The small fire crackled in the ornate grate, throwing out waves of heat into the parlour that did nothing to warm the mistress of the house who sat morosely at her delicately-carved mahogany desk.

Narcissa had often sat there since her marriage, with a swan-feather quill in delicate hand - writing out invitations, replies to those sent by others and scribbling missives of gossip to those she had once considered friends.

The letter that sat finished before her had been written some weeks earlier. Originally a desperate scrawl that had been corrected, added to, erased, and finally completed - many times over the passing days since the engagement of her only daughter had been arranged.

At first it had been written in blind desperation, the thought that time was not on her side, for the wedding was supposedly to have taken place seven day since that awful night, and yet, Severus himself had delayed it, persuading the Dark Lord that he wished to focus himself to assisting with the fall of The Ministry and the capture of the boy first.

The boy... how often Narcissa had thought of the boy. Her feelings a confusing mix of hatred and hope, and bringing back that begrudging respect she had felt for the boy's mother on hearing the news all those years ago... To sacrifice oneself for their child was something Narcissa understood and admired, even in someone like Lily Potter. That's why the letter that she had agonised over sat before her - that was the only reason she would stoop so low... and yet she hadn't sent it, despite the fact that if she did not send it by the morning, she might well have never bothered to write it at all.

Her tired eyes drifted over the opening lines - the pretence of apology that was followed by the desperate plea of remembrance of former, happier times. Of little girls that had once walked hand in hand down the sweeping corridors of home… and then the appeal of mercy, of help, of one mother's heartfelt cry to another…

"Cissy?"

The song of childhood, that voice with the edge that promised either censure or succour, called from the corridor, and Narcissa quickly shoved the letter beneath a book on her desk while setting her pained expression to her marble mask.

"Here you are," Bellatrix trilled as she prowled into the room, her dark eyes glittering in the light from the grate.

"What do you want?" Narcissa asked, trying, as always, to discern her sister's mood.

"I thought you'd be downstairs, directing the elves in the hanging of garlands and displays. Gardenias and Baby's breath - isn't that what you had for yours?" Bella sneered, as she walked restlessly around the room as her sister stayed still and silent. "I, of course," Bella continued, "had hemlock in my displays, the only thing I insisted on. I did hope that Rodolphus' side might be stupid enough to think it was parsley and use it to garnish their entrees, it would have saved me so much aggravation - but such are the foolish dreams of a virgin bride." She finished with a theatrical sigh while approaching the desk, her eyes on the book that hid beneath it the parchment that Narcissa was so keen to conceal.

"Talking of flowers," Bella continued, picking up the book and sneering at the cover. "Are you really going to give her this as her instruction?"

"I don't want her to be ignorant... I-" Narcissa hesitated, her eyes locked with Bella's - praying that her sister wouldn't look down and see the folded sheets that were slowly opening to reveal the contents and the addressee.

"I agree," Bella replied, breaking eye contact to open the book entitled 'The Garden of Witchhood' with another scornful look. "Is this one yours? I burnt mine the morning after my wedding night - along with that lacy nightdress mother insisted I wore for my dear, new husband... it couldn't be saved... not with all the staining."

Bella looked up again, pleased to see the shudder that Narcissa couldn't repress. "I suppose you've got her one of those as well - all acres of creamy lace and pink ribbons?"

"She needed something to wear," was the quiet reply.

"Such a waste of our dwindling fortunes," Bella tutted. "Severus Snape won't appreciate it... He'll be too busy frantically trying to get at the body beneath."

She smirked as Narcissa's delicate nostrils quivered. "But that's what we all have to hope for, that he'll be so desperate to impale himself in her that he won't have time to notice the proverbial dragon in the room."

"Bella, when did you start to delight in torturing me?" Narcissa snapped, shaken from her studied repose. "Perhaps I have been blind and you always have-"

"No, Cissy, I haven't always. You do me an injustice... I do love you, but I can't forgive you."

"For what?!"

"For many things..." Bella intoned, pocketing the book, "but I guess the real turning point for me was when you disgraced yourself by begging that half-blood scum to protect Draco. You got on your knees and begged him. HIM!"

Silence fell between them, the shallow breathing of the siblings accompanied only by the crackle of a falling ember from the fireplace behind them.

"I am sorry, Bella," Narcissa began, her tone strained but tinged with the hope of truce. "If you had a child you would understand. Draco was in danger. I had to-"

"Is that why you've written that letter?" Bella interrupted, a ghost of a smirk returning at the sharp intake of breath from her sister that followed the question.

"What letter?" Narcissa asked, the slipped mask back in place.

"This one," Bella replied, plucking up the incriminating sheets from the desk.

"You don't know what that is."

"Yes, I do."

"Then you have been spying on me!"

"Of course," Bella smiled coldly, "I was ordered to. Myself and others. Ordered to make sure you and Lucius weren't thinking of smuggling your precious children out of here... You're very lucky I was the one to find it."

"I didn't send it," Narcissa replied, supressing her fears to look back defiantly at her elder sister.

"Of course, you didn't. You're not a complete idiot, Cissy, despite your desperation... You know the owls are being checked. I was waiting for you to use the elf, I would have enjoyed torturing the information out of him, but you didn't take the chance. Why was that, Cissy? Did you think you'd be caught, or did you think our bitch of a sister wouldn't help despite her debased beliefs?"

Narcissa's hands involuntarily flew to her hair in despair, but she forced them down again. "I didn't send it because I knew I would be betraying The Dark Lord's wishes."

"Such lies," Bella cooed, regarding her sister's distress with vicious amusement. "Go on then, prove it," she continued, passing the letter back. "Burn it!"

For a fraction, Narcissa hesitated, and then she plucked it from her sister's fingers and marched across to the fireplace.

The sheets flared as they hit the burning coals and the words 'My dear Andromeda' were lit up before they curled and danced upwards causing Narcissa to blink heavily as ash flakes settled on her face.

"Your daughter is going to be fucked by Severus Snape, and she better play the willing whore, or we're all going to be fucked," Bella intoned softly, as she approached her sister's back.

"He has been good to us in the past, he protected Draco... he has been a friend to us." Narcissa whispered, her eyes on the place where the letter had once lain and now had been consumed by the devouring heat - along with one of her last shreds of hope.

"He's been plotting, Cissy... It was all an act, most likely thinking if he kissed up to you and Lucius, you'd give her up willingly. Obviously, the joke will be on him... I sort of wish I could be there when he realises."

"Lucius and I have been discussing options. We have a plan where he might not notice," Narcissa murmured, her gaze still on the grate.

Bella let out a mirthless chuckle and pushed the book she now held into her sister's hand. "He will if the only guide you're giving her is this piece of shit. A lot of good that did me with Rodolphus! I suppose the idea was I could lie back and think of all those pretty pictures of flowers while he took his painful pleasure... But if that's the best you can do, then go give her the book, little sister," she purred, planting a kiss on the pale, cold cheek of the other woman.

A long way south-east of the manor, in one of the more illustrious houses of Knockturn Alley, a dinner of sorts was taking place - one whose courses consisted solely of alcohol.

Severus lifted the glass again to taste the sweet elf-wine. It was an extremely fine vintage, and once more he wondered, as his two companions indulged him so, what exactly Mulciber and Avery were up to.

He had at first thought to refuse the invitation to his 'Stag Night', and yet on reflection he wondered if it might get back to The Dark Lord that he was in less than celebratory mood about what the morning would bring.

At least, he thought, as he glanced about the gaudy drinking parlour, it was being held at one of the houses of ill-repute where the women employed lacked the hollow-eyes of that god-forsaken place where Avery and Mulciber had dragged him to after their graduation - the last time he'd set foot in a brothel.

"So, are you sure we can't persuade you, Severus?" Avery asked, leaning back in his chair. "I mean, when are you going to get the chance like this again?"

"I'm sure," Severus replied, putting down his glass.

"How can you not want at least one of them?" Mulciber muttered, his eyes roving over the moving miniatures of the available 'ladies of pleasure' that were spread out across the table – like some obscene collection of Chocolate Frog cards. "You can have any one you want. It's all on the house... well not the house," he finished with a snigger.

"You're paying for this?" Severus asked, looking over at Avery.

In reply, the other man chuckled. "No, as much as I am fond of you, Severus, I'm sticking to the usual tea-set for my wedding gift."

Severus cocked an eyebrow with suspicion, "Then who is paying for all this?"

The two men across from him exchanged a look and another shared snigger echoed from them.

With a sinking feeling Severus realised the answer, and not for the first time he wondered how he could ever have desired the company of Mulciber and Avery. "Lucius is paying, isn't he?"

"Yes," Mulciber laughed, not attempting now to hide his amusement, "Yes, your future father-in-law is being made to foot the bill. So don't feel you have to stick to one, you could have a nice little orgy on Lucius' galleons."

"I'll stick to the wine, but thank you."

"Why?"

Severus looked back at them and took in the curious frowns that grazed across their faces, and inwardly he groaned at the need for such deception.

"I wish to save my stamina. I wouldn't want to disappoint Miss Malfoy, would I?" he intoned, forcing his lips up into a smirk.

It worked like a charm; the frowns vanished and were replaced with lascivious grins.

"You're a lucky bastard, Severus," Avery replied, before pausing as he downed his whisky. "I asked for her myself - seen her all dressed up at parties. This was a few years ago, of course. She'd just come of age, actually she might have been younger," he paused again to shrug, "I spoke to Lucius."

"What did he say?" Mulciber asked as he drained his own glass.

"Basically, told me to fuck off. Me?!" Avery spat, his good humour giving way to anger. "I'm a fucking twenty-eighter and he turned me down! Well, he's getting his comeuppance now, isn't he? His precious daughter is going to be fucked by a half-" The words of the man ground to a sudden halt and his eyes flickered up with contrition to meet Severus'. "Not that there is anything wrong with that."

"Of course," Severus replied coolly, finding some enjoyment in the way Avery squirmed under his gaze.

"Just that- You know- it's just the high and mighty has fallen, and no one deserves to fall more than Lucius."

"Is it true that he cried when The Dark Lord told him that you were going to marry her?" Mulciber asked, pouring Severus the last of the wine and clicking his fingers to summon more.

"Who told you that?" Severus replied, as the fresh bottle sailed across to land, with a soft thud, in front of him.

"Pettigrew."

Of course, Severus thought grimly, he had probably been listening at the key hole - the disgusting little rat. At least he was installed at the manor now instead of making Spinner's End even bleaker.

"Lucius was not best pleased, but he didn't cry," Severus lied.

"You ever broken in a virgin before?" Mulciber asked as he opened the new bottle. "What?" he added in reply to the look of disdain Severus didn't try to hide in response to the question.

"The thing about girls like Miss Malfoy is that they are brought up to keep themselves utterly untouched but at the same time submit totally to their husbands... She'll cry while asking you if she's pleasing you - desperate for your approval," Avery remarked. "You can mould her to your every desire, while knowing you're the first and last to ever get a taste."

"You speak from experience?" Severus asked with a sneer which went unnoticed by the other two.

"Of course, he does, he's married to Yaxley's little niece, isn't he?" Mulciber replied for Avery with a knowing smirk.

"I am indeed, my dear little Maude. You must have taught her, Severus?" Avery grinned, as the vision of a wide-eyed and nervous Maude Yaxley behind her cauldron surfaced in Severus' mind. "All those girls," Avery continued, "from the good families are the same. Miss Malfoy even more so with the way Lucius and Narcissa have tried to keep her isolated from wicked influences... and tomorrow you're going to be undoing all their hopes and dreams as you undo the pretty little ribbons of Cassandra Malfoy's nightie."

"She looks like she's got a lovely pair of tits for you to play with under all those flounces," Mulciber mused.

"He's looking uncomfortable," laughed Avery, as two spots of colour appeared high on Snape's cheekbones. "She isn't your wife yet, Severus. We can talk about her tits for the next twelve hours or so, until she's officially Mrs Snape."

Back at Malfoy Manor, Cassie sat in her well-appointed bedroom turning the pages of the confusing book her mother had left her with.

"This might help," Narcissa had said leaving 'The Garden of Witchhood' on top of the damask throw of the bed that Cassie was now perched on top of.

Blinking with bafflement, Cassie looked down at the open page where a lush illustration of a lovely meadow was dominated by a blooming red flower and the bee that made a leisurely flight towards it. She supposed it had some abstract meaning, but she wasn't exactly sure what that was as she watched the petals close to embrace the insect, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she might have been better off reading the book on peacock breeding from her father's study.

With a sigh, Cassie turned the page to an image of a thick wand which sparked softly as it filled the delicate bowl it rested in with shimmering white liquid.

It was all so surreal, tomorrow she would marry - and yet she had known for so long now that she was never to be married. That no one was ever going to touch her, that no one was going to love her in that way.

Her emotions were a mess of confusion, because if she was honest with herself, she had wanted to fall in love, to be able to be with a wizard - to feel normal.

The first time she had realised that this was the case had been around five years prior, just before her brother had started his second year at Hogwarts.

It had been an unexpected treat for Lucius to take her out with them. It was usually Narcissa who accompanied her daughter, and for Mother to stay at home and Cassie to join Father and Draco on an outing to Diagon Alley - well it had been wonderful... at first.

She'd walked along on her father's arm, watching in awe as so many stopped to bow to them, basking in the looks of approval her father bestowed on her when those they deigned to stop to greet complimented him on his 'lovely daughter'.

Draco's excitement had been infectious as well, the way he'd rattled on to her about how he was going to win the cup for Slytherin, how no snitch would be a match for him when he was made seeker.

In Quality Quidditch Supplies, the owner, Mr Twig, had fallen over himself in delight to close the shop up for them so that Mr Malfoy and Master Malfoy could examine the brooms in privacy before buying the set of seven they required.

A pretty occasion chair was summoned for Miss Malfoy, as well as tea and delicate refreshments.

Perhaps it had been the fact the shop was locked against the public, or perhaps it was that Lucius had been too distracted by his son's enthusiasm to think about the risk of leaving Cassandra unchaperoned. Either way, Cassie had watched as Mr Twig had ushered her father and brother out for a test ride in the field behind the shop.

The door had clicked shut, and Cassie had been left alone in the silent store watching the dust sparkle in the afternoon light that penetrated the mullioned window panes.

Getting to her feet, she had passed the time examining the displays of Nimbus, Comets and other brooms.

It was just as her gloved hand was stroking along the length of the glossy handle of a Starsweeper, when she realised that she wasn't alone and had swung around to find a young man, a year or two older than she was, watching her with friendly amusement.

"It's a nice one," he had said with a smile, breaking the tense silence.

"Yes," Cassie had flushed, removing her hand from the broom.

"It's alright," the boy had said, "you can touch it if you want. My uncle owns the store."

"Do you work for him?"

"During the holidays."

"Are you at Hogwarts?" Cassie asked, wishing to keep the conversation going, the novel experience of speaking to someone without the watchful eye of her parents – especially a boy of roughly her age, stirring something in her.

"Yes, I'm in Hufflepuff. My name's Jim."

"A pleasure to meet you, Jim"

"Are you not at Hogwarts?" Jim had enquired, moving a few steps closer to her with an ease which spoke of innocent attraction.

"No."

"I thought not, I thought I'd remember you."

Cassie had found herself blushing and a feeling of warmth spreading out across her as she gazed into the boy's gentle brown eyes. It was a curious feeling, one which was completely foreign to her until that point, and to hide her reaction she had turned back to the broom she had been examining.

"Would you like to try it out?" Jim had offered, with a soft smile, seeming to sense her shyness and wishing to put her at ease.

Instead, the opposite had happened and Cassie had stepped back away from the broom as if burnt. "No. No, I- I don't know how to."

"You've never flown?"

"Not on my own."

"I can teach you. There's nothing to be afraid of, I-"

"What is going on here?" a cold voice had demanded, fracturing the air and startling the young couple who had turned in shared trepidation.

In the doorway that led out to the test field had stood Lucius, behind him a glaring Draco, followed up by a concerned looking Mr Twig.

The colour had drained from Jim Twig's face, as he realised in horror who Cassie was. "Nothing, Sir. I was just offering to teach your daughter how to ride."

"Were you indeed?" Lucius had seethed, before turning to look pointedly at Mr Twig.

There had been a moment of hesitation and then Mr Twig had sprung to life. Marching forward and grabbing his nephew by the ear he had dragged the shocked boy into a store room, where muffled shouts of fury and cries of pain and protest followed the sharp bangs of curses.

Lucius had turned to his daughter then, his cold grey eyes narrowed.

"Father, I'm sorry, I did-"

"It's alright, my Pet," her father had soothed. "I should not have left you, and Twig should have made me aware that the boy was here - a mistake for which he will be offering a substantial discount on our purchases... Draco, take your sister home, I will finish up here."

And that had been it, never since that moment had she been left alone in the company of anyone but her family.

Yet that feeling had stayed and that memory of the delicious warmth had come back to her in dreams.

In the bedroom, Cassie sighed again and closed the book.

She was in danger, she knew. She was not fit to be married. Especially not to a powerful wizard like Severus Snape, and she didn't want to marry him. She couldn't imagine him paying her compliments, or that glower of his softening to look at her with the gentle gaze that Jim Twig had held her with. And yet...

The door to her bedroom swung open, vanishing all thoughts of tender caresses, and instinctively Cassie shrank backwards as she saw the woman who stood in the doorway with a vicious smirk on her curling lips.

"How are you feeling, My Sweet?" Bella mocked, as the door of the bedroom snapped shut behind her with a flick from her wand.

"I- I- I'm well, Aunt," Cassie stammered.

"Well?!" Bellatrix enquired with mock confusion. "Well?! When you know, what tomorrow is going to bring? But of course, you don't know," she continued, prowling forward as Cassie swallowed hard. "You have no idea what horrors you are going to face... What that man is going to want to do to you. And that won't help you," Bella said, pausing to sneer at the book which now lay closed beside Cassie.

With a deft movement of Bella's wand that caused Cassie to shriek, the book flew from the bed to smash violently against the opposite wall - exploding in a shower of colourful pages.

"That's why Auntie Bella is here," Bellatrix intoned, coming to sit beside the cowering Cassie on the bed, "So that I can help prepare you in a way your mother refuses to..."

Despite herself, Cassie couldn't help but stare as Bella pulled from her robes a thin volume and placed it between herself and her niece.

"Open it," Bella ordered, tapping the blood-red cover that was devoid of words.

Hesitating for a moment and then driven by fear and curiosity, Cassie opened it to the title page where 'His Pleasure' was written in fine calligraphy.

"Turn the page then," Bella murmured, gleefully watching Cassie's reaction.

She complied, and then her eyes widened in shock.

These were no lush illustrations; these were line drawings done with jet-black ink, but there was nothing abstract about the moving images.

"This is probably the page that is most useful to you, sweet Niece," Bella sang, tapping the book with her wand so that the pages quickly turned offering Cassie the merest glimpses of the sinful secrets that the tome offered.

The pages stopped, revealing a double spread drawing of an unclothed man straddling an equally naked woman - his hands pinching and squeezing her breasts, as the witch's head fell back with her eyes half-closed and her lips parted in seeming ecstasy.

Cassie couldn't look away, her eyes flickering across the page to where the wizard's manhood repeatedly appeared and disappeared as he thrust forcefully into the woman.

"That's what he is going to do to you," Bella remarked.

"Will it hurt?" Cassie found herself whispering, her eyes still locked on the pages before her.

"Depends... Even if it does you have to pretend you enjoy it... Listen!"

Her aunt tapped the book again and moans emanated from the pages, desperate cries of female pleasure from the drawing filling Cassie's ears.

"That's what he's going to want to hear from you," Bella murmured, moving closer to the girl. "Do you think you can do that, Niece? Do you think you can pretend?... Or shall I take you to Knockturn and you can get a demonstration?"

"No, no..." Cassie replied, her eyes still fixed on the book, that warmth she'd felt during the brief moments alone with that boy coming back to her, but with a strange new intensity, confusing her with her visceral reaction to what she was seeing. "I can learn from this."

"See that you do," Bella said, watching as Cassie's pupils involuntarily dilated in fascinated focus as the movements of the illustration grew more frantic, the cries growing louder, the image pulsing as it built towards its climax. "Merlin… You like it, don't you?"

"No!" Cassie protested fearfully, dragging her eyes from the image.

"Yes, you do... You little slut!"

"No, aunt, I-" but Cassie's protests were cut off as Bella grabbed her by the chin, forcing her eyes up to hers. "No, please don't!" she added as she realized what was about to happen.

But it was too late, and Cassie was utterly powerless to resist as Bellatrix pushed her way into her conscious. Memories flooded to the surface - Jim Twig; Draco's handsome school friend whose hand had brushed against Cassie's when she had passed him the salt at the dinner table the previous Christmas; and then her imaginings of Severus Snape - memories of his brooding shadow at balls and parties - her fear mixed with curiosity of what it would be like to be alone with him.

"Part of you wants it to happen, don't you?" Bella demanded, her breath fanning her niece's face.

"No! I- I- just never thought I- I never thought I'd be able to get married," Cassie explained weakly.

"And you shouldn't have been! You disgusting stain on your family's name... Shall I go and tell mummy and daddy how depraved you are - getting excited over a book meant for deviants like your uncle? I took it from his private library, perhaps you and he could look at some of his collection together – would you like that, you whore?!"

"No, Aunt, please," Cassie begged tearfully. "I'm sorry, I don't want to feel like this, I- I- I'm sorry."

With an inward smirk of delight at her niece's tearful humiliation and remorse, Bella released her grip on Cassie and stood up from the bed. "I won't tell them."

"Thank you, Aunt, thank you!"

Bella nodded and made her way towards the bedroom door, before turning back with a sickly smile. "They have enough misery with having you as a daughter without this little reveal... You know it would have been better if you'd never been born? You know they would have been happier, Draco too... You're worthless, Cassandra, and if Severus Snape find's out about you and your issue... Well then, you'll have killed them all. So, keep studying the book, learn what it will take to make him happy and then you better do everything you can to keep him so."

An hour later, Severus sat brooding in the darkness of the sitting room of Spinner's End, having escaped the hideous company of his former friends with excuses about wishing to be 'well rested'.

At least, he thought, as he reflected on the awful evening, it had given him an idea. For if Cassandra Malfoy was so completely innocent, then she wouldn't know what to expect and thus avoiding intimacy would be far easier. In fact, he mused, a brief kiss on her forehead at bedtime would probably have the girl thinking she was with child.

He didn't want to be married, and he had managed to put off the inevitable for a least a few weeks. Partly, it had been in the hope that The Dark Lord might change his mind, but if he was honest, it had been his utter horror at having to bring the girl here.

Looking about the room, Severus thought glumly of what Cassandra Malfoy's reaction would have been to finding herself in this neglected corner of Cokeworth – she who was so used to the most elegant of settings with house-elves to do her every whim... With her fine robes, and glossy hair, her striking features and those grey eyes…

She's got a lovely pair of tits for you to play with.

The memory of Mulciber's words came back.

Fuck Mulciber, Severus thought, and fuck his brain for the intrusive thoughts.

Still, if Mulciber or Avery said anything more about Cassandra, Severus would have the excuse to curse them both under the guise of an affronted husband - there was some grim satisfaction in that.

What was he going to do though to keep the girl from discovering his secret? That was the big question. Play the doting husband? It wasn't exactly a role he was cut out for. It would be far easier to terrify her, as he had done to countless students over the last eighteen years… But then it was one thing to reduce first years to quivering wrecks with nothing more than a quirk of his brow, it was quite another to use the same tactics on a woman he was about to make vows of honouring and protection to – despite how hollow they might be.

With a sigh of frustration at the utter shittiness of the situation, Severus stood up, and then with heavy tread made his way up the narrow, creaking steps, to sleep for the last time as a single man...