Posted: 12/18/15
Edited by: MirandNack
A Fable
October 17th1998
2:15 am
She knew, the second she recognized him what he'd come for. And she knew deep inside of her that his pretty young Chinese woman was now dead.
She was surprised by how casually he was accepting all of her screaming. She would have thought he'd have gagged her and tied her up first thing, but he was just smiling as though pleased. He stood there for more than a minute and let her scream her head off - lungs out. She didn't even consider begging, not yet. There wasn't time for that yet. She knew that what she needed was help. The door was locked, her leg was off, and she was a tiny person. A small, helpless…female. And he was a man. Big fat man, or slightly smaller Daniel mattered not. His insidious, blood-chilling smile told her everything she needed to know; his eyes were dead and she'd seen that look before. She knew that Kew's departing soul had latched on to his mercy and taken it to be with her in the afterlife, perhaps for the company.
He finally headed toward the bed, and when he swerved to come around the right side of it, she moved to the left. Once again he demonstrated a lack of concern for any aid that might be coming for her as he was walking for her, not running, and he simply laughed at her speedy removal to the other side of the bed.
God, her throat was burning. How much longer could she keep up this level of piercing screaming before her voice died? Where the hell were her 'protectors'?
He slowly climbed up the bed; his heavy-limbed movements were thick and bovine. He wasn't used to maneuvering in this bigger body and it showed.
He was crawling on his hands and knees to her, and she was the little grey mouse and he was the fat white cat with a satisfied, cream-licking grin.
She had no choice; she had to get off the bed.
He started laughing again as he watched her hopping around the bed, trying to get to the door.
She was nimble and balanced on one foot, like a spry kangaroo rat, and when she made it to the door - and started ripping at the handle and banging on it so hard she thought she was breaking bones - she couldn't help turning her head to see where he was. He was just getting lackadaisically off the bed to come after her.
Even while she was prying uselessly at the door handle, she was still screaming as loud as she could but her voice was faltering, aching, losing its momentum.
As she watched him lumbering across the room for her, she decided that she'd better keep flying. Fighting would have to be her last, most desperate resort.
He watched her bounding away from him once more, laughed at her again. She could hear both of his voices in it: the borrowed, deeper one slightly overlapping the real one. The Daniel voice. It was so goddamn creepy those voices; it was the way she imagined that a demon might sound.
She considered heading to the bathroom, locking herself in, but she could see his wand in his hand and knew she'd only succeed in trapping herself for him. When attempting to flee on one leg only, wide open spaces are a must. So she headed toward the opposite end of the room.
"You's quick for a gimp, ent ya?"
As she was leaping away she got an idea. She risked toppling over as she tripped even faster toward the window. She grabbed his broom, fastened her legs around it and positioned it toward the sky. It was her only chance for escape, and she knew she was just as likely to fall and crack her head open like a bloody egg as she was to actually making it someplace safe, but at this point it seemed preferable.
"No ya don't, ya lil' bitch!"
Nothing happened anyway, she had no idea how to make the broom fly, or maybe it was her immunity to magic, and she stood there facing the window for a full twenty seconds before he caught her.
As soon as his beefy hand closed on her she went hysterical. Yelling maniacally, she heaved the broom bristles at his head once, twice, three times, and then he backhanded her. Pain blossomed before her eyes like Catherine wheels and posies, and the only reason she didn't collapse to the floor was because he didn't let her. He had her now, and lifted her like a floppy, boneless ragdoll.
By the time he'd tossed her onto the bed and heaved himself up as well, she'd regained enough of her faculties to start thrashing and screaming again.
He straddled her frail body, pinned her legs under his massive weight, and he languorously unbuckled his belt, slid it slowly out from the loops like a lurid parody of a cabaret dancer, and then he got it around her neck. With one quick motion, he snapped it.
The flat leather noose strangled her screams, suffocated her.
She quit scratching at his arms and brought her hands up to the belt, trying to find purchase beneath it, but only succeeded at digging her nails into her own flesh. Her eyes were bulging, rolling back into her head. Fuzziness crept into her periphery like the salt and pepper of a television channel with no reception, but instead of black and white and grey, the popping crackles came in the cartoon-colors of blue and pink and purple. And then, just when she was going to pass out, just when she wanted to pass out, he loosened it.
Her body betrayed her brain's death wish, and cold, harsh air scraped into her lungs, feeding her great, razor sharp gulps of life-giving oxygen.
Oh god! This was just like the last time. It was a belt around her neck instead of a bathtub full of water, and he was going to stick his disgusting dick into her vagina instead of taking the back door, but what did it matter? Belts, water, vaginas, rectums, it really was all the same. Insane ruthless men, torturing and taking and for what? It was all so, so tragically ironic. She'd gone to Dumbledore to save herself from this and it had all come around full circle.
After everything she'd gone through, after the oceans of grief and loss that she'd swum through against all odds, she couldn't believe it was actually going to end like this. She'd been through so much, risked everything to save herself and her Dax, and now all of her bravery and her cowardice were going down the same toilet in a single, unfair flush.
On the other hand, she was thinking that it was because of her spying. It wasn't right, not a natural thing what she did. She'd used her gift to meddle in things that were none of her business, that weren't even of her world, and now the Powers-That-Might-Be were trying to restore the balance, to once more even the scales of good and evil. No light without the dark, no yin without the yang and all that bullshit. It was why she'd come here to work for a harbinger of death. It was why she was going to be raped again. It had to happen, the cosmos needed to teach her a lesson. The intimacy and the ecstasy of her earlier fantasy from the bath was just that - a fantasy. She was a cautionary tale; a born tragedy.
Even though she was repulsed by the vomit-inducing notion of it, even though there were probably hundreds of other kinds of torture she would take over rape, even though she would bankrupt the strength of every fibre of her being to prevent it happening - none of it mattered. Because she was a weak female who was powerless to prevent it, and he was an immoral, merciless man, who had perhaps convinced himself that deep down all women are really whores, and when they cry and beg they're actually teasing. Playing hard-to-get. Is all just a game to the silly slags.
He was going put his filthy cock inside of her and she'd never heal. Never had healed completely from the last time. He was going to reopen the old wound, and it was going to fester and devour her up from within.
Fairy tales need not apply.
~~~}{~~~
"Lucius."
It was a breath. His name rode the air, out of her throat, thrown into the dark and swallowed swiftly.
Narcissa thought she heard someone screaming. Was it a dream? A nightmare? She didn't feel scared - alert but confused.
She lay there a few moments listening, her senses sharpened inside the absolute blackness of their bed curtains. She didn't hear anything now. She was so tired. Cissa closed her eyes and started to drift into sleep once more.
She heard it again and her eyes snapped open. It was so distant, but still distinguishable.
"Lucius!"
Narcissa slept with her wand under her pillow these days. She reached beneath her head and felt the solid, reassuring baton of wood immediately. She sat up with it, muttered 'lumos', and then used it to pull back the bed hangings, and she began to rapidly light some of the candles around the room. She only missed once, despite her exhaustion and the late hour, for fear was quickly clearing her mind.
"Lucius!" she yelled again.
He was snoring soundly still.
"LUCIUS!" She started to shake her husband. She was getting more and more scared with each passing second, and so she slapped him. Hard.
Still nothing. He was so ruddy drunk before he came to bed every night.
"Augementi!"
A cold stream of water spouted from the tip of her wand and she had to give him a thorough soaking before he stirred.
"Ah!" Lucius cried in surprise as he sat up and wiped the bracing shower from his face. "What the hell!"
"Lucius, I hear screaming!"
"What?" he said loudly, his voice rampant with confusion and doubt, his wet, dripping face glistening dimly in the candlelight.
They sat there a moment, silently, his grey bloodshot eyes locked with her pale blue ones.
It came again. It was such a faint sound, as though it was coming to them from the other side of a very long tunnel or emerging from the echoey depths of a pensieve, and Narcissa couldn't believe it had even managed to wake her. But despite the distance of the scream it was still such a raw noise, full of fear and…pain.
"Poisson!" Cissa yelled.
It took her two seconds to decide, and then she cast two swift patronuses with very loud messages embedded in them. One for her sister and one for her son.
~x~}{~x~
He had no intention of killing her.
Like any man possessed by grief and rage, Daniel Baddock wasn't thinking clearly. He had taken steps to ensure that he could have his revenge and escape undetected; however, he was simply ignorant about three very critical factors.
The spells he had cast around the room were an insulating magic meant to keep all sound from escaping. If he had spent as much time as the Malfoys watching the Dark Lord experiment on the girl, he would have gathered an inkling of exactly how impervious she was to magic. He might have realized that even her voice couldn't be dammed by it completely.
He'd also used Polyjuice Potion to disguise his appearance. If she didn't know who was assaulting her, she certainly wouldn't be able to finger him. He didn't care whether or not she knew why she was hurt; this wasn't that sort of power trip. It was a plain kind of revenge, meant to punish but not enlighten. He knew he didn't have that sort of power. He couldn't tell her what she'd done, what she'd taken from him, but he just had to make her hurt the way he did.
In addition to the silencing charms, he'd attempted to erect a magical deterring barrier, to keep out anyone that might try to come in unannounced to disturb him. He couldn't imagine why anyone would wander in at this time of night, but it was a contingency that had seemed wise to plan for, just in case.
But, once again, his ignorance wasn't doing him any favors. He'd grown up in a tiny flat in London, raised by a distant, mediocre mother, and he hadn't been bright or focused enough to complete his education. He wasn't a fully qualified wizard. He didn't understand the depths and intricacies of Homespells. He had no idea that behind the plastered and wood paneled walls the very stones, the foundations of the house were capable of recognizing magic, and they were so sentient as to be loyal to blood. Malfoy blood. No spell, no matter how complex, no matter how powerful, not even if it were cast by the Dark Lord himself, could ever bar a Malfoy from entering any room in his or her manor.
But, of all his useless magic, the second thing that worked against him now was time. By his reckoning, the Polyjuice Potion had bought him a little under an hour, and he intended to use every minute of it. He didn't want a simple in and out and then over. He wanted to draw it out. He wanted to listen to her scream, to make her plead. He wanted to taste her tears, to ride her long and hard; he wanted to watch her during the shock, the pain, and her crushing resignation when he sliced into her and she realized that yes, this was actually happening to her. She was being fucked. She hadn't wanted it, had fought with all her pitiful, little-girl strength against it, but she was overpowered, torn open, raped. He needed to prolong the moment and see it happen in her eyes while he was murdering a vital portion of her soul.
And thirdly, by underestimating her value, he didn't understand that it wouldn't have mattered if his whole plan had worked anyway. She was a Muggle. Crippled, dumb, ugly, a freak of nature, a mudblood – not even a proper witch. He, a low-class, pure-blood wizard, couldn't begin to fathom her importance to a man like the Dark Lord. She was spoken of like a circus sideshow among the Snatchers. She was a brief, titillating distraction, the Dark Lord's new plaything. Daniel had no idea that, even were his plan to be carried out to the letter, and he got on his broomstick and flew away, and Jane wasn't discovered until the morning, that the Dark Lord wouldn't stop hunting for her attacker for the rest of His immortal life. For even if Jane was just an ephemeral, shiny new toy - which wasn't how He saw her at all - she would always be His toy. And on bare, unrelenting principle, nobody broke His toys without His permission.
~x~}{~x~
"Beg!"
"Pleeeaase!"
With a downward rake of his wand, her nightgown was sliced open, and then he ripped off her knickers with it as well.
"PLEEEEASE!" she cried and knew it was useless, but what else is there to do in these moments? Brave people, like the ones in books and movies, might yell, "Fuck you, you sick bastard!" But in real life you just beg. "Please don' be doin' this! Oh, god, please!" she howled, her voice shattering into racking sobs. She moaned it again, "Please."
According to the clock by the bed he still had another forty minutes before the potion wore off.
He got off of her, and pried her legs apart with pathetic ease. Danny positioned himself between them, and wildly drove his fat middle finger into her sex. When she started to scream and scratch at him again, he simply tightened the belt around her neck.
She was so tight. He had no idea how big or little the penis of this borrowed Muggle might be, but he hoped it was as huge as the man. He was already hard as a rock, and he unfastened the thick, green corduroys and pulled it out to see it. Not nearly as big as he thought it would be. Oh, well, it would have to do. She was so small and tight anyway; it would probably feel bigger than a cucumber going in. He glanced down between her legs and then did a double-take. It was so red. He'd never seen a cunt this red. It was as rich and deep red as a rose. He felt an odd urge to taste it, but then he gathered his wits again.
He realized that he was still squeezing the strap into her neck. Damn! He allowed it to slacken, watched her gasping. Didn't want her unconscious.
"Beg!"
"Please," she whispered, her throat too dry and raw to give him more.
He pulled his finger out of her, grabbed one of her little snitch-sized breasts and squeezed it with all of his might.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh hhhhhhh!" She was arching her back and digging her nails into his arm again. But the pain of the pinching, scraping fingers in his arm was intoxicating, made him harder, more eager for the moment when he stabbed into her.
Suddenly he heard a group of frantic voices outside the bedroom door. Bloody hell!
Should he go ahead and finish? They couldn't get in. There was only one wand between them. Where was his wand? He'd dropped it on the bed when he undid his trousers. He immediately snatched it up again and then he stopped to think.
Though under normal circumstances Daniel would never own it, especially to himself, shoddy wand-work was one of the main reasons he'd never completed his education. And he had looked up all the repelling spells in a book a few days ago, practiced them a bit, hadn't bothered testing them at all, and he wasn't totally confident that they were all that solid.
He should get the hell out of here. Damn! Why had he lingered over it? Fuck! He was livid now. He hadn't got to teach her the lesson.
He refastened his trousers and climbed off the bed, turned around and started swiftly for the broom that lay next to the open window.
Suddenly the door burst open and he turned around.
All of the Malfoys, followed closely by Lestrange, were pouring into the room.
Daniel started casting every hex, jinx, and curse that he could think of at them – the bangs and explosions they caused added to the chaos of the moment – while he backed to the window.
~x~}{~x~
Narcissa didn't know what to think on entering the room. How in Hades had this happened? The huge man who was firing random, ill-aimed spells at them looked a complete stranger.
She had the wand this time. Lucius had wanted her to give it to him, but she wouldn't do that again. Besides, he reeked like a bottle of scotch and he was swaying on his feet as he'd asked her for it.
Narcissa had instructed Lucius, Bella, and Draco to find Poisson immediately; whatever awaited them inside, they had to get the mudblood and get her to safety. But with all the cascading lights and the splinters of wood showering in every direction from the busting furniture and plaster, everyone except her had immediately run for cover. Together, Lucius and Bella retreated behind an over-turned chaise to the left of her, and Draco dove to the right and used the bed as his bastion.
Narcissa swiftly, easily deflected his curses and was carving an astonishingly rapid path across the room to him.
Daniel couldn't believe how good the bitch was. And she was bloody scaring him. There was something in her eyes that was completely unnerving him. She looked mental.
Narcissa, the closer she came to the intruder, was feeling calmer and calmer. Without any logical reason to connect these events, she still knew: this was to do with the day in the Nook. Whoever this man was - and she sincerely hoped that he was Charles - she was going to make him scream like a pig. Her mind and her arm felt eerily detached from her as she closed in on her quarry.
He was backed up against the edge of the window seat and when he tried to reach down to retrieve his fallen broom she blasted it in half, and he had to stand up and refocus on her again. He got the feeling that she was toying with him. There was a smirk tugging at a corner of her mouth.
He was getting more and more desperate, casting sloppy-handed wand-work at her. But she seemed cooler than her glacial eyes, quite relaxed.
Fuck this! he thought. "Avada Kedavra!"
Luckily for her, unfortunately for him, this spell was as messy as the previous ones and it merely jagged past her head, fanning back her long blond hair in its slipstream.
"Crucio!"
Her spell met its mark and he was on the ground, writhing, twisting, screaming.
~x~}{~x~
About thirty seconds after Draco had hurled behind the bed, Jane fell on top of him, and she was practically naked! She was beet red, panting, her nightdress was in tatters, she was drenched in sweat, and she smelled, for once, very sweet. Like a flower. She had some sort of leather strap around her neck.
Draco had no idea what the hell he should do for her, so he made to take off the belt. But she cried out, "Don't touch me's!" and tried to beat him away from her with rocky, clenched fists, one of which she managed to knock into his cheek. But she was too worn down with exhaustion, and the closed hand that connected with his face didn't even hurt his adrenaline-soaked body. As soon as he pulled his hands away from her, she gripped one of her tremoring arms around her chest, and with the other convulsing arm she tried to hide her exposed sex. She was so out of it. Her breath heaved raggedly in and out loudly, and her big eyes cast around the room like a trapped, wild animal's. He felt something akin to pity for her, so even though he couldn't seem to stop his eyes from raking rapidly over her flesh, drinking up his first sight of a naked female, Draco reached up to the bed and tugged the enormous blanket down. He laid it over her and then, for the briefest moment her eyes touched his. Perhaps she had seen the sympathy in his eyes, or perhaps it was because he'd preserved her modesty, but when he reached for the belt again, this time she allowed him to remove Daniel's leash.
Her neck was not a pretty sight. A wide, thick weal was coloring pink around it, the edges looked white and pinched, and there were small bleeding gashes above and below the forming bruise where she had clawed at herself each time she had been choked. Draco noticed that one side of her face looked redder than the other and it was sort of puffy too. His mother would have to examine the rest of her for injuries.
Merlin pants! She was naked. Had he had sex with her? The Dark Lord would probably kill them!
"Poisson, did he have sex with you?" Draco asked her.
She didn't answer him. Her eyes still roamed frantically, randomly around the room, unseeing.
"Did he have sex with you!?" he asked again, louder.
Suddenly Draco heard someone screaming in agony. He knew that the man was being punished, and he was sort of shocked when he realized his mother must be the one wielding the Cruciatus Curse on him.
~x~}{~x~
From behind the chaise, Lucius heard the man cry out the Killing Curse at his wife, and was so enraged that he immediately stood up. But he saw the curse fly by her head and less than a second later the man was on the ground, thrashing in anguish. Thank Merlin.
Bella followed her brother-in-law across the room toward the strange fat man, who was rolling and twitching while he released loud yells of blood-curdling pain. The sound of it crashed wave after delicious wave through her body, warm and tingling it was, and it radiated to her sex.
Lucius noticed how distinctly hungry Bella looked as she gazed at the man on the floor. She was such a strange beast.
"Cissa!" Lucius called to his wife. "Cissa!" He was startled to see that, as she watched the man on the ground, Narcissa's expression mirrored her sister's. "Cissa!" he cried again, and put his hand on her arm.
She seemed to come back to herself at his touch and she relinquished the spell and lifted her wand up. As she turned to look at him, her eyes transformed into something softer and innocent. "Yes?" she inquired lightly.
"Who is he?" Lucius asked them.
Both sisters said that they'd never seen him before.
"Morgana! Poisson!" Narcissa exclaimed, as she realized why they'd come here in the first place.
"She's here," they heard their son calling.
Bellatrix saw Daniel's wand on the floor, picked it up immediately, and used it to tie him up.
Narcissa and Lucius found Draco with Jane behind the bed.
"She's shaking," Draco told his parents as they came to kneel on the floor beside them.
Jane's lips were fringed in purplish blue, and her lower lip was trembling so hard it was almost vibrating.
"She's in shock," Narcissa informed them as she ran a finger lightly over the child's neck. "Is that why you covered her?"
Draco looked up from Jane and glanced at both of his parents as he shook his head. "She… she was… naked."
"What!" Narcissa said loudly. She started to pull the blanket down, to see for herself, but when Jane felt her trying to tug it off she clung to it and started whimpering. Big tears pooled in the inner corners of her eyes and then they dripped down the shallow crevices beneath them and disappeared down the sides of her face.
"Did he rape you, Poisson?" Narcissa asked her.
She shook her head softly and sniffed wetly.
"Are you positive?" Lucius asked.
Her face contorted in misery, stretching and scrunching, and she started to sob quietly while she nodded.
"The Dark Lord," Lucius said simply, bluntly, darkly.
"Should we call him?" Narcissa asked.
All three of the Malfoys' eyes reflected the same dread.
"No!" Jane cried, her voice sounding as if it had been gnawed at by something with sharp, mean teeth. "I's ent wanna see 'im."
"Hush child," Lucius told her roughly. "When we feel it necessary to adhere to your whims, we'll consult you."
Draco thought his dad was being a little harsh with her. Especially considering what she'd probably just gone through. But he kept his peace.
"He'll find out now or later, either way," Narcissa reasoned, too scared to try and delay the inevitable. "Do you think he'll be angrier if we don't inform him this instant?"
"Please!" Jane moaned again. She opened her eyes and looked at them. "Get Mr. Snape. I's want Mr. Snape." Then she started to cough roughly.
"Severus," Lucius said. He turned hopeful eyes at his wife. "He said to call him if she was ever injured."
Narcissa nodded. "He'll know what to do. Get him, Lucius. Draco, go with your auntie to take that animal to the cellar. I'm going to examine Poisson. We need to ascertain all of her injuries. And I think I should see whether her hymen is still intact, so make you sure you knock before you come into the room."
"Her hymen," Lucius repeated in shock. "She told us he didn't rape her."
"Well, we need to be sure before we call him," Narcissa stated matter-of-factly. After all, she'd had her first taste of this sort of shame only a month ago. She now knew exactly why Jane might feel a need to lie to them about what had happened.
And now, no thanks to Jane, Narcissa would no longer be able to keep what had nearly happened to her a secret. The whole story was going to come out to the Dark Lord, and, more than likely, his other servants.
"But she said he didn't!" Lucius spat at Cissa, his terror too big to bear so he had to flip it to anger. "He can't have done it!"
Narcissa lifted one of her eyebrows and appraised him steadily, silently. If the assaulter pricked her, he'd pricked her. What did Lucius expect her to do about it? She couldn't re-grow Jane's hymen. Well, with magic she maybe could, but with Jane magic was tragically never an option.
"He'll kill us," Lucius said in dead hopeless way.
Jane's hand shot out from under the blanket, and she grabbed at Narcissa's arm. "No," Jane groaned. "Won't- " cough, cough.
"Shh," Narcissa shushed her, gently prying Jane's hand off of her arm. "Rest now, Poisson. Lucius, Draco, help me put her on the bed, then get Severus."
Lucius and Draco tried to get her up, but Jane was getting too frantic about her nudity and she started to wail hoarsely and bang her fists on their arms and snap her maw at them.
Lucius, who was still drunk and more than a little frazzled by everything, finally lost his temper with her and grabbed her by her hair and growled, "Stop it, you stupid mongrel! We don't care what you look like nak- Ow!" A slice of fire had briefly run down the arm that he was using to grip Jane with so that he was forced to release her.
He looked at Narcissa. She pointed over his shoulder and Lucius turned around and saw Bellatrix pointing the intruder's wand at him. She waved her index finger and 'tsk'-ed at him a few times. Her whole face was effulgent with delight. While the Malfoys were dealing with Jane, Bella had cast a silencing charm on the burly bastard and tortured him. She was high and breathless and felt a surge of generosity toward Jane.
"Now, now, my dearest brother," she rebuked him cheerfully, "we mustn't hurt our little charge. No matter how badly she deserves it. Besides, I think she'll pass out if she has any more pain. Trust me," she said with a wink and a smirk. "I can always tell."
Bella's chocolate eyes were shining brilliantly and her heavy brown hair fell about her shoulders and waist in loose curls and waves. Her skin shone magnificently with exultation, and her happiness had somehow tamed years from her face. All of them, as they looked her over, couldn't help noticing that she was sort of beautiful again. Lucius had more opportunities than his wife and son to observe his sister-in-law while she inflicted pain on the hapless – any excuse would suffice, be it flimsier than an undergarment – and he knew that when she was in any position to actuate her sadistic whims, Bella glowed.
The Malfoys saw the intruder magically bound in the air behind Bella. He was still conscious, and his watery brown eyes were squinted at Jane with hatred. His doughy mouth was shutting and opening while his tongue worked over his teeth and lips.
"Did he tell you who he is or why he came?" Lucius asked his sister.
"I haven't got 'round to asking him yet," she panted. "All in good time.
"We should call our master," she told them, and started to raise the sleeve of her nightgown.
"Not yet!" Lucius called loudly, while Cissa cried, "Wait!"
Bella bestowed a confused look on them. "He needs to know what's happened!"
"Of course he does," Lucius agreed in a placating tone, "but we're going to get Severus first, and Narcissa's going to examine Jane to be sure he didn't…compromise her hymen."
"What?!" Bellatrix exclaimed. "What?!" she repeated. "Did you fuck her?!" she shouted at the suspended man. Bella waved the usurped wand at him and he began to writhe, his loose, pasty flesh jiggling. She released the spell, and he hung limp and spent.
"Just take him to the cellar and lock him in, Bella," Narcissa commanded her imperially. "Once I have completed my assessment of her injuries and we've consulted Severus, we will call the Dark Lord."
Lucius was pleased that his wife was taking charge because he was dizzy and exhausted and felt utterly incapable of rational thinking. How had this happened? Why hadn't his protection spells worked? When had he last renewed them? He couldn't remember, but an icy ball of fear in his stomach was indicating to him that he may have been remiss in refreshing them as frequently and thoroughly as he should have done. Was this his fault? And, if so, what would the consequences of his negligence be to him and his family?