Cold Comfort

It was an outrageous idea, not to mention cruel and uncivilized. But after two years of terror and mayhem, the morality of the average witch and wizard had deteriorated. Only a few liberals objected when Undersecretary Umbridge announced the proposal. Since those people were the same ones who advocated freeing house-elves and passing werewolf anti-discrimination laws, no one listened to them.

Those Death Eaters who had miraculously managed to be captured rather than killed were bound with the same spells that enslaved the elves. Then they were auctioned off.

The idea of witches and wizards being enslaved would have repulsed Katie Bell two years ago. Even last year, she would have conceded that it was justice but hardly want to participate in the system herself. But that was before Angelina died. Before Fred was tortured to death. Before George killed himself rather than live without his twin. Before Oliver was murdered.

It was Oliver’s death that upset Katie the most. At least Angelina and the twins had been engaged in the war, had fought He-Who-Still-Should-Not-Be-Named. Their deaths made sense; Oliver’s did not. All Oliver had wanted to do was play Quidditch. There was no reason for anyone to cast the Killing Curse on him.

Oh, back at Hogwarts, Katie had joked about it. The others had as well. When Oliver veered into the second hour of his explanation on the ideal timing of the Hawkshead Attacking Formation, how often had she leaned over to Angelina and whispered, “Wish someone would Avada him?”

She could not take back the words, not without an illegal time-turner. So Katie would do the next best thing, she would make Oliver’s murderer pay. Oh, she didn’t know who’d killed him. But one Death Eater was as guilty as another. They’d all tortured and killed people who didn’t deserve it.

When Katie saw Marcus Flint up on the auction block, she was surprised. She’d figured he was the type who’d fight to the death rather than allow himself to be captured. If there was anyone Katie wanted to suffer – besides the actual killers of her friends – it was Flint.

Alicia grabbed her arm when Katie raised the placard bearing her name. Katie shook her off and ignored her hissing.

Even in defeat Flint looked intimidating. There was no competition for him. He didn’t cost Katie more than one month’s salary.

As soon as her apartment door was closed behind them, she pointed her wand at Flint and spoke the words of the Cruciatus Curse for the first time in her life.

Flint screamed and collapsed to his knees.

Katie was not a sadist, hence the spell did not sustain itself for very long.

It was for Oliver, she reminded herself. Oliver, who’d died a lonely death. Oliver, whose passion for life – all right, for Quidditch – had been erased from this world for absolutely no reason. Still, the sound of Flint’s screams and the look of agony on his face made her want to look away, made her want to take a long, hot bath.

Flint didn’t speak to her and Katie had nothing to say to him. Truthfully she didn’t even have any work for him to do. Rather than leave him home to sleep or go through her belongings, Katie thought of things to occupy his time.

Her small apartment looked like a photo out of a magazine; that’s how clean and neat Flint kept it. She taught him how to knit, because she knew he would hate it and because it would keep him busy.

Marcus Flint knitting was an absurd sight, an absurd idea. Those big hands and muscular forearms should be throwing quaffles half away across a Quidditch pitch, not delicately twirling needles over yarn. But the scarves and gloves Flint produced were perfect, proving that Flint failed at nothing. She had to remind herself that Flint wasn’t some dark god, that he was fallible. After all, he’d failed to choose the winning side in the war.

Katie spent more money feeding Flint than he earned. She was seriously considering selling Flint when it happened.

She didn’t have the stomach to torture him. Really, he was living perfectly well. Boredom was the only punishment Flint was receiving. Surely this wasn’t what the Ministry had had in mind.

She didn’t know why she let it happened. She didn’t know what she was thinking. Maybe she wasn’t thinking, only reacting to pheromones or whatever. Or maybe she was thinking about how Oliver would have spent his twenty-second birthday. Maybe it was due to a PMS-induced hormonal imbalance. Maybe she was lonely. Maybe she was just horny.

There was a collar around Flint’s neck, courtesy of the Ministry. The collar served no purpose but to humiliate him, to remind him that he’d lost. Katie could have removed it, but she didn’t. She liked the way the leather and steel band looked on him.

In the mornings, before she was fully awake and conscious of all that had happened, the sight of Flint scared her. Every day, for exactly two seconds, he was the same terrifying figure he’d been back at Hogwarts. Then, every day, she saw the collar and was reassured that he was harmless now.

Flint leaned across Katie to reach her dinner plate. His expression was blank; after three months, he was used to cleaning up after meals – although Katie still cooked because Flint’s attempts to cook rendered food unfit for a troll.

The little silver ring at the front of his collar caught Katie’s attention and she looped her finger through it. The action served to pull Flint’s face closer to her.

He wasn’t handsome, not like Oliver had been. But he was taller and his shoulders were broader and his arms were more muscular. His body language was different, too. Oliver had always projected either manic enthusiasm or nervous tension. Flint’s body was utterly still…calm…confident…

Maybe it was the glass of wine she’d had with the chicken teriyaki. Maybe it was the fact that Flint was a decent looking young man and she’d been celibate ever since Oliver’s death nearly one year ago.

She kissed him. Just one soft brush of her lips against his.

Somehow she ended up on the table with Flint’s tongue in her mouth and his cock between her legs.

It was wrong. She was betraying Oliver’s memory. She wasn’t moving on with her life with someone nice like Lee; she was fucking his old enemy. But Oliver and the war mattered less and less as her body’s arousal grew, until she stopped thinking and concentrated on only feeling.

She cried afterwards, while Flint cleaned the dinner dishes the muggle way. She wished she could tell herself that it wasn't her fault, that it was all Flint's fault. But, like a house-elf, Flint was bound to obey her. If she'd ordered him to stop, he would have had to. If anything, she was the one who'd taken advantage of him.

That was the thought that comforted her. No one would ever know about it, except herself and Flint. And Flint couldn't tell anyone if she ordered him to keep it a secret.

If anyone ever found out, Katie’s reputation would be ruined. It wasn’t that she’d had sex with her slave – from what she’d heard, that was quite common – it was that she’d fucked the man who could very well be Oliver’s murderer.

Flint invited himself into her bed that night. Since her apartment only had one bedroom, he'd been sleeping on the couch in the living room. But from that night on, he walked into her room and stretched out beside her without saying anything.

It annoyed her that he dared to assume he could share her bed just because of one mistake she’d made. It bothered her even more that he was correct, that she wanted to feel his body next to hers still. She told herself, “Oliver’s spinning in his grave.”

Katie was too embarrassed to talk to him. She simply turned away from him and drifted to sleep. When she awoke, however, she found Flint's arm curled around her waist and his erection pressing into her thighs.

She scrambled out of bed and grabbed her wand off the nightstand.

She’d dreamt of Oliver, of the nervous excitement on his face when he’d asked her to marry him after Puddlemere United won the League championship. They’d made love after she said yes. And now she couldn’t remember how it’d felt, but she could remember the feel of Flint perfectly.

Flint's scream as he awoke to the Cruciatus Curse sickened her, literally as well as figuratively.

"Scourgify," she said, and the mess on the bedroom carpet disappeared.

A monster - she was becoming as bad as the Death Eaters themselves. Katie fled to the bathroom. There's was nothing left in her stomach to vomit, but she stayed hunched over the toilet for ten minutes anyway.

It wasn’t Flint’s fault, it was hers. Fucking Flint had been wrong; torturing him was even worse. She wished she’d died along with Oliver and Angelina and the twins. What was the point of her life if she was going to degrade it this way?

"Don't talk to me," she rasped, when she heard Flint's footsteps behind her.

Flint didn't say a word.

Katie managed to shower, dress, and Apparate to work. She didn't remember Apparating to work, though; she only remembered Disapparating from her bedroom at nine o'clock and then Apparating in her living room at five o'clock.

Flint was sitting on the couch, a book on his lap and a pile of scarves beside him. He looked at her without saying anything.

Katie couldn't bring herself to look into his eyes.

She couldn’t bear to see whether he hated her, or worse, whether he pitied her.

But after dinner, she again reached for him. He neither protested nor resisted. Then again, the pain-tinged pleasure his body inflicted on hers was all the protest-revenge-satisfaction he could want.

She closed her eyes, but she could never pretend he was anyone else. He sounded-tasted-felt differently from the other men she’d been with. He was the best and Katie knew there was something wrong with her for thinking that. She was a disloyal whore; if Oliver could see her, wherever he was, he was surely cursing her name.

It became a nightly ritual. Katie could never look at Flint in the mornings, but she always went to sleep in his arms.

It felt so good to have his strong arms around her, to drift to sleep listening to his steady heartbeat. Flint never tried to ruin her illusion of peace by talking to her.

She came to her senses by the end of the month. It was madness. There was always a knowing look in Flint's dark eyes now, his lips always curled into a smirk. Soon Katie could only look at him in bed, in the dark.

His very life depended on her good will, but she was the one who needed him. She depended on him, and he knew it. If she wasn’t a grieving almost-widow and he wasn’t a Death Eater, she would have thought she was falling in love with him. She wanted him to whisper compliments and declarations of love, like Oliver used to do. But she didn’t want him to be Oliver. She didn’t want Oliver anymore. The memories of her relationship with Oliver were purely knowledge rather than feelings now. She knew that she’d loved him, but she didn’t remember being eager to get home to him every day.

Something had to be done. She couldn't continue to live her life this way. If Angelina could see her know, she'd be ashamed of her. Oliver was probably rolling in his grave. The twins were probably working on a way to haunt her.

It was Alicia, who'd always been against the idea of owning Flint, who suggested a solution to Katie's problem. "My uncle is looking for workers," she said. "Not many wizards want to work in the caves, and muggles ask too many questions."

So Katie sold Flint to Alicia's great-uncle.

Flint's smirk slipped from his face when she informed him of the news. "You're bluffing," he said, but he didn't sound like the old, confident Flint from school.

She wanted to believe Flint liked her…loved her…that he wanted to live with her for the rest of their lives. She wasn’t foolish though. She knew that any dismay in Flint’s voice, any worry on his face, was because he hated the prospect of working in the mines. Not because he’d miss her. Not because he loved her.

"No, Flint, I'm not. I never want to see you again. And don't bother telling stories; there won't be anyone to listen where you're going."

He didn’t say anything to her; not even to insult her. If he’d begged or pleaded, Katie might have changed her mind. If he’d suggested they run off to America together, she might have gone. But he only sneered once then ignored her.

The first night without Flint, Katie couldn't sleep. She was too used to the feel of Flint's body next to her, and the sound of his breathing, to fall asleep without him.

She cried.

The next day, at work, she fell asleep at her desk and dreamt Oliver kept trying to push her off her broom during a Quidditch game against Slytherin. She dreamt she fell and Flint refused to catch her. She dreamt he smirked at her while she lay immobile on the Hogwarts pitch.

The next night Katie discovered that a bottle of wine before bed was a perfectly adequate substitute for Flint's arms.

She had a new ghost to haunt her.