Tempus

TEMPUS

by marisol

In the beginning, there was emptiness. Emptiness that consumed always yet remained ever-unsatisfied. She was forever trying to fill this emptiness within herself once she knew it for what it was; knew what it craved. The emptiness had a peculiar taste for sharp, silver eyes that cut deeper than any knife and a regal arrogance that belittled and debased. He was what the emptiness desired most, and he was the only thing that filled it. Only for a moment, of course, but she lived in that one moment, that few seconds of euphoria which she paid for with blood and tears and heartache. Only then had the emptiness every receded.

That is, until the day light had appeared, as if the emptiness had choked on the very life it had consumed, and spit some back up. There it was, a little glimmer of life on the edge of her consciousness that sparkled and shone and demanded her attention from the moment of its arrival. Hope struggling out of Pandora's box of pain and suffering, growing ever more exuberant from moment to precious moment. And, at last, she was filled. At last, the emptiness was no more. At last.

------

"All this pain. It's punishment for my sins against you. I believe that now," she gazes into the center of nothing and everything, unseeing. Her eyes only glitter now, no more tears. No more left. She speaks of many things in these moments. Emptiness and pain and sins. She tells him of the little life that never had the chance to become anything more than a gaping pain within her. She spouts axioms from her muggle religious texts, which had been one of her odd idiosyncrasies for as long as he'd known her. 'Sometimes the muggles have it right,' she would say as they sat around the common room fire. 'Sometimes they've lose their minds.' Presently, she rants again and again about being punished, and deserving her pain. She almost seems to dote on her pain, nourish it so that it may live on. Perhaps so that she may live on. "I believe that with all my being, Vincent."

"I'll kill him for you," he says, puffing up his considerable frame, and slamming a fist into his hand as though it is the only reaction familiar to him.

That awakens her inherent viciousness. If nothing else, she could always rely on her anger. "The way you killed him before? When you found him leaving your wife's bedroom, and practically kissed his coattails for it?"

Her anger is another thing with which he is familiar. Finally, something he knows how to react to. He slips into his mask of belligerence, and notes the comfortable way it fits. "If you weren't such a whore, we wouldn't be in this position." Then he waits, and she doesn't disappoint. She leaves a hand-shaped imprint of her rage displayed across his cheek, and he knows she's alright now. He can forget all this business now. They both can. "Come and have some tea with me, Pansy. We'll sit in the west gallery. It's nice out, today."

Her masks are as masterful as his. Even the glimmer of tears is gone now. The pain is put away for another day, and her smile is bitter, not sad. "Yes, that will be nice, Vincent."

------

Two years later...

She gathers up her sleeveless, black shift, and slips into it swiftly, with the practiced ease of an acquired necessity. His back is turned to her as if the very sight of her disgusts him, when moments before he was insisting that she was all he wanted in this world even while he crushed the breath of life out of her lungs. "I won't do this anymore." A flash of razor-sharp, silver gaze, then nothing but that chilling drawl.

"So, you've conceived again?"

A lie is on the tip of her tongue along with the memory of the taste of her own blood that would follow the lie if she spoke it. "Yes."

Quick as lightening, he whirls around, and utters that spell from before. The one that all the young, dark princes learned from their father early on. The one that had killed her first little glimmer of life. He's surprised, she thinks. Yes, there's definite surprise lurking just there in the infinitesimal lift of his brow when the spell ricochets off its intended target, and crashes uselessly against the opposite wall.

Surprised when she triumphantly declares: "Not this one."

In an instant, he bears down on her, and strikes her across the face, causing her to fall back onto the bed with a crash. "This isn't your decision, you bitch! If you want a little bundle of sunshine, go screw you husband!" He begins to rip at her clothing mercilessly, searching ceaselessly until his hand clasps around the amulet hanging by a thin, strong chain around her neck; invisible to all the senses -even touch- unless you know it's there. He yanks it off in a manner that he knows will cause the most damage. A smirk ghosts across his visage at the pained yelp that escapes her mouth.

He collects himself, and he's standing before her as calmly as if he'd never lost his temper. His silvery eyes glint with malice as he raises his wand a second time. "This will only hurt a second," he purrs, carelessly mocking her with feigned niceties.

"You bastard!" she spits the words at him as though they are venom. She begins to tell him that she hates him, but stops. Hate seems a gift all of a sudden. The words are not enough. Not nearly enough. So she simply waits for the pain and the emptiness to renew again as one might await the arrival of a lover who has been gone so long that their touch has faded from skin, then memory, and finally heart.

Her lover never returns. When she opens her eyes again the world is the same yet oh so irrevocably changed. Draco is sprawled against the same wall that had recently absorbed the blast of his first curse. He rubs at the back of his head, and glares in the direction of the doorway. A firm, reprimanding voice is saying: "Draco Malfoy, you will not harm this child now, or at any point in the future, is that clear?

He stands up hastily, and faces the intruder with all of the obstinacy one can muster after having been knocked very unceremoniously off his own feet. "Mother, you can't be serious?"

"I am completely serious. You will not touch this girl or this child!" Narcissa Malfoy, exuding a soft aura of tremendous power, moves not a muscle as she delivers her pronouncement. Her tone is deadly, yet she does not once raise her voice from her trademark quiet murmur.

"What I will not do is see this whore's bastard child running around without a leash just to satisfy one of your silly whims!" he shouts impudently.

"You do not have a choice in this matter. Leave this room now or I will expel you for this house, and you will never return to it again. There is your choice."

Much to Pansy's immense astonishment, he glares only a second more before merely stalking out of the room with an obedience she has never seen in him.

Relief comes on the heels of his departure, and with it tears, She chokes backs the grateful thanks that she instinctively knows would be a waste of breath to this woman. Instead, she feeds her curiosity with the one question pulsing through her mind. "Why?"

The other woman fixes her with a cold, calculating glance, and Pansy nearly flinches at the sheer amount of power within her gaze. "Time, girl," she says as if it is obvious. She turns abruptly in order to exit Draco's quarters, apparently leaving Pansy to find her own way out. "It's all to do with time."