Azkaban Mon Amour

Title: Azkaban Mon Amour

Author: tambrathegreat

Beta: Rumor and Sigh, Jilliane, theladyzombie

Cheerleader: darkrivertempest

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Romance

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: Non-consensual, dubious consent, adult content, bestiality (?) torture, violence

Pairing: Lucius Malfoy/Remus Lupin

Characters: Lucius Malfoy, Severus Snape, Remus Lupin, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy

Word Count: 10,445

Summary: Azkaban wrought great changes in Lucius Malfoy, not all of them bad. Remus Lupin helps him discover that there is life after the torture of his incarceration and subsequent change from proud, pureblood patriarch to magical creature.

A/N: Thanks to J, Rumor and Sigh, TLZ, and darkrivertempest for your support in my struggles with this story. Dedicated to Rob Zombie, just because.

Azkaban Mon Amour

Azkaban Prison, the North Sea, 1999-2000

Lucius had always appreciated the fine things in life. He had been born with the proverbial silver spoon firmly implanted in his mouth. He’d had everything he could possibly need or desire. He had the requisite decorous wife, intelligent and handsome son, more than a few scintillating mistresses, all his right, his due as a powerful pure blood wizard. That charmed life had ended with the fall of the Dark Lord.

After the end of the war, Lucius had thought himself fortunate to escape with his life and his family intact. The bellicose hands of the gods had struck down many of his companions as well as many of the people he fought against. It seemed a miracle that Lucius and his family remained as if blessed by the gods. Potter had said in his testimony for the family that the Malfoys were like cockroaches. Lucius, though hating the analogy, had to concur with the sentiment. Malfoys would survive. A few months after the end of the war, he was informed he must pay his dues for fighting on the losing side. No amount of chicanery and /or well-placed remuneration could get Lucius out of a sentence in Azkaban. He could not again claim that he was Imperiused. Shacklebolt was not the grasping, arrogant fool that Fudge or Crouch had been, and many of his influential friends had fallen upon the same fortune as Lucius, whether they carried the Mark or were mere sympathisers.

Narcissa, at his insistence, divorced him, and Draco, while still his heir, had distanced himself from the tainted Malfoy sire. Lucius readily gave both of them up so that they might not bear the stigma of his poor choices. It was Lucius that had brought them to this by his inability to see what Severus had tried to warn him of so many years before. It was the family name, not himself, that must be preserved.

He spent his first weeks alone in the dimly lit cell. He prayed that his good fortune would last. There had been rumours circulating throughout the incarcerated population of revenge being taken on those who bore the Mark. Some of the stories were too fantastical to be true. Lucius doubted that it was physically possible to actually pull a man’s testicles through his body and out his nose. That little spot of revenge was rumoured to have been carried out on Amycus Carrow for his ready defilement of several of his very young male charges during his time as Professor at Hogwarts.

Other rumours were chillingly realistic, especially since the prison population during the first month of his sojourn seemed to contain an alarming number of werewolves.

Lucius wisely restrained his more imperious tendencies in dealing with the brutes that guarded him, though he refused to give obeisance, as they seemed to wish. Yet he would do anything else if he could remain outside their notice. If he did that, he might very well remain fully human.

Lucius had thought at the time that the curse of Hominus Lupus would be the worst punishment that his guards could deal to him. How wrong he found his assumptions, how naive he was in those first days.

Loneliness ate at him, the craving for human contact, and a meeting of minds became almost unbearable at times. He listened to his fellow detainees as they went about their daily business. He heard the soft grunt of mutual orgasm occasionally, brought himself off more times than he cared to admit when the earthy scent of musk and spunk overcame the air of decay and body odour that lay oppressively over the block. He wondered how a man could take such pleasure in the sordid little affairs that sprung up amongst his fellow travellers. Lucius had always loved the softness of the female form, and could not fathom taking pleasure in ploughing a man. He smirked at that thought. Of course, Lucius would be the one ploughing. It was the natural order, as he saw it.

The prisoners were allowed monthly showers. Lucius had missed his cellblock’s turn by a few days. His fastidious nature craved the pelting of water on his back, no matter how cold or saline it was. He wanted to wash the filth and stink of prison from his person more than he wanted to eat, breathe, or fuck at the moment. Shower day came and as he heard the shuffle of slippered feet as each prisoner was let out, he readied his spare clothing and the standard issue bar of yellow, lye soap. The guards opened the doors one at a time, letting each of the inmates take their fifteen minutes before they escorted them back. Lucius waited impatiently for his turn, disregarding the occasional hoarse screams that emanated from the shower room.

A thin-faced guard stepped to his door, the jingle of keys setting Lucius’ already raw nerves on edge. He could almost taste the water, feel the ambrosial cleanness that would be his for at least the night. The guard swung the door open, and Lucius put out his hands for the magical binding that was part and parcel of his incarceration. The man gave him an indifferent prod with a truncheon, the only weapon aside from their wands that the staff was allowed, and Lucius stumbled slightly before he could walk properly. The guard pushed him again, this time the baton lower, at the base of his back, slipping between his cheeks and bruising him a bit. Lucius kept his eyes down, his mind on the prize that awaited him in the shower.

They came to the bathing area, a stone room with a single brass spigot sprouting from the algae-covered wall. The enclosure smelled of salt, mould, and another scent that niggled at Lucius’ mind. He could not define what it was, but knew he had been in its presence before. The guard stepped through the doorway with him and Lucius waited for him to remove the charm on his wrists so that he could disrobe. He held out his hands expectantly and was surprised when the man merely smirked. “Oh no, you won’t need to have the spell removed.”

Another two guards entered the room as the first guard levelled his wand at Lucius. Malfoy closed his eyes, awaiting the curse that he knew would follow. He heard several others enter with the silence of rubber sole on stone, felt the wash of a spell over his body, and the cool North Sea air against his skin. Lucius opened his eyes, breathing a sigh of relief as he turned toward the spray of water and began his ablutions. He wondered why there was a need for so many to guard an unarmed wizard, but shrugged off the feeling of unease that had become more insistent as several more guards arrayed themselves around the walls.

He washed away the filth of weeks and once done, turned to don his clothing. It was then that the first blow came from behind. He stumbled, barely keeping his footing on the slime-slicked floor. As he recovered, he noticed a white, vaguely tooth-shaped thing gleaming from a crack in the cobbled floor. Another blow fell on him and he was knocked off his feet. He saw stars as a third, then a fourth blow landed on his back and neck. Other hands grabbed at his legs, roughly pulling them out straight and causing him to strike his chin on the floor as he dimly heard the sound of a buckle being loosened. It was then that Lucius realised the import of the cries he had heard earlier.

Rough fingers parted his arse cheeks, a wand was pushed inside his anus, and an agonising spell, at once burning and slick, washed through his colon. He cried out, but bit the noise off as he heard a nasty little snigger from one of the assembled guards. Lucius crawled to his knees, his head muddled from the repeated blows, attempting to crawl to a corner, attempting to flee this new nightmare. It was to no avail as someone took a fist of his wet, matted hair and slammed his head into the wall, causing him to see black spots. Lucius weakly spat through the blood, “Fuck you!”

“Aw, gents, it seems we have need of occupying his filthy mouth.” There were more nasty chuckles as another one of the brutes took his hair and forced his head back. A blunt fingered hand slapped his cheek as another hand dug into his mandibular process, forcing his mouth open with a sharp, knifelike pain.

A rough voice taunted, “You ever sucked cock, Death Eater?”

“Wot a stupid question. Of course ‘e did,” another, deeper voice, derided, “Snake cock from the old bastard ‘e served. Ain’t I right, Death Eater?”

Lucius tried to close his bruised and bleeding mouth; he tried to fight, clawed at the hand that held his hair, gouged the flesh, as his head was forced toward a tumescent penis. The first rough voice warned, “If you bite me, scum, I’ll fucking gut you like you did lot did my wife, and no one will care.”

The cock was forced painfully past his lips, leaving the taste of his blood as it scraped to the back of his throat. Lucius gagged and a wand was jabbed into his neck, the tip painfully digging into the underlying muscles, bruising him. The leering face of the first guard swam into Lucius’ field of vision. “Take him already. I want my turn.”

Fingers pried open his arse cheeks once again, seemingly ripping flesh, and Lucius screamed as he was breached in one swift, agonising thrust. He felt his skin tear, tasted his tears in the back of his throat as they mixed with the foulness of the creature in his
mouth. He heard the man behind him grunt after an eternity of pain, flooding him with spunk. The man moved away, and another replaced him with the same type of brutal thrust, eased this time by semen, and Lucius’ own blood. Above the din of the assembled males, a female laugh tripped up the scales. The guard in front moved erratically, and Lucius tasted the slime of his impending release. The man jerked Lucius’ head in rhythm to his thrusts until he came with a loud shout. The thin-faced guard said in Lucius’ ear, “Swallow, scum, or your new friend will be quite put out, and he’s very good at punishment.”

Lucius lost consciousness after the fifth or sixth time he was breached, wakening only when cold water was sluiced over his body, the rapes continuing until the sun sank low in the sky.

&*&*&

At the sixth month mark of his incarceration, madness visited him. It wasn’t the type that caused him to howl or froth at the mouth; it was a type of catatonia that cushioned him from the abuses, the degradation, and the torture of loneliness and want. Occasionally he noticed that his hand had moved of its own volition to his crotch, and that it worked absently at his flaccid penis. The gesture was meaningless to his mind, so swathed in cotton wool that he felt nothing, let through no sensation. He masturbated without thought, without effect.

Narcissa requested a visit, but since he could give no answer in his tomb of flesh, she was denied. It was just as well. Seeing her would bring back memories of entitlement, of rightness, and he could not survive with those things in his mind. The only time that he felt anything at all was in the shower, but his mind shied away from those feelings. Rage, revulsion, and despair were banished with all other emotion, locked up as tight as a Gringotts vault.

He vaguely remembered a guard taunting him with news of Narcissa’s marriage to a wealthy Chinese wizard in Hong Kong some time ago. Was it yesterday? Last month? Lucius couldn’t tell.

It was in the thirteenth month of his incarceration that his ultimate fear was realised.

He had been counting the stones in the wall opposite him, occupying his mind with thoughts that did not include bloody revenge or suicide. Those darker thoughts were taboo, given that the guards had a powerful Legilimens in their midst. Her mental rape of him did not require that he visit the shower. She was able to practice her skills wherever Lucius might be, and she was good at making the process painful, especially since the thin veil that separated his reality and unreality had been rent like wet bog paper.

She brought a cringing figure to Lucius’ cell. She sat it in the corner, a shape more beast than man, that winced as she moved in to let the filthy creature free of its fetters. Lucius watched numbly as the she-devil patted the creature on its head playfully. “Good boy. He’s all yours, just as you wanted.”

She smirked in Lucius’ direction. “I know you can hear me, you bastard. We’ve devised a special treat for you tonight. I hope he doesn’t scar you up too much though. You’re popular because you’re so pretty. They wouldn’t like you as scarred as my mum was from Greyback. Now that was a horror.”

Lucius’ gaze never wavered from the stones. He never gave any indication that he understood the import of his new cellmate, or the day of the month the creature was delivered. He was past caring that the man-thing cringing against the wall was one that had been reported killed by Doholov, whilst mad Bella dispatched his wife, her niece, nor did he show that his heart raced at the prospect of what the full moon night would bring. He merely moved his lips and pretended to count. He pretended that this was not his last night as a human.

The devil’s spawn guard left with clanking keys and ringing boots, leaving in her wake the cold silence of the condemned. Lucius watched what he could see of the sun’s progression through the sky, the deepening shadows calling to the darkness in him that he had unabashedly utilised in the past. As the light slid from pale, wintry white into the deep maroon of evening, the creature stirred and drew nearer to Lucius though still keeping a distance, across which Lucius could smell the odour of wet dog and human filth. His skin crawled as the creature surveyed him with inhuman, golden-eyed fascination. It was the creature that broke the silence with a low grumbling bark. It was a mad sound, and one that tolled through the corridors like a death knell. The various rustlings of the cellblock stopped before an answering yip sounded further down the hall.

The creature moved forward, still human and said, “You’re broken, just like I was when I dug myself out of that grave. My poor Nym dead, my son... lost to me. Some would say you deserve this fate.”

Lucius counted and the creature snuffled at his neck. Soon soft lips grazed his skin and Lucius braced himself for the first bite, the one that would end his human life. The werewolf growled and then nipped him, not enough to draw blood, not enough to cause pain, and Lucius’ consciousness fled as the man-shape assumed its more primal form.

He awoke apparently whole, and entwined with the creature, skin to skin, his cock hard against the werewolf’s belly. Golden eyes flew open as Lucius made to move away from the creature, to resume his numeric vigil on the pallet. Lupin sat up but made no move to follow him. Lucius began counting, punctuating the rush of each number past his lips with a sharp backwards motion and a jerk of his now flaccid cock. There was wet pain behind him before he reached ten. The werewolf’s golden gaze never wavered, the creature never moved to stay his pain or stop his pleasure. Lucius counted, and the werewolf watched.

Another shower-time came and Lucius followed the guards meekly to his degradation. It was his way since the last beating he had received for biting. He had felt his nose break during that one, and while Lucius knew there was no reason to be so in this situation, he was still a vain man, proud of his no-doubt fading looks. When he returned with jism dripping out of his anus and fresh welts on his skin, the werewolf seethed with angry energy.

Lupin screamed as the door clanged shut, “He’s mine! You promised him to me. No more, or I don’t do what you want. I can smell you all on him. You’re like fucking cats in heat, you animals! Who is the animal now? Who? He’s mine, I say! Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”

There was no answer, and the werewolf continued his harangue deep into the night, alternately pacing, shaking the door, and cursing. Lucius watched from the corner of his eye, fascinated that the creature would be so upset about something that no longer mattered to him. He did not feel the violation anymore. He did not feel anything.

Later that night the werewolf came to Lucius’ pallet. It was the first time he had sought Lucius’ body since that first night’s contact. The werewolf murmured over the bruises marring Lucius’ marble cold skin as he stripped the older man’s inert form bare. He kissed his skin softly, covering every millimetre of Lucius with gentle, shattering touch. Lucius felt this, the first thing he had in months, and damned his body for its response as the wolf sank lower down his body.

Gold eyes flicked upwards to Lucius’ face as Lupin took his cock deep in his mouth. He laved Lucius’ organ with care, sucking it down, constricting his throat muscles around it. Lucius heard a moan, and hoped it wasn’t from his own throat, but knew it was. The werewolf slowly drew away and spat into his hand, reaching behind himself to deposit the spittle on his anus. Lucius watched in horrified fascination as the beast lowered himself with a hiss of pleasure onto his cock, slowly drawing his organ into the hot, depths while the unblinking gaze lingered over his face.

Lucius bucked against him, pleasure pulsing through him as the beast rode him to completion. The werewolf stayed astride Malfoy as he milked his own orgasm, spewing his semen onto Lucius’ chest before bending and licking it off. Lucius wanted to count again, tried to as the werewolf coaxed yet another response from his flaccid penis before taking his pleasure again. The werewolf whispered of love and worship, not of well-deserved revenge. Hot spikes of fury tore through Malfoy’s body at the undeserved words, but he remained inert under the wolf’s seething body.

It was worse than rape, that tenderness, and Lucius hated the werewolf more for it than he ever had the guards and their brutal attentions. He would never forgive the werewolf for making him feel again. He said, almost sure the werewolf was asleep, “I hate you for this.”

The wolf placed soft nipping kisses along Lucius’ collarbone as he said, “I’ve wanted you for so long. So long. You have to have known that. It’s not just the madness of this place.”

Lucius remained quiet at those words. What could he say to such a declaration? He had never desired such intimacy, especially with both of them in a state of madness. He clenched and unclenched his fist in syncopation to the werewolf’s slowing breaths. He would kill this beast in man form if he saw him outside Azkaban. He would kill him for wanting him, for reminding Lucius he was still human, and especially for the desire that stirred in his groin as the creature moved in his sleep. He would kill him, and let the Dementors take him for the deed. No filthy creature was allowed to touch a Malfoy, no matter how far that Malfoy had fallen.

The next morning the wolf had retreated once again to his corner, the gibbering madness of the first days having returned in full, it seemed. He sat hunched over, rocking his body, his matted hair covering his face, alternately muttering and silent, as if in conversation. Lucius ignored him as best he could, but could not help but think on the shame he felt at the sweet feeling of completion that the creature’s inhuman touch had pulled from him. A few days later, when he turned from human to wolf, Lucius found that he had not been left as whole on that first night as he had assumed.

He and the other wolf played in their prison cage, ripped about, sniffing the cobbles and dark places for mice to eat. He remembered every moment, and how the other wolf seemed less mad in that form. Lucius-wolf did not feel dirty for mounting the other wolf, for enjoying the slide of his cock into the dog below him. In this form, Lucius-wolf did not feel anything but joy when he came in hot, spurting arcs as the other wolf howled his own pleasure.

He woke in his human form, nude as before, draped across Lupin’s hot skin, his own back exposed to the cold of the cell. Lucius felt his cock stir to life remembering the joy they had shared. He damned himself for it even as he rubbed against the other werewolf with a delicious building of tension. He was a pureblood no more. He had become a beast just as the broken Lupin was. He despised his state of arousal as much as he despised the animal that now lurked in him, waiting for the fulsome moon. He took Lupin swiftly, using the moisture from their previous accumulated efforts to ease his way back into the heated depths.

Over the next month, the two men settled into a pattern in which both retreated to their fortresses of madness or ennui after coupling. Lucius desired Lupin more than he ever thought he could another man. It seemed the wolf portion of him required its baser needs filled. Lucius, when he was human, had never been a sensualist, though he did revel in the trappings of his position. He had been raised on the great stoics; Livy, Pliny, both Cato the elder and the younger. His father had beaten the republican ideals of his forebears into Lucius when he exhibited any more plebeian sentiments. Love, whilst acceptable, could never turn to passion. It was unseemly.

Then shower time came and Lucius was brought out of his cage with Lupin. They were forced to fuck in front of the guards. Their jeering presence was worse than the assaults, worse than being beaten after, because Lucius, in his new animal state, accepted that he could love this man beneath him. He accepted that his lot in life was now to be degraded, and he could perform like the circus animal he had been made into that first night spent in Lupin’s arms.

The situation had been maddening for Lupin. He had retreated instantly to his corner upon their return, muttering incoherently about revenge, only responding to Lucius as the full moon grew nearer.

And then...

Lupin was taken away, screaming and fighting the entire way down the echoing halls. Lucius told himself he was glad, but the beast in him howled, and the human in him cried for nights on end. He retreated to his numbers, but found no solace. He shut down again, but could still feel the fleeting pain at the loss of his mate. He retreated to the madness that would both save and destroy him.

Grimmauld Place, London, England 2000

The wizarding world had undergone a fundamental shift in perception. Long gone were the days when familial ties dictated one’s worth. The old bastions of pureblood nonsense had fallen after the Dark Lord was finally killed, and Severus Snape could not have been more pleased, though he had noticed some disturbing trends within Shacklebolt’s Ministry.

It had taken him two long years to recover from the snakebite that was supposed to end it all. It had taken him a few more months to realise that he had been exonerated for his part in the war crimes. He now sat at the dining room table at Grimmauld Place, attempting to find a potion that might help the man who had brought Severus back to his enemy’s camp, so to speak. Hermione Granger sat across from him, hair as odious as in the past, though her demeanour was less strident as she had made her own place in the post-war world.

A few weeks before, they had found Lupin and moved their operation to the mutts’ old haunt, but only after Potter had argued that the werewolf would be more comfortable in surroundings he knew. All decided after Granger argued logically that Severus must put aside his feelings on Potter so that they might find a way to make Lupin whole again. The two children wanted their friend back. Severus wanted answers to some very interesting questions. Potter was abovestairs with the lunatic now, attempting to coax the wolf to eat. Severus held out little hope for his recovery, given the wild state in which he entered the house.

Lupin had been illegally placed in Azkaban over Healers’ recommendations, ostensibly because the werewolf posed a threat to public safety. Granger had argued before the Wizengamot that it was against the New Wizarding Charter, ratified a year after Shacklebolt took office, to hold a man in prison for being mad, especially without a trial. Severus’ own argument had been simpler and to the point. He merely asked what decorated Order member wouldn’t go mad after having experienced a week in a grave alongside his rotting, beloved wife? Severus had produced a theatrical shudder at the image the scene evoked, even as he smirked inwardly that his argument had trumped Granger’s more reasoned one, knowing that the large body of logic-challenged witches and wizards would respond better to emotional blackmail. He knew his performance would work, and had argued with the girl to that effect. He had spent the last twenty years and some weeks knowing what arguments would work and on whom.

He had also spent the same amount of time ferreting out conspiracies, and he knew that poor Lupin’s presence in the prison was not merely a miscarriage of justice or some bureaucratic oversight, especially since he had run across statistics concerning the number of werewolves serving time in Azkaban. Severus turned his attention back to the parchment that he held, cursing the wizarding public for their tunnel vision when it came to those perceived as enemies.

&*&*&

Weeks went by with little alleviation in Lupin’s madness. Granger had come up with the idea of taking him to a Muggle psychiatrist. The physician had placed the werewolf on antipsychotics a few days before, and had cautioned that the werewolf needed round the clock care. Severus stole into the wolf’s room to take over the vigil from Potter. The boy sat hunched in a chair, chewing on his fingernails in a most unbecoming manner. It was a vice that was wholly his own. Severus had seen neither Lily nor the toerag with the habit, and it made him like Potter a little more. The boy, while still all things that his father was; attractive, charming, and insolent, was also his own person, and nothing brought that fact home to Severus more than his ragged nails.

Lupin slept on his back in the bed, and as Potter relinquished the chair to Severus, the werewolf moved restively, clutching the blanket spasmodically and shivering. Potter said softly, “He’s had a pretty bad night of it, Snape. He keeps mumbling about someone in Azkaban.”

Severus nodded, “Very good, Potter. Get some rest. Miss Granger is going to be gone tomorrow, so there will be no one to watch Lupin but us.”

Potter let himself out of the room, only lighting his wand after he had shut the door, knowing how Lupin reacted to any form of disturbance. Severus busied himself with the task of relaxation; spreading his robes out so that they did not wrinkle an inordinate amount, toeing off his shoes and setting them at the side of the chair with a flick of his wand.

“I’m mad, you know,” Remus said from his corner of the room. “Quite ruined. I don’t know why you all bother with me. I’m just another casualty of the war. I should have stayed in that grave...”

Severus leaned forward in the chair but said nothing as Remus sat up, the telltale rustling of the bedclothes giving his action away. “They promised me that if I did what they wanted, he could come with me. I don’t know why I wanted him so much, but I couldn’t help it. He’s always been fascinating to me. Like Sirius was, and Nym. I’ve always been drawn to people with a great deal of power.”

“And those who were a little mad,” Severus answered. “I always wondered about you and Black. Were you lovers, or was it unrequited?”

“Don’t be filthy-minded, Severus.” Remus shifted again, making the bedsprings squeak under his weight. “Sirius never knew. I never had the courage to tell him.”

“And this other person, the one in Azkaban?” Severus inched forward in his seat. “Tell me of him.”

Lupin laughed softly, a sly, mad sound in the deep shadows. “No, I can’t do that. I had him, but he hated me for it. He was always so unattainable. I used to watch him, you know. At Hogwarts before, and then... later. He was so beautiful and so lost, even though he didn’t know it at the time. He does now, and I’m afraid I’m the person to blame for that. He’s a werewolf now, you know. They made me do it, like... I’m not supposed to talk about that though. Oh, no. Not supposed to talk about the other things either. What they do in the shower, what they did to me. That’s where they break them, you know. In the shower. Fucking animals enjoy it too. They made us do unspeakable things in front of them after they confirmed that I had turned him. I expect he hates me for that also, especially since I made him alive again... not in the shower, but in between. I shouldn’t’ve done that, not at all. That was my worst mistake. I just couldn’t stop myself. He was so beautiful... so...beautiful...”

Aside from the hitching breaths Lupin took in the gloom, a profound silence filled the room. Severus sat back in the chair which creaked softly in the gloom.

“At one point, before Nym, I wanted you too. Did you know that, Severus?” Lupin asked with a querulous note creeping into his voice. “I wished for a long while that things were different between us, but you’re an unforgiving bastard for all your power. You certainly know how to hold a grudge. Not that it wasn’t deserved, but you nourished it like one of your potions, until it became part of you. I think that would be your superpower if you were a superhero. Your name would be Captain Grudge.”

“Shut up, Lupin.”

“Good night Severus,” Lupin answered, and then with a wobble to his voice, he whispered, “I hate being mad, you know. It tears at my mind. It wears me out, this madness.”

“Get some sleep, Lupin,” Snape said into the darkness as he made a mental note to find the object of Lupin’s desire. That person might be the key in breaking the case wide open. He was sick to death of working on the side of political expedience.

“I know you’re going to find him, that’s your way, Severus. You’re as bad as Harry with wanting to save people.” Lupin yawned, his jaws cracking as he opened them probably to the widest. “Promise me, when you do find him, that you’ll not think worse of him than you already do. He may deserve it, but... I think there is something besides cruelty in his eyes. Something that I could lo... admire, even if he does hate me.”

“Why be coy, Lupin? Tell me who he is. I know that’s what you want to do, so, do so.” Severus took on the wheedling note of an adult coaxing a child to comply.

Lupin snorted softly. “Nice try, but you’ve lost your touch, Snape. I will go to the grave with his secret if he doesn’t want me. The last thing I need is for you to ridicule me for desiring someone who hates me.”

“I wouldn’t do that. You know my history.” Severus sat back in his seat, willing Lupin to silence, remembering his own feelings for Lily. He knew all too well about unreturned affection. “Very well, Lupin. Get some rest. Miss Granger has arranged, at great expense, I might add, for you to meet with a new Muggle mind healer tomorrow.”

“’Night, Severus,” Lupin said in a childlike tone.

“Sweet dreams, werewolf.” Severus settled back into his seat, planning his approach on finding Lupin’s last cellmate. That man might be able to solve a great many problems.

Azkaban Prison, the North Sea, 2005

It was Snape and the bright Mudblood that Draco couldn’t stand in school, who brought Lucius the news of his impending parole. The girl had stayed beside the door of the interrogation cell, her expression a tense and shifting mixture of revulsion at Lucius’ state of health, obvious mistrust, and pity for him.

Just as he had Lupin so many years ago, he hated her for such an open display of emotion. It could, and would, be used against him. Snape, as was his way, remained impassive to Lucius, and therefore welcomed within the burbling of emotions that fought for supremacy in Malfoy’s mind. He stilled his hands from twitching to his hair, stopped his mouth from moving as he counted, but could not hide the madness that lurked in him. It was there, an oily sheen of wrongness on his facade of icy hauteur, as slick and treacherous as black ice on cobbles. Lucius had been ruined by his own choices and the choices that others had forced on him.

It only struck him later, as the two brought him to the Floo, that it was odd that Snape was alive. He had heard that the Dark Lord had killed him with that foul snake. He turned to ask about it but only uttered, “199, 200...”

The count of the steps they had made to walk from that room to the next. The number of breaths Lucius had taken during his last session with the one guard who still took pleasure in raping him. The number of times a minute he thought of golden eyes and warm arcs of spunk bathing his chest as he came in the wolf’s hot cavity. The number of ways he could think to torture that same werewolf for leaving him alone when Lucius needed him most... The Mudblood touched his elbow, a mere brush of her fingertips on the mouldering cotton tunic. Lucius felt himself stiffen, ready for flight if she wanted more. He could not function as a normal man anymore.

The counting filled his mind, ripped all thoughts but revenge or sex from him. She would expect civility, and he could only give raw insanity in return. He fought the urge to scream, fought the urge to vomit, and concentrated on the number of steps it took Severus to enable the Floo-network and pull Lucius forward into the unknown. He screamed as the green flames enveloped him, and was catatonic by the time he was deposited at his destination.

Grimmauld Place, London, England, 2005

It was a new prison, this place he vaguely remembered from a party in his youth. The Mudblood and Snape hovered about him as a new face above Healer-green robes poured magic over his body, healing long untended injuries. The Healer, a dark-haired woman who looked familiar, pulled Snape aside, speaking in low, urgent tones, and Lucius began counting the number of times her jaw moved up and down when she spoke. The Mudblood moved closer to him, asked a question he could not understand, and had tears in her eyes for some reason.

Lucius sneered and said, “35, 36, 37...”

To him, it meant that he did not appreciate her presence, but he knew the message was somehow bungled as she looked upon him. The threatened tears spilled down her cheeks and Lucius turned away from her, exposed the ruined flesh that was his back to block her confusing gaze. The Healer returned to his side, spelled a potion into him, and he slept.

&*&*&

When he next woke, he was more himself, less the maniac that had been wrought in the water of the showers and the pull of the moon. His son stood just inside the doorway, his fists clenched at his sides, his eyes red-rimmed.

“Father,” Draco said before he sucked his lips between his teeth, his eyes overly bright as he sought to look anywhere but at Lucius. It was a familiar expression, something Draco did in his childhood when he was overwrought, usually over not getting his way.

Lucius tried not to count how many seconds it took his son to gather his wits, he tried to give him the cool patrician facade his son surely expected, but knew he had failed when Draco, the man who would always be a little boy to him, fled the room.

He heard the Mudblood’s shrill soprano, and then Snape appeared from the dimness of the hallway as if he were a spectre. Lucius said to him, “You were a traitor.”

“I did what I had to do, Lucius,” Snape’s cool tone was made a lie when he folded his arms across his chest, “just as you did.”

Lucius turned away, wanting to say he was glad that Severus had betrayed the Dark Lord, and to rail at him for leaving him to Azkaban. Instead he found his hand furtively burrowing under his pyjamas, fisting over his cock, and counting the strokes it took to make it hard. He thought of the werewolf and mourned his loss again, as he had done every day since he had been taken from Lucius. He mourned him even as the slick feeling of fury coiled in his gut. Severus sighed heavily and left the room.

Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire, England, 2006

Lucius sat at the heavy rosewood desk that had been in the same spot for at least two centuries, his sparse breakfast of coddled eggs and toast before him as he read the daily drivel of the Prophet. It had been eight months since Azkaban prison had been raided, four months since the trials of those responsible for the systematic torture and turning of hundreds of prisoners, and less than a week since he had returned to his ancestral home, relatively sane though still a werewolf. Throughout the tumult that had made up the past year, a thin thread of longing for someone he would have hated before Azkaban lent sad continuity to his life.

News of his part in the trial, his testimony of the tortures he endured still made lurid headlines with equally sensational copy beneath it. He flipped past the front page, beyond weary of the constant pitying tone and overblown hyperbole of the articles on Lucius Malfoy’s supposed plight and the celebrity it had gained him. At great expense, he might add; he had paid the editor of the rag handsomely to put a sympathetic slant to the articles on him and the Malfoy name. He scanned past the dreary obituaries just as his daughter-in-law of less than a week entered.

The former Miss Granger surveyed the untouched food and clicked her tongue in disapproval. “Lucius, you haven’t touched your breakfast. You need to eat, especially since you changed last night. You know that.”

Lucius smirked as he picked up a fork and flicked the tines into the congealed yolk of the egg before seeming to return his attention to the paper before him. She rolled her eyes whilst letting out a small, exasperated giggle. He studied her deft movements for a moment and reflected on his change in attitude towards his outspoken new family member.

He doubted very much that the Lucius who lived before the curse, before the tender mercies of the guards, would have allowed a member of his family to marry a Muggleborn, much less the Muggleborn who stood in front of him gathering his untouched dishes as if she were a house elf. He snapped his paper as he turned the page, drawing the girl’s attention. “You are aware that we have house elves, Madam. Please allow them to do their jobs.”

She frowned but made no move to desist from her labours, not that Lucius thought she would. She was as obstinate as she was steadfast in her convictions. It was just that trait to which his son had been drawn. It was her compassion that held Lucius’ attention, and her viability as a political tool.

Having no interest in the futures of domestically grown Boomslang, he turned the page of the paper and gave a small grunt, as if he had been punched in the gut. A grainy picture of Remus Lupin, standing next to Severus Snape, caused him to jerk forward. Both men held a large bank note from the Ministry. The caption stated that the two men had made progress on a treatment for lycanthropy and had received an award to continue their research.

Lupin looked healthy, though there was another quality to the man’s movement in the ephemeral motion of the picture, an almost geriatric defeat as he hunched his shoulders against the onslaught of questions. Lucius traced the image with his thumb, damning himself for the weakness even as longing and a darker emotion burned through his gut and then sizzled down to his groin. He still wanted the werewolf.

His daughter-in-law, on her way out the door, paused as if she would speak. He lowered the paper, folding it into precise squares before banishing it to the corner of the desk. The girl padded silently out of the room, leaving Lucius to his brooding. He knew she could read his moods well from the time she had spent with him during his recovery.

&*&*&

Severus visited. Lucius passed the time with him in their usual manner of pleasant distance. Both of them needed time to heal the breach that had risen after the war, but the distance was not simply due to that. Lucius knew he owed Severus a debt for his actions on Draco’s behalf during the last year of the war, and the later work on Lucius’ behalf, and he hated the thought of being beholden to anyone, but most especially to such a skilled Slytherin as Severus.

Severus sniffed the brandy given him by the house elf, eyes shut in blissful concentration as the fumes rose. He sipped from the snifter, a small, contented half-smile softening his features. After a thoughtful moment, he set aside the drink. Lucius waited patiently for Severus to artfully broach the reason for his visit. It was a conversational dance with which they were both well practiced. Lucius had taught Severus the fine art of silence, and Severus conversely taught Lucius the art of deadly riposte. Theirs was a true Slytherin friendship.

“The young Mrs. Malfoy sent me word that she was concerned for you, Lucius,” Severus said. “I trust there is no need to employ the Muggle psychiatrist again?” Lucius smirked behind his glass.

Trust the chit to bring in the big wands when Lucius became fractious. “No need, Severus. I merely refused to eat one bland breakfast. The girl misread my inability to eat pabulum as ennui.” Severus moved in his chair, coming to rest with his elbows on his knees, his lank hair hanging in heavy swatches around his face.

“She was not speaking of your lack of appetite, at least for food. She informs me that you have refused any renewed acquaintanceship with your former paramours and that you have struck no similar friendships with the plethora of ladies in your social circle. She became concerned because she has heard from various sources this lack of social congress is most unlike you, Lucius.”

“My interests...,” Lucius began, “I am not interested in...” He felt his eyes drift to the book that contained the picture of Lupin, cut out hastily in a moment of weakness, the same photo he caught himself caressing when he happened to look at it. A part of Lucius wanted to storm to Lupin‘s residence and shout at him for his absence, another part of him wanted to face the world cloaked in his icy brand of aristocratic hauteur and continue his noble suffering. He let his hand rise to the tip of his cane, and it mocked him with the movement’s suggestive quality. “Damn me, Severus. You haven’t touched quim since you were eighteen! Perhaps you need the aid of the Muggle mind healer.”

“Perhaps,” Severus answered with infuriating equanimity. Lucius tapped his cane on the floor in irritation as Snape continued. “I suspect, however, that there another reason for your reticence.” Lucius rose, striding to the open window, staring vacantly at the ordered gardens beyond the terrace. Severus said, “You know that I have begun research with Remus Lupin on a cure for lycanthropy.”

“Yes.” Lucius felt as if the word strangled him when he responded. The werewolf had been the subject of many of his recent and not so recent sexual fantasies.

“He was quite ill when we first retrieved him from Azkaban.” Lucius closed his eyes, remembering their shared madness.

“As was I, Severus.”

“During his illness, he spoke quite openly about the numerous persons he was asked to turn, yet when I questioned him about his final cell mate, he would tell me nothing other than that he was sure the creature hated him.” A heavy buzz filled Lucius’ hearing as Severus continued. “I was under the impression that there was more of a relationship between the two than shared lycanthropy.”

“As you said, the man was quite ill.” Lucius turned to Severus, masking the sharp purr of desire and exultation that shot through him.

Severus bestowed his patented know-all smirk as he said, “You are quite right, yet he refuses the solace of companionship from the various offers he has had, as if he is waiting for someone else to come along. It’s quite touching in a maudlin way really, almost as if the wolf in him is waiting for a mate to return.”

Lucius nodded. “It’s quite likely, speaking from my limited experience as a lycanthrope.”

“Indeed,” Severus answered and rose, pulling his watch from his waistcoat. “I must be going, Lucius. Perhaps you might like to tour my new labs sometime. We bought out Borgin and Burkes’ shop and set up quite a nice facility. If you’re interested, Lupin and I usually work until eight, but we break for tea at five.”


&*&*&

At one time in Lucius’ life, there would have been no hesitation on his part. He was a Malfoy and as such, entitled to whatever it was he wanted, when he wanted it. Yet as he stood outside the shop watching Severus brew whilst Lupin waited on a customer, he was possessed with a stuttering kind of fear, one that could not be overcome with the inbred confidence of blood or status. What if the wolf didn’t want him? What if he was mistaken about Severus’ innuendo and Lupin wanted nothing to do with that part of his past? What if he rejected Lucius for his politics and his own colourful past? What if Lupin felt only pity and revulsion for the man he had turned?

Lucius moved farther back in the shadows as Lupin escorted the older woman he had been waiting upon to the door. Remus opened the door for her, and followed her outside, walking her past the small alcove in which Lucius hid. Lupin had become greyer, his face more lined, but no less beautiful to Lucius’ eyes. He traced the man’s features lovingly, catching a whiff of the fusty odour of potions and a darker scent, of musk and chocolate, that was pure Lupin. The werewolf strode back past Lucius’ hiding spot, toward the shop, but stopped suddenly, nostrils flared and his eyes closed, his head bent as if in prayer.

Lucius felt his arm lift as if of its own volition. He held it aloft, eyes closed in concentration, not knowing if he was trying to will Lupin to notice him or not. He waited in his prayerful posture until he heard the tell-tale jingle of the bells on the door to the shop as Lupin entered.

A week later he returned, lurking in the same alcove, watching as Lupin went through his day, waiting until the werewolf left before he made his way home to his lonely bed. He began making the trek daily, keeping to the shadows, never letting Lupin see him as he longed for the younger man’s touch. No doubt the Muggle mental healer would say it was an unhealthy occupation, or as she might phrase it, quite wrongly of course, obsession, but once begun, Lucius felt a compulsion to see Lupin.

He only missed the day after the change, taking solace in the knowledge that Lupin must have done the same.

The fourth week of his vigil, Severus strode out of the shop, directing his black gaze at Lucius’ preferred alcove. Lucius could see Lupin’s bemused expression through the window as the potions master stopped in front of the featureless brick wall in which Lucius hid daily. Severus barked, “I’m tired of you lurking outside my shop. It upsets the werewolf and makes my customers nervous. Either come in and speak to him, or stay away completely.”

Lucius Apparated away, nearly splinching himself in the process.

&*&*&

During another bland breakfast after a full moon, Lucius’ daughter-in-law unexpectedly appeared in his study. After the last full moon fiasco in which she had attempted to spell a nourishment potion into his stomach, she had been banished from the room until he was finished with breakfast. She was discommoded about something, he could tell by the way she clung to the walls as she entered, studiously observing the various titles which he knew she had already consumed in her endless quest to become an encyclopaedia. The girl’s mind might be admirable, but she was a horrible actor. Lucius paused in his perusal of the paper, “Yes, Madam?”

“Erm, well... I know you said you didn’t want to be disturbed during breakfast, but you have a... you have a visitor, and well... I thought you might like to know he’s here. That’s... all,” The girl said all without looking directly at Lucius. “Do you want me to send him in?”

She slicked back her tightly coiled hair nervously, causing several strands to pop out of place, creating a strangely attractive, frizzed halo around her head. Lucius patted his mouth with the pristine serviette that lay in his lap, and dipped his fingers in the finger bowl before standing and with a courtly bow saying, “Please do send him in, Madam, and direct a house elf to fetch my dishes.”

He prepared himself mentally for whatever unpleasantness awaited him. He was cognizant that certain members of the public were clamouring for codified restrictions on the werewolves released from Azkaban, and both Potter and Shacklebolt had contacted him in the previous week in an effort to convince him to become a spokesperson against the ratification of such measures. The door swung open just as Lucius affixed a pleasant, yet cool smile on his face. The smile slipped as Remus stepped through the doorway.

Lupin must have seen the death of the smile because he stopped. His mouth worked wordlessly and the colour drained from his already pale cheeks. Lucius felt as if he were freezing and burning at once as he alternated between elation and abject terror. He clutched blindly at the back of a silk upholstered chair as he fought for some sort of equilibrium. He croaked, “Lupin.”

The other werewolf took a tentative step forward, his slick soled shoes hissing on the Chinese silk rug, the only sound in the silence of the room. “Severus said... you’ve been... are you... I thought I smelled your scent… that day… several days, in fact…”

Lucius crossed to Lupin not quite touching him as he said, “You ruined me.”

Lupin recoiled as if slapped. “I see. I’m sorry to bother you. I won’t do so again.”

Before Lucius could arrest the younger man‘s flight, Lupin was out of the door and clattering down the marble hallway in his cheaply made shoes.

Lucius brought up his wand, using a little utilised ward to seal the exits to anyone but those of Malfoy blood. As he made his leisurely way to the foyer to which he was sure Lupin had fled, he cursed his luck at having been turned and subsequently mated to a Gryffindor. They were all noble idiots who acted before thinking. He also damned himself for not remembering that fact when dealing with Lupin. Had Lucius said the same to Severus, no offence would have registered upon his façade. He would have merely sneered a retort and they would have spoken logically about the situation until coming to a satisfying conclusion. There would have been no fireworks, no tumult. Lucius found himself relishing the fact that he could wound Remus; in a disgustingly overwrought way, it reassured him that the werewolf felt something for him, even if it was mere pity.

Lucius entered the Neo-classic foyer, added during the Muggle tumult of the Napoleonic era. It wasn’t just the French aristocrats who were martyred in that little war. Britain had gained a great many magical architects after the little dictator took over Gaul. He readily acknowledged that his mental hare-chasing only put off his confrontation with Lupin, and so he straightened his robes and patted his already straight hair into place before stepping into the room. As Lucius caught up with the man, Lupin slammed his body against the outer door with his shoulder, most ineffectively. The sight might have been comical, had Lucius not seen the stark panic on the younger man’s features. “Let me out, Malfoy! I swear by all that’s holy, I’ll fucking kill you, if you don’t let me go right now.”

Lucius released the wards with a wave of his wand as soon as he drew close enough to touch the werewolf. He put his arms around the man’s trembling shoulders and said, “I meant to say that you have ruined me for anyone but you.”

Lupin gave a sharp huff of disbelief and as Lucius tipped his face up, he was chagrined to see the drying tracks of tears on Remus‘ cheeks. He swiped them off with his thumbs while cursing himself for his lack of foresight in the situation. He should have remembered the man was a Gryffindor and only learned from action. His lips followed his thumbs, lingering over the salty tracks. He breathed in Lupin’s intoxicating scent, chocolate and musk, one that even the foul prison could not eradicate, growled as he pulled the man closer to him, letting Lupin feel just how ruined Lucius was as he ground his turgid cock into Lupin‘s already tumescent groin.

Remus gasped as Lucius pushed his head to the side and exposed the younger man’s neck. He bit the tender flesh and then sucked it into his mouth, smoothing the sting of the action with his tongue. Remus desperately pulled Lucius to him, clasping at his thin, linen shirt, his fingers biting into the flesh below.

Lucius lowered himself out of the man’s grasp, knelt before Lupin, and slowly began opening his twill trousers, aware of the steady golden gaze on his inclined head. Lucius pushed both trousers and pants down roughly as he almost simultaneously engulfed the werewolf’s penis with his mouth. His own mouth watered as he got his first taste of Lupin in six years. He wanted to bring the man to culmination as quickly as possible, so that he might drink him down as greedily as Lupin had done him in the throes of their combined madness in prison. The mere thought of Lupin spilling onto Lucius’ avid tongue was driving the older man to the brink of climax. He redoubled his efforts, drawing those familiar low, throaty groans from Remus, nearly climaxing at the filthy sound of them.

Lupin’s cock twitched as the younger man’s harsh hiss filled Lucius’ ears, and spurred him to take the organ entirely down his gullet. He drew back and plunged back down the shaft as Lupin‘s fingers clutched spasmodically at his lover‘s head, before bobbing back again. Lucius swiped the viscous liquid gathered on the glans, and Lupin jerked forward, his cock spurting the sweetly bitter liquid onto Lucius‘ tongue, a torrid moan emanating from his throat. Malfoy took the cock deeper as he swallowed, his throat muscles constricting around the organ.

Lupin leaned weakly against the door as Lucius sat back heavily on his haunches, his own erection in bold relief in his buff trousers. He smirked, “Do you see how you have ruined me?”

Remus sank down beside him, flushed and lovely from his orgasm. Lucius leaned in to kiss him as Lupin said, “You said you hated me. That first night we were together.”

“I did,” Lucius said, after a momentary struggle to maintain his calm façade. The memories, while now distant, were still painful. “I hated you for making me feel again, and for making me want something other than death. After we were free, I waited for you. I thought perhaps my past and my politics might have caused you to…stay away. Is that why… you rejected me?”

“I never did, Lucius,” Lupin smiled; not the knife-edged one that Lucius had become attuned to in Azkaban. It was a small, shy lifting of his lips, causing small dimples to form beside them, and wrinkles to appear at the corners of his eyes. It was a lovely expression that Lucius wanted to see again. “We were both so damaged by that place. I wanted… to come… to see you, but I wasn’t sure how I would be received.”

“Now you know.” Lucius felt a swift, painful smile cross his face as he pulled Lupin toward him. They kissed until Lucius felt Lupin’s deft fingers inside his shirt, brushing his nipples with the flat of his nails. Lucius trapped Remus’ hands against his chest. “I believe we should take this elsewhere. My son and daughter-in-law are in residence. They might not take well to seeing us in the throes of passion.”

Without further pause, Lucius drew Lupin to his feet and then Apparated them to his bedroom. Lucius captured Remus’ lips in a sweet kiss as he rubbed against the man. Before long, both men were unclothed with shaking hands, and Lucius had Lupin bent over the side of a chair, cheeks spread and anus glistening with the wash of a lubricating spell. Lucius grimaced in anticipated pleasure as he let his cock slide over the puckered hole, drawing a hiss from Lupin as he slid the tip of his member past the heated skin and into the other man’s delicious tightness. He took his time, drawing each utterance from Lupin’s throat as he fucked him with painstaking care. He had never made love to a woman as thoroughly as he did his mate.

When he felt Lupin’s sac tighten against his own and the other man’s anus contract for the final time, it brought Lucius over the edge, and with starbursts of pleasure rushing through him, he reached around to Lupin’s cock so that he could feel the thick, sticky evidence of the other man’s satiation coat his fingers. The viscous fluid gave Lucius a feeling of power that had been missing in their interactions in prison. He licked the moisture off his hand his eyes closed so that he might savour the sweetness of the moment. Lupin’s throaty moan at the action made his softening cock throb dully, wringing a bit more pleasure out of Lucius even as he slid out of his lover.

Much later, after retiring to the luxurious bed in the suite, they lay twined together, lethargically stroking each other’s skin. Lucius said, “I would like very much to get to know you without the madness and the pain between us.”

“I don’t think that’s possible, Lucius,” Remus answered after a moment. “I think the madness will always be with us, but is that such a bad thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“It was my madness that caused me to act on feelings that I have had since... for a very long time... since our schooldays.” Lupin turned toward Lucius, his eyes taking on the feral gold light they had exhibited in prison. “I have wanted you for so long, Lucius. I can’t... I won’t.. be able to separate the two realities. I don’t know if I would want to.”

Lucius leaned forward and said, just before he captured Lupin’s lips with his, “Well, then, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Stay for as long as you dare, Lupin, and we’ll see where whatever this is between us takes us.”