Challenge: The Eclectic Bookworms' 19,000 Prompts Challenge on HPFC; Dobby Rocks Socks' I've Never... competition on HPFC; Cheeky Slytherin Lass's Fanfiction Scavenger Hunt Competition on HPFC.
Characters: Narcissa Black/Malfoy, Peter Pettigrew
Prompts: Never leave me again; Week 1: I've never written a crack!fic; 38. A oneshot collection of 5 (each over 500 words)
Word count: 773
She couldn't do anything about her obsession. It kept her up at night, polluted her mind and tainted her dreams. These dreams were many things, could be anything at all, and varied in eroticism, but they were never prophetic, not once. A part of her resented that.
Whispers as sly as darkness itself filled every instant, corrupting her mood the next day. "Never leave me again," they would chant, and then, as she teetered on the edge of a fall she knew she would cover from, she would hear, every single time: "Go on, do it. You know you want to, Narcissa Black, so just do it. Go on. I won't tell anyone."
Then she'd jerk awake, shuddering as though death itself was hot on her heels and she was run - run - running for her life. Lucius would wake up and grant her with a cursory glare that always softened into a mockery of concern, an emotion he would never feel, but pretended to, for her sake. She would soothe his mind and coax him back to sleep, and then lie awake, staring mutely at the ceiling.
It wasn't that he was smart; he never had been. He wasn't clever or brave in the least, not at all like his friends. His sense of humour was immature at best, his pranks ineffectual and often crass, as were his insults. He wasn't even attractive: his front teeth were so large as to protrude beyond his lip, or at least seemed to, and his skin was splotched unevenly with shades of gray and red, even when they were young and attending Hogwarts together, several years apart. He was weedy, short and plump, and she doubted even an Imperius curse could make him graceful.
Nevertheless, dreams of Peter Pettigrew continued to keep her up at night, unable to get comfortable and unwilling to submit to the reprieve granted by dreamless sleep potion. She didn't want to have to explain consumption equal to that of an addict to her husband and son.
She could remember perfectly the first time she'd actually bothered to notice him. It was after she'd tripped on robes a centimetre too long, as the latest fashion had dictated, and she'd fallen down the last few steps of the Entrance Hall, headed back to the dungeons at the end of the day. An engorged mass had cushioned her fall and, when she opened her eyes, she'd found herself nose to nose with the single most hideous creature she'd ever had the misfortune to gaze upon - and she was in seventh year Care of Magical Creatures.
"Why, my liege," he'd tittered in a horribly unpleasant squeak, "how nice of you to fall for me."
Her pale cheeks became heated and she withdrew quickly, but this was worse.
If her position had been awkward before, then this - this - was humiliating. Her palms were flat against his oddly fleshy chest, stunted legs spread wide between her knees. She drove her pelvis forward as she shifted, grinding unintentionally - or so she told herself - against his - his thing - and sensing it begin to excite beneath her.
"Narcissa, what are you doing?"
Her head shot up and she stared at her cousin, one of the weedy midgets Gryggindor friends. It took a moment, but she collected her thoughts - naugty Narcissa, wherever did you learn to think of using the Imperius curse like that? - and, with as much dignity as possible, snarled at him,
"Don't just stand there watching, Sirius, help me up!"
The troublemaking buffoon tilted his head, then grinned impishly. "Nah. I don't think I will."
"Oh, in the name of Merlin, Black," another voice muttered, and a pale hand with ragged nails extended before her. She took it, purely for dignities stake, not even glancing at the person who owned that hand.
"Thank you, Lupin," she said shortly, turning on her heel and leaving.
Narcissa slipped out of bed just as the sun was touching the horizon in the distance. Lucius did not stir, he rarely did unless her writhing interrupted his own dreams. She pulled a black silk robe around her and drew it close, wondering to the sun room and staring out at the garden, where a silver hand topped the fountain.
"You'll never leave me again," she whispered to the ghost of Peter Pettigrew, her obsession and her burden. "Not as long as I live."
No words were spoken in reply. How could they be, when he had died by his own gifted hand, a curse in itself, in her own home?
