Title: In Its Deepest Being
Author: kelly_chambliss
Pairing: Poppy Pomfrey/Narcissa Black [Malfoy]
Rating: Hard R
Kinks/Themes Chosen: Bad Porn Clichés: "naughty nurse has exploits with patients or doctors" and "someone above corruption (priest, nun [add 'trusted healer'], etc.) is corrupted"
Other Warnings: slightly under-age sex, suggestion of drug abuse
Word Count: 2000
Summary: Each time, she tells herself it will be the last time.
Author's Notes: I decided to go with clichés all the way, and some overwought language, too. As always, my unending thanks to my beta therealsnape, who improves everything I write.

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Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something that needs our love.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
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Each time, she tells herself it will be the last time.

(Oh, Poppy, you know better. . .)

Each time, she reminds herself that there should never have been a first time. She has violated everything that matters to her: her oath of healing, her trusted position as a school nurse, the faith of students and colleagues alike.

(And you will do it again. Because even now, in your moment of guilty anguish, you feel the pull of desire.)

Poppy violates her principles, yes, but most of all, she violates the girl who stands before her now in the infirmary's private examination room, her fine pale-blond hair falling over her shoulders in a mass of gossamer tangles that Poppy yearns to smooth out. There are smudges like bruises under the soft blue eyes: Narcissa hasn't been sleeping, she can't eat.

(At first you did it just to help her, didn't you, Poppy? And maybe to help yourself. That's what you like to think. She was so obviously in distress, as she stood shivering in her under-shift in the examination room, nearly in tears as she told you of the stomach aches, the sleeplessness, the fits of inexplicable terror that came upon her in the most unlikely places.

You gave her a hug. It was almost medicinal, it was humane, it was what any caring person would have done for someone so unhappy, so anxious. So lovely.)

"Please," Narcissa says. "Please, I need it."

(And so do you, Poppy. So do you.)

"It's too dangerous, Narcissa," Poppy replies, trying to be what she should have been all along: the guide, the professional, the adult, the one who protected children like Narcissa (seventeen she may be and under tremendous pressure from her family to affiance herself to a pureblood, but she's a child nonetheless.)

(But when you take her to your bed, Poppy, you reassure yourself that she's not a child, don't you? After all, she knows what she's doing, doesn't she? You've seen the evidence of her experience in the way she touches you, in the things she desires. You tell yourself that she's not a child -- she's a woman, a knowing woman, and she's made a choice. She's chosen you.

You tell yourself it's not a child whose full breasts you knead, whose legs you spread, whose most intimate, non-child parts you awaken with your tongue. It's not a child who transfigures your Potions beaker into an anatomically-correct male organ and begs you to fuck her, and it's not a child who returns the favour with deft skill while you lie splayed on your bed, your hips rising, your silencing charms as strong as you can make them as your voice cries out the non-child's name.)

"Just this once," Narcissa pleads. "Just let me have it one more time, and then I'll never do it again, I'll never ask again."

She hooks a lock of the pale hair behind her ear, and Poppy can barely stop herself from reaching out to trace her fingers along that beautifully-revealed cheekbone.

(You believe you are the only one with whom she lets down her guard like this, the only one to whom she can show her vulnerable side. You like to think that this is the real girl, the real Narcissa -- not that languid, pureblood ice queen that she shows to the world. Young as she is, she keeps up that façade perfectly. And you do believe it's a façade, that it's only with you that she can be herself. She trusts you, she needs you. She wants you.)

"Let me have the potion. Please," Narcissa says again. "I need to sleep, you said it yourself. And you’re the one who gave it to me to start with."

(Yes, you did, Poppy, and you continue to, every time she asks. Oh, not the dangerous one, not the one Narcissa thinks she so urgently needs. You give her a placebo, though of course you can't let her know that. She might not come to see you so often then, even though you always let yourself believe her when she tells you that she comes to you for yourself and not just for the potion.)

"Yes, I did give it to you, but that was for an extreme situation," Poppy says, trying once more to be the nurse she should be. "It's a potion for occasional emergencies, not for long-time use. I can show you the studies."

She feels stronger now that she's talking like a professional, and she's certain she'll be able to say "no" this time. She'll be able to break it off. She will.

(You will not, Poppy.)

"I've missed you," says Narcissa softly, touching Poppy's face just the way Poppy had wanted to touch hers. She takes Poppy's hand; soon their fingers are entwined.

(And now you're lost, Poppy, you know you are. Admit it. It will happen this time like all the other times: you will agree to give her the potion, and then you will let Narcissa pull you towards her. You'll let her be the one to join your lips, tease your mouth open with her delicate tongue. You will tell yourself that it's what she wants. And you will ask yourself who is to say that what you're doing isn't helping the girl? It's just another form of healing.)

"It's N.E.W.T. year, of course you've been busy. How are you holding up?" Poppy asks, struggling to keep the conversation on the level of schoolwork. Just an ordinary conversation, that's all it is. She's asking a student about her academic work, the way any school professional would. "All the more reason you need to keep a clear head. I've been researching some therapies to help your anxiety."

( Of course you have, Poppy; it gives you a good excuse to think about her, and it's not as if you want to think about anything else these days, is it? You think about Narcissa here-and-now so that you don't have to think about her eventually leaving school.

About her leaving you.)

"If I could spend the whole night with you, I'd feel better. I could sleep then," Narcissa answers, her voice strengthening. "You relax me, Poppy; you're so calm and strong, and when I'm with you I feel like I could do anything."

"Like cope with your family and young Mr Malfoy?" Poppy forces herself to ask. She raises the painful issue deliberately, for Narcissa will be finishing Hogwarts soon, and it's only natural for a staff member to ask after the girl's future. It's expected, even. It will do Narcissa good to be reminded of what will be the realities of her life. It will do Poppy good, too.

(Except that's not why you're asking, is it, Poppy? You ask even though you know Narcissa's reply will hit you like a cruciatus. You're like a patient who keeps worrying a wound, activating the pain as a way to show its limitations. You will know the worst it can do, then. Merlin, but you hope it's the worst.)

Narcissa waves away the air in gesture somehow redolent of privilege, a gesture that reminds Poppy, if she needed reminding, of the gulf between their positions. Suddenly Narcissa is every inch the pureblood, and Poppy hardly knows her.

"Oh, yes, I'll marry someday, probably Lucius," Narcissa agrees. "He's perfectly acceptable, it's not that. And I do have a duty to the family."

But then, with her usual mercurial quickness, she becomes Poppy's Narcissa once again, stretching out a beseeching hand. "But not yet, I'm not ready to marry yet. I can't breathe when I think about it. I can only breathe when I'm with you, Poppy. Let me spend the night with you. You make me feel safe."

(Of course, Narcissa makes you feel anything but safe, Poppy. You know that every moment she stays with you puts you in danger -- of losing your reputation, your livelihood, the few slivers that are left of your heart.

Yet part of you almost wishes that someone would come in, would discover you, would stop you. Minerva, perhaps, come to discuss accounts, or Horace, checking the Potions stock, or Pomona, bearing a harvest of herbological salvation. Part of you almost wishes one of them would enter the room right now.

But only 'almost,' isn't that right, Poppy? You only 'almost' wish to be caught.)

Narcissa kisses Poppy now, winding a slim arm around her waist and drawing her into an embrace that Poppy tries to resist.

Poppy is going to put a stop to this.

(The way you did the first time Narcissa kissed you, Poppy? The first time, nearly a year ago now, when you still had a chance to take a different road and didn't?

But you like to tell yourself that the first time, at least, wasn't your fault.

Narcissa needed help; she needed a kind, understanding touch. You understood her fears and her sense of helplessness in the face of what other people wanted from her.

For you were in pain, too. You were grieving, you weren't thinking properly. You weren't yourself.

Because that very week, after twenty-two years together, Aurora had left you. Just left you, with no warning, no preliminary symptoms. You, who pride yourself on your diagnostic skills, had no idea that the woman with whom you planned to grow old had been in reality growing away from you. She no longer wanted you.

And you were facing a lifetime of living in the same space with her, of seeing her at every meal, at every staff meeting. Seeing her everywhere except where you wanted to see her, which was in your bed and in your arms.

So you let Narcissa kiss you, or at least you like to think it was she who started things -- it wasn't you; all you had done was to offer her a motherly hug.

You say it was because you didn't have the energy that you did nothing to stop her when she slipped her shift over her head and bared her delicious breasts, their pink-tipped roundness so different from Aurora's boyish flat chest. You were so weary and dazed -- you say -- that you just stood still as she pulled off her wisp of knickers to reveal impossibly-narrow hips and a dainty blond crotch as unlike Aurora's dark thatch as could be.

And then you and Narcissa were in each other's arms, and your hands were between her legs before you had any idea what was happening -- isn't that the way you remember it now? And you swear -- you would swear under the strongest dose of Veritaserum in existence -- that to this day, you do not know which one of you Transfigured the examination table into a real bed.

All you know is that she was suddenly underneath you, and your thigh was between hers, and she was moving against your leg, desperately, hotly, and you felt as if you were outside your own body, watching yourself kiss her and bite her neck until the blood pooled under the porcelain skin, and then she was coming with little mewling sounds, and when she finally touched you, when she slid her fingers inside you and stroked you until you couldn't breathe and couldn't think of Aurora even if you'd wanted to. . .

Well, by that time, you were so lost to yourself that even now, you don't really think you can be held responsible for what happened. It was a fluke, a one-time accident. It was regrettable, but you didn't think any real harm had been done.

And in any case. . .

You told yourself it would never happen again.)

"You can't stay the night, Narcissa," Poppy whispers. She's broken their kiss but still holds the girl close.

"But may I have the potion?" Narcissa whispers back, plaintive and so warm against Poppy's chest. "Just once more?"

"Once more," Poppy agrees, kissing her again.

Once more can't hurt, she thinks, as they transfigure the bed and ward the door.

Because this time is the last time.