A/N: Vanessa's POV, this chapter is dedicated to sarahmichellegellarfan1. Sorry this isn't the reaction you were looking for, but that comes soon! :D

-C

The purpose of the party was well-known, although it was not listed on the invitations. That in and of itself was the biggest clue, as parties always listed the purpose on the invitation.

Jack Avery was a Death Eater.

He'd officially been inducted over the weekend, and the Wednesday dinner party to honor his "recent accomplishments," as his mother said haughtily to all the guests who dared ask in hopes of getting it out in the open, was in order to celebrate his inclusion in the Dark Lord's inner circle.

I had donned my classiest wine-colored dress robes for the occasion. Black would have been too much.

"Vanessa, darling," Mrs. Avery drawled. "You look gorgeous."

"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Avery," I sighed. "You're really too kind."

I had to keep my future mother-in-law happy with platitudes like that. I could see jealousy in her eyes every time she looked at me and I had yet to decide if it was just because I was young and attractive or because I would be stealing her son's attention away from her after the wedding. Either way, I couldn't let myself underestimate her ability to make my life a living hell if I put a toe out of line.

The path to the banquet hall was so familiar I didn't have to think about it anymore, and when I arrived to see it bustling with purebloods, many of whom were Death Eaters or related to Death Eaters themselves, I let my eyes lazily scan the crowd for my fiancé.

"Vanessa!"

And there was my future father-in-law.

"Mr. Avery!" I said, putting on my most brilliant smile. "I was hoping to find the guest of honor. Have you seen him?"

"He's still in his room," Mr. Avery said with a sigh. "He was having some difficulty with some new cufflinks, but I think he's nearly sorted."

I wondered what that was a euphemism for, since magical cufflinks were essentially foolproof.

"Do you think he'll see me if I go up?" I asked.

He could take that as he liked, I really didn't care. He paid me little mind compared with his wife.

"I would knock, obviously," he drawled, already looking around the room. "It's possible."

I nodded, said something suitable to take my leave, and went out to the staircase, following along the west wing of the manor until I reached Jack's quarters.

Taking a deep breath, I knocked on the large oak door.

"Jack?" I said. "It's Vanessa."

"Enter," he said, and there was something strange in his voice, although I couldn't place it.

I turned the knob and pushed the door open and stepped into the Victorian sitting room that was at the front of his rooms. He was sitting on a mauve sofa his mother surely picked out for him, gripping his hair with his left hand.

"Jack?" I asked, actually feeling concern in the pit of my stomach. "Are you all right? Are you ill?"

"No," he said through gritted teeth. "Sit."

I did so, next to him but not touching him. I didn't know what was wrong, but I didn't deal with illness well. He expected me to obey him, but if he started to get sick….

"It hurts still," he said by way of explanation.

"What hurts?" I asked, frowning in confusion.

His right hand shifted over to his left sleeve, unfastening the cufflink deftly and pulling the sleeve up his arm, revealing his flexed forearm to me.

I stared in shock.

There, on his flesh, was a mark, the Dark Mark, in a burning black tattoo.

"What…what is it?" I asked, both fascinated and horrified. "I mean, what does it do?"

"It's my Mark," he said dully. "It's the symbol of my inclusion in the Dark Lord's inner circle and is how we are summoned to him. When it burns, I have to Apparate directly to his side."

I shivered slightly, but Jack didn't seem to notice. His arm was still clenched in pain.

"I'm telling you this because as my wife there will be times when you have to just accept the things I do without understanding them fully," he said, still in the dull, slightly strained voice. "You are not to ask questions, you are to do as I ask, and you are to accept whatever I tell you as absolute law and fact. Are we understood?"

"Of course," I said without even bothering to think about it. I didn't have to. I had been raised to take all of those things as a given whenever I got married. "Is there anything I can do for you now, or would you prefer I leave to the party?"

"Stay," he ordered. His arm was beginning to relax. "There are a few things we need to discuss further."

So I stayed, and I was admittedly curious about what it was he thought we needed to discuss. More wifely duties? Something to do with the wedding?

I was honestly dreading wedding planning. Between my mother and his mother and social expectation, nothing about the day that was supposed to be all about me would actually be about me. Still, I would do as I always did and bear it all with as much grace as possible.

He stood after a moment, his arm relaxing and falling from grasping his hair to his side.

"Much better," he muttered to himself.

I waited patiently as he put his sleeve back and quickly fastened his cufflink in place once more. He took a further minute to pour himself some ice water, down it quickly, and regain his composure. He used a polished brass vase as a mirror and straightened his bowtie, smoothed his hair, and adjusted his collar.

All the while I waited behind him, knowing he could only groom for so long. Even the most high maintenance males couldn't take as long as a reasonable female.

And I was far from reasonable. I could wait all day.

Finally, he turned to me with a small, albeit weak, smile on his face.

"I know about your contact with one Peter Pettigrew," he said triumphantly.

I did my best not to raise an eyebrow. There was no possible way for him to know, unless he was having me followed. Actually, I wouldn't entirely put it past his mother to have me followed. But the way he was looking at me, the way he had said it…. There was something else going on. This didn't have to do with our marriage prospects, exactly.

"And?" I said.

There was no point denying. He knew. Even if I hadn't believed him when he told me, there was a look Jack would get in his eyes when he lied, and that look was not there.

"What do you hope to gain by it?" he said, not necessarily derisively, but I was careful not to assign emotions to his voice. He'd been practicing throwing people off with his tone of voice for as long as I had. "Surely you aren't attracted to him."

"Hardly," I drawled, a smirk turning up at the corner of my lips. Peter Pettigrew had nothing I wanted, except knowledge: knowledge of the Marauders, of Amy, of Evans, of their comings and goings and weaknesses. "He has…information."

Jack smirked back at me. He knew my anger at not being able to obtain James Potter. He wasn't jealous. It had nothing to do with feelings or attraction or love. If I was thinking about it, Jack was more attractive than James, although neither could hold a candle to Sirius Black.

And that was the other matter, how Sirius had humiliated me, how Amy had sided with him and Sarah sided with her….

And Lily Evans. Her very existence offended me still.

"He is still close with the blood traitors, then?" Jack asked in a casual voice that belied his amusement at my long-harbored bitterness.

"Yes," I snapped. "Of course he is. Did you expect any different?"

Jack then sat across from me, all amusement gone, his eyes harsh.

"And he is with them in this organization that Dumbledore has?"

I froze, unsure of how to answer.

Peter had told me little of the Order of the Phoenix except that he was part of it. It was clear, though, from Jack's question, that I might need him to tell me more.

"He is," I said slowly.

Jack nodded.

"Very good," he said softly. "You will continue to see him. Get him to tell you as much as he will about this group. You're a clever girl with many talents. I'm sure you'll get a fair amount out of him." He smirked again. "If he proves useful, he might become a dear family friend."

Translate: if we could control him and he proved subtle enough he could be recruited to the Dark Lord.

If I was the average person, underestimating Peter Pettigrew, I would think Jack was insane to suggest such a thing. I knew Pettigrew better than most, however. He had kept his desire for Amy McAuley hidden for a very long time, from his friends and Amy and everyone else. He knew things he shouldn't know about all sorts of people, which meant he was capable of spying. He was the sort of person who could blend right up against the wall in almost any situation simply because even his closest friends discounted him.

He was a part of the furniture, not a person, to them. An amusement and a tool when they needed an extra set of hands.

Jack was right. There was potential.

"What do you want me to do specifically at the moment?" I asked, crossing my legs and letting the robes shift enough to show a considerable amount of thigh at the slit. It was mostly on purpose. Jack and I had yet to have sex, mostly because his parents always seemed to be around when we were courting. This wasn't the time for it, but it never hurt to remind him what he was getting.

Indeed, his eyes flashed with lust as they traced up my legs.

"Just keep doing what you're doing," he said with a smirk. "I'll let you know what I need and when."

"I bet you will," I teased, and I stood, crossing to the large oak door once more, intent on mingling with guests and showing myself to be the future mistress of the manor. Jack, though, grabbed my arm roughly, yanking me around to face him.

My heart pounded, but I wasn't afraid. Fear was an emotion for the weak. I was not weak.

"I didn't dismiss you, Vanessa," he said in a dark voice, eyes flashing still, a mix of anger and lust that was surprisingly arousing.

He kissed me hard on the mouth. I had a vague thought that he would have to deal with lipstick before I remembered I wore the new kind that didn't transfer onto glasses and such.

Jack was a good kisser. I would have been very pleased with the skill I was getting in my husband if not for the fact that I had kissed Sirius Black in school. I knew what true skill and passion tasted like, and Jack paled in comparison.

Dating Sirius had been both an excellent and terrible decision. Getting to shag a man that talented was always a blessing. But the way it ended….

Well, needless to say I hadn't come out on top of that particular attempt.

Jack pulled out of the kiss with a patronizing smile on his face and he said, "And now, Vanessa darling, you're dismissed."

I put a suitable smile on my face and opened the oak door, going down to the party on his arm, trying to appear as though I was the happiest fiancée the world had ever seen, and that I was even more happy about the fact that my future husband had a disgusting skull-and-snake tattoo on his arm that controlled his life.

I'd had more difficult acting jobs.

To be perfectly honest, the real headache in my life was the wedding planning. Mrs. Avery had very specific desires, but most of them were things I thought to be tasteful and reasonable, in line with what I wanted on almost every point.

My mother was the one being ridiculous.

"How was the party, dear?" she asked, watching me come in over the top of her massive stack of bridal magazines.

My mother, nutter that she was, wanted me to have a "modern wizarding wedding," whatever that meant. It was horrible.

"Fine," I said, taking off my cloak and hanging it up in the hall with the others. "Is Jeffrey not here?"

"He's off with Susan," she said dismissively. "Lovely girl."

I rolled my eyes.

My brother had taken a liking to Susan Snow, the idiot girl Sirius had dated before he turned to me. My mother adored the chit, even trying to talk me into having her as a bridesmaid since I wasn't speaking to anyone from school.

But Jack had a cousin who would be my bridesmaid. I had already agreed to it with his mother, and Susan Snow was not going to be in my wedding. Not on my life.

"I'm going to my rooms," I said.

"Just a moment," my mother said. "Did you know someone bought that ring I was telling you about, the Carulio's one?"

I raised my eyebrows.

Why was she telling me this?

I'd already told her I didn't like the Carulio's ring. It was garish and simple, and anyway I was going to wear the Avery family ring, like a proper pureblood should.

"Eight-five thousand Galleons," she said, reading the report. "Sold to Sirius Black."

I dropped the earring I'd been taking out.

"Are you sure?" I asked, feeling my heart race.

Sirius Black. That couldn't be true. It couldn't.

"Positive. Sirius Black bought the Carulio's ring."

Sirius Black had bought an engagement ring, and not just any engagement ring: the most expensive engagement ring in the wizarding world. Eight-five thousand Galleons.

That was a lot of money to spend on anyone, especially when your sole income was an annuity doled out monthly by goblins.

Sirius Black was going to marry Amy McAuley and all I could do was bend over and pick up my earring from the floor.

"Who do you think he's going to marry?" her mother asked, looking up from the magazine with a smile. "Must be a very lucky girl."

"Indeed," I choked out, picturing that garish ring on Amy's disgusting fingers. Amy Black.

It didn't even sound regal like a pureblood name ought to. It just sounded simple, base, vile.

Just like her.

"Come look at this flower arrangement, dear," my mother said happily. "It's lovely."

"Perhaps later," I said diplomatically. It was probably horrible, but I wasn't in the mood to argue with my mother. "I'm very tired. I think I'm going to take a bath, wind down."

"Well, all right, dear," my mother said absently, marking a page, making note of something on her massive roll of wedding notes. "Feel better."

Unlikely.

I rushed up to my rooms, peeling off my robes without a second thought.

We'd had a house-elf once, but we hadn't bred it young enough and after several miscarriages it died delivering a stillborn. Finances were too tight to procure another from the breeding of other house elves. I'd been drawing my own baths since I was ten, and hating it.

I pulled the pins out of my hair that were holding it in place as I walked into my bathroom.

A quick tap of my wand adjusted the temperature of the water when I turned on the tap, just to the right temperature. I hated cold or hot bathwater. It had to be just warm enough to turn my skin a little bit pink at the start. My hair fell around my face and I looked in my mirror, frowning.

Sirius Black was marrying Amy McAuley. James Potter was marrying Lily Evans.

I was marrying Jack Avery.

Why did I feel like I was getting a consolation prize?

Because I was, I told myself as I slipped out of my underwear. Amy was getting the god of sex. Lily was getting the second-richest wizarding bachelor in England (right after Regulus Black, whose mother flat out refused the idea of us courting).

I was getting someone suitable who would court me.

Amy at least was a pureblood, but she was plain at best. If she made attractive children, it would be because they took after Sirius. Lily was attractive, but she was Muggleborn.

The Potters' only son was going to breed half-blood children into one of the last pureblood families remaining in England.

I felt a bit sick to my stomach, but I poured some vanilla-scented bubble bath into the tub, organizing my shampoo and conditioner beside the tub. With a sigh I carefully climbed in, feeling the warm water and bubbles wash across my skin, purifying me. I closed my eyes.

I snapped them open again when the image that came to me was that of Jack's Dark Mark tattoo.

The water suddenly felt cold and strange. I reached for my wand and tapped the spout to heat it up slightly.

My skin had passed pink and was turning a bit red.

Even if I couldn't best them, I would find a way to win. Perhaps my husband would be a consolation prize, but I would ensure that my life was the one worth remembering, not theirs. I closed my eyes once more, leaning back in the bath and dreaming up ways to make every single one of them suffer.

I would write a letter to Peter Pettigrew as soon as my bath was done and I was dressed. I would meet with him. I would find out all about this engagement ring, the impending wedding, and the Order of the Phoenix.