Title: Azkaban: Ink and Parchment
Author/Artist: inamac
Characters/Pairings: Lucius (Lucius/Narcissa, Lucius/Severus, Lucius/Draco)
Rating: NC17
Kinks/Themes Chosen: erotographomania: arousal from writing romantic or erotic letters or poems
Other Warnings: Frottage, sounding, implied incest
Word Count: 2455
Summary/Description: There are no longer any Dementors in Azkaban, but Lucius Malfoy's soul is still tortured.
Author's Notes: I picked one of the help_japan themes this month (and added one from last month as it wasn't one of my posting dates) . Alas, this turned out much darker than I intended, and I couldn't resist the temptation to add a little illustration too.

Azkaban: Ink and Parchment

1. Desire

1996. Day 23 of my incarceration.

They have given me parchment, quill and ink – all of very inferior quality – thinking, perhaps, that I will blot my way to confession.

Well, perhaps I shall; in due time and when all other entertainment has been exhausted. But there are other, better, purposes to which letters may be put, even without parchment. One of my ancestors used nothing more than a stylus and stone to carve himself a path out of his prison. Though that was a Muggle jail, and such enchantment will not work here.

These cells are watched and if I touch myself for my own pleasure I know I shall become nothing more than the object of other voyeur's amusement. No, I shall not give them that satisfaction. My pleasures are for myself alone. And so I will commit myself to parchment – burn out my desires on the page. And when I am done? Well, there are more practical uses for paper than writing.

So, what shall my pleasure be? I feel like some potentate contemplating a night of lust. Sat upon some well-upholstered couch rather than this metal-framed bed as I watch the eunuch unroll the scroll for my perusal. Here are the names of a hundred concubines, a hundred catamites; each delineated with all their charms and skills set down. I run a finger down the page, brushing past memories. This boy's open smile, that woman's tender body...

Well, I have time enough for them all. A year in this place. Three hundred and sixty five days. Three hundred and sixty five objects for my desire, and ways in which to enjoy them.

I will start with the known. One should not be greedy.

(I recall saying the same thing to Draco, teaching the five-year-old boy manners over a birthday gift of chocolates.

"But Daddy, they're my present. I should get first pick!"

"No, Draco, hand them round to your friends. It's polite to do so. And," a whisper, "note their choices, thus you will learn their weaknesses."

Later on, of course, Narcissa gave him a whole box for himself – another lesson on the importance of public appearance and private indulgence.)

But I wander from my purpose. Pleasure. Well, let the mental diversion guide my choice. The potentate's metaphorical finger pauses on a name.

"That one. Have her prepared and sent to my bed."

With Narcissa there was always a bed. Not for her the frantic fumblings in draughty corridors, the trysts in deserted classrooms, the impulsive coupling on the cool green sward at the centre of the Manor's maze in high Summer.

Not that she was – is – unadventurous. I had her first in my own four-poster in the Slytherin Prefect's Dorm. Curtains drawn tight and spelled against intrusion. It had its moments, but I do not wish to re-live that adolescent fumbling. My mind moves on. The illicit thrill of using her sister's borrowed bed the night of her Birthday Ball. The gentle rocking of the boat beneath our honeymoon mattress as the cacique sailed between lonely Greek islands on that long first summer together, the succession of bedrooms looking out onto Mediterranean vistas, the harbour at Rhodes, the marina of Monte Carlo, the black sands and white houses of Santorini.

I have only to write these names and the sensations return, the feel of her warm flesh under my hands, the silky slickness of sunoil as I smooth it onto her back. Light and warmth seem to flow with the ink across the page, even in the pale northern light that seeps into this chill cell. It seems that my pen is as much an instrument of magic as the wand now denied me.

A familiar bed, then. I would not want to overtax my first experiment with this particular form of conjouration.

The oak-carved heavy four poster in the Carolingian Chamber has been in my family for three centuries, a gift from a King before the Statute of Secrecy abolished Royal Magicians from the Muggle world as it abolished royalty from ours. There are charms carved into the wood and woven into the hangings. It is a bed designed for magical coupling. Generations of Malfoys have consummated their marriages under that green and gold canopy. It is where Draco was conceived and, a too-short eight months later, born. In fact (I confess this with some reluctance, though the memory is enough to stir my blood, and that is the purpose of this exercise), it was the first thing I fucked.

The carving on the thick posts is intricate and, as befits such an object, erotic. My adolescent penis fitted perfectly between the smooth, beeswaxed buttocks of a voluptuous nymph being pursued up the bedpost from baseboard to canopy by a priapistic satyr. To this day the scent of furniture polish makes me – amorous.

Narcissa smiled when she first saw the bed. Her hand trailed along the carving, over the crinkled outlines of the oak leaves, the hard knobs of the acorns, the beard of the Green Man peering from among the leaves at the bed-head, the antlers of the stags and the breasts of the nymph, finally coming to rest on the disproportionate member of the satyr. Her eyes met mine with such a challenge that it was as if I felt the touch on my own flesh, and, had she not flung herself invitingly onto the bed I might have thrown her there myself.

I followed her down.

And now my pen becomes inadequate.

How to describe the sensation of my fingertips dragging over the fine spidersilk of her negligee, the contrast with her shivering thighs? Her scent, expensive Parisian perfume at throat and wrists, musk and sex at dimpled buttock and crotch? Her moan as my lips followed my stripping hands, muffled by my possessing mouth? The taste of the wine she had drunk on her tongue, mingled with the brandy on mine?

I massaged her mound, fondled her folds, as she liked it. A gentleman should always ask how to please a lady – though no real lady would countenance the question. I asked it of a Park Lane whore, and her instruction seems to have been accurate. Certainly Narcissa always responded as I had been led to expect.

I am hard now, at least in thought. I press into her, the memory of the whore and my wife mingled, and this literary magic works. Without touch, without any more than memory, I am satisfied.

I will set aside my pen, cap the inkwell, crumple the parchment and throw it into the oubliette.

And sleep.


2. Desperation

Day... 178?

The days are growing shorter. If I were at home I could gauge the date from the colours of the maples in the Home Park, the rags of velvet as the deer prepare to shed their antlers, or the changing planting in the knot garden.

Here there is nothing but grey sky and the scream of gulls. Are gulls seasonal? They have been screaming around the towers, as eerie in their way as Mother's beloved peacocks.

They keep me wakeful, and I will not afford my jailers the amusement of watching me pleasure myself to sleep. So I again take up my pen to allow that same stimulation to my mind.

I miss Narcissa still, but to assuage this heat, this need, I need a stronger memory.

Severus.

His was the last name I spoke as a free man, before the doors of this place clanged closed behind me.

"Narcissa, if you and Draco need help, call on Severus."

I wonder whether she realises how much I owe him? How much we have used each other – for good or ill, in the years both before the fall of the Dark Lord and after his return.

Those were mostly good years, particularly those before I was coerced into taking the Mark. My business affairs flourished and Narcissa's social and charity events were the talk of the Wizarding World.

Severus hated them. I sent him invitations solely to bait him, and was consequently surprised when, three years after leaving Hogwarts, and with a growing reputation as an experimental researcher for one of my independent Foundations, he accepted the invite to the Summer Garden Party.

That intrigued me, as he had doubtless intended, and I made sure that we had an opportunity to talk in private. I was not entirely surprised by his request for access to the Malfoy library, but the reason for it gave me pause. I had thought that only the family was aware that the library contained the best collection of works on erotic magic in England (Hogwarts library may be more comprehensive, and the French national collection more explicit, but Guillaume Malfoy was a dedicated collector and practitioner and his descendents have not neglected his work).

"Sex magic?" I asked.

He nodded, reached into his robe and handed me a sheaf of closely written notes in his small, neat hand. Severus is one of the few people who knows exactly how to pique my interest. I never turn down a properly presented and costed proposition. Even when I am part of the equation.

I did not agree immediately, of course. Seduction, even in business matters, is best conducted slowly and with a thorough examination of all the implications. It was a fortnight before I invited him back to the Manor, and to the library. And another month before his purely theoretical research took a turn towards the practical.

Much sex magic, like all ritual magic, demands cleansing and control. I think that was why he craved it so much, the act reduced to its components, like the ingredients for a potion, to be assembled in accordance with the book of instruction. Severus was a natural. Even during his last year at school he had no difficulty in finding partners for his experiments. Slytherin House is, of course, known to take only bisexual students, as Gryffindor is the house of heterosexuals and, as the saying has it, 'Huffs are Puffs'. Severus learned much in that last year, and more in the time before he came to me with his proposition.

That is what I remember most about that year of experimentation, the shagreen bound notebook with Severus' meticulous black script and his elegant line drawings that illustrated each stage of the process. He cut his quills so fine that they seemed to etch into the parchment. I wish this poor pen could imitate that script, for even a line, though thinking about it arouses me as though he had slipped that flexible, smooth quill directly into my cock.

(He did that once. I forget the purpose of the ritual, but I will never forget the burn of that long, potion-oiled shaft nudging me to incomparable orgasm and his quiet voice insisting on restraint even as his breath ghosted over the tiny flag of feather that he had left at the stripped quill's end.)

I wonder whether, when they allowed me this pen, they realised the uses to which a desperate man might put it? But I am not so depraved yet. Writing this is sufficient stimulation, I do not need that touch – only the memory of it.

But I would prefer to recall a gentler coupling, with a less demanding Severus.

It was Beltane, the Spring before Draco's birthday and the year of the Dark Lord's fall. I wonder how much what we did that day affected that outcome?

Narcissa's bed and body were barred to me so I welcomed Severus' visit and its intent. I did not discover, until much later, the purpose of the ritual he intended to perform. Given the debacle in the Room of Prophecies which let to my current incarceration perhaps I should have paid more attention. I know now why he was so desperate. He and Dumbledore had linked the child of the Evans girl, Lily, with the downfall of the Dark Lord and, trusting no one but himself, he had found a ritual that might protect her and the child.

We met in the Summer house. He already had the circle and the altar prepared and himself cleansed and anointed.

He was – is – six years my junior and was then at his most desirable, slender but muscled, his hair caught in a ring, oiled and flowing down his back like black ink, his eyes huge and dark – he reminded me of the cup-bearers painted on the walls of the palace of Knossos, proud and elegant.

Writing this, the thought makes me proud.

We drank together. Wine and honey mixed to disguise the bitter herbs of prophecy. I released his hair from its clasp as he did mine, allowing the black and white to flow together before binding us again with a long red hair that he had obtained (Merlin knows how) from Evans.

I had not asked him about the purpose of the ritual, content to follow his lead and accept the role he had assigned to me. He laid me down across the altar, spread my legs like a whore, like a witch, and I permitted his possession, encouraged it. If he called her name at the height of his passion it was expected. What I did not expect was the surge of images that flooded my mind; a child protected by serpents, a woman, red-haired, wand levelled in the Killing Curse, a house devastated by fire; and a burning desire to protect my own son from whatever danger might threaten him – at the cost of my life.

I came harder than I can ever remember having done, before or since, and he punished me severely for breaking the rhythm of the magic. Prophecy, it seems, should be coaxed gently, not torn, panting and bloody from the seer.

Well, I deferred to his greater knowledge as my master in sex magic, but I have given that day much thought since. If it was a prophetic vision it is not one that was ever recorded by the Ministry. And I am by no means as convinced as Severus that it has yet come to pass.

3. Despair

Day 333.

There are no longer any Dementors in Azkaban.

When the messengers of Lord Voldemort finally come to release their supporters they do not see the abandoned scrap of parchment on the damp verdigrised flagstones of the cell that has held Lucius Malfoy for nearly a year now.

The parchment is creased and crushed where it has been fondled, and is stained with sweat, and semen, and tears. It bears a single word, scored in ink as black as the long imprisonment has made the writer's soul.



The end.