Darker Days

Fleur Delacour was forced to admit that she was confused.

She resigned herself to her fate when she was captured. She knew what had happened to other women from the Order when the Death Eaters got them, and her mother had told her and her sister, from the time they were old enough to understand such stories, about the tragic fate so many veela met. They were supposed to never forget it: better for a veela to die, than to ever be caught.

But Fleur had been caught, shoved in a pretty little cage to await whatever foul owner threw enough gold on the table.

Owner. Fleur spat on the word. She had resigned herself to have a jailor, but never more than that, because no matter what happened to her body her mind was her own. She could be caged, yes, but possessed? Never.

So she had sat, and gone along with the farce of an auction because she had no choice, awaiting what rich dark wizard would bid galleons to make his home her new cage.

She did not expect her buyer to be younger than her. She did not expect him to walk about with an enormous dog. And, above all the rest, she did not expect him to deposit her in his home and promptly leave again, telling her to do as she liked.

He had gone to the door, removing something from his closet when he was out of sight, and Apparated away, leaving Fleur in a living room with nothing for company but a large dog and a severed head, mounted on the wall.

"Where are we?" she asked the boarhound, who wandered up to her, bumping her knee with his wet nose.

She examined the room. It was ugly, yet ordinary. A bit sparse, perhaps. A lot of money seemed to have gone into each piece of furniture, but their colors were not well-matched. Fleur came away with the impression that the decorating had been done by a variety of people, each acting on their own, hinting that the host himself didn't care at all.

She approached the largest window first. Reaching out hesitantly, she weighed up whether it was cursed or not, before deciding it did not matter. Even if it hurt her, she had nothing left to lose.

But the latch clicked, and the cool glass slid up with a squeak. Fleur stuck her head through, feeling fresh air for the first time in a very long while. She looked out over a rolling grassy hillock, while to her left the lights of a village blinked and shone in the night.

There was enough of a gap to squeeze through. She could wriggle out and make a break for it. But she did not, for she could not shake the idea that this was all an elaborate game, and doing so would play right into that green-eyed boy's plans, granting him an opportunity to laugh at her.

She pulled her head inside, shutting the window. 

Over the next few minutes she explored the living room, poking around for signs of anything interesting. With a start, she discovered that she recognized the severed head. It was not an old friend of hers, or even an ally from the war, but a bitter enemy. Fenrir Greyback it seemed had not enjoyed his side's victory for long.

Soon Fleur grew restless. It had been a long time since she had the freedom to walk without guards prodding her along. She made use of it.

The house was three stories in total. Fleur tried many of the doors as she passed them, choosing at random and investigating purely out of curiosity. None were locked. Some rooms were entirely empty inside. One had a desk with quills and parchment, yet no adornment on the walls, and only the simplest of wooden chairs. She found a bedroom similarly lacking in ornamentation. There were only two photographs in the entire house. The first was in the room where Fleur started, directly above the fireplace, showing a much younger image of her jailor standing beside a blond boy. The other was hung on the stairwell. This one featured the same boys, older now, with a girl as well. She had short dark hair, a pug nose, and naturally smirking lips. Fleur noticed absently that she was somewhat attractive, albeit in an atypical way.

Fleur worked her way slowly through the house, moving room by room and climbing gradually. Finally, after discovering a disturbing amount of nothing, she came to a door that seemed different from the rest. It was metal, appearing firm enough to withstand a bombardment charm cast point-blank. Fleur tried the handle. It was stuck fast.

"That's off-limits."

Fleur felt as if her heart had grown wings and soared out of her chest. She whipped around, and when she did so, she found a girl standing in the hall behind her.

This girl was so pale, and had appeared so silently, that Fleur briefly considered her being one of those ghosts like what haunted Hogwarts. But she was corporeal, merely sullen. Her expression looked as vacant as the house they found themselves in.

"Who are you?" Fleur asked.

The girl tilted her head, expression unchanging. She had a short curvy figure, and hair that was a shocking shade of red. She wore a quality of robes some purebloods would die without ever being able to afford, yet she didn't seem happy, and almost didn't seem alive by Fleur's measure.

"That room is off-limits," she repeated. "We aren't allowed in there."

"Why?"

"Because it's locked."

"And why is it locked?"

"Because he locks it."

For just a moment, as she spoke of this 'he,' her face had twisted toward a snarl. As soon as the word was free of her lips she returned to being apathetic.

"By he, do you mean my jailor?" Fleur asked. "The one who owns this house?"

Instead of answering, the girl began approaching her. Fleur stepped back, attempting to keep distance, until her back hit the door behind her. It was cold through her robes, offering no route for further escape. The girl kept coming. She walked right in front of Fleur, leaning in, moving past her personal space—

Smack!

Breathing hard, Fleur stood with her open palm still held out. The red haired girl was no longer in her face. Instead, the girl's head was turned to the side, bright finger marks on her cheek.

The girl began to laugh. It was a manic sound, easily filling the otherwise silent hallway, bouncing endlessly off the blank walls.

"You're fiery!" Before Fleur understood what was happening, both of her shoulders had been grabbed, pinning her in place. "You have courage! You have wrath! You could really do it!"

Fleur tried to worm out of the girl's grasp, but it was like a vice. She felt nails marking her shoulders through her robes. "Do what?" she gasped.

"Kill Harry Potter, and make sure that murderer never sees the light of another day, just like he deserves!"

O-O-O

Harry Potter sneezed, drawing looks off the others sharing his table.

"Bless you," said Theodore Nott, a thin boy with relatively handsome features. "What's that old saying again? A sneeze means somebody out there is plotting to kill you."

"That's a superstition," Harry said. "Nothing but an old bit of paranoia from purebloods that spent too long in politics."

"Obviously—" Nott started to say.

"If it were true," Harry went on, "then I would be sneezing all throughout every meal, without ever catching a bit of rest."

In the silence that followed, he cut a strip of beef, bringing it to his mouth and chewing thoroughly. There were five people including him at the table, which was set to the one side of a ballroom thick with chatting voices.

Working clockwise around the circular table, there was: Theodore Nott Junior, Blaise Zabini, Daphne Greengrass, and Pansy Parkinson. They looked slightly put off by Harry's last comment, all of them except Pansy, who had a drinking glass tilted all the way back to finish off its contents.

Sighing with a bit of verve, Pansy finally dropped the glass, letting its bottom smack against the table. "Oh quit scaring them. You don't have to act so scary all the time, you know."

"I pointed out a superstition," Harry said. "I hardly see how that qualifies as scaring anybody."

"You know what you did. You're not actually socially inept, you just act that way so that you can get away with never thinking about tact."

"I'd rather not be lectured about tact from the girl on her fifth glass of Firewhisky."

Pansy glanced down at her empty glass, looking away at the floor immediately after. "Come off it. I'm not even drunk," she said, followed immediately by a loud belch.

Daphne visibly lifted her napkin and, under the pretense of wiping a bit of grease from her cheek, covered her nose.

Harry and Pansy's bickering did bring the table back to life, though, with Nott and Zabini reigniting the conversation in short order. That was good. This would work best for Harry if his evening looked natural.

It was a ball, technically, although only a few had begun to dance. The main purpose was for the young heirs of promising families to mingle and forge beneficial connections. It was near the last sort of thing Harry planned on attending, especially on the same day as the auction, but in the end he decided it could be useful.

On his way here, he had stashed the bodies of Proudfoot and Severus Snape amidst the wreckage of a fictional duel. The story was this: Harry attended this event like a dutiful young pureblood, and on his way back he was attacked by a rogue Auror. When the man had been dealt with, Harry discovered the body of Severus Snape nearby.

Draco would be crushed.

"So, Harry," said Theodore Nott. "What have you been up to lately?"

"Working," said Harry. "The village on my land is always running into problems. And when it isn't that, well, there are missions."

No one asked for more details. They were wise enough to know that would be a mistake.

"But for fun!" Theo pressed. "What do you do with your free time?

Harry smirked. "Recently? A bit of hunting, actually."

"Yes, I imagine you would be quite the expert in that," said Daphne.

She had lowered the napkin that had been pressed to her mouth. She had blond hair and bright blue eyes, with luscious lips. Her skin was immaculately powdered. She was every inch as proper as her younger sister, who Harry had spoken with just earlier that day.

Her line about hunting made Theo laugh, although almost as soon as he made the sound his eyes widened, and he coughed to get it under control.

"What is that supposed to mean," Harry asked, though he knew full well.

"It was merely an observation," said Daphne. "Hunting certainly seems in character for you."

"And why is that? What about me gives you that impression?"

"Come on, Potter," said Theo. "She didn't mean anything by it."

"Other than the fact that he's a dirty werewolf."

Everyone's eyes fell on Pansy, who had somehow, when none of them were looking, refilled her glass with Firewhisky. After a heavy sip, she lowered her glass. "What, those are her words, not mine."

"Do not put words in my mouth, Parkinson," Daphne said icily.

"Don't make jabs at my best friend," Pansy returned with a shrug. "If you're going to call him a mutt, may as well get your money's worth."

This time, Blaise laughed.

"You do not hold back, do you?" he observed in the velvety voice that had narrated Pettigrew's grand auction.

"I'm just sick of it, that's all," Pansy said. "Sick of everything."

She drained the rest of her cup.

The band's music sped up. People rose, finding partners and moving to the dance floor. Perhaps seeking an escape, Theo asked Daphne to dance, and the girl offered him her hand. Blaise nodded to Pansy and Harry, then rose, prowling off in search of an unattended witch to use his chiseled features on.

"Want to dance?" Pansy asked.

"No," said Harry.

"I expected as much. Can't believe you showed up at all."

She reached for the Firewhiskey bottle, but when her fingers touched it they passed straight through, catching nothing but air. Pansy slammed her hand down on the table, overturning her empty glass.

"Prat," she said sourly, sinking back in her chair and crossing her arms. 

Her hair reached her shoulders, slightly longer than it had been in their youth. Her pug nose was what she was most known for, and while Harry knew how much she hated that feature of hers, he didn't understand the dislike. It was distinctive, and she was still a perfectly attractive witch with it.

"What would you have done if I hadn't come tonight?" he asked suddenly. "Sat here and gotten drunk while everyone at the table judged you? Danced with Blaise, perhaps, and stumbled after him when he invited you home?"

"If I say yes, will you keep showing up to these things?" Pansy asked hopefully.

"Maybe," Harry offered.

Pansy snorted. "That's what I thought."

The song turned up in pitch. All around the room purebloods swirled around each other with perfect steps. Harry watched their eyes. Rather than enjoying the sight of their partners, each of them watched the dancers around them, eyes straining to pick out the slightest of missteps. Anything one could use to belittle a rival, when the music cut and the posturing was back on.

How… sad.

"What happened to us?" Pansy said suddenly.

Harry looked back at her, finding her staring at the table cloth.

"It was the three of us," she said. "You, Draco and I, ready to take on the world. We had everything at our fingertips! Then the war started again, and now… what am I even doing?"

"Getting drunk at a party," Harry said.

As if she didn't hear him, Pansy continued staring down.

"I just always thought it would be me, you know?" she said. "How many years were we together? I loved him. I thought he loved me too. And all of a sudden it's over, just like that."

Harry winced. He would usually keep such a visible expression to himself, but with just the two of them, he let it out.

"I'm sure Draco did what he thought was best."

"I haven't seen him for seven months. He's avoiding me."

"Or, he's busy," Harry offered.

Pansy scoffed. "He's not you. He was as addicted to these sorts of events as I was, and now he doesn't make it to a single one. Sometimes Astoria is here though. Lucky me. Merlin, I need a distraction."

Pansy looked Harry directly in the eyes as she said it, imploringly.

"You're drunk," Harry said.

"That was the first distraction I tried," she admitted. "It didn't work at all. So I'm thinking that either I need more alcohol, or it's time that I tried something new. Seeing as you're the one that cut me off, it's on you to provide the new distraction."

Harry stood up from his seat. "How many glasses have you had? Seven? You aren't thinking clearly."

Pansy grabbed his hand.

"I am thinking clearly," she said. "That's the whole problem. So this night is going one of two ways. Either I'm going to crawl home and cry myself to sleep in bed before waking up with a raging hangover, or I'm going to 'step away' from this ballroom to a secluded corner and have some actual, genuine fun. I know which I'd prefer. Can you guess?"

Harry sighed. He looked Pansy dead in the face, catching her pleading brown eyes. That one mistake sealed his fate.

The two left the ballroom together, slipping out a side door, while from the middle of the dancefloor blue eyes tracked them.

O-O-O

Harry grunted, leaning back against the wall of the empty hallway they'd snuck into. His robes were parted right down the middle, revealing everything from his muscular core down to his quads. As he looked down, Pansy looked back up at him, her face pressed to his flesh.

She drew her head back, her pug-nose returning to its natural shape without being shoved against his crotch, only for her to mash her nose and face back against him a second later. The wet gurgles from deep in her throat echoed down the hall, but Pansy didn't gag. This wasn't the first time she had crammed her mouth full of his cock.

Harry didn't remember how it started exactly. She had been distraught when Draco announced his engagement days after breaking up with her. Harry tried to keep her company, one thing led to another…

They weren't dating. Their relationship wasn't like that. But Pansy leaned on him, and this had become one of the ways in which she did it.

By getting fucked until she wasn't thinking about anything else in her life.

Her teeth never so much as grazed him as she jerked her head along his cock. She'd gotten better at this since they started, adjusting to Harry and his size. She refused to look anywhere but at Harry's eyes, even as slobber trailed down her chin. The next time she reached Harry's base, he grabbed her with both hands, holding her there.

He came inside her mouth, spraying out his load. By the time he was finished, Pansy's eyes were half-closed. Despite looking a step off passing out, she still wouldn't break eye contact. Her head slid back, the eyeliner ruined and a large bubble attached to one of her nostrils.

Harry pushed himself off the wall, shedding his robes the remaining way off his shoulders. He descended on Pansy, pulling her own robes off with strong deft movements.

Pansy wiggled to help him when needed, until she was lying naked beneath him. Her short back hair hung back against the carpet. She had an excellent figure, with firm breasts, narrow hips, and a shapely ass. Harry thought privately that she was much more attractive than the willowy Astoria, but Astoria's perfect face was what counted most in pureblood culture. Which was fine. That left Draco with the perfect pureblood bride, and let Harry fuck the curvy witch beneath him.

He turned Pansy sideways, causing her breasts to hang slightly toward the floor. Harry straddled Pansy's right leg while lifting her left one, hooking it over his shoulder. Leaning forward slightly, he proceeded to slam his hips into her with a great clap of flesh.

Pansy screamed. Harry gripped the thigh of her raised leg with both hands, fingers clenching into het soft skin.

"Fuck! You are so much bigger than Draco!" Pansy swore.

Harry pulled a hand off of her thigh, slapping her ass. "Don't talk about him right now."

Pansy gasped. "Why, what'll you do? Fuck me harder? You're twice the size of him, ten times as strong, and a hundred times the wizard! I bet he—"

Harry grabbed her throat, forcing her to go silent. Pansy giggled, her eyes rolling up in her head. A moment later her breath hitched and she came, bathing his cock in her juices.

Harry slowed down for a minute, shutting his eyes and focusing to keep from cumming too early. As he collected himself, Pansy managed to worm free from his grip.

"I wanted to be Draco's wife," she said. "But for you? I'd happily be your slut. You can fuck me in ways I would never let him. Anything, not to lose your cock."

"Is that why I got a marriage proposal from Lord Parkinson?" Harry couldn't help but ask.

Pansy's face had been flushed and smiling. But as he spoke, her smile shrunk slightly. She looked away from his eyes for the very first time.

"I'm yours if you want me," she said quietly.

The soft reaction wasn't what Harry expected. He rolled her over very quickly, so that her stomach was on the floor, and began to fuck her from behind at even faster speeds, returning the mood to the rough and wild one it had been before. Squealing too loudly to speak, Pansy lost herself in the sensation of his cock.

Harry was breathing hard in short order. He was moving at a pace that was difficult even for him, pushing to go faster and harder still. Pansy's squeals became increasingly loud and desperate. His fingers dug into the cheeks of her ass, holding her steady and stopping her from being scooted away along the carpet.

His heart beat wildly. His bad ankle ached from the angle it was trapped at against the floor. Pansy was soft, her insides hot and wet.

At the very last second, just as Pansy came again, he pulled his cock free, spraying his load across the ass he was gripping.

He staggered up to his feet right away, catching his breath. He shifted his ankle against the floor, trying to lessen its dull throb. Pansy groaned. She wasn't moving, still face down on the carpet, leaking profusely between her legs.

"You can come out now," Harry said finally.

There was a long moment where nobody said anything, and the only movement in the hallways was Pansy's chest, rising and falling in time with her breath.

Daphne Greengrass stepped into view.