A Moon for the Misbegotten

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

Part II- Seduction

“Well? How is it?”

“Well enough, well enough. But I warned you from the beginning. His mental state has never been exactly what one might call dependable. Add to that all the stress of training, and even the normal things people of his age must cope with: hormones, school.... I am not attempting to imply anything, I merely suggest that you keep a careful eye on him. He has been so successful to date, it would be a true shame to lose him because of a misjudgment in character.”

“If a breakdown were imminent, what do you think would be the most likely thing to trigger it?”

“Well, as I said, it is truly nothing to be too concerned with, if you are careful....”

“The trigger, Clann.”

“Ah, yes, well, judging simply from his reactions and the magical feedback, I would have to say.... the girl.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. Although, and I say this strictly from one professional to another, I don’t think that the methods you are employing are the wisest in this particular....”

“You train in your way, Clann. I’ll train in mine.”

Her icy anger evident in every line and angle of her thin body, Bellatrix Lestrange drew her robes around her tightly and swept out of Endelfrid Clann’s study with all the dignity of a condemned queen.

Endel rose wearily from his chair and stretched, then closed the door quietly after her. She was right, he supposed. A mind-magic specialist knew little about how to discipline young Death Eaters. As a half-breed himself (it was amazing the mixes that could be produced using magic if one was so inclined, although anyone who made explicit mention of Endel’s merrow ancestry was likely to find that magic could effect the mind in more bad ways than good), he always considered himself lucky to still be alive after more than ten years as an adviser to those Death Eaters who were still operating in stealth.

Steering his mind deftly away from such thoughts and memories, Endel paced slowly back to his desk and stared heavily at the roiling Pensive. With another deep sigh, he raised his wand and gently stirred the shimmering surface. The girl’s wide-eyed face, slightly blurred and shining from having traveled between too many minds, swam fluidly into view.

It did not bode well for young Blaise, this shining image. Endel had seen stronger minds break sooner under the sort of unseen pressure Bellatrix was exposing him to. Such strong unconscious idolatry, and of one so obviously unworthy of receiving it, was clearly a subconscious attempt at escaping the unbearable tension his mentor was placing on him.

No. It did not bode well at all.

ooooooooooo

She felt so cold. So freezing, shivering cold. And sore. The bruises throbbed in time to the dull pounding ache in her hands, which were swollen and tender from the raw gashes. She had never imagined anything like this. It seemed like she ought to be screaming. But really, she just felt very, very tired.

Suddenly, like a mirage springing from the desert, the boy was there. His presence was antithesis to the ice within her. Everything about him was burning, from the fiery black of his shark eyes to the sweat that she could see standing out on his forehead as he leaned against the door, gasping for breath. The dark room seemed blurry and distant, swimming like some underwater cave. She heard herself say something desperate, pleading, and stretched her hands mindlessly out to his heat, feeling like a moth drawn to a candle flame.

And he took her into his warmth, surrounded and trapped her. He whispered something to her, but it was lost in the pounding pulse of blood in her ears, which washed away the world like an ocean tide.

And then he was muttering softly, brushing fingers against her wounds and bruises, and they seemed to mist over and fade away at his touch. She stood and trembled, her bright eyes following his every movement, with a feverish devotion. Many minutes later, he drew his hands away and leaned back on his heels, studying her now-downcast face.

“Well, little girl,” he said mockingly, “What in Merlin’s name have you been up to?”

She looked up at him, startled.

“I... don’t know,” she answered, and fainted dead away.

When Tally woke up again, the boy was crouched facing the farthest corner of the dark classroom, his ever-present tattered bag beside him. Smoke was rising gently from in front of him in tiny streams that curled and twisted. They seemed to be trying to spell out a message in the air... but one that Tally could not read. She tried to stand, but her legs would not support her, and her head was spinning so fast that she seemed to be floating, somewhere dark and unending. Once she was back on the solid ground again, she pushed against the floor and crawled until she was beside the boy.

“Who are you?” she asked, quiet and curious, her head cocked upward, the better to take in his face.

“Here, hold this,” he answered without even glancing at her face, thrusting a small black bowl filled with a greenish, sloshing liquid toward her. “Since you’re here, you might as well be of some use.”

It was either take the bowl or let it go and watch it shatter on the floor. Tally leaned forward and cradled it in her hands just before he let it go. The movement brought her much closer to him than before and she could see the bowl that sat in front of him. Almost, but not quite, against her will, she leaned in still farther to see the contents.

At first, it looked like mud. Then, it took on the distinctive sheen of quicksilver; just as fast, it shifted to aqua blue water, then to a bundle of writhing fluid which was the rippling shades of fire. Mesmerized, Tally watched the mad kaleidoscope metamorphosis taking place inside the bowl . Unbeknownst to her, Blaise looked down at her wide eyes and bright hair, shining in the constantly changing light, and smiled.

Her grip on the bowl was slowly loosening as she stared with wonder into the charm Blaise was concocting. They never made anything this amazing in classes, not even in Potions. This was obviously advanced magic, and arcane. Despite her relative inexperience in the magical world, Tally could see that this thing was neither potion, nor primitive amulet, nor one of the magical objects sometimes used to focus and intensify spells. It was something else entirely, something new and wonderful that defied description.

Seeing her half-glazed eyes as she fell under the magic of the charm, Blaise reached out and took the bowl she was holding from her distracted grip. At his touch, she seemed to wake with a start, and stared up at him from her crouch on the floor.

“What is it?” she whispered in awe. Blaise smiled to behold her wonder, remembering, in some distant corner of his mind, the first time he had seen a blood charm being made. He pushed the bowl back into her willing hands, and steered them firmly toward the simmering charm.

“See for yourself.” She sat up slowly and stared at the fluid in her grip for one long moment, and then smoothly and decisively poured it into the bowl in front of her. There was a mighty hissing, but instead of a huge cloud of steam enveloping the both of them, as she half expected, a tiny stream of the fiery mixture slowly snaked its way up into the air in front of her. It threw everything in the dim room into sharp relief with its shimmering glow and made long, eerie shadows dance madly around them both.

The charm was even more mesmerizing than before as it undulated slowly in front of Tally’s face, like a fern trapped in an underwater current. Without warning, it struck out at her, faster than a viper. But before it could touch her, the boy was between them. Aiming for Tally’s face, it instead latched firmly onto his arm, burning a hole through his robes and burying itself in his flesh. She could only look on as the boy’s eyes fluttered quickly shut and a satisfied smile, so different from the smirk he usually wore, stole across his face. His breath escaped in a quiet gasp and a small stain of his blood spread out like a blooming flower from the tiny squirming snake.

Tally looked at that familiar, ecstatic expression calming his face and seized her chance.

“Boy,” she whispered, “what’s your name?

“Little girl,” he hissed, “don’t even try.”

ooooooooooo

It was not the last time she was to help him with one of his strange spells. She knew it was probably dangerous, for she had not forgotten the strange and vicious beating she had received in the dark from Merlin knew who as she walked through the halls to meet him that first night, and the quiet voice that had whispered hatred and threats as she fell to the floor. It ought to have scared her. But it didn’t. Rather, she was... excited. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before, not to innocent, silly little Natalie. Her whole family, a mixture of Ravenclaws and Slytherins, had thought her a Hufflepuff for sure. Quite the disappointment. But Gryffindor, well, that wasn’t much better, of course. She was the stupid one in the family, meant for nothing very good. At first she had seemed to be a Squib, not showing her magic until she was eight and just beginning to understand the shame of being ordinary. She still wasn’t very good at magic, at least, her professors didn’t think so, and was only mediocre at best in Quidditch. She knew it, too.

But the boy... the boy didn’t know that. The boy didn’t know who she was, or even what House. She hadn’t been wearing her tie or badge that first night, on account of the banquet, and was careful to avoid wearing them afterward. Slytherin, of course, just like her mother and brother and every other smart, wonderful person in her family. Clever and devious and powerful and mysterious. Everything she wasn’t, and could never become.

The boy didn’t know that, either. He had bound her by blood, the strongest magic there was, and he had called her back. The boy saw something different in her. Maybe even something... special. He wanted her. She flushed nervously with pride at the very thought. And what he was doing, well, it wasn’t meant for stupid little children, that much was clear. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. True magic, uncontrolled and wild, not the dry and dusty incantations from bland schoolbooks or scrolls that they were taught during school.

Most nights, though, the boy didn’t want to work on his spells. Rather, he would set her to bottling or brewing other ingredients over a small blue fire while he studied tattered scraps of parchment from his school bag. But she didn’t mind. The ingredients were strange, oddly colored things that she had only seen in glimpses on hidden shelves at the apothecary’s shop as the tottery old man scuttled into one of his dank storerooms. These rare delicacies were never meant for students: Re’em blood and manticore venom and Hippocampus eggs. But the boy gave them to her, seemingly without concern, and told her how to prepare them for the next spell. It gave her a feeling of power that she had never known before. He trusted her.

He wouldn’t tell her his name. Somehow, they never seemed to meet in the halls or outside, and she made sure to always keep her hair tied back and her face obscured by her goggles during Quidditch games. She sat with her back to the Slytherin table during meals. If he even suspected that she was a Gryffindor. Ugh. Natalie shuddered at the thought. He would never speak to her again. He would break the blood bond and send her away and she would never know who he was, never see another amazing spell take shape in the shadowy classroom, never again feel the wild rush of raw magic flooding through his body beside her... It didn’t bear thinking about. But after all, she was just a third year, and she was almost certain he was in sixth or seventh. The was no reason for him to see her during school. Surely she was safe.

Her grades were suffering, of course, and her already shaky Quidditch flying was hurting under the pressure of too many sleepless nights. The Captain, Ronald Weasley, was furious at her, she was sure of it. But she couldn’t stand to stop going to the boy at night. It was more amazing than anything she had ever been part of before, and magical like nothing else in this supposedly magical world was. Even Quidditch looked pale by comparison. Her only other consolation during Ronald’s furious rants was that even Tally’s idol, Ginevra Weasley, who was the best Chaser on the team and Ronald’s own sister, seemed to be flying worse than usual.

But none of it seemed to matter in the slightest, not the Captain’s anger and not her parents’ wrathful Howlers as teacher after teacher wrote home about her flagging class work. No, none of it mattered at all, because one night, the boy took her out on the roof.

ooooooooooo

It was like nowhere she had ever been before. On top of the North Tower, perched on the very edge of the gutter, she could see faint glittering lights from windows far below, whose twinkling brilliance was beginning to be matched above her head by the emerging stars. She let out a sigh and smiled happily up at the boy, who sat beside her with his long legs dangling right off of the slanted pinnacle of the tower. Strangely, he smiled back at her, and then turned to observe the clear sky above.

“So, little girl, what do you think?”

“Oh, it’s wonderful!” she answered fervently. “Better then Quidditch!” Tally froze, inwardly cursing her slip. But the boy didn’t seem to have noticed, merely continuing his survey of the darkening horizon. Still, perhaps it would be safer to change the subject. “So,” she said, her voice sounding forced, “why are we here?” He didn’t answer. The silence grew longer, and she began to shift from side to side uncomfortably, making her perch on the roof even more precarious.

“Stop that,” he said absently, but with little of the usual annoyance. She hurriedly stilled her motions and remained frozen, staring up at him. The last glow of sunlight had long ago slipped away, and the sky was shaded somewhere between darkest blue and black. Suddenly, she felt his body go rigid beside her and he lifted his hand to point beyond the trees.

“Look,” he commanded, his hoarse voice quiet in her ear.

For a moment, she thought that the sun, impossibly, was rising again. But it was far to dim too be the sun, too dim and too red. And yet, how could it be anything else? All she could glimpse through the trees of the Forbidden Forest was a glowing edge, rising slowly and surrounded by its own shimmering incandescence. She stood up quickly to get a better view and the blood rushed to her head, making her dangerously dizzy. But she stepped firmly away from the edge of the tower and clambered up the rough slates of the steep roof, toward the summit. It rather reminded her of the oak trees she used to climb when she was very, very small. Once at the top, she wrapped her arms around the peak of the tower and caught her breath.

“What is it?” she murmured in quiet awe, so low that she doubted the boy had even heard her.

“The blood moon,” he answered, and was silent.

She didn’t like to annoy the boy with her questions, but all the same....

“What makes it that way, so big and red?”

“Some say it’s an effect of Muggle pollution in the air, or just a rare combination of atmospheric conditions and the refraction of the setting sun.” He paused. “But I’ll have you know, little girl, that I think it’s something else entirely.” She waited breathlessly for him to finish his sentence and pass on his wisdom to her....

“Draco Malfoy and the Weasley girl are together,” he said abruptly. Natalie froze like an insect transfixed in amber.

“Who?” she asked carefully, after what seemed to her like an uneasy and lengthy silence. The boy looked at her as though she was quite mad.

“Draco Malfoy, the Slytherin prefect, and Ginevra Weasley, the girl who plays on your House’s Quidditch team. She’s a Chaser, I believe, just like yourself.”

Without a thought for the dangerous height, Natalie slid down from the tower and landed shakily on her feet back on the balcony below it. She stared upward at the boy’s blank face for one horrorstricken moment (he knew, good Lord, he knew) and fled, her bright hair whipped wildly in the wind as she ran.

Blaise sighed lightly and leaned back against the rough shingles of the tower roof, staring at the moon above him as it spilled its bloody light across the dying grass so far below. The cast of the light suited Bella’s face perfectly, he reflected, unperturbed by the gaunt witch’s sudden and silent appearance at his side.

“What in Grindelwald’s name possessed you to do that, boy?” she asked quietly. He was unnerved and slightly unsettled to hear no accusation or anger in her voice, just polite interest. Odd.

“Maybe just to see what would happen, I suppose. Maybe because I wanted her to know.” Her young student seemed unusually thoughtful. Perhaps Clann might be on to something. A disturbing notion, but not impossible. It would have to be dealt with.

“You’ll have to tell her, you know, if she ever recovers her mouse-like courage and returns to you.” It interested Bellatrix to see the complex but repressed play of emotion on the boy’s face at her carefully chosen words. Fear was regrettably present, and anger, yes. But that was not all. Pain. A tiny flicker of it, but undeniable. What a shame, she thought, almost wistfully. What a shame, indeed.

“She’ll come back,” he said confidently, his face wiped clear of any weaker feelings. If only Bellatrix could discount them as quickly. “She won’t have a choice.”

Yes, it would have to be dealt with. Soon.

ooooooooooo