Bellatrix eyed Lucius Malfoy meaningfully when he turned around. She stood very still, her dress black as the night and clinging tightly to every curve of her body. Around her neck was a thick gold chain, from each link hanging a single peacock feather, perfectly matching the blue-green of her eyes.

"Bella, may I introduce you to..." began the blonde girl.

"That's alright darling. I know Lucius already."

"Not really," Lucius interjected, "More... acquaintances, really, wouldn't you say Bellatrix?" His voice was soft but his eyes were adamantine. Narcissa enquired as to how they knew each other and Malfoy rattled off something about school, Bellatrix being a year above Narcissa, friends in common and the like.

Bellatrix half listened to him, watching his eyes, animatedly enhancing his ad hoc fabrication of their 'acquaintance'. She felt her throat tighten... though they had always kept their affair secret, she felt somehow betrayed by his public indifference to her. As she watched him, locked in banal conversation with her sister, she was overcome by a surge of jealousy; a feeling, however, which was indiscernible to the people around her. Her body remained motionless and taut, her countenance serene. With the conversation now apparently on the days at Hogwarts, Bellatrix added a few sarcastic comments here and there, all the time watching Malfoy's eyes, or more considerably how they responded to Narcissa's.

The latter, however, was hastily removed from the party when Fudge returned and insited on parading his pretty Goddaughter around the ballroom. Bellatrix remained still and waited for Malfoy to speak.

"What happened to Paris?"

"Paris will still be there when I leave tonight." Bellatrix drawled, feeling that perhaps she had drunk too much already.

"You brought your little sister with you I see," he said, following Narcissa wth his eyes as she left, casting a fleeting glance back at him as she did so. Bellatrix bristled, but said quite calmly, "I did not bring her... her Godfather did, he thought it would be nice for her. She does not usually attend these kind of functions."

"A family outing? How nice. Tell me, are any other Blacks going to grace us with their presence tonight? Perhaps that charming cousin of yours Sirius? Or maybe your other sister, I hear she has actually married this... Ted Tonks... I expect your family must be awfully disappointed."

Bellatrix reeled internally, though knowing of course that this kind of repartee was, for them, quite normal, and more often than not it was the prelude to something far more exciting.

"It is true. An alarming number of our family seem to be... defecting, as it were. My sister is a fool and our parents will not soon welcome her back into the fold. As for Sirius, he always had ideas outside the traditions of our family, but he is a Black. He has our noble blood," she paused, smiling, "Which automatically makes him leagues above many other pure-blood families…"

"If he were truly a match, my dear, he would have been put in Slytherin like us. He has no ambition... I'm afraid your family cannot compete with my own." He grinned widely at her.

"You forget," Bellatrix retorted, "My other cousin, Regulus, a worthy adversary, and I believe, a friend of yours?"

"Now, Bella, you know I only tolerate him so I can be closer to you..." She knew he did not mean it, Regulus had followed Malfoy around at school like a puppy, but she appreciated the lie just the same. She leaned into him, quite forgetting the antagonism of before. She slipped her leg out of a long slit in her skirt, a startling contrast of white against the black of her dress, and rubbed it up against the inside of his leg, close enough to him to be covered by his cloak and avoid an audience, close enough to feel his lust for her. Now it was his her turn to leave him. She strolled off towards the centre of the ballrooom, and, cutting a striking figure as she did so, was accosted by a number of would-be suitors. She looked back at Malfoy and winked. Malfoy looked at her, feeling bothered and restless, though not quite understanding why.

However, it was now fast approaching midnight. He slipped out of the hall unnoticed and made his way to the foyer. Shortly afterwards Julius appeared. He looked both grave and slightly drunk. He prowled towards Malfoy.

"The cane, you see, that I have been valuing... It appears that it is of Dark origins."

"I know this, Julius, you told me when I first showed it to you." Lucius was impatient, "I merely wanted to know its worth."

"That's just it, Lucius, apparently it is worth a great deal more than I had first suspected. There was a raid you see. It was confiscated for being Dark Art related material... a regular procedure these days, you understand... but..." Lucius stopped him. His blood went cold and he could feel the hairs stand on the back of his neck.

"That cane was emblazoned with the Malfoy crest. You understand this could implicate me." He remained very calm.

"But, there is something else." Julius continued, "It wasn't an ordinary raid. They... they didn't take anything else... "

"What's your point!" snapped Malfoy, his cool beginning to crack.

"My point is this; there were many things they could have taken, a plethora of items from certain less desirable customers... they only took your item. My point, Mr. Malfoy, is that this was not an official raid. Something is being kept under wraps... I'm not even sure it was the ministry... which means that perhaps you may remain unscathed... this time," he added raising an eyebrow. Malfoy rasied his eyebrow even higher and glared at the man before him.

"I see that information as irrelevant considering the fact that I trusted you to look after an heirloom that has been in my family for generations. You knew they carried out raids and yet were unprepared..." His mind was spinning with thoughts as to who could have taken the cane and why. "I shall in future take my custom elsewhere... I need no further assistance and would suggest that if you want to remain in one piece you leave this ball immediately."

Julius looked at Malfoy's fist hovering tentatively above his wand and, thinking better of a rebuttal, left the room. Malfoy looked towards the huge burnished doors, through which lay a host of people celebrating for one reason or another. The ministry knows that my father was allied with the dark arts, he thought carefully. There is no reason for them to blame me for an heirloom which I have never even used. He thought back to his father's will. The cane had played a significant role, never had it left his father's side. Malfoy suspected, with Julius' advice, that it had some kind of power that the ministry would not want in the hands of anyone but themselves. Theories of what exactly it did though were vast and varied, 'I believe it is a device through which wizards can harness their own powers, amplifying and increasing the effect... effortless destruction, for example...' Malfoy had suspected Julius of talking rubbish, and believed himself, looking at the swirling gasses which seemed contained within the glass sphere at the end, that it was some kind of pensieve... perhaps something to extract the thoughts of others.

In the midst of his consideration, however, he was roused by a hand suddenly pressing hard across his backside. He did not turn, but waited. The hand moved around to the front of his trousers and slid inside them. Two dark figures so close together that they could be mistaken for one single person, save for the raven hair of the woman behind. As Bellatrix felt her target grow hard under her touch she was suddenly startled when he spun around and marched her backwards, pulling her behind a pillar which marked the entrance to the hall. The guests could be heard quite clearly inside.

"Here?" said Bellatrix, casting a quick look towards the doors.

"Not scared, are you?" replied Malfoy, lifting up her dress and pulling her underwear aside violently.

"Scared! I think not..." she said, breathing deeply as he put a finger inside her, then she began laughing, throwing her head back as she did so.

"Something amuse you?"

"I knew you would have to have me... you are so easy, Lucius. For moment I thought my sweet little sis might have caught your fancy…" With that, Malfoy hoisted her leg up and over his hip.

As he undid his own trousers he whispered into her ear, "Whatever makes you think I had to do any of this? I just think you need a good seeing to, after your derisive comments about my family. You need putting in your place." With that, he thrust deep into her. Bellatrix inhaled sharply and put her hands against the wall to support herself.

"Putting me in my place... is that what you call it now?" He drove into her relentlessly, his frustration with Julius easing with every stroke. Bellatrix began to close her eyes and her moans became increasingly more vocal. As she let out a cry, Malfoy put his hand across her mouth, silencing her climax as he drove into her one last time, succumbing to his own. Still inside her he pushed her against the wall, his hands either side of her face, against the wall. She looked into his eyes breathing heavily.

"Have fun in Paris," he said with a smile.