Title: Undeniable
Author: Lauren (blacklustz)
Pairing/s: Past reference to Hermione/Draco
Rating: R, mild sexual content and adult themes.
Warnings: Character Deaths.
Summary: Sirius watches as she sits in what is now know as 'her' chair, he wishes everything was different. Wondering when it will all end.
Word Count: 3,259
Disclaimer: I don't own it…if I did own it, then it would have an 18+ rating.
Beta: Er… me…. Yeah so you've been warned.
Spoilers: PS/SS, CoS, PoA, GoF, OotP, HBP.
Authors Notes: Inspired by Neil Gaimans, Smoke and Mirrors: Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot, its set a few years after Harry, Ron and Hermion have finished school.
The story may seem like it jumps at certain times, this is because I've tried to keep the flow of the story similair to that of ones thought process.
Undeniable.When asked about her, that's what he tells them.
No other word existed that could better describe her. And if there was, he didn't know it.
Undeniably sensual.
Undeniably black.
Undeniably cold.
Undeniably addictive.
Undeniably dead.
They tell us that 'the eyes are the window to our souls'. Perhaps this is to reassure us that no one can pretend to be something they're not, somehow keeping us in the belief that everything is as it seems.
I know better.
But her. She. This, woman, is exactly what she poses to be. Deadly. Poisonous.
Yes, she is beautiful. Aphrodite herself would have looked upon her in refined jealousy.
For she was the epitome of the perfect woman.
Intelligent, cultured, witty, youthful, sexy.
If only for one pesky little problem.
Vampirism.
The war is far from over. People have died, and friends have killed. And yet, she continues to stand detached from the situation.
We know she cares. To an extent. But it's no longer about her beliefs, or her desires for a better world. No, she gave that up when everything gave up on her.
This is about a vendetta.
She loved once.
Some say it was Malfoys' son, after he was disowned from Lucius, but I'm not so sure. Though, it's not like she would tell us, lord knows we no longer try to strike up a conversation with her. Every time someone does, they spend countless nights trying to banish her cold eyes from their minds.
Albus is dead. I can't grasp it. I keep telling myself that he won't be coming back, that his ever amused eyes won't be looking upon us ever again.
It doesn't seem right.
I don't ask myself 'why' or 'how' anymore. I know why. And I know how.
Superiority. Racism.
That's what this war is based on. It's what they're all based on. Well, that and religion.
It makes wives into widows and children into orphans. It makes people like her into what she is now. Something that was never supposed to be, something that could have been avoided.
Something that should have been avoided.
I watch her, always in black, I wonder if I should tell her that it's maybe too much of a cliché. It'd be nice to see a vampire wearing white, a symbol of something they once had. I know it wouldn't depress them. They're already depressed.
But she never shows it. Her depression that is.
Perhaps it's because she's more angry than 'depressed'. Not that she appears angry, like I said – she's detached.
Death Eaters killer her parents. The fact that she wasn't there to help really hurt her, I know what she went through. It's the not know that kills us all, the 'could have', 'would have' and 'what if's'. Could she have helped? What if she was there to stop it form happening? Would it have made a difference?
I miss James and Lilly. Not that Lilly was all that fond of me to begin with. I can hardly blame her, I tormented the hell out of her in school.
The Order was surprised, though none so much as me, to find that Snape offered 'Mione the best comfort during her parent's death. It wouldn't have been such a shock had she been a vampire then.
But that didn't happen for another few years.
I still can't fathom why Minerva believes in Snape's innocence. The man, if he can be called that, is a traitor. I don't care that he showed us in a Pensieve what Albus ordered Snape to do if the Malfoy's son was to kill him. I voiced my objects, but Minerva didn't budge. Now Snape and the Malfoy kid live in my families' old house. Snape belongs here, with all the filth of past generations.
God I loathe being a Black.
It happened when 'Mione left with Neville to gather more potion ingredients for Snivellus, as Snape has since been placed as 'out of commission', unable to leave the house unless under glamour and in the company of another Order Member.
They were to be gone for 3 days and no longer.
But after 5 days, and no word from them, we started to worry.
On January 14 2006, 6 days after they had left, Neville Longbottom returned to Grimmauld Place alone.
When he walked through the front door without Hermione, we went silent, the dejected face that Neville wore told us that something had happened to her. It was what we had feared. She was our golden girl. She stood for everything we were fighting for. Not since Albus had a death come as such a personal blow to the Order of Phoenix.
I remember the Malfoy kid yelling, demanding to know everything that Neville knew. He left a few hours after that to go look for her, he even agreed to allow Harry and Ron to accompany him in on his search. It was the first time the boys, no men, saw eye to eye.
The three of them were gone for weeks, and yet still she wasn't found.
Over and over Neville told us that he last saw her in India, where they were searching for rare plants that are unable to grow here. Deciding that they would obtain the last few ingredients quicker by separating, they agreed to meet back up at the place they were staying at.
He last saw her turning a corner in an eerily quiet street in Cuddapah.
Months went by after the return of the Draco, Harry and Ron. Months of searching, months of mourning. We followed up on anything we could get our hands on. At one stage we got word of a small group that unoriginally hunted innocents to offer as sacrifices to their gods, many saying that they saw the group traveling through a small town 50 km outside Cuddapah. It turned out they only sacrifice fish, or something that looked like a fish. If you squinted your eyes, and then unfocused them.
But in the end she came to us.
She returned not long after the Malfoy kid was killed, or rather tortured then burned to death by the hand of his own father. I know the others believe that I only praise the boy now that he's dead. But that's untrue, the minute he stepped out the door to go find her, accepting the help of someone he'd rather see six feet under, he became a true Order Member.
It's sad, out of everyone, he never gave up hope. He truly believed that she was still alive.
I won't lie. I gave up.
I threw in the proverbial rag a few months after her disappearance.
She doesn't talk to anyone. Occasionally she'll speak a few words with Snape, but that's all.
Molly's terrified of her, though I think that has something to do with the fact that she can't eat Molly's cooking. Molly never was too fond of anyone that won't eat her cooking.
I hear Molly crying one night, while in bed, she hates that she's lost Hermione as a daughter.
Maybe if Ginny was still alive, then perhaps Molly wouldn't be so out of place. Ginny, the girl was a spitfire. Harry calls to her sometimes, in his dreams. I never disturb him, I let him have those precious few hours alone with her.
I almost wish he were never born, it's not fair for him to have this broken life.
That's how I've come to view his life, broken. It's like handing a busted toy to a child, then telling that child that they're to fix it, or they'll never get another toy again. That's Harry's life. And that's why I wish he didn't have it.
She sleeps in Malfoy's room, during the day of course. She won't let anyone in there. Not even Snape.
I know she still reads a lot. I think that's what reassures us the most, that there's still a small part of her left.
"What do you want?" I look up sharply, not quite sure I heard her ask me that, I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me. It wouldn't be the first time. I look at her closely, trying to determine whether or not she uttered those four words.
She's sitting in the same chair, one of two chairs in a gloomy corner of the library, just reading. Though she hardly makes it look so harmless. The shadows are always cast across that part of the room, never allowing light to dance along the walls. Not that you'd find any sunlight now, when I entered the room it was well past ten o'clock. I know she hasn't moved for over five hours, as I've been watching her for nearly as long as that, even longer if you count the days since she's returned to us. I come here nearly every night now, just watching her. I really don't know why I come here anymore, though I'm sure it has nothing to do with a deep seated desire to read. The Black family was never been known for its harmless 'light reading' material. I don't think there is one such book in the entire Black family collection.
I jump slightly when I see her move, transfixed I watch as she slowly closes the book she was reading. Her pale hands caress the cover of the book with such an appreciative manner.
"I asked you a question." Her cloaked head rises, slowly, and I know her eyes are on me, as I suddenly feel cold, very cold. It's nothing like the Dementors, but chilling all the same.
What do I want, Merlin so many things. I want everything to be how it's supposed to be, I want James and Lilly back, I want Snape to strangle himself on a chain of dandelions, I want Moony to be happy. I want to know you.
Instead, I ask her the one thing she won't tell me, "How?"
With the book floating back to its original place, her attention becomes solely on me.
"Pardon?" she questions.
"How did you become a vampire?" I ask her, unable to keep the nervousness out of my voice.
As she stands, her finely tailored cloak ripples around her, almost drawing in the shadows into the folds of the fabric.
"How did I become a vampire?" she says, slowly walking towards me, looking every bit the predator she is.
I move my right hand along my thigh, reassuring myself that my wand's still there.
"You don't need your wand." Her teeth almost shine from an unknown source of light beneath her hood, "I'm not going to bite you."
I don't say anything. She knows what I would have said if I did.
"Sirius…" my name on her lips sends conflicting reactions through my body, lust for her beauty, for the way she said my name, for the raw, almost religious, sexuality vampires hold. I shiver - equal amounts of attraction and repulsiveness. I feel colder than before, and yet I can feel the familiar tugging of my cock.
"Sirius," she cooed, shaking her head slightly. "Why ask a question that can not, and will not, ever be answered?"
Standing, I retaliate, "Every question has an answer."
"No."
"No?" I ask.
"Every question has the opportunity to be answered. But not ever answer exists." Stopping to stand in front of me, she lowers the hood of her cloak. Pale skin and black eyes are the features I notice first. It's something I miss, her eyes. I remember them being a warm chocolate brown, easily readable and very expressive. Now their cold, lifeless, harsh against her pale skin.
Her hair hasn't changed much, tamer, but still her wonderful honey brown signature curls.
This is not the girl I once knew, the girl who spent her days in books, desperate to prove her worth to all who would listen.
Now, now I'm not quite sure who she is.
"What do you want Sirius?"
"Why do you talk to Snape and not us?"
"I'm talking to you now, am I not?"
"Don't avoid my question."
Smirking, she steps closer to me, her face is inches from mine.
"Maybe I like Severus," she says, dragging out the last syllable of his name.
"No body likes Snivellus, I don't think even he does."
"Even so, what does that change? Maybe I have sex with him because I don't like him."
I moan when I feel her hand press against my abdomen, creeping lower ever so slowly.
I start breathing deeper, feeling myself becoming more desperate for air. "You, you… have… Ah… sex, with him?" I almost stammer.
"No," is her simple response.
"So you and Severus…?"
She doesn't say anything, merely a faint quirk of her eyebrow is all that I get.
I'm rock hard by this point, and at the pace her hand is going, she's moments away from knowing this too.
She stills and suddenly turns her head towards the libraries open door. I hear a loud 'thud' downstairs accompanied with many people shouting. Jokingly I comment, "I think my cousin has returned."
Before she draws away, I see her sniff the air, as if she's trying detecting who just entered the house.
"She's not alone."
I watch as she brings herself up to her full height, while still shorter than me, it makes her look all the more intimidating.
The last thing I hear her say to me was an unsettling, "A time to die."
Turning away from me, she makes her way to the commotion downstairs, her charcoal black coat flaring dramatically as she stalks away.
I don't call out to her, it's of no use. What transpired only amused her. Perhaps in a different world, in a different time, we could have tried.
But that's not how everything works. Mayhap if I was Hindu, I'd pray to Kali – The Black One. But I'm not Hindu, or religious in way.
Unless you counted my detestation for Snape, I might be inclined to consider that as my one and only religion.
Not that I really give a damn, I don't have time for love, in any fashion. I'm surrounded by death, hate, they all were. And for what? A megalomaniac who's angry at his deceased father for never truly loving his mother?
It's all so childish.
But right now, Sirius wanted to know what the hell was going on downstairs.
As I walk down the hall, making my way to the stairs, I hear shouting, no, that an understatement. I hear screaming, someone's hurt, that much I can easily tell.
Placing my hand on the smooth surface of the drawing rooms' door, I carefully push it open.
Oh god Tonks.
There's blood on her, she's collapsed on a haggard old couch, she's screaming unintelligibly. With my heart rate doubling, I hastily kneel before her, though I can't find a scratch on her I continue to worry.
Whose blood is this?
"BLACK!"
Whipping my head around, I finally notice everyone else in the room. Snape, who was standing before a kneeling figure, was binding him with more magical rope than was probably necessary. Molly's was shouting for everyone else to 'shut up' and 'calm down', trying to establish some sort of order. Harry's was spitting blood from a cut lip he was supporting, while Ron was happily taking the prisoners wand, then quickly proceeded to snap it.
I could clearly hear Moody's gruff voice, which was ordering Snape to take 'her' out, who was not indicating to Tonks, as I had presumed, but to the unsurprisingly quiet woman standing discreetly off to the side.
Leaving Tonks to Molly's capable hands, I quickly stride over to the captured man, as I stood next to Snape, my eyes fall upon the one man that everyone had been dying to get their hands on.
Lucius Malfoy.
Dressed in his beloved Death Eater outfit, his baby blond hair tousled, for a man like him could never have 'messy' hair, he looked every bit the aristocrat he posed to be. A bruise slowly forming on his jaw was the only evidence of a scuffle that undoubtedly just occurred.
Looking at Snape, I noticed the greasy haired git glaring daggers at Moody, "What's the meaning of all this. Will someone PLEASE tell me what the hell is going on?" I demand.
Ignored, I watch Malfoy snicker at Harry's cut lip.
"Take her upstairs," Moody growled.
"No. She has the right to be here," Snape hissed at moody.
"It's probably best that she leave…"
"NO!" Snape bellowed, interrupting Kingsley. "I'll hear none of it!"
I turn and watch Molly direct Tonks out of the room, no doubt to give her some of her world famous tea.
"How's the lip Potter?" Malfoy snarls.
Smiling, Harry casually walked up to him, "You know what, under any other given circumstance, I'd beat you to a bloody pulp. But no matter what I could do to you, she'll do ten times worse," nodding towards the black cloaked figure standing off to the side, watching the proceedings in an eerily calm manner.
Undisturbed by Harry's threat, Malfoy simply sneered at him in what could be called 'a purely Malfoyish fashion'.
"Come on Harry, you too Ron, lets go see if we can help Molly," urged Kingsley as he headed towards the drawing rooms doors, not waiting for them to follow him.
With one last meaningful look towards their once best friend, Harry and Ron followed Kingsley out to the kitchen without protest.
"So, Black. What a quaint place you have here."
"Go sodomize a sheep Malfoy," I snap.
"I'm not staying for this," Moody snarled. "You can all deal with this," indicating to Malfoy's kneeling figure with a swift kick of his fake leg.
Annoyance flowing off him, Snape watched as Moody awkwardly limped out of the stuffy room.
Finally fed up, I demand to know what's going on for the second time.
"Mr. Malfoy took it upon himself to try and conduct what he would undoubtedly call, 'pest control'," said Snape, pausing to look at Sirius his baritone voice took on a softer, and almost sadder note. "Consequently, Minerva is currently consoling the newly widowed Mrs. Tonks."
Andromeda. I don't want to believe Snape, I want to pretend that Malfoy isn't smiling from where he is on the floor. That I can't hear Tonks crying her heart out in the kitchen, that her father isn't dead. Murdered. Not Ted. Andromeda didn't deserve that, her and Ted were, they were my James and Lilly.
"The blood, Tonks?" I whisper.
"Compliments of Mr.Tonks I'm afraid." Malfoy chuckled, finding the situation obscenely humorous.
"Yes well, we'll be leaving you now Mr. Malfoy. I do so hope that you thorough enjoy your stay, not that you'll be seeing many rooms in this glorious house," said an exceedingly pleasant Snape.
"Wait, leave? Don't we need to interrogate him?" I question.
"We know everything we need to know. And he's not 'ours' to interrogate."
Before I was pushed out of the room from an impatient Snape, I watched as the familiar cloaked figure smoothly made its way before Malfoy.
In that moment I knew what she felt. Contentment.
And as she looms over him, not uttering a word, I know that we won't see Lucius Malfoy again. Not alive anyhow, and not intact.
'While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down'
Perhaps now, there's at least one less vendetta in this broken world.
-Fin-
'While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.' This comes from a favourite poem of mine written by Edgar Allan Poe, 'The City In The Sea'.