Refuge Has Its Price

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS











CHAPTER 11: LUNA\'S WEDDING NIGHT











"Friend? Can you stop him from doing it to her?" Tommy whispered, raising hopeful eyes, brimming with tears, at his painfully embarrassed confession.







"What do you mean by a \'pretty girl that can see you\'?" Harry sharply asked.







Tommy cringed at Harry\'s harsh tone, and whimpered, "Don\'t be mad at me, Friend. I don\'t know how she did it, but the pretty girl saw me once before. It was right after I met you that first time. You know, when you told me to listen to that powerful wizard and left me."







Harry drew in a deep, calming, breath.







Scaring the shit out of the scrap of Voldemort\'s humanity wouldn\'t accomplish anything, other than to cause the child to not listen to him or call on him anymore. Trust was a word that this child had never learnt. Love was another.







So Harry slowly nodded his unruly dark head, and managed a weak smile, to let the child know that he wasn\'t really angry; he probably felt that enough from Voldemort.







"Go on. You can tell me what you know about it, and I\'ll try to sort it out," Harry gently encouraged with a more firm \'fake\' smile in place.







"Are you sure you\'re not mad at me?" Tommy anxiously whined again, desperately seeking his only friend\'s approval.







"Of course I\'m not mad at you, Tommy," Harry finally managed to say the name, and was amazed that it had passed his lips without him bursting out-loud in laughter.







How the powerful and all-mighty Lord Voldemort would rage if he only knew that his last innocent scrap of humanity wanted to be called Tommy!







Harry\'s smile suddenly became genuine with that thought, and little Tommy relaxed and smiled back at his friend.







"W-ww-well, see . . . this pretty girl looked at me when he took her wand. That\'s when he decided to do the nasty thing to her. He made the strong wizard get her for him. Should I still listen to him? Is he bad now, too?" Tommy asked through quivering lips.







He looked for all the world like he was about to cry.







Harry sucked in a sharp breath.







Sweet Merlin, please don\'t let it be Hermione!







His heart thumped painfully within his chest in his fear. What was this about the dark Potions Master?







Had Snape finally, and truly, turned to the Dark Side?







How long had he been stuck in the Station before Tommy had summoned him again?







"I don\'t know," Harry replied to the boy\'s questions, covering them all with that truthful blanket answer. "But I intend to find out. Do you know the pretty girl\'s name?"







"Yes," he brightly answered. "He dreams of it often. It\'s Lucy, or Lunacy. Something pretty like that. Things get mixed up in here sometimes."







Harry felt a sharp pain within his chest as his loving heart clinched again.







Not Hermione then. But who . . . oh no!







"Could her name be Luna?" he softly asked.







Tommy vigorously bobbed his head in childish agreement.







"Damn," Harry whispered.







That single whispered naughty word froze Tommy\'s blood.







He was so frightened now that he had to struggle to get his breath back. He knew that the nasty wicked thing must be a bad thing. Whenever HE did it, it made him tingle uncomfortably all over, and caused \'creepy-crawly\' feelings down there. It was like pain, but not like pain. It was just weird.







Tommy didn\'t like the weird feeling, because HE did like it. And He liked it a lot!







It had to be a bad thing; he\'d sort of thought that, but now he was positive. Tommy was truly terrified, and he clutched tighter at Harry\'s hand as if it were a lifeline.







"Will you stay with me?" Tommy whispered back.







"Yes," Harry firmly answered. "I won\'t leave you until I know what is really going on."







"Good."







The single word was Tommy\'s relieved reply.









s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s











Bellatrix led Luna up towards the former Headmaster\'s Chambers. Luna softly sighed when she realized just where their destination would be.







Dumbledore had always singled her out for sympathy, kindness, and candy. He\'d told her once that she reminded him of his sister, when she\'d been a young girl.







His door was always open to her from her very First Year.







The wily old Headmaster saw what none of her other teachers, not even her own Head of House had ever seen: the other girls always mocking her, being cruel in stealing her things and then calling it a \'friendly\' prank, and very worst of all, that horrid nickname they\'d stuck her with; \'Loony\'.







Dumbledore had seen the secret pain she\'d felt and buried deep inside, at being so bullied, so mistreated, so utterly friendless from her very first year at Hogwarts.







It was a soul-deep kind of lonely ache that Luna Lovegood had covered up with her nonchalant humming and skipping through the intimidating stone corridors full of jeering students. They had been the catalyst that had sent Luna exploring the Dark Forest, all alone for hours, to visit the unicorns and Thestrals because they didn\'t judge her for not \'fitting in\'.







That peaceful alone time had allowed Luna the time and distance to push her agony deep down inside, so that her tears never fell in public. Her lonely silent tears only came at night, in the privacy of her curtained bed, high in Rowena Ravenclaw\'s protective tower.







When Dumbledore had first started comparing her loneliness to Harry\'s, in the privacy of shared sherbet lemons at his cozy fireside, Luna had suddenly realized that the Headmaster wasn\'t speaking aloud the words that she was hearing inside of her mind.







It had been the first time that Luna Lovegood had quite unconsciously performed Legilimens.







She slowly began to think of Harry as her secret friend as she watched him being singled out and bullied, even worse than herself, during the Tri-wizard Tournament.







As she\'d trained under his patient tutelage in the Room of Requirement, as a member of Dumbledore\'s Army, Luna couldn\'t help but fall in love with the awkwardly shy, but powerful and kind, Harry Potter.







His feelings for her Ravenclaw sister, Cho, were plainly obvious at the time. Luna settled for Harry\'s friendship. She knew that his destiny didn\'t lie with her anyway.







How bizarre that the only place she\'d ever been comforted, or felt sheltered, while a student here at Hogwarts was now to be the place of her ultimate degradation; the surrender of her maidenhead to He-Who-Was-Now-Her-Husband.







Fate is a cruel bitch and Destiny is her sister! If only it could be Harry coming to take me instead . . .







"Well here we are, my pretty! What can I get for you?" Bellatrix\' amused cackle of a voice broke into her reverie.







Luna blinked. She looked blankly around at the chamber. It was all totally different now; maybe she could do this, after all.







"Did you hear me? I asked you what could I get you, and make it quick, girl! Your husband grows impatient for me," Bellatrix added with a knowing smirk of her blood-red lips, thinking the stupid little chit wouldn\'t catch the double entendre.







The stupid little chit caught it just fine; Bellatrix was her husband\'s lover.







"I don\'t suppose you\'d get me my wand would you?" she coldly said, staring Bellatrix Lestrange directly in the eye. At the sudden dropping open of Bella\'s jaw, Luna softly sighed, and gently continued, "No, I suppose not."







She didn\'t skip.







Luna gracefully walked over to an intricately carved, dainty, rosewood chair, set near the roaring fireplace and sat down, as a queen would assume her throne.







Bella swallowed hard. Something about this girl was different. How had she missed it? There was real power at work here, inside of this tiny young witch.







Of course, the Master would want her! He craved power, like an opium-eater craved his drug.







Bellatrix Lestrange respectfully bowed her dark head to the girl enthroned before her.







She became the very first of the Inner Circle to address Luna by her now proper title, "My Lady, please forgive me. May I be of service to you? May I fetch anything for your comfort? What do you desire?"







Bella\'s questions quickly spilled, almost one atop the other, from her ruby lips in her sudden anxiousness to please her brand new Dark Lady.







Luna smiled.









s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s











Harry looked out through the ruby windows that were Voldemort\'s eyes, and scanned the situation.







What in the world had they done to the Great Hall? They\'d dolled it up like some weird Grecian temple. Some kind of new religious rite for Death Eaters, perhaps?







Is Lucius Malfoy acting as some kind of priest now?







Dear gods! It\'s a wedding; Voldemort\'s marrying . . . Luna Lovegood?







Harry paused for a moment as he had yet another epiphany of sorts. This wasn\'t the wizarding world that he\'d been a part of anymore.







This was Voldemort\'s world now.







Whoever had managed to live through the war would continue to do so, by any means that they had to. It was purely survival now. Who was he to judge any of them for their choices?







At least Voldemort was marrying her first, before he took her to his bed.







He could have made Luna his whore, or worse. She could\'ve been passed around amongst a gang of horny Death Eaters until they\'d quite literally fucked her to death.







He\'d convince Tommy to protect and care for Luna to the best of his childlike ability.







That part should be easy enough. The boy already seemed to like her, and he thought that she could see him, here, within his prisonlike cell of suppression.







Harry sadly smiled. Maybe she did see Tommy inside of here; Luna had that special way of seeing beauty where no one else could or would.







But to have to endure having sex with Voldemort . . . uggh! Harry couldn\'t even begin to wrap his mind around that horror, so he shut it off.







Harry froze. He slowly turned to look back over his shoulder at the scabby little boy who\'d cringed back as far as he could into his usual corner. Tommy didn\'t appear to be more than nine years old.







He would be an unwilling, frightened, forced participant in the abomination of that act. No wonder he was terrified!







No matter what the boy had to endure, before whatever power had sent Harry into this strange situation, he wasn\'t about to allow the child to suffer again, if there was any way that he could help. Even if that \'child\' was really Lord Voldemort.







Harry himself hadn\'t begun to be attracted to girls, or even to tentatively imagine what to do with them, before he\'d developed his all-powerful first crush on Cho Chang during his Fourth Year.







If only there was some kind of way he could take Tommy\'s place for this abomination, he\'d gladly do so.







As Harry left his position at the \'window\', to attempt to comfort the suffering little scrap of cowering humanity, he suddenly felt something hard and cool in his pants pocket.







He felt a frisson of déjà vu slide down his spine as he remembered just how he\'d retrieved the Philosopher\'s Stone, and the very first time that he\'d ever met Voldemort face-to-face, as an eleven-year-old boy.







Harry very carefully reached into his pocket. His fingers wrapped around a small, cool, glass vial of some sort. When he withdrew it, he instantly recognized it for what it was.







Sirius had provided him with enough of it during his Fifth year, quite illegally of course, so that he could at least have a few peaceful nights\' sleep whenever he\'d become too mentally exhausted to go on.







It\'d been all that had helped him keep hold of his sanity while Voldemort had tortured his dreams and waking mind alike that year.







It was a tiny blue vial of Dreamless Sleep Draught; perhaps Tommy wouldn\'t have to be aware of what was to come after all.







Harry didn\'t dare question the wherefores or why-comes of exactly how it mysteriously came to be in his pocket, lest it disappear.







He simply accepted that it was real, that it was there, and silently thanked whatever or whomever had seen fit, at last, to be merciful to a child.









s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s









(What Voldemort found upon entering his chambers after the Awarding Ceremony):











There was a small fire cozily burning in his hearth; it smelt faintly of apple wood and myrrh. Both were herbal ingredients used to magically ensure both spirituality and sensuality, a wedding night Witch\'s Tradition.







A blazingly white vision of pure beauty nervously sat before the fireplace in the little carved rosewood chair that he\'d selected personally for his new bride as his wedding gift to her.







He might be Lord Voldemort now, but the Dark Lord still had Tom Riddle\'s critical eye for spotting rare, beautiful, and valuable antiques.







That chair had once belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw herself. It was only fitting that it now belonged to another Ravenclaw, his own Dark Lady, just as Salazar and Rowena had once secretly been lovers.







Voldemort felt his breath suddenly vacuum out of his body, as his eyes drank in the vision of his new bride, leaving his heart hammering strangely within his chest. He\'d had more pussy in his long wicked lifetime than any cat hoarder could ever claim to possess!







So what exactly was it about this young witch? He actually trembled within his nervously sweating skin, like a virgin schoolboy, in his eager anticipation of taking her into his bed.







Voldemort allowed his eyes to drift slowly over the girl before him.







Merlin\'s Balls! She\'s so beautiful; her pale hair nearly to her waist, I\'ll forbid her to ever cut it; the perfect alabaster complexion; and those dove-grey eyes that see so deeply inside of me, but still she does not flinch away in horror. The silk and lace of her lovely white gown covering, yet revealing, just as a virgin\'s should . . . and she\'s MINE . . .









"Would you care for some champagne, sir? It was a present from Minister Malfoy. I think that it must be very expensive, and a very good year," Luna softly nattered away, suddenly terrified beyond what even she had expected to be, in her nervous attempt to buy herself some more time.







Voldemort smiled at her, and Luna swallowed hard. He decided to play along, and grant her a few more moments to compose herself.







"Of course, my dear. Shall I pour?" he replied, in an equally gentle tone. This was fine; he could do this. It had been nearly forty years since he\'d last done it, but Tom Riddle still remembered how to seduce a virgin.







It had also been years since he\'d attempted to allow another person to have at least semi-equal standing in his presence but, as his wife, he\'d try for her. As his Consort, he owed it to her.







At least in private, of course; in public it would never do.







In public, he\'d always be Lord Voldemort, sole lawgiver, and Lord Paramount to over twenty thousand loyal Death Eaters.







In private, he could relax himself with, and for, her. He could make it so very good for her, in return for her obedience and loyalty. On the other hand . . . even the Consort wasn\'t exempt from terrible punishment . . . should she bring it upon herself.







Best make that plain to the girl before the honeymoon even began.







Voldemort popped the cork of a nearly two hundred-year-old bottle of Dom, and silently filled two delicate crystal flutes. He handed one to his bride, the other he carried to the forest-green leather wingchair facing her, and sat down.







"To Luna, whose beauty rivals the Moon herself," he toasted the girl. They both drank. He deeply, her delicately, Luna\'s very first taste of champagne tickling her nose and sweetly clinging to her palate.







This was to be a night of firsts all around for Luna.







Luna stared into the bubbles racing to the top of the wine in her flute for a moment. She really didn\'t know what to call her husband, and felt like anything she chose would be the wrong thing to say.







Her bottom lip suddenly quivered in her nervousness. She took another small sip of her champagne, in an attempt to whisk away the hot moisture suddenly brimming in her eyes.







Voldemort stared at her in consternation. Has this girl never received a compliment before? Instead of thanking him prettily, as most witches would have done, she instead appeared ready to cry.







More gently than he\'d tempered himself to have to do in years, Voldemort tentatively touched the girl\'s mind with his own. She gasped, and her lovely grey eyes jerked up from her glass to meet his intense ruby stare. "Sssh," he soothed her. "Let me see what is troubling you, my dear."







Perhaps this was the easier way; she sighed, nodded her pale-blonde head, and gave him entry to her mind.







It was the first entrance of Lord Voldemort into her person of the night, and she could feel that her new husband was trying to be gentle.







Legilimency was always mentally painful, if done by someone who was not Eildarvitch. Perhaps he\'d decided to be just as gentle with her physical body. Luna could only hope.







Professor Snape had already warned her of the messy pain she could expect to have to endure this first time, and he had given her a variety of things to help with the aftermath.







Bellatrix had provided the beautiful negligee she had on, as her wedding gift. The older witch had also provided her with a frank witch-to-witch talk about some very intimate details of Voldemort\'s sexual preferences.







Luna hadn\'t demanded that Bellatrix Lestrange never service her husband again. However, by simply being her own unique self, Luna had quite accidentally made a friend of Bella.







The mad older witch had taken it upon herself to volunteer to act as her Lady-in-Waiting and Protector.







No one could have been more shocked at that particular turn of events than Luna herself.







"Stop. Stop that," Voldemort sternly ordered, as he abruptly withdrew from her mind.







Luna looked into Voldemort\'s eyes, his revealing, then instantly concealing his self-disgust, her own, honestly puzzled. "Stop what, sir?"







"Stop thinking that if you do, or say, the slightest thing wrong, I shall hurt you," he softly answered. "I will not lie to you about that honest quirk of nature. Yes. You will hurt, and I will be the source of your pain. It is unavoidable and a fact of life. However, after the pain passes, will come pleasure, much pleasure; this I promise you. Much pleasure indeed."







Silently, he passed her a quickly conjured-up handkerchief. Luna daintily wiped her moist eyes and mopped up the single little drip that had escaped from one nostril.







They both picked up their glasses again, and sipped the cool, delicious, wine as they stared into the crackling flames in the fireplace. Wine that had cost Lucius Malfoy enough galleons that the single bottle would have paid the annual tuition of four students at Hogwarts. But, damn! It was excellent!







Lucius just earned a point up in his Master\'s esteem. He wasn\'t out of the woods yet; but if Malfoy kept this up, he might get there . . . eventually.







Eventually being the primary time frame.







After their second glass, the Dark Lord rose to his feet and extended his pale long-fingered hand towards Luna.







"Shall we retire, my dear?"







Luna\'s face went even whiter than her negligee. She carefully set her wine glass down on the side table that held her crystal ball and the small silver-framed portrait of her Mum.







Luna trembled, but bravely accepted Voldemort\'s hand without flinching, and allowed him to lead her into their bedchamber.











TO BE CONTINUED:











SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS



A/N: Now then. Put down the rope, and slowly back away from the tree. Shan\'t be hanging the author today.



Simply a word of warning: The next chapter will contain MATURE SEXUAL CONTENT. You are warned. **snickers**