The Long Grift: Harry Potter Fic
Author: Bitterfig
Title: The Long Grift
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Remus Lupin/Draco Malfoy
Other Characters: Nymphadora Tonks, Pansy Parkinson, Marietta Edgecombe, Kingsley Shacklebolt
Summary: Post-War AU set four years after HBP. Voldemort has been defeated. Remus Lupin is married to Nymphadora Tonks, and they are expecting their first child when he is drawn into the ambitious schemes of a not exactly reformed Draco Malfoy.
Beta Reader: Nzomniac
Word Count: 5089
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Yaoi sex including sex magic, rimming, fingering, masturbation and inappropriate use of the word “daddy.” Violence. Gore. Angst. Just the faintest hint of Yuri.
Author’s Note: This story is for
irstrange.
Look what you’ve done,
You gigolo.
You know that I loved you, hon,
And I didn’t want to know
That your cool,
Seductive serenade
Was a tool
Of your trade,
You gigolo.
Of all the riches you’ve surveyed,
And all that you can lift,
I’m just another dollar that you made
In your long, long grift.
Stephen Trask
The Long Grift (from Hedwig and the Angry Inch)
The Long Grift
Remus Lupin was wrenched from his uneasy dreams by a strangled cry. Opening his eyes, he faced a ghastly apparition-the wraithlike form of a woman, contorted in pain, staggering across the bedroom. Her hair flowed, flowed from her head all the way to the floor, and trailed behind her as red as blood. The front of her white gown and the sheet she clutched between her legs-they, too, were stained with blood that flowed down to the floor, leaving a smudged trail as she moved slowly, choking out the syllables of his name. Still half in slumber, he thought she must be a ghost endlessly recreating her final horrible moments. Then he recognized her as his wife, Dora Tonks-Lupin.
*****
The Healer in charge at St. Mungo’s was an austere, blonde witch named Portia Smith who scrutinized Lupin with open disapproval.
Truthfully, he’d expected nothing less. He knew how he must look to her, a bedraggled middle-aged wreck of a man at least a dozen years older than the bleeding woman he’d brought to the hospital’s emergency room in the middle of the night. His undesirability was clearly marked by the scars on his face, the chipped black polish on his nails, but most of all by the Ministry issued collar around his neck that identified him as a werewolf.
A great many werewolves had perished during the war and, following Voldemort’s defeat two years before, the Ministry of Magic had set for themselves what Lupin considered the ominous sounding task of “eliminating lycanthropy in the United Kingdom by the next generation.”
Their efforts hadn’t been nearly as bad as he had feared. No one was to be killed; rather, existing werewolves were to be contained, closely monitored to ensure the disease was not spread. To this end, he wore the collar, and each month he spent the days of the full moon detained in Azkaban.
After the legislation was passed, Nymphadora had continued to work for the Ministry as an Auror. It would have been unreasonable for him to ask or expect her to throw away a career she loved for what amounted to little more than a minor inconvenience. If he was angry, if he was bitter, he took care to hide it from her. At twenty-eight, she was still something of a girl in his eyes, a bright and joyful creature even after all she had been through in the war. He had not wanted to becloud her world with his gloom. He had not wanted to destroy her.
Though, it seemed he may have, after all.
“I won’t mince words with you, Mr. Lupin,” Mrs. Smith said. “It’s almost certain that within the next few days your wife is going to lose the child she’s carrying. When this happens, we may not be able to save her life.”
Lupin slumped against the wall, unable to speak, but the woman went on.
“You must be aware, Mr. Lupin, that werewolves aren’t meant to breed with humans,” she informed him with considerable disdain. “They’re as incompatible as humans would be with actual wolves.”
“Yes, I know,” he managed to say. “Dora was horribly disappointed when we first got together that we wouldn’t be able to have children. We were quite surprised by her pregnancy, but she is a Metamorphmagus. Somehow, her body must have made itself compatible…”
“So it would appear,” the Healer sniffed. “However, the strain of maintaining this unnatural pregnancy has destroyed her health.”
“That’s not right,” Lupin muttered, more to himself than Mrs. Smith who clearly had very little interest in anything he might have to say. “She hadn’t been sick or run down. She’s been absolutely thriving the past six months. I don’t understand this…”
“There’s nothing to understand,” Mrs. Smith said. “You’ve made your lady very ill.”
*****
Hours later, when she was as stable as she was going to be, he was allowed to see Dora. She was so still and pale she might have been dead already. He sat at her bedside for a very long time, clutching her icy hand, trying to will whatever warmth and strength he had to flow into her body. It wasn’t right that it should be like this. It was not right that her youth and health, her spirit, should all be wasted. He had expected her to outlive him by decades. She had always been stronger than he was. She was the one who carried him in their marriage. He was more or less useless.
In the past two years, he’d become a recluse. Often as not, his monthly visits to Azkaban were the only times he ventured out. Holding down a job was out of the question. Even if anyone were willing to hire a werewolf, he was unable to work. He was physically incapacitated for days both before and after each transformation, completely useless. He managed to earn a pittance ghostwriting books and publishing his more paranoid fantasies in the Quibbler under assumed names, but, for the most part, Dora supported him. Supported him and kept him sane, made him believe he belonged in the world, provided him with whatever measure of hope he might have.
It wasn’t right that she should suffer for what he had done.
And she was suffering for something he had done.
Portia Smith was an ignorant bigot, but she was correct. He had made his lady very ill.
It was not Dora’s pregnancy, but the way it was suddenly disrupted that struck him as unnatural. He was familiar enough with Dark magic that he could feel it’s presence with them in the hospital room. He could feel that someone had their claws in her and the baby and was leeching away their lives.
He wasn’t sure why or how, but he knew who it was.
Eighteen days before, he had reported to Azkaban for the last full moon. Dutifully or resentfully, it hardly mattered. He’d been chained and locked in a cell, spent the night tearing at the chains and at his body. It may have been the confinement, the aging of his body, or the damage done by the war, but the transformation from human to wolf and back again had become increasingly difficult and debilitating for him. When dawn came, he lay naked and bleeding on the cold stone floor, weighed down by the heavy chains, too sore and exhausted to move, scarcely knowing time or place.
He might have been nine, seventeen, twenty-five, or thirty-four years. In the Shrieking Shack, his parents’ house, number twelve, Grimmauld Place, or some Death Eater dungeon. Someone was touching him lightly, moving their hands over his battered body, chanting healing spells. It might have been his father, Madame Pomfrey, Dora, or Sirius. It might have been Fenrir Greyback-even that monster had moments of tenderness. There had been mornings when Lupin had woken to find him licking the very wounds he’d inflicted the night before.
Somehow, he’d forced his eyes to focus on the source of the voice and of the soothing touch. It had not been any of the people he’d imagined it might be. It was a stranger-a beautiful, golden-haired stranger in expensive, tailored robes.
“Lie still,” the young man told him. “You’re hurt.”
The chains fell away, and the young man, slender but strong, untangled them from Lupin’s limbs and tossed them aside.
“Barbaric,” he whispered. “The way they treat you. It’s positively inhuman.”
“Who are you?” Lupin asked him. The young man smiled.
“You don’t know me?” he said.
“Right now, I scarcely know who I am.”
“I was a student of yours once, not that you were especially fond of me.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Perhaps I’m kind. Perhaps I’m aware, unlike the brutes that run this place, that you’re a human being and not an animal.” He drew close, speaking softly, almost whispering. “My father died in this place. And I know what it’s like to be on the wrong side of things, to be hunted and hated and treated as a vile thing.”
“You’re Draco Malfoy,” Lupin said weakly.
“You remember me, after all.”
Despite his involvement in Albus Dumbledore’s death, Draco Malfoy had somehow emerged from the war with both his life and his fortune intact. He’d proven his innocence, proven that everything he’d done for the Death Eaters was done under duress. Lupin had always suspected that the fortune had a great deal to do with the innocence. At any other time, he would have regarded Draco Malfoy with considerable suspicion, but that morning, in the haze of pain and fatigue, Draco Malfoy was his best and only friend.
“Drink this,” Draco said, holding a vial of potion to his lips. Lupin drank; it was warm and bitter. It did nothing to clear the fog in his head, but it seemed to take the chill from his bones and the ache from his muscles. With Draco’s help, he was able to rise and make his way to the threadbare cot where he collapsed.
“You’ve hurt your wrist,” Draco said.
“Yes…” Lupin muttered hazily. He must have broken it struggling against the chains. His hand was twisted at a grotesque angle. Draco sat beside him; taking the injured wrist in both hands, he plied it with whispered spells till he was able to painlessly straighten it.
“Better?” Draco asked and lingeringly, seductively, licked the wrist he had just healed.
It had to be the potion. It usually took Lupin at least a week to regain potency after his transformation, but when Draco’s lips pressed against his, when Draco’s velvety tongue filled his mouth, he felt himself growing hard.
Draco pulled back from the embrace, undressed himself, and carelessly let his fine robes fall to the prison floor. He was gorgeous, twenty-one years old, lithe and gold and white. Like a dream and Lupin reached for him, not thinking about the wife he thought he loved or the child she carried. No, he was thinking only of the burning need that had somehow been ignited in his ruined body.
Draco had started it, but he didn’t seem to know where to go beyond kisses, beyond undressing. Lupin took control, licking and sucking Draco’s cock, his balls, finally moving between the cheeks of his arse. Lupin’s experienced tongue untied the knot of muscle there, and when it was relaxed and slick, he inserted a finger, another, still another. He reached inside, massaging Draco’s prostate gland. The younger man whimpered like a child, his arms wrapped tight around Lupin’s neck.
“You’re killing me,” Draco gasped. “I can’t hold out much longer. Put your cock inside me. Please, put it inside me.”
“Have you done this before?” Lupin asked.
“Please, hurry.” He spread his knees, arched his pelvis upward. He was trembling, shaking, but Lupin did as he asked, pushing into the tight, hot passage, losing himself to the rhythms of sexual release. Draco locked his legs around Lupin’s hips, driving the older man deeper into him.
“That’s it,” he urged. “Let yourself go … come inside me…” Then his words dissolved into a strangled wail as he bucked frantically against Lupin in his own orgasm.
After that, things had dissolved once more into a haze. The potion that had lent him temporary vitality must have worn off, and he sank into an exhausted slumber. When he woke, he was chained again, and the sun was setting. No beautiful stranger came to him the next morning, or the next. By the time he left Azkaban, he had almost forgotten Draco Malfoy’s visit.
Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin stirred. Her blue-tinged eyelids fluttered open.
“Remus…” she whispered weakly.
“I’m here, darling,” he said. “I’m right here.”
“The baby… Have I lost the baby?”
“No. No, darling. There was a bit of a scare, but everything’s all right now. The baby’s out of danger. You’re both going to be just fine.”
Lies and omission, this was the language he excelled at. He had warned her early on that he wasn’t who she thought he was, that he wasn’t right for her. Somehow, she’d convinced him he was wrong, that he was someone who deserved her love. He’d wanted to believe it, wanted to be that person, but he wasn’t. He had failed her, and now she was dying.
“You’ll be all right, Dora,” he whispered, stroking her chilly hand. “You and the baby, both. You’re going to walk out of his hospital in a few days, and in three months, you’ll give birth. You’re going to watch our child grow up. I promise you this.”
*****
Much to his surprise, Lupin was admitted to Malfoy Manor. A thin and wane young woman with strawberry-blonde hair, a pock-marked face, and downcast eyes let him in. With shuffling steps, she led him to a lavish parlor where Draco Malfoy waited.
When Lupin had last seen Draco, he’d been naked and flushed, his hair disheveled, parting his bruised lips to beg for more. This was a different creature entirely-cool and poised, a born aristocrat, a perfect Edwardian gentleman reclining on his leather sofa. Perched beside him on the arm of the couch was a round-faced woman, tiny and curvy. Her burgundy red hair fell in a heavy fringe over her forehead and flipped up at the ends. She was wearing a short, tight shift patterned in swirls of red and white, long boots the color of her hair laced all the way up her thighs. Huge dark glasses covered her eyes and gave her the appearance of an exotic insect.
“Hello, Remus,” Draco greeted him. “Good of you to stop by. Allow me to introduce my fiancée.” He laid a hand fondly on the thigh of the insect woman. “This is Miss Pansy Parkinson, a former student of yours as is Pansy’s attendant, Miss Edgecombe. You may go now, Marietta,” he said pointedly to the girl who had shown Lupin in. She hastily shuffled away.
“What have you done to my wife?” Lupin demanded.
“Your wife? I’m afraid I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Tonks-Lupin,” Draco said with a sneer. “Such a shame as she’s my closest living blood relation these days. Isn’t it a pity how the attitude of the parents’ generation can shape the lives of their children?” Pansy laughed, apparently finding Draco quite clever. Lupin snapped.
“You’re killing her, you fucking bastard,” he snarled, lunging at Draco. As he did, something came from the shadows, crashing over him like a cold wave, chilling him with his own hopelessness, his guilt and shame, his useless impotence. When the wave broke and he could breathe again, he was on his knees, trembling. “That was a Dementor…” he gasped. “You’ve got a Dementor protecting you.”
“Quite right,” Draco said. “So I’d advise you to respect my personal space, mongrel.”
“And watch your fucking mouth,” Miss Parkinson added. “There is a lady present.” And the two of them giggled like errant schoolchildren.
“Whatever you’ve done to Dora, please stop it,” Lupin pleaded. “I beg you. I will do anything, anything you ask, give you anything if you release her from this spell…”
“What can you give me?” Draco said mockingly. “You don’t have anything of value, and you’ve already given me your firstborn. This is your fault, you know; you brought this on yourself. I’m killing your wife and the thing she’s carrying, but you gave me the power to do it. What do you think our little jailhouse tryst was about? Mutual attraction? When two people fuck, it creates a new thing-Magick Childe. Surely an expert in the Dark Arts such as yourself knows that there are ways of capturing the energy of the Magick Childe.”
“Those weren’t healing spells you were chanting…” Lupin said.
“Some of them were. I had to keep you conscious, after all, but most of them were incantations to snare the Magick Childe created when the two of us fucked. A Magick Childe, half of you and half of me-your wife’s cousin and closest blood relation. Once I had it, it was the easiest thing in the world to bind it to the flesh and blood child your precious Nymphadora is impregnated with. They were practically the same. Here, look…”
He held up an hourglass filled with blood rather than sand. Slowly, drop by drop the top emptied into the bottom.
“This is the essence of the Magick Childe, bleeding away. When it runs out, that thing you and my cousin made, that three-quarters Muggle hybrid of wolf and Metamorphmagus, will die. It’ll rip out her insides when it does. She might live, but she won’t have another child.”
“Why are you doing this?” Lupin asked frantically. “Why would you do something like this?”
“It’s nothing personal,” Draco said placidly. “I’m looking towards the larger picture. You see, during the war, my Pansy discovered she has a remarkable talent for clairvoyance. She’s seen the future.”
“Civilization is like the moon; it has its cycles,” Pansy said. “For the past thousand years, the Muggle world grew brighter and brighter, but now it’s begun to wane, to turn back towards the dark. They’ve already become superstitious, breaking down into tribes. They’re using up all the things that give them power. In twenty years, they’ll be huddled around fires for heat, fearing the shadows. Things will be the way they were in the age of Merlin, and I’ve seen who the Merlin for this new age will be. One who has the blood of the house of Black-the blood of Black but not the name.”
“The blood of Black but not the name,” Draco said. “It comes down to me and my lovely cousin Nymphadora. It’s got to be her or me. I’m taking steps to ensure that it’s me … if not me personally, then my line, my children. Not hers.”
“That’s rubbish,” Lupin burst out. “That’s absurd. Half the Wizarding world has the ‘blood of Black but not the name.’ This new Merlin could be anyone; there’s no way of knowing. Didn’t you learn from Voldemort that prophecy can’t be taken at face value?”
“Don’t lecture me, Professor,” Pansy sneered. “I understand what I see. I’m not some addle-brained ninny like Sibyll Trelawney.” She removed her dark glasses; beneath them, her eyes were vacant, drained of color and unseeing. “I’ve paid the price for true vision.”
“You foolish, destructive little girl…”
“Hush,” Draco purred, a finger to his lips. He rose, stood over Lupin, who was still on his knees, and stroked his hair as though he were a pet dog. “You needn’t upset yourself; there’s nothing you can do. You can’t touch us, Pansy and me. Not physically, magically, legally or even morally. Your wife and child are dying because you betrayed them.”
“You drugged me…” Lupin protested.
“What, that potion?” Draco laughed. “That just enabled you to get it up. What you did with it was your choice. You made it so easy for me, Remus. You were so easy. All I had to do was be there, show you the slightest bit of kindness, and you were quite literally kissing my ass. You know what you are? You’re a beast. A beast and a coward. I’ve known it since I was a thirteen-year-old schoolboy. You’d lecture on the Dark Arts with such longing in your voice. Look at me, Potter, the other boys with the same longing in your eyes. Like a starving animal. It was obscene how much you wanted sex and power, but what was really disgusting was how you pretended to be so kind and humble, so selfless and good. A beast and a coward at the same time. I knew I’d find a use for you one day.”
Draco cast a wary glance at his blind co-conspirator, then, grinning wickedly, bent down and licked Lupin’s face.
*****
The next day, Lupin went to St. Mungo’s to say good-bye.
There were dark circles under his eyes. He’d been up all night working magic, preparing. That morning, the bodies of half a dozen small animals had been laid to rest in the garden, and in Knockturn Alley, a drunken vagrant was missing two fingers and a pint of blood.
Everything Draco Malfoy had said about him was true. He was a beast and a coward as well. What Draco did not understand was that these things made him not helpless but dangerous.
For hours, Remus Lupin sat beside his wife’s inert body, his hand laying on her belly, watching her breathe. She did not wake or even stir, and as the sun set, he slipped a letter into the pocket of her dressing gown-a letter in which he had written all he could bear for her to know. Then he kissed her cool, still lips and, drawing his shabby overcoat about him, went out into the night.
For years, she had given him a reason to live. The least he could do was save her life, however much it cost him.
He watched Malfoy Manor. Early in the evening, Draco and Pansy, trailed by Marietta Edgecombe, climb into a carriage borne by sleek, grey Granians and depart in the direction of London.
When they returned, Lupin was standing at the gate of the manor, waiting. As he expected, Draco emerged from the carriage, wand in hand.
“You’re becoming quite a nuisance, Lupin,” Draco said. “I thought I made it quite clear to you last night that we’ve no further use for you.”
Lupin could feel the chill in the air from the Dementor’s drawing near. He had no wand. He only waited, silently, until they were almost upon him, then raising his hands pushed them outward towards Draco.
“Luna lux lucis fio vos,” he said. The young man began to glow with a pale luminescence. Draco Malfoy began to glow with the light of the moon.
“What is this?” Draco demanded. “What did you do?” Focused on the light emitting from his body, he did not see and Pansy could not see that Lupin was transforming, twisting and morphing from man to wolf. The Dementor, caring nothing for an animal, paid him no mind, retreating to the shadows, believing their master was safe at the very moment he was in greatest peril. Only Marietta Edgecombe saw, and her screams filled Lupin’s ears as he leapt on Draco Malfoy, tearing into the young man with a wild abandon he had never enjoyed so much, drunk on the taste of blood and fear.
*****
Four days later, when Draco was released from St. Mungo’s, Lupin went back to Malfoy Manor. It was a tremendous risk, but he felt he had to see Draco again, speak to him, before disappearing entirely.
There were Aurors watching the house, but he was familiar enough with their protocol and warded with enough forbidden charms to evade detection. He found Draco in the parlor, sprawled on the leather sofa in a robe. His face was drawn and pale, and when he saw Lupin, he didn’t bother to pretend he wasn’t afraid.
“Have you come to finish me off?” he asked, voice trembling slightly. “Get on with it, then.”
“I’m not going to hurt you unless you make me,” Lupin said.
“Those cursed Aurors are supposed to be protecting me from you. A fat lot of good they’re doing.”
“Where are your Dementors?”
“Those were Pansy’s pets,” Draco snapped, fear rapidly being overwhelmed by bitterness. “She’s gone and taken them with her.”
“So, Miss Parkinson isn’t going to stand by you in your hour of need?”
“Miss Parkinson is a mercenary twat,” Draco spat. “Not that I can blame her. She can only see her glorious vision, and I’m no part of it any more. What do you want?”
“I need to know the spell is broken,” Lupin said.
“Of course it’s broken, you stupid mutt,” Draco snarled. He hoisted up the hourglass-it was empty-and lobbed it weakly in Lupin’s direction. “It was a blood spell, and my blood’s been tainted. I lost control of the spell when you infected me with your disease.”
The hourglass had shattered against the wall. Gingerly, Lupin picked up one of its fragments. He could feel the magic that had been in it, feel that the magic had fled. It wasn’t a trick; Draco was telling the truth. The spell was broken.
“Dora will recover;” he muttered to himself. “She’s going to be all right.”
“Yes, yes,” Draco interrupted. “Your bitch and pup will have long and happy lives without you. I chatted you up as the next Fenrir Greyback; the Ministry is mad to get their hands on you.”
“You’re only making it worse for yourself,” Lupin said calmly. “Stirring up animosity against werewolves. You’re one now. That collar becomes you.”
Draco’s fingers leapt to his throat, and the fear returned to his eyes.
“The full moon is coming…” he said.
“Don’t let them put you in Azkaban,” Lupin said. Despite himself, he realized this was why he had come back to Malfoy Manor. “You’re weak. I hurt you badly. If you’re chained up alone, you won’t survive your first transformation. You should leave before then. You still have your fortune, get out of England. Go somewhere where they won’t lock you away. Find someone who can help you.”
“What about you?” Draco said quietly. “You did this to me; you teach me how to live with it.”
“No. I may have cost you a great deal, but I’ve lost everything because of you, Draco. Do you think I could ever trust you?”
“Then don’t trust me. Pity me. If you can’t pity me, use me.”
Draco untied the sash of his robe, let it fall open, revealing his white gold body marred now by the angry red and black of Lupin’s bites across his chest and shoulder.
“Maybe I deserve to be alone,” Draco said. “But I don’t want to be, and I doubt you do, either.”
He lay back on the couch and began stroking himself, his cock growing hard and flushed. Spreading his legs, he pushed the fingers of one hand into himself as the other rubbed his erection.
“Come on, Remus,” he urged breathlessly. “I’ll be your little boy, the only one you’ll ever have.” The sight of him turned Lupin’s stomach, but he could not take his eyes away, and he felt the same fire he had felt in Azkaban spark once more.
Draco rolled over, presenting his arse to Lupin, hands dug in his flesh spreading himself open. “Come on, daddy,” he pleaded.
Lupin was hard. He felt the heat of desire pulsing in his body even as a dread of loneliness gnawed at his mind. He laid a hand on Draco, on the warm crest of Draco Malfoy’s buttocks.
He was a beast if he did this, a beast and a coward, but he had to live for something.
“Yes,” Draco moaned triumphantly as Lupin drove into him with the vicious abandon of his recent attack. “Fuck me blind, punish me. Use me however you want, daddy. I’m all you have.”
*****
“Tonks!” A tall, dark man with a glistening shaved head called as he hurried towards the rose-haired woman who sat in the green off Diagon Alley. “Nymphadora Tonks, I haven’t seen you in an age. I’m quite cross with you, leaving me in the lurch. The department’s falling apart without you.”
“Oh, Kingsley, so good to see you,” the woman said with a bright smile. She held out the bundle in her arms. “I want you to meet Wolfgang Tonks-Lupin.”
“He’s lovely,” the man said. “I have to admit, I was half expecting him to be purple with ears and a tail…”
“I was born green myself, but most Metamorphmagi don’t manifest their power till they’re three or four, so we’ll have to see.”
“How old is he?”
“Eighteen weeks.”
“Beautiful little boy. Congratulations. Have you gotten any word from his father?”
The woman’s pleasant face hardened.
“Don’t try to ply me for information, Kingsley,” she said coldly. “I don’t know where Remus is, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Sorry, it won’t happen again,” he apologized, then after a moment of awkward silence, he spoke again. “What about you? What are you going to do, now that you’ve decided not to come back to the Aurors?”
“I’m going to raise my son.”
“But how are you supporting yourself?”
She smiled slyly.
“I’m a kept woman these days,” she said and laughed at the shock that showed plainly on his face. “Oh dear, I’ve scandalized you. Yes, I’ve taken up with someone already. I love Remus. I’ll love him for the rest of my life, but he’s not coming back … and this new thing, I think its’s best for Wolfgang and for me.”
“I’m glad you’re being taken care of.”
A pale, thin young woman with red-blonde hair and a market basket in her arms approached them. When she saw the man, her eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open in stunned surprise.
“Oh, hello, Marietta,” Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin said, making introductions. “This is Marietta; she helps me out. And this gentleman is Kingsley Shacklebolt who I used to work with.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Kingsley said, extending a hand to the skittish girl. She ducked away from it. He didn’t remember her, but she remembered him. He had been there five years before on the night she had betrayed her friends in Dumbledore’s Army to Dolores Umbridge. The night she had been branded a sneak by angry pustules on her face she still bore the scars of. Kingsley Shacklebolt had been there that night and toyed with her memory, rendering her testimony useless.
That had been the worst night of Marietta Edgecombe’s life, and she trembled at the thought of it until she remembered that it was also the night when she had first come to the attention of the woman who was now her mistress. The woman who was her destiny, the woman who was destiny. Thinking of this woman, Marietta made herself brave.
“I’ve finished with the shopping,” she said to Mrs. Tonks-Lupin. “We’d best be getting home. The Lady will be missing you.”
“Yes, of course,” the pink-haired woman replied, wrapping up her infant. “I’d not keep Pansy waiting for the world. It was lovely to see you, Kingsley. I’m sure you’ll manage quite well without me.”
“We’ll try and muddle through somehow,” he said.
Title: The Long Grift
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Remus Lupin/Draco Malfoy
Other Characters: Nymphadora Tonks, Pansy Parkinson, Marietta Edgecombe, Kingsley Shacklebolt
Summary: Post-War AU set four years after HBP. Voldemort has been defeated. Remus Lupin is married to Nymphadora Tonks, and they are expecting their first child when he is drawn into the ambitious schemes of a not exactly reformed Draco Malfoy.
Beta Reader: Nzomniac
Word Count: 5089
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Yaoi sex including sex magic, rimming, fingering, masturbation and inappropriate use of the word “daddy.” Violence. Gore. Angst. Just the faintest hint of Yuri.
Author’s Note: This story is for
irstrange.
Look what you’ve done,
You gigolo.
You know that I loved you, hon,
And I didn’t want to know
That your cool,
Seductive serenade
Was a tool
Of your trade,
You gigolo.
Of all the riches you’ve surveyed,
And all that you can lift,
I’m just another dollar that you made
In your long, long grift.
Stephen Trask
The Long Grift (from Hedwig and the Angry Inch)
The Long Grift
Remus Lupin was wrenched from his uneasy dreams by a strangled cry. Opening his eyes, he faced a ghastly apparition-the wraithlike form of a woman, contorted in pain, staggering across the bedroom. Her hair flowed, flowed from her head all the way to the floor, and trailed behind her as red as blood. The front of her white gown and the sheet she clutched between her legs-they, too, were stained with blood that flowed down to the floor, leaving a smudged trail as she moved slowly, choking out the syllables of his name. Still half in slumber, he thought she must be a ghost endlessly recreating her final horrible moments. Then he recognized her as his wife, Dora Tonks-Lupin.
*****
The Healer in charge at St. Mungo’s was an austere, blonde witch named Portia Smith who scrutinized Lupin with open disapproval.
Truthfully, he’d expected nothing less. He knew how he must look to her, a bedraggled middle-aged wreck of a man at least a dozen years older than the bleeding woman he’d brought to the hospital’s emergency room in the middle of the night. His undesirability was clearly marked by the scars on his face, the chipped black polish on his nails, but most of all by the Ministry issued collar around his neck that identified him as a werewolf.
A great many werewolves had perished during the war and, following Voldemort’s defeat two years before, the Ministry of Magic had set for themselves what Lupin considered the ominous sounding task of “eliminating lycanthropy in the United Kingdom by the next generation.”
Their efforts hadn’t been nearly as bad as he had feared. No one was to be killed; rather, existing werewolves were to be contained, closely monitored to ensure the disease was not spread. To this end, he wore the collar, and each month he spent the days of the full moon detained in Azkaban.
After the legislation was passed, Nymphadora had continued to work for the Ministry as an Auror. It would have been unreasonable for him to ask or expect her to throw away a career she loved for what amounted to little more than a minor inconvenience. If he was angry, if he was bitter, he took care to hide it from her. At twenty-eight, she was still something of a girl in his eyes, a bright and joyful creature even after all she had been through in the war. He had not wanted to becloud her world with his gloom. He had not wanted to destroy her.
Though, it seemed he may have, after all.
“I won’t mince words with you, Mr. Lupin,” Mrs. Smith said. “It’s almost certain that within the next few days your wife is going to lose the child she’s carrying. When this happens, we may not be able to save her life.”
Lupin slumped against the wall, unable to speak, but the woman went on.
“You must be aware, Mr. Lupin, that werewolves aren’t meant to breed with humans,” she informed him with considerable disdain. “They’re as incompatible as humans would be with actual wolves.”
“Yes, I know,” he managed to say. “Dora was horribly disappointed when we first got together that we wouldn’t be able to have children. We were quite surprised by her pregnancy, but she is a Metamorphmagus. Somehow, her body must have made itself compatible…”
“So it would appear,” the Healer sniffed. “However, the strain of maintaining this unnatural pregnancy has destroyed her health.”
“That’s not right,” Lupin muttered, more to himself than Mrs. Smith who clearly had very little interest in anything he might have to say. “She hadn’t been sick or run down. She’s been absolutely thriving the past six months. I don’t understand this…”
“There’s nothing to understand,” Mrs. Smith said. “You’ve made your lady very ill.”
*****
Hours later, when she was as stable as she was going to be, he was allowed to see Dora. She was so still and pale she might have been dead already. He sat at her bedside for a very long time, clutching her icy hand, trying to will whatever warmth and strength he had to flow into her body. It wasn’t right that it should be like this. It was not right that her youth and health, her spirit, should all be wasted. He had expected her to outlive him by decades. She had always been stronger than he was. She was the one who carried him in their marriage. He was more or less useless.
In the past two years, he’d become a recluse. Often as not, his monthly visits to Azkaban were the only times he ventured out. Holding down a job was out of the question. Even if anyone were willing to hire a werewolf, he was unable to work. He was physically incapacitated for days both before and after each transformation, completely useless. He managed to earn a pittance ghostwriting books and publishing his more paranoid fantasies in the Quibbler under assumed names, but, for the most part, Dora supported him. Supported him and kept him sane, made him believe he belonged in the world, provided him with whatever measure of hope he might have.
It wasn’t right that she should suffer for what he had done.
And she was suffering for something he had done.
Portia Smith was an ignorant bigot, but she was correct. He had made his lady very ill.
It was not Dora’s pregnancy, but the way it was suddenly disrupted that struck him as unnatural. He was familiar enough with Dark magic that he could feel it’s presence with them in the hospital room. He could feel that someone had their claws in her and the baby and was leeching away their lives.
He wasn’t sure why or how, but he knew who it was.
Eighteen days before, he had reported to Azkaban for the last full moon. Dutifully or resentfully, it hardly mattered. He’d been chained and locked in a cell, spent the night tearing at the chains and at his body. It may have been the confinement, the aging of his body, or the damage done by the war, but the transformation from human to wolf and back again had become increasingly difficult and debilitating for him. When dawn came, he lay naked and bleeding on the cold stone floor, weighed down by the heavy chains, too sore and exhausted to move, scarcely knowing time or place.
He might have been nine, seventeen, twenty-five, or thirty-four years. In the Shrieking Shack, his parents’ house, number twelve, Grimmauld Place, or some Death Eater dungeon. Someone was touching him lightly, moving their hands over his battered body, chanting healing spells. It might have been his father, Madame Pomfrey, Dora, or Sirius. It might have been Fenrir Greyback-even that monster had moments of tenderness. There had been mornings when Lupin had woken to find him licking the very wounds he’d inflicted the night before.
Somehow, he’d forced his eyes to focus on the source of the voice and of the soothing touch. It had not been any of the people he’d imagined it might be. It was a stranger-a beautiful, golden-haired stranger in expensive, tailored robes.
“Lie still,” the young man told him. “You’re hurt.”
The chains fell away, and the young man, slender but strong, untangled them from Lupin’s limbs and tossed them aside.
“Barbaric,” he whispered. “The way they treat you. It’s positively inhuman.”
“Who are you?” Lupin asked him. The young man smiled.
“You don’t know me?” he said.
“Right now, I scarcely know who I am.”
“I was a student of yours once, not that you were especially fond of me.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Perhaps I’m kind. Perhaps I’m aware, unlike the brutes that run this place, that you’re a human being and not an animal.” He drew close, speaking softly, almost whispering. “My father died in this place. And I know what it’s like to be on the wrong side of things, to be hunted and hated and treated as a vile thing.”
“You’re Draco Malfoy,” Lupin said weakly.
“You remember me, after all.”
Despite his involvement in Albus Dumbledore’s death, Draco Malfoy had somehow emerged from the war with both his life and his fortune intact. He’d proven his innocence, proven that everything he’d done for the Death Eaters was done under duress. Lupin had always suspected that the fortune had a great deal to do with the innocence. At any other time, he would have regarded Draco Malfoy with considerable suspicion, but that morning, in the haze of pain and fatigue, Draco Malfoy was his best and only friend.
“Drink this,” Draco said, holding a vial of potion to his lips. Lupin drank; it was warm and bitter. It did nothing to clear the fog in his head, but it seemed to take the chill from his bones and the ache from his muscles. With Draco’s help, he was able to rise and make his way to the threadbare cot where he collapsed.
“You’ve hurt your wrist,” Draco said.
“Yes…” Lupin muttered hazily. He must have broken it struggling against the chains. His hand was twisted at a grotesque angle. Draco sat beside him; taking the injured wrist in both hands, he plied it with whispered spells till he was able to painlessly straighten it.
“Better?” Draco asked and lingeringly, seductively, licked the wrist he had just healed.
It had to be the potion. It usually took Lupin at least a week to regain potency after his transformation, but when Draco’s lips pressed against his, when Draco’s velvety tongue filled his mouth, he felt himself growing hard.
Draco pulled back from the embrace, undressed himself, and carelessly let his fine robes fall to the prison floor. He was gorgeous, twenty-one years old, lithe and gold and white. Like a dream and Lupin reached for him, not thinking about the wife he thought he loved or the child she carried. No, he was thinking only of the burning need that had somehow been ignited in his ruined body.
Draco had started it, but he didn’t seem to know where to go beyond kisses, beyond undressing. Lupin took control, licking and sucking Draco’s cock, his balls, finally moving between the cheeks of his arse. Lupin’s experienced tongue untied the knot of muscle there, and when it was relaxed and slick, he inserted a finger, another, still another. He reached inside, massaging Draco’s prostate gland. The younger man whimpered like a child, his arms wrapped tight around Lupin’s neck.
“You’re killing me,” Draco gasped. “I can’t hold out much longer. Put your cock inside me. Please, put it inside me.”
“Have you done this before?” Lupin asked.
“Please, hurry.” He spread his knees, arched his pelvis upward. He was trembling, shaking, but Lupin did as he asked, pushing into the tight, hot passage, losing himself to the rhythms of sexual release. Draco locked his legs around Lupin’s hips, driving the older man deeper into him.
“That’s it,” he urged. “Let yourself go … come inside me…” Then his words dissolved into a strangled wail as he bucked frantically against Lupin in his own orgasm.
After that, things had dissolved once more into a haze. The potion that had lent him temporary vitality must have worn off, and he sank into an exhausted slumber. When he woke, he was chained again, and the sun was setting. No beautiful stranger came to him the next morning, or the next. By the time he left Azkaban, he had almost forgotten Draco Malfoy’s visit.
Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin stirred. Her blue-tinged eyelids fluttered open.
“Remus…” she whispered weakly.
“I’m here, darling,” he said. “I’m right here.”
“The baby… Have I lost the baby?”
“No. No, darling. There was a bit of a scare, but everything’s all right now. The baby’s out of danger. You’re both going to be just fine.”
Lies and omission, this was the language he excelled at. He had warned her early on that he wasn’t who she thought he was, that he wasn’t right for her. Somehow, she’d convinced him he was wrong, that he was someone who deserved her love. He’d wanted to believe it, wanted to be that person, but he wasn’t. He had failed her, and now she was dying.
“You’ll be all right, Dora,” he whispered, stroking her chilly hand. “You and the baby, both. You’re going to walk out of his hospital in a few days, and in three months, you’ll give birth. You’re going to watch our child grow up. I promise you this.”
*****
Much to his surprise, Lupin was admitted to Malfoy Manor. A thin and wane young woman with strawberry-blonde hair, a pock-marked face, and downcast eyes let him in. With shuffling steps, she led him to a lavish parlor where Draco Malfoy waited.
When Lupin had last seen Draco, he’d been naked and flushed, his hair disheveled, parting his bruised lips to beg for more. This was a different creature entirely-cool and poised, a born aristocrat, a perfect Edwardian gentleman reclining on his leather sofa. Perched beside him on the arm of the couch was a round-faced woman, tiny and curvy. Her burgundy red hair fell in a heavy fringe over her forehead and flipped up at the ends. She was wearing a short, tight shift patterned in swirls of red and white, long boots the color of her hair laced all the way up her thighs. Huge dark glasses covered her eyes and gave her the appearance of an exotic insect.
“Hello, Remus,” Draco greeted him. “Good of you to stop by. Allow me to introduce my fiancée.” He laid a hand fondly on the thigh of the insect woman. “This is Miss Pansy Parkinson, a former student of yours as is Pansy’s attendant, Miss Edgecombe. You may go now, Marietta,” he said pointedly to the girl who had shown Lupin in. She hastily shuffled away.
“What have you done to my wife?” Lupin demanded.
“Your wife? I’m afraid I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Tonks-Lupin,” Draco said with a sneer. “Such a shame as she’s my closest living blood relation these days. Isn’t it a pity how the attitude of the parents’ generation can shape the lives of their children?” Pansy laughed, apparently finding Draco quite clever. Lupin snapped.
“You’re killing her, you fucking bastard,” he snarled, lunging at Draco. As he did, something came from the shadows, crashing over him like a cold wave, chilling him with his own hopelessness, his guilt and shame, his useless impotence. When the wave broke and he could breathe again, he was on his knees, trembling. “That was a Dementor…” he gasped. “You’ve got a Dementor protecting you.”
“Quite right,” Draco said. “So I’d advise you to respect my personal space, mongrel.”
“And watch your fucking mouth,” Miss Parkinson added. “There is a lady present.” And the two of them giggled like errant schoolchildren.
“Whatever you’ve done to Dora, please stop it,” Lupin pleaded. “I beg you. I will do anything, anything you ask, give you anything if you release her from this spell…”
“What can you give me?” Draco said mockingly. “You don’t have anything of value, and you’ve already given me your firstborn. This is your fault, you know; you brought this on yourself. I’m killing your wife and the thing she’s carrying, but you gave me the power to do it. What do you think our little jailhouse tryst was about? Mutual attraction? When two people fuck, it creates a new thing-Magick Childe. Surely an expert in the Dark Arts such as yourself knows that there are ways of capturing the energy of the Magick Childe.”
“Those weren’t healing spells you were chanting…” Lupin said.
“Some of them were. I had to keep you conscious, after all, but most of them were incantations to snare the Magick Childe created when the two of us fucked. A Magick Childe, half of you and half of me-your wife’s cousin and closest blood relation. Once I had it, it was the easiest thing in the world to bind it to the flesh and blood child your precious Nymphadora is impregnated with. They were practically the same. Here, look…”
He held up an hourglass filled with blood rather than sand. Slowly, drop by drop the top emptied into the bottom.
“This is the essence of the Magick Childe, bleeding away. When it runs out, that thing you and my cousin made, that three-quarters Muggle hybrid of wolf and Metamorphmagus, will die. It’ll rip out her insides when it does. She might live, but she won’t have another child.”
“Why are you doing this?” Lupin asked frantically. “Why would you do something like this?”
“It’s nothing personal,” Draco said placidly. “I’m looking towards the larger picture. You see, during the war, my Pansy discovered she has a remarkable talent for clairvoyance. She’s seen the future.”
“Civilization is like the moon; it has its cycles,” Pansy said. “For the past thousand years, the Muggle world grew brighter and brighter, but now it’s begun to wane, to turn back towards the dark. They’ve already become superstitious, breaking down into tribes. They’re using up all the things that give them power. In twenty years, they’ll be huddled around fires for heat, fearing the shadows. Things will be the way they were in the age of Merlin, and I’ve seen who the Merlin for this new age will be. One who has the blood of the house of Black-the blood of Black but not the name.”
“The blood of Black but not the name,” Draco said. “It comes down to me and my lovely cousin Nymphadora. It’s got to be her or me. I’m taking steps to ensure that it’s me … if not me personally, then my line, my children. Not hers.”
“That’s rubbish,” Lupin burst out. “That’s absurd. Half the Wizarding world has the ‘blood of Black but not the name.’ This new Merlin could be anyone; there’s no way of knowing. Didn’t you learn from Voldemort that prophecy can’t be taken at face value?”
“Don’t lecture me, Professor,” Pansy sneered. “I understand what I see. I’m not some addle-brained ninny like Sibyll Trelawney.” She removed her dark glasses; beneath them, her eyes were vacant, drained of color and unseeing. “I’ve paid the price for true vision.”
“You foolish, destructive little girl…”
“Hush,” Draco purred, a finger to his lips. He rose, stood over Lupin, who was still on his knees, and stroked his hair as though he were a pet dog. “You needn’t upset yourself; there’s nothing you can do. You can’t touch us, Pansy and me. Not physically, magically, legally or even morally. Your wife and child are dying because you betrayed them.”
“You drugged me…” Lupin protested.
“What, that potion?” Draco laughed. “That just enabled you to get it up. What you did with it was your choice. You made it so easy for me, Remus. You were so easy. All I had to do was be there, show you the slightest bit of kindness, and you were quite literally kissing my ass. You know what you are? You’re a beast. A beast and a coward. I’ve known it since I was a thirteen-year-old schoolboy. You’d lecture on the Dark Arts with such longing in your voice. Look at me, Potter, the other boys with the same longing in your eyes. Like a starving animal. It was obscene how much you wanted sex and power, but what was really disgusting was how you pretended to be so kind and humble, so selfless and good. A beast and a coward at the same time. I knew I’d find a use for you one day.”
Draco cast a wary glance at his blind co-conspirator, then, grinning wickedly, bent down and licked Lupin’s face.
*****
The next day, Lupin went to St. Mungo’s to say good-bye.
There were dark circles under his eyes. He’d been up all night working magic, preparing. That morning, the bodies of half a dozen small animals had been laid to rest in the garden, and in Knockturn Alley, a drunken vagrant was missing two fingers and a pint of blood.
Everything Draco Malfoy had said about him was true. He was a beast and a coward as well. What Draco did not understand was that these things made him not helpless but dangerous.
For hours, Remus Lupin sat beside his wife’s inert body, his hand laying on her belly, watching her breathe. She did not wake or even stir, and as the sun set, he slipped a letter into the pocket of her dressing gown-a letter in which he had written all he could bear for her to know. Then he kissed her cool, still lips and, drawing his shabby overcoat about him, went out into the night.
For years, she had given him a reason to live. The least he could do was save her life, however much it cost him.
He watched Malfoy Manor. Early in the evening, Draco and Pansy, trailed by Marietta Edgecombe, climb into a carriage borne by sleek, grey Granians and depart in the direction of London.
When they returned, Lupin was standing at the gate of the manor, waiting. As he expected, Draco emerged from the carriage, wand in hand.
“You’re becoming quite a nuisance, Lupin,” Draco said. “I thought I made it quite clear to you last night that we’ve no further use for you.”
Lupin could feel the chill in the air from the Dementor’s drawing near. He had no wand. He only waited, silently, until they were almost upon him, then raising his hands pushed them outward towards Draco.
“Luna lux lucis fio vos,” he said. The young man began to glow with a pale luminescence. Draco Malfoy began to glow with the light of the moon.
“What is this?” Draco demanded. “What did you do?” Focused on the light emitting from his body, he did not see and Pansy could not see that Lupin was transforming, twisting and morphing from man to wolf. The Dementor, caring nothing for an animal, paid him no mind, retreating to the shadows, believing their master was safe at the very moment he was in greatest peril. Only Marietta Edgecombe saw, and her screams filled Lupin’s ears as he leapt on Draco Malfoy, tearing into the young man with a wild abandon he had never enjoyed so much, drunk on the taste of blood and fear.
*****
Four days later, when Draco was released from St. Mungo’s, Lupin went back to Malfoy Manor. It was a tremendous risk, but he felt he had to see Draco again, speak to him, before disappearing entirely.
There were Aurors watching the house, but he was familiar enough with their protocol and warded with enough forbidden charms to evade detection. He found Draco in the parlor, sprawled on the leather sofa in a robe. His face was drawn and pale, and when he saw Lupin, he didn’t bother to pretend he wasn’t afraid.
“Have you come to finish me off?” he asked, voice trembling slightly. “Get on with it, then.”
“I’m not going to hurt you unless you make me,” Lupin said.
“Those cursed Aurors are supposed to be protecting me from you. A fat lot of good they’re doing.”
“Where are your Dementors?”
“Those were Pansy’s pets,” Draco snapped, fear rapidly being overwhelmed by bitterness. “She’s gone and taken them with her.”
“So, Miss Parkinson isn’t going to stand by you in your hour of need?”
“Miss Parkinson is a mercenary twat,” Draco spat. “Not that I can blame her. She can only see her glorious vision, and I’m no part of it any more. What do you want?”
“I need to know the spell is broken,” Lupin said.
“Of course it’s broken, you stupid mutt,” Draco snarled. He hoisted up the hourglass-it was empty-and lobbed it weakly in Lupin’s direction. “It was a blood spell, and my blood’s been tainted. I lost control of the spell when you infected me with your disease.”
The hourglass had shattered against the wall. Gingerly, Lupin picked up one of its fragments. He could feel the magic that had been in it, feel that the magic had fled. It wasn’t a trick; Draco was telling the truth. The spell was broken.
“Dora will recover;” he muttered to himself. “She’s going to be all right.”
“Yes, yes,” Draco interrupted. “Your bitch and pup will have long and happy lives without you. I chatted you up as the next Fenrir Greyback; the Ministry is mad to get their hands on you.”
“You’re only making it worse for yourself,” Lupin said calmly. “Stirring up animosity against werewolves. You’re one now. That collar becomes you.”
Draco’s fingers leapt to his throat, and the fear returned to his eyes.
“The full moon is coming…” he said.
“Don’t let them put you in Azkaban,” Lupin said. Despite himself, he realized this was why he had come back to Malfoy Manor. “You’re weak. I hurt you badly. If you’re chained up alone, you won’t survive your first transformation. You should leave before then. You still have your fortune, get out of England. Go somewhere where they won’t lock you away. Find someone who can help you.”
“What about you?” Draco said quietly. “You did this to me; you teach me how to live with it.”
“No. I may have cost you a great deal, but I’ve lost everything because of you, Draco. Do you think I could ever trust you?”
“Then don’t trust me. Pity me. If you can’t pity me, use me.”
Draco untied the sash of his robe, let it fall open, revealing his white gold body marred now by the angry red and black of Lupin’s bites across his chest and shoulder.
“Maybe I deserve to be alone,” Draco said. “But I don’t want to be, and I doubt you do, either.”
He lay back on the couch and began stroking himself, his cock growing hard and flushed. Spreading his legs, he pushed the fingers of one hand into himself as the other rubbed his erection.
“Come on, Remus,” he urged breathlessly. “I’ll be your little boy, the only one you’ll ever have.” The sight of him turned Lupin’s stomach, but he could not take his eyes away, and he felt the same fire he had felt in Azkaban spark once more.
Draco rolled over, presenting his arse to Lupin, hands dug in his flesh spreading himself open. “Come on, daddy,” he pleaded.
Lupin was hard. He felt the heat of desire pulsing in his body even as a dread of loneliness gnawed at his mind. He laid a hand on Draco, on the warm crest of Draco Malfoy’s buttocks.
He was a beast if he did this, a beast and a coward, but he had to live for something.
“Yes,” Draco moaned triumphantly as Lupin drove into him with the vicious abandon of his recent attack. “Fuck me blind, punish me. Use me however you want, daddy. I’m all you have.”
*****
“Tonks!” A tall, dark man with a glistening shaved head called as he hurried towards the rose-haired woman who sat in the green off Diagon Alley. “Nymphadora Tonks, I haven’t seen you in an age. I’m quite cross with you, leaving me in the lurch. The department’s falling apart without you.”
“Oh, Kingsley, so good to see you,” the woman said with a bright smile. She held out the bundle in her arms. “I want you to meet Wolfgang Tonks-Lupin.”
“He’s lovely,” the man said. “I have to admit, I was half expecting him to be purple with ears and a tail…”
“I was born green myself, but most Metamorphmagi don’t manifest their power till they’re three or four, so we’ll have to see.”
“How old is he?”
“Eighteen weeks.”
“Beautiful little boy. Congratulations. Have you gotten any word from his father?”
The woman’s pleasant face hardened.
“Don’t try to ply me for information, Kingsley,” she said coldly. “I don’t know where Remus is, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Sorry, it won’t happen again,” he apologized, then after a moment of awkward silence, he spoke again. “What about you? What are you going to do, now that you’ve decided not to come back to the Aurors?”
“I’m going to raise my son.”
“But how are you supporting yourself?”
She smiled slyly.
“I’m a kept woman these days,” she said and laughed at the shock that showed plainly on his face. “Oh dear, I’ve scandalized you. Yes, I’ve taken up with someone already. I love Remus. I’ll love him for the rest of my life, but he’s not coming back … and this new thing, I think its’s best for Wolfgang and for me.”
“I’m glad you’re being taken care of.”
A pale, thin young woman with red-blonde hair and a market basket in her arms approached them. When she saw the man, her eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open in stunned surprise.
“Oh, hello, Marietta,” Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin said, making introductions. “This is Marietta; she helps me out. And this gentleman is Kingsley Shacklebolt who I used to work with.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Kingsley said, extending a hand to the skittish girl. She ducked away from it. He didn’t remember her, but she remembered him. He had been there five years before on the night she had betrayed her friends in Dumbledore’s Army to Dolores Umbridge. The night she had been branded a sneak by angry pustules on her face she still bore the scars of. Kingsley Shacklebolt had been there that night and toyed with her memory, rendering her testimony useless.
That had been the worst night of Marietta Edgecombe’s life, and she trembled at the thought of it until she remembered that it was also the night when she had first come to the attention of the woman who was now her mistress. The woman who was her destiny, the woman who was destiny. Thinking of this woman, Marietta made herself brave.
“I’ve finished with the shopping,” she said to Mrs. Tonks-Lupin. “We’d best be getting home. The Lady will be missing you.”
“Yes, of course,” the pink-haired woman replied, wrapping up her infant. “I’d not keep Pansy waiting for the world. It was lovely to see you, Kingsley. I’m sure you’ll manage quite well without me.”
“We’ll try and muddle through somehow,” he said.