Death of a Death Eater
"Pity is Treason" (Maximilien Robespierre)
When pale grey dawn light filtered through the heavy draperies of the bedroom a little while later, Eleanor found herself still awake. Lucius had kept his promise. He had reclaimed his former position spooned around her.
It had not taken him very long to recover from her attentions, and now his cock rested inside her, sheathed among the slick folds of her center. His hands curved around her and explored her, rubbing and kneading the sensitive flesh of her breasts, painting spirals on her stomach and raking down her exposed flank.
She wriggled in his arms, wanting to deepen the penetration, craving a firmer touch from him, but his lazy, playful mood would not be swayed. He eluded her with a soft, dark laugh.
"Why so impatient, my dear? I have no intention to even leave our bedchamber today."
She groaned in frustration. Her whole body was tingling with anticipation now. But as an answer, his right hand merely snaked down her belly and his fingers began a light teasing of her swollen clit. Again she thrust her hips back, again he evaded her.
"I would have thought you'd had enough lying in bed," she challenged him, trying not to moan as he intensified his touch. "How – ummm – how did you get out anyway?"
His voice sounded right by her ear now. "I discharged myself. Had another grouchy nurse wake me at five in the morning and decided I finally had enough of this. They grumbled and made me sign a few waivers. But I was done soon enough and apparated here."
She bent her head backwards to see him and felt his lips on her neck and chin before her kissed her. "So you are cured?" she asked, when he released her.
His hips moved in a few lazy strokes. "Far as they can tell," he said. "What do you think?"
Eleanor moaned, arching her spine inwards to allow him better access. "Oh – perhaps, but I think I require further proof…"
She felt his teeth on her shoulder. "Proof, eh?"
He shifted and she got the distinct impression that he was finally prepared to give a certain matter his full attention. The long muscles of his legs tensed and one hand ranged back to her hip to hold her. She smiled into the pillows, knowing he couldn't see her face. Lucius was just unable to resist a challenge.
She reached behind her running her fingers over the skin of his thigh, feeling the short, wiry hairs on his legs tickle her palm as he moved.
Soon they had established a rhythm that had them both panting for breath, when suddenly the bedroom doors opened. "M-m-master, mistress!" piped the shrill, nervous voice of a house elf.
Lucius stopped abruptly and she felt him turn his torso backwards. "Nibbs! I will personally boil you in a small cauldron for this! You know you are not to disturb us! Now get out!!!" Obviously he was not amused.
Eleanor held the bed-sheets to her chest and craned her neck. She heard the elf scrabble around nervously. "Please, Nibbs knows. Nibbs already bashed his head against the hallway wall seven times before he came in. But Master needs to see. It is most horrible."
Lucius' hand lifted from her body now and she could see him point at someone on the floor out of her line of sight. "How can anyone with ears like that not hear me? Again, get out! Or do you want me to remove them? We will be ready shortly."
She heard a panicked whine, some quick footsteps and the snap of the door. Lucius shifted again. "Bloody vermin," he growled behind her.
"Shouldn't we…?" she began, but found that her lover's anger had rather added fuel to the flames, and a few seconds later he had almost made her forget the house elf entirely as she pushed her hands against the headboard for leverage against his aggressive thrusts.
She gasped under the assault of his body and barely needed the persuasion of his skilful fingers to find her release mere minutes after. As she cried out she felt his movements grow ragged. She heard a deep vibrating groan behind her, and then he buried his face in her hair as he came.
For a moment they lay still, catching their breath, but Lucius had not forgotten the interruption. He withdrew soon after and she felt the mattress dip as he brushed a kiss on her shoulder and sat up.
"And now I shall deal with this imbecile oaf of a house elf," he muttered angrily.
She turned around and laid a placating hand on his arm. "Lucius, he already knows it was wrong to come in. I'm sure he had a valid reason to go against your orders. Remember what you promised me when I moved it, nothing excessive."
He shook his head at her. "You and the house-elves… We'll have complete anarchy here one of these days. Anyway, I wasn't really going to anything drastic. They're too bloody expensive to damage permanently."
A few minutes later Lucius and Eleanor had dressed and followed Nibbs down the broad stairway and through the entrance hall of Malfoy Manor. The house-elf jabbered to himself nervously and seemed barely able to walk in a straight line.
Eleanor thought he might still be distraught by the lightness of his punishment that Lucius had set for him after he had hit him over the head with his cane – to shut his ears in the oven door. Nibbs had broken down in tears and had thanked his master profusely. The wizard had merely kicked him and told him to stop sniveling.
The elf led them out of the house now and Eleanor paused to ask him where they were going.
"Nibbs needs master and mistress to see what's on the entrance gate," he said.
"Oh, Merlin," growled Lucius. "Can't you just tell us?"
"Please, master, Nibbs cannot say. It is too terrible, much too terrible."
Lucius sighed and the three of them walked down the gravel path in the dim morning light.
Malfoy Manor had always been carefully warded against detection by muggles, who normally just wandered aimlessly around the large park and forest that surrounded the house and gardens without ever spotting a building, but these days more powerful spells had been added to insure protection against the Death Eaters. Most of those secondary defenses encompassed the immediate building and lay inside a tall, ornate wrought iron fence that surrounded the grounds of the mansion.
As they approached now, Eleanor thought she could make out a black shape against the ironwork of interlacing serpents that formed the gate. Something seemed to move and she cautiously drew her wand. A soft scraping noise to her side told her that Lucius was also prepared.
"Protego," she said softly, but Nibbs looked back at her.
"Mistress does not need to be afraid," he said. "It is quite dead."
"Dead?" she exclaimed, and a moment later they saw: someone had hung a human body swathed in a black hooded cloak on the gate. The cloth moved gently in the morning breeze. Blood had dripped down from the lifeless form and made a dark stain on the light gravel. From the inside of the fence it was impossible to say who the victim was.
Eleanor cast a quick look at Lucius, who had turned pale. "It can't be Draco," he said as if to reassure himself. "That's a Death Eater cloak."
He didn't even bother to command the house-elf, but opened the heavy, creaking gate himself. Eleanor followed him and looked up at the wide-eyed face that stared down at them, the features arranged in a permanent rigor mortis of agony.
"By Azrael," exclaimed Lucius. "That's Auror Woollett, and they've really done a number on him." He sounded actually slightly impressed.
Eleanor in turn felt decidedly sick at the sight. The man wore nothing but the Death Eater robe which covered his hair but was unlaced at the front, and she could clearly see that he had been eviscerated. The body seemed to be suspended by spell-work. "Hecate," she gasped. "This is evil! Who would do such a thing?"
"Oh, that's normally old Merton's specialty," said Lucius factually. She stared at him. "The question is," he continued, "Why kill an auror and leave him on our doorstep?"
Eleanor sighed. It was high time Lucius knew what she had discovered a few hours earlier.
"He's your poisoner," she explained. "It wasn't Severus after all. Woollett is a follower of Voldemort. He used the guise of an auror and the unsuspecting Marigold to get into the house. Last Thursday he got himself zapped by a spell on purpose. When I sent him to the bathroom to fix up a cut he got he went to the dining-room and put the poison on your goblet. Your former associates must have given him a map of the manor. I only found out last night."
Lucius lifted an eyebrow. "Well, at least he got a decent dose of what he deserved, then. I couldn't have thought of a better send-off for him myself. Still, even though the attempt to kill me failed, that's a bit of a harsh punishment, even for the Dark Lord."
"Unfortunately that's not all," said the witch, and filled her lover in on the rest of the story, her legilimency attempt on Woollett, the Death Eater raid, and her find of the pensieve in the auror's cloak.
"I think Voldemort punished him for getting himself discovered by stupidly leaving his cloak behind. With his cover blown he must have become useless to him. But the worst is that Woollett saw the mural with our family tree in the Silver Hall. He took notice, because Marigold heard him comment on Desiderius Wermuth, which means Voldemort knows there is another descendent of the mirror maker who can get the Mirror of Battle for him," she confessed.
Lucius now looked grim as he regarded her. "I am sorry," she murmured and hung her head. "Not only did I almost get you killed, I might as well have gone blabbing to the Dark Lord myself."
Instead of an answer Lucius drew her to him and held her. "You couldn't have known," he said simply. "It changes nothing. Just like me you have become a target now. We have to be as vigilant as before. At least you discovered Woollett's betrayal, and he got what he deserved."
Eleanor looked back up at the dead auror. "Deserved," she murmured. Whatever had drawn the young man to the cause of the Death Eaters; whatever he had done, she felt she pitied him. His last hours in this life must have been horrible.
The wind moved the cloak again and she spotted a glimmer of white. "There," she said. "He has something pinned to his robes."
Lucius stepped up and removed a bloodied piece of parchment from the black cloth. "'So will all end who fail me'," he read. He crumpled up the paper in his fist, hissing in anger. "We'll see about that," he said.
Eleanor felt his arm encircle her. "Come on. Let's go back to the house. We can owl the Ministry and have the aurors clean up the mess."
A little while later the wizard and witch sat at a round table facing two Ministry officials in a light and airy morning room overlooking the grounds at the front of the Manor. The sun had risen and bathed the chamber in golden light. On the polished wood between them lay the parchment note that Lucius had removed from the body of the executed auror.
Eleanor's eyes strayed from her company and out of the tall gothic windows to a small cluster of green-robed people on the lawn by the gate. Aurors removed Mr. Woollett's torn body from the iron work of the fence and searched the surrounding area for any clues.
"Again Mr. Malfoy, Miss Sartorius, we apologize for the damage done to you by one of our own. We will have to work on our security checks and background investigation process. I can promise you that this event will not repeat itself," said one of the officials. Both men looked rather uncomfortable.
"You are right about that," she now heard Lucius answer. His voice sounded decisive and cold. "We will not give any of your people a chance to abuse our trust again. The defense workshops at Malfoy Manor will stop – you will have to negotiate with Miss Sartorius if she is gracious enough to train with your people somewhere else, under the strictest security of course, which I will personally inspect to assure myself that she will be quite safe.
But I believe you are in our debt nonetheless, and I demand compensation for the suffering and anguish Mr. Woollett has caused us."
The older of the two wizards now raised an eyebrow. "Compensation? What kind of compensation?" he asked. "We can't be expected to make any financial – "
"Money won't buy me off," interrupted Lucius. "As you can see for yourself, I have hardly the need for a share of your paltry tax revenues. No, I want full protection for an event at Malfoy Manor on Halloween. I want every available auror, background checked and deployed here to safeguard my family and my guests."
Now everyone in the room including Eleanor stared at the blond wizard.
"What event?" asked the official.
"The invitations will go out on Monday," said Lucius. "In the meantime, I suggest you get this cleared with your superiors. If you have any problems I recommend you talk to my family advocatus, Mr. Tethering. I'm sure he'll be happy to explain the finer points of this arrangement to you."
The Ministry wizard seemed cowed by the older Malfoy's commanding manner, but not quite ready to give up. "If this is a private event, we cannot use public resources…" he started.
The Lord of Malfoy Manor got up and leant forward across the table. His voice had gone very quiet.
"We will have about two-hundred guests here, including most of the members of the Ministry of Magic. That's about as official as it gets. I have just spent a week at death's door because Miss Sartorius was kind enough to use our private resources to help your people, and through your criminal negligence you put a traitor in our midst. So do not presume to talk to me about separating private and public. Make this happen."
Eleanor watched and bit her lip. Lucius' ability to gain leverage and use any situation to his advantage had not diminished. If the Department of Magical Law Enforcement gave in to his demands they would have the best possible security for their handfasting. Next to Hogwarts Malfoy Manor would be the safest place in the wizarding world – at least for one day.
