January/February, 2013
Regulus looked at Astoria who dimpled at him as she spooned some of the marmalade onto her miniature toast. Never had a woman looked so delighted to have breakfast with him. Even though she'd just asked him the most outrageous thing, he still felt charmed. That was what made her so dangerous.
"Astoria," he began, "you know I adore you."
"Pish," she said. "Everyone adores me, even your hellion of a child."
Regulus laughed because it was true. Drusilla was as taken by Astoria as everyone else, though her delight in the youthful Minister stemmed from how the woman fooled everyone into thinking she was a bit of society fluff even as she twinkled and sparkled and outright glittered them into doing everything she wanted. "It's just," he said, "among other things, she's already married."
Astoria waved her hand as if to say these pesky issues could be dealt with easily enough and he needn't worry his pretty little head about such trivial things.
"And my sources tell me it was a binding ceremony," he said. "One Dumbledore did, and, as much as I don't care for the old coot, no one's ever claimed he was bad at magic. If he did a binding ceremony, the girl is well and truly bound."
"Against her will," Astoria said. "Or so I understand."
"Still binding," Regulus said.
"Until death do us part," Astoria agreed and the quiet chill that ran up Regulus' spine reminded him that under her coiffed hair and perfect nails beat the heart of a Death Eater. "Her daughter is delightful, by the way. Bright and cheerful with the prettiest shock of ginger hair you ever did see."
"You would know," Regulus said. "Does she?"
"We send pictures," Astoria said. She took a bite out of her tiny toast and seemed to consider. "When the information is good enough."
"It amazes me people think you are good," Regulus said. None of them were good. Not him. Not any of the young and brilliant members of society who orbited Tom Riddle. Certainly not the Minister for Magic. "So you want me to do you a favour and offer your sister my protection. And what do I get in return?"
"A beautiful wife?" Astoria suggested. "The personal gratitude of the Minister of Magic? The opportunity to enrich our world with a new generation of Blacks?"
Regulus spooned some of the sweet blood orange concoction onto his own tiny toast and bit into it, savoring the sting of the marmalade on his tongue as he studied the beautiful woman sitting, a picture of serenity, across from him. As much as it irritated him to admit, he knew he wasn't going to say no. The personal gratitude of the Minister was no small thing, even if the sister he'd be rescuing was, as far as he could tell, a dumb little thing prone to reacting without thinking. Marrying into those Weasleys to protect herself from Tom Riddle had been stupid. Agreeing to sell herself as a spy to get out of it, desperate beyond measure. He hoped that at least she wasn't as… uninterested… in sex as Astoria was reputed to be. He couldn't fathom having a young, pretty wife and still sleeping alone.
"The Blacks do binding marriages," he hedged. "We always have."
Astoria nodded. Even Drusilla and Neville had bound themselves, though so had she and Draco. Most of the old families preferred the traditional marriages. "Then I suppose you'll have to please her lest she decide to kill you too," she said. She took a sip of the tea Kreacher had made and smiled at it with such pleasure Regulus was sure the spying elf would spend the afternoon telling him that Madam Malfoy was the best of women. "The boys tell me the first time's the hardest, but after that it's just like pulling weeds out of the garden."
Regulus laughed out loud at that. Even his own mother hadn't been quite that blasé about murder, though he doubted she'd have stayed her hand if she'd decided it needed doing. "Now that might have been the most enticing thing you could have said about her," he said. "If she's truly dangerous under that dumb exterior, I could fall in love."
Astoria dimpled at him. "I'm counting on it," she said.
. . . . . . . . . . .
The newest of Greg's many servant girls stopped to stare blankly at the huge orange cat blocking her way. "Fluff-butt?" she asked. "Do you need more food?"
"Meow-er."
. . . . . . . . .
Tom squinted down at the cup the girl had put in front of him. "Hermione," he asked. The cold anger in his voice made her look up from the old text she'd been studying and fix the patient gaze of the long-suffering wife on him. He ignored it. "What is this swill?"
She sighed. The daily ritual of Tom's complaint about the coffee had ceased to amuse her long ago. Since he cared that much, he should just go find someone competent and explain why they needed to make it to his specification. A few torture curses and the problem would be solved. Sometimes she suspected he just liked whinging in the morning. "It's coffee," she said.
Tom made a dramatic show of taking another sip. "It is not," he said. "It might smell like coffee, but this is some kind of boiled dirt. At best."
Hermione picked her book up again. "Talk to Greg," she suggested as she returned to reading how to turn a person's hair to snakes. "Maintaining the staff is his job. Go have him kidnap a barista or something."
Tom scowled at her lack of sympathy. "I'll do that," he said before he stomped off.
. . . . . . . . . .
When Draco arrived at Castle Library his smile was too tight and his shoulders too tight and his eyes too tight and Hermione pulled him into a hug and held on until he began to slowly ease and unwind. She hustled him into one of the smaller sitting rooms and he looked around with a wry smile. "Do you remember when this was filled with fox shit and dust?" he asked her.
"The glamour of our beginning," Hermione said. She snapped her fingers and one of the endless line of interchangeable blank-eyed girls brought him tea and a plate of madeleines before letting herself out and shutting the door behind her.
"I sometimes miss those days," Draco said. "It was easier."
"Just play around with Dark magic and travel and dust?" Hermione asked him. The sitting room didn't dare to have dust these days. Light streamed in through leaded windows and a potted lemon tree sat in an alcove, flourishing as only Neville could make a plant grow. The chairs had all been covered in fine silk in neutral colors and a thick rug absorbed noise and heels. It wasn't a room furnished with transfigured boxes any longer.
"Being an adult has its drawbacks," Draco said.
"Problems with the children?" Hermione asked.
He snorted. "I wish," he said. He took one of the madeleines and bit into it. "It's my aunt," he said.
"Monthly visit?" Hermione asked. Draco rolled his eyes and slouched down in the expensive chair and popped the rest of the madeleine in his mouth and chewed with sullen agreement. He dutifully went to visit his Aunt Bellatrix almost every month. He and his mother would sit and smile as she ranted about Mudbloods who stole magic and how she'd show everyone. It had been awkward when he was a child. Now he spent the whole visit hoping Tom wouldn't show up and kill him for pretending to listen to the old bat as she mouthed her nonsense. Times had changed but, locked in her madness, Bellatrix hadn't.
"You know I don't agree with her shite," he said. He searched Hermione's face and relaxed when he saw she was trying not to laugh at him.
"Draco," she said.
"I did," he said, "you know I did."
She became more serious. "And I thought the world was fair," she said. "I thought my parents wouldn't matter."
"We were so young," he said.
"It was good to know everything," she agreed.
. . . . . . . . . .
Severus Snape looked at his class of Slytherin first year Potions students and summoned a tired sneer. He'd been up most of the night brewing one of the pain potions Dumbledore needed to function. Highly addictive, dangerous to take and even more so to make, the potion had taken all his attention and now he had to face a day of incompetence, exploding cauldrons as likely as not, and 11-year-olds who thought they knew everything.
The Black girl sauntered in, bag slung over her shoulder with a jaunty air that spoke of a life spent surrounded by wealth and love. Every boy in the class watched her, some openly and some trying to hide it because girls were still supposed to be icky. Worse, she knew. She flashed a look at one of them under lashes with a skill no child should have.
"Do you plan to take your seat, Miss Black, or are we all to be an audience for your budding social life?" he asked.
She smiled at him and sat down with the Malfoy boy. Snape glared at the pair of them. Had their robes been made to order? No patches for that pair, no hand-me-downs. "I'm ready whenever you are, Professor," she said.
"And the universe applauds," he muttered. He began to write the day's potion on the chalkboard. "Try to be more competent than your father, Miss Black, if you're capable of that."
Because his back was turned to the class he missed the amused look she and Scorpius shared. He did get to hear her say, "I try to emulate my father in all things, sir." He wondered why that sounded like a threat, but he was too tired to pursue it.
. . . . . . . . . .
Daphne clipped the bottom off each of the rose stems with a sharp, neat movement. Ron had handed them to her, pleasure in his eyes that he was the sort of husband who remembered Valentine's Day even after over a decade of marriage. She'd smiled as happily as she could even though she hated him. He'd expect sex tonight. He'd breathe the scent of his mother's cooking into her face as he pumped away and collapsed and then she'd have to wash the sheets tomorrow.
. . . . . . . . . .
"Valentine's Day," Tom said. He lay beside Hermione in their bed, sheet half pulled up over himself as a nod to the drafts in Castle Library even the best warming spells couldn't quite prevent. She was still too flushed and disheveled from their evening to want blankets of any sort and she had one leg thrown to the side, knee bent, in wanton exhaustion. "How did a Muggle saint's day become a thing in the wizarding world?"
"Don't know," Hermione said. "Don't care."
He began to drop a line of kisses down the arm that she'd reached toward him earlier. It had been tense then, every line of muscle a plea that he bring her to completion. Now it lay, limpid and spent on the wrinkled sheets. "What?" he teased, "Did the brightest star of our age admit to a lack of curiosity about something?"
Hermione lifted her head as though she planned to scold him but just let it drop back. "You've robbed me of the energy to care about anything other than the feel of you," she said. "I thought men lost stamina as they aged."
Tom didn't even waste a huff on that claim. "I'm not old," he said. He'd worked his way up the whole of her arm and began to kiss the curve of her neck. "And I don't age."
Hermione tipped her head so he had more access to skin and Tom chuckled. "I thought you were too tired," he said. He pushed some of her hair back and then stopped and wound one of her curls around a finger.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Do you remember when we met?" he asked her.
"Handsome boy in Dumbledore's office who got dumped in my lap because he was too lazy to deal with you himself?" she asked. "How could I forget?"
"He probably thought the oh-so-good and dutiful Head Girl would keep an eye on my evil for him," Tom said. That would have been Dumbledore's style: use children to manage the place so he could do things far more interesting than run a school. He kept turning the lock of hair around and around in his hand as he contemplated the way the brown hair turned to a thousand colors and then a thousand more. The longer you looked at it the more complicated it became. "Like you," he murmured.
"Tom?" she asked.
"Your hair," he said. "It's always been like you. The wild woman who doesn't care what anyone thinks, who does as she pleases."
"That's what you said." He watched her become lost in the memories of their first days together. "You were horrid, making me come to you when you could have just seduced me."
He shrugged. He'd always liked making people dance to his tune and move as he pulled their strings. She'd been the most difficult person he'd ever had to manipulate. "I needed to know you really wanted me," he said. By the way she rolled her eyes he knew she didn't fall for that, for all that it, like the best equivocations, was true. "I like you taking things," he said. "I liked you taking me."
"Horrid," she said again.
"Do I get a pass for being madly in love with you?" he asked.
"What would I have done without you?" she asked.
"Got a tedious job as Theo's administrative assistant," Tom said.
She laughed and nestled herself into his arms and he shifted so he could hold onto her. He liked this world he'd made for himself. Power, eternal life, this woman. He didn't even itch to run the Ministry or Britain or the world. He'd just enjoy eternity letting Astoria handle the minutiae while he had his way with this one woman. It had become enough.
"For the greater good," she said with a laugh.
Well, Tom thought, it would be enough once he'd stripped Albus Dumbledore of all his power, of all his respect.
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A/N - Many thanks to cocoartist, who beta read and brit picked this chapter.
