Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

15 March, 1980 - Dirty

***

She could feel his breath in her neck and it made her want to vomit. She could feel his hands on her body and they were too gentle for comfort. She could feel his laugh in her ear as she squirmed and she wanted to scream but the sound got stuck in her throat.

"Enjoying yourself, little traitor?" Rowle asked, a smirk in the words.

Lavinia let out a sound like a whimper and he laughed again, sick and soft. Her skin was crawling and every inch of her felt dirty and wrong. She wasn't sure she was breathing. She wasn't sure she knew how.

"Let her go," came Mulciber's almost bored voice. He could have been talking about the weather for all the emotion in those words.

Rowle pulled back slightly, though he still held her tight against him. "What for?" he demanded. Like a petulant child, Lavinia thought vaguely. A sick, awful, horrible sort of child who was far too used to getting his way.

"We have orders to follow," Mulciber reminded him, folding his arms and narrowing his eyes. "Once we've at least tried that..." he trailed off and his eyes landed on Lavinia, his lips curling into a grin. "Then you can play with her if she's uncooperative."

Yes, Lavinai thought, she was definitely going to vomit.

Rowle made a growling sort of noise and threw her away from him. She landed on the hardwood floor and scrambled away, her knees protesting at the impact. Once she was a decent distance away from the other two people in the room, Lavinia looked up, her eyes darting around, taking in the surroundings she'd been too panicked to notice while Rowle was breathing down her neck.

They were in the room of a house that looked... nice. It was well furnished and the wood beneath her was shining and polished. It could have passed for the study in any respectable household.

She almost laughed then, though there was nothing funny about the realization she'd just had. Every time she had ever been threatened or beaten or physically hurt by someone, it had been in a room like this, with nice furniture and soft, luxurious throws. It was like the world was laughing at her, putting her back in a room like this when the last time she'd been in one... the last time she'd been in one she'd crawled away bruised and bleeding.

Something like hysteria mut be setting in, then, if she was tempted to laugh at just how awful the world could be.

"We have an offer to make you," Mulciber said now, pulling Lavinia from too rapid thoughts and waiting for her to look at him. He was fiddling with her wand in one hand while the other pointed his own directly at her. "The Dark Lord needs assistance and you can offer it."

Lavinia waited, heart in her throat, thoughts running too fast to understand as questions overlapped with the building panic. Assistance? The Dark Lord? What the hell was going on? How was this real? Or maybe it wasn't and her nightmares had just decided to take a particularly nasty twist today.

"Serve as his spy," Mulciber continued, either not knowing or not caring that Lavinia was far too panicked to process what the hell he was saying, "And we'll spare your life. Serve as his spy and we won't touch you. Refuse...." He trailed off and his smile said enough about what would happen if she said no.

Lavinia didn't think she was breathing as her thoughts continued tripping around that all important question: dream or reality? Nightmare or hellhole? Real or not real?

She stared at Mulciber, not really seeing him as she tried to shut her head up, tried to think of a way out of this. Tried to hold it together long enough to form a plan. A plan that got her out of here alive and without them finding out that she wasn't even a member of the Order. A plan that didn't involve betraying her friends but also didn't involve... That.