arly as usual, Lucius,’ Snape said, with what passed for pleasure, with him. ‘I trust your newest acquisition is tractable, then?’
‘Very,’ Lucius said, knowing he could trust Severus—they had very different tastes in slaves. ‘The gods themselves made him especially for me.’ He traced the outline of an empty flask with his fingertips lightly, as he came further into the laboratory. ‘I only wish they’d brought him to me sooner. The muggles have nearly destroyed his mind.’
‘Then he is lucky you found him,’ Snape returned. ‘I presume you have learned he needs something more than what you already ordered from me?’
‘I am in a conundrum as to what, precisely, will achieve my ends,’ Lucius admitted. ‘I haven’t had a boy shaped like him before—but you, Severus, you’re ambisexual. Perhaps you will have insight on the matter…’
‘I have had a good lunch,’ Snape said, ‘and am looking forward to making potions I rarely get to make, so I shall humour your meandering.’
‘Kind of you, old dragon,’ Lucius said, with an arch smile. ‘Perhaps it would be best you examine him yourself. His chest needs adding to, only I cannot think what kind of softness to put there—I’ve never had a blank slate, before. Such a rare sort of treat.’
This, as he’d thought, piqued Snape’s interest; one of those dark brows raised.
‘Can you come?’ Lucius asked, knowing he could not indulge in too smug a smile, hiding it in his pale eyes. ‘I wouldn’t want to take you away from anything… delicate.’
Snape’s look was flat and his voice dripped with his signature acerbic humour. ‘Your courtesy is incomparable.’
‘Oh, well, I do try,’ Lucius said modestly, looking down at his nails.
Snape stalked over to the fireplace, taking off his work smock as he did, hanging it up on the hook and getting the Floo powder.
⁂
Lucius was pleased to note the boy was as he’d been left, sitting on the bench at the foot of Lucius’ curtained bed. Lucius had told Severus to wait exactly five minutes, before following him. ‘My colleague is coming to examine you. He is a potions master.’
‘So he’s the one making the potions that will change my body?’
‘Yes. He will need to look at you, and touch you. Will you be good, or must I bespell you with obedience?’
‘If you’re here and I can hold your hand while he does it, I think I can be good? If he gives me a little warning before touching. I don’t know for sure,’ he added, nervously. ‘But I can do my best. What do I call him?’
‘Sir.’
The boy nodded. ‘Thank you, Master. For caring about my health.’
‘Come,’ Lucius said, and the boy got up, coming over to face him. Lucius smoothed his hands over the boy’s shoulders, before turning him to sit on a cushioned footstool to face the fire, just as the flames turned green, and Snape emerged from them. Lucius didn’t take his hands from the boy’s narrow, soft shoulders, moving them a little farther in, his fingers brushing the boy’s long neck. He felt the boy relax, and was satisfied. ‘Severus,’ he said.
‘Can he even raise his arms?’
Lucius felt the boy’s jaw tense. ‘Can you, boy?’ Lucius asked.
‘I can now that I’m healed,’ the boy said. ‘I popped a stitch when I was sent home because I was too high on opiates to remember, but that was when I was thirty.’
‘Where?’
The boy lifted his left arm, crossing the other hand over to point. ‘somewhere about there,’ he said. ‘Hence the scar being wider.’
Snape looked, but didn’t need to touch. The scar was as transparent and violet and papery as he expected. ‘Raise both arms as much as you are able,’ he said, and the boy raised them, slowly. The scar ran across the chest and turned sharply upward under the arms, though it didn’t quite achieve a smooth line on the right side, despite healing as well as could be expected for such primitive techniques and weak scar tissue. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-six.’
‘Cancer or something else?’
‘I had calcifications already from being hermaphroditic and chest-binding, I have chronic pain from the weight and lack of elasticity necessary to support them, but I am, also, transsexual. Had I kept them they would have been considered high risk for cancer.’
‘And you have malformic collagen.’
‘I do, yes.’
Snape considered this, toying with his wand thoughtfully. ‘Show me an old scar.’
The boy lowered his hand, showing Snape the back of it, where a very small scar, thin, sat. ‘I was between eight and ten.’
‘Something surgical.’
A pause, and the boy ran his tongue along the front of his teeth, before speaking again. ‘I’m not sure you can really see those easily, they’re inside my mouth.’ He ran a fingertip along the outside, indicating they were very far down inside, indeed.
‘What did they do?’
‘Rebuilt my jaw when I was seventeen. Sliced it up and screwed it back together. I’ve got about four dozen screws and a few plates in there. It didn’t grow when it should have, so they had to do it manually.’
‘Horrifying,’ Lucius murmured faintly.
‘Muggles are,’ Snape said, with no particular inflection, before casting a Glasskin Charm, briefly, to see inside, finding the scars—and the metal screws. ‘You heal quickly, then.’
‘Yes, sir, so I’ve been told. My nerves don’t recover well, though. That feels cold,’ he said, as Snape ran a thumb along the damaged part of his face. ‘It gets better every year, but slowly.’
‘If you want any new growth,’ Snape said to Lucius, ‘the scars—and any nerve damage—have to be mended.’ He got out his pocket notebook and writing down his findings in shorthand.
‘What do you think I should do with his chest, Severus?’ Lucius said, moving his right hand to trail down said chest from behind, stroking along its too-flat plane thoughtfully. ‘Shall I make him a milchcow, or simply give him handfuls of fat? He had quite the set of teats, once, and I am a little curious…’
Snape looked down at the boy, at his chest. ‘His torso is certainly long enough to handle large tits. I’d want to know what noises he makes when you torment his nipples, before deciding.’ He tilted the boy’s head up, looking into his eyes, and smirking at the thoughts the boy was having. He looked up at Lucius again. ‘You’ll have your hands full with this one.’
‘Mm,’ Lucius said with a rather wicked smile. ‘Yes, I rather like my hands full of soft boyflesh.’
‘You’re worse than Horace, you know that.’
‘I should hope so,’ Lucius said, playing with his new boy’s dark curls. They were the perfect diameter to slip a finger inside the ringlets.
‘I don’t have to tell you to not stretch him until the potion takes effect fully.’
‘I had the same affliction, Severus,’ Lucius said, with the softest frost over the words. Snape gave a small nod of concession.
‘Can he stand?’
‘How long can you stand up, boy?’ Lucius asked.
‘One minute, unless you let me sway back and forth, then maybe three minutes.’
‘That speaks of injury,’ Snape said. ‘What did you harm?’
‘My arches collapsed because retail workers aren’t allowed to sit, in America, and I had eight-hour shifts on a concrete floor. Christmas season, I was twenty-nine. Nobody told me what had happened, or that I shouldn’t be in pain, or…’ he swallowed, looking away and glaring at nothing that was currently in the room. ‘Anyway, my plantar fasciia are befuckened, and that’s why I can’t stand anymore.’
‘The fact that you used “plantar fasciia” and “befuckened” in the same sentence is truly breathtaking,’ Snape deadpanned. ‘Up,’ he said, with a sharp gesture, and the boy got to his feet, Snape casting a spell of his own creation, one that highlighted all stretch-scars on a body with green light. There were fans of them, wide and harsh, mostly around the hips and thighs. ‘You gained weight recently.’
‘They put me on some medicine that turned off my satiety and I gained fifty pounds so fast my skin started splitting. It’s been a couple years since then.’
‘They?’
‘I was homeless and in The System.’
Snape felt that gaze, understood the boy was likely testing whether he’d ask what “The System” meant. But Snape knew, even if Lucius wasn’t fully aware of that exact term. ‘In America or England?’
‘Oh, America. I ended up here because I got invited to speak on an erotica panel at a fantasy convention. Which is, if I may say, funny as hell, given my current situation.’
‘I see why Hermes likes you,’ Lucius murmured.
‘You absolutely cannot make him heavier, nor fill him, until these are mended,’ Snape said to Lucius, and glared at him. ‘I mean it, Lucius. His skin is silk.’
‘It certainly is.’
‘Malfoy.’
‘Yes, yes, Severus, I understand,’ Lucius said with fond annoyance.
‘One litre, at most.’
Lucius clicked his tongue in disappointment. ‘Alright. Sit, boy.’
The boy sat back down.
‘Are you in touch with Rosier?’ Snape asked.
‘Should I be?’
‘The boy is transsexual, he’s likely to have been on artificial hormones. That’s beyond my ability, you want Rosier if you want him to remain as he is.’
‘Were you on such things, boy?’ Lucius asked, still playing with those dark curls, starting to stitch them into a French braid idly.
‘Yes, Master, I have been on topical testosterone for nine months, and was planning on being on it for the rest of my life. I have not had anything done to my genitals though, like surgically,’ He added the last quickly, sounding the least bit frustrated. ‘May I please just tell you and Master Severus my medical history without waiting to be asked? There’s a lot of invisible things going on.’
Lucius saw how hard Severus was holding back from snapping at the boy; but it was pragmatism that won out, in the end. ‘Tell us,’ Lucius said softly.
He told them, and Lucius noted it was… well-practised, and guardedly cold and clinical, explanations that indicated he was used to nobody understanding what any of it meant, but equally unable to give explicit instructions for what he needed—and that was assuming he knew. He was candid, and self-aware, and clearly used to being the only person protecting himself from harm. What was most shocking of all, however, was that he had no trust of healers to even want to heal, let alone be competent about it.
If Snape actually softened his approach when he looked into that mind—and he did, immediately, upon using his usual subtle Legilimency on the boy—then Lucius was concerned. He mentally extended the schedule of plans for this slave; it was unthinkable Lucius would sell the creature, any muggle slave needed rehabilitation at this point in muggle history. After Snape had left, Lucius called Evers to bring the boy clothes to wear for going outside, and opened the French doors to his terrace.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Follow, we shall sit outside.’
Beauty was, the Malfoys had always believed, a very important part of healing; and the prospect from any terrace of the Manor was a study in centuries of magical beauty. Old-growth wood, carefully-tended, with yews and oaks, ash and quaking aspen and birch planted centuries ago, their children and grandchildren, and every shrub and flower, peopling the space between them.
Unlike a muggle manse, set atop a hill and exposed by acres of lifeless lawns sloping away, a wizarding manor was built atop a reservoir or underground river, at the lowest part of an earthen cauldron, with a forest garden spreading its adumbral limbs over all, the columns of the trees acting as shelter and temple all at once. Muggle myths about dark woods full of dangers were not just about wolves and bears, nor were stories of the fae always about the venerable Gods-of-the-Grove to which any Pureblooded family still paid respect—if they didn’t outright worship said gods themselves, which most did, the Malfoys being something of an exception in their worship of the Gods of the Mediterranean.
Lucius wondered how the boy would react to the view—the endless wood, darkening even this early with the shadows of dusk.
The boy was still for long moments, and sat down slowly on one of the down cushions on one of the wicker chairs that was set out here. ‘Oh,’ he breathed, and was weeping. ‘Oh, she’s primeval. I… I’ve never seen one in person… wish I had my glasses. They um, they got lost in the scuffle.’
‘You didn’t mention. Why?’
‘There was nothing I really needed to see clearly, and it helps me stay calm, to just dull one of my senses a little. I guess wizards don’t need them, huh? You can just fix it.’
‘It’s a delicate thing, not done until adulthood; and by then, most consider their spectacles a part of their face.’
The boy sat quietly for a little while, then said, ‘…That’s the first time you’ve told me something.’
Lucius did not answer this for some moments; he could hear something intriguing in the tone, but it wasn’t clear, as yet, what kind of sorrow it was. One expected sorrow at captivity, and occasionally there were slaves who tried to seduce their masters and mistresses, to vouchsafe better conditions for themselves, and small liberties and comforts—that was to be expected. So far, though, this boy had been nothing but surprises.
Many did not care for slaves with thoughts of their own, or interior lives; those usually ended up with runaways or murderers in their homes—or, they were like Narcissa, and preferred to all but Transfigure their slaves into another species. Lucius trained for silence, as that was the expectation when there were others about; but he knew his boys, and cared for them as one always cared for beloved pets. Still, it usually took more time… ‘Are Americans always so forthright?’
‘No, that’s a me-thing,’ the boy said. ‘Other Americans find me just as off-putting. It’s a changeling thing.’
‘You do realise changeling was the euphemism for an unwanted child, left to die.’
‘Yes, and usually they were like me, broken and wrong, not normal. The descriptions of the Folk, the way they act and how their logic works, is how mine does too. It’s a more useful metaphor than clinical facts and diagnoses, which aren’t nearly as specific as they say they are, and just dehumanise a person—more, I think, than calling them something inhuman, something else. I’d rather be a monster than a list of symptoms. Did wizards ever find those babies? What did you do with them?’
Lucius looked out, into the wood, fingers tracing the familiar contours of his cane’s silver head. ‘We took them inside, and gave them to the servants, if they could be saved. If they could not, then it was kinder to make sure they did not suffer longer than they had already. Muggles are very cruel creatures.’
‘Christians,’ the boy said in a hard voice, ‘are very cruel creatures. But that’s mostly the same thing, in this part of the world.’
‘Ah yes, I suppose in America you have more variety. More Jews, at least, and I have always found them to be people that understand the value of a life, for all the animosity my people and theirs have had in the past. And Muslims are at least more polite than Christians.’
‘Christians are worse, in America,’ the boy said, relaxing into the pillows and looking up at the sunset-painted sky—it was an uncommonly clear day, but it had been for some years. ‘I’ve been stoned as a witch,’ he said, not exactly the juddering volume one expected of the word ‘sudden’, but sudden nonetheless. ‘I feel incredibly safe, here, from Christian violence. That’s why I didn’t resist. I figured it out immediately—oh, these are not Christians, I’m safer with them, no matter what happens.’ He looked over at Lucius, wiggling until he could sit up against the large pillows of the wicker chair. ‘Even if someone from this world decides I need—Idunno, “rescuing” or whatever, and tried to “return” me to the muggle world, I’d scream, and probably throw things at them, and try and find you again.’
No mention of physical struggle, but Lucius knew very well why—that was a good way to dislocate and sprain things, when you had loose joints. He smiled faintly, turning from the railing and studying the boy’s expression; he avoided Lucius’ gaze directly, and Lucius hadn’t noticed it until now, it was so expertly-hidden. But if he couldn’t see where Lucius’ eyes were… he came closer, sitting on the chair adjacent, and putting fingertips beneath the boy’s chin again, moving close until he saw the violet-blue eyes focus.
And the mind within, he slid into so gently the boy didn’t even feel it; it was instant cacophony, songs and poems and stories mixed with the din of loud memories and the sort of nasty phrases that were delivered with matter-of-fact confidence—you’re ugly, you’re awkward, no one likes you really, you’re helpless to change any of this—they weren’t appreciably different from the nasty things in other people’s darkest corners, but they were louder, and backed up with more evidence. Fragile, but tenacious, this one—more of each than any of his other boys. A project, which was just what Lucius needed as stress relief.
‘Good boy,’ he murmured, lips so close their breaths mingled; but Lucius didn’t kiss him, not this time.
Distantly, the bell for the hour tolled, the sound echoing strangely in the wood, and Lucius pulled away, enjoying the flush on that pale skin, the arousal-dark eyes. The clothes Evers had picked out were simple and untailored, but the man had an expertise at picking just the right colour to make a boy glow.
‘Come,’ Lucius said, rising to his feet. ‘It’s time for dinner.’