered with bits of the feathers of his peacocks.
And so, on the days when Lucius left the house with airy and vague statements about where he was going, Narcissa followed him. She gave him a few minutes' head start, then crept out into the grounds and listened carefully for sounds of rustling or the occasional squawk of a peacock, then followed the sounds and watched until she could not deny it any longer.
It would not even have been so bad if it was only that Lucius had decided that a peacock was a better bedmate than her. She would have been disgusted, horrified, and confused, but she did not think that she would have really been angry, had it only been a matter of perverse sexual release. No, the worst thing was the way that Lucius held and caressed the bird while he rubbed against it. He pressed kisses far more tender than he had ever given his wife along its long neck, and whispered endearments so sweet as to turn Narcissa's stomach.
Narcissa could have accepted the knowledge that her husband was sexually depraved. A man having sex with a peacock would not even have been the worst thing she had witnessed – the peacock, after all, was unharmed, unlike the Muggles that Narcissa's own sister had done far worse things to for the sake of her own gratification. What Narcissa could not stand was the idea that he treated those birds with more tenderness than he saw fit to give her.
And so, one day, Narcissa lurked in the shadows until her husband – oblivious as ever to her presence – had finished with the peacock and wandered away, after giving it no less than a dozen kisses and promising the thing that he would see him again soon.
He left the bird sitting placidly – helplessly – in the grass.
That night, Narcissa watched Lucius attentively over dinner. She had overseen the preparation of the meal herself, and was pleased to see that Lucius was thoroughly enjoying every bite of the food that she had laid before him.
"I must say, my dear, the house-elves have outdone themselves tonight." Lucius skewered a final olive and a small piece of the meat with his fork and laid them on his tongue. He chewed slowly, savouring the taste, before laying down his cutlery.
Narcissa smiled. "I did think you would like it."
"I don't think that I've ever tasted such a fine goose."
"It's not goose, love," Narcissa said, and she too placed a piece of the meat in her mouth.
"Duck? Ostrich?"
"No, darling, not duck or ostrich."
"Well, what is it, then? We shall have to have it more often."
Narcissa smiled and stood up, whisking away his plate from in front of him.
"Peacock."
)O(
Fin