Author's Note: To get me back into the swing of writing, here is a one-shot involving HG/SS. I'm a long-time lurker of this ship, it's about time I came out of the closet.

Continuation should be updated in the upcoming week.

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o 0 o The Things He Does. o 0 o

By FicklePen.

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Seeing that look in His eyes, day after day; she knew. She knew that He was… Fond of her. That He loved her. And it did nothing but sicken her. She had trusted Him, like a fool, she trusted Him to do what was right. He was supposed to protect her! He was supposed to protect them. But somewhere down the dark path, He forgot about everything He had pledged to do.

He forgot and she knew that she was to blame for this, like so many other things that had happened in her life. She may as well have killed them with her own wand hand for all the good this arrangement did for her.

But even after everything, thought she belonged to Him, he was… Kind, in His own way.

It frightened her when He seemed so utterly morose in her company, so quiet; like He wanted to ask a question that was balanced on the tip of His tongue and the only thing that stayed Him were her haunted eyes. Eyes that were so full of disgust and hatred for Him that He never dared to question her.

Her lack of compassion and empathy for Him worried her but in the end she supposed she got the better end of the deal because He would love her in perpetuity and she… She would scorn Him and His love until one or both of them were dead in this war of emotions.

How did she know that He loved her?

This pale, cold, stoic man who betrayed no emotion upon His sallow face would never have been foolish enough to show His love for. But it was there, growing like a blackened cancer.

It was there in the things He did for her.

Small things that would not normally have mattered, but coming from Him it meant the world and more.

Like the time she had fallen ill from her exposure to the disease ridden streets of Muggle London. He had stayed by her bedside as she burned with fever, a never-wavering presence in the sweet delusions of her mind. Or perhaps the time He had gifted her with a book. A book! Such things were a luxury for her now.

At the time she had never understood the significance of His gifts, but she knew much better now.

And so, through the first inklings of distaste and suspicion, she found small ways to manipulate Him. Such as gaining more freedom to roam around the grounds of His home, achieved with a small but simple pout and a secret glance beneath long, dusky lashes. He crumbled so swiftly that she, triumphant in her exercise of manipulation, exalted at the power He gave her.

A power that had somehow tainted her that in one defining moment. One clear, precise moment where she knew that He would travel through the deepest pits of Hell for her.

So she had asked Him the inconceivable.

It was a grave request, one that had rendered Him speechless for the remainder of the evening. But, as with all things, He finally complied with a gravitas that was befitting of His person.

That evening, the man that stepped through her chambers was no longer thin, dark and gaunt. No… He was tall and lean with vermillion hair and brilliant blue eyes that glittered in the candlelight. He had stood so awkwardly, just like him that she was instantly transported back to a time where the sun still shone and fortune smiled on the brave.

His name, her dead childhood lover's name, slipped past her lips like water on ice, reverent and filled with such love that she almost missed the flinch on that transformed freckled face.

She raised her arms out to him, beckoning like a beautiful but deadly siren calling to her sea-mate – and he answered almost instantly.

They clashed and tore at one another so completely, like two twin storms fighting for dominance.

The pleasure was like no other as she looked up into his clear, crystal blue eyes. And she allowed herself to be loved by him.

It was all right to be loved by him.

It was all right to feel the pleasure he bestowed, to moan and grunt like a wild beast, all the while whispering his name because he was not Him; not at the moment.

That poignant ecstasy finished too soon and she wanted him again and again. But where he had lain, it was now Him. Changed. Disgusting greasy hair, beaked nose and those ice-chipped obsidian eyes that gave nothing away as He lay beside her, gasping and panting up at the ceiling like a dying man given salvation.

Her skin crawled as He whispered one word that emblazoned itself across her mind, across her heart.

"Mine."

She had risen, wincing at the dampness between her legs, feeling dirty for allowing Him to touch her and allowing Him to make her come. But deep down; deep, deep down, she also knew that it would be the first of many times.

If…

"You would do this again? I'll be yours if you do…"

The promise of her murmured words seemed so loud in the quiet room, like an echo refusing to stop.

But He rose to stand before her, painfully aware of her embarrassed cringe at His lack of clothing.

"I will do this… If it pleases you." His voice, so deep and pronounced, seeped into the marrow of her bones as His pledge was imprinted upon her blemished, nude skin.

So she nodded and He left, head bowed like a man with a heavy burden cast upon His shoulders, though she regretted nothing.

She knew.

She knew that He loved her more than His vanity and pride could dictate, and it sickened her…

It sickened her even as she planned the next evening with Him as him.

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Finite Incantatum.

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