AUTHOR'S NOTES:

This was my 2017 Interhouse Fest (interhouse-fest . livejournal . com) entry. The fest is over and reveals are out, so now I can post this for you here. This fanfic is finished. It is multi-chaptered, so I'll put up a chapter a week until it's finished.

My prompt for the fest was: #153 - "He told her he loved her, she thought it was a joke. It had to be. Right?"

Once more, a HUGE thank you to my betas, 'ladysashi' and 'wingedheart'! I appreciate all the advice, the corrections, and most importantly, the kindness and love you freely offer to help beta my stories. Love you ladies, and this one is dedicated to you both!

Thank you to the mods of Interhouse-Fest for once more putting on a fest for us this year! Always love this event and can't wait to read and review the submissions!

DISCLAIMER:"Harry Potter" is the property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. This fanfiction was written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.

TIMELINE: War - A/U (2004)

CHARACTERS FEATURED (alphabetical order, last name): Katie Bell x Marcus Flint, Severus Snape, C. Warrington, Oliver Wood

SUMMARY: Their one night together still haunted Katie… Marcus Flint had saved her life long ago, and she'd given her heart to the enemy in return. Now, captured by Voldemort's dark forces during the war and sold into slavery to Marcus, she discovers the real reason for his abandonment so many years before…

RATING: NC-17 (MA)

WARNINGS: Het sex (not explicit, but on-screen), Profanity (explicit), Reference to rape (not on screen), Capture and enslavement (not at all graphic)

Extra Notes: War has dragged on longer than canon, with no immediate resolution in sight. Some Order Members have been taken prisoner in the interim.

FOR YOU ONLY

By: RZZMG

His fingers were a cold vice around Katie's wrist, his touch a million icy suns, and it was with great trepidation and some resistance that she was forcibly led on wards towards an uncertain fate.

"Hurry," Marcus Flint urged her, yanking hard on her arm, nearly pulling it from its socket as he dragged her behind him down a dizzying number of corridors that all looked the same.

In truth, she wasn't sure how her new 'master' knew which way to go in this twisted labyrinth of a house. She'd tried counting the number of turns they'd taken, how many sets of stairs they'd climbed, but it seemed the old Flint Manor was as deviant and freakish as its owners.

Deeper they went into the house, away from the fancy ballroom and its blood-curdling screams, far from the taunting laughter that seemed to haunt Katie's every step.

Marcus had really done it, hadn't he? He'd invested fully in the lie of blood superiority. Gone was the man she'd loved four years ago; in his place stood one of Voldemort's Inner Circle, a loyalist to the cause of wizarding superiority. The iron slave collar branded with his initials and bound around her neck proved it.

In her head, she'd always known that her ex-lover wouldn't betray his father's traditions, but in her heart, she'd held out a foolish hope that perhaps he'd find his way back to her, that he'd be his own man and shun the wrongness of his upbringing.

Now she knew better.

"You're hurting me," she snarled, yanking on his hold.

Coward. Liar. Flunky minion, she silently accused the back of his head.

The first thing she'd do once they'd stopped would be to figure out a way to get the collar off, and then like she had four years ago, she'd steal his wand and turn it on him. She'd truss up Marcus Flint like a goose at Christmas and hang him by his toes from the rafters. Then, she'd find her way back to that bizarre ballroom to free her friends from that disgusting group of demented rapists who were reveling in the capture of some of her fellow Order members. She'd show the lot of them how raising hell was really done, a la Gryffindor style…

They came at last to an impressive, metal door and it magically opened for Marcus, and then summarily shut behind them once they'd passed through its gilded arch with a resounding boom.

Katie looked up and around to find they were in an ancient chapel of some sort—early-Christian, if the rough iconic imagery and the crude construction of this subset of building were to be believed. Her mother might have been able to say for certain the date, as Paleochristian art and architecture were her areas of expertise at the University of Edinburgh, where she taught.

When she had taught, that was, before Katie's biological father had taken her mother and escaped from England's shores when the war had broken out. They'd gone to the continent to hide.

Divorced her parents might have been, but her wizarding father, Caius Warrington—whom Katie had hardly known, as he'd left them when she'd been two to return to the wizarding world—had done right by his Muggle ex-wife this time around, at least. Apparently, he'd never stopped loving Chandra Monique Bell, despite the years, her non-magical status, and the colour of her skin.

Bully for him! That didn't make up for his complete abandonment for years, as far as Katie was concerned. The man would have to work harder than a hefty Apparition overseas to earn her forgiveness. It's one of the reasons why she'd turned him down when he'd asked her to come with.

To be fair, she'd also stayed to fight, to help her friends, to right the injustice of Voldemort's world, just like Hermione had chosen to do.

And now here she was a captive of Marcus Flint, her childhood tormentor and former lover.

It was one night, she reminded herself, shutting out the memory of the hours spent in continuous ecstasy in Marcus' bed as she'd succumbed to his seduction. Dusk to dawn. Hardly counts.

She should have known after everything that had gone down that this was where he'd end up. When he hadn't taken her hand and joined her on the run, despite her pleading, when he'd stayed to serve his Dark Master, well, that had been the big clue that she'd misplaced her affections. Obviously, what they'd done together hadn't been enough to sway his dark heart then; he'd already decided who he'd wanted to be.

Only once they were near the front of the chapel did her new 'overlord' release her from his bruising hold. Katie quickly took two steps back from him, alert and on the defensive. She looked for his wand, but saw it was already in his hand, in a rather tight grip.

"Vicious brute," she accused him, massaging her sore wrist and quickly looking around for some tool of some sort that might help her pry the collar off. There had to be something nearby she could use, right?

Flint snorted, turning to pin her with an intense, censuring stare.

"Ungrateful witch," he fired back.

She gaped at him. "You expect me to be grateful? For what?" She grabbed the band of iron that encircled her throat. "The part where you snapped this around my neck and used magic to drag me out of line to your side to claim me as your intended broodmare in front of a room full of psychotic murderers and rapists? Gee, thanks ever so for 'claiming' me first, Marc."

Impossible as it seemed, Marcus' dark green eyes hardened. He took a step towards her and her heart took off like a frightened little bird in her chest.

She pointed at him with her uninjured hand and stepped back until her shoulders met the nearby wall. "Don't you dare!" she screeched at him, hoping to keep him at bay, all-too-aware that they were alone and that her magic had been shackled by the ugly iron 'accessory' he'd secured around her neck. "Don't you dare touch me again, Marcus Andronicus Flint!"

There is power in using someone's full name and she watched as her ex-lover flinched as she hurled his like a curse. He spat something under his breath, but kept his distance.

His brows lowered as he glowered at her, though.

Katie lifted her chin and sneered right back, refusing to be cowered.

The doors at the back of the chapel opened, and Flint's wand was up and pointed at them faster than Katie could track. He relaxed a moment later as the shadows coalesced into familiar shapes.

"Trouble with your slave, Flint?"

Cassius Warrington strolled in as if he owned the room. Behind him, leashed as well as collared, came a vanquished Oliver Wood.

"The Nott pipsqueak was right about what they do to them," Katie's snobbish first cousin stated, tugging gently on Oliver's chain to pull him forward to his side. To her surprise, her former Captain said nothing. He didn't even look up. He looked well and truly defeated, in fact. The light had gone out of his eyes as he dully stared at the floor and awaited the next abuse. "That arse-fuck MacNair liked his 'pet' a little too much, it seems. Motherfucking sadist."

She knew Oliver had been captured three months ago, but how could he have been broken in such a short time?

"Ollie?" she called to him in concern and took a step in his direction. "Ollie, what‒?"

Flint cut her off, stepping effectively in her path and forcing her to stop or they'd collide. Glaring up at him, she coldly conveyed in exacting detail the evisceration she had in store for him if he didn't move out of her way pronto.

Across the room, her cousin burst out into laughter that rang around the chapel's domed ceiling. "Your crude Muggle roots are showing, cousin."

Over Marcus' shoulder, she told Cassius exactly where he could shove his disgusting pure-blood sensibilities. "I'm ashamed to be related to you," she told him. "This‒" She pointed to the collars and then to what everyone knew was happening out the chapel doors, on the other side of the vast mansion. "‒is truly evil." She shook her head and looked with great disappointment on her relation. "How could you want to be a part of this, Cassius? We might never have gotten on, but how could you want to be like Yaxley and the Lestranges and that…that disgusting creature you serve on your knees, like a dog begging for table scraps?" She looked up at Marcus, looked him straight in the eye when she asked him, "How could you?"

Her captor didn't reply, but he didn't drop his gaze in shame, either. Apparently, he was okay with becoming what he had.

No one spoke or moved for a long while, so eventually Katie took that as her cue that she would not be hindered in going to Oliver again. And she'd been right. Neither man interfered as she went to her friend and gently attempted to get him to look at her by talking softly to him.

When the tears came, silent as they fell, Katie knew Oliver was still in there, that whatever MacNair had done to him hadn't been enough to completely shatter his soul, thank Godric.

"Gryffindor to the end," she whispered to him their House's proud mantra, trying to give him courage in the face of such wretched anguish. He gave a sad-sobbing laugh and pulled her into his embrace, hugging her as if the world was ending.

As she glanced over at Marcus from the safety of Oliver's arms, noting how an angry storm coiled and twisted in his eyes as he watched her touch another man, she held to her friend and secretly despaired of sharing Oliver's fate.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Notes:

Well, I hope you'll give this one a chance and let me know your thoughts about it as we hop along on this new ride together. I do adore this couple - brooding, mostly silent (but snarky) Marcus and feisty, take-no-prisoners Katie.

If you want to see how I envision these two, I have a banner I made for this story. It's over at my AO3 account, under this story there (archiveofourown dot org / works / 12998004 / chapters / 29721246).

Please review, if you would be so kind. Love follows reviewers. :)

XOXO,

- RZZMG

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Preview of next chapter:

To get Marcus to let go, she punched him in the shoulder as hard as she could.

He released her immediately, but the pain in her knuckles that followed had her swearing up a storm. "Jesus, fuck! What have you been doing over the years, Flint—weightlifting Erumpents?"

Shaking her hand out, she whimpered from the ache, sure that was going to leave a serious bruise.

Colour her surprised when Marcus reached out and gently took her injured hand in his. He ran careful fingers over the hurt, then extricated his wand and cast a healing charm over the area. Instantly, a cool wash of curative magic came, and with it instant relief. Katie was thankful, of course, and she said as much a moment later, but she was also weary of the kindness. Marcus had never been known for doing something for nothing, Slytherin as he was to the core.