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The characters and the situations within these fanfiction stories are
not my property. They are the property of J.K. Rowling, Warner
Brothers, and others, and are used without permission; challenge to
copyright is not intended and should not be construed. No profit is
being made from the use of these characters and situations; these
written-down imaginings are only presented in an internet forum for the
interest of and consumption by the like-minded individuals who enjoy
them and recognize them as unauthorized fanfiction only, and are not in
any way meant to be confused with the originals NOR presented as
authorized materials of these owners.
A Spell In Azkaban
by Amanuensis
Pairings: Lucius/Narcissa
Categories: Humor
Summary: The daring rescue.
Only, not.
Thanks to fabularasa for the beta.
*****
She fled past the deserted ballroom. Past the gardens with their
self-weeding beds and self-manicuring hedges, past the open-air
natatorium and its cheery calypso music, across the quarter-scale
Quidditch pitch where her heels sank dishearteningly into the soft
lawn, tearing up clots of turf behind her as she ran.
She was panting by the time she reached the dining wing, and hexed the
nose off the terrified chef manning the Mongolian stir-fry grill, just
for spite.
This wasn't going to work. Where the hell was it?
She leashed in her haste and began a more meticulous sneak-and-search.
The casino didn't have what she was looking for, neither did the
karaoke bar. (She was able to resist ducking inside the latter to
silence the assassin murdering Embraceable You.)
At last she spotted it, in the corridor leading away from the spa. In
cursive text as curlicued and serifed as that designating the ladies'
fitting room in the best of Diagon Alley couturiers, it glittered on
the wall just above her eye level: Cell Block
Three-B.
Cell Block Three-B was done up in tasteful browns and golds with just
the right accent of dried autumn foliage. Even the numerical
designations on each cell were done in wood-grain engraving that
blended harmoniously, even if the numbers were harder to read as a
result.
But at last she saw it: three-oh-six-six-five. With only the merest
twinge over the amount of galleons it had cost to get that bit of
detail out of her informant--plus the cleavage-revealing dress she'd
worn that day to sweeten the deal, but she wasn't going to tell Lucius
about that--she aimed her wand at the doorlock.
"Alohomoramora!" she cried, her wand's precision a
trifle affected by her agitation, so that the additional wrist action
sent up sparks and singed the edge of the "5." The lock clicked and the
door yielded to a push.
And Narcissa yielded not only to relief but to the mingled outrage and
disbelief that had been building since she'd slipped into the fortress
of Azkaban prison. There, still clad in post-massage towels draped
about his hips and neck, looking fit and glowy and gratifyingly
open-mouthed with surprise, stood her husband, condensation-dewed glass
of lemon-garnished water still in hand.
He closed his mouth. His lips twitched. "Aren't you a little short for
a Death Eater?"
"Lucius, it's I!" she said, grammar betraying her even before she had
thrown her hood back and torn the mask away.
"Ciss-Ciss?" He did not drop the glass, but it slipped in his fingers a
fraction, contents sloshing. "You've come...all by yourself?"
"Well, don't say it as if you're disappointed," she huffed, folding her
arms and tossing her blonde head. "You could at least pretend to be
glad, for my sake! I know it wouldn't be for your
own--" with another head toss she indicated the entire prison, casino,
natatorium, and all-- "now that I see the truth! 'No, my dearest, do
not come to visit me here--'" she could remember the words as if the
parchment was in front of her-- "'such a dreadful venue is not for the
likes of my beloved wife to endure; wait instead the short time until
our lord sees fit to liberate me.' I traced those words with my lips,
Lucius, aching for you, weeping for you--there were blots on your
letters that I took for tears! Now I see they were likely that!" she
snarled, pointing her wand at the drip of condensation that fell from
his waterglass.
He had the grace to flush. "Darling, I wanted to be able to tell you.
But the other prisoners--well, there's a code, see..." he finished
lamely.
"I bloody well imagine there is!"
His face twinged as if she'd jabbed him with a pin. "Now, Ciss-Ciss,
there's no reason to use that kind of language. It doesn't become you."
"Doesn't become me? Do you know what I've endured since you've gone,
Lucius? Filthy leering Aurors tramping through our house without the
slightest warning, the house-elves frantic to hide the dark artifacts
and good silver and even my sex toys--which may I add are the only
source of comfort I have these days--until they're gone, my sister and
her husband showing up with no less frequency, helping themselves to
our Chateau Nostradamus and rambling on about how I should be proud of
your sacrifice and by the way Cissy, do you have any of that
Petrossian caviar left?, me having to truck with horrid
riff-raff informants and spend our gold and wear tarty low-cut
dresses--" damn, she hadn't planned to tell him that-- "to learn things
like your cell number so that I could get you out of what I naturally
assumed was a hideous, soul-bleeding place? And I find
this?"
"I wanted to tell you." His hangdog expression--one she'd never seen
him use, not even to play on her sympathy--made her bite back her fury
and listen, for the moment. "Since the Dementors left, we learned the
place was...quite nice, actually. Turned out it had once been the
summer retreat of Baron Ceintachwyr the Third. Before the Dementors,
obviously. Had a few remodelings since. There's a rule among the
prisoners about keeping it quiet--it's not as if we want the Ministry
stepping in to make it all a house of horrors again."
"You might have given me some idea!" She yanked the left sleeve of her
robe back to the elbow. "I took the Mark for you, Lucius! Voldemort
wouldn't allow me to stage this rescue unless I was a full-fledged
Death Eater. It took me a full year to convince him!"
Eyes widening and mouth falling open, Lucius grabbed her wrist. "You
what? Narcissa, I told you I wouldn't have it!" He gave the Mark on her
arm a look of disgust, as if he expected the snake on it to rise and
drip poison all over the carpet. "Tattoos on a woman are gauche. You
look like a Knockturn Alley trollop!" He looked accusingly at her face.
"Did you do...that part of the initiation ritual?"
"Which part?" she said, drawn off-course by the question.
"That part."
"Oh." She swallowed. "That part. Yes."
"Oh, my God!" He dropped her arm, recoiling. "I'm never going to be
able to share a bed with you again. Voldemort and my
wife. Ew. Did you at least
protest, you harlot?"
"No, I fucking well didn't protest! I was doing it for you, you
double-standard unfeeling prick! Because I thought you were rotting
away in here and I would have done anything I could to stop that! I
don't fucking believe this!" She turned from him and screeched a curse
at the piano in the corner of the room, for want of something
spectacular to destroy that wasn't her husband. The echoing explosion
of discord from the strings pleased her even more than the crumpling of
wood and ivory and the resultant cloud of dust.
"Narcissa! That was seventeenth-century."
"So's your attitude!" She had the wand pointed at his face. "And I
won't have it! I--" she drew herself up to her slim height-- "am a
Death Eater, Lucius. I did it to save my husband when even our lord was
unwilling to spend the effort. If I've not earned your thanks, I
will have your respect!"
He was actually pouting, as he always did when defenseless. Despite its
luxuries, Azkaban hadn't provided him with a wand to face her down.
"You needn't have done it." She didn't even answer him. Her wand hand
didn't waver. Slowly the pout left his face, and then, oh, she hated it
when he used that little wistful smile on her; she'd no power against
it-- "I've really missed you, Cissy."
"Have you." Still she kept the wand steady, but the waver was in her
voice. Damn.
"Yes. Azkaban turned out to have all this--" he spread his hands in his
version of her earlier head-toss-- "but it didn't have you."
"It's not going to be that easy," she retorted, knowing that it was and
the rest of her outrage was just for show. "Don't think I've forgiven
you. 'Never share a bed,' indeed! How do you think I felt when I
realized you'd been through the same ritual?"
"We'll edit the memories. Cissy--" He came close to her, put his hands
on her shoulders, despite the wand--her arm had slackened and it was
only at his chest now, anyway-- "it doesn't make sense for me to leave
here. Voldemort's furious with me for failing; I don't imagine a year
has tempered that. You know how he is. And frankly, who'd
want to leave? Perhaps if it meant returning to our
home, but I'd live as a fugitive now. Dungeons, seedy little
hideaways--can you imagine me shacking up at Voldemort's lair for any
amount of time? Bats and mold and the occasional visiting
carnivore-breathed werewolf for company. Eurgh." He shuddered and she
almost caught herself doing the same. "No sane man would leave here for
that." He gave her shoulders a squeeze, the smile blooming on his face
again. "The food's amazing, Narcissa. They recently acquired Tadahiro
Ochi as head sushi chef. Florian Fortescue wasn't taken by our side--he
was just hired to work here. I'd've put on three stone if I didn't keep
in shape." Here he slapped his lower abdomen, which, indeed, had lost
none of its glorious tone. Despite her anger, Narcissa felt the
familiar stirrings of arousal as she focused on the gold hairs of his
treasure trail disappearing under the edge of that towel. Well. It had
been a year, after all.
"You do seem to have managed," she said dryly, folding her arms so that
he wouldn't notice her nipples peaking. Wouldn't do to let him know he
had the advantage of her.
"One hundred laps in the pool every morning, for starters." He grinned.
"Not that that's any hardship. You should see the cabana boys." He
punctuated it with a noise of appreciation that Narcissa knew she'd
heard to that degree only once--on their honeymoon in the Cotes du
Rhone and it had been for the first sip of a bottle of a 1945 Domaine
Orlando Premier Cru. Damn him.
Before she could open her mouth to berate him for mentioning what were
obviously very accommodating cabana boys, when she'd been alone for a
year with nothing but Madame Velissima's Pulsating Pleasure Pet for
company, he said, "Stay here with me."
"...What?"
"Stay here. It can't be pleasant for you, knowing that you're doubly at
risk, not only as the wife of a known Death Eater but as one yourself.
And it doesn't leave me happy about it, either. We'll let everyone
assume you were captured--if Voldemort's left me alone all this time, I
can't think he's going to put forth a battalion just because it's both
of us in here. Did I mention that they have larger suites for married
couples? Macnair's going to be jealous as hell if we get one of those;
he's been trying to bribe his way into one for months..." he broke off,
musing.
"Is that why you want me to stay?" she said, not able to put as much
contempt into it as she'd have liked. "So that you can have a nicer
cell?"
Another man would have looked hurt. Lucius, though, knew exactly what
to use on her. Another smile, this one slow and wolfish, as he drew her
closer. One finger tilted her chin up, and the kiss he gave her was
lingering and brain-meltingly sweet.
When he broke it, he murmured into her hair, "I really have missed you,
Ciss-Ciss."
She turned her head to lay her cheek against his bare chest. Her
fingers began to toy with the edge of the towel at his waist.
Loyalty to her lord, or her husband?
She sighed. "Can I...have a look at the cabana boys?"
-fin
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