"Circe," Andromeda/Ted, no spoilers
Title: Circe Author: green_amber Pairing: Andromeda/Ted Rating: NC-17 Warnings: D/s (fem-dom) and brief use of a riding crop Word Count: 2600 Summary: After twelve years of marriage, Andromeda endeavors to rekindle the flame. Author's Notes (optional): For the Canon Pairings challenge at erotic_elves. I don't think this contains spoilers for anything more recent than OotP.
On the occasion of Andromeda's eleventh birthday, Druella Rosier Black had given her a mirror as a gift. "From Paris," Mother had said, "and very expensive, mind you don't break it."
"I'll try not to," Andromeda had promised.
"I daresay you'll try. This is no ordinary mirror; I'm certain you'll find it useful."
The next morning, as Andromeda dressed for breakfast, a disembodied voice had admonished her from within the glass, "Brush your hair. You look like a slattern."
Andromeda had no such mirror now; the one that stared back at her now was nothing but silvered glass, bought in a Muggle secondhand shop. She didn't need it to point her flaws. The voice was part of Andromeda now, capable of reciting her failings without magical aid.
That's an extra stone around your hips. Are you letting yourself go? Oh, and are those crow's feet? You're only twenty-nine. You'd best stop frowning, or you'll look like a basset hound in ten years.
She could add other items to the list, too; her mind felt as slack as her muscles of late. Eleven years at home when she could have worked, but no, you couldn't, you aren't a Black anymore. There was no nanny, no governess. Who would have stayed home with Dora? And what skills did you have, just out of school, just out of childbed?
She remembered nights with Ted in those early months, dancing to the pulse of loud music and dizzying lights in the London clubs, hurtling afterward through the labyrinth of the Tube, his world as exotic to her as Diagon Alley must have been to Ted when he first saw it. Walking home from the station at dawn, limping on a broken heel with her hair a witch's snarl and her clothes redolent of sex, heart pounding with the thrill of getting away with something and the fear that this time would be the time she was caught…
How she had sneered at the housewives in their dowdy flower-print dresses, waking with the sun to sweep the front steps, to scold and prod and herd their children to school. Joyless women they seemed, pursed lips moving silently in an unspoken litany of disapproval: husband, children, and hung-over teenage witches alike.
My enchantress, Ted had called her then, and she'd felt her power in her bones. Not her magical power; that she had always taken a bit for granted, but her irrepressible vitality, her joie de vivre, her lust to taste of life as if it were a succulent fruit in the palm of her hand.
I will never be one of those narrow bland women, she had always sworn to herself. I will dance until they put me in my grave.
What was she now? She had become one of those women she had so disdained, unable to speak of anything but home and family, prattling on incessantly about the cost of milk and how Dora had broken the neighbor's window with a toy Quaffle. Ted had once called her voice a siren's song. Did he think so now, when it nagged him to pick up his dirty socks?
Obviously not, or he would have come to her by now. Their lovemaking had been infrequent when Dora was little, and furtive when it did occur; somehow, Dora had excellent timing and always managed to shatter something or set something on fire at the very worst possible moment. Now, however, they had the house to themselves. She'd been away at school for almost a month, and still nothing. She'd tried. He was tired.
She thought about her weight and her face and about not being eighteen anymore, and about how she'd turned from an enchantress to a house-proud shrew obsessed with dusting and laundry…
If he'd wanted a housewife, he could have married anyone.
I'll have to give him the enchantress back.
*****
Her face smiled back at him from the photograph on his desk, its very smile a reproach to him. How long had it been since she'd smiled that way? As though the world were her plaything. As though she herself was born to be its queen.
I've tied her down, Ted thought, running his finger along the cheap flaking filigree of the frame. She was wild once. I've caged her.
He thought of her ancestral home. He'd only seen it once, an immense hulk looming against the sky, watching him from a hundred flickering windows. That was what she'd once had. Mansions, and soft smooth hands, and all that she could desire.
I took it from her. She forsook all that, and for what? So that she could wash my dishes for all eternity?
He hadn't been able to touch her, not since Dora left for Hogwarts. He knew he had disappointed her by rolling away from her to embrace his pillow instead, but now that their daughter was away at school and the house was theirs--now that those first eleven years, so hurried by the little emergencies of childhood, haunted by the fear of retribution by Andromeda's kin, were gone--he was ashamed of how little he'd been able to offer her.
A few frantic nights, once, when they were young and she hadn't known any better, hadn't known what she was throwing away. He remembered the defiant glint in her eyes, the heated way she had taken him in her arms. What had gone wrong?
It was her eyes, yes, that was the crucial thing. There was a defeated and downcast look she had now. That was why he could not bring himself to touch her. He knew that look was his fault.
*****
To one who had grown up with Madam Malkin's and Gladrags Wizardwear, the charity shop was a riot of disorder. Andromeda's first instinct was to cast a few tidying spells, to press the rumpled shirts and mend the fraying hems, and above all to organize the place, for Merlin's sake. The urge to leave and do her shopping in Diagon Alley was seductive, too, but she reminded herself of two things:
One, robes were singularly inappropriate garb for seduction, as loose and billowing as they were. Two, she couldn't afford new robes anyway, not for a whim, a fantasy.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and opened them, forcing herself to see this place in another way. She wandered among the racks, letting her fingers run over tweed and satin and seersucker, reveling in the sensations. So many different things the Muggles wore, she thought. Fashions in robes changed a little, but in essence they were always still robes.
There were robes here too, of course: things labeled bathrobes and smoking jackets and pajamas. She knew, though, that these were not what she sought.
The formalwear rack burgeoned with huge crinolines of tulle, enormous skirts of satin in powder blue and baby pink and Easter-egg yellow. Most of them too small; all of them too insufferably good. These were not dresses for tempting. These were dresses for curtsying and promenading and being Daddy's little debutante, something she'd had enough of at seventeen to last the rest of her life. She made a face.
She almost overlooked it; it wasn't much on the rack. No crinolines; no ruffles. It hung straight and plain, though its fabric was shot through with a thread of iridescence. Green, the color of the serpent in the Garden. Perfect. She took down the hanger and held it up, and knew without even donning it that it would fit like a second skin. For once, she was thankful that she was the exact size she was. Otherwise, how could she wear this?
*****
Ted opened the front door. There was music playing, somewhere in the house--an unfamiliar swirl of drums and sitars, something that made him think of snakes. Incense coiled through the house.
Incense?
Yes, there it was, scent of frankincense and patchouli and amber, a miasma of decadence, like those nights in the Ravenclaw dormitory when one of the older boys had sneaked in pot and burned near everything in their Potions stores to cover up the scent. Like those nights in London, Andromeda brave and boasting in his arms: they'll never find me…and if they do, I'll just say I wouldn't go back to their stuffy old manor if my life depended upon it….
There was something odd about the light, too--he looked around and saw scarves of pink and coral and violet draped over the lampshades, lending their diaphanous color to the surreality of the scene.
"Andromeda?"
She stood framed in the door, smoke undulating around her; she was sheathed in something shimmering and green and tight, so tight he could see every Grecian curve of her body, her Gorgon hair tumbling down over bare shoulders, and he couldn't help staring. He was hard already; he didn't know what she had in mind, but he was up for it, so to speak. He'd been in the middle of hanging up his coat when he saw her; as he stared, he forgot all about the coat, let it slide with a soft thud to the floor.
Her eyes flicked to the heap of fabric, and she let out a musical laugh. "If I turn you to a pig, it'll be no more than you deserve."
Ted was used to her obsessively neat tendencies, and her frequent nagging about his less tidy habits, but there was something mischievous in the look she was giving him, and that was a mythological reference, if he wasn't mistaken. Andromeda, his Andromeda, always with her nose in dusty old books…
"You look great tonight, honey," he said as he hung up the coat.
"Honey?" She raised an eyebrow. "Tonight, you will call me Lady."
He stared, his eyes meeting hers and seeing an eerie glint there: fury or lust or a trick of the twisting smoke? What was she playing at? "Yes, my Lady."
"Better," she said. "Now have some wine." She gestured in the heavy air, and a glass goblet materialized in front of him, filled with something that gleamed the red-black of garnets and pomegranates and poisoned apples. "It's my own secret recipe."
He plucked the glass from the air and sniffed the wine, as he had seen Andromeda do on the few occasions they'd splurged on a nice dinner. He was sure she'd be able to conjure up some poetry, fruity or oaky or buttery or something, but to him it smelled like wine. Spiced wine, with herbs maybe. She was watching him with a sly sort of expression--had she dosed it with some sort of love potion?
Does she really think she needs a love potion to enchant me?
Have I been that distant?
He drank deeply. No, just spiced wine, warm and smooth on his tongue. It made him think of her. He didn't want to be drinking wine. He wanted her. His hand was slick on the stem.
There was no one Ted had ever met who could do that haughty lift of the chin just so, that imperious little turn of the wrist. "Follow me to the bedroom," she said. "And I think I'd like you to crawl."
Ted dropped his wineglass instead. There was a shattering sound as it hit the tiles, then a pool of red spreading, collecting in the cracks.
Andromeda raised her wand. "Evanesco." Then, pointing to Ted, "Clumsy, Ted. Come here."
He began walking toward her. She stopped him with an outstretched hand. "Did I rescind my previous order, Ted?"
"Er, no. My Lady." Ted dropped to his hands and knees, heartily glad she had cleaned up the wine and glass splinters first, and followed Andromeda to the bedroom. Her hips swayed, the rough fabric of her gown glinting and sparking as she moved, and Ted found himself physically unable to look away.
The bedroom had been subjected to the same treatment as the living room; sheer scarves hung from every conceivable object, the air languid with smoke. Andromeda had picked up a riding crop from somewhere, or Transfigured it from something, and he had just a moment to register that she was holding it before it fell with a flash of pain across his arse.
"For breaking the glass," she said. "Now, you will undress me."
"Yes, my Lady." To do this he had to stand, but she didn't seem to mind as he slid the dress up her body. Her skin was petal-smooth and the fabric scratchy; he could see where the metallic threads had rubbed the inside of her arms red, and he kissed the skin there tenderly, feeling a surge of anger at the dress, of all the mad things, for hurting her.
It occurred to him then that it had been years since she'd let him see her in even this much light.
"Now, lie down on the bed. On your back."
He obeyed, and Andromeda climbed into the bed and straddled him, lowering her body until the heady musk of her eclipsed the incense. "Please me," she said, her voice a study in boredom, her flushed skin and half-mast eyes telling another story. She moaned as he tongued her. So many times they'd been quiet to keep from getting caught, then to keep from waking Dora; this new, uninhibited Andromeda let him know with every whimper and every ragged breath that he aroused her, and the knowledge aroused him in turn.
She let out a high broken moan suddenly, and fell limp against the headboard. "Ted," she whispered.
"What?" he asked, irrationally worried there was something wrong despite knowing she'd just come.
"That was..." Andromeda drew in a deep breath and let it out, and with her next inhalation she seemed to pull her Black hauteur back in with the air; he could see her spine straightening, her chin lifted just so, and then her voice--
"That was very good, Ted. You will be rewarded."
Ted was, too, as Andromeda vanished his robes and slid down onto his cock, as he felt the slick heat of her surrounding him. She kissed him as she rode him, the taste of wine mingling with the taste of her on his tongue. Everything fell away from him then but her rhythm; her dark hair tumbling down around his face was the boundary of his world. She rose up just a little, remembering perfectly the precise angle that would send him over the edge. When he saw her mischievous smile again, it was all he could take; he came, the sensation flooding his body like liquid flame.
They lay spent, then, tangled and sweat-soaked and smiling. Andromeda trailed fingers over Ted's face, through his hair, and whispered, "We should do this more often, love."