Magical We

“Honessly-”

At the foot of a weathered staircase in some cavernous spiral tower, in gods-only-knew which wing of the castle, Rosie notched her fists on her hips and stamped her strappy heeled sandal.

Her pigtails flounced.

“Doesn’t this place ever stand still for one second!”

Beside her, in a black velvet dress with a low neckline and nipped waist and poof skirt that barely kissed her bottom, a green satin sash and bow tied round her pony tail to match, Rey crossed her arms over her chest and cracked her tongue. “Chht, nevah. Stupid stairways…”

On the other side of Rose, Luna swayed dreamily up at the domed ceilings. Her lace cat-ear headband had slipped back slightly along her white-blonde waves. “I think we’re going in circles. Or maybe… that fresco is circling us?”

She made a paw with her hand and waved to it.

“Gods, we’re never gonna find it,” Rey covered her eyes. On her fingers were many pretty silver and white gold rings set with sparkling faux-emeralds. She had bought with her ‘llowances back when she thought she’d be a Slytherin. When she thought her husband would be handsome, not-evil.

Young.

It was Wednesday afternoon and they had a free period before supper; they were using it to search desperately for the library. They’d just come from double-Potions with Professor Snape down in the dungeons; he was so beasly they didn’t dare ask him the way up to the third floor.

Snape hated Gryffindors, and it seemed he hated Rey especially. When he got to her name during rollcall – Rey, of the House of Hux – he paused to give her the cruelest smile she’d ever seen in her life. “Ah, Lady Hux. Our new celebrity.”

That’s when girls decided right then and there over their smoldering cauldrons that they would go to the library ‘mediately and find everything they could about the wizard who was ruining Rey’s life. And how she could get divorced to him.

Cept for now they were totally lost.

“What if I just poison him?” she mewled miserably with her red mouth peeking through the frame her wrists made. “You heard Snape, I could learn to put a stopper in death-”

“Yeah but prolly not this year,” Rosie peeled Rey’s hands off her eyes and laced their fingers together. Her expression was worried, and soft. “Anyway you heard him, we’re bound to be rubbish. Didn’t he say potions are like, really hard?”

“Not nearly as hard as solving the riddles of a French quarry-gnome,” Luna interjected helpfully. She was chasing slowly the dazzling flecks of dust floating inside the bands of sunlight streaming through the long crystal windows.

“Lu-nah, be serious,” Rey really tried not to smile as she touched foreheads with Rose. “Suppose I could drown myself in the lake-”

“Ooo, or become a mermaid!” Luna chirped.

The girls giggled until a startling rooster-voice cockadoodled, “Oy oy, hands off our bird!”

“Oh no,” Rosie groaned sideways at the two tall weasel boys waltzing grinning up the hallway. Ever since the Sorting on Saturday, they’d been popping up all over – before and after classes, on the stairwells headed back to commons, outside the lavatories even – to try to get a rise out of Rose.

“Kill me-” George – at least, Rey thought it might be George – swept Rosie up, up and away before she could finish, “-now.”

“ ‘lo, poppet,” he popped Rose up onto one of the wide stone window sills so that they were almost the same height. It was slanted slightly; she had to hold onto his shoulders so that she didn’t slip off. He tried rubbing noses with her, big hands holding steady round her small waist, as his brother slid in at his side.

“I’m not your girlfriend!” Rosie screeched and flapped and turned her face away. Just in time for Fred – Rey was almost positive that one was Fred – to peck her on the lips.

“Ew, gross!” she squealed and wiped her mouth on her forearm. “You taste like licorice!”

They smirked.

“Aren’t you a pretty bitty,” the boys chorused as her waist changed pairs of big freckled hands. Both their bright eyes lingered over the plunging neck of her white summer dress and on her creamy, rounded thighs peeking out her short skirt.

It was warm outside, a perfect day for a dinner-picnic well away from the Whomping Willow. Which was exactly what the girls planned to do if they ever got their books from the library.

Luna was wearing a gauzy set of black robes tied flatteringly to her body with a silk cord like a Grecian goddess. She wore lace cat ears and dark kitty-eye makeup to match.

Rosie wriggled but couldn’t squirm away from the Weasley boys petting her tenderly, so Rey squawked and lunged to take a swipe at one of them with her long dark nails. “She said go ‘way, stupid! We’re busy.”

Fred – she guessed he was – dodged her as he cooed at Rosie, “Whass the matter, beauty? Are you lost?”

“We can help you,” George waggled his eyebrows, “tell us where you want to go and we’ll take you there.”

“Yeah Rosie, we’ll take you anywhere.”

Rosie snorted primly, “Oh really? Well how ‘bout you both go tah hell?”

“Ooo, she’s a mean one,” Fred stole another smacking kiss as George tickled her belly, “We love a girl who’ll take the mickey out of us.”

“Chut up,” Rosie was trying very hard not to smile. Luna purred and pretended to lick her arm.

“We’re lookin’ for the library,” Rey knitted her bejeweled fingers and looked at them both from beneath her lashes. “Do you know where that is?”

“Course we do,” Fred puffed up proudly as George paused sneaking his hand up Rosie’s skirt to nod. “S’easy. But why you wanna go there?”

“Yeah, come outside with us, Rosie,” George wheedled.

Fred gave her his big weasel-pup eyes. “Pleeease? You can bring Tweedle Strange and Tweedle Deatheater’s wife, if you like-”

“Hey!” Rey balled up her hands and flushed furiously as Luna hopped delicately with her tongue out to catch the floating specks of mica in the air.

“No!” Rosie flapped her finger between their faces now very close to hers. The boys stared as if she’d hung the moon as she demanded, “I wanna go to the library with my friends! Now take us there you lot, or I’m never speakin’ to either of you again!”

“Alright, alright beauty,” Fred caught her beneath her arms and swung her down off the sill.

She tottered on her heels just before George squatted down in front of her and reached back behind himself to hoist her up. “C’mon poppet, up yah go then-”

She clapped her arms about his neck squealing, short skirt flouncing as he hiked her up his back in a way that would have made Madam Beaux clutch her pearls. Luna laughed and started meowing a song about cats and fiddles and cows jumping. Rosie beamed triumph-ful and so did Rey until she remembered the dark older wizard she met on the train.

Then her heart ached.

She prayed to all the gods Rosie and Luna’s husbands weren’t like Armitage.

“I am muggleborn, thank you,” Rose was informing the twins primly, holding tightly onto George as they all started off together down the hall, “so I have a fiancé.”

The brothers glanced smirking at one another and said in unison, “We know.”

Rey stayed back a bit behind the three of them, rubbing her chest as the memory of Armitage and his love flowers stole her warmth away. All her life that she could remember, she’d dreamed of having a cool boyfriend who worshipped her.

Now she had a cold man who hated her guts.

“Don’t you just love black-cat Wednesdays?” Luna came and slipped her arm into the crook of Rey’s and laid her temple on her shoulder. She purred as they walked.

Rey turned her cheek and kissed the top of Luna’s pale hair and smiled. “Yeah, guess they’re cool.”

Rey slammed her one hundredth tome closed and dropped her head against it. She sprawled her arms on the study table and wailed, “This is pointless!”

A sixth-year girl in ugly glasses at the end of the table turned her head and hissed, “Shhh!”

Rosie stuck out her tongue at her, then she sighed. She sat across from Rey, perched on Fred’s lap, pouring diligently over books about bonding ceremonies and magical law between bouts of delighted smothered giggles at the origami animals George animated for her.

“Yeah, s’like tryin’ to read a different language with this lot,” she turned another large papyrus reed page of an ancient law tomb with a painted fingernail and sighed again.

“Oh, but that is a different language, Rose,” Luna piped in her sweet, musical squeak. “It’s Greek.”

“Is it really?” Rosie dragged the tomb closer to her and squinted suspiciously at the page. A white paper crane on her shoulder the size of Rey’s thumb trilled and cricked its neck to peer with her. “Well I wondered…”

Rey growled into the cover of Magical Marriage Precedents between the Middle and Victorian Ages as the homely girl tried to shush them all again.

“Oy, here’s something-”

It was George, hunched gangly and inelegant over a smaller, newer-looking text. “It’s got nothin’ to do with marriage laws, but it is about- well,” he eyed Rey frownfully, “Him.”

Her heart began to beat faster. She sat up and payed strict attention, hardly noticing George’s nose was rather beakish, or that there was a tiny paper tiger pacing the table in front of him and pausing intermittently to let out a teacup roar as he read:

“Lord Armitage Brendol Hux - known as the General, Death’s Star, and the Destroyer – is the sixty-second heir to the House of Hux, which is rumored to trace its lineage back to the Arkani-”

“Blimey,” breathed Luna.

“Wassa our-canni?” Rey pawed back her fringe.

“The Arkani,” Fred exchanged dark looks with his brother as he bounced Rosie idly on his knee. His arm wound protectively around her waist. “They were a group of witches a long time ago who, er… bonded themselves to dragons. Supposedly,” he added.

“Bonded to dragons?” Rey crinkled her nose. “How?”

George made a face. “Trust us, you don’t wanna know.”

“They’re extremely powerful,” Luna mused up at the candles floating above them. Her black cat headband slipped back over her pale hair again. “They can’t use wands because their magic shatters them.”

Rey thought about Armitage closing the door to their carriage and changing the size of his longcloak to fit her, all with his bare hands.

But was he really descended from dragons?

“That’s just a myth,” George scoffed, until Rey shook her head.

“It isn’t. I’ve seen him do it – magic with no words or wand. Just his hands.”

The boys passed another bleak look between them.

“What else s’it say?” Rosie nudged George’s arm. On her shoulder, the little paper crane was nestling down into the ends of her pigtail.

George hesitated. “Well…”

Rey strained up through her tiptoes and leaned on her arms over the table, trying to catch a glimpse of the book.

On the left page, she could see the upside-down, black-and-white impression of her… whatever standing tall and proud with his chin lilted, hands behind his back. He was wearing a sort of dark uniform with a long row of silver buttons and medals twinkling on his chest. He looked very young in the photograph. Arrogant.

Gorgeous.

On the opposite page, there was a later picture of him. He was being led down the steps of the Ministry by bailiffs, his hands not clasped loosely behind him but tied up in chains. He looked solemn, haunted and gaunt.

“Was he arrested?” she piped, chewing at her lip. The thought made her tummy twist into knots.

Fred and George exchanged another set of nervous glances, as beside her, Luna looped her arm comfortingly around her waist.

“You really don’t know who he is, do you?” Fred looked worried, and sad.

“Come out with it!” Rey slapped her hand on the table. She made a mad snatch for the text, “Why won‘t you lot tell me- just give it to me and I’ll read it myself!”

The plain girl at the end of the table slammed her book and stood.

“Honestly!” she whispered venomously at them.

George turned to tell her off and Rey grabbed the book.

“Rey, don’t,” Luna sang sadly.

“Whassit say?” Rosie asked.

The line that caught Rey’s eye broke her heart.

A suspected associate of He Who Shall Not Be Named, Lord Hux was implicated but never convicted for the killing of over seven hundred muggle-born witches and wizards, witches and wizards of inter-magical parentage, and those who supported intermarriage with muggles-

Heart pounding and tummy churning flip-flaps, she read shakily aloud, “He was taken into custody but his accusers all disappeared before he could stand trial. Due to extenuating circumstances during his incarceration in Azkaban Prison, he was released and all charges were withdrawn.”

“Extenuating circumstances?” Luna mused curiously. Across the table, Rosie’s eyes were frightened and huge.

“Yeah,” Fred sounded hollow, far away to Rey through the bells ringing in her ears, “Dad said the Dementors were afraid of him. Told their handlers either he had to leave Azkaban, or they would.”

Dementors. Dragons. Seven hundred dead-

Her husband’s pale, angular face stared up smugly at her from the page.

“Rey, wait!” cried Rosie.

But she was already past the end of the table and in the library’s main corridor, running as fast as she could as she sobbed.

“This is egregious.”

Between a pair of overstuffed chairs angled before a great claw-footed desk, the General loomed like a dark spire. He was dressed in his usual longcloak and sharp imperial black. He looked very much out of place amongst all the glimmering, tinkling oddities crammed gaudily onto every surface around the circular room. The paintings in their lavish frames gawked at him from their standing easels and from the walls. All except for the portrait of the Headmaster himself, which blinked bemusedly around the room as if he had no idea where he was.

But the General’s wrath was reserved for only one artifact in particular. His magic sizzled around him, making the air crackle and shimmer as if above a raging fire. He clenched his fists behind his back so hard they wrung their leather and snarled lowly, baring his glinting white teeth, “That thing is a menace-”

The object he referred to sat old and tatty on a shelf safely behind the Headmaster.

The Sorting Hat.

“You have bewitched it to do your bidding,” the General’s enunciation had never been sharper, or more furious, “Give it to me. Now.”

“Armitage, please. Calm yourself,” the Headmaster had the gall to use his first name. Reclining in a tall, tufted pale-lavender seat behind the desk, Dumbledore smiled and gestured with a sweep of his long sleeve, “Sit down. Enjoy a jelly bean-”

As swift as an asp’s strike, the General backhanded the crystal candy dish to the floor. It hit the chintz carpeting and shattered, scattering crystal shards and candy beans of every color across the rug.

“General!” at the Headmaster’s side standing straight as a ruler with her hands folded in front of her, Minerva McGonagall gave the General a look that could melt ice.

Yet he did not miss the way her fingers shook as she implored him imperiously, “If not for your sake, then for Lady Rey’s, I insist you stop with these baseless accusations at once.”

The General ignored her. He planted his gloved hands on the desk and bore down slowly on the Headmaster like a chuffing beast, “You contrived that shamble of a ceremony to bind me to that girl, knowing full-well what I am-”

The Headmaster smiled blithely.

The General dropped his voice to a deadly rumble, “- and I will not allow you to sort her now where she will be surrounded by talentless, showboating delinquents-”

McGonagall blustered, “I beg your pardon!”

“Oh?” the General turned his tightly-reigned fury on her, “You dare contradict me, when the degree to which you acquiesce to disorder among your students is legendary, madam?”

“I most certainly do!”

“I can assure you, General, I can assure you,” the Headmaster inserted himself as cheerfully as if he were suggesting pudding for dessert, “Professor McGonagall is held in the utmost regard by her pupils. Furthermore,” he regarded the General a bit more seriously over the tops of his half-moon glasses, “there has been no tampering with Lady Hux’s sorting. Of any kind. She is your bride, and she is a Gryffindor.”

His blue eyes twinkled, “Circumstances which will make for many lively dinner conversations, I am sure.”

In his corner amongst the shadows, the Head of Slytherin House snorted.

The General’s jaw ticked. He straightened, allowing his magic to gather dark and kinetic around him, like heat sizzling warningly around a dragon’s maw. “I see-”

Rey’s heart pattered, her heels click-clattered against the stone floors as she raced blindly down long-winding staircases and through cavernous halls. She wanted – no, had – to see the Headmaster. He was supposably the most powerful wizard alive.

If anyone could unsort her marriage to Armitage the monster, it was Albus Dumbledore.

“Please!” she cried at the walls and paintings and suits of armor. They must have heard her, because she felt led by something unseen through the corridors. A red string from her aching heart to someplace up ahead. Her ears drummed, her breath came in wet, shallow gasps as she galloped until at last her race ended in a tall, narrow hall lit by torches inside their arched recesses.

Their yellow flickering light drew a line down to the end where an enormous stone gargoyle waited in fierce repose.

The pull on her heart grew stronger as she followed the light of the torches. Its beat grew slower and slower, yet louder and louder; she had the sensation of floating towards the gargoyle at the end of the hall.

When finally she as near enough she could have reached up on her tiptoes and touched its snout, she heard a muffled voice.

“So this is your retribution-”

It was him. Her husband.

He was speaking from somewhere behind and above the stone.

Her pulse scrambled; as if in a trance, she pressed herself tentatively against the fierce-looking statute. Her ear turned toward the cold, rough stone. Swallowing, she closed her eyes.

His voice rumbled deep down in her belly as he spoke.

“You mean to sequester my bride from me. Do you really think you turn her against me? That you can poison her heart-”

A sort of dreaminess washed over her. It smothered her heartache, made her yearn for something… warm.

“My dear boy,” it was her Headmaster, she recognized his serene unmistakable rasp, “you may see your sweetheart any time you like.”

“Oh of that there was never any question- I will see her. You cannot deny me that-”

Her chest ached and fluttered. She had to bite her lip to stop its trembling as fat, fresh tears slipped softly through her lashes and raced each other sparkling down her cheeks.

Armitage didn’t want them to be apart…

“Why should we wish to? No no, the wards that surround this school which dissuade intruders will not detain you,” her Headmaster continued, “the magic that binds your souls is very old. Very old indeed. There is no spell known to man or beast which can keep you apart.”

She could picture him perfectly – her husband – his long, black mass ghosting soundlessly across the grounds as he came for her, face white and hair burning against the bleak backdrop of the Forbidden Forest. His big hands and long fingers full of white-hot, crackling magic-

The small, soft gap between her thighs gulped pitifully as the Headmaster went on.

“As for disparaging you to your young bride, well. We understand it would only wound her. Quite grievously. Quite…. You must take my word when I assure you, General, that no one in this room wishes your dear one any harm.”

There was a tense pause, in which she felt some of her man’s anger cool down and unwind.

“Be that as it may,” his voice came back to her. It made her nipples tighten and her skin prickle softly. She wanted to tip her head and touch her neck as he spoke, “the fact remains she belongs in Slytherin-”

“Oh I beg to differ.” It was Professor Snape who spoke up coldly from farther away.

“As do I,” she recognized instantly the severe voice of her Head of House, Professor McGonagall. Oh, she sounded seriously cheesed off. “She cannot be sorted to Slytherin, as you well know, General. According to its House precepts written by Salazar Slytherin himself.”

“Her blood, you mean?” her husband’s next words made her heart wince, “You’re referring to her impurity-”

“I am referring to her parentage,” McGonagall spoke over him, “Please never again make the mistake of assuming I equate the two. I leave that sort of ignorance to you and your associates.”

“My associates?” now Armitage sounded slightly amused. She felt something else curl through his soothed-down temper. A long black tongue of contempt. “What exactly are you insinuating, Minerva?”

“What everyone in this room well knows. Your affinity for the Dark Arts-”

“I do not believe this vein of conversation will prove fruitful, Minerva,” her Headmaster was gentle but firm, “The fact remains Rey belongs in Gryffindor House-”

“The fact is-” her husband’s diction grew razor-sharp. It made in ache in that small, needy slit getting wetter and wetter, “- she belongs to me, and to the House of Hux. My bloodline reaches back a thousand generations. She is a Slytherin.”

“Not in my school, dear boy.”

Hatred flashed through her husband’s magic. It was mesmerizing to stand there inside its dark mouth, to feel his power surging all around her. She’d never felt another wizard’s magic. A part of her wondered from a dreamy, underwater sleep if all bonded couples could feel each other’s auras this way.

Or if it was just him.

Her Arkanian.

Eyes still closed, she saw warm, dark-shimmering visions of young witches naked and wrapped sensually inside their dragon’s scaled tails.

Beautiful…

“So we shall see if it remains,” her husband was saying suddenly. Her heartbeat, which had sunk into a slow velvet rhythm, clicked on and sped up. She snapped out of her strange daydream feeling feverish with fear.

He was coming down.

“Good day-” he said from almost directly above her. The gargoyle opened its sightless eyes and growled at her.

She shrieked and leapt back as it prepared itself to move aside.

She needed to hide.

The General straightened his cuffs around his gloves as he descended the stone staircase. His pupils strained to dilate despite the strong light. His tongue felt wet and sensitive inside his mouth. He had the strangest urge to send it flickering into the air.

Scenting.

His body was buzzing with electricity. The mark on his forearm burned.

Oh yes. His little one was very near.

And very excited, from the taste of her small aura held inside his magic’s maw. He felt her energy, her confusion and sexual excitement at his proximity. So ravenous in its innocence.

So young.

His kitten would be wet and needy, the way she was in the train car the day they met. If this time they were interrupted again-

White heat sparked off his fingertips. But the moment he stepped off the last stair, his hackles raised and his gut went eerily calm.

She was there, in the hall. With him now.

Where are you, little witch, his cool blue eyes panned slowly through the long, narrow passageway. His Dark Mark seared him like a brand. Come out, come out-

Ah-ha.

He caught the soft, sudden hush of velvet and the rustle of her black crinoline skirt. The flash of smooth, tan skin inside one of the central alcoves revealed her.

He heard her breath catch in her throat.

A predatory smirk spread itself across his wide, sensual mouth as he made his way leisurely to her hiding place. He felt her fear and anticipation as he worked off his leather gloves finger-by-finger. Her excitement buzzed at the base of his skull.

Strange, how whenever she was near his resolve to keep her at arm’s length dissolved. In this moment, he wanted only to gather her into his lap in some warm, dim-lit corner of the castle and please her with soft kisses and rich treats and sweet wine.

“Have a care, Hux.”

Severus.

The General turned, hatred cracking like a whip down his spine.

The Potions Master was posed dramatically at the mouth of the staircase, ever the tormented Gothic soul. From his air of open hostility, the General sensed he spoke without knowing the girl was there with them.

Good. The thought of another dark wizard watching her when she was vulnerable and aching for love made the General positively rabid.

He kept his white hands folded mildly behind him and raised his chin. “I beg your pardon?”

“You may call it a word of caution,” the Potions Master enunciated precisely as he gestured eerily to himself, “I have walked the path you now tread to its conclusion and I tell you with no small amount of regret- that way lies devastation. For you, and the girl.”

The General’s sneer became cruelly amused as he swept forward. He was well aware that, over his shoulder, his bride strained to hear every word.

He began in a deceptively casual tone, “I take it you mean your unfortunate liaison with Miss Lily Evans-”

The Potions Master winced and ticked his jaw.

The General continued, “I heard how she perished that night alongside her infant son.”

He stopped and considered the high, cathedraled ceiling arching down the length of the hall. “What was the name of her husband – the boy’s father? Was it Potter?”

Another tick of the Potions Master’s jaw.

“Yes,” the General spoke softly, smiling blackly now, like a crocodile rising up through the swamp, “I believe it was. James Potter. He died her hero, did he not?”

“I am warning you, Hux,” Severus folded his arms like a dark Jinn and lifted his chin. His small, black eyes burned coldly down the length of his hooked nose, “For her sake. Break the bond.”

For the past ten years, the General had been contemplating how to do just that.

But now, every cell inside him desired to keep her, to lavish her with luxury and to bathe her in affection. Until she grew ripe.

He wanted to give her everything.

Magic crackling, he stepped closer and spoke lowly so that only the Potions Master could hear.

“You think because you let a little mudblood slip through your fingers and then killed her with your incompetence that I shall do the same? Half-bred fool,” the Potion Master’s snarl only made the General’s smile more sinister, “You have never walked as I do because we are not equals. I am above.”

Severus’s eyes flashed murder. But he did not speak another word as he gathered his dignity and spun away with a sharp, dark whirl of his robes.

“Leave my girl well alone, Severus,” the General called after him. All the while his hands stayed tensed behind his back. “Or I shall find you alone in an alley on some dark night.”

The Potions Master halted sharply at the mouth of the hallway and fixed him with a deathly glare.

“Pray that you don’t.”

The General watched him disappear with another theatrical billow of his robes before turning his attention back to the alcove where his young wife hid.

Alone at last.

Steady, he chided his eagerness. She was still a very little girl, and she quite despised him. A fact he found perversely charming, given his affinity for bold, pretty witches with a histrionic edge.

He would simply have to win her trust, then her deference and affection would follow. By the time she had completed her magical education, she would long for her place in his lap and in his bed. Seven years was hardly a long time to a wizard. For an Arkanian, it was the blink of an eye.

But he must begin softly.

“You may come out now, sneakling,” he made sure she could hear the good humor within his severe-sounding voice.

Another delicate, feminine rustle made him picture a long skirt gathered over creamy thighs and his hand working tenderly beneath them. It suffused him with heat that would light a normal man on fire.

“I won’t be angry,” he beckoned her, mark blazing and heart ravening at his ribs. “Come my love, don’t be shy.”

His bride stepped tentatively out into the hallway after peering out at him around the smooth stone.

His breath shuttered and his blood rushed roaring to everywhere it shouldn’t, as visions of sweet sashes tied around modest child-gowns dissolved.

His wife was dressed like a high-price harlot, the sort of delicacy one might buy in Nocturn Alley for a depraved, indulgent evening. He could see nearly the entire length of her slim, tanned legs bracketed by a pair of glossy patent shoes and a velvet skirt made light as air by pleated layers of black crinoline. The neck of her dress was entirely too low, showing off her flat, boney collar and dimpled, sun-dappled line of her sternum. Her warm-colored eyes stared up at him fearfully, while the soft ends of her hair dripping over her shoulders like coils of smoke danced with her trembling. She had been crying.

Simultaneously, he was furious, aching and – he admitted balefully – aroused.

“Good gods, child,” his blood pounded, he wanted to reach out and snatch her, wrench her over his knee and rap her bare bottom until she was red and weeping apologies. He wanted to take her until she was limp and drunk off his cock against the slate wall.

He tamped out those impulses as he came to loom over her. His voice was deadly calm, “What in Hades do you think you’re wearing?”

She snapped out of her fear-filled, trance-like state and balled up her hands. Her rings winked at him. She was covered in imitation jewels.

“Get away from me,” she edged back as she screeched, “I hate you!”

“Gracious.” He advanced casually, as if they were playing a game. “Whatever have I done now?”

“Go way and leave me alone!” she scrambled back faster, making soft rustles with that ridiculous, delectable dress. Her patent shoes gleamed like the star-lit tears now falling down her round cheeks as she hissed at him, “You- you’re evil. Murderous snake-”

“Evil? Well,” he lost the battle with a quarter-smile. What could this child possibly understand about him or the mark that burned him for being near her? “I wonder what could make you say such a thing. Has someone told you a story about me?”

Her beautiful, fragile expression crumbled.

“You ki-killed all those pe-people, for him-” she choked on her grief and gulped out, “V-Voldemort. You killed people li-like me-” she couldn’t say the word.

Mudbloods.

Her heartbreak rankled him. He was fully upon her as he took her slight waist between his hands. She struggled weakly with her hands at his chest as he bowed nearer, but he held her as tenderly and easily as one holds a kitten while his eyes searched her sad face.

"Who told you that?” he asked her quietly.

She began to cry in earnest, shoulders shaking, her face crumpled in as she continued to squirm. “I read it, in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts. Your picture’s in there- a-and all the bad things you done. Oh Armitage,” she held the lapels of his robes and pressed her face against his heart and sobbed, “how could you do it? Why?”

An ugly, unfamiliar emotion welled inside him. Something cold and clear as ice.

Remorse.

Suddenly, he became hyperaware of the openness of their surroundings. How his young wife was here so conveniently waiting for him, dressed like a temptation and utterly distraught. He thought back to Dumbledore’s calm condescension and the Potions Master’s smirks.

Was this a trap?

“Shh-shh, none of that now, sweeting,” his instincts whirled darkly as he lifted her bodily and settled her like a child against his chest. She was such a little girl, petite and somewhat too thin; she wormed but could not escape him. He kept her close with his long, strong arms.

He soothed her back and hushed her gently, “Ah-ah, I said none of that…”

She squealed and struggled, tried to slip through his grip, but he held fast, kissing her wet cheeks as he bore her quickly through the hall and down a series of corridors. His magic flexed lazily in the nearness of her aura, its dark smolder smothered her cooler, feminine energy in sensual love.

Where he was taking her, he had not the slightest idea. Until he recognized the darkening stone and wending staircases leading down to-

The dungeons.

They descended a flight of steps bathed in shadow and lit scarcely by torch light; he recognized the narrow corridor at its landing as one of the multitude of discreet, secluded passageways surrounding Slytherin House.

At the base of his throat, his blood thrummed approvingly. He felt overwhelmed by the primal urge to take her deep underground. There the air would be dark and thick with fertile earth scents. He would lay her down on a mound of gold and admire her bare, glowing body. He would bathe her soft skin with his tongue.

My lovely treasure-

The black desires taking root startled him. Rattled, he slowed his stride.

Oh yes, they were deep beneath the castle now, far off from the corridors the students used. The stone there was darker and cruder, the narrow hallway was cool and dry and lit only by the sparsely spaced torches hung in iron grates along the wall. They stopped inside the shadows between warm circles of light, her body now soft and still in his arms except for her tremors.

“Wh-where are we?” she whispered, peering cautiously from the shelter of his chest, holding in her small hands the lapels of his robes as a child holds her bedding for fear of what lurks beneath her bed.

Somewhere no one will find us, the sinister thought alarmed and thrilled him. The lusty seedlings hidden inside his heart flowered and sighed.

“Somewhere safe,” he murmured back. He let her slide down the length of his body as the mark in his arm seethed. He kept his white hands on her waist to keep her from fainting, he relished the cool slickness of her satin sash and her smallness compared with his height. His fingertips could nearly touch behind her low back. She still held onto his robes, shivering like a sacrifice to the winged gods who breathed fire.

She whimpered, “I wanna go back.”

“Yes-” he cupped her cheek in one wide, warm palm. He tipped up her chin with his thumb. Either her skin was ice cold, or he was on fire.

His hot breath touched her lips as he whispered, “That would be wise.”

He kissed her.

It was gentle and chaste.

Until she opened her mouth in surprise.

Just a little taste, he told himself, as his tongue slipped like a love note to the back of her throat. On reflex she startled and swallowed him, he rewarded her by pressing her back against the textured stone and molding himself to her.

His fingertips trailed her jaw, her neck, her chest – he touched her everywhere a woman longs to be touched.

Softly.

She strained up onto her tiptoes and whimpered into his mouth.

It was the bond-magic, snaking its way around them the same way his tongue coiled jealously around hers. Its energy made him reckless, unscrupulous. Feral.

It made him ache with desire for the one that belonged only to him.

Remembering the way she was dressed, all gleaming bare shoulders and creamy naked thighs, he broke their kiss and took her throat harshly between his lips.

“Armitage!” she gasped and clutched him.

The mark he made there, how forcefully the blood burst the delicate capillaries beneath her skin as he suckled, made her struggle and bleat.

“Stop,” she mewed pitifully, hands scrabbling at his shoulders and along his back, “It hurts-”

When he was satisfied, he did.

“That is enough caterwauling for an evening, I think,” he lifted his head and watched his hand wrap itself lovingly around her throat. Their bodies still embracing, he tilted her face back and spoke very close to her mouth. “Do you mind telling me what you think you were doing, sulking outside the Headmaster’s chambers dressed like a muggle slut?”

She flinched, beautiful tears of fear and confusion and need slipping down her temples onto her freckled shoulders. “I wasn’t-!”

“Don’t lie to me, girl,” he scolded softly before he dipped to steal the wet salt from her neck with quick, open kisses. She shuddered and slackened in his grip, scissoring her small thighs trapped in against the wall together so that he could smell her hot slick.

He rose back up like a wraith swallowing the night and wrung her. Tenderly.

“Answer me, dearest,” his demand was adoring, devoted. Insane. “Tell me why my lady has made herself up like a harlot and come weeping at the very hour I should be here. It’s too perfect to be coincidence, don’t you think so?”

“Pi-piss off, lunatic,” she spat, breathless and glowering, digging her fingers into his strong forearm between her shaking hands.

His Dark Mark raged like it would leap off his skin and kill her. He thumbed her lower lip, wet and lush from his kiss, and smiled. “Ah yes, I see the Gryffindor now-”

She snarled and thrashed.

He held her as easily as if she were an infant swaddled in his loving arms. And she was. His child.

“Ah-ah- would you like me to take you over my knee, little witch?” his thumb continued to sweep pendulously along her soft lip.

It quivered as she gasped.

“Yes, perhaps I should,” he lowered his voice to a sensual simmer and brought their faces even closer.

Again, she scissored her thighs.

More tears dazzled down her temples. She shook her head as best she could with her throat in his soft grip and whined, “No please don’t…”

“Well?” he arched one eyebrow.

She started, “I- was in the library lookin’ for- for answers- to my essay an’- and I saw you in the book-”

“Go on.”

“I thought you were terrible – you are terrible,” she glared at him, even as she spread herself to let his thigh slip with a hush between her legs. “I ca-came to ah-ask Dumbledore- to ask-”

Her lashes fluttered as, all on her own, she pressed tentatively her little cunny against his muscular thigh.

“Armitage…”

“You came to ask him to break the bond?” he felt a swell of masculine pride as she closed her eyes and let her small, untried hips work herself against him. Through his slacks, he could feel she was soused.

She bit her lips and said nothing. She held his arm loosely, her eyes stayed closed while she rutted against him as much as she dared. A comely little blush stained her rounded cheeks.

“What a shrewd little witch you are,” he pressed up into her, relishing the way it made her shudder and clutch her thighs and gasp. The smell of her arousal painted the air around them, he sopped up the tear streaks drying on her temples with his lips before he murmured in her ear, “Still. I will not have my wife parade herself for these randy schoolboys-”

She exhaled hotly and shuddered as he surged and ground into her again.

“If I catch you in another one of these come-fuck-me confections outside my manor, I shall give you a lashing you will never forget,” she succumbed to a full-body conniption, “You will long for the mercy of Madam Beaux’s willow switch. Do I make myself clear?”

She nodded against his shoulder, hiccupping and trembling, with barely any breath. “Yes! Yesyesyes I understand!”

“Excellent,” he let his hand slip softly from her neck and kissed her. Deep and full on her childish cherry mouth.

She rewarded him with her arms clutched tightly about his neck. His big hand engulfed her hip and startled her, but she quickly grew eager for his touch as he trained her to pleasure against his thigh. He skin underneath his slacks was coated in her extract. Beneath his palm on her flat chest, dulled through a bit of sock-batting, he sensed the vivid beat of her heart.

He traced her upper palate with the tip of his tongue and tasted her sigh.

Have her, if you want her, his heart thundered among violent sugared visions of her split open, helpless and limp with her pink tongue lolling and her pretty eyes leaking tears and rolled back in her skull. No one can stop you. It is your right…

His Dark Mark burned him.

Slowly, he peeled their lips apart.

His breath shuddered hotly across her innocent face, as if he’d been running for leagues and leagues. He felt drunk on the black synth waves of impulse as he stared into her; for a moment, he couldn’t remember what sort of man he was.

“Armitage,” she called him. Whisperingly. Sweetly. With so much uncertainty. Her body trembled. Her small slit made beautiful, obscene sounds as she rode his thigh, aching to come.

How could he hurt one so precious?

He traced the arc of her open upper lip with his tongue before he asked, “Do you really think I could harm you- I, who have cared for you almost all your life? Do you think I could bear to hurt you?”

Fresh tears slipped through her lashes. In a small voice, she answered him. “No…”

“No,” he hung his head. Their foreheads touched. The shame of it overwhelmed him as he confessed, “I could sooner harm myself.”

He kissed her. Her fingers went to his hair, she tried desperately to return his love, her tiny tongue wet and unsure as she sent it out to play with his own.

His magic cocooned them, making the corridor intimate and hot. He worked her faster, harder, more fluidly against his thigh as he read her tremors, her gasps and whimpers to make her come. Inside his dark imagination, she was in his lair now, a pretty little virgin laid out on his alter by the wizards who wished to slake his violence. Was that not the very beginning of his ancestors? Was that not the very legacy of the House of Hux?

Was it Dumbledore’s intention all along?

He did not care he did not he did not-

His love came to him, so sweetly. Crying out her pleasure into his mouth as her little sex squelched hotly against his thigh. His heart thundered like a beast’s roaring. He held her and lapped up every shudder, every mewl and whimper, every soft-stuttering sigh.

The hat had given her to him. So he would take her.

He knelt even as she shivered and gasped weakly and clutched his robes.

He lifted her dress.

Layers of dark crinoline made a wreath of fluttering, soft-crinkling shadow around her glowing tan thighs, her panties were a mess of black lace and gleaming slick covering her pussy. She was a gift of smooth, tremoring skin.

He alone would unwrap her.

Her breath caught as he peeled aside the gusset to reveal her small, smooth slit glinting like ripe, pink fruit. His cock thrummed painfully; she dug her fingers into her shoulders and mewed panicked and mesmerized, “Don’t!”

The soles of her patent shoes made hushed, grainy sounds on the stone as his white hands spread her legs. He thumbed her sopping little slit and groaned.

She smelled so good, fresh as warm bathwater, salty like tears. He peeled apart her folds and admired her swollen, throbbing pink flesh as above him she ceased breathing. He heard the low crack-hiss of the torches, and of his ancestors, as he leaned in and down and dragged the hot flat of his tongue along the open length of her slit.

They both moaned.

Her taste was exquisite. Sweet, needy young cunt. His fingers anchored themselves in the taut, slick flesh of her thighs. He lifted her, spreading her wide, baring her fully. She weighed nothing to him. She grappled and gripped his hair and whined panting, “No… please… don’t…”

Crinoline crinkled softly as he ate her, lapping her soft pink lips and suckling them into his mouth. Everything about her was so tiny and delicate. He lavished her flesh before his tongue pressed into her sex. She was tight and dripping like honeycomb. He supped greedily, shifting closer to shore her on his shoulders so that he could touch her.

Her whines soon gentled to whimpers as she pleaded whispering, “Please… please… please…”

He kneaded the small globes of her asscheeks and the sensitive crease where thighs met pelvis as finally his lips sealed around her clit.

It was small, so small. Fragile. Like the petal of a cherry blossom. She bucked and gasped and juddered and panted each time he slipped the tip of his tongue through its indent.

He bullied her gently, savoring her trembling building beneath his mouth and within his hands. Her cunt dripped hot, syrupy slip down his chin and onto the stonework. His mark ached, but he was in ecstasy. His heart beat slow and hard inside his throat and along his cock.

She came again too soon for him, shuddering violently. She coated him generously in her slick as she keened.

With his tongue and with his fingers he probed her clenching openings and drew out her orgasm. Her eyes rolled and she choked on nothing, convulsing before she went limp on his shoulders against the wall.

Tenderly, he stood and guided her down to her knees on the floor his body had warmed for her. Her lashes fluttered, she stared unseeingly up at him, still shaking with fissuring tremors as he gripped her hair at the base of its high tail-style and drew out his cock.

“Open, sweeting,” he coaxed her breathlessly, his red, angry girth pulsing in his hand. “Yes, there’s a good little mudblood. Show me your pretty tongue.”

There were no words to describe the black flutter in his chest when his beautiful little bride let her eyes shut serenely and her head tip back as she stretched out her pink kitten tongue. His breath shuddered hotly, he pumped his length a few strokes and came lurching, all over her face and into her mouth.

“Such a good little girl, Rey,” he panted. He thumbed a bit of thick, white cream from her lashes as he felt his heartbeat wind down. “Swallow, my love. All of it. Yes, like that-”

She blinked sleepily at him through streaks of come. “I’m tired…”

“Mm, is it bedtime, do you think?” he smiled tenderly. His fingers brushed her forehead like a kiss as she yawned sweetly through her nod.

“Obliviate,” he whispered. Then he leaned down.

Their walk through the halls to Gryffindor Commons was a silent one. His bride was cleaned with magic and tucked safely inside his arms. It was late, through the high cathedral windows he saw the half-moon rise over the Forbidden Forest. They met no one until they came to the portrait at the top of a set of long stone stairs.

Its frame was empty except for its scenery. As he approached with his bride it swung aside.

In its absence stood Minerva McGonagall. She glared coldly at him over the rim of her black square-framed glasses. Beside her, her prefect tried to look equally stern.

But the boy – a Weasely, by appearances – was utterly terrified to see the General standing there.

“What have you done to that child,” she whispered. She shielded the Weasley boy with her arm and drew them back as the General stepped inside.

“I will arrive tomorrow at two as we discussed, for a walk with my lady,” the General told her in lieu of an answer. He did not pause his ghostly progress towards a flight of narrow turret stairs. How he knew they led to his wife’s room, he could not say really.

“The boy may be our chaperone, if you insist.”

“I do. And General-” with a quick rustle of her robes, the witch followed him.

Halfway up the turret stairs, he turned and met her.

She stood at the base, staring up at him through her lenses. She was not afraid of him.

How very rare…

“If you are to continue to see Lady- to see Miss Rey while she is at Hogwarts,” she would not call her Lady Hux. “There are two conditions I must impress.”

His brow arched. “Go on.”

“The first is that you are never again to be alone with her. There will be a supervision of my choosing at all times.”

The Weasely boy paled visibly.

The General inclined his head in acknowledgement. “And the second?”

“The second,” she folded her hands in front of her robes and took a steadying breath, “is that you leave her intact while she is here. Gods help that poor child when she graduates,” for a moment, the witch’s face reflected sadness. Then again it became stern. “But until then, she is my charge, and under my protection.”

Boldly, she mounted the first step. “Do not test me in this, General. You will be sorry you ever did.”

His eyes flashed. Oh he did so love a challenge.

Alas-

“Very reasonable, Professor,” he nodded once. Then he gave her a quarter-smile too smug to miss his gloat. “Now, I must put my girl to bed.”

“Very well,” she frowned but did not follow him. He felt her eyes on his back until he reached the top of the stairs.

The other two girl-children were already sleeping peacefully in their beds. In the center of their small room, the charmed roses he sent his bride seemed to glow under the light of the moon pouring in.

“Sleep well,” his bid his lady quietly after he had gently unwrapped her from her dress and tucked her tenderly beneath the covers.

He kissed her cheek, and then her hand.

“Until tomorrow,” he said.

He walked alone along the path that lead from the castle to Hogsmeade Station. The grounds keeper did not accompany him, he carried no lantern and made no light. He saw only by the pale, cool glow of the half-moon washing down over the shadows.

Other than the croak and creak of the late summer insects and the conspiratorial murmur of the wind through the trees, the Forbidden Forest made no sound. Even its most sinister creatures - those that preyed on the weak and the pure-hearted – slithered and crept away from his path. They followed him with their bright mirrored eyes from the tree line until he slipped unimpeded through the charmed iron gates.

They feared he would come back.

From the warm-glowing window of his chambers, the Headmaster had watched him until he disappeared into night’s dark throat.