Oh, Mistress

Narcissa, finished with having her way with Lucius, reached for the long and thin willow wand on the bedside table. She tapped it ever so carelessly against his spell-bound lips to free them, although she did nothing for the heavy chains that bound him to his bed, the manacles that weighed down his wrists and ankles. He whimpered appreciatively in between heavy, gasping breaths.

"Thank you, mistress," he intoned, with all the humility and shyness of a schoolboy.

She only nodded, willfully depriving him of her gaze. Outside of the thresholds of her home, his power and forcefulness were a mere façade. Lucius's true nature was that of a battered puppy, desperate for love and attention.

It must have been some accident of a sick and twisted Fate that he should find himself matched in matrimony to someone who was so innately cold, cruel, and calculating as Narcissa Lumina Lestrange. He couldn't hold a candle to her, not even with a wand and heart filled with hatred.

A husband, Narcissa thought, was merely a vessel by which the bloodlines could be reinforced by the work of the womb of a woman, only she equipped with such great importance and duty. The mere vessel he was, with strong good looks and a large family fortune, he was reduced to her plaything in the domain she ruled with an iron wand.

Lucius, outside of her influence, could be an astoundingly intelligent and acute-minded man who could perpetuate the ruthlessness of his Dark Master. Within his own home, he was prostrate before the ruthless will of his fair-headed Mistress Narcissa. She had bought his submission from him with her stunning patrician beauty and firm mind, the promise of suitable heirs to the Malfoy name, fortune, and reputation. Now, she reveled in it.

Narcissa, who had long moments ago become bored with the great satisfaction she had demanded, rose from his bed and slung about her shoulders a hell-black robe that grazed the ancient floors of his family manse. He watched her silent preparations forlornly, knowing that she would leave him soon. Lucius had not so much parted his lips to beg for her mercy and to be left untied for this night, but she imparted one withering glance of contempt- almost as if she knew what he would ask.

Refusing the role compassionate benefactress by will, she looked away from him again and did not speak. Her jaw was set rigidly, her face a work of stone. She stalked out of the room and left an even colder void behind. She locked the door to the cell-like room she kept him in.

He was a pathetic man, and she would have been moved to pity if that had been an emotion she allowed herself. She was the ice queen of the magical world, a cruel mistress who partook in some grim kind of pride that she had dominated one of the power-brokering men of the pureblood ranks. It did not matter to her that this was a private matter and there was no one to know of her accomplishment.

Anyone and everyone who knew Lucius well enough (but not nearly as well as Narcissa had come to master him and gaining his submission, she thought), would have been horrified by this apparent lapse in his character. He was an actor, an expert at the trickery of seeming what he was not- a free soul who bore the volition of a life. By day and often by night, he was the right hand of Lord Voldemort. Inside the walls of his own home, he was a prisoner. And he liked it, adored it, craved it and could not stop it.

It had displeased the Dark Lord greatly once he was aware that he competed for the service Lucius could provide him, but it had also brought Narcissa into the fold of the Death Eaters. She made herself useful enough to off-set the consequences of her hold on her husband until she could turn Draco over into the tutelage of the great Evil One himself.

Thinking of Draco, Lucius felt his heart sink a little deeper into his chest. There was no way for him to know if he was aware of this secret dynamic of power between his parents, but Lucius could feel shame flaming across his pale cheeks. It humiliated him that the man who guided his son was not soulless, but barely possessed a human enough body to be incarnate. Here he, Lucius Malfoy d'Argne, man of flesh, blood, and power, lay bound in chains set by his beautiful monster of a wife as some other wizard usurped him of his masculine honor.

Hot tears of anguish rolled across his cheeks, scarlet with anger and kept so by the salty paths arcing down his face. He was almost glad that she had left him, so that she could not take pleasure in his pain this once. She always did. He felt himself ready to leap to her defense and say that he could bear it for her liking. If she was so pleased, he would do almost anything. Any demand that she deigned to make upon him was as strong as the law of the very land itself, and he would comply.

Lucius couldn't even bring himself to hate Narcissa for what she had done to him. He was barely a shadow of the man and wizard that he had been as a bachelor, twenty years ago. That was before they married, and she had extracted three years of unconditional, unquestioned submission as the promissory note for his heir. Seventeen years previous to his immediate shame now, she had born him Draco Lestrange Malfoy d'Argne. The son, his son, was perfect enough and he had been pleased. But she had continued to demand so much of him.

When had she broken his spirit and caged it with her whims? Too many years had passed for him to even recall if he had felt that moment, known what he had lost. If he had felt it, he questioned himself, would he have fought back to keep his soul from her grasp? Could he have fought her for it? Her icy hands had snared him so deeply, too early.

He wept still, regret for the young man that he had been before he had become her husband. There was no shortage of things he could bring himself to grieve about- he missed the sweetness and tenderness of being man and wife, the unwavering steadiness of a woman capable of love and loving him, and what he might have become in time had he not spent it bonded to Narcissa.

She could never know, and he would never tell her. But he hated her as fiercely as he needed her now, dependent on the force-feeding of her mean affections. While his thoughts ran a gauntlet marked by loathing and doubt and despair, the locking mechanism of the door broke his concentration with its hollow clicks.

Narcissa, long and elegant and beautiful and fearsome, slipped into the quiet darkness with him. Her wand was clutched in a loose fist, one which he thought would deliver a stinging strike, tapped the bonds in which she had left him. They ceased to exist almost as quickly as she had created them long ago.

She bade him to kneel before her on the floor. He obliged, brushing away what remained of his tears. Stripped of his clothing, his dignity, and his spirit, he hung his head. For once, he avoided her gaze.

"Lucius," she said, using it harshly.

"Oh, Mistress..."