Author's Notes: Prompts and Challenges listed at the end, as usual. When you get there, please leave me a review.

Word count – 1.393


Her Piece of Him

It started out like an ordinary day. But Nagini soon found it to be different. Quite extraordinary actually.

Her Master always moved like a wraith, as if he was stuck in an unending waltz with himself. But there was something different to his stride today. There was a new lightness to his movements. There was a unnameable feeling to him, and Nagini was trying to understand it.

Anticipation. He was looking forward to something. Someone, she could tell from their link. He was almost happy.

He had stepped out of bed as usual, though he had pushed her body away during the night. She had slithered close to him again, intent on wrapping herself around his shoulders, a pillow made of flesh and scales, but he had hissed to her, rudely.

She was cold. And for some reason, her Master did not like her cool that night. No, he craved something different today. He wanted soft skin, warmth, silky tresses. He was lost in memories of it, and he was almost happy at the thoughts.

Nagini was unsure about it at the start. Happiness was foreign to him, so it was foreign to her. But he was allowing her into his mind, sharing his thoughts, his desires, and so she was as happy as snakes can be. She remained happy throughout the morning, feeling the emotion grow and turn into something else.

Happiness still, but complete. Not a single blemish to the feeling. She even felt a little warmer. It was the piece of him in her. That piece of him was wide open to her today, infecting her with humanity, and she was glad of it.

She remembered something like this, not much time ago. Her Master had ordered her to stay behind and behave, but she had had a hard time at it. He had been so energized, so sure of himself, so happy, that it had been a nightmare of a day for her. She was supposed to be still, but she had felt frenzied, like she had to move. He had been anticipating some sort of battle, some skirmish in a dark place that would grant him immense satisfaction. Most of all, there had been some great prize to be won at that battle.

He had left. He had fought, she had seen. He had liberated precious warriors. He had returned, victorious, assured, and completely content for once. She had not seen what was so special about them, that first night. They were all the same then. Lanky spectres wearing rags, weak, starved, half mad at the least.

But some weeks had passed, and they were not all the same anymore. Her Master had been working with a few of them already, training them once more. But she had been so frail he had not dared. Still, she lingered in his thoughts. Nagini would catch glimpses of her every now and then.

That day she caught her name in his mind. Bella. She also caught the surge of happiness that name caused. She felt it. She liked it. She revelled in it, too. All morning until her Master had entered a room and left her outside.

He had locked her out, without a word, without any sort of justification. She shared every space he ever entered, always had. But not now. Now, she was locked outside the dark double doors made of mahogany that defined the border to his chambers. Their chambers. His domain inside the manor. Her lair.

Worse, she was also locked outside his mind. Their minds had fused together seamlessly over the morning, and now she felt like a piece of her was missing. Her piece of him. She kept trying to summon him into her mind again, but he was just not listening.

Her emotions were much duller now that he was not there, but she suspected this was her version of anger. She felt like hissing menacingly at the barrier. She felt like sinking her fangs in that witch, that Bella that dared take him from her. She had nurtured him, she had carried him, she had nursed him. What had that witch done for him?

She remained there, coiled, eyeing the dark doors, for what felt like forever. She would uncoil, draw figures of eight and arabesques with her long body on the floor, and coil again, hissing.

She waited, determined to kill her prey the second it stepped outside.

Then her Master allowed the link between them to come alive once more. The doors remained closed and silenced, for his magic ordered them so, but his mind was open to her once more. He showed her in, allowing her to familiarize herself with his reality inside the chambers.

He had what he craved. Soft skin, warm flesh, silky but kinky and curly tresses. All of it on his own skin, under his fingers, by his side. He also felt different, and so did Nagini. She realized what she meant for him, what she could do for him, what she could make him feel.

This was new. This was a human emotion she hadn't experienced yet. It wasn't just happiness. This was completion, and happiness, and satisfaction, and joy, all rolled into one.

Bliss. From the certainty that now everything would simply fall into place. Because he had all his best warriors back, because he had her back where she belonged, because surely nothing could fail, not this time around.

Blissful. Her Master was blissful. But he was blissful beyond those doors, without her, so she hissed at the dark wood and slithered away. She did not go far, though. Not before the door came open, inviting her, enticing her to see for herself. So she did.

Nagini lazily slid across the floor, moving past the door, which closed behind her. There was a man on the floor of the study, she could smell his blood. She could see his blood, too, drifting away from his body, soaking the rug, and the manner in which he was splayed in an unnatural position. His hair was white now, but it had been a dull light-brown in the dungeons the day before.

"Dinner, Nagini, with the compliments of Bella," came the hissing voice of her Master from the bedroom, "I know you like them warm. Feast."

So she did. And by the time she was done, feeling full, she could feel the bliss of her Master grow inside of her again. She moved in slow, groggy, curves to the bedroom. She was sated, completely, but there was something missing. A piece of her, her piece of him, beckoned her closer wordlessly.

She slithered up onto the bed, letting her big yellow eyes greet him first, then caress the sleeping shape of the witch beside him. She, too, was coiled around his body. Differently, but similar still. Nagini couldn't pinpoint what it was, but there was something this witch did for her Master that she could not rival, she understood.

And then she realized what she missed, what she craved. Her piece of him wanted Bella, so she wanted Bella, too. She approached the sleeping body, realizing just how much she wanted to feel its soft, warm flesh, not under her fangs but on her scales.

"You are fond of her, Master."

"Yes, Nagini, I am," he said, not offering any reason as to why, "come, rest with us." She understood then that she did not care about it. She cared only about sating that hunger of Bella that her skin now had.

Nagini slid between her Master's legs and those of the witch, climbed the delicate curve of the witch's hips, continuing her path alongside the bony but warm back and then through the wild tresses spilled on the pillow, rejoicing on every point of contact. She kept going, surrounding both heads, hers and his, so that her own head could come to rest on her Master's free shoulder. She caressed his skin with a flick of her tongue, and felt his breathing slow down and grow deeper until it synchronized with that of the witch.

She felt utterly complete then, like this Bella she barely knew was a piece of her Master, too. She felt absolutely at peace now that she could touch her, now that her crave was satisfied.

Blissful. Like her Master.


Author's Notes: Prompts and Challenges

Assignment #8 Charms: The Unlocking Charm Task 1 - Write about someone who is locked in somewhere, or locked out of somewhere.

365 Prompts Challenge: 135 First Line - It started out like an ordinary day.

April House Challenge: 58 Emotion – Bliss