Covet

After the death of Dumbledore, he'd become a somewhat notorious pet of his master. Naturally, when they captured the girl, they'd brought her to him first, in his little house at Spinner's End. They flooed her in, and threw her callously on his living room floor, bound inescapably by invisible charms.

Now she was kneeling at his feet. "I don't believe you would betray him like that, I don't, I can't," the girl in front of him said. sobbing almost hysterically. He could see her thin shoulders shaking beneath her black robe.

"I trust, Miss Granger, that your delusions are entirely grounded in an inability to accept that you have finally found a problem you cannot solve," he replied evenly, looking down at her disheveled hair.

"You wouldn't betray him."

"Oh, wouldn't I?" It had been a long time since he'd played this particular game. He looked away from her face and watched her white fingers twine together nervously. "I've done as I was bid. No more and no less."

Her face fell, and she looked away, towards the hearth.

Just then he felt the familiar burning in his arm. She did not look back before he disapparated.

* * *

"Tell me what you want from me," she entreated, when he returned later that evening, sweaty and spattered with blood not his own.

With a mutter and a quick gesture, most of the muck came out; he tossed his outer robes into the hamper he'd put conveniently near the door. Then he took off the mask, wiping it with a damp cloth before he laid it down on the arm of his favorite chair. "I want nothing from you," he explained, these things attended to. "You were a gift. I suppose I shall do with you as I please, when I feel so inclined."

"And what is it that you please?"

"I find your questions irritating," he snarled. "Also, as you may have noticed, I don't like you or the company you choose to keep," he added for good measure.

"Please, just let me go, Professor, let me go, you don't have to do this." Now her voice was shaking, he observed, although not impassively.

"My tenure as your teacher has ended, if you'd be kind enough to remember." He released the charm which restrained her hands before he summoned the house-elf (a present from Narcissa), and instructed it to bring the girl food. "It's rather late. I shall be rather irritated if I find that you have tried to give me any trouble when I wake. Since I know that you will try, you will not succeed in breaking the wards on either the parlor or my house as a whole."

"All right," she said, looking down.

With that, he went off to bed, too tired to do more than hope that he didn't awake to find the house on fire or some such nonsense. But surely the girl was more sensible than that.

For the first time in weeks, he drifted off to sleep easily as soon as his head hit the pillow.

* * *

In the morning, he found the girl still asleep, curled up by the embers of the fire. The house-elf prepared some strong tea & toast. He noticed that there were a few books piled by her head, but the wards seemed to be still in order, so he took his meal in the kitchen peaceably enough.

Afterwards, he stood over her for a moment. Her face looked innocent and much younger in sleep, and was slightly more agreeable when deprived of excess enthusiasm. There were shadows under her eyes, though, that belied the illusion of the young girl he remembered. Still a child though, he thought to himself. But then again, to be a Gryffindor was to be in a perpetual sort of childhood, where there was no room for shades between white and black.

She stirred, then, and opened her eyes, slowly. He was silent for a moment.

"I did try," she said, so quietly he was almost unable to hear her.

"I would have been seriously disappointed in you if you had not," he replied.

"I couldn't reach the books on the upper shelves."

"I know."

He met her eyes for one long moment, then glanced away.

* * *

He had the house-elf bring her toast in the morning and whatever he was eating at night. It wasn't as if he entertained many visitors, after all. He spent most of the time in his room or out... on business, of one sort or another.

On the fourth day, she made a request. "I'd, ah, like to take a bath."

He eyed her closely. "You do seem to be wanting for one, at that."

So he filled the tub in the bath with hot water, and carried her in. He set her down on the edge of the tub, and moved to pull her robes over her head. The girl blushed furiously, clutching them close to her. "I am perfectly capable of bathing myself."

"Yes, Miss Granger, I am quite aware. Nevertheless, you are going to indulge me."

At last, she was quiet. Surprising, really, he though to himself, how quiet she'd been. Or perhaps she was merely waiting until the appropriate moment to start railing at him like a shrill harpy once more. He disrobed her before placing her in the water. She bit her lip, and turned away from him, but still said nothing as he washed her, careful not to pay any special attention to her person. Finally, he wrapped her in a towel and set her on the bathroom floor once more. "I'll find you some robes."

"Why don't you just kill me? Or turn me over to them? Or whatever horrible thing you're intending to do to me?" Her voice started out soft, but finished high and keening. She buried her face in her hands, and the towel fell away from her. He turned away and found her some robes that, to his best recollection, had belonged to his mother.

"I don't know," he said at last. "I don't know."

* * *

He began to get used to stepping over her in the mornings. At least she put the books back where she'd found them. Occasionally, he allowed her a bath.

He began to get used to watching her sleep while she lay unknowing. Her face seemed calmer in her sleep. Her breasts rose and fell gently with her breathing. Sometimes, she clutched a pillow to herself in her sleep, and he wondered whom she was dreaming of. She never asked about her friends, or the war, or really, anything. Perhaps she talked to the house-elf.

His mother's robes were loose on her; for the first time, he realized that she was in fact very small, which was one of the many things about her that were usually masked by the fact that she was talking, all the time, very loudly. She was smart, after all, he reminded himself, just so... so... self-righteous. Or had been, at least, as, after all, she rarely spoke to him.

One day, she woke to find him watching her, as she had that first morning. He watched her uncurl and stretch like a kitten. (He'd had a kitten himself, once... long ago.) The tower of books by her head was smaller.

"Have you decided what you are going to do with me?" she asked.

"No."

* * *

He was startled from sleep in the dead of night. His heart thudded painfully in his chest as he tried to reorient himself. "Ah," he said, comprehending slowly. "You figured out the ward on the parlor, then. It took you long enough."

She was on the floor. He remembered her legs were still bound. "May I sleep here?" she asked. "The floor is very uncomfortable."

It took him a few moments to decide. "I suppose that you may. If only as an appropriate reward for your cleverness."

She managed to pull herself up into the bed, and promptly curled up against the farthest wall, stealing the fattest and the most comfortable of the pillows. He said nothing. Instead, he watched as her breathing grew even and steady. The moon shone lightly on her pale face, throwing its hollows into soft shadows. Her hair, tangled, straggled over her back; she wore his mother's favorite robes, which were a dark blue. He had just decided that he would have to do something about her hair when he fell asleep.

* * *

The next night, he carried her to bed when he returned home at the end of the day. Then, patiently, he began to work through the knots in her heavy mass of curls.

"This is very strange," she said at last.

"I suppose," he said, surprised to find his voice even and neutral.

"Did you buy these robes for me?"

"No," he answered, gathering a section of her hair into his hand as he aimed for a particularly rough patch. "They were in the family. I saw no reason why they might not get some use."

"You could have found a pet some other way."

"You're not a pet."

"Oh?" She looked over her shoulder at him, and for a moment she came alive to him as the girl she had formerly been. "For someone who claims otherwise, you've done a pretty nice job training me. I even do special tricks. Like taking down wards."

He continued brushing her hair.

"I gather that I shouldn't even ask," she said, finally, sounding defeated, "what the purpose of all of this is."

"An astute line of reasoning," he said.

"You never use my name now."

"I don't know what to call you."

"Okay." She was silent as he shaped her hair into a long braid. Then she lay down, facing the wall again. "Goodnight, then."

He waited until he was sure she was asleep before he answered, "Goodnight."

* * *

One morning he awoke to find her curled around him. Her hair was still damp from the night before and had come loose in her sleep; it smelled of rosemary and nettles. Of course, she had stolen all the covers.

He slipped out of the bed and dressed before disapparating to the Malfoy estate.

When he returned that evening, he found her still in bed, much as he had left her.

"Are you unwell?" he asked. She shook her head. "It's unlike you to have given up so easily."

"I don't know what's like me at all any more."

He sat down next to her and put his hand to her forehead. Her eyes were very bright. "Perhaps you need some exercise," he said, and unbound her ankles.

He helped her take a few turns around the parlor before bed. It was hard for her, having gone for weeks without the use of her legs.

That night, as he was brushing her hair, she asked, "Why did you do this to me?"

"I'm sorry."

He woke in the middle of the night to find her embracing him again, but this time he simply went back to sleep.

* * *

"I'll be gone for at least a week," he said. "The house-elf-" (it didn't have a name) "-will take care of you."

She was perched on the couch, perusing a book, but she looked up as he said this. "What if you don't come back?"

"You'll have to trust that I do." With that, he disapparated.

The summit was boring, as usual. His master had lost his mind a long time past, and he himself had little tolerance for the sniveling cronyism of the other disciples. There were no intellectual peers here, now that Lucius was dead. He spent most of his time in his allotted laboratory preparing the concoctions for collective needs, as well as attending to his master (now peculiarly indulgent, or perhaps not so peculiarly, considering what had happened). At meals, they discussed tactics and strategy with glee, if not much wit or foresight. No one asked after her; he supposed they thought her long dead, or as good as.

He watched his godson from afar. They hadn't really talked since it had happened. At least the boy was alive, he reflected bitterly. For good or for ill.

When he came home, she was asleep, so he washed up and put on his nightshirt before climbing into bed. She started, and sat up quickly, gasping. "Oh," she said. "It's you."

"Just me," he said. Then she reached out and clung to him. He held her awkwardly. Her hair was loose again and spilled over her shoulders, clean and recently brushed.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come back."

"I should think you'd have hoped for that."

He held her for a long while, until she pulled him down and they fell asleep.

* * *

He became accustomed to waking up tangled in her embrace. He wasn't sure how to feel about it. She seemed better nourished now, a little more light-hearted; she'd made her way through most of his library by this point in time.

One night he came in to find her already resting in her dark blue robes, and he lay down beside her. She turned to him, and gently put her mouth against his. He froze. She continued placing soft kisses on his lips, his cheek, his neck.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, at last.

"I asked you first," she replied, and kissed him hard. He closed his eyes and wondered if this was real.

* * *

In the morning, she was gone. She had left a note; it said simply, "I'm sorry."

He held it for a long while before it shriveled and turned to ash in his grasp.