A/N: Welcome back! Still with me? Enjoying ourselves? Thanks to everyone who is still hanging in there. I realize this is not the typical fan fiction (being more inspired-by than derivative) and so likely attracts a limited audience, but it's helping me work on my own personal projects and giving me a nice break from reality. Plus, Lucius Malfoy.

. . . . .

"Otilde, what's wrong?"

Otilde turned her face to the evening above, to the silver light fractured by a tangled canopy of elm and oak. She had fallen in love with the trees at once, each slow spirit rooted to the earth; unmoving, yet still vibrant and alive. They whispered amongst themselves about the strange two-legged cousins who almost looked human. She could not quite understand them, but as children of ancients they shared a connection with the world that she had not known existed outside of the waters they called home. She wondered how many others there were, how many eternal lines sprung from Sun and Sky and Earth and Fire. Were they bound to humans, like she was?

The distant chord of pain rang out again, harsh and jarring. She flinched and pressed a hand to her forehead.

"Another verse gone," she said. "Why is it unravelling so quickly?"

"Iphany," said Alba, understanding. She joined Otilde in the center of the stream, bending to hum a gentle melody in her sister's ear. Otilde did her best to allow the comforting song to do its work, but her mind insisted on replaying the cry of sorrow and pain over and over and over again, an endless loop of suffering that she could neither hide nor heal.

"She will be so vulnerable if it falls apart," Otilde said.

"You said we wouldn't have been able to sense and find her if it hadn't begun to fail, so we can be grateful for that, at least."

"But if it fails before we get there, she will be in danger. I had not realized it stifled so many of her abilities, it was only meant to shelter her spirit from the harshness of the human world. Ilia should have known how hard it would be on her when it finally gave out. She won't be able to control herself."

"Maybe she did know," Alba said. "She had your gift, after all."

"I would like to believe she knew something I did not," Otilde said. "But there is different magic at work in her, a kind we do not understand. Perhaps Ilia did not consider what would happen if Iphany had both. She might not have expected the man to teach her."

"It will only make her stronger," Alba replied, her voice round and buoyant.

Otilde felt a rare flush of annoyance at her youngest sister's optimism. She had taken on the weight of Renali's determination and distrust for the humans, while Alba remained herself, relentlessly hopeful, blind to the perils of the human world. The burden of leadership was thrust upon her without consent, jostling out her natural visions of the future and the path ahead. Loose thoughts and formless images rattled around in her mind, crashed and banged into each other, never fully able to converge in a sense of what was to come. Though her precognition was in no way flawless, she should have at least been able to predict when Ilia's spell would rupture and spill its dark contents into Iphany's unsuspecting mind. Otilde supposed that Ilia had thought it would hold until Iphany completed her task, and that the three of them would be able to help the young girl navigate the chaos of her memories. That, as it had turned out, would not be the case. She wanted to scream her grief and frustration at the stars, to curse the Moon for his cold, unfeeling silence, beg the Sea to bring Renali back.

"Oh, Alba," was all she said.

. . . . . .

Her father above, his face a paradigm of grief and terror, his hands at her throat, thumbs in her windpipe, crushing and sobbing, tears raining warm on her cheeks. Salt in her mouth. A black pulse in her ears, burning chest, heart limping towards silence.

That, at least, would be something. Something new and strange, death.

And what do you want?

I do not know.

But I do not want to die today. Today, I want to survive.

I want.

I want.

I want.

A small, insignificant snip, like a thread on a dress that has become too tight. The desire to live trickled out from behind the newly created fissure, first a gentle hymn, then a trio of voices, finally a choir roaring from the heavens and the waters of the world. You are our daughter. You are a child of the Moon and the Sea and the Men who gaze in wonder and awe and fear. You are powerful. You are real. Teach them not to gaze, but kneel.

I want. I don't know what.

But I want.

Iphany crawled from the grave of unconsciousness with a strangled gasp. The warm, dry air of the library rushed into her lungs, coaxed tears of relief to her eyes. She dashed them away with a shaking hand. A volley of cursing and motion stirred behind her, followed by footsteps and a shadow over her shoulders.

She started to speak, but her voice rasped impotently against her injured throat. The shadow moved and a pair of fine-stitched gray trousers and shining wing-tipped boots entered her field of vision.

Lucius crouched down in front of her, his expression a mixture of panic and outrage.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm-" she swallowed the knife of pain and nodded an affirmative. He studied her intently, eyes dropping to her neck and narrowing at what he saw there.

'What happened?' She mouthed, though he did not seem to be paying attention. With every passing moment the pain in her throat seemed to meet and surpass a new threshold, and her breath came in thin, strident bursts.

"Your throat is crushed," said Lucius. "I have to heal it now."

She raised an eyebrow to say 'What are you waiting for?' and he settled back to meet her gaze.

"I've got to touch you," he said. She shrugged and motioned for him to continue. He canted his head, a quizzical frown replacing the fading panic. One hand palmed and pointed his wand, while the other reached out to close the distance between them. As his hesitant fingertips met her skin, a thought thudded into the forefront of her mind - I do not like to be touched.

Except…

His bare fingers were soft and warm. Businesslike, yet gentle, he traced a path down the ridge of her injured throat, eliciting a flinch, but no flight. He performed the motion three more times, murmuring the words of the healing spell. She could not, for some unknown reason, stop staring at his face. Had his cool gray eyes always been so full of dark mirth and wisdom? She could not recall noticing his mouth before, but now she saw it held a shape suggesting the curve of a wicked smile. A shadow of stubble ran along the cut of his strong jaw. She had a horrifying urge to run the backs of her fingers over his cheeks to see how it might feel.

Something is wrong with me, she thought with genuine alarm. But before she had time to follow that idea past its intrusion, she felt a flare of heat in her throat that crested in a searing prickle and subsided to leave no trace of pain or injury. Lucius sat back at once and withdrew his hand. Iphany watched as it returned to his side, grasping until it found and clutched a fist full of the fabric of his robe. She snapped her gaze back up to his eyes, noting that his features were stitched with intense, unwilling concentration.

"Can you speak now?" He asked.

"Yeah," she said. She dragged her attention away from his mouth. "I don't remember-I was on the floor, you made me get up. Did I do it? I saw-"

I saw my father's face above me as he tried to choke me to death.

Her heart vaulted into a rapid patter, and she hauled herself to standing. Clear across the room, slumped against the door, was a man; not her father, of course. The Muggle with the beard.

"Is his neck supposed to bend that way?" She asked. Lucius let out an ungentlemanly snort.

"Not at all," he replied. "He is dead."

"What'd you do? I was doing well, I thought," she replied. He stared at her for several seconds, his brows half-raised. "What?" she snapped, wishing he would stop gawking at her like that every time she opened her mouth.

"I didn't do anything. You, on the other hand, went into some kind of trance, froze me in place, untied it, and promptly got yourself strangled half to death."

"Oh please blame me," she said, rolling her eyes at the vaulted ceiling. "You're the one who kept pushing me. So how'd he wind up across the room? Did you whack him again?"

"I did not. I was thoroughly incapacitated. You lost consciousness, and then all of a sudden the Muggle went flying and hit the wall. I am certain he died instantly."

"Ooh," said Iphany. "I killed him?"

"I certainly didn't. You appear to have discharged some odd surge of magic just as you went under. And lucky for you, since you managed to hold me in place for quite a few moments."

Rather than sounding upset by the notion, Lucius thought she appeared, of all things, intrigued. She made her way towards the door, smoothing the rucked-up folds of her robes as she walked. Her steps were uneven and dragging, her shoulders hunched in obvious exhaustion. She paused once to catch her balance with a hand against a bookshelf, and he heard her mutter something disparaging to herself under her breath. He could not help the smile of admiration tugging at the corner of his lips.

Determined little thing, he thought.

He followed her to the spot where the Muggle lay, quiet and broken, limbs stuck out at awkward angles. A knob of a bone that had no business being there distended the skin of his neck.

Before he could stop her, she crouched again, wobbling a bit on her way down, and bent to stroke the dead Muggle's wiry beard. Lucius tsked in disgust, unable to stop himself from reaching out to snatch her elbow. He dragged her away to the tune of a squawk of protest.

"Hey!" She jerked her arm away from his grasp and scowled. "I just wanted to know what it felt like!"

"You don't go around touching dead people," he sighed, in disbelief that this was a thing that needed to be said out loud. "Besides, that's a Muggle. A perfect world would be one where they did not exist at all, and here you are poking one like a toad you trapped in a jar."

She raised her chin at him and sniffed.

"I don't care for toads," she said, and he laughed in spite of himself. After a moment, that damnable smile - blue sky between storm clouds, the first rays of moonlight cooling the glow of dusk - spread across her face. It was quickly replaced by an enormous yawn. She rubbed her eyes and skirted to the side to avoid leaning against the corpse, instead allowing her shoulders and the back of her head to thud against the door.

"I'm so tired," she said.

"I'm not familiar with the sort of magic your ki-you possess. I would think it came naturally enough that it wouldn't cost you so much energy."

"I've never really gotten to use it before," she said. Her eyes drifted closed. "My body kind of hurts."

"Well, you did get slammed onto a stone floor," Lucius replied. "Tends to leave a few bruises." He decided not to mention the way the Muggle, torn between manufactured fury and relentless desire, had pinned her small body to the floor between his knees, grinding his hips against hers even as his fingers dug into the column of her throat. White-hot rage ran its sandpaper tongue against his ribcage. He wished she'd left a bit of the Muggle alive, just to make him suffer before finishing the job himself.

"It's not that," she said, sliding in and out of a drowsy whisper. The tone of her voice, unintentionally warm and husky, invited a feeling far more pervasive than anger.

"No?" Somehow, and for no discernible reason, he was afraid of what she might say next.

"No," she replied. Her lids opened halfway, dusky lashes backlit by dreamy, unfocused eyes. "Not like bruises. It's inside. It's like…" She paused, roused a bit from her reverie, surprised by her realization. "I'm...hungry."

Lucius' mouth went dry and he drew very still.

"You should rest," he said, livid with himself, with his gentle voice, the tenderness behind it. She nodded and reached for the doorknob behind her, missing by quite a few centimeters, and abandoned her attempts with a plaintive groan.

"Can't I rest down here?"

"You cannot," he replied.

"I'm going to," she said, and slid down the door, mouth gaping in another enormous yawn. "Just you get rid of my friend there, and I'll sleep on the floor. I don't care."

"I care," Lucius replied. "Up with you, girl. This is a civilized house."

"Bother your stupid house," she said, and then rolled over to her knees and spread herself out face-down across the runner with her face tucked into the crook of her arm.

She hadn't even the strength to protest when his hands snaked around her middle, and he lifted her up from the ground. All she managed was a feeble, half-hearted swat at his shoulder before feeling one arm tuck itself under her knees and the other bend to wrap her shoulders.

This is lovely, she thought. I should have someone carry me around everywhere. The rhythm of his footsteps, the sway of her body moving with his stride. The unusual thunder of a heartbeat, audible even through the layers of his shirt and waistcoat. She dropped her head against his chest, decided for that moment that she would forget what a bossy, self-important git he was. After all, he did smell nice. A hint of cedar, a kiss of smoke, the spice of some exotic fragrance, the pleasant redolence of magic, which had its own unique scent: the smell of the air just before the rain begins.

The next thing she recalled was being deposited on her bed, and Blat's frenzy of inquiries as to her Mistress' condition. The elf removed her boots and stockings, drew the curtains, and she knew no more.

Lucius stood outside her door, tongue in his teeth, a balled fist driving against his thigh.

Damn you, Icarus Novara. Damn you and damn your wife and damn your stupid daughter.

. . . . .

Lucius considered doing a number of things after he pried himself away from her door and stalked down the long hallway back to the interior wing of the manor. He owed Fudge a visit and a handful of Galleons. There was the half-completed letter to the Hogwarts Governor's Board, regarding an upcoming vote on a mandatory pre-roommate assignment blood-status disclosure. He had to come up with something for Naricissa's birthday-

He skidded to a halt at the base of the stairs, simmering desire and frustration doused in an instant. The loss hit him anew, just as it did every time an idea crept in still infected with parasitic notion that she was alive. Resentment and sorrow skimmed the river of his thoughts, etched their conflicting stories on the canvas of his body; a slight clenching tremble in his hands, a bowstring tension in his shoulders, a transitory sting behind his eyes.

And then as quickly as she had been banished, the girl came pirouetting back into his head. Any semblance of grief cowered before the surge of anger flooding his body. He set his jaw, teeth gritted and bared, a hand shooting out of its own volition to strike the elegant wooden bannister at the base of the stairs.

She won't even allow me the solace of my thoughts, he seethed, pounding the wood again with a fist that was beginning to ache from the blows. Never in his life had he known such a nebulous hold on his own mind. As a passable Leglimens he had done his share of mental training, sharpened his ability to control and direct his attentions, to hide or reveal what he wished, both to his own consciousness and any prying from the outside. He ought to be able to put her out of focus, to seal her up in a fortress of cerebral stone walls. Ought to, but could not.

It would get better if you fucked her, just once, came the rude, intrusive, impolite-entirely sensible internal voice. Too bad that's not even in the realm of reality. At this point I'd just take someone who looks like her, though that, too, would be equally impossible.

He stopped grousing at himself and stared straight ahead, the simplicity of the idea knocking him momentarily senseless.

Or is it?

. . . . . .

A timid, elfish-sounding knock rattled the door of his bedroom.

"Enter," he called, capping the Floo powder before returning it to the mantle. The elf shouldered his way inside, a hangdog look in his enormous eyes and a small, silk-lined envelope tucked into the ratty rope holding his rags up.

"I assume by your presence you were successful," Lucius said. Yanna nodded slowly, extracted the envelope from his belt, and passed it to his Master.

"Dismissed," Lucius said. The elf bowed his way out of the room and shut the door.

Lucius resisted the urge to open the envelope, lest he lose any of its clandestine contents. Instead he turned back to the hearth and pitched the Floo powder, and when the flames boiled emerald he spoke his destination, knelt so that his voice would be audible through the connection, and called out:

"Maidne?"

Nothing for a moment, no answer or shadow of movement from within the fire. He sat back and dabbed at the perspiration along his brow. Then the green flames parted and Maidne Lestrange stepped into his bedroom.

"Lucius," she said, her pretty face twisted up in a sly grin. "It's not even noon." She threw her riotous auburn curls over one shoulder and planted a hand on her hip. "I could have been indisposed, you know."

"Then lucky for me, you were not," he replied. She gave him a wink and looked down to dust the ash from her well-tailored robes, then closed the scant distance between them with a smile. Her hands landed on his shoulders, fingertips pressing into the painful tension there. Her brows shot up and she pulled a face ripe with mock-pity.

"Awfully pent up," she said. "It has been a while."

He plucked her fingers delicately from his shoulders, careful to mask the cold thorn of revulsion poking at his gut. Her face darkened as she registered the refusal, lower lip thrust out in a fetching pout. Lucius wasn't fetched, but he knew he must navigate her expectations with care. Maidne was a formidable lover, with the potential to be an even more formidable enemy. So despite the unwelcome feeling of wrongness in the gesture, he gathered her hands in his and pressed a kiss to her fingertips.

"Later," he said, infusing the word with promise. Her featured smoothed out and she looked up at him with keen, expectant eyes.

"How is your strapping husband?" He asked as he peeled away from the embrace and withdrew his wand to summon a crystal-carved decanter full of amber liquid from the bar set over the fireplace. Maidne let out a yip of laughter and sat herself on the end of his bed.

"Still cheating Death on an hourly basis," She replied. "I honestly believe that at this point, he's holding on out of sheer spite."

"Not for you, angelic nymph that you are," Lucius said, sending her drink over to her with a swish of his wand.

"Oh, of course not. I'm still responsible for the stars in the sky and the depths of the sea. Thanks," she said as she accepted the snifter of firewhiskey and knocked in back without a trace of a grimace. Lucius crossed to refill it as she continued.

"It's his rotten children, acting like infants, the lot of them. They've accused me of all kinds of mischief, from love potions to Imperius. Say I'm a ladder-climbing New-Blood, that no matter what I'll never really belong in the sacred twenty eight." She quaffed the second drink and waved off a third, her mouth slanting into a cheshire grin. "They've no idea he's already written them out of the will."

Lucius joined her at the foot of the bed, deftly shifting his weight to avoid allowing her to place a hand on his thigh. He hadn't the presence of mind to examine the abrupt repugnance, but it was becoming harder and harder to hide.

Get to the point, he told himself. He swirled the gold-burnished liquid in his glass and cleared his throat.

"What if I could give you the security that your inheritance cannot?"

Her hand had been creeping across the coverlet towards him, but she paused, fingers positioned just beneath the chandelier so that her quartet of ruby and emerald rings caught and returned an array of sparkling light. Lucius took the pause as intrigue and reached over to trace his thumb over her knuckles.

"I'm listening," she said, her words composed of careful indifference.

"I have an arrangement I wish to propose. It will be exactly the same as the one we have now-" Here he trailed off, lifting his hand to court the line of her jaw. He slid his fingers around the back of her neck, fingers threaded through wild, coppery curls. She let out a satisfied hum and leaned in to the touch.

"-the same, truly. With one small, insignificant change."

She cocked her head and regarded him without comment.

"Are you interested?" He asked, when she offered no reply or refutations. Her narrow chin bobbed in a nod, and Lucius rewarded her with a particularly beatific smile.

"I won't join up with…" She lowered her eyes to indicate the dark mark, visible under the border of his unbuttoned wrist cuffs. He shook his head and raised both hands in acquiescence.

"I would not ask it of you," he assured her. He would not have you, anyway. "It's much simpler than that. Just a little potion, a harmless thing. Each time we meet."

At the word potion, her focus strayed from his arm and wandered back to his face. Suspicion flashed in her amber gaze.

"What kind of potion?"

. . . . .

Iphany woke to the sweaty delirium of an unexpected nap, unable to process the improprietous presence of sunlight. She heaved her body over with a groan and saw scraps of blue sky peeking through the half-drawn balcony curtains. Had she ever once in her life intentionally slept during the day?

Roused and whirring, her mind sifted through the last moments in the library, ordering the flashes of memory from the first wave of exhaustion to the dying-dreams of celestial voices as her body surrendered to the violence it endured. And the denouement: Lucius' concern and anger, healing her wound, carrying her up the stairs. She swallowed around a phantom twinge, feeling her skin ripple under her fingers, and realized she was unconsciously tracing the same path he had taken, a feather-stroke from chin to collarbone.

A spontaneous hunger gnarled through her belly, much as it had in the moments before Lucius swept her up and bore her to bed. She flung herself up and out from the covers, searching the corners for Blat. The elf appeared at her knees, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"Mistress Iphany Novara, Blat is so sorry she did not bring you your lunch while you slept. Blat often sleeps during the day, since Mistress is up most nights." The elf stifled a yawn and straightened her shift. "It is past noon, I will bring something up at once."

"See that you do," Iphany replied. "And lots of it, too. I'm starved." As if to prove her point the hunger struck another pang inside, resounding through an emptiness she had never noticed before.

Blat disappeared and Iphany went to the vanity to straighten her disheveled robe and braids. She did her best tucking the escaped locks of hair back into their proper place, but just as she was about to step away from the mirror, she noticed something strange. A closer look at the blue-black tendril revealed what she'd seen in her reflection. Someone had cut off a chunk of her hair. The ends were slanted and jagged, as though the job had been done in a hurry. Dismayed, and more than a little disturbed, she whirled around and scanned the room as though the perpetrator might have concealed themselves behind the curtains or under the bed. She bent down to examine the latter and found nothing but spotless marble, then rolled her eyes at herself and straightened just in time to see Blat reappear with the lunch tray.

"Oh good," she breathed, the mystery hair-thief momentarily forgotten. Blat set the tray down on the small dining table beneath the eastern windows, and Iphany hovered impatiently as the elf arranged the legion of flatware, unfolded her napkin, and filled her glass with salted water. Was eating always this much of a production? She waved Blat away as she tried to fiddle with the silver some more, and took to flinging the covers off of the serving dishes and loading her plate with food herself. She took several of the small tuna sandwiches, a teetering pile of salted crisps, filled her side plate to overflowing with a chopped fruit salad with sesame dressing. The smell of food was at once both overwhelmingly new and familiar - she knew she had not suddenly gained some additional sense, but could not remember her mouth watering at the fragrance of cut-up strawberries before.

If the smell was novel, the taste was extraordinary. She held a bite of sandwich in her mouth and closed her eyes, tongue working to decipher the glorious variety of flavors - the silky hint of lemon in the mayonnaise, the brine and bite of smoked tuna, the earthy crunch of celery between her teeth. Nothing had ever tasted so good, until she moved on to the fruit, and could not hold back a groan of pleasure. Every morsel was unique, textures met and mingled, salt enhanced the sweetness of the berries, the buttery croissants melted in her mouth.

When she came back to herself, many moments later, the serving trays were completely empty and Blat watched from the sidelines, her eyes round with incredulity.

"Was...Mistress Iphany Novara...hungry?" The elf asked. Iphany gave a shrug and patted her stomach.

"I guess I was," she replied. "Where's the pudding?"

. . . . .