Woman Scorned

He could not help but smile as he strode up the hill, greeted by the sight of his lovely wife sitting in the grass a book propped atop the crest of her very pregnant stomach. The pale moonlight shone on her skin and face, making her radiant as she gazed into the distance. He came to rest besides her following her gaze as she looked down upon the small muggle village in the foothills below.

"I wondered where you had gone. The meeting ran long, Nott kept bring up irrelevant tangents."

"Have you ever sat and watched them as they move about their lives? So convinced of their own superiority that they think themselves above all others, not knowing there is a growing tide of hatred headed their way."

"No, why would I waste my time?" he sneered at her.

"Did you forget the first lesson they taught us in DADA? Know thy enemy"

He took a deep breath looking down upon the small village below. "In the end they will perish, or fall to our boots and serve us, such is the Lord's will and so it will be."

She frowned, resting her hands on the swell of her belly. "But are you sure he's right, Lucius?"

"I have no doubt that he is right. If we let them run about unchecked it will be the end of life as we know it." The moon reflecting off his face made him look like a statue, cold and unreal to her, even as he spoke. "That is why we must join with him, to keep our family strong, to keep our ways and ensure the next line of pure wizarding blood."

The blood rushed from her face as she stood her eyes flashing dangerously at her husband, "So I am nothing more then a brood mare? Someone to be shown off on your arm at parties, and to provide you with an heir?"

"I never said that. You know you are the love of my life, that I would do anything to make you happy. But this must be done to protect our child," he stepped towards her resting his hand over hers. "This child will be strong. It will be allowed to grow up safe knowing all is right with the world."

"And the means support the end result?"

"Perhaps not. But I cannot stand ideally by and watch and wait doing nothing. What about honor and the family name?" He smiled as he felt the baby kick his other hand caressing her face tenderly. "Did you never take muggle history while at school? Have you not read the horrid things they would do to you, to our child if they knew of the existence of magic? How they have hunted us down like vermin in the past. Burnt our kind at the stake only to satisfy their own need to feel superior? They would torture you then kill you simply for being a witch."

She leaned into his hand slightly, resisting his comforting touch in the face of such horrid words, "Surely you over state it, Lucius. They cannot be that horrid."

He sighed deeply taking both her hands is his, leading her back towards the manor, "Come, there is something I think you should see."

She nodded as she followed him, the very conviction in his voice told her there must be something to his agreement with the dark Lord, but she needed to know for herself what it was. She had long agreed with him for the sake of agreement, assuming the man she loved simply held a popular view with most pureblooded witches and wizards. After all even her own mother and father seemed to agree that perhaps Voldemort had the right ideas. But as the time neared for their first child to be born Lucius seemed to become more fanatical about it, and the more she heard of Voldemort's idea's they more they startled her.

He motioned to a chair in his library as he moved to the shelves to find the volume he sought and she couldn't help but admire his lithe frame as he stretched to pull a book down from the uppermost shelf. He seemed to find the page he wanted with ease, as if the place was well marked by repetition of reading. His cool clear voice filled the room as he read from the seemingly ancient tome.

"Now the wickedness of women is spoken of in Ecclesiasticus xxv: There is no head above the head of a serpent: and there is no wrath above the wrath of a woman. I had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon than to keep house with a wicked woman. And among much which in that place precedes and follows about a wicked woman, he concludes: All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. Wherefore S. John Chrysostom says on the text, It is not good to marry (S. Matthew xix): What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colours! Therefore if it be a sin to divorce her when she ought to be kept, it is indeed a necessary torture; for either we commit adultery by divorcing her, or we must endure daily strife. Cicero in his second book of The Rhetorics says: The many lusts of men lead them into one sin, but the lust of women leads them into all sins; for the root of all woman's vices is avarice. And Seneca says in his Tragedies: A woman either loves or hates; there is no third grade. And the tears of woman are a deception, for they may spring from true grief, or they may be a snare. When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil." He stopped a moment looking at her gauging her reaction as he handed her the book even as he resumed speaking. "That is one of the original copies of Malleus Maleficarum, a book they widely used as a model during the burning times. The things they did to their own kind in the name of hunting us, was unspeakable. They are not human Narcissa."

She took book, her delicate fingers running over the leather cover. "You would have us join him so as our children not to suffer as our ancestors have?"

He nodded as he bent to one knee before her, "I would join him so our children and our children's children can live the life we would want them to. So you may teach our daughters to sign and dance and I can teach our sons to be good honorable wizards. If we do this not only is our livelihood is assured, but the livelihood of many generations to come."

He took her hands in his, his gray eyes pleading as they looking into her. She could not help but tremble even as she nodded her head in agreement. "Very well if our child is a girl we shall name her Leaena and if it is a boy let him be named Draco. Let the world know there is not wrath greater than a woman scorned."