(pre-DH): The Noonday Wizard (LM/BW, R)
My most recent Lucius fic. Well, he can't win everything every time.
Title The Noonday Wizard Author Leni Jess Pairing Lucius Malfoy/Bill Weasley (plus non-explicit Bill/Fleur) Rating R Word Count 3,111 Summary In a tomb in Egypt there's a Dark curse – but Lucius Malfoy is a curse in himself. Warning This is consensual. Author's notes Written July 2007 for reversathon. I owe sincere thanks to my beta reader regan_v for suggesting ways in which I might expand and improve the rather slight draft I sent her, and then for reading it again.
The Noonday Wizard
by Leni Jess
"Remember me, dear boy."
Lucius's voice was utterly confident, and the fingers of one hand stroked surely down Bill's cheek and cupped it. The thumb brushed over the corner of his mouth, and Bill felt his lips parting, found himself leaning involuntarily into the hand. Lucius continued the caresses until Bill's head was bowed almost to the other man's shoulder, wholly unwilling, but unable to resist. How bitter that Lucius did not even need Imperius to secure his submission, but did it with mere sex.
Bill shuddered deeply, though not from horror at the consequences of taking such a lover. His whole body resonated to the man's touch, the overwhelming intimacy that had fascinated him from the first.
He saw Lucius smile, satisfied, and saw the smug gleam in the grey eyes when he looked up, trying to avoid meeting them, but needing to look at his face, to try to read it.
Lucius spoke even more softly. "You will remember."
Bill gave him what he wanted, though he managed to avoid a show of complete subjugation. "How could I forget you?"
Experimentally he added, "Must you go?"
"I have what I came for." The smile became cruel, and Bill braced himself. "Thank you for the tour of the tomb of Amentihotep. It was just what I needed."
Bill had always known Lucius Malfoy had not come to Egypt for him. He had thought himself a diversion while Lucius waited for whatever he had truly wanted to come to his hand. If, instead, he had been Lucius's means to the desired end, he had been even softer and stupider and more manipulated than he thought.
Lucius had (of course) wanted a lover of the moment; Bill had, despite his father's hatred of the man, been curious, and without a lover. He had never been seduced before, and at first thought it an interesting experience. Before he realised it was more like voluntarily giving himself into slavery (at least with this man), he had been caught, and for some time had been very pleased to be so. Not now. Even before he understood that Lucius wanted a tool rather than a bed-partner.
He shoved away the sting. This had better not be about Bill Weasley. It was almost certainly about Lord Voldemort.
He took the risk of asking, "What did you find there? I didn't see you take anything – well, there was so little it was safe to leave there for the Muggles when they discovered it..."
"The writing on the wall, dear boy, that your supervisor is planning to deface. You do read hieroglyphics? If not, your translations sounded remarkably apt."
"That curse." Bill remembered that particular inscription. He had not read it all aloud, fearing suddenly to do so. There had been a sense of magic building, even though he spoke in English, not in the original tongue, and he had broken off with a quick but elaborate aversion charm.
"I punished you that night for not reading it all."
Bill had thought that had been whim, and had submitted for the pleasure Lucius provided with the pain.
"All I needed, you had read, and of course I committed the image of the whole to pensieve. But disobedience should never be forgotten."
Great. So Bill had given Voldemort something he wanted enough to send his chief lieutenant for. His memories of sex with Lucius were already utterly tainted for him, though the recollection made him heat and quiver, and the thought of Lucius's hand leaving his face was harrowing him already. Never again. Oh Merlin. He was determined to be glad Lucius was leaving, and almost wished Lucius would Obliviate him. Lucius was enjoying tormenting him too much to spare him the memory of their dealings, however.
Lucius's other hand gripped his chin and lifted his head so that Lucius could kiss him square on the mouth. Bill's mind shut down as his mouth opened to the demanding tongue, and to the lazy nip of teeth that grew sharper, sharp enough to draw blood. Bill let his head fall back, dizzy and delighted one more time. Lucius slid his hand down to Bill's shoulder and gripped, digging in his nails. Bill gasped into his mouth and rocked his hips against Lucius, pressing in, gripping his back more tightly, urging him closer, savouring rather than ignoring the pains. Lucius drew back a little and licked Bill's lips and tongue tip, then pulled himself free.
Bill found himself standing, swaying, glazed eyes fixed on Lucius Malfoy's still bloody lips, and the infinitely pleased smile that curved them.
"Yes, you'll remember."
He did, but after a while he was able to remember other things, too, and regain some sort of perspective, instead of spending his time wishing for what he could no longer have. Lucius's body had never been his, and he needed to remaster his own. Sometimes he feared that regaining his balance had taken weeks rather than days, but he could dismiss that fear after observing the land's progress towards the rising of the waters, or by looking at the site records of his own activities.
Bill liked his job, despite its moments of terror, often in the dark, in the deep, narrow, rubble-strewn, trap-riddled passages, shafts and holes. Being deeply worried (he refused to say 'afraid'), in a well-lit burial chamber, was never so bad as to be intolerable.
While he was in those passages, however confined, he was in control of his fear of entrapment. He could almost always see a light, or at least a wider space, to remind him he was free to move, and whole. He could always make a light. In the chambers he knew his way out, and his rational fears were of dark magic rather than of physical harm. In his nightmares he forgot about the chambers and his own command of magic, and remembered fallen-in passages and the bottoms of hidden shafts, but nightmares were rare, and soon over. Generally he was able to see the malice of those ancient Egyptian wizards as skilful care for their own, a concept he approved of.
When Lucius Malfoy intruded into those dreams Bill eventually learned to wake himself before he came to the part where Lucius pronounced the curse of Amentihotep and left him in the dark with the vengeful chief scribe. He never learned to wake when he felt again Lucius's hands, and mouth, and the cock that pierced him to the heart.
Bill loved Egypt, even the wide, brown, boulder-embedded, gritty roughlands where most of his work was done. He loved the sun, hot and clear and dispelling all doubt. He liked the people, wizards, Muggles, goblins. They all lived their vivid days and simple nights and never tried to tell him what to do, never crowded him, never clamoured for him. If he were to love a person, it would only be someone who saw him as himself, and gave him faith, and room, and silence. His supervisor Hayaket would not have cared to be loved. They had a comfortable and stimulating relationship, and were never short of projects and puzzles to discuss; it satisfied them both.
He had never thought Lucius Malfoy loved him, and had never imagined he loved the man, either, but it was astonishing what a hold the memory of fantastic and devastating sex had on him, body and mind alike. At least Lucius had not poisoned the idea of love for him: that was something new and rich he could look forward still to finding, when he was free of that shadow. He didn't think he ever wanted to touch another man again.
He was enthralled every year by the river's rise, and always went to observe the first hours of wonder and the later hours of triumph in stolen moments that Hayaket never alluded to. Watching that this year –knowing of the world of rain miles and mountains away upstream – he too could almost believe in divine certainties, in the rightness of the world, despite the memories of Lucius and the knowledge of Lord Voldemort.
It occurred to him that if the world was to continue to turn its predictable and marvellous cycles, he needed to tell someone about Lucius Malfoy's visit to Egypt.
At last the sure sun of Egypt dispelled the shadow of the fair nightmare, faded the bloodstains to nothing, and allowed him to think once more of something besides doing his job with gritted teeth. If the tomb passages and even the chambers remained dark to him, it was not something to trouble Hayaket with.
He admitted that though he loved the land, it was not his land, which needed every one of its children to defend it from shadow.
Bill took careful thought, then went to Hayaket with the best reasoning he could devise for his return to London. In the back of his mind he knew he was prepared to resign, but that was a last resort, one he did not want to threaten Hayaket with. Goblins responded badly to threats, and Bill wanted to be able to return to Egypt, to his work, and if possible to Hayaket.
He found Hayaket had identical plans for him. Not because Hayaket had seen the demon that tormented Bill's dreams with soft touches and cutting laughter, so that even now Bill slept in the afternoons rather than the nights, but because Hayaket had kept him here, denying his own superiors what they had been demanding.
Gringotts employed wizards, however reluctantly, but as soon as possible worked the foreign creatures into its own weave. It was time and past time for Bill to learn the heart of Gringotts, not just the peripheries where he had spent almost all his life with them. Time for him to learn new skills. Hayaket said, with uncommon frankness and generosity, that he believed Bill would surprise the London office with his ability to get on with goblins, and even to help them to cooperate with each other without the appearance of being their arbitrator. Bill must learn not only the formal structures and processes of the central goblin enterprise, but also how to negotiate his way through it with the same ease as the native-born.
Bill, in other words, had to become an administrator, and to demonstrate his commitment to Gringotts as a whole.
Hayaket assured him he need not fear being trapped in that web for life. Gringotts did not waste its own. Bill would be a cursebreaker and valued for it for as long as he wished, and when he grew older, at a mere eighty, perhaps, seeing that he was only a wizard, he could become a site administrator like Hayaket himself. He might even wish, in later, more sedate years, to use what he knew of wizards and goblins in some central post in London, or Zurich, or Frankfurt. Skills were never wasted.
Meanwhile, said Hayaket, he should go to London, and also remind himself he had a family, and perform whatever duties that involved.
Bill wondered for a moment if Hayaket knew about the dire message of hideous troubles to come that Lucius Malfoy's visit had given. No. Goblins had a strong sense of mutual obligations; perhaps Hayaket had been waiting, holding off on implementing his superiors' designs, until he saw that Bill had that sense too. If Bill's duties were to a wider group than his family it was not necessary, yet, for Hayaket or Gringotts to know.
The sun did not shine in London as it did here, but he would take with him the memory of that strong sunlight that admitted no doubt, and himself be a noonday wizard despite whatever passages he stumbled along or shafts he found himself fallen into.
Shadows or not, the sun was always there.
His first winter in London was mild, and his work at Gringotts much less tedious than he might have feared. Goblins were, after all, highly intelligent creatures; they would not needlessly risk a useful employee. If Bill found himself dealing with more than his fair share of surly, elderly goblins, he soon enough realised it was because he had a skill for it. Without seeming patronising, he could soothe them into calm, and get them to concentrate on the pleasures of resolving the issue at hand rather than on the irritations it aroused. Nonetheless, his goblin vocabulary expanded to include many new words and phrases not admissible in polite company. Bill stored it all away, hiding his amusement. It was almost certain that the goblins were observing him with an equal amusement at the strange creature in their midst.
They tossed him another strange creature to supervise. It wasn't very likely that they merely thought that the red-haired English wizard and the blonde witch from France would have more in common with each other than with their immediate supervisors.
"Teach her to lose that theatrical accent," his current supervisor Nimfik instructed. "It must be some kind of protective shell that she should know she does not need. She has all the charm of her Veela nature, but it will be useless to send her to negotiate for us with English wizards if she persists in marking herself as a foreigner to be laughed at." Without cracking a smile Nimfik added, "Make sure she enjoys London. We want her to be at home here; she will be here in our service for a long time."
Showing Fleur Delacour London was far more a pleasure than a duty. It was also very much a pleasure to know that she liked him enough not to turn the infamous Veela charm on him.
Bill stopped going home every other weekend, telling his mother that he was expected to be on call most of the time. Spring turned to summer, and Bill saw more evidence of an underground war, but it had not erupted into the daylight yet. He had joined the Order when he returned from Egypt, and never skimped whatever duties Dumbledore gave him, glad to be doing more than revealing that his own idiocy had helped the enemy.
When he learned that Lucius Malfoy had trapped himself into Azkaban, Bill's natural confidence asserted itself even further. It was more than comforting to know his betrayer was so far from infallible that he could follow his master's schemes to their unsurprising failure.
It had been delightful, that summer, to rediscover sex with Fleur, and to find love as a new clean thing to share with her. Even the Order's scuffles and incompetence and the constant clash of personalities had not dimmed his clear skies. Happiness could light up the whole world, just as the sun did. A powerful force indeed.
More recently Bill had asked himself what it was that Harry had, that Voldemort knew nothing of, that would ensure Harry defeated him. The old man before his death had never been more specific, he was sure, or if he had, Harry was unaware of it, when he confided in Bill and Kingsley. They were the two wizards in the Order Harry felt he could trust to treat him as just another wizard, one with a specific mission inherited from Dumbledore. Even after their leader's death Bill was inclined to believe Harry could safely have confided in Snape, too – but it was not as if Snape knew much of either love or happiness, whatever it was that Dumbledore believed would disperse the shadow Voldemort cast over them all.
The time in the locked ward after Greyback's spiteful attack had been bad, but Fleur had demonstrated confidence as well as love – and her occasional sharp words to his mother tickled his funny bone as agonisingly as ever. Whatever Bill might now feel himself able to say to his father, or had been able to say to Dumbledore, he wasn't going to get across his mother, or be caught laughing at her. Let Fleur do that for him, as she did so many things, freely, joyfully, smiling at him even through the occasional tears of rage.
Greyback might even have done him a favour, in a twisted way. Fleur still touched him without hesitation, his family were as supportive as they knew how, and Harry still talked to him of his secret necessities, so that Bill didn't feel locked away from action or everything real that was happening to them and around them. Bill felt wryly sure that Lucius Malfoy would not now choose sex as a way to get access through him to dangerous relics. Besides, Lucius was in Azkaban, and any sex he could get there was probably second rate.
Bill smiled, and rolled over, eyes still closed, to bury his nose in Fleur's hair, inhaling the delicate scent that rose from the back of her neck. Lucius too had a beautiful wife, but could not seek pleasure or comfort from her as Bill could from Fleur. Nor did Narcissa Malfoy have the Veela's defences. It had taken a little coaxing, but after Bill's face became a constant reminder of his vulnerability, Fleur had shown him what she could be and do. If people thought Bill Weasley now was scary, with the more than physical hint of werewolf that Greyback had given him, they had no idea of the claws and beak and murderous skill that Fleur Weasley could summon on the instant. Even a part Veela like Fleur, one with so much witch blood in her ancestry that she was safe around people, was a walking offensive weapon.
And so was Bill, now that he was accustomed to the wolf nature he had acquired. Some people thought the scars were a handicap. In the beauty stakes they were, but Bill had never particularly valued or used his looks. Rather the scars were a warning. He still had his oldest son's confidence and willingness to push boundaries. Now he too, like his wife, could summon up the demon within, and never lose control of it. He didn't know what their children might be, but he knew that he and Fleur were powerful forces to support Harry's quest to bring the sun back to Britain. Lucius Malfoy would never cloud his skies again, and together they would bring Lucius Malfoy's master down.
And when Voldemort was no more... it would be petty to take revenge on Lucius, perhaps. Even if he never implemented them, however, it was entertaining to devise possible punishments for Voldemort's servant, if he did not go the way of his master. What mattered was that Bill was a free wizard, and always would be, whatever else happened.