Notes:
TW: Rape, although it's under lust potion it is still rape.
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"She smiled like she had already died once. And survived it."
—Witness Testimony, Sealed
The east wing always felt colder at night. Blaise moved through it without looking into the other rooms. He knew them all by memory. Their heavy curtains, their sealed doors, the faint murmurs of the portraits that stirred as he passed. They whispered to each other, always just out of his hearing, but he had long stopped trying to catch their words.
Tonight, he had no patience for anything but the Watching Room.
The door was already waiting for him, its iron surface catching the light from a single torch in the hall. He pressed his palm to the cool metal, and it gave way instantly, as if eager to admit him.
The room inside smelled of resin and smoke. Black candles stood in their holders along the walls, burning with low, steady flames that never flickered. The glass of the mirror dominated the far wall, its frame carved with writhing figures whose heads bent toward each other in silent conversation, their features never quite the same when you looked at them twice.
He crossed the floor without hesitation, his coat whispering over the stone. He did not go to the chair in the corner, the one meant for waiting and watching in comfort. He stopped directly before the mirror and lifted a hand, letting his fingertips graze the surface. It was cold, like water in winter.
"Show me," he said, his voice quiet but precise.
The glass shifted almost immediately, as it always had before. An image began to take shape. The pale curtains of her room. The smooth, untouched coverlet on the bed. A chair angled toward the window, its seat empty. The faint spill of moonlight on the floorboards.
The room was empty.
He frowned and leaned closer. "Where is she."
The image broke apart into shadows and reformed, this time giving him the view of the garden wall beyond the east courtyard. Dew glistened on the stone, catching the light of the moon. It was a still, lifeless scene.
"No," he said under his breath.
The mirror rippled again, but there was no sign of her. For a heartbeat, he thought he saw the faint line of a shoulder, the curve of pale hair falling loose down her back. He pressed his palm harder to the glass, trying to hold it there. But the shape dissolved like smoke in wind, and in its place came only the long stretch of gravel path beyond the herb beds.
He waited, his gaze fixed on the mirror.
Nothing.
"Luna," he said at last, the name slow and deliberate.
The surface gave no answer.
The house had always obeyed him. For as long as he had been master here, its walls and corridors had bent to his will, the mirror especially. It had given him her face whenever he asked. Her voice. Her smallest movements. It had shown her in sleep, in thought, in the rare moments when she smiled to herself. It had been his eyes in the places where he could not stand.
But now it gave him only empty rooms and stone walls.
"Let me see her," he said, pressing both hands against the glass. The tone was no longer a request.
The reflection that stared back at him now was his own, faint and warped, floating beneath the sheen of the mirror's magic. He could see the tension in his jaw, the narrowing of his eyes, the faint furrow between his brows. He could see that he was beginning to look the way he felt, like a man who had been denied something that belonged to him.
The glass rippled again, but this time it only showed him the ceiling of the greenhouse, the slow drift of clouds beyond the glass panes. There was no sign of her among the blooms.
His voice came quieter now, almost coaxing. "You listen to her now, is that it? She whispers and you obey?"
The mirror did not so much as flicker.
His jaw tightened. "You are mine to command."
Still nothing.
A slow heat began to build in his chest, not the quick flare of rage but something heavier, something that sank into his ribs. This was not an accident. The house was not confused. It was refusing him. Worse, it was refusing him for her.
"You think she needs protection from me," he murmured. "You think keeping her from my sight will keep her safe." His lips curved in something close to a smile, but it had no warmth. "You are wrong. You forget what I am."
He kept his hands against the mirror as if he might force it to obey by touch alone. "She is mine. She does not hide from me."
The glass stayed cold.
The silence pressed in, thick and close, until it felt like there was less air in the room.
His fist hit the wall beside the mirror before he could think better of it. The stone cracked beneath the blow, the sound sharp enough to make the candles along the far wall shiver in their sconces. Blood welled over his knuckles, hot against skin already beginning to bruise. He watched it for a moment as it slipped down his hand. Before it could fall to the floor, the stone drank it in, erasing it as if it had never been there.
The mirror still showed only the faint reflection of his outline.
He stood there a long time, breathing slow but deep, keeping himself from hitting it again. He had learned long ago that the house responded to force when it wanted to, but sometimes it responded better to patience.
"Do you think she will thank you for this?" he asked the empty glass. "Do you think she wants your interference?"
A flicker, faint as a breath, crossed the surface. For an instant he thought he saw her shadow again, the tilt of her head, the pale line of her wrist. He stepped closer, but it was gone before he could focus.
He laughed once, low in his throat. "You are not clever enough to keep her from me. No one is."
The glass did not answer.
At last he stepped back, shaking out his hand once, the ache in his knuckles steady and familiar now. The house might think it had won this round, but it would learn. Everything learned, in time.
He turned away from the mirror, his coat swinging at his heels, and left the Watching Room without looking back. The door closed behind him with a sound like a sigh.
As he walked the long corridor back toward the central hall, the portraits stirred again. He caught their shifting shapes from the corner of his eye. He could almost feel them leaning toward one another to whisper, their voices curling just out of reach.
Let them whisper.
They would have more to speak of soon enough.
⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡
It was late enough that even the house had settled into its quietest hum, the kind of silence that only came when time forgot itself. No footsteps echoed down the halls. The corridors had stilled, heavy with sleep and shadows. And yet, Luna could not rest.
The silver necklace she had worn earlier still lay abandoned on the small table beside her bed, but she had long since given up trying to sleep.
Her gown was loose now, the bodice unlaced just enough to ease the pressure against her ribs, the skirts soft as mist around her ankles. Her feet, bare and silent, barely stirred the thick rugs as she moved past her door, one hand brushing the wall as she went.
The house let her go.
The hallway was longer than she remembered, but maybe that was the way of it at night.
Everything stretched when the world was asleep. When she reached the greenhouse doors, the scent reached her first. Warm earth, sweet moss, something faintly citrus that curled in the back of her throat like memory. She pushed the door open gently.
The air inside was thick and damp and full of something ancient. The kind of magic that did not speak but simply was.
The vines overhead rustled at her arrival, curling and pulling back in a slow, graceful motion, as if they recognized her. As if they had been waiting. The blooms were wide open, their petals lit from within, glowing faintly with silver and gold veins that shimmered beneath the moonlight pouring through the glass ceiling in streaks.
Bubbles was curled near the far wall, nestled in a nest of moss and ferns beside a low planter overflowing with night lilies. Her breath was slow and even, the soft snuffling of her dreams barely audible over the gentle pulse of plant life around them. Luna moved quietly to her, kneeling first, pressing a hand to the mooncalf's soft side. Bubbles didn't stir, just let out a slow exhale and tucked her face deeper into the moss.
Luna settled herself beside the creature, shifting until she found the stone bench near the planter and sank into it slowly. She pulled her knees up, resting her chin lightly atop them, and let the silence wash over her.
The moonlight stretched through the high windows in broken lines, scattering across the floor like veins through marble. The blooms swayed, some turning their open faces to the sky, others folding inward as if too shy to show their light.
She didn't expect Blaise to find her. She hadn't meant for him to.
But he did.
She heard the soft scrape of his footsteps long before she saw him. He did not call her name. He did not knock or ask permission. He entered like someone walking into a room they already belonged to. And when she finally looked up, he was already inside, framed by the tall glass doorway, the moonlight catching in the folds of his coat and the angles of his face.
He didn't speak. He didn't scold. Just met her eyes with that quiet, watchful calm he wore like armor.
Luna didn't say anything either.
He moved toward her without hurry, his gaze drifting only once toward the sleeping mooncalf before he lowered himself onto the opposite end of the bench. There was still a stretch of stone between them. She didn't reach for him, and he didn't close the gap. But something in the air shifted anyway.
He pulled something from his coat. A blanket. Pale grey. Wool, she thought, but soft enough to melt between fingers. He didn't hand it to her. Just unfolded it neatly and draped it over the space between them, letting the fabric fall across the bench with a kind of reverence. She looked down at it. Then, slowly, she reached for the edge and pulled it over her knees.
The silence returned. But it was different now. Not hollow. Not cold. It wrapped around them gently, thick as honey. They sat like that for a long while, not speaking, not moving. Just breathing. Just existing in the same pocket of time.
The vines overhead rustled now and then. A few petals fell, soundless as snow. The nightflowers began to shift again, some curling closed, others holding firm against the tide of sleep.
Blaise sat with his elbows on his knees, his hands loose between them. His head tilted back briefly as he looked up at the ceiling, as though the stars beyond the glass might offer him something. A reason. A map. A curse. She didn't know.
Eventually, he spoke, his voice lower than usual, something private folded inside it.
"I used to come here when I couldn't sleep."
She turned her head, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He didn't look back at her.
"Even before the war. Even before all of this. My mother used to say there were some plants that only bloomed for the truth. She said this greenhouse listened."
Luna's voice was soft, almost absorbed by the air around them. "Do you believe that?"
He paused. "Sometimes."
She let that settle.
The moonlight caught in his profile, turning the sharpness of him into something softer. He didn't look like the man who had slit a throat hours ago. Not exactly. He looked like the boy he must have once been. The one who found comfort in roots and petals and quiet things that needed tending.
She shifted slightly beneath the blanket. "I came here because it didn't feel safe in the walls."
His jaw flexed, but he didn't speak.
"I'm not afraid of you," she added after a moment, her voice a little clearer now. "But I didn't want to sleep with the smell of blood in the air."
"I understand," he said. And she believed him.
The vines shifted again. A soft sound, like the house sighing through leaves.
Neither of them moved closer. Not yet.
But Luna unfolded her hands from the folds of her gown and rested them atop her knees, open and still.
"I don't think I know how to be wanted like that," she said, not looking at him. "Not the way you want me. I don't know what it means to be protected and still free."
His answer came after a long pause, weighed down by everything he had never said.
"You will never be trapped by me," he said. "Even if it looks like it. Even if the world calls it that. I would burn every door before I lock it behind you."
She let out a slow breath, not quite relief, not quite trust. But something in between.
"I believe you mean that," she said quietly.
"I do."
What a fucking liar.
The night pressed in gently, warm and humming. The last bloom began to close. Her eyes fluttered, and for just a moment, she let her head fall sideways, resting lightly against the edge of the bench, her fingers still curled in the blanket he had given her.
And Blaise, without saying a word, leaned forward slightly, resting his arms on his knees again, watching her in the hush of moonlight. Not to guard. Not to claim. Just to be near.
⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡
The sun rose just as it had the day before, slow and indifferent, painting the sky in muted gold and pale pink. Its light spilled across the upper windows of the manor, catching in the glass and briefly setting them alight before sinking back into the cool shadows inside. The house itself stirred the way it always did. Servants moved through the hallways with the quiet efficiency of those who had learned never to linger in one place too long. Doors opened and closed in soft succession. Somewhere far off, the faint echo of laughter threaded through the air, followed by the murmur of polite conversation and the occasional scrape of porcelain against silver. The corridors wore their usual mask of civility, as if nothing had happened the night before.
It was an old trick, one the manor had perfected long before she had arrived. Blood could be cleaned. Memories could be blurred. An evening could be smoothed into a more palatable shape, retold with the edges filed down until it could be spoken of over breakfast without anyone losing their appetite. What had happened in that hallway would be remembered only by those who had been standing close enough to smell it, and even they would not speak of it openly. It would live in glances, in silences, in the way footsteps slowed whenever they passed that patch of stone. The rest would carry on.
And so they did. The music began again before noon, drifting faintly up from the lower rooms where someone had decided it was a good day for champagne. Voices rose and fell in easy patterns. A door banged open somewhere, followed by the sound of clinking glass. Even the birds outside the windows seemed unaffected, their song bright and relentless.
But Luna did not join them.
She stayed in her room, the door closed not with wards or locks, but with her own stillness. She had not dressed. The silk gown from the night before lay pooled at the foot of her bed, half-folded over the edge as if it had tried to slide to the floor and given up halfway. She had not eaten. The breakfast tray someone had left outside the door still sat untouched, the tea inside its silver pot gone cold.
She had taken the chair by the window, the one with the slightly crooked leg that wobbled if she shifted her weight too suddenly, and curled herself into it as if it could shelter her. The robe she wore was one he had sent her earlier in the week, soft and warm, with a hem now faintly stained with tea from the night she had almost dropped her cup. There was another stain near the edge, darker and smaller, a mark she had not noticed until this morning and had not bothered to scrub away.
The light in the room shifted with the passing hours, stretching across the floor in long, slow angles. She watched it without really seeing it, her eyes fixed somewhere past the glass. The garden lay below, quiet except for the occasional ripple of movement where wind bent the taller blooms. Vines clung to the far wall. A scatter of pale petals lay on the grass like the remains of something delicate that had been carried too far and fallen apart.
Her thoughts moved as slowly as the light.
He had killed for her.
With his own hands. With a blade that had been polished before the guests arrived and left blood-wet in its silver sheath after. She had seen it gleam once in the light before it disappeared into motion, the arc of it so quick and clean that for a heartbeat her mind had refused to make sense of what it meant. There had been no warning in him. No falter. The decision had lived in him already, waiting.
The sound had been final.
She had seen the way the others had looked away, as if unwilling to meet the sight of what he had done. She had seen the careful stillness in his shoulders afterward, the way his breath had not quickened, the way his hands had been steady when he wiped the blade against the dead man's robes.
She had also seen his eyes.
And it was his eyes, not the blood, that she had carried back with her into this room.
They had not been cruel. Not proud. Not even possessive in the way she might have expected.
They had been certain.
Certain that the insult was unforgivable. Certain that she should not have to hear such words. Certain that she should never be touched by that kind of disdain again.
She had never seen him look more sure of anything.
And somehow, that certainty had made her feel as though no one would ever lay a hand on her again without first weighing the cost. No one would speak her name without remembering what happened when someone forgot themselves in front of Blaise Zabini.
She knew it should have frightened her.
She knew she should have looked at him as the others did, with something between awe and disgust. She should have stepped back. Should have let her voice rise into the space between them and name what he had done for what it was.
But she had not.
She had stood in the doorway and met his gaze. She had felt the air shift around them, felt the heat of something that was not safety but something far stranger.
It was not the feeling of being protected.
It was the feeling of being chosen.
And there was something terrifying about being chosen by a man like him.
She drew her knees up to her chest, the robe bunching awkwardly at her elbows, and pressed her forehead lightly against the glass. Outside, the garden went on without her. She could see a single moth drifting low over the grass, its pale wings catching what little sunlight reached that far. It circled once, twice, then vanished into the shadows at the base of the wall.
She wondered if the moth knew what had happened in this house.
She wondered if it mattered.
Her fingers tightened slightly around the arm of the chair. Somewhere far below, the music swelled again, and she thought of the way blood had spread across the stone the night before, slow at first and then faster, like it had been waiting for permission to leave.
⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆
By the time the sun had climbed fully above the horizon and poured its light across the high windows, the second day of festivities was already in motion, and word of the night before had moved through the manor like smoke through a closed room, curling into corners and seeping beneath doors until there was no one left who had not heard at least a fragment of the truth.
No one spoke of it directly. Not in the open. No one dared to shape their lips around the full shape of what had been done, as if naming it aloud might invite some of that cold precision upon themselves.
Yet still, the story traveled. Every man in the manor had heard some version of it before the first bottle was uncorked that morning. The kneeling. The drunken insult. The flash of steel at the throat. The unhurried, exacting way Blaise Zabini had cut the sound out of a man and left the room heavy with the weight of his silence.
And despite it all, they carried on as if nothing had shifted, as if the night had been only another page in the endless ledger of parties and wagers and whispered scandals.
The corridors filled again with the same measured laughter, with glasses raised in idle toasts, with the kind of quiet, self-satisfied gossip that dressed itself in civility while stripping reputations bare. Somewhere in the middle of it all, deals were struck with a glance, grudges measured in the tilt of a head.
It was the same world it had always been, a place where violence was as much a form of payment as gold, and where Blaise Zabini had reminded them, without ever needing to repeat himself, that his wealth in such currency would never run out.
Draco was the first to cross the room to him that morning, a glass already in his hand, the amber surface of the drink catching the light as he tilted it lazily. The cuff of his shirt was rolled back with the kind of effortless precision that always suggested intention, no matter how carelessly it appeared, and there was a certain ease in the way he moved that made it feel as though he had been waiting for this encounter since the night before.
There was no lecture waiting on his tongue, no rehearsed lines about the dangers of recklessness, the cost of cruelty, or the importance of guarding public perception. Instead, there was only the faintest shift at the corner of his mouth, a subtle curve that carried something between approval and a grudging respect, the kind of look that old families used when the truth was too sharp to be spoken aloud without cutting the room open.
It was all there in that single glance, stripped of pretense and heavy with understanding.
He was proud.
It was the pride of one predator recognizing another, the silent acknowledgment that boundaries had been drawn in blood and would be defended without hesitation. It was not kindness, not in any pure sense, but it was a kind of trust.
Draco knew now, without having to be told, that Blaise would take care of her in the only way that mattered here, in the absolute way that could not be softened or undone once it had been proven.
After that moment, there was nothing left for him to ask.
No warnings left to give.
He simply lifted his glass in a gesture that needed no words, the brief clink of ice against crystal catching in the air like a quiet seal on the agreement. Then he turned back toward the swirl of voices and laughter, disappearing into the crowd as though the exchange had never happened.
Blaise, standing in the center of it all in a suit so perfectly tailored it looked untouched by movement, his expression composed and his body still, did not bother to return the toast. He did not need to.
Goyle, in a rare display of cheer, had taken it upon himself to play host for the second half of the evening. He stomped around the grand hall with a bottle in each hand, barking half-formed jokes and sloshing liquor into crystal glasses like the war had never happened and like none of them had ever had to dirty their hands with anything heavier than celebration. The others humored him. Laughed when they were meant to. Raised their glasses. Let the tension fade from their shoulders in the glow of good drink and good company.
But Blaise didn't laugh. He didn't even look up when the glass was offered. He took it, silent and still, and downed it in one sharp motion, the burn of it doing nothing to cool the heat still crawling beneath his skin.
He didn't usually drink.
But tonight, he didn't care about precision. Tonight he needed something to drown the rage that had been coiled behind his ribs since the moment that little worm had dared to speak her name with filth on his tongue.
He poured himself another.
It wasn't about the insult, not really. It was about what the insult implied that they thought she was for the taking. That she was some passing curiosity. That they could look at her and forget she was his.
They must have forgotten who they were dealing with.
Idiots. Amateurs. Soft-bellied fools playing at strength.
They thought their names would protect them. That their fathers' gold or the way they clinked their rings on goblets gave them permission to say whatever they pleased, to whoever they pleased, and that Blaise would simply swallow it, smile, and carry on with the evening like a good host.
But his Luna was not for sale. She was not a prize to be handed around. She was not an ornament for them to admire from across the room.
She was his.
His to shelter. His to guard. His to tear the world apart over if it came to that.
And if they didn't understand it after last night, he would make sure they did today. Every single one of them.
He poured a third drink. Didn't sip it. Didn't taste it. Just let it slide down his throat like fire, hoping it would burn out the violence still pulsing through his blood.
But it didn't.
It only reminded him of the heat in her skin, the weight of her voice when she said he could do whatever he wanted. Equal to the insult. That was the word she used. Equal.
He had never heard anything more perfect in his life.
He turned the glass in his hand, watched the amber swirl like slow honey, and felt something settle in his bones.
They would never touch her.
Not once. Not ever.
Not unless they were prepared to die for the pleasure.
And Blaise, possessive to his core, would be the one to make sure of it.
⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆
The last glimmers of afternoon light had long since bled into the oppressive, inky blackness of night, leaving behind a silence so profound it felt like a physical weight pressing in on all sides.
He hated it, a deep, irrational loathing that curdled in his stomach, for it was not his own.
Something ancient and predatory had awakened inside him, a dormant impulse triggered by an unknown force, and it screamed a single, terrifying command.
He needed to see her. Not a want, but a need a desperate, gnawing hunger that demanded immediate satisfaction.
He rose from his chair, a puppet with severed strings suddenly reanimated, and was across the room in a stumbling, frantic lurch. His feet slapped against the cold, bare floorboards in a rhythmic, frantic beat, a heartbeat that was no longer his own.
The darkness of the hallway was a hungry thing, swallowing the last of the moonlight, but he didn't need to see. He knew where she was.
He could feel her, a siren's song drawing him forward, an undeniable magnetic pull that promised both salvation and damnation.
When he reached her door, the knob felt slick with a cold sweat that wasn't his, and he twisted it with a violent, jarring motion.
The wood groaned in protest before he threw his full weight against it, and the door burst inward with a splintering crack, revealing the darkness of the room within.
She was standing in the middle of the room, slipping her nightgown over her hips, long hair cascading down her back like liquid starlight. The thin fabric clung to her skin in all the right places, and when she turned just slightly, it caught the light in a way that made her curves glow.
He stopped in the doorway, chest rising slowly.
Predator. Stalking. Starved.
"Baby girl," he said, voice low, a warning and a promise.
She turned, innocent and barefoot on the rug. "Blaise…"
His eyes darkened. "You look absolutely beautiful."
Before she could breathe out another syllable, he crossed the room. His mouth crashed into hers, hands rough as they grabbed her by the hips, pulling her against the hard line of his body. Her gasp was swallowed by his tongue, the kiss filthy, devouring.
He shoved the nightgown up with both hands, bunching it at her waist, groaning when his palm met bare skin.
"No knickers?" His voice was thick with arousal, the edge of control already fraying.
"I was warm," she whispered.
"Liar."
He spun her around, hand flat between her shoulder blades, pressing her forward over the edge of the bed. The nightgown slipped up further, baring her completely. She braced herself, breath trembling as he dragged a hand down her spine and gripped her arse, fingers digging in, claiming.
"Do you even know what you do to me?" he growled, lining himself up.
He didn't wait for an answer.
The first thrust knocked the air from her lungs. Deep, rough, merciless. She cried out, gripping the sheets, knees nearly giving out.
"Take it," he hissed against her neck, his pace brutal and relentless, hand curling around her throat as he pulled her back against him.
She choked on a moan, lost in the sensation, in the sound of skin slapping skin, in the filth he whispered in her ear between every thrust.
"Mine."
"Say it."
"Scream it."
And she did. Again and again, until her voice cracked and her thighs shook, until he filled her so deep she could hardly remember her own name.
He didn't pull out.
He stayed buried inside her, hips grinding, slow now, possessive. His chest was slick against her back, one hand gripping her throat, the other sliding down her front to tease between her legs, fingers unrelenting even as her body twitched and gasped beneath his touch.
"Still with me, baby girl?" His voice was rough, dark. "You're not done."
She whimpered, already wrecked, but he didn't care. He wanted her completely broken. Ruined. Unmade.
His fingers moved faster, dragging fresh moans from her lips, her body tightening again. Her walls fluttered around him and he groaned, biting her shoulder.
"Fuck, look at you. So sensitive. So greedy."
She tried to move away from the overstimulation but he held her there, completely at his mercy.
"You begged for this, didn't you?"
He pulled her back by her hair, forcing her upright, keeping himself buried inside her while his other hand clamped between her thighs, pushing her right to the edge again.
"You don't come until I say so."
"Blaise" she gasped, trembling.
"Say you're mine."
"I'm yours, Blaise, I'm yours, I'm—"
"Now."
She shattered again, screaming his name, body shaking violently in his arms.
He wrapped both arms around her, slamming into her with brutal force, chasing his own release with a growl that sounded like it came from somewhere primal. He emptied himself inside her with a long groan, grinding as he pulsed deep.
Neither of them moved for a long moment.
When he finally pulled out, she collapsed face-down on the bed, panting, skin flushed and damp. He leaned over her, brushing hair from her cheek, voice suddenly soft.
He was in heaven.
Her taste lingered on his tongue, sweet and sinful, like moonlight soaked in wine. Every moan she gave him felt like a prayer, and he devoured it all like a starving man. Luna was all softness and surrender beneath him, her thighs shaking, her body pliant, soaked with everything he craved.
He wasn't done yet.
Not even close.
He gripped her knees and pushed her legs apart slowly, spreading her open for him. Her breath hitched. The glow of magic still pulsed faintly beneath her skin, a leftover shimmer from the spell she'd murmured earlier. She looked divine, flushed and trembling, her lips parted as if to whisper his name again.
He lowered himself between her thighs, lips brushing her skin, voice rough with hunger.
"I haven't had dessert yet."
His tongue flicked out, teasing the inside of her thigh, slow and deliberate. He kissed the soft skin above her knee, then higher, then higher still. She whimpered and arched into him, hands fisting the sheets, her hips twitching with anticipation.
He knew, in his bones, she would be the best thing he'd ever tasted in his entire miserable life.
And then he saw it.
The blood.
A sharp, thin streak across the inside of her thigh.
He froze.
His mind, fogged with lust just seconds ago, snapped into clarity like glass under pressure. His stomach turned before his thoughts caught up.
He stumbled back from the bed, blinking, heart pounding in his ears. She sat up, confused, reaching for him, but he was already halfway to the bathroom. His chest heaved as he gripped the sink, knuckles white, bile rising in his throat.
And then he threw up.
Violently. Helplessly.
The sound echoed, harsh and ragged, mixing with the quiet hum of magic still clinging to the air.
He splashed cold water on his face, gripping the edges of the porcelain. His reflection looked pale, haunted, shaken. A thousand thoughts rushed through his mind, none of them coherent.
What had he done? Had he hurt her? Had he crossed a line without knowing?
He felt it settle in his chest like a punch to the ribs, cold and sickening. The moment his eyes met the blood, the moment her body trembled beneath him in that quiet, sacred stillness, it struck him with absolute clarity.
He realized then, with a bone-deep weight he couldn't shake, that he had just taken something from her she had never given to anyone else. Her first time.
Her trust, wrapped in innocence and quiet surrender, handed to him without words.
And he had been too far gone to see it. Too consumed. Too drunk on desire to notice what should have been obvious.
He rinsed his face with cold water, splashing it again and again like it could wash the shame away. His breath was shaky, chest tight, throat raw from guilt. He ran a hand through his hair, paced for a second, then finally forced himself to return to her.
The room was dim now. Quiet. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs drawn up slightly, a small towel in her hands as she gently wiped her inner thigh. There was no anger on her face, but she wasn't looking at him either.
His heart felt like it might crack open right there in his chest.
"Baby girl," he said, voice barely holding together, thick with panic and regret. "I am so sorry. Please. I'm begging you to listen to me. I didn't know. I would never have— I swear to you, if I had even the slightest idea, I never would've touched you like that. I didn't mean to take that from you, not like that, not when—"
"It's fine," she said softly, cutting him off, but her voice didn't sound fine. It sounded distant. Detached. Like she was somewhere else entirely.
"No," he breathed, stepping closer, hands shaking at his sides. "It is not fine. You have no idea. I was given something. Someone must've slipped me a potion or an enchantment or something before I came upstairs. I remember feeling this heat like it was crawling through my skin and I just— I lost control. Please, Luna. Please, I am begging you to forgive me. I know I don't deserve it, but I need you to know I would never, ever intentionally do something like this to you. You mean more to me than that. So much more."
She didn't respond for a moment. Her fingers clenched around the towel, eyes still fixed somewhere on the floor.
Then, quietly, with no malice, she said, "Maybe you should leave."
The words gutted him more than any hex ever could.
He stood there, frozen, helpless, watching the girl he had wanted to protect more than anything withdraw into herself because of something he had done. And no matter how hard he tried to explain, no matter how much truth filled his words, he knew it might never be enough to make this right.
⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆
That evening, the house buried another man.
The corridors stretched long and dim, the kind of quiet that didn't settle so much as crouch, waiting. There was no laughter left in the air, no drunken footsteps echoing off the stone, only the distant hush of closing doors and the occasional rustle of fabric as bodies slipped away from one another. The revelry had ended in the usual way—too much wine, too many hands, not enough consequence. Some were curled up in warm beds with warm mouths still pressed to their skin. Others had Apparated into the night, vanishing into alleys and basements and the cold arms of strangers, seeking something to drown out the aftermath.
No one noticed when Blaise stood. No one looked up. No one asked where he was going, or why he hadn't spoken in hours, or why the shadows around him had grown so heavy. There were no footsteps behind him, no voices trailing after. They knew better. Or maybe they simply didn't care enough to stop what had already begun unraveling the moment he felt her go still beneath him.
He left the way monsters do. Quiet. Intentional. Inevitable.
There was no plan. That would have meant control. That would have meant weighing his options, counting his breath, deciding how best to inflict the right amount of pain. But he wasn't a man in that moment. Not a Death Eater, not a lover, not a son. There was no mask left to hold him together. His thoughts had torn loose somewhere between the horror of what he'd done and the sick, dizzying memory of how it had felt. All that remained was the roar under his skin and the need to answer it with blood.
He didn't reach for his wand.
He didn't bother with words.
He walked like the house itself was leading him.
And it was.
He found Goyle exactly where he had expected to—grunting like a wild animal over the limp form of a girl who looked barely old enough to know what regret would feel like in the morning.
They were sprawled across a filthy couch in one of the lesser-used drawing rooms, the kind of place that smelled like stale sweat and spilled firewhisky, like too many parties no one remembered and too many women no one cared to name.
Goyle's trousers were around his thighs, half-shredded from careless hands, his hips moving in the kind of rhythm that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with power. It was a pitiful display.
Sweat pooled down his spine, clinging to the rolls of his back like oil, and every sound that came out of his mouth was some ugly cross between a grunt and a whimper, as if he couldn't quite decide whether he was enjoying himself or choking on his own exertion.
The girl beneath him wasn't moaning. She was performing. Making all the right noises with none of the conviction, her head tilted just enough for Blaise to catch the blankness in her eyes, the way her hands curled at her sides like she wasn't really there. She didn't see Blaise enter. Neither did Goyle.
That would have required a shred of self-awareness. Goyle was too busy pretending he was a man worth touching, and the girl was too far gone to notice the quiet shift in the air.
He watched them for less than a heartbeat, but that was all it took.
Long enough to see the way Goyle's mouth hung open, drool pooling at the corner. Long enough to register the stink of sex and sweat and cheap aftershave.
The world tilted behind his eyes the way it always did in those rare moments when the illusion of control slipped and the man he pretended to be gave way to something far less polite.
And there it was. No mercy. Just the sick, crawling certainty that the man in front of him had taken something he could never give back.
The blade he held wasn't meant for this, not originally, but tonight it felt made for this exact moment.
His fingers didn't tremble. His body didn't stall. In one smooth, merciless movement, he brought the blade to Goyle's throat and dragged it across, slow enough to feel resistance, fast enough to deny any final words.
There was no ceremony in it. No sadistic flourish. No speech to mark the occasion. Just the wet, animal sound of flesh giving way to steel, the ugly gasp of air turning liquid in the man's lungs, and the sudden, metallic scent of blood filling the room like a curse made visible. It sprayed, not in a beautiful arc, but in violent, chaotic bursts—splattering across the sheets, the floor, the girl's bare legs. She screamed as the weight of him began to fall, a sound too high-pitched to mean anything but pure, primal terror.
Goyle collapsed forward with the grace of a sack of meat. Not a man. Just a body.
Just blood and weight and disbelief frozen into the grotesque stretch of his eyes. He choked on nothing, his hands clawing at the air, at the slick wound at his throat, at whatever twisted god he'd hoped would make him untouchable. The blood kept coming. Thick. Hot. Unapologetic. It pooled beneath him and soaked through the mattress like ink through parchment.
Blaise just watched.
He stood there, motionless, the blade still held in his hand as if it were an extension of his own breath. His grip remained tight around the hilt, steady as ever, his chest rising and falling with a kind of eerie calm. His eyes never moved. He stared at the mess below him and felt no shame. No regret. No fear. Only a sharp, cutting clarity.
If anything, he felt cleaner. As if something inside him had been scraped raw and rinsed with fire.
The girl opened her mouth to scream again, or maybe to speak, but the sound broke in her throat and never made it out. She looked at him with eyes wide and trembling, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps as she tried to shrink away from the blood now drying on her skin.
"Tell them why," he said at last, his voice low and even, like it had been waiting in the silence. "Tell them what he gave us."
She couldn't answer. He didn't wait.
He turned and walked away, leaving her behind—shaking, soaked, stripped of everything but the knowledge that death had passed within inches of her and chosen someone else.
Her sobs followed him down the hallway, but he didn't slow.
His steps were silent, unhurried, like a man returning from a necessary chore.
The air in the corridor didn't resist him. It parted easily, as if even the house had learned there was no use standing in his way.
And somewhere far above, beyond the bloodied linens and the echoing walls, past the dead man's gurgling silence and the girl's unanswered cries, the west wing remained untouched.
Luna Lovegood slept through the night.
And for once, she did not dream.