The Mystery Wife

Draco was standing beside the Dark Lord when the prisoners were brought in.

"Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, and Severus Snape," the Dark Lord crooned. "Never very loyal to me, were you, any of you?"

Draco's father tried to open his mouth to protest, and it was immediately sewn shut. He tried to scream through it, and Draco's mother was screaming as well, screaming for it to stop, begging. Breaking.

Snape continued to stand there defiantly, apparently unable to do anything else.

"Go on, Draco," the Dark Lord crooned. "You know what I want."

Draco couldn't. He couldn't.

"Do it, Draco, or their torments will look like a Sunday walk in the park beside your own."

Bellatrix screamed with laughter and wound herself around the Dark Lord sinuously. They kissed, and the wand in Draco's hand trembled. He thought about taking a shot. He was close. He could save everyone with one shot, just one, if he could work up the nerve...his mother was crying, his father was screaming through a sealed mouth, and Snape was watching Draco calmly, and somehow that was worst of all.

"You were the master of the Elder Wand," Snape mused, shrugging off his bonds and walking toward Draco. "There was a time when you could have challenged the Dark Lord and won. How many people need not have died in this war, if you had done so?"

"I didn't know," Draco said, turning away. His throat was tight.

"How many people did you torture on the Dark Lord's orders, Draco?"

"Stop. Please."

The room around them was darkening, Lucius' screams and Narcissa's sobs fading away to nothing. He was alone with Snape, who kept shifting to his female form and back again.

"How many, Draco?" he/she continued mercilessly. "Ollivander? Yaxley? That Muggle Studies teacher, what was her name?"

"Stop..."

"Crabbe, dead..."

"Stop," Draco rasped, closing his eyes, covering his ears. Sevanna took another step forward, and he smelled the faint, spiced perfume of her hair.

"How many bodies did they pile up in the Great Hall?"

"STOP!"

He tried to shove her away, only to find she was too close, winding her arms around his waist. Rage, pain and something twisted and perilously close to desire were twining in him like serpents, venomous and corrosive. Her mouth was moving, that melting dark voice insinuating, her body was pressing against his, all softness, now, only one way to stop her mouth and he did, he kissed her, hard and angry, biting her lip until she bled.

She met him, she matched him, fierce and sweet and finally, exquisitely yielding, drawing him down, enfolding him in her limbs, taking him deep inside her and he wanted her to scream...

"Draco," she said sharply, impatiently.

"Not like that," he growled insistently, tugging her down onto the bed, pulling her closer, rolling on top of her. He blinked. Somehow, that wasn't the way it had just been. They'd already been lying down, hadn't they, and he'd been driving into her...

"Draco," she snapped.

His eyes flew open.

Oh, shite.

Sevanna was looking up at him, amusement and irritation warring on that beautiful face. Draco had her pinned quite firmly beneath him, her wrists over her head, though she'd managed to get her omnipresent wand out. And the unmistakable evidence of his arousal was currently pressing into her hip.

She shot him with a light Stinging Hex, and he scrambled off her and gathered the blankets around him hastily. Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, shite, oh, Merlin...

"Time to get up, Mister Malfoy," she drawled, that dark silk voice a siren's. Draco felt himself blushing to the roots of his hair.

I'm up. I'm about as up as it's possible for me to get.

Oh, bugger THAT. There's snark, and then there's suicide.

"Sorry," he replied instead, pulling the shreds of his dignity around him along with the blankets. "I was dreaming. What time is it?"

"Somewhere in the vicinity of six in the morning," she replied, sounding almost cheerful about that. Madwoman. She got up, folded her hands behind her and started pacing like a metronome. "We have a lot of ground to cover today. We need a convincing disguise for you, we need to close out our old Gringotts accounts, and we have a considerable amount of shopping to do. That last, however, is better done in Paris. New wands for both of us, and new robes for me."

Draco glanced at the wand he'd picked up during that last battle in Hogwarts. He didn't even know whose it was, although judging from the bodies around it at the time, it was probably a Death Eater's.

His own wand was in Potter's hands. Both his, and the Elder Wand.

"A new wand for me can't be bought, here," he said flatly. "It'll have to be in Paris." He studied the pacing Sn--Sevanna, and shook his head. "You, on the other hand, need new clothes before you can even be seen in Diagon Alley."

Sevanna snorted, sounding a good deal like her older self. "No one in Diagon Alley will be paying my clothes any particular attention today. I could show up naked, and everyone would assume it was just part of the general revelry. There will be a festival atmosphere now that the Dark Lord is finally dead, there will be dancing and partying in the streets, and the only beings likely to notice us for exactly who and what we are are Ollivander and the Gringotts goblins."

She pursed her lips pensively. "Ollivander, we will have to avoid like the bloody plague. The Gringotts goblins, on the other hand, are likely to be sympathetic to two disguised Death Eaters. They have little love for Harry Potter, between his foray into bank robbery and the apparent repossession of the sword of Godric Gryffindor, a goblin artifact of some note. No, they backed the Death Eaters during the war, and Potter has offended them personally. I can guarantee you, they will be the only residents of Diagon Alley not celebrating today. Come down to breakfast; it's already on the table," she said, that prowling walk taking her out of the room.

Draco made a mad scramble for his clothes, before he followed her.