The Radiant

Lucius had slept poorly, waking up during the night to check on the young woman curled at his side, monitoring her slow, deep breathing. He hadn’t felt this responsible and caring since the days of Draco’s childhood, when either he or Narcissa used to drag themselves out of bed in the middle of the night and have to rock and walk the baby in order for the infant to fall back asleep. Lucius remembered it well – the pacing up and down the hallways, the warmth of his son against his chest and shoulder, having to tie his hair back because of Draco’s propensity to fist it in his little hands.

He wondered if that would work with Ginny – just holding her in his arms and rocking, feeling the warmth of this bodies transmute, held between them. Lucius brushed a hand through her hair and she shifted in her sleep, turning towards him and burrowing into the heat of his torso. He hesitantly wrapped his arms around her, feeling her sigh.

It was startling, the feelings he had towards her. Even as she subconsciously moved near to him in her sleep he was affected. She was so broad in her understanding of him and all of his shortcomings – didn’t force the idea of marriage upon him, held off his insecurities, offered her body as a canvas to him when he was feeling impotent and frustrated in his endeavours. Ginny rolled closer and murmured something, and Lucius smiled slightly, tightening his hold on her. She hadn’t even complained about his initial inability to hold her during sleep, but she had adapted. And he had adapted. Lucius had adapted.

He sighed, staring up at the ceiling. It was early morning – the grey and watery light was edging around the curtains, and he could begin to see the edges of Ginny’s face. He looked down at her, appraising.

She was an interesting form of pretty. Her face was more angular than soft and feminine – her cheekbones were cut sharply, almost like his were. In fact, there was much in their faces that was similar. Sometimes, when she was angry and when she tilted her head to one side, he was reminded of both his son and himself. Her skin was almost translucent, especially with the wan dawn light playing across it. He could nearly count the sparse, pale freckles across her nose – freckles that he didn’t always notice.

Lucius traced a thumb over her mouth, following the lush curve of her lips. While her face was sparsely curved and mainly angular, her mouth was full and pillowed, the lines in her lips defined and deep, the sweet bow of her upper lip and philtrum subtle and feminine. Lips ebbed into more pale skin, and the harsh line of her jaw, down to the strained, swan-like white of her neck, and then down to the sinuous cords of her body. The only softer parts of her physique were her breasts and her inner thighs and her hips. Everything else was all lines and muscle, toned and tall.

She was his match. He realized that as his eyes greedily took her in – the exposed slope of her breasts from under the covers, the one slender leg thrown over his hip, the absolute warmth coming from between her thighs, the subtle movement of her lips as she breathed in and out of sleep.

And she had sacrificed such an amazing amount. Lucius felt that odd, hard swelling in his throat again, felt as though his lungs were aflame, felt floored and shaken. She had told her family – had risked their rejection, their anger. She had weathered that for him. He had dealt with Draco, but that was the majority of his troubles. She had done so much more.

“Staring is rude.” Her voice was rough and low, and Lucius startled, meeting her eyes coolly.

“I’ve heard.”

They looked at each other for a moment. He was unsure of what to say to her – after last night, after the horrible night she had had. The handprint across her face had faded completely, but her eyes were still puffy as if she cried herself through the night.

“I feel off,” she started, and then stopped, looking up at the ceiling, sighing, dashing a hand across her eyes, frowning, looking, frowning. “I feel deadened. I don’t feel. Do I feel?” She looked at him, almost panicked, her eyes hot, and then she looked back up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Lucius levered himself out of bed.

“Take your time. I think you might need to be alone for a while. I’ll be in my study.”


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The soft footfalls that he had come to known as hers and only hers were hesitant and yet also strong, also determined at the same time. He didn’t look up until he heard them stop, and when he knew that she must be near.

Ginny was standing in front of him, holding his formal black leather belt. It was a thing of beauty, it was. Long and thick, with a good, weighty heft to it – made of butter smooth leather, dyed deepest black, with a heavy silver buckle. Lucius looked briefly at what she held in her hands and then trained his eyes up to her face. Ginny’s eyes were full but her face was calm, and in that moment Lucius understood. She was not asking to become his permanent submissive, not asking to be collared or to play games, but she was acceding and now, wordlessly, asking him to play an active part in the healing process. She wanted to be removed from the reality of the situation for a short while. She wanted to pass control onto someone else. She wanted a sliver of real, physical pain in order to deal with the mental and emotional pain she was also coping with.

“The belt?” His voice was quiet and low.

“It’s a good mental picture – you, arm up, wielding it…” Ginny trailed off and blinked, two tears running down her face, as she looked up and beyond his head.

“This is going farther than just spanking, Ginevra.”

“I know.” She looked serious and willing, and as he silently appraised her, deciding if she was fit for what he was planning to do, she smiled slightly at him.

“I’m going to act differently.”

“I want it.”

“It’s going to be harsher than you –”

She cut him off, throwing the belt into his lap, her eyebrows knitting together. “Goddamn it, Lucius. Are you going to do it or not?”

Her needling worked. He stood up and threw the belt onto the divan, grabbing her around the waist and backing her up until she was leaning against a smaller, four-legged table.

“Turn around.” His face had become that impassive blank slate that – she suspected – had helped him go so far in his Death Eater days. Ginny searched the corners of his eyes and the lines of his face for a moment, her pupils tracking the subtle tics around his mouth and jaw, but she didn’t express any displeasure, and instead turned around, resting her weight on her hands on top of the wooden table.

“Stay there.” He disappeared for a moment, but she didn’t dare move, instead waiting for him to return. “Put your chest down on the table.” She did so, and felt him move up behind her. “Spread your legs. Reach out and grab the opposite legs of the table with your hands and do not let go.” Ginny shuddered and did as he asked. He deftly cuffed her ankles to the back two table legs with – with? – with thick leather cuffs. He has obviously gone to retrieve them. Moving in front of her, he did the same thing with her wrists.

Ginny instinctually tried to struggle against the bonds, testing them out as she wiggled her wrists. They were solid.

“Don’t move.” His voice was low near her ear, and she stilled immediately, turning her face to the right and resting her cheek on the old wood of the table. She felt something cool sliding under her skirt, along her thigh – she realized, as she heard a tearing sound, that Lucius was cutting her clothes off, and the cool thing she felt was the blade of an extremely sharp knife. One rip from between his large hands and her skirt fell to the ground, ruined. Another flick of the knife and her underpants came off. The blouse was merely torn off with his hands alone, and the bra undone and extracted from beneath her body after the straps had been sliced.

She let out a sound of arousal as she felt the cool wood against the skin of her chest.

“Be quiet.” Lucius was somewhere farther behind her now, seemingly still, and Ginny got the feeling that he was simply sitting and watching her. In this position, she was completely spread out for him to see – between her legs, between her buttocks, all the way down to her ankles, her feet, her hands hanging limply. She imagined him sitting in his wingback chair, becoming harder and harder just by watching her, and she the blood rush to between her own legs. She moved her bottom an inch –

“Be still.” His voice was measured as always. Ginny stilled.

Time passed. She heard the scratch of a quill across paper, and she realized that he was doing work, probably sitting at his desk, even while she was naked and spread out for him. She couldn’t see him – was facing a wall, actually – but she could sense him behind her still, placid and calculating.

More time passed, and she was beginning to get cramps in her legs and feet. She was considering opening her mouth to say something to him, but before she could consider exactly what to say, she heard movement behind her. Suddenly she could sense him standing closer to her, and she stilled again, listening intently.

The soft wap of something let her know that he probably had the belt in his hand and was probably tapping it lightly against his thigh.

“You are not to be silent now. I want to hear your sounds as I strike you.” There was a snake-like sound, and she realized that he was pulling the length of the belt through his fingers, savouring the feel of the leather, testing the weight of it. “Twenty.”

Before she had time to breathe, there had was a slick crack that echoed in the room and Ginny physically jolted forward as much as she could despite being tied to the table. She gasped for a breath, and then the blooming streak of pain set her backside on fire. She cried out while trying to intake air, and the sound that resulted was a barking, tortured sort of thing. The pain was deep and so hard that she could feel it traveling up her body to claw at her throat and gag at her mouth. The second blow came before she truly recognized and acknowledged the first hit, and the sound that she made was even more torn and ragged.

She could hear Lucius starting to breathe heavily behind her already, the effort of hefting the belt taking its toll on him.

The rhythm that was established was a primal one. The sound of the wet cracking leather mimicked his heavy breaths and the heavier steps that he took on each swing. Ginny’s alto moans and cries were the harmonic overlay, the rattling of her cuffs as a result of her fists clenching a percussion, the breathing through her nose a coda. They were blazing out a new type of music, a symphonic thing, and around the tenth stroke Ginny’s mind erupted into a blaze as she realized how exquisite it was. Her vision became silvered and sharp, and the cries turned into mainly low, wrung out moans. Her throat was tired, and her mouth was dry, but as Lucius rounded into the fifteenth stroke, she stopped rattling her arms and lay still, accepting the more painful stripes across her upper thighs, the crease where leg met buttock.

When he finished, he threw the belt down in front of her on the floor. Ginny stared at it, unfocused, and began to concentrate on getting her breathing back to a normal pace. She felt Lucius uncuff her and rotate her wrists with his own hands, coaxing feeling back into her fingers. She felt him release her legs and run firm palms up and down her calves and ankles, urging blood back into them. She could hear him inhale deeply as he knelt behind her, kneading her thighs, face-to-face with her arousal. When he ran hands over her welted bottom, she hissed slightly and shifted, and awareness was forced back into her, her vision clearing, her mind’s brilliance turned back down to normal.

Lucius lifted her from the table, and Ginny’s legs stuttered for a moment before she righted herself.

“That was good.” Her voice was a whisper, and Lucius braced her by placing his hands on her hips, avoiding the reddened skin. “Thank you.” There were tears running down her face, and she sniffed quietly, leaning forward to kiss him. Lucius could taste the salt on her mouth, and, as he felt her shudder slowly in his arms, he shrugged off his dinner jacket, wrapping it around her. Ginny smiled tiredly and sagged into him. “Can you take me to bed, please?”

They made a different sort of love that night, Lucius spanned out on top of her, running his hands through her tangled hair, fingertips dancing reverentially along her hips, Ginny groaning at the abrasion of her bottom against the sheets of the bed, one long leg draped over his shoulder, her head moving slowly from side to side. She felt as though every sensation were heightened, the two of them moving languidly and in a drugged manner, and he felt as though every motion were more significant, as if their coupling was some sort of ritual, some sort of wonderful thing. Lucius took care to move meaningfully inside of her, each motion of his body thought-out and elegant, and when she came she clutched at his shoulders and sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, crying his name like a mantra.

Lucius fell asleep still inside of her that night, and Ginny made no motion to stop him.

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