Chapter 25 - Jay


Diana moaned, and the sound of her pitiful protest drew her more fully out of her stupor. She felt as if she'd been underfoot during a thestral stampede, and she further hurt herself by pulling into a fetal position, protecting the ribs which already felt broken. Almost as an afterthought, she moved her hands over her belly, wondering if her baby was alright.

She heard movement, and looked up to see her captor looming close. She flinched back, groaning as every muscle in her body balked. She narrowed her eyes at him, affronted that this unknown stranger should have taken such liberties with her. Who was he to Stun her?

She looked around the dark room quickly, searching for the tell-tale platinum hair that would confirm her suspicions that this hulk worked for Lucius. Seeing no one else in the room, she looked back at the man, who had gone back to his seat at the table. She moved until she was leaning back against the wall, easing her sore muscles. Now that circulation was coming back, the pins and needles going through her overwhelmed the soreness, and she knew she hadn't been seriously injured.

"Why am I here?" she demanded of the silent thug at the table.

He glanced at her and shrugged. She couldn't interpret the gesture, and she felt her blood pressure rising in indignation.

"Who are you?" she tried, putting as much dignity and authority into her voice as she could under the circumstances. Still, the wizard refused to answer, instead sipping from a cup that was as cracked and chipped as the walls and furniture.

She looked at the door, then struggled to stand, stamping her foot to get rid of the numbness. She took a few faltering steps toward her freedom, only to have her arm yanked hard by the quick-moving wizard. The momentum drew her up close to him, and she gagged at the fetid odor emanating from him. She tried pulling away from him, but that only earned her an unceremonious push to the sofa.

She waited until he returned to his tea, then bolted toward the door once again, ignoring the stiffness in her spine. She yanked the door handle, breaking her nails and scraping her palm when it refused to yield to her. The loud guffaw from the table hurt worse than her hand, and she turned on her heel and faced him down.

"I demand to know why I'm here!" she spat at him. As he continued to laugh, she began to count to ten, mentally forming the words that would turn him into a toad. By the time she reached eight, he'd stopped laughing and was stalking menacingly toward her, his wand drawn and aimed at her.

"Unless you want to be Stunned again, you'll sit quietly on that sofa until I can deliver you to your new home."

Her breath stilled in her throat. Knowing this wizard had nothing to do with Hogwarts, her worst fears were realized.

Lucius was her captor, and she was to be locked away until...

Until what?

Until he managed to kill her and her baby? Until he could turn her over to The Tribe?

She kept silent as she slowly walked to the sofa and sat, prim and proper, watching the wizard take up his cup of tea once again. She stretched out to make herself more comfortable, knowing Lucius wouldn't show up until he could put it off no longer.

For once, she didn't have a ready plan.

---

"Thank you, Severus," Poppy said, putting her dust cloth back into the closet. "And it's good to have you back at Hogwarts."

Severus brushed the residual powder from Poppy's cabinet from his shoulder. "I'm not back."

He left the office and headed down the aisle to Jillian's bed. After seeing Lucius run pell-mell across the campus, he had turned his attention toward helping Poppy and Minerva clean up the mess of Lucius' departure. It had taken almost an hour, because Poppy refused to let them use magic, just in case any of the mess could be saved for its original, medicinal purposes. All for nothing, too. None could be salvaged.

He settled into the chair he'd placed next to Jillian's bed. She'd slept through the whole incident. He studied her even breathing, the slight movement of her eyes under her lids. She must have felt his presence, because her eyes opened, and as she focused on him, she began to smile.

As he shifted to sit at the edge of her bed, Poppy's assistant medical-elf popped up next to Jillian's table. She barely glanced at Jillian and Severus, but began replacing the flowers on the table with fresh ones, and refilled the water pitcher with cold water, drawn from her magical finger. "Good afternoon, Miss Jillian. Good afternoon, Mister Snape. It's good to have you back home again."

"I'm not back," Severus murmured as he slid closer to Jillian. The elf disappeared as Severus leaned in, kissing Jillian. "How are you feeling?"

"Just a little tired," she answered. "Otherwise, I'm fine. What happened to me?"

"As best as we can put together," he replied, "you were given a potion that rendered you unconscious." He decided she didn't need to know that it was probably Diana who'd given it to her, nor that it was an abortion potion.

She frowned. "I remember some things," she said softly. "I remember running into Diana. She was coming back to the castle from somewhere... probably Hogsmeade. We had a row. She was upset with me. No!" She sat up abruptly. "No, she was upset before I saw her. It wasn't me, it was something or someone else that had upset her."

"What else do you remember?"

She looked at him, her eyes coming back into focus. She frowned, then shook her head in defeat. "Nothing, Severus. Just that I think she raised her wand to me, but I can't be sure of that."

He needed to speak to Diana. He didn't want to; the less he had to deal with her, the better he liked it. But it might be easier to read Diana than Lucius. Though he knew Lucius had been lying back in Poppy's office, he couldn't pinpoint exactly which statements were lies. He needed to interrogate Diana, then compare stories. Between the both of them, Severus should be able to ferret out the truth.

Once and for all, he had to know if Jillian was truly in danger, or if he was merely being overprotective. After all, Jillian should know her sister well enough to know what she was all about. Still, wasn't it Jillian's way to deny what she didn't want to see? Would she acknowledge the worst of her sister?

He talked to Jillian of inconsequential things, passing the time of day, until his silken voice lulled her back to sleep. Only then did he get up from her bed and leave the hospital wing, heading to the wing where Diana's room was.

Binns passed silently by on his way to the Great Hall. "Ah, I heard you were back, Severus. Very good news."

"I'm not back!"

---

Narcissa looked over the dining table with a careful eye. The elves had outdone themselves, and she felt just as proud as she might have felt had she laid the table herself. She checked her appearance in the mirror behind the sideboard, and saw the flush of happiness glowing under the surface of her skin. She smiled.

She eagerly waited on the arrival of her husband, wondering idly when the last time it was that she'd anticipated his company so happily. But he'd shown her things last night that she would never have believed she'd enjoy so much. She had discovered a need deep inside her she'd buried so deeply, it might never have come out to see light if Lucius hadn't strayed, if she hadn't wanted to save their marriage.

No man had ever looked at her before with that gleam in his eye that said he wanted to drag her down in the mud and soil her. Not the elegant and beautiful Narcissa Malfoy nee Black, whom most men realized was out of their leagues.

But Lucius...

Lucius had made her feel human, so alive, so blemished... She had no idea until last night how burdensome it had been to carry around the image that had been forced upon her. The model of perfect beauty, shoved onto her shoulders by her parents at an age too young to realize how they were molding her; it was a heavy aloofness she'd learned to tolerate. Always with the perfect hair, the artistic makeup, the unchipped and flawless manicured nails. Her wardrobe was impeccable, and should the slightest wrinkle or stain appear, her house-elves had been trained to spirit her away to her dressing room for repairs. Anything less would be... not perfect.

But with a few choice words, words she'd only ever heard in reference to the lowest level of witch, or sometimes whispered in disdain about the skanky whores of Knockturn Alley...uttered from the noble and arrogant lips of Lucius... straight to her ears... She'd melted like ice in hell, and to be treated like a slut from the one she trusted and loved...

She'd never again be the same Narcissa. She felt as though she and Lucius were once again on their honeymoon. And now her heart skipped a beat, because Lucius was coming through the Floo in the parlor. Narcissa ran to the room, a wide and sincere smile already on her face, when she noticed the bundle Lucius carried into the room.

As he dumped it impassively on the divan, he turned to his wife. "A minor inconvenience, my love. We'll make sure the elves handle it all, and we need not be bothered any more than absolutely necessary."

She looked more closely at the now-moving bundle on the divan. As she recognized the face that turned toward her, her eyes narrowed and her hands clawed into fists. Diana!

"What is that witch doing here, in our home?" She barely got the words out. Was this part of allowing her husband to humiliate her? Was this what he wanted in a submissive woman? How much was she supposed to take? That she should smile when he waved his whore under her nose?

"Please, Narcissa," Lucius said, turning her in his arms and catching her eyes. "I promise you, I neither have, nor want to have anything to do with her. But due to circumstances beyond my control, she must remain here for the next seven months, at least. After that, I should have everything lined up to get her out of our lives forever. But until then, she must be watched carefully."

She ground her teeth together, striving for patience. "And why must she be watched? Why must we be the ones to watch her?"

Lucius turned toward the doorway. "Eldred," he called softly. Immediately, an almost human-looking elf appeared. Bowing to acknowledge Lucius' summons, he moved to the divan and lifted the semi-conscious Diana into his arms. "Thank you, Eldred," Lucius said. "To the room downstairs you prepared earlier."

The elf left with his bundle, and Lucius turned back to Narcissa. She'd been silently stewing, but she could now see the sincerity in Lucius' face. Enough to at least give him the benefit of doubt, she supposed. She quietly waited for him to make his explanation.

"Narcissa, she is claiming to be pregnant."

She sized things up immediately. "It's yours?"

"I believe so, my love. But because of things that happened yesterday, I have to assume that by now the Ministry has been told of my attempt to administer an abortion potion to a pregnant woman. They'll be watching me carefully to make sure this baby is born when it's supposedly due."

"You're telling me the Ministry is going to come here and take you away? For giving that witch a... that potion?"

"No, my love, they can't. I did not administer the potion; they'd have to prove someone else did it on my request. In addition, the potion wasn't administered to Diana. It was mistakenly given to her sister, who, as far as I know, is not pregnant. Therefore, no contravention of the abortion law has taken place."

"So why are we burdened with her?"

"She must give birth to that baby, Narcissa. You know the penalty I'd face if she claimed I caused her miscarriage or abortion. We must house and feed her, see to her and her unborn child's needs, in order to keep the Ministry from harassing us all. Once she has the baby, I will remove her from our lives forever."

"You sound as though you plan on killing her, Lucius. You cannot take the child's mother away from him."

"She will not keep the baby. Either she willingly gives the baby up to her sister or an orphanage, or we forcibly abduct the child. We'd only be doing it a favor. Diana is no one's idea of maternal."

Narcissa turned on her heel and left the room, heading up the ornately curved stairway to her bedroom. She didn't know when she'd last felt so angry, but still, she couldn't allow herself to react to his news. Not in his presence, anyway. She'd stew, get it out of her system, then present a calm and serene persona when he joined her tonight.

Then she'd take it out on his hide, the first time he turned his back on her...