Clair de Lune, Zacharias/Daphne, Rated R, Part 1/2
Another new ship arrives at we3sisters! Is there an epidemic around this place or what? Please welcome Zacharias Smith/Daphne Greengrass to the mix.
Clair de Lune
Pairing: Zacharias/Daphne
Summary: In war-torn England, one is captive and the other captor. Will dark things ensue?
Rating: Restricted. Adult themes and adult language.
Warning:Reader beware. This one is darker than I usually write, as per the request.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: This fic was written for _____faith as part of the 2007 LJ Zacharias & Daphne Fic Exchange. Although the exchange stopped short of the revealing, I've obtained permission from Azadi786 to post my fic here. Due to a variety of factors, only the first half of the fic was posted at the exchange. It always felt incomplete to me without its second half. In honour of her birthday, I would like to dedicated the entire jumble of words to _____faith, who introduced me to this lovely ship. Happy Belated Birthday! Part II will be posted in a day or two - just tweaking it a bit.
Many thanks to my three betas, dragonlilleth, black_alnair and Peki, whose spirited discourse kept me busy. The title was taken from the third movement of Claude Debussy's Suite Bergamasque.
ORIGINAL REQUEST:
BRIEFLY describe what you'd like to receive in a fic: During the war, Daphne Greengrass is captured by radical members of the Order and mistakenly branded/treated as a Death Eater.
the tone/mood desired: Dark, with very minimal usage of humor
a theme/element/line of dialogue/object you would like in your fic: Musicbox that plays Debussy's "Claire de Lune"
rating of the the fic you want: PG-13 - NC-17
canon or AU? AU :)
deal breakers (what don't you want?): Too many mentions of other pairings
Clair de Lune
Part I
Into the Darkness
"I told them not to use the shackles," Zacharias mutters, tapping the iron cufflinks with his wand. When the heavy manacles break open and fall to the floor, huge bleeding sores cover her wrists.
"I'm a Death Eater or haven't you heard?" she hisses, wincing as he picks up her left hand and examines her wrist.
He glances at her before lifting the sleeve of her robe and looking at her forearm. Its delicate ivory skin is without a blemish. There is no Dark Mark.
"There are Death Eaters who wear the Dark Mark and those that don't. You don't." That said, he casts several healing charms that leave her slender wrists as flawless as her left forearm.
"How do you tell the difference between a Death Eater who doesn't wear the Mark and an innocent bystander?"
"If you were an innocent bystander, you wouldn't be here." Zacharias throws a set of yellow prisoner's robes at Daphne, who catches them in her arms. "Put those on and place your clothes on the table."
Daphne looks at Zacharias, who is leaning against the wall staring at her.
"Aren't you going to turn around?"
"Nope."
"Bastard," she mutters under her breath.
"Bastard to you. Sensible to me. It's all a matter of perspective. If I turn my back, you could disarm me or worse." He pauses, looks her up and down and continues, "Don't worry. I don't get my jollies off of female prisoners, no matter how attractive they might find themselves."
Snorting, Daphne spins around, strips down to her knickers and bra before reaching for the set of yellow cotton robes.
"Your boots and socks as well."
Cursing, Daphne bends over, pulls off her boots and socks, fully aware of the picture she is presenting for him. Then she grabs the set of yellow robes and throws them over her shivering body. The temperature is near freezing in the small cell.
When she turns around, flush with anger and embarrassment, he has her clothes and boots in hand.
"It's harder to escape with no boots." Then he points his wand at a clean pair of thin socks. "That's what you'll be wearing for the duration of your stay here." He bids her goodnight with a nod of his head and Disapparates before her furious eyes.
Escape? How the hell does one escape from a cell with no windows and no doors?
And the lights go out.
----- ----- -----
"It's not true, you know," she says, moments after coming out of her interrogation session.
He's in the hallway waiting to escort her back to her cell. They've been coming and going between her cell and the interrogation chamber for over a week.
"What's not true?" he asks, placing his hand on her shoulder, preparing to Disapparate her back to her cell.
"I haven't been vaccinated against Veritaserum."
"CRACK!"
They land in her cell.
"That's not what we've heard."
"You've only heard what they want you to hear. And I'm here because they want me to be here. I'm no more a Death Eater than you are."
She feels his hand lifting off of her shoulder, and she turns around to look into his stubborn eyes. When he doesn't respond, she sighs.
"You think I'm lying, don't you?"
"It's not my job to decide that."
"Does the truth mean anything to you people? Did it ever occur to you that your informant stinks? That he or she maybe a double agent?"
He doesn't answer.
"They won't let me out of here, will they?"
"No."
"Will you?"
"No." He looks at her and sighs, "Your only way out of here is giving them the information they want. You give them that, and you'll get out of here. Nothing else will gain your release."
Two days later, another guard comes to take her to her interrogation session. Zacharias has been called away to his other duties. When she asks where he's gone, no one will tell her.
----- ----- -----
She stares into the darkness. She can't see her hand in front of her face. It's darker than dark. It's black. There's no alternating day and night, only night. They cut off the light in her cell when she couldn't give them the information they demanded.
She's lost all sense of time. Has she been here a month or two months or a year? She doesn't know. No one talks to her. Zacharias talked to her. No one touches her. They use a leather noose around her throat to side-by-side Apparate. The guards are as anonymous to her as she is to them, changing almost daily now.
She isn't lonely because she has two constant companions, hunger and cold. Long periods of time pass with no food or water. She doesn't know if it's been a day or two days or more since her last foul-tasting meal, eaten in the dark. She is weak from the lack of food. She tries not to move because movement wastes energy. And there is her other unrelenting companion, cold. It seeps under her skin and into her bones and twists around her aching head, where fears of hypothermia and death chase her in the dark as she lies naked and shivering on her cot, the sound of her own heart pounding until it deafens her.
"CRAAACK!"
A blinding light illuminates her cell with the strength of a thousand candles. And it hurts. She shields her eyes with the back of her hand.
The guard raps her with his steel rod before her eyes can adjust to the light.
She sits and puts the blanket aside. Where is her indignation and shame at her lack of clothing? Gone with everything else they've taken. She doesn't remember when they took her clothing away, but they told her she must earn it back by giving them the information they need. Her bare feet hit the frozen floor, and she stands, but when she stands, the room spins. She is weak-headed from a lack of food, another punishment for her lack of cooperation. The guard slams the side of the rod into her stomach like a Beater to a Bludger, causing her to gasp and double over onto the floor in agony. Then he slips the leather noose around her neck and casually Apparates her to another interrogation session where she will be beaten again.
The following week they continue to beat her, only now they beat her until she is unconscious. She prays for death and stops eating.
----- ----- -----
The lights in her cell flicker on and hiss while casting out gentle waves of illumination into the dank space and lighting up her emaciated and motionless form, covered in a filthy, tattered cotton blanket. She doesn't react to the light. In her world, there is no light.
"I've brought you hot soup and bread."
She opens her eyes, startled. No one speaks to her. She looks over at the guard, but it isn't a guard. It's Zacharias. He's back. She struggles to sit up.
"No, don't," he cautions, walking over to her cot from the other side of the room where he placed the tray of food on a rickety wooden table. "You're too weak.
When he reaches out to assist her, she shrinks back and holds the blanket firm against her chest. Ignoring her, he grabs a firm hold of both her forearms and hauls her upright into a sitting position. As he does this, the blanket slips, revealing her breasts and her upper torso, littered with raging purple bruises and scars. As soon as he releases her, she snatches up the ragged blanket and covers herself, embarrassed by her nudity for the first time in months.
Without pausing, Zacharias conjures up a set of pristine yellow robes, white knickers and thick woollen socks. He hands them to her and turns around. Daphne stares at the clothes and then at Zacharias.
"Go on," he orders when he hears no movement from her, "put them on, or you'll catch your death in here." While Daphne scampers into her new clothes, Zacharias casts a series of warming spells, chasing away the cold and bringing the temperature in her cell up to something inhabitable.
She watches as he brings the tray of food from across the room and sets it down on her lap.
"I want you to try and eat some of this."
The fragrant aroma of hot lentil soup seeps into the air. He pulls a wooden chair up to her bedside and watches as she picks up the spoon with a trembling hand and takes a small sip of the delicious mixture. Her eyes go wide as the warm liquid tumbles down her throat and into her growling stomach where it lands with a delighted splash. It's the most divine tasting food she has ever eaten. She devours sip after sip and begins ripping off pieces of bread and shoving them into her mouth.
"Slowly or you'll make yourself sick."
She doesn't slow down. She eats faster and faster until her spoon strikes the empty bowl. Then she sticks her fingers inside the bowl, scraps up the remaining liquid and sucks the precious last drops from her fingers.
"Here, I've nicked this for you," he says, taking out a small blue vial from his robes. "It'll help with your fever. I've added a few drops of strengthening potion as well."
She nods and swallows it like an obedient dog. Fever? Does she have a fever? Is that the odd warmth in the room?
He stands, collects her tray and Disapparates. She braces herself, waiting for the light in her cell to disappear, for the cold to come seeping back in. She waits and waits but nothing happens. The light and the warmth hold. She slips back into bed under the thin blanket and stares at the ceiling.
----- ----- -----
Over the next month, Zacharias woos Daphne back to life. He not only returns night and day to her cell and warmth to her life, but he also brings her special foods, a heavy blanket, strengthening potions, an oversized woollen jumper and even house slippers in addition to her thick socks. She waits for his daily visits and no longer dreams of death. The interrogation sessions and the beatings stop. She doesn't ask him what he's done to make that possible. She refuses to believe that they finally realize she doesn't have the information they want, that she can't give them something she doesn't have.
"I thought you might fancy this," he says late one evening.
"What is it?" she asks, leaning over to watch as he fishes around the pockets of his robes.
"There you go." He places a small wooden box with an intricate inlay pattern into her hands.
Daphne stares at the box and then at Zacharias.
"Open it," he says. "It's for you."
She opens it, and when she does, glorious, haunting music fills the room, chasing away the chill and the darkness and filling her soul with hope.
"It's beautiful. What is it?"
"It's you," he says.
"Me?"
He smiles, the first smile she's ever seen on his face. "It masquerades as "Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy, but it's really you."
She doesn't know who Claude Debussy is and has never heard of his "Clair de Lune", but she hugs the music box to her chest. Of all the gifts he's given her, this is the one that will most transform her endless incarceration. It will lift her out of her dank cell and let her dance among the shimmering stars and frolic in the fragrant wild meadows that live on in her mind and her heart.
She looks at the beautiful box, wondering where it came from. Is it a stolen treasure? Her belongings were confiscated the day she entered this hellhole, and she's never seen them again. Do the guards divvy things up or simply help themselves on a first come first serve basis? Is the original owner dead? She doesn't want to know. She doesn't care. It's her music box now.
"Thank you," she says, tears filling her eyes.
----- ----- -----
One night, he sneaks her out of her cell with its myriad wards and into his quarters for a shower, her first real shower since her imprisonment. When they land in his room, he releases her hand from his. She looks around his personal space. It's a typical soldier's quarters. A bed, a desk and a chest of drawers fill the modest space. She can't help herself. She's drawn in.
He watches as she lingers over the few objects strewn about. She reads the titles of his books, runs her fingers over the handle of his broom, and stares at pictures of his Hogwarts Quidditch team and of his parents. He waits as she picks up the picture of his parents and studies it.
She decides he rather favours his mother, an elegant blonde, but he has his father's penetrating cerulean eyes.
"Go on," he says, handing her a soft white cotton towel.
"I'll be as quick as I can." She grabs the towel and rushes into the bathroom, not bothering to lock the door.
When she emerges from the steaming room more minutes later than she intended, she finds him lying down on his bed reading. She's never seen him like this. What else does he do when he's not tending to his prisoners? Do the guards play an occasional game of Quidditch? Where does he eat his meals?
"All done?" he asks, putting the book aside and sitting up.
"Did I take too long?"
"Of course, not. Come here."
She sits down on the bed beside him, her face flush and limbs relaxed from the hot water beating down on her. Zacharias takes out his wand and casts a series of drying spells on her hair then stares at his handiwork.
"There. Much better."
Daphne laughs, startling Zacharias. It's the first time he's heard the melodious sound emanating from her throat. Her infectious smile transforms her face, and he's captivated.
"You're beautiful," he whispers, his hand reaching out to touch her. It's an exquisite face, a perfect face. He rests the palm of his rough hand on her soft cheek.
The laughter in Daphne's throat dies, and she stares at Zacharias, at the fascination on his face. He has never touched her before - not like this. Is she beautiful? She doesn't feel beautiful, and she hasn't seen her own face in eight months. Daphne turns until her lips meet his palm. Then she kisses it, a gentle, tentative kiss. Zacharias gasps, and Daphne kisses his palm again and again, each time deeper, longer and more passionate, leaning into the kiss until she is pressed up against him.
Zacharias remains motionless but she doesn't stop. Instead, she kisses him. She impales his cool lips with hers, hot and moist and deadly. They tenderly cajole and beseech him to join her, killing whatever futile resistance he might have had to her and trampling the nexus of morals and self-respect he's been hanging onto for the past many weeks as he spends day in and day out with her, enticing her back to life and then some. She doesn't think he expects this, does she?
But Zacharias can't think with her this close. He can't remember what is wrong with something that feels so right. He can't remember who is prisoner and who guard. When he feels Daphne hesitate and falter while waiting for him, Zacharias reaches out and pulls her to him, crushing her lips beneath his and kissing her back until he feels the room revolving around that intoxicating kiss, around the juncture of their two aching bodies. His hands are on her, roaming up and down in places he shouldn't, stroking her curves and delighting in her heated response to his touch. And he doesn't want to stop. He wants more. He wants all of her. He has wanted her for so long.
Her hands are on him, desperately grabbing and touching in a hurried exploration. She tears at his robes and his shirt, at anything that separates the two. She's fumbling with his belt and his trousers when he slips her yellow robes off her shoulders. They tumble down around her waist, exposing her chest and her back. Their lingering bruises and scars scream in the brutal light of his room. This is no moonlit romantic interlude. His hands freeze.
Zacharias goes cold and sick in the pit of his stomach, until he feels he might wretch all over both of them. This isn't what he wants for them. Not here. Not like this. He jerks the yellow robes back up over Daphne, covering her scars and her bruises. Then he pushes back and stands, stumbling as he pulls up his trousers and tries to buckle his belt.
He is so disoriented and nauseous that he doesn't remember his fallen wand on the bed, not until she picks it up. Zacharias looks at Daphne, who is staring at the wand in her hand. Then she looks up, and her startled dark eyes meet his. Each stares at the other for many minutes, until Daphne whispers, "I'm sorry," and Disapparates from his view and his room and his life.
Zacharias collapses against the wall and eases his grip on his second wand. No soldier carries one wand in a war.
----- End Part I -----
(Part II: Lost)
[Index Page]
Clair de Lune
Pairing: Zacharias/Daphne
Summary: In war-torn England, one is captive and the other captor. Will dark things ensue?
Rating: Restricted. Adult themes and adult language.
Warning:Reader beware. This one is darker than I usually write, as per the request.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: This fic was written for _____faith as part of the 2007 LJ Zacharias & Daphne Fic Exchange. Although the exchange stopped short of the revealing, I've obtained permission from Azadi786 to post my fic here. Due to a variety of factors, only the first half of the fic was posted at the exchange. It always felt incomplete to me without its second half. In honour of her birthday, I would like to dedicated the entire jumble of words to _____faith, who introduced me to this lovely ship. Happy Belated Birthday! Part II will be posted in a day or two - just tweaking it a bit.
Many thanks to my three betas, dragonlilleth, black_alnair and Peki, whose spirited discourse kept me busy. The title was taken from the third movement of Claude Debussy's Suite Bergamasque.
ORIGINAL REQUEST:
BRIEFLY describe what you'd like to receive in a fic: During the war, Daphne Greengrass is captured by radical members of the Order and mistakenly branded/treated as a Death Eater.
the tone/mood desired: Dark, with very minimal usage of humor
a theme/element/line of dialogue/object you would like in your fic: Musicbox that plays Debussy's "Claire de Lune"
rating of the the fic you want: PG-13 - NC-17
canon or AU? AU :)
deal breakers (what don't you want?): Too many mentions of other pairings
Clair de Lune
Part I
Into the Darkness
"I told them not to use the shackles," Zacharias mutters, tapping the iron cufflinks with his wand. When the heavy manacles break open and fall to the floor, huge bleeding sores cover her wrists.
"I'm a Death Eater or haven't you heard?" she hisses, wincing as he picks up her left hand and examines her wrist.
He glances at her before lifting the sleeve of her robe and looking at her forearm. Its delicate ivory skin is without a blemish. There is no Dark Mark.
"There are Death Eaters who wear the Dark Mark and those that don't. You don't." That said, he casts several healing charms that leave her slender wrists as flawless as her left forearm.
"How do you tell the difference between a Death Eater who doesn't wear the Mark and an innocent bystander?"
"If you were an innocent bystander, you wouldn't be here." Zacharias throws a set of yellow prisoner's robes at Daphne, who catches them in her arms. "Put those on and place your clothes on the table."
Daphne looks at Zacharias, who is leaning against the wall staring at her.
"Aren't you going to turn around?"
"Nope."
"Bastard," she mutters under her breath.
"Bastard to you. Sensible to me. It's all a matter of perspective. If I turn my back, you could disarm me or worse." He pauses, looks her up and down and continues, "Don't worry. I don't get my jollies off of female prisoners, no matter how attractive they might find themselves."
Snorting, Daphne spins around, strips down to her knickers and bra before reaching for the set of yellow cotton robes.
"Your boots and socks as well."
Cursing, Daphne bends over, pulls off her boots and socks, fully aware of the picture she is presenting for him. Then she grabs the set of yellow robes and throws them over her shivering body. The temperature is near freezing in the small cell.
When she turns around, flush with anger and embarrassment, he has her clothes and boots in hand.
"It's harder to escape with no boots." Then he points his wand at a clean pair of thin socks. "That's what you'll be wearing for the duration of your stay here." He bids her goodnight with a nod of his head and Disapparates before her furious eyes.
Escape? How the hell does one escape from a cell with no windows and no doors?
And the lights go out.
----- ----- -----
"It's not true, you know," she says, moments after coming out of her interrogation session.
He's in the hallway waiting to escort her back to her cell. They've been coming and going between her cell and the interrogation chamber for over a week.
"What's not true?" he asks, placing his hand on her shoulder, preparing to Disapparate her back to her cell.
"I haven't been vaccinated against Veritaserum."
"CRACK!"
They land in her cell.
"That's not what we've heard."
"You've only heard what they want you to hear. And I'm here because they want me to be here. I'm no more a Death Eater than you are."
She feels his hand lifting off of her shoulder, and she turns around to look into his stubborn eyes. When he doesn't respond, she sighs.
"You think I'm lying, don't you?"
"It's not my job to decide that."
"Does the truth mean anything to you people? Did it ever occur to you that your informant stinks? That he or she maybe a double agent?"
He doesn't answer.
"They won't let me out of here, will they?"
"No."
"Will you?"
"No." He looks at her and sighs, "Your only way out of here is giving them the information they want. You give them that, and you'll get out of here. Nothing else will gain your release."
Two days later, another guard comes to take her to her interrogation session. Zacharias has been called away to his other duties. When she asks where he's gone, no one will tell her.
----- ----- -----
She stares into the darkness. She can't see her hand in front of her face. It's darker than dark. It's black. There's no alternating day and night, only night. They cut off the light in her cell when she couldn't give them the information they demanded.
She's lost all sense of time. Has she been here a month or two months or a year? She doesn't know. No one talks to her. Zacharias talked to her. No one touches her. They use a leather noose around her throat to side-by-side Apparate. The guards are as anonymous to her as she is to them, changing almost daily now.
She isn't lonely because she has two constant companions, hunger and cold. Long periods of time pass with no food or water. She doesn't know if it's been a day or two days or more since her last foul-tasting meal, eaten in the dark. She is weak from the lack of food. She tries not to move because movement wastes energy. And there is her other unrelenting companion, cold. It seeps under her skin and into her bones and twists around her aching head, where fears of hypothermia and death chase her in the dark as she lies naked and shivering on her cot, the sound of her own heart pounding until it deafens her.
"CRAAACK!"
A blinding light illuminates her cell with the strength of a thousand candles. And it hurts. She shields her eyes with the back of her hand.
The guard raps her with his steel rod before her eyes can adjust to the light.
She sits and puts the blanket aside. Where is her indignation and shame at her lack of clothing? Gone with everything else they've taken. She doesn't remember when they took her clothing away, but they told her she must earn it back by giving them the information they need. Her bare feet hit the frozen floor, and she stands, but when she stands, the room spins. She is weak-headed from a lack of food, another punishment for her lack of cooperation. The guard slams the side of the rod into her stomach like a Beater to a Bludger, causing her to gasp and double over onto the floor in agony. Then he slips the leather noose around her neck and casually Apparates her to another interrogation session where she will be beaten again.
The following week they continue to beat her, only now they beat her until she is unconscious. She prays for death and stops eating.
----- ----- -----
The lights in her cell flicker on and hiss while casting out gentle waves of illumination into the dank space and lighting up her emaciated and motionless form, covered in a filthy, tattered cotton blanket. She doesn't react to the light. In her world, there is no light.
"I've brought you hot soup and bread."
She opens her eyes, startled. No one speaks to her. She looks over at the guard, but it isn't a guard. It's Zacharias. He's back. She struggles to sit up.
"No, don't," he cautions, walking over to her cot from the other side of the room where he placed the tray of food on a rickety wooden table. "You're too weak.
When he reaches out to assist her, she shrinks back and holds the blanket firm against her chest. Ignoring her, he grabs a firm hold of both her forearms and hauls her upright into a sitting position. As he does this, the blanket slips, revealing her breasts and her upper torso, littered with raging purple bruises and scars. As soon as he releases her, she snatches up the ragged blanket and covers herself, embarrassed by her nudity for the first time in months.
Without pausing, Zacharias conjures up a set of pristine yellow robes, white knickers and thick woollen socks. He hands them to her and turns around. Daphne stares at the clothes and then at Zacharias.
"Go on," he orders when he hears no movement from her, "put them on, or you'll catch your death in here." While Daphne scampers into her new clothes, Zacharias casts a series of warming spells, chasing away the cold and bringing the temperature in her cell up to something inhabitable.
She watches as he brings the tray of food from across the room and sets it down on her lap.
"I want you to try and eat some of this."
The fragrant aroma of hot lentil soup seeps into the air. He pulls a wooden chair up to her bedside and watches as she picks up the spoon with a trembling hand and takes a small sip of the delicious mixture. Her eyes go wide as the warm liquid tumbles down her throat and into her growling stomach where it lands with a delighted splash. It's the most divine tasting food she has ever eaten. She devours sip after sip and begins ripping off pieces of bread and shoving them into her mouth.
"Slowly or you'll make yourself sick."
She doesn't slow down. She eats faster and faster until her spoon strikes the empty bowl. Then she sticks her fingers inside the bowl, scraps up the remaining liquid and sucks the precious last drops from her fingers.
"Here, I've nicked this for you," he says, taking out a small blue vial from his robes. "It'll help with your fever. I've added a few drops of strengthening potion as well."
She nods and swallows it like an obedient dog. Fever? Does she have a fever? Is that the odd warmth in the room?
He stands, collects her tray and Disapparates. She braces herself, waiting for the light in her cell to disappear, for the cold to come seeping back in. She waits and waits but nothing happens. The light and the warmth hold. She slips back into bed under the thin blanket and stares at the ceiling.
----- ----- -----
Over the next month, Zacharias woos Daphne back to life. He not only returns night and day to her cell and warmth to her life, but he also brings her special foods, a heavy blanket, strengthening potions, an oversized woollen jumper and even house slippers in addition to her thick socks. She waits for his daily visits and no longer dreams of death. The interrogation sessions and the beatings stop. She doesn't ask him what he's done to make that possible. She refuses to believe that they finally realize she doesn't have the information they want, that she can't give them something she doesn't have.
"I thought you might fancy this," he says late one evening.
"What is it?" she asks, leaning over to watch as he fishes around the pockets of his robes.
"There you go." He places a small wooden box with an intricate inlay pattern into her hands.
Daphne stares at the box and then at Zacharias.
"Open it," he says. "It's for you."
She opens it, and when she does, glorious, haunting music fills the room, chasing away the chill and the darkness and filling her soul with hope.
"It's beautiful. What is it?"
"It's you," he says.
"Me?"
He smiles, the first smile she's ever seen on his face. "It masquerades as "Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy, but it's really you."
She doesn't know who Claude Debussy is and has never heard of his "Clair de Lune", but she hugs the music box to her chest. Of all the gifts he's given her, this is the one that will most transform her endless incarceration. It will lift her out of her dank cell and let her dance among the shimmering stars and frolic in the fragrant wild meadows that live on in her mind and her heart.
She looks at the beautiful box, wondering where it came from. Is it a stolen treasure? Her belongings were confiscated the day she entered this hellhole, and she's never seen them again. Do the guards divvy things up or simply help themselves on a first come first serve basis? Is the original owner dead? She doesn't want to know. She doesn't care. It's her music box now.
"Thank you," she says, tears filling her eyes.
----- ----- -----
One night, he sneaks her out of her cell with its myriad wards and into his quarters for a shower, her first real shower since her imprisonment. When they land in his room, he releases her hand from his. She looks around his personal space. It's a typical soldier's quarters. A bed, a desk and a chest of drawers fill the modest space. She can't help herself. She's drawn in.
He watches as she lingers over the few objects strewn about. She reads the titles of his books, runs her fingers over the handle of his broom, and stares at pictures of his Hogwarts Quidditch team and of his parents. He waits as she picks up the picture of his parents and studies it.
She decides he rather favours his mother, an elegant blonde, but he has his father's penetrating cerulean eyes.
"Go on," he says, handing her a soft white cotton towel.
"I'll be as quick as I can." She grabs the towel and rushes into the bathroom, not bothering to lock the door.
When she emerges from the steaming room more minutes later than she intended, she finds him lying down on his bed reading. She's never seen him like this. What else does he do when he's not tending to his prisoners? Do the guards play an occasional game of Quidditch? Where does he eat his meals?
"All done?" he asks, putting the book aside and sitting up.
"Did I take too long?"
"Of course, not. Come here."
She sits down on the bed beside him, her face flush and limbs relaxed from the hot water beating down on her. Zacharias takes out his wand and casts a series of drying spells on her hair then stares at his handiwork.
"There. Much better."
Daphne laughs, startling Zacharias. It's the first time he's heard the melodious sound emanating from her throat. Her infectious smile transforms her face, and he's captivated.
"You're beautiful," he whispers, his hand reaching out to touch her. It's an exquisite face, a perfect face. He rests the palm of his rough hand on her soft cheek.
The laughter in Daphne's throat dies, and she stares at Zacharias, at the fascination on his face. He has never touched her before - not like this. Is she beautiful? She doesn't feel beautiful, and she hasn't seen her own face in eight months. Daphne turns until her lips meet his palm. Then she kisses it, a gentle, tentative kiss. Zacharias gasps, and Daphne kisses his palm again and again, each time deeper, longer and more passionate, leaning into the kiss until she is pressed up against him.
Zacharias remains motionless but she doesn't stop. Instead, she kisses him. She impales his cool lips with hers, hot and moist and deadly. They tenderly cajole and beseech him to join her, killing whatever futile resistance he might have had to her and trampling the nexus of morals and self-respect he's been hanging onto for the past many weeks as he spends day in and day out with her, enticing her back to life and then some. She doesn't think he expects this, does she?
But Zacharias can't think with her this close. He can't remember what is wrong with something that feels so right. He can't remember who is prisoner and who guard. When he feels Daphne hesitate and falter while waiting for him, Zacharias reaches out and pulls her to him, crushing her lips beneath his and kissing her back until he feels the room revolving around that intoxicating kiss, around the juncture of their two aching bodies. His hands are on her, roaming up and down in places he shouldn't, stroking her curves and delighting in her heated response to his touch. And he doesn't want to stop. He wants more. He wants all of her. He has wanted her for so long.
Her hands are on him, desperately grabbing and touching in a hurried exploration. She tears at his robes and his shirt, at anything that separates the two. She's fumbling with his belt and his trousers when he slips her yellow robes off her shoulders. They tumble down around her waist, exposing her chest and her back. Their lingering bruises and scars scream in the brutal light of his room. This is no moonlit romantic interlude. His hands freeze.
Zacharias goes cold and sick in the pit of his stomach, until he feels he might wretch all over both of them. This isn't what he wants for them. Not here. Not like this. He jerks the yellow robes back up over Daphne, covering her scars and her bruises. Then he pushes back and stands, stumbling as he pulls up his trousers and tries to buckle his belt.
He is so disoriented and nauseous that he doesn't remember his fallen wand on the bed, not until she picks it up. Zacharias looks at Daphne, who is staring at the wand in her hand. Then she looks up, and her startled dark eyes meet his. Each stares at the other for many minutes, until Daphne whispers, "I'm sorry," and Disapparates from his view and his room and his life.
Zacharias collapses against the wall and eases his grip on his second wand. No soldier carries one wand in a war.
----- End Part I -----
(Part II: Lost)
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