Freedom

Narcissa felt her nostrils flare and her cheeks flush unbecomingly with rage. That dirty, lying, two timing son of a bitch. She folded up the paper in her hands and threw it down on the ground in disgust. It was a done thing that men of a certain stature and wealth kept women as mistresses, but it was never something that ever came to the light of day. It was always an unsaid thing. But now... now it was being thrown about in the tabloids, front page no less. Lucius' record books had been seized by the Ministry for his and Draco's trials and some... peon had let it slip a few of the juicier secrets in the Malfoy books.

One of them had been a kept woman. Sylvia Iris, a veela.

She felt her ire almost overwhelm her again and she fought to keep it in check. She needed to keep her calm. Malfoys - no Blacks were above all this and she would show the world that she was made of sterner stuff. After she dealt with the problem at hand.

****

Raven had been sleeping soundly when she heard the door open to the living room, a gasp, and a thump. Starting from her bed, she hurried into the living thinking it was Papa coming to visit. He'd promised that as soon as he was freed, he'd come see her. Her birthday was in a few weeks and he'd promised he'd be home by then.

She burst into the living room only to stop dead in her tracks.

It wasn't her father standing there, arms open and free.

It was a strange woman.

And she was standing over....

"Mum!" she gasped, forgetting for a moment her own danger as she rushed to her mother's limp form, oblivious to the start of surprise on the woman's face or the momentary flash of lust on her companions.

Narcissa was rarely if ever caught by surprise, but tonight she was. A child no older than her own had come running into the room and at first Narcissa thought that Sylvia was peddling her wares for anyone who could pay but then she looked closer and saw... her husband's eyes staring back at her. Lucius had had another child, it was all there: in the girl's nose, in her eyes, even in the way she held herself screamed Malfoy. Cissa felt something large and deep open within her, yawning like a chasm inside her sucking her soul into it. Lucius had had another child.

"Do with her what you will," she said softly, her lips numb and her conscious barely aware of what she was saying. She turned and left the living room, slipping out the door as quietly as she'd come leaving the girl to her fate.

Holding her mother's body, she hardly noticed the woman leave until her arm was roughly grabbed by one of the men and she was hauled to her feet, his fingers twisting in her long black hair. She struggled against the pull, her body going rigid with fright, as he turned her around, a leering smile on his face. His eyes roamed over her body.

"Seems the night just got a bit more profitable," he said to his friend.

Biting her lip in fear, she felt a shiver of apprehension at the look on their faces, and the shiver turned to all out terror as he pulled her to him and Apparated them away, her mother's body still laying on the floor.