"Mo-ther! Why d'you have to soak the laundry outside? That's how people really know you're a Muggle!"

Well, I am a Muggle, and the neighbors all know that, so. . .?

Thus began Theresa's day, just as it had nearly every day since Josephine, barely thirteen and convinced the whole world was peering constantly into their little house to make some sort of judgement, had been taken out of school.

Theresa was the Muggle wife of a wizard named Roman. Their family lived just at the edge of Hogsmeade, in a cottage that was just big enough, with a garden that was just bigger than most of their neighbors, all of whom were witches and wizards. They consisted of four members: Theresa, Roman, and their two children, of which Josephine was the eldest, followed by nine-year-old Jeremy. Theresa wished the children looked more like their father, who was handsome and tall, with dark reddish brown hair, and striking hazel eyes. Instead, their poor (in Theresa's mind, though not Roman's) children had taken stubbornly after their mother: mousy haired, smallish build, thin lips. Theresa did think both of her children beautiful, but . . . she sighed and thought of her husband's smooth, strong features—his hawklike eyes and his broad shoulders—

Theresa smiled to herself and tried to concentrate on the laundry.

On this day, just as all the other days since the Dark wizard Roman and the neighbors called You-know-who had overtaken the Ministry of Magic the previous summer, Theresa fought down the usual swell of anxiety in her belly. It had been nine months since the overturning of the previous government. Nowadays, Roman told her he was just glad the Death Eaters who sometimes roamed the village had decided to leave them alone. What he really meant, understood Theresa, was he was glad they'd overlooked her—a Muggle. It had been one of the reasons they'd pulled Josie out of Hogwarts, and been allowed to do so, for that matter. It was now mandatory for all British magical children to attend Hogwarts, but what was one half-blood? Perhaps the fact that Roman neither fought nor shrank in fright when Death Eaters passed him by helped as well. It was hard to tell what would set off He-who-must-not-be-named's followers anymore.

In the evening, after the curfew had activated, supper had been eaten, and the children ushered to bed, the shrill, spine-tingling Caterwauling Charm rang horribly through the village.

Someone had broken the curfew.

It wasn't until the small hours, after Roman had finally wandered out to gauge what was happening up at the school, that Theresa dared walk outside herself. She heard noises before she saw flashes, the telltale signs of spells being cast in the distance. The children were awake, and they begged their mother to come inside me. Josephine, the little girl who would be a grown up now, tried desperately to act as though she were simply worried that Mammy would get hurt, though the fighting was quite a distance away from them.

Theresa would go outside again when dawn broke. The noises had stopped. She hardly registered Josephine's startled cry—"Mammy!" The girl had fallen asleep in an armchair with her little brother, guarded by their mother.

Where was Roman?

It took another day for news to reach the denizens who'd stayed in Hogsmeade during the battle of Hogwarts: Harry Potter was dead.

Through neighbors and newspapers (the Prophet wouldn't cease to run even after a worldwide apocalypse; this was nothing), Theresa learned that no one could exit the Hogwarts grounds. The two sides were at a stalemate, with the supporters of Harry Potter holed up in the castle while Voldemort and his Death Eaters and Dark followers held up outside. But no one knew anything else.

All Theresa could think to do was to hide them all in the cellar. It was a good thing too, because after another two days, the cottage was broken into, loudly and violently. It was in the middle of the night. Jeremy slept through it, but Theresa knew Josephine only pretended sleep.

Theresa thought about Roman, wondered what his fate had been. She thought about trying to escape Hogsmeade, but now they could sometimes hear the Death Eaters and their minions about the village.

There were times in the night when, if all became still enough, Theresa thought she heard screams.

Of course, they were discovered.

Death Eaters tore through the cottage again one afternoon, and one who paid more attention to his surroundings noticed the faint outlines of an adult's shoe prints leading from kitchen to narrow stairs. Those were the stairs that led to the cellar.

When they burst through the door, Theresa stood up and was swiftly knocked down by an elbow to her face. One of the children screamed. Jeremy she'd forced to curl into a fetal position in a corner so that she could shove an empty sack over him. Josephine could not be hidden.

On the floor on her back, Theresa learned that it was Jeremy who had screamed. A Death Eater tore away the sack she'd hid him with, picked him up by his shirtfront, and slammed him once, twice, three times, four times against the stone wall until the back of his head opened in a bloody mess and his body hung completely limp.

All Theresa could hear was screaming. Then one swift, vicious kick to her temple sent her consciousness flying.

As one of their fellows hauled the weeping girl away, the other Death Eaters looked down at the unconscious woman before them.

"We can just kill her. I know who her husband was. She's a Muggle," said one man.

"Maybe. We might save her for work, though. . ." ventured another.

A third, more authoritative Death Eater spoke next. "We should save her for Malfoy. He doesn't want a very young girl—"

"It's a school—what does he expect?!" The Death Eaters sniggered.

"If he likes her—" The one in charge nudged Theresa with his boot, "he can have her. She looks good enough knocked-out, somebody else might decide to take her."

It was the Snatchers who had seen the opportunity. They'd been put in charge of captives, and with many young women and girls among the prisoners, they'd realized quickly that they had an advantage. The Death Eaters had set up camp on the school grounds. With the attention of the outside world trained on Hogwarts, the Death Eaters could go no further than Hogsmeade. As nearly all of them were men, well, the Snatchers figured the female captives would be taken sooner or later—they may as well earn some capital from it. And so, within a week of the stalemate, several girls had been either sold or traded to interested Death Eaters.

When the others had asked Lucius which girl he liked, he'd scoffed and complained that they were all too young. "I won't have all that crying and sniveling in my tent, I tell you!" He said he liked his fruit ripe, that he didn't want to have to teach someone how to fuck.

He wasn't the only Death Eater to state a preference for someone closer to them in age, but as he'd regained an incredibly high amount of favor, he would be offered first pick.

Theresa woke alone in a small, dark room. The first thing to come to her was the pain in her head, face, and stomach where the Death Eaters had hit her, while they bashed her little son's body against the cellar wall—

The Snatchers outside the tiny hut jumped in fright at the screams from the woman inside. Some had not yet heard the sound a mother makes when the knowledge of her child's death has hit her. They backed away, uncertain and wide-eyed. Others knew the sound, and only stared at the locked hut with expressions that were forcibly blank.

"Lucius! Lucius! We've got something you might like!"

Macnair sounded excited. He wasn't usually this eager to show Lucius anything. If something were so interesting, Macnair was more likely to try hiding it for himself. Lucius opened the flaps of his black tent to a day filled with sun, blue sky, and the looming threat of another battle. Who knew what the blood traitors and Muggle lovers inside the castle planned? They'd tried negotiating for the captives, but the Death Eaters had been ordered not to cooperate.

Lucius followed Macnair along the row of Death Eaters' tents and makeshift little huts—some weren't too bad, to be honest—to the large tent the Death Eaters had dubbed the Meeting Tent. Inside was a handful of Death Eaters who all looked up when Lucius entered.

"Over here, Lucius." Macnair gestured to a corner where a woman crouched. She shrank into herself as they approached.

"I know she's a little bruised up—we just pulled her out of confinement. But we remembered you saying you wanted a grown woman and not some whimpery little chit—so we brought her back to show you."

Lucius's eyebrows shot up. He would be lying if he said it wasn't lonely in his tent—his wife had died during the first Hogwarts battle. That was only ten days ago, but war had done strange things to his senses—those of grief, loss, and sadness, anyway. As soon as she was buried, and he'd gone off for a lie-down, he'd wanted nothing more than a warm body to press himself against.

"Do you want a better look?" Macnair asked him. Without waiting for an answer, Macnair reached for the trembling woman and hauled her to a standing position. He pushed her towards Lucius, who raked her with his eyes. She was of average height, though edging towards the short side. She was clothed in a long, simple dress that left nearly everything to the imagination. Her hair, which had been held in a knot that now drooped against her shoulders, was an unremarkable shade of lightest brown. She was much less interested in looking at him than he was her, so he lifted her chin to better see her face. One of her cheeks bore a sore-looking, dark bruise. She had a round face with a nicely tapered chin, which framed both a regular set of lips and nose, but very pretty eyes. They were wide, tilted slightly upwards, and a bright shade of brown that might be called russet—almost red.

Regarding age, she must have been somewhere in her early thirties. Well, there was only one way to find out, wasn't there?

"How old are you, woman?"

She swallowed audibly. She seemed surprised at his question. He still held her chin in his grip; he gave it a slight squeeze. "I've never liked asking questions twice."

The woman swallowed again. "I—I am thirty-five."

Lucius nodded. He released her chin. She was only a little older than he'd suspected. To his forty-four years, she was rather youthful.

"Oh—Malfoy, I forgot to tell you: she is a Muggle."

"What?"

"That's right. Her husband was a wizard who lived in Hogsmeade. They even had kids together, so, I suppose she's run through a bit."

Lucius looked at the woman again. A Muggle woman would be easier to subdue . . . the captive witches whose wands had been confiscated could still prove dangerous—all they needed to do was grab someone else's wand. Besides, if he didn't like this one, he could wait for a witch to be found for him.

He looked at Macnair. "Do you want something for her?"

Macnair shrugged. "Not really. I'm not sure a Muggle's cunt should be worth anything tangible, to be honest."

"Well, I'll not twist your arm, then. . ." Lucius smirked. He took the woman by the elbow and pulled her outside of the Meeting Tent.

As soon as they were outside, she began to twist this way and that, her eyes wide and searching. Her actions hindered their progress to his tent, but with a rough shake, Lucius had her matching his strides. Still, from the corner of his eye, he thought he saw her own continue to dart about.

They reached his tent where he sat her on the edge of his bed and ignored her. He went outside where a chair sat in the shade and relaxed for a while, watching the rest of the camp. Where he was, he could not see the gamekeeper's hut. The Snatchers had taken it over, and that, with its surrounding patch of land, was where they kept the prisoners, men and women who'd rushed to aid the school during the first battle before Potter was killed; older students; a professor or two, all crowded together in a pen outside of the hut, or else, in the case of the more desirable young women, inside the hut.

Lucius wondered if the woman he had now would fight him. Or would she lay down, stiff-bodied with her eyes closed, and simply wait for him to finish with her? Well, he supposed he would find out later that night. He didn't want sex at the moment, though he was growing rather curious as to what she looked like undressed, so he returned inside where she'd remained sitting, and ordered her to stand up.

He saw her flinch, then stiffen again. "Get up."

This time, she did as she was told. Her head remained lowered, her shoulders hunched, and her hands clasped and shaking.

"Now take off your clothes." He expected her to balk, and she did. If he decided to keep her, Lucius thought he would prefer not to have to strike her every time he wanted something done.

"Look at me." Her head stayed down, but her eyes darted up at him. Good enough for now, he thought. "Take off your clothes, or I will do it for you."

The woman swallowed, shuddered, and after a few tense seconds, unclasped her hands. Her fingers trembled around the buttons at her front, and after an agonizingly slow minute, Lucius lifted his own hands to help her. She didn't like that, but she would have to learn to deal with it, wouldn't she? It wasn't as though he was ripping the dress off her, anyway. When he had it pooled at her feet, he reached behind her neck to untie the loosening bun of her hair. A few pins fell to the floor of the tent and her mousy hair was revealed to be waist length and full. He turned his attention to her underclothes, which consisted of a black slip that he forced over her head. In just her pants and bra, he could see the soft, vertical pouch of her abdomen, the sign of a woman who'd had children. Her stomach was bruised where she must have been kicked.

"Take the rest of it off . . . get it over with, woman!"

Now her tears began to fall—he'd wondered how soon they would appear. She stifled her whimpers as she dropped the last of her cover to the floor with her dress, and Lucius took her in completely, turning her slowly in a circle with his hands on her shoulders. He liked the look of her fully grown body, the fullness of her frame where the twenty-year-olds were still girlish. She was shorter than him, and not a broad woman, but her hips flared out just so, and her breasts were still full if not high. When she realized how hard he was staring at her nipples, she sputtered and slapped a forearm over her breasts. Lucius supposed he could give her credit for trying to hold in the desire to wail and beg.

"You'll do." With that, he bent down, pulled her dress up and her arms through the sleeves, and buttoned it closed for her. Her pants he would toss into the nearest fire—yellowish discharge and what was probably some urine stained them from terror, being kicked in the belly, or both. He would clean her up later. For now, they needed to get to know each other a little better.

"Sit back down." He joined her on the edge of the bed. "What's your name? Look at me—What is your name?"

"T—" She choked a bit, swallowed, and tried again. "Theresa."

"Theresa. . ." The Harvest. The irony of her name and her current fate wasn't lost on him.

"Well then, Theresa, I don't suppose you're stupid enough to not know why I've taken you. So, don't go blubbering about and begging me to let you go. I'm not interested in torturing or killing you, so hold any urges to scream at bay. We both know you're a Muggle, and that puts you under everybody else in this camp. The only thing that's going to keep you alive and whole is the fact that you belong to me, now. I'm not going to bother tying you up whenever I leave here, but if you try to run, there's a whole army of Muggle haters right outside this tent that will catch you, rape you, and torture you until you're half dead unless I'm there to tell them otherwise. Do you understand me?"

Theresa nodded jerkily. She looked away from him with her eyes wider than before, the russet-brown catching the dim light that shone through the black tent. Again, Lucius thought she seemed to be looking for something.

In the evening, he brought her food, but she couldn't eat it. Even lifting it to her mouth felt like a chore. He forced her to drink a full goblet of water, then poured a measure of wine into it—he said she needed it. Probably, Theresa thought, she did.

One thought kept her from bighting through her tongue and letting herself bleed out—Josephine. Jeremy was dead. Josephine had been alive when the Death Eaters knocked Theresa unconscious, when they'd dragged her daughter away. If she was still alive somewhere, then Theresa felt she had a reason to continue on. If Josephine were dead though. . .

Was Roman dead as well as their son?

As night came on, Lucius left the tent for some hours. Theresa could hear laughter in the distance, and some arguing, as well. From other parts of the grounds, she thought she heard other sounds—faint screams and weeping. Her stomach contracted at the thought of her daughter being one those distant victims, but if she were, it meant she still lived, yet.

She wondered how she had accepted Jeremy's death so soon after it had happened. Had she loved him less somehow? No. That wasn't it. Was it because this was a war, and that changed people's perceptions of the things that happened around them? That didn't feel completely right, either, though it felt more accurate than the idea that she hadn't fully loved Jeremy. Was it simply because, through the horror and chaos she'd experienced in the last twenty-four hours, she could only concentrate on the bare facts in front of her? Jeremy, dead. Roman's fate, unknown. Josephine, possibly alive. She, herself, captured and given away in the camp.

Did it actually matter, the reason for her acceptance of her son's murder, as long as she might be there to find her remaining child?

When Lucius returned, he smelled of liquor, and faintly of smoke. He sat on the bed for a moment, running his hands through his hair and over his face. He watched her closely for a bit, then ordered her to sip some more wine. He told her she was going to bathe. Firstly, he helped her wash her hair, bending her over a metal tub he'd conjured and filled with warm water. His touch made her shudder. She could tell that he knew what he was doing—he'd washed a woman's long hair before. It was not a comfort. He'd let her keep her dress on, but once her hair was clean, he told her to strip. Before he let her sit inside the tub, he produced a tin filled with what Theresa recognized as bruise paste. With his thumb, he dabbed it onto her cheek where a Death Eater had elbowed her. She almost jumped as he touched it—it must have been a deeper injury than she'd realized. He swiped more onto her stomach and spread it with the back of his hand. Then he had her turn away from him, and, to her shock, began touching her in places she didn't even know she'd been hurt—on her back, her buttocks, her thighs. He swept her hair from the back of her neck to check for bruising there, but must have found none, for he set the jar of bruise paste aside and nudged her to step into the bath. She curled into herself, hiding as much of her body as she could, but he only washed her back for her before handing over the flannel washcloth. Of course, she didn't want to wash herself while he was there, but the looks he had given her previously when he became impatient had frightened her.

He wrapped a bath sheet around her shoulders and told her to sit down on the bed again while he vanished the tub of water and the splashes that had soaked the rugs that made up the floor of the tent. The tent itself was wide enough for perhaps ten people to sit about. There was a small square table at one end, the bed, and a side table beside it, upon which a branch of candles had been lit.

He began to remove the bath sheet from her. She was still sitting as he forced it down her arms, letting it pile about her hips atop the coverlet. Then he pulled her to a standing position and stepped back so he could see all of her.

"Lay down on the bed."

Theresa felt her insides turn to ice. No, no, no. . .

"I'm not going to hurt you—but if you don't obey me, I may change my mind." He was undressing himself now.

Theresa choked back a sob as she did what he wanted. He could kill her if wanted to, and no one in the camp would stop him.

Josephine, Josephine, Josie . . . my baby. . .

He climbed on top of her and wiped her tears away. "Don't act like you haven't done this before. You aren't some delicate virgin. Good for you, that, eh?"

Was this his way of justifying the total lack of permission from her? Theresa could only suppose it to be.

He sucked at her neck, stroked her hair and her arms. He touched her breasts, played with them and licked them to his heart's delight before lowering his hands. She wondered if it would not have been better if he had taken her quickly, when he had first brought her to his tent, for as he knelt between her legs, pulling and spreading her, she felt a fresh, overwhelming wave of horror and shame that made her cover her face with her palms. She'd never even thought of fighting him—shouldn't she be doing that? Did this make her a whore? Where was her husband? Where were her children? Why was she here? Why—

"Shush, now. If you don't calm yourself, I'll slap you."

Theresa forced in the breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. Breathing now made her feel as if she'd been reborn into the nightmare of a new existence.

He pulled her hands from her face, wiped more tears from her cheeks. Then he lowered himself onto her and began to rape her.