"Fortis vero, dolorem summum malum judicans; aut temperans, voluptatem summum bonum statuens, esse certe nullo modo potest. - No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest god." (Marcus Tullius Cicero)
A harsh clap from his hands brought out three house-elves who presently cowered around him, took his cloak, pulled off his boots and carried his cane. He kept hold of the bundle of parchment he had brought with him, slid into a pair of beaked leather slippers and walked over into his dressing room while unbuttoning his greatcoat. One of the elves scrambled nervously onto a dresser and opened the snake pin on his neck scarf, another caught the coat as Malfoy flung it off. He stretched languidly before the floor-length mirror, looking at himself and taking stock.
A half-naked tall, blond, pale-skinned man stared back at him out of heavy-lidded grey eyes. His body was powerful, lean and well-muscled. Blond hair a few shades darker pooled at the center of his chest and curled up between his collar bones. Black pants hung low on his narrow hips and revealed a thin smoke-trail of hair snaking down from his flat oval belly button. He reached behind him and pulled off the velvet band that held his hair together, shook out his blond mane until it flowed around his shoulders and twisted his lips in an arrogant smirk. Not bad. He was sure that Eleanor Sartorius could not have failed to be favorably impressed.
'Eleanor, what am I going to do with you?' he mused as he smoothed his hand over his hair and sauntered over to his wardrobe where he picked out a black silk housecoat and flung it over his shoulders, not bothering to belt the luxurious fabric that caressed his naked skin. This had really been different. As he had got ready for the meeting he had half expected that the impression she had made on him that afternoon in June would be eradicated, that it had been some magic of the moment caused by a combination of disparate and fleeting coincidences. After all, she hadn't even replied to his message shortly after the encounter. On second sight she would probably be plainer than he recalled, less vivacious, less engaging or intelligent. In fact, he had half expected to meet an unappreciative and unresponsive bore. He had prepared meticulously but had also been ready for disappointment.
But then disappointment had been the last thing on his mind as she had entered the room. She had looked very different from the laughing barefooted woman in a blue dress that had almost danced before him over the pavement, her hair tossed by the warm summer breeze, that had charmed him so the first time. She had been darker, sterner, sharper somehow, even in the clothes she had picked. And then her conversation had stripped him bare. She had uncovered his secrets and alliances with the mere deduction from a birthday present.
Any other witch or wizard who was not a Death Eater would have suffered for this impertinence. Any other witch or wizard would have run straight to the Ministry as well, but she had in essence sympathized with him. They only disagreed on the merits of the Dark Lord, but he was sure he would be able to win her over. She was a self-declared adept of the dark arts who had proclaimed herself the heiress of Falco Sartorius. She was a prize unlike any he had come across before. For a moment he allowed himself to consider what would have happened if his father had chosen her for his wife instead of murdering her relatives. They would have been magnificent! She would have been as a queen by his side.
Well, the day had been a success, not in the least because of what he had been able to bring home with him. He walked back to the dresser and carefully lifted a folded up piece from the bundle of papers. As he pulled it apart it revealed two vivid copper strands of hair. As she had left the room, he had picked them from the upholstered back of the chair in which she had been sitting.
He snapped a command to one of the house-elves to bring his skrying bowl filled with water and to set up candles in his study. Then he picked a blue glass bottle from a wall cabinet and dripped some of the contents on a small piece of silk. He sniffed the cloth and took a deep breath. Frankincense, benzoe and juniper. The only thing missing was the subtle essence of the raw scent of her skin. She had been careless enough to tell him the secret of her fragrance and had given him a powerful way to attune himself to her.
As he stepped through to his study he saw the glimmer of candles and found his skrying bowl set out. He snipped off a small fragment of her hair and let it float in the water, then he called for the elf to bring his cane. He pulled his wand from it, sat down so he could gaze into the still mirror of water, inhaled the fragrance he had prepared and moved the wand over the bowl, murmuring the appropriate incantations. A while later a misty film seemed to form over the bowl, as he intently stared into it, and when it cleared he saw into Professor Sartorius' room.
She was sitting at her desk, a squat glass a quarter full of deep amber liquid by her side, and read in the book he had given her. With some satisfaction he noted that she had very carefully folded the black wrapping paper and placed the silver bow in a neat pile on top of it. He forced the water mirror around so he could study her face and found her intent on the text in the book, murmuring spells and other sentences in German, scribbling notes in brown ink on fresh sheets of parchment.
While she was busy he decided to take a look around her quarters. Her study was a square spacious room lined with bookshelves interrupted only by a fireplace, a door leading to a narrow entrance hall, another leading off to what had to be her bedroom and two tall windows. Her heavy desk was pushed up to the left window and just left space for a broad windowsill that held a few potted plants, which seemed to be part of Professor Sprout's more adventurous breeding experiments. The other window had an inglenook seat built into it where a beautiful slim-boned Siamese cat was cleaning herself lazily atop some silk pillows.
Lucius directed his gaze further into the room and through the doorway into her bedroom. He looked into a slightly narrower chamber with a large four-poster bed in the center. Indigo-blue muslin curtains shrouded a flat mattress with a silk comforter and a single pillow in the same color. At the back of the room one wall was almost entirely covered by an old worm-eaten carved oak wardrobe. The room also contained a small easy chair with a low side table, and a dresser as ancient and well-worn as the wardrobe. He was sure that apart from the sensuous textiles that sported the background color of the Sartorius family crest and also covered the window, the rest of the contents of the room were Hogwarts property. Sartorius had still managed to give the room a touch of her own by placing golden-yellow beeswax candles on several surfaces and hanging some rare old alchemistical and astrological drawings and prints on the walls.
A rustling noise made Malfoy jump and he almost lost the connection, when the object of his skrying attempts walked into the room. She was squeezing the bridge of her nose between her fingers and closed her eyes. In her other hand she carried the glass that had been sitting on her desk. She walked right through the bedroom and through him and out of a door next to the wardrobe. He directed his viewpoint to follow her and entered her bathroom behind her. Again the décor and furnishings were old, rickety and rather primitive. A large claw-foot bathtub stood in one corner and she pulled up a wood stool on which she placed her drink. Then she lit several candles, opened the only faucet he could see, and the tub slowly started to fill with water.
'My, my! – Ice cold bath,' Malfoy mused. 'I didn't think things are going this badly for you, my dear.' In the meantime she had returned to the bedroom and loosened her belt that held a narrow sheath for her wand and a purse for other personal and magical items. With bated breath Malfoy watched her unbutton her tunic and reveal nothing but a small lace-edged black bra beneath. She next sat down on the edge of the chair and pulled off her boots and socks and slipped out of her skintight velvet pants. As she turned to hang the trousers and tunic in the wardrobe, Malfoy got a good glimpse of her panties, a small triangle of cloth covering her in front, a mere string of black fabric separating the smooth, pert butt cheeks. 'Holy Hecate!' If he had spent more time on muggle studies, he would have known that he had just for the first time in his life encountered a thong. As it was, the sight took him by surprise and seriously screwed with his abilities of concentration, which are unfortunately essential to successful skrying.
He started counting down the geomantic figures in an effort to distract himself from the pulsating bulge that strained his trousers, but couldn't remember further than fortuna maior. Suddenly Sartorius' ice-cold bath seemed like a really, really good idea. Of course from now on things could only get worse as the target of his magic shed her bra and the superbly inventive underpants and flung them into a hamper together with her socks.
She now revealed herself completely naked and he saw to his amazement that in the tradition of the ancient Egyptian priestesses she had carefully removed every single hair on her body revealing perfectly velvet smooth pale-honey skin on her every curve and hollow. His breath took on a decidedly labored note. She was mind-blowingly gorgeous in every respect. He loved long, slim legs, liked his chests rather less well endowed, but pert and youthful looking and enjoyed the sight of a flat taut stomach that showed the sickle shapes of hipbones. She satisfied completely.
As if she knew about his escapade as a voyeur she seemed to be bent on torturing him and now stretched languidly right in front of his eyes, a cinnamon-colored perky nipple almost grazing him if he had been present in the flesh. He heard the delicate crack of vertebrae in her spine and the soft satisfied sigh that escaped her lips as she felt the tension ease out of her muscles. 'Keep it together, Lucius,' he admonished himself as the demands of his own body threatened to jeopardize his ability to maintain the connection to Sartorius' room.
She walked over to the bed and removed the wand from its sheath. Then she entered the bathroom and switched off the faucet. "Fervefacio," she commanded, pointing her wand at the tub, and immediately he could see wisps of steam rising from the water. 'Neat trick,' he thought, and then watched her as she retrieved several odd shaped glass bottles from a shelf above the tub and poured some of their contents into her bath. A light golden mist shimmered above the surface and the water seemed to glow from the depths of the tub. She replaced the bottles, rolled up her hair into a bun that she fastened irreverently by abusing her wand as a hairstick, hung a towel next to the bath and stepped into the warm and inviting water. With a sigh she sank down and reached for her glass for a deep sip. Then she grew still and closed her eyes, and with little new developments to witness and to distract him, Malfoy's discomfort became so intense that he contemplated ending the skrying session and taking care of his own needs. This was more than even a wizard could bear.
Just as he lifted his right hand from adjusting his pants and reached for his wand to properly sever the connection, he heard a little gurgle of water and saw that she had moved. He replaced his palms on the rim of the bowl and watched as she started to glide her hands over her body. What first had seemed an almost involuntary motion soon became purposeful as she started to stroke her breasts until her nipples stiffened, despite the warmth of the water. She did not open her eyes, but he saw her tongue snake out and lick over her lips. Then she slowly moved her head from side to side and began to caress her stomach and the insides of her thighs. Her legs fell apart against the sides of the tub and her hands reached down to touch her water-slicked lips and her center. Malfoy positioned himself at the foot of the tub and had a perfect view of her fingers getting busy in earnest.
She started rubbing and stroking herself with one hand while her other spread her apart, and as she increased the speed of her efforts he heard her breath escape her full lips in short hissing gasps and moans while her sweat-sheened face flushed pink. She could not be far off now, as her whole body began to tremble and heave, sending several heavy flood waves of water over the edge of the tub. Then she arched back her head, shuddered as her climax gripped her and let out a stifled half-articulate cry of "Lucius!"
Malfoy almost swept his skrying bowl off the table in surprise as the sound of his name hit him. Great Goddess Isis!
The next second several things happened at the same time. The skrying image paled and wobbled as Sartorius enjoyed the slow ebb of her passion oblivious to the rather sizeable shock she had caused, and as Lucius' grasp on reality adjusted itself with a few jolts. Just then a jabbering house elf bolted into the room followed by a big, evil-eyed black owl. The wizard swung around at the racket, tangling the sleeves of his robe, and the bowl finally went flying, drenching the owl and the elf. "Master, master," howled the elf. "Please, it's a summons, master! Dobby said you were busy…" The owl shook itself and flapped up onto the table where it dropped a piece of parchment and then took off with a disgusted screech.
Malfoy kicked the elf that stood pawing at his calf begging for mercy half across the room and unfurled the message. A Death Eater summons and now. He muttered every curse he could remember from his extensive study of grimoires, causing several spiders in the room to die slow agonizing deaths. Then he snarled at the elf. "Bring me my dark robes and mask and ready the broom. Hurry, or you will be very sorry!"
Unfortunately the poor elf was already a nervous wreck and it took him quite some time to get the boots back on Malfoy's legs and the complicated dark robes arranged in the appropriate fashion. "Look," the wizard finally hissed at him. "Stop cringing, you oaf, I'm not going to kick you again, just concentrate on your job. You can put your head through the lead-glass window in the dining room after I am gone. And remember to tidy up the mess afterwards." "Yes master," sniffled the unfortunate servant and handed Lucius his mask.
He strode out of the room and down the stairs and grabbed the broom that another trembling elf held out to him in the high entrance hall. The broom was an old, large and bristly ebony-carved family heirloom. The handle showed a design of flying snakes in silver intaglio and Malfoy winced as he stood on the front steps of his manor and put the broom between his legs.
It was rumored that witches quite often derived considerable pleasure from flying, but for wizards the whole affair proved to be a rather uncomfortable business at the best of times. Actually it was rumored that despite the risks involved quiddich players frequently used a numbing spell. Right now his need to fly to the Death Eater meeting for security reasons, rather than being able to simply apparate seemed particularly annoying. Attempting to ride a broom while suffering from the worst case of blue-balls imaginable was not a pleasant prospect at all. He would be glad for his Death Eater mask hiding his pain-wracked features later on. With a hiss he lifted into the air over rural Wiltshire and continued cursing softly at every gust that shook the broom, leaving a trail of failed crops, barren livestock and soured milk in his path.