Puritas Vincit - Part IV
Astoria expected dozens of scenarios to play themselves out rather swiftly, given her compromised position and the way the man stared at her, the way a panther stalks its prey. Training her face to stay impassive, relaxed, she openly watched him. There were no polite ways around staring down the person bursting through the doors of your prison, when the only other option was your reflection in the pier glass.
"Welcome, my lady."
Well. She hadn't expected that; words draping gossamer fine threads over her nerves as they slipped between dark lips. Lips that were slightly chapped and...yes there, even in her distraction she could see the marks around his lower lip from teeth marking the soft flesh. Odd, for a man who exuded an unmistakable aura of control and raw power.
"I'd feel more welcome if I weren't strapped to a chair." She pushed her chest and arms against the ropes for emphasis, silently withstanding the increase to her discomfort.
"In due time," the man replied. Traces of amusement threaded through the cool exterior.
The sweep of the man's robes as he strode towards another chair mesmerized her, something that would make her governess weep joyously from the ease and grace, and the purpose, of each step. His movements were lithe and almost...sexual.
No. Absolutely not. Her husband might be a poof of a wizard without an ounce of attraction to her, and she might be feeling the effects of a fresh marriage bond itching at her more forcefully than the ropes around her, but it did not excuse her weakness. She still had a chance to convince Draco to give her a child if she could just get back to him from...wherever in the Manor she'd wound up.
As she watched the man sit and stare at her, her conviction she was suffering vertigo began to wane.
As she traced the edges of his jaw, the cut of his hair, and the way his fingers traced his yew wand, the conviction all but vanished. Denial flooded the empty space it left behind.
"What is your name and what are you doing in my Manor?" she demanded.
"I should ask you the same thing." His eyes were cold, but the amusement in his voice grew stronger, like she was an unwanted kitten left on his stoop he hadn't decided what to do with yet. "But, I forget my manners as a host, even to an intruder like you. I am Tom Riddle."
Her stomach dropped through the floor, her voice an incredulous whisper. "Liar."
"Yes, I am a liar, but my name is Tom Riddle."
"It's treasonous to impersonate You-Know-Who," she snapped. She needed to get out of these bindings, a pain potion for her head, and an Auror to arrest this man. In that order.
The lip, with impressions of teeth still visible, curled delicately. Astoria watched impassively, thinking through every action she had available to her to get out of this, when she realized the marks on his lip were going the wrong way for his own teeth to have caused them.
"My lady," he purred, "You are gravely mistaken."
Dread continued to pour in over the walls of her resolve, a distracting trickle threatening to spill over into a downpour. "You can't be Tom Riddle. He's dead." She hated how small her voice sounded, the lack of conviction.
A piano string, strained from overuse and cold, snapped behind the eyes of her captor, and he was on her faster than she could blink.
With one jerk, his hand ghosting over her jaw, never touching but close enough she could feel the heat of his fingers drilling into the cold of her flesh, he turned her head. Two ends of a magnet, pushing against each other and shaking when they came too close to touching, his knees trembled as they pressed into her chair. The tumult, the snowball of doubt deeply rooted in her gut and weaving towards her spinal cord, allowed him a fissure into her mind.
She saw the blur of memories. Elation as she walked down the aisle; the feeling of Draco's clammy hands in hers beneath the open gazebo; a hushed celebration with their family afterwards on the grounds of the Manor. But he dug his heels in deeper.
Astoria was transported, dragged, backwards in her memory towards her years at Hogwarts, and like a train skipping the tracks and derailing, the man who claimed to be Tom Riddle slammed into a memory so benign she couldn't recognize it immediately. The library, piles of books around her as she and a few others in her year worked on a Potions project for Slughorn in her fourth year. Daphne recited names from the ratty log book found in the shelves of the Slytherin dorm rooms, a list of every person ever invited to every Slug Club party on campus, and pictures where available. One she'd gazed at for several long seconds glittered up at her, smirking before leaving the edge of the photo.
Tom Riddle.
"Tom Riddle," she breathed, her eyes snapping into focus, a pair of dark eyes monitoring each atom of her being as she breathed in and out.
"Astoria Malfoy." His breath was sweet with a hint of decay, like an overripe plum left in the sun too long. "Your marriage-"
Her first instinct was to scoff, but she restrained herself to only pinching her lips together tightly. At his proximity, he noticed, and licked his lips in reply. He'd dragged her through the last four hours of her life for a second miserable time, the crash of disappointment as jarring as the first time it happened. His hand still trembled and floated over her skin; close but not touching, coursing over her shoulders and down her arms. She wasn't sure if her body was going numb from cold and loss of circulation or if he truly were loosening the bindings.
"Your marriage, Mrs. Malfoy," he began again, the decay in his breath unfurling into the distinct scents of whiskey, ashes, and melting wax, "tugs at my soul, and grates it along broken glass until I cannot stand it."
The layer of air between her arms and his hands solidified, a palpable and malleable thing acting as armor between them. Who was it really protecting?
"I, Mrs. Malfoy," he said, rolling the name along his tongue like a sin, "am Lord of this Manor. Your arrival disrupted the seal, my consummation, and I daresay we have a similar goal. You see...I want to live forever and command the respect of the wizarding world. You," here he paused to test the barrier, caressing it like spider silk stuck to his robes, searching for purchase, "wish your line to continue in tandem with the pure blood of the Malfoys."
Astoria sucked in a desperate breath, the sound rattling around in her throat and lungs, sharp and sudden. She felt the crystalline shell of her resolve ring with a clear bell tone as his words landed endless blows against it, threatening to shatter.
Tom leaned further towards her, and she could feel the gusts of his breaths against her neck, shallow and rapid. His lips trembled against the ridges of her trachea, her increased pulse lifting her skin up to brush his lips with each beat of her heart.
Sin sin sin sin sin
He was gulping the air from her, raking himself through her to steal it all and siphon it through her pores, her blood; anywhere she had oxygen he tore it away. "An heir for the ages, Astoria."
Facing up towards the ceiling she pulled another lungful of air into her, breaking the top of the waves filling her mind. That voice, promising power and sin without shame, hit every note of her name to cut into her and shatter the crystal within in a discordant explosion. Words and feeling sloughed from her body as the barrier between his trembling fingers and her shaking bones evaporated, and she succumbed to the feeling of sweaty silk of a man's shirt on her brow, and tulle scratching her thighs.
Promises scripted into her calves, psalms were planted in the dip between her breasts, and pleading words of return and reign crowned her brow and decorated her neck.
