PROPERTY
Chapter 1
Salty tears on cotton fabric. A fading shock of red hair against a bright white pillowcase. A broken woman. His woman. Voldemort's. Lily Potter is now, indefinitely Tom Riddle's property, his concubine, his whore and whilst the human in her still grieves for her son and her James and the horrors that the last years have bestowed, the monster in her, the monster which he unwittingly created, lavishes in the pain and the pleasure and the indifference of her situation. The monster in her loves that he wants her through her muggle heritage. The muggle in her, the human, the moral in her knows that he doesn't. That he's repaying Sirius for being a blood traitor. That he's repaying Remus for his reluctance to join the deatheaters. That he's repaying Dumbledore for ever scaring him.
Bitter-sweet.
Lily lives in a world where nothing is certain. Where people can be crushed. Where people can be glorified. Where the flip of a coin can decipher fates. It excites her. He excites her. Tom. Voldemort. My Lord.
She shivers against the early morning cold and opens her eyes, realising that her clothes are vacant. No one is with her in the familiar, cold, stone dungeon and as she pulls dirty ripped covers around her frail body, a sob almost escapes her lips. She's alomost weak. She's almost blown it. Before, she had never imagined what Azkaban would look like, what it would feel like, how the air inside that dreary place would taste, smell, make her shiver. She could never have imagined the damp, the dullness and the hopelessness. Before, Lily Potter would never have known what death smelt like, how madness tasted, and how monotony could drive people to the edge of consciousness. But she knows now. She knows how doing nothing all day can be lead to the worst kind of fatigue. She knows how something that seems like hell one moment can seem like heaven the next. She is on the edge of her own sanity.
She is constantly scared and constantly ecstatic. Constantly bleeding, in pain, in ecstasy. In hell. In heaven. In a dreamworld. In reality.
"Potter."
She jumps slightly. Clutching the covers around herself, biting her lip, shaking. "My Lord." Voldemort smiles and sits, cloaked and sodden wet from the winter rain outside on the side of her bed. He smells of outside. Her eyes wild, she searches her memory for the last time she's seen the outside world, the sun, the moon...grass. She can't remember. She manages a shaky smile. "How are you My Lord?"
"Silence woman. You utter my name as though you detest it" He smiles manically. "yet everytime I come close to you...you're hot for me...ready for me." Lily says nothing and turns her face from him so he cannot see the shame. The fear. The confusion. "Lily, my love. You are slowly running out of uses."
Her head snaps up. "What do you mean?" She screechs. "My Lord?"
"I mean, Potter," He states harshly. "that you rarely attain my interest anymore. That you are little use to me. That you...mudblood...are worthless." He finishes with a hissing grin.
She shivers again. "And yet you still keep me here. Against my will. You torment and torture me, but I rarely hold your interest?" She raises her eyebrows.
"I didn't bring you here to torture you Lily. I brought you here to punish them, The Order. I brought you here because you were pretty...once, and you meant something to Black. I brought you here...so that he would know he could never have you.
"Do you know how long it's been, Potter? Do you know how long you've been rotting here?"
She shakes her head.
"Six years. And have they ever come for you? One of them? Once? Your so-called friends don't care Potter you're as good as dead to them anyway."
She shakes her head again. Defiantly. With conviction.
((No.))
He nods. "Yes Lily. Yes. The have forgotten about you." He reached out to her with a long, scaly finger, tracing her pale, once beautiful face with his fingertip. "And I come to you now, out of pity, not out of lust. I come to you because you used to be someone. I come to you because I can not because I want to."
((No.))
He smiles.
((Yes.))
"You are alive because of me. You owe your life to me you selfish little mudblood. You sacrificed your child to be here. You sacrificed your husband. Was it worth it Potter? Is reality really that much better than death?"
Her face stays blank. The tears that are tearing her insides apart not once falling. "Yes Tom. Anything is better than death. I thought you of all people would understand that."
His eyes ficker with annoyance. "You address me "My Lord" Potter. That or you do not speak."
She shakes her head again. "Do what you came here to do...My Lord. Kill me, Take me, or leave me in peace."
"You are hardly in a position to be making orders Lily." He smiles.
((No.))
"I wont kill you. There's no point. You aren't a threat to me. You aren't a nuisance. You hardly eat, you hardly drink, you demand little. You are a plaything Lily, and you're not broken yet" He moves swiftly to her side and extracts the covers from her clutching fingers. "and I'll leave you in peace, my love, once I get what I come here for."
He pulls her frail frame toward him and kisses her mouth, forcing her teeth apart with his snakelike tongue. Moving his scaly fingers over her battered, exposed body and finding what he's looking for. She gasps at his heavy body atop hers. The only thing she waits for. The only thing in six years. It's her and him and she's passion-filled in the same moment as she's disgusted.
Bitter-sweet. Maybe It'll never be over.
Somewhere, In a place not so far away, a man is asleep. "Lily" He whispers slowly. No. He hasn't forgotten.
-
Remus Lupin glances around the cold, familiar room and sighs slowly. Six years. Six years ago, in a place that seems so far away from the constant fear and paranoia; James was ripped from the world, and his son; his Harry, the only one who could stop the hurt; went with him.
He has no idea where Lily is. He knows that she's somewhere; with him, with Voldemort. He knows that in actual fact, six years ago, she had very little choice, but it doesn't stop him from blaming her, from wishing she had had the guts to save her son, her Harry, because; only partially realising it; all those years ago, she signed the death warrant of every person in the world. By stepping aside, she bought herself time to live, time to think; but she gave Voldemort the power he wanted; the power he needed. Now, it would never be over.
Remus sits awake this night, the way he has on a hudred other nights before, his eyes cautious, his mind wide awake. For one night, he knows that they'll come for him; the death eaters, and what will be left to do then but lay down and wait for the pain to stop?