The Ghost of a Memory

Him

Blue-grey eyes regarded him with an amused glint as he swiveled round to confront whoever had dared to touch him. He heard a soft throaty laugh and then his companion lifted her mask. "Iocasta Mayfield," he said neutrally. She grinned. "Nice going tonight, Lucius," she teased him. "Losing your edge?" He compressed his lips. He would not take her bait in potential earshot of their master. "What do you want, Iocasta?"

She rubbed herself against him in a quick sensuous wriggle and long black hair spilled from the hood of her robes. "Why, you of course! I have been missing you. You never stop by and fuck me any more."

He stood close enough to catch the sharp smell of a recent sexual encounter on her. She'd had a man just before she'd come to the meeting and she hadn't even bothered to clean herself up. Lucius imagined that probably she wasn't even wearing anything underneath her Death Eater robes. He bent down, his voice no more than a heated hiss. "I don't think you've been starved of attention in the meantime," he sneered.

"Meaningless, only to slake the unquenchable thirst of your absence," she sighed with mock pathos, pressing against him. He knew the moves of her game only too well, yet his feelings of contempt at her crude approach began to mingle with genuine desire despite his better judgment.

The events of the last two days had left him feeling raw and vulnerable. He remembered Andromeda too vividly to be able to deal with this woman effectively, but then he looked again at the pale oval of her face, the deep wells of her eyes, her high-backed aquiline nose, and the full sensuous curve of her knowing mouth and he knew he would give in, as he had done before.

Her face had begun to show the first traces of her dissipated lifestyle and the color of her eyes tended towards a dark blue-grey, but otherwise Iocasta Mayfield could have passed for his former love's twin sister. That was what had drawn him to her to begin with. Of course he had never told her of his true motivation, but his and her needs and expectations had meshed well enough over the last few years to make them seek each other's company on occasion.

"Come on," she teased him now. "Be with me tonight, Lucius. Draco is well past the age for bedtime stories these days, and you have nothing else to go back to. And I can give you so much of what we both need."

He gripped her arm. "Don't speak the name of my son!" he threatened her, but she sighed in contentment at his display of force. "Oh yes, Lucius," she smiled. "You want to hurt me, to punish me. Wait till you see how bad I've been!"

They apparated together in the vaulted entrance hall of her luxurious London town home and she immediately turned on him and slashed at him with a hiss, her fingers curled like claws. She managed to rip two nails across his cheek before he could grasp and pin her wrists. He felt a sharp pain and the drip of warm blood where she had got him and threw her back against the wall with a growl of rage hearing a satisfying crack as her skull made impact with the dark wood paneling.

"You bastard, "she spat at him, fighting against his grip. "Who do you think you are? Not a word from you for three months! Do you think I'm your whore, your bitch, only to serve you when you want me?"

She tried to attack him again, but this time he was ready for her and lazily back-handed her across the face with enough force to throw her back into the wall. "I didn't know you thought of yourself as a woman who required payment, but I'm sure that can be arranged, my dear. Now, since you seem to have a clear appreciation of your role in our relationship I suggest, you get to it."

He grabbed a fistful of her hair and brought her face up to his. "Dare to break my skin one more time tonight and you will only barely live to regret it." Lucius smirked inwardly as Iocasta managed to lead him to her bedroom at a speed that clearly conveyed her eagerness while trying to make him believe at the same time he was dragging her there against her will. She was an inventive little slut and knew very well how to play him.

Still, as she threw open the French doors to her large bedchamber he barely managed to hide his shock. Spreadeagled and tied down on the bed lay a tall, muscular naked man who now looked up first in relief, then in some alarm at seeing not only Iocasta, but another male enter the room. He licked his lips. "I'm glad you're back," he called out to her. "You really need to untie me. I need to go to the bathroom in the worst way, Lisa."

At this point the blond wizard still reacted with a modicum of worldly composure, though he had to admit he found his companion's behavior to be in questionable taste. He raised an eyebrow. "Very untidy of you – Lisa – to leave your toys lying around like that… I believe I should report to our Lord what a faithful follower you are, dropping absolutely everything when he calls."

The witch seemed unfazed by the whole situation and smiled at him. "Lucius, may I introduce Mark Williams. I believe he works as a banker in the City of London, but I must confess that I do understand little of such muggle matters…"

At that point Lucius' jaw dropped in disbelief. The man bound before him, the man Iocasta had undoubtedly had sex with just before going to a Death Eater meeting was not a wizard at all. She had dared to stand before the Dark Lord with the seed of a muggle still fouling her body. He gasped in outrage and disgust.

Seemingly oblivious to his reaction his companion had turned to the man on the bed. "Mark, this is Lucius Malfoy, an old friend of mine. I thought he could join us, if you don't mind." Striking with the speed of a coiled snake Lucius grabbed Iocasta, pulling her round to face him. "You are out of your mind, witch!" he choked. "How dare you…" and for once in his life found he was lost for words. Still his seething rage screamed for release and he struck her across the face again, hard, meaning it this time, wishing for it to hurt, to knock some sense into her.

Lucius Malfoy was a powerful man. Iocasta was thrown from his grip and flung halfway across the room where she collapsed just before the bed. However, she recovered quickly and pushed herself up on her hands and knees. Blood dripped from her split lip. She shook her head to clear it, but she grinned and her eyes now gleamed with aroused excitement. "Oh Lucius, I knew I'd get you. You didn't believe me when I told you I'd been bad, did you?"

The blond wizard strode up to the bed ignoring her. His fury had not abated. He looked into the stupid, shocked eyes of the muggle, who now made the fatal mistake of threatening him. "You perverted bastard, how dare you hit her like that. I swear to you, as soon as she unties me, I'll fight you, I'll call the police on you! Who do you think you are? What kind of a sick game is this?" Lucius' face now held a positively feral expression. "You filth are in no position to speak to me like this. You ask me who I think I am? I'll tell you who I am: I am your worst nightmare!"

He looked around and found his glance arrested by a flat black leather case on the nightstand holding several small vicious-looking knives. He didn't even pause to wonder what Iocasta would be doing with those in her bedroom, but simply fixed his eyes on them raising magical energy and intoning: "Inserto laminas!" A moment later the instruments blurred and vanished, and as Lucius now again concentrated on the muggle, the man before him suddenly howled in pain and convulsed straining against his bindings until his joints cracked.

The Death Eater noted vaguely that Iocasta had got back up from the floor and was standing next to him. She gave an amused chuckle as she witnessed her lover's death throes as he was slowly cut to pieces by the knives now magically embedded inside his stomach. "Oh Lucius, what a delightful idea," she crooned, blissfully unaware that the wizard's fury had by now reached boiling point.

He turned from his victim as blood began to pool on the man's lips and confronted her, his face white with rage. "You planned this!" he hissed at her. "You wanted me to see him, to know what you just did!" And suddenly he felt an almost physical reaction as his tenuously maintained control finally slipped. It seemed like a tearing sensation in his stomach, perhaps not unlike the one he had just produced in his muggle opponent. A red haze flowed through his mind eroding any pretense at conscious choice.

When he finally came to he found he had mounted Iocasta who now lay face-down pressed into the dead body of the muggle. Her fingers scrabbled at the covers as she feebly tried to fight him, but his hands were firmly closed around her neck cutting off her breath and he was fucking her with all the vicious intensity of which he found himself capable.

His only motivation was to punish her, to make her feel the agony, the heartbreak she had caused him. "Now you know what you did to me, you bitch," he grunted, accentuating every word with another powerful thrust, tearing into her. "Now you know how I suffered, what I have suffered since."

Suddenly he felt the woman beneath him arch up and realized through the fog of his furious confusion that she was actually climaxing. He moved off her in disgust at the discovery – it would take someone as crazy as Iocasta to show any positive reaction to this kind of treatment – but in his own state of arousal it took no more than the contact of his own strung-out body with the bed-sheets as he threw himself off her to set him off.

In helpless anger at his own weakness he felt his hips thrust into the mattress a few times out of their own volition as his instincts took over and he ruthlessly bit down on his lips to stifle any sound of pleasure as he spilled himself into the blankets.

A moment later the rage he had felt seemed to slowly drain from him, leaving him cold and hollow and strangely weightless. He heard a choking sound between a sob and a cry next to him. With a groan he lifted himself and saw that Iocasta had rolled off the corpse and onto her side. She was rubbing her neck and slowly and painfully curled up into a ball.

He looked down on her, shaking all over, and for a moment the woman staring back at him out of wide-open, shocked, red-rimmed eyes was not Iocasta Mayfield at all, but Andromeda herself. He neck showed the blackened bruises of his hands where he had almost choked her very life out of her. Her lips, split from his vicious blows, quivered in panicked disbelief that he could do something like this to her.

Reality blurred and he felt tears spring to his eyes. He stretched out a hand, loathing himself beyond his own capacity for disgust. "I'm, I'm sorry, my love. I never wanted to… I could not hurt you… I love you. Why did you do this to me? Gods, I love you!"

Then the embarrassment of his situation hit him full force and he recoiled, feeling sick to his stomach. The woman before him was nothing but a common whore who would even debase herself to having sex with a muggle just to bait him. He had given her exactly what she had wanted, what she had needed.

Losing his composure before her now had been an inexcusable weakness, and he hoped she was still too dazed from the violence of their encounter to remember his reaction and his words. He curled his lips in what he hoped was a convincing sneer and pulled the bedclothes over her. "Cover yourself, you filthy little bitch," he snarled, genuine anger at his own lapse coloring his words.

He tidied up his clothes and stalked over to where he saw his Death Eater robes in a pile on the floor. He picked them up trying to push down his overwhelming feelings of disgust at the whole situation. As his hands encountered the solid, heavy weight of his purse, his decision came to him quickly. She had made him weak, and his wish to punish her for it no longer had the make-believe quality of a game. He truly wanted to humiliate and hurt her now.

He grabbed a fistful of galleons and threw them over to her, the heavy gold coins bouncing on the silk blankets and slipping into her dark hair. "Here," he said. "I guess your muggle john couldn't pay you before I killed him and he won't be round to fuck you again either. Let me compensate you for your loss."

He watched her lift herself up from the mattress and for the first time he thought that she really looked nothing like Andromeda at all. Her face seemed suddenly ugly, twisted, worn-out and coarse. "You are one sick fuck, Lucius Malfoy," she croaked angrily. "What the hell is wrong with you?! I'm through with you, once and for all."

He straightened himself, tossing back his hair. "Good, Iocasta. I'm genuinely relieved to hear that. In the future, if you ever dare to proposition me again, I will wring your worthless neck in earnest, you filthy muggle-whore."

Lucius Malfoy apparated directly into the manor and spent the next hour scrubbing himself thoroughly in one of the guest bathrooms. He still felt a ghost of his former anger, but now it was solidly directed at himself, for having given in to Iocasta Mayfield's stupid games and for his inability to separate fantasy from reality as he had allowed her similarity to Andromeda Black to govern his actions.

He also had to admit that it sickened him to find that when it came down to it, he had wanted to do nothing more than rape and hurt the woman that he remembered once loving with every fiber of his being. As a Death Eater Lucius could easily recall many questionable deeds, but this realization made him sick to his stomach.

Sleep was out of the question, and he did not want to confront Narcissa even if he had been able to lie down and rest. So he walked over to his study, lit a lamp, picked up the small book with the silver unicorn and star on its cover and began to read.

Her

Black Manor, August 31st 1974

Finally, I have had some time to talk with Bella. I'm quite desperate now, as I think Lucius and Andy are shaping up to be an item. It's so frustrating! I try to be around when he comes to visit, and mother seems to help me by inviting him to have tea with us and then seating me next to him, but any chance he gets he's off with her, always under the pretense of helping her with father's business.

It's a stupid pretext, I think, and Bella agrees. She says she's seen the whole scenario before and she's sure there's something between them and that Lucius has fallen hard for my stupid bitch sister, who won't even make an effort to dress up for him. It's not fair. I saw him first. I'm so jealous I could blow up just thinking about them.

I told Bella I'd hex Andy, make her face erupt in pus-filled boils or give her a hunchback, use a spell to have her hair fall out or develop horrible stinky dragon-breath, but then she told me I'd be found out, father would be furious, Lucius would think I was childish and Andy could easily get rid of the curses. She's pretty good with magic, especially healing spells, because of all the herb-lore and potions she works with.

Anyway, Bella asked how serious I was about Lucius, and when I told her I'd marry him, actually that I would even secretly go all the way with him whether he married me or not, that I didn't care, she seemed to grow quite thoughtful. She asked me to tell her whether I loved him and I really choked up when I told her that I did. So she sat down with me and stroked me, and told me that I shouldn't stop hoping and that she would help me.

She said something strange, too. She said that as a family it would be very good for us to be related to the Malfoys. But she also said that father was still upset with her for eloping with Rodolphus, and that if I was taken care of as Lucius' wife and with the third out of the race, things would look much brighter.

I asked her what she meant, but she just laughed the way she does sometimes, and it scares you and excites you just a little bit, and said she was talking out of her ass, and I shouldn't pay any attention to her, but that she had a plan she needed to think on some more. She said she could probably make things better for all of us in the long run.

Black Manor, September 26th 1975

Well, summer's at and end and I'm actually busy with non-school work right now. I've got a junior position at the Ministry of Magic working at the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Some of the stuff I need to deal with is quite interesting, and it helps that I am fluent in French after my time at Beauxbatons, but I am angry that it keeps me away from home during the day.

Of course now when Lucius comes around I'm stuck in bloody London and he hangs out with Andy all the time. The other night Andy told father over dinner how she was planning to launch a new business venue with the Malfoys, and he was so approving of her plans, I wanted to throw my plate at her in frustration.

Not much in the way of news from Bella, but at least there is a little fly in the Andy-Lucius ointment now. His name is Ted Tonks, and he's a muggle! Andy first started to talk about him about two weeks ago. It seems that muggles have the equivalent of mediwizards, but they call them doctors. Well, this Ted is a muggle doctor. Andy says he specializes in "alternative medicine", whatever that is. I mean from what I know muggle medicine itself is pretty alternative already, what with their obsession with germs and cutting people up and all that.

Anyway, first time Andy talked about Ted in front of mother, mother told her pretty soon to shut up, and that she would not have a topic as rude as muggles discussed at home, which I think is only reasonable, but I was still able to find out that Andy met this Tonks guy at a herbology fair in Sussex. It's frequented by witches and wizards, who go scouting for new potions ingredients, but there are also muggle traders, and muggles come to buy herbs and tonics, too.

I pretended to be interested, and surprisingly she bought it, stupid as she is, and I got her to talk to me when mother was gone. Boy, she really lit up when she mentioned the guy. It was Ted-this and Ted-that, and generally the sun shines out of Ted's ass. I've never heard her speak of Lucius that way. Mind you, I could never bring myself to ask her as I would probably have scratched her eyes out, if she told me.

Anyway, Ted Tonks is an alternative doctor, and he works with a potions – well, she calls it medicine – research group in London who look at tinctures and plant extracts taken from South American jungle plants. Of course the traditional grimoires don't have anything on that, but she said Ted knew of a tree-sap that could cure skin breakouts and rashes, and of an orchid extract that could help with immune diseases, whatever that is. I guess the short of it means that she wants to work with him to find new ingredients for our magical supply trade.

I really think, though, she has a bit of a crush on that muggle doctor. If parents find out they'll go berserk. Blacks don't do muggles! Ever! After all we are not some sad mudblood, half-breed, village-witch family! Well, I guess Andy always went for brains over looks. Maybe things are going to look up a bit. Time to send Bella another owl!