To Have and To Hold
Chapter Three
"Narcissa." Lucius' voice, to his own ear, reverberated as though from a great distance.
"Lovely, lovely Lady Narcissa." He paused. This was victory. Impending. Racing. He savored the look of apprehension only he could have detected. Savored it.
"You are banished."
Those three lilting words left his lips, freeing him of years past, hating and loving, and hating for loving. Free of years to come, of abhorring and loathing and cursing.
His glee could barely be contained as he watched the full realization of his words impact his wife. His lovely, lovely Lady.
Her face contorted, then smoothed, then grimaced again in silent disbelief.
He repeated the words once again, slowly, going over each with the satisfaction of a connoisseur.
Her hand flew to her bare chest. She? the hand seemed to be exclaiming. She?
In the wizarding world, when one is pure bred and of old blood, banishment is among the worst fates one could be given; it simply wasn't used so often as it might, had it been given a different name. Unfortunately, it had long lost its terror to more threatening sounding tortures.
But to those who remembered it, those who valued it, the simple name held a terror unlike any torture or death one could name.
Narcissa was one who remembered.
She laughed unsteadily. "C-come now, Lucius." She began, attempting to cut him off from the last repetition that would finalize it. She looked desperately into his eyes, those hard grey eyes that barely concealed his unholy glee.
"L-Lucius—" Her voice caught. "You – you wouldn't – not really –"
"You—" he cut in, eyes glinting, "—are –"
The little blood left in her face drained, leaving her golden appearance to become a pasty mockery.
Snarling, she lunged upward at him, her fingers scrabbling to cover her mouth.
"Ban—"
Gently, he pulled her clawing fingers away from his lips, heedless of the welts and razor fine cuts her nails had left. Almost lovingly, he pressed his body full against his wife, relishing in her tremors, "—ished." He murmured.
Before kissing her, applying his full lips to hers in a rapturous state for the last time, he whispered her name.
When the kiss ended, the door had opened.
Not a regular door, wooden and square like yours or mine, nor like the round steel door of a vault. Indeed, most would not refer to it as a door at all; instead, we would refer to it as a – rip. A rend. A jagged part, black and empty, hovering in the air, seven feet tall and shimmering like only the most potent of magics.
It was to this that Lucius tenderly led his wife. Echoes of something left the rend in the air and penetrated the bedroom, filling it with an eerie stillness that only lost spirits could incur. Lucius suppressed a shudder. This room would be sealed off for a very, very long time.
Neither spoke as they approached, one filled with the terror that only the most horrific could instill; the other reverent as he approached the open wound.
Something waited on the other side.
Something lurked on that other side of the Borderline.
Something lay there, in wait – for her.
A thick, black fog crept out, feeling, testing the alien other side for the one it had been called for.
A hiss, a whisper, a shriek – filled with agony – malice – permeated the air. A word was in that sound, that lurking noise. Muddy and murky and muddled – a name.
Narcissa.
That night, and the next night, and the night after that – no shriek had ever so haunted him since his first torture as the scream of his wife.
The room was shut off to all or any access.
The door was never touched again.