Title: Vital Little Sliver
Author: kelly_chambliss
Based On/Inspired By: Who Do by thegildedmagpie
Characters/Pairings: Minerva/Tom, past Minerva/Narcissa
Rating: R
Content/Warnings: genital shaving, voyeurism, moment of violence to a dog.
Word Count: 4400
Summary: After Narcissa tires of committing random acts of voodoo, she decides to let someone else play with her doll.

Author's Notes: The first version of this story was longer and not at all worth reading. But my wonderfully perceptive, honest, tactful beta (you know who you are, my friend) saved me from embarrassing myself by posting it, and she has my eternal gratitude.

This version may not be much better, I fear, but today's my posting day, so here goes. Apparently I'm just not capable of writing a Lord V who is not melodramatic and over-the-top. Snake-like megalomaniacs with fragmented souls seem to do that to me.

My dear thegildedmagpie, I'm afraid I didn't manage to recreate the atmospheric power or evocative language of your fine original, but yours was a story that stayed with me, and I wanted to see what might happen next. And to explore your comment about Minerva's "depilation fetish."

I've taken a few lines from the original story; the title comes from a thought of Minerva's: She had no choice but to conclude that she had utterly lost some vital little sliver of her sanity to this year, this hellish year.

Set during DH.

~ * ~ * ~

He didn't know, at first, from whence the Dark magic came. But the moment he entered the room, he felt its power so strongly that had he not been Lord Voldemort, the force of it would have brought him to his knees.

But he was Lord Voldemort, and no magic was stronger than he. He remained upright and let the source of the Darkness find him.

Narcissa. The pulsing power was centered on Narcissa Malfoy, who was standing demurely near the fire. But before Voldemort could speak to her, her husband had crossed smoothly to the Dark Lord's side.

"Good evening, my lord," Lucius said. "If you have a moment before the meeting -- or after, whatever suits your lordship's convenience -- Narcissa and I have a small gift for you."

"A gift?" Pleasure and distrust warred briefly in the Dark Lord's breast. It was right that they should want to do him honour, but he knew that his followers were sometimes overly ready to try to buy his good will. It was a weakness shared by too many of them.

And sure enough: Narcissa placed an object into his hand with the indifferent, languid grace that was her pureblood trademark, but the Dark Lord could feel her suppressed intensity, her smug little-girl satisfaction at being the one to please the teacher. He had seen children in the orphanage behave similarly, pathetically currying favour, as if a hurried smile from a harried matron was worth the self-debasement.

Tom Riddle had despised those children, just as Lord Voldemort momentarily despised Narcissa Malfoy. Pureblood she might be, but she was still willing to whore herself to him, if not in body, then in soul. It would have been different if he'd believed that she was really dedicating herself to his vision, his brilliance, his cause -- but she wasn’t. She merely wanted a few moments' approbation, a few knuts added to the Malfoy column of his mental ledger, as if Lord Voldemort tallied points like some sort of damned Hogwarts hour-glass. Lucius's motives were probably no better.

But then the burning power of the item in his hand banished all thoughts of the Malfoys. Voldemort was nearly breathless as he turned his eyes to the gift.

It was a small, badly-formed effigy -- a doll, some might call it, though here was no toy. The crude, barely-shaped block of clay only vaguely suggested anything human, and the intensity of its Dark magic was such that Voldemort would not have been surprised had it seared his skin. He could feel it to his core, the fullness of the Darkness giving the doll the heft of ages, though its actual weight was negligible.

Alien the object might be, a remnant of a time and a culture long gone. Yet he felt an affinity for its makers, a connection so strong that it was almost as if he had received the offering directly from their hands rather than from the pale near-shadow that was Narcissa Malfoy.

He tightened his hand on the doll and relished its adamantine smoothness. It was warm; he could tell that it had been recently used.

"Your little doll has been busy," Voldemort said to Narcissa, and she nodded, though he could see from the sudden wariness in her eyes that she feared he might disapprove.

"Yes, I -- "

"Yes, Narcissa has been exploring the magic," Lucius cut in. Arrogant, as always; it was one of the few drawbacks to his pureblood status. The Malfoys had few betters, and it made them proud -- as they should be, but not in the face of their actual betters. The Dark Lord had thought that taking Lucius's wand would show him his proper place, but evidently the lesson was still not fully learnt.

"When she realised its power," Lucius was continuing, "she brought it to me. We decided at once that it ought to belong to you, my lord."

"A wise move, Lucius. But then, you have always known how to serve your interests. Just be careful that they are mine as well."

Lucius flushed, his face suddenly mottled with unattractive red blotches. "Indeed, my lord," he muttered. Really, the man was looking positively haggard, his hair lank, a patch of stubble marring his chin. Perhaps he was even less to be trusted than Voldemort had thought.

"And now, my dear," the Dark Lord said, tucking Narcissa's hand in his arm and turning away from Lucius; he assumed Malfoy would have the wit to recognise his dismissal. "You will tell me about this doll."

She gazed at him, her expression not so much mild as inscrutable. "We live in difficult times, my lord," she said. "The doll has been a. . .comfort to me. It has been in the Black family for many years, but only recently have I learnt how it could help me."

"It has helped you control your enemies?"

"It has taught me about control, yes."

"Show me."

There was only the briefest of hesitations before she closed her eyes and opened her mind.

A quick succession of images assailed him -- Narcissa seated at a vanity, brushing her long hair, the doll lying ugly and incongruous amid the shimmering potions and cut-glass perfume phials. Narcissa swathed in the finest of silk negligees, kneeling on her bed, stabbing a pin into the doll with a frenzy that made the Dark Lord wonder at her sanity. Narcissa, an oddly-beatific smile on her face, thrusting her wand between the doll's legs, murmuring, "Incendio."

The scene shifted suddenly to a different bedroom, smaller, darker. This time Narcissa was speaking, quiet and brittle: "Do you imagine we've reached a limit of how I can hurt you? I could make you do precisely as I instructed you."

Then a voice that he hadn't heard for nearly fifty years: "I hope you rot in hell -- Mrs Malfoy.”

And there she was: Minerva McGonagall, standing naked and haughty, her eyes flashing with disdain, her unbound hair cascading over breasts that had once filled Tom Riddle's hands and still occasionally filled the Dark Lord's imagination, her skin -- always so tantalisingly pale and markable -- gleaming in the candlelight.

Voldemort let his eyes travel down her body to her sex -- and saw that she was still smooth and hairless, as Tom had always required of her, even at the start, when they had become lovers in their schooldays. Then and now, he found pubic hair disgusting, coarse and animalistic, bestial in ways that only the lower orders could think arousing. He had refused to allow a trace of it on either himself or Minerva.

She had kept the habit, after all these years. . .

"You have used the doll against Professor McGonagall? When?" Voldemort demanded of Narcissa. "And how?"

A delicate lift of an eyebrow, probably as close to a shrug as she would dare offer him. "These past several months. After I went to Hogwarts to tend to Draco last year, I found a stray hair on my clothing. So I wrapped it round the doll. I didn't know, until the end, that it was hers."

"You inflicted the pain, not knowing who received it?" Evidently there were dimensions to Narcissa that he had never expected. How. . .useful.

"I knew it was not Draco," Narcissa said, as if nothing else mattered. "The hair I found was black."

Voldemort was momentarily silent, playing out the implications of what Narcissa had done to her doll: he pictured Minerva driven to her knees with pain, gasping, perhaps screaming, fucked by a fire she couldn't see. For almost the first time since his rebirth, he felt his cock stir.

"Then you learnt that the hair belonged to the professor," he prompted Narissa. "And you revealed yourself to her?"

Narcissa's lips quirked; the memory evidently pleased her. "I told her that if she did exactly as I ordered, I would free her. And she did. She said she agreed only because she had children depending on her, but I know she managed to get her fun out of it in the end. Would my lord like to watch?"

She looked up at him almost flirtatiously, but there was a sardonic edge to her glance that made Voldemort's teeth clench in displeasure.

"You overreach yourself, Mrs Malfoy," he said, and she dropped her eyes.

"My apologies, my lord."

The Dark Lord decided to let the insubordination pass; he'd got what he needed from her. He'd even managed glimpses of Minerva on her knees between Narcissa's legs; Minerva on her back, her legs open to Narcissa's questing fingers, her face twisted the way he knew it did just before orgasm.

He nodded slowly. "Tell Lucius that his gift -- your gift -- is duly noted. And take him in hand, Narcissa. I don't like those in my service to look like ragged mudblood labourers."

~ * ~ * ~

Lord Voldemort sat in the quiet drawing room of Riddle House, relishing the solitude. He was rarely alone; his followers required a close eye, and so he usually had several of them at hand, summoned randomly and without warning so that they would not grow complacent.

But tonight, he wanted none of them. Even Nagini, resting near the fire, seemed to know to keep her distance. Tonight, Voldemort needed nothing but silence, darkness, and the crude, faceless figure that he turned idly in his hands, its dun-coloured clay warm against his fingers.

Narcissa Malfoy had used a hair to activate the strong magic of the doll. It was an effective method -- primitive, but effective. Yet Voldemort did not believe that he would require any such crutch. Unlike his minions, he could harness magic with the simple power of his mind. That power was what would always separate him from the lesser beings, purebloods though they might be.

No, Voldemort needed only his mind and a suitable portal, like this old and resilient testament to Darkness, in order to reach his. . .he would not use the word "victim," because there was no one, now, for whom his notice was not an honour. Even death could be an honour for them, if it came at his hands.

But he intended no killing this time. This time, there would be only pleasure -- for himself, of course, and no doubt for Minerva. What he had seen in Narcissa's mind convinced him that something he had long suspected was indeed true: Minerva regretted having displeased him so many years ago; she was sorry she had driven him away from her. She rued the loss of him.

He imagined that she must have many regrets. She was weak, as were so many from her House -- they were simple and shallow, unable to see complexities, their supposed Gryffindor "courage" merely a flashy emblem of their fundamental lack of nuance.

True courage required cunning and patience, traits only one Gryffindor had ever shown: Albus Dumbledore, a man who might have been a Slytherin had he not suffered from a fatal flaw. He'd been too afraid, in the end, to accept the ultimate truth about power: that the only ones worthy of possessing it were those who were willing never to limit it.

This level of power would never be within a woman's grasp, of course, and herein lay both Minerva's weakness and her charm. She would call her weakness "love," but by any name, it meant that she needed a man to lean on, someone to guide her, someone to shape her undeniable abilities. She had been too flawed to allow that man to be Tom; his fire had been too fierce for her. She'd turned instead to the lesser force that was Dumbledore, but obviously he hadn't been enough for her.

No, she still yearned for a Dark Lord to master her. That's why she had fallen in love with Tom Riddle all those years ago. She'd loved him then, and now he knew that she loved him still. The evidence was clear: she had kept herself clean for him. She still needed him, wanted him.

And tonight, he vowed, she would get what she wanted.

Focusing his mind on the room he had seen in Narcissa's memory, the Dark Lord closed his eyes, shut the doll into his fist, and concentrated on his long-ago connection to Minerva McGonagall.

~ * ~ * ~

After a few moments, however, he let out his breath in a slow hiss of irritation. His attempt to insert his mind into Minerva's world had so far met with. . .not failure, of course, but with what could only be described as limited success. He'd seen a series of random, unconnected images: a corridor in Hogwarts, the prefects' bath, the dungeon in which he and Minerva had first explored their sexualities.

But he had not seen her, not tonight, and he couldn't even be sure if the pictures in his mind were actual windows into Hogwarts as it existed now, or whether they were simply memories from his past.

Summoning Nagini to him, Voldemort curled her onto his lap and held the little doll tight against the snake's side. With his other hand he stroked her lightly, letting himself feel the Dark magic thrumming through the heavy coils of her body. The magic was within her, but it was not hers -- he knew it came from himself, and it was his to reclaim.

"Nagini," he crooned, never ceasing his slow petting, sliding the edge of one finger along her fang, calling forth the venom, just a touch. . .

. . .And he felt it, a fizz of renewed power like a knife along the bone; his blood sang with it.

He would succeed now, without question. He would cast his mind into Minerva's, reclaim her as he had reclaimed Nagini. She would resist him at first, of course, but the Dark Lord knew himself to be a persuasive man. There were any number of ways to appeal to a woman like Minerva: through her heart, through her sense of duty, though her fear for others, through her desire to believe that she was making a necessary sacrifice.

Or through defiance -- even if she refused to admit her true feelings for him, there would be pleasure to be had in her resistance, in making her yield to him against her will. It would please the Dark Lord, as Slytherin's Heir, to make Minerva think that she was fighting against him while actually she would be helping him.

If nothing else, he could use her to keep track of Severus. Not that Voldemort distrusted Severus; the man was loyal, beyond a doubt, and carefully watched out for the Dark Lord's interests at Hogwarts.

But only a fool would not watch his watcher. And even Dumbledore knew better than to call Voldemort a fool.

So did Minerva.

Closing his eyes, his hands still roving the body of his great snake, Voldemort concentrated again on Minerva.

Immediately he had a stronger vision -- not fleeting images this time, but a sustained view into a small bedroom with a narrow fireplace faced by a chair and a book-laden table. There was a large bookcase, a washstand with a bowl and pitcher, a wardrobe.

And against the far wall was a high bed with tied-back hangings, a bed wide enough for two. The Dark Lord felt an unexpected surge of anger at the thought that Minerva might ever have invited others to share that bed with her. He would make sure it did not happen again.

As he watched, several candles sprang to light. A door near the fireplace opened, and she entered, the real Minerva -- not a memory, but the actual woman, as she was at this moment.

Voldemort allowed himself a smile.

If he'd needed further proof that her heart was still his, he had it now: her robes. They were long, sweeping -- and green. For Slytherin. For him.

Minerva looked weary, with lines round her eyes and mouth and streaks of grey in her hair that reminded the Dark Lord forcibly of what else she had lost when she had lost him -- she had lost the chance for immortality. She had refused him, and now she was old; she would die, and it would be what she deserved.

First, though, she would be of use to him. In many ways. As he'd planned for her to be, all those years ago.

~ * ~ * ~

Tom and Minerva had been students together at Hogwarts. They'd been wary of each other initially, their Houses so opposed, their intellects so threateningly matched. But gradually they had grown closer, or rather, he had made a point of drawing her to him, for she was a pureblood, and bright, and worth cultivating. He'd been polite and serious with her in their early years, and then, once he'd realised that she would be a worthy sexual partner, he'd been charming and attentive.

She'd just turned seventeen, and Tom was nearly sixteen, when they'd consummated their relationship. For months she had resisted him, virginity not being something pureblood girls surrendered easily in those days. But she'd come to believe that she loved him, and once she decided to give herself to him, she held back nothing.

He had delighted in her appetite and willingness, her adventurous spirit; she'd taken him into her bed, her body, her mouth. She had spread herself open for him, had offered her pale skin to be marked by his teeth and his hands, and had come all the harder when he'd bruised her.

She had seemed glorious to him then, tall and lean, her hair a thick, wavy curtain that she unplaited just for him and that felt like silk around his fist. The only blot on her perfection was the wiry nest between her legs, a constant reminder that mortal humans were animals after all.

The first time he'd drawn his wand across that hair, murmuring a spell of his own devising to smooth it away, she had jerked in surprise, and he'd thought for a disappointed moment that she was going to refuse him. But she hadn't; she'd let him continue until her body had been clean and perfect, and he'd believed that she understood why.

Every subsequent coupling had begun with each of them purging the other of their imperfection; nothing had ever stiffened Tom's cock like the hot, slow glide of Minerva's wand over his groin as she cleansed him. He had a similar effect on her, he knew -- she'd be breathless and gasping by the time he finished, and when he'd run his hand over her soft smoothness, he'd known she deserved him.

He'd had one more year of school after she left Hogwarts, but he continued to see her; he'd Apparate from Hogsmeade to her rented room in Lincoln, where she would talk about her transfiguration apprenticeship, and he would tell her carefully-tailored bits of his plans as he slowly undressed her, unpinned her hair, and prepared her to receive him.

It was after he'd taken the job of artefacts-hunter at Borgin and Burkes that Minerva began to change towards him. She'd started to nag him about the moral and physical dangers of working in Knockturn Alley. She had harangued him when he finally allowed himself to tell her the truth about Muggles and mudbloods. She had disagreed with him.

So furious had she made him one day that he had drawn his wand, and only her lightning-fast shield charm had saved her from being cut deep. He'd turned his rage on a passing dog, cruciating it until it dropped.

"Don't let yourself be next," he'd warned at Minerva before striding off. However much a pureblood she was, however old (though genteelly-impoverished) her family, she needed to understand her place in his world -- it was to support him, believe in him, succor him, not to challenge or oppose him. She was a smart girl; he trusted she would soon learn her lesson.

But the next time he had gone to visit her, she had pointed her wand at him and told him never to come near her again. He'd been shocked -- not at her behaviour, for he'd already begun to conclude that she was unworthy of him -- but at the depth of his own miscalculation. How could he have been so misguided as to believe that she -- that anyone -- could be a fit consort for him?

He'd never expected an equal, but he'd thought that there could perhaps be a helpmate. He'd been wrong.

At last he understood that his road was to be travelled completely alone. He would rely on no one, share himself with no one.

He considered killing Minerva for her perfidy, but after some thought, he'd decided to let her live.

The knowledge that she was still in the world would serve as a constant reminder to him of his one error. She would ensure that he never made another.

~ * ~ * ~

And now Minerva would in his power once more. The Dark Lord continued to smile as he watched her walk about her bedroom, placing hat and robes neatly in the wardrobe, slipping a dressing-gown over sensible underwear, casting a heating charm on the water in the wash-pitcher.

He watched her take down her hair, the heavy, silvered black length of it reaching to the belt of her dressing gown. Her nightly regimen didn't seem to have changed over the years: a charm to remove snarls, a few efficient strokes with a hairbrush, then a spell to twist the tresses into a thick plait.

Volemort thought about what he had seen in Narcissa's mind: how Minerva's long hair, this crowning glory, was the only hair she kept. When he thought of how she still kept her sex clean -- out of regret at losing him -- he felt his cock begin to swell.

Sex was not a vice in which Voldemort generally indulged; in fact, since the less-than-successful conclusion of his liaison with Minerva, he had remained nearly celibate, resorting to intercourse only a few times early in his rise, when it had been expedient. After Minerva, he had never again made himself vulnerable to a woman.

But now he would not be vulnerable. He was in control -- of himself and most especially, of her, and he planned to enjoy himself.

He waited until Minerva had finished her ablutions and settled into her chair by the fire before he opened his hand to lay Narcissa's magic doll flat on his palm. Speaking Minerva's name, he circled his fingers round the doll's thick neck. And squeezed.

Nothing happened.

Minerva continued to relax in her wingback chair, her legs underneath her, a large book steady on her lap. Not by so much as a tilting of her head did she indicate that she felt anything unusual.

Voldemort squeezed harder and was infuriated to see Minerva calmly turn a page, untouched by his power. A tide of angry red surged before his eyes. When it cleared, the vision of Minerva and her room had disappeared.

~ * ~ * ~

The Dark Lord allowed several days to pass before he chose to try again.

They were days in which he found himself troubled by unsettling dreams that faded as he woke, leaving him short-tempered and more impatient than usual with his followers' idiocy. Even Severus had displeased him by responding late to a Summons. At least he had not tried to offer any pitiful excuse; he'd accepted his punishment silently, like a man. His response had calmed the Dark Lord slightly, but only slightly.

No, lately the only thing that could actually soothe Voldemort was the thought of what he would do to Minerva -- and have Minerva to do him -- once he established control over her.

And he would establish control, of that fact there was no doubt. He would force Minerva to acknowledge him, to begin to accept his place in her life again.

She would not see him, of course. She would just feel his presence and eventually -- perhaps -- he would let her hear his voice.

But she would be in no doubt as to who he was. She would know the instant he forced her onto her back, the instant he touched his wand to her and began to cleanse her of any trace of the bestial.

He hadn't yet decided how he would use her to help his cause. At first he would simply indulge himself with her -- use his invisible hands to disrobe her, to smooth her hair over her bare breasts, to lift his invisible cock to her lips. It would please him to watch her take him in her mouth, knowing that she felt the solidity of him without being able to see him. She would be sucking Nothing, and Nothing would be holding her by the hair, Nothing would be thrusting, taking. Claiming. Owning.

He would appear to be Nothing, and yet he would be her Everything. He would be the air itself, his pleasure unsullied by anything corporeal. He would be with Minerva nowhere and everywhere at once.

And though she might pretend to resist, her cleanliness had already shown him the truth about her desires.

He would prevail. If not on this attempt, then soon. His success in all things was inevitable; thus his view was long.

Taking Narcissa's doll from the pocket of his cloak, he gazed on its ugliness with something almost like affection. Its Darkness was something he could count on; unlike his human followers, the Darkness never failed him.

Caging the blocky figure in his hand, he concentrated his mind and found that his consciousness slipped easily in Minerva's room.

She was there, brushing her long, dark hair.

Voldemort paused before tightening his fingers on the doll's neck. He would not be angry, he reminded himself, if Minerva did not immediately feel his touch.

He was the Dark Lord of All, and there were many paths in the forest of his power, many rooms in his mansion. He would find a way.

Or perhaps he would use the way he already knew.

He could always order Severus to bring him one of Minerva's hairs.

~~fin