Caspar David Friedrich: Winterlandschaft mit Kirche, 1811

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Anyone who says today that history has ended* is, to say the least, naïve.

Gustaw Herling-Grudziński

*The concept history has ended refers to Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, which posits that Western liberal democracy has achieved a final form of human government, thus marking the end of ideological evolution.

CHAPTER ONE

ON WHOM THE SUN NEVER SETS

“You might find this rather interesting,” Graham Montague said, setting the tone of familiarity. He reached for the cut crystal glass and slowly brought it to his lips. He was drinking in small sips, probably thinking he was building up tension.

“Is that so?” Draco didn’t even bother to sound in the slightest bit interested.

It was Friday evening, yet the Ehwaz was not crowded. Nowadays no respectable establishment in London would allow anyone in without papers confirming blood purity, but the Ehwaz was even more exclusive. Its doors were open only to the crème de la crème of the wizarding community. Luckily, Draco’s family was one of the oldest and wealthiest patrons, so he’d never had any trouble getting his favourite table.

The décor reflected the expectations of the members of the club. The halls were large and spacious, with high ceilings. They were wide enough for a fully-grown dragon to walk between the tables without touching any of them (not that anyone would ever entertain such a ludicrous notion). The furniture was of the grand French palatial style: lots of dark velvet and satin, crystal chandeliers, richly carved pieces with slender, decorative legs.

Draco cast his gaze at the ornate spiral staircase leading to the women’s powder room, where Astoria and her sister had retired some time ago. They were likely to spend at least another fifteen minutes there. That was a quarter of an hour longer than Draco was able to endure the company of a sloshed Montague on his own. He finished his drink in one gulp and was about to use it as an excuse to get up and go to the bar when Montague put down the glass with a loud clink and disclosed:

“Snatchers have found an omega in the Forest of Dean.”

This was the last thing that Draco should concern himself with. Still, he hesitated for a second, one hand already on the armrest. It didn’t go unnoticed. Montague gave him a smug smirk as he leaned back in his armchair.

“I told you this might interest you.”

Draco bared his teeth in a malicious half smile, nonetheless, he remained seated.

“Why? Would you think that I care about the omega caught by Snatchers? I am sure you are not implying that I share the lowly tastes of ‘homines novi’ like some of my former schoolmates, are you?” He watched with satisfaction as Montague’s face flushed red.

The insult was quite obvious. Montague couldn’t have dreamed of living such a comfortable life if it hadn’t been for the Dark Lord’s reign. His family was neither wealthy nor influential, nor of such a pure lineage as, not to look far, the Malfoys. His maternal grandfather was a Mudblood, and although the Montagues had disowned everybody from that branch of the family, it still left a bad taste in ton’s mouth. Only when Montague joined the ranks of Death Eaters did it cause collective amnesia among pure-blood wizards and witches, which resulted in Montague’s rapid social advancement.

As a part of his initiation, Montague had been given a task that particularly amused the Dark Lord (and some of the Death Eaters who shared his peculiar sense of humour).

“Graham,” the Dark Lord told him, “all of us know what’s a fly in your ointment. Get rid of every fly, and you will be welcomed with open arms.”

The Dark Lord would probably be pleased with Montague purging his bloodline in the recently fashionable way: by taking his Mudblood relatives out of the country. He wasn’t the first citizen of the British Wizarding Empire whose family tree needed pruning due to the recent decades of social liberalism. The practice of removing inconvenient relatives by displacement had become pretty common. After a quick disinheritance ritual in the presence of a Ministry of Magic employee, one could pretend they had never had anything to do with them. But Montague wasn’t willing to take such half-measures. At the next Death Eater meeting, he showed up with the severed and bloody heads of all his Mudblood relatives. Draco still wasn’t sure if Montague was so stupid that he didn’t understand that the Dark Lord only wanted to make fun of him or if he was so recklessly bold to try to impress the Dark Lord.

Whichever it was, it had worked. Since then, he had gained the approval of the Dark Lord and had quickly climbed the ranks in the newly established government. Currently, he had a senior position in The Ministry of National Affairs — better known as MINA — which was responsible for ruthlessly combating any manifestation of resistance to the authorities. At the beginning, its main task was to fight the underground terrorist organisation, the Order of the Phoenix. However, after several years of successfully tracking down its members, this became more of a secondary goal, as there was almost no one left to be caught. For some time now, MINA had been mainly uncovering conspiracies and looking for unregistered contacts between so-called pure wizards (whose bloodline purity was satisfactory enough to be treated as first-class citizens) and Muggles, Mudbloods, or foreigners, which could threaten the country’s security. Taking all of this into consideration, it was not surprising at all that Montague was one of the first to find out who Snatchers had caught.

“Omegas are so rare that many alphas seem not to mind their lineage as long as they can serve their base needs,” Montague replied.

On any other day, he wouldn’t have allowed himself to talk to Draco in such an intimate way. He may have secured himself a cushy job in a new government, but at the end of the day, he was still just a parvenue with a mutt heritage.

“Then I can only feel sorry for them. Someone whose ancestors have been defiling themselves for centuries may not be able to understand this, but some of us have far too much respect for ourselves to whore around,” Draco drawled. “Remind me how much mud flows in your veins?”

Montague gave him a drunken, goofy smile. He was obviously too tipsy to care about the possible consequences. Unless he was such an idiot to believe that out of pure sentiment for their old school acquaintance, Draco would turn a blind eye to his shenanigans.

“Not even a drop since no evidence survived until this conversation. Come on, the girls aren’t here, Astoria will never find out. How many omegas have you seen not to be even curious? I heard that once they get into their heat, they won’t say no to anyone. No matter if it’s a wizard or a troll.”

Draco still remembered what had happened to the last one Greyback had brought to the Ministry. Just thinking about it made him feel sick. An omega or not, if she was hiding, she must have been either a Mudblood or a terrorist. Her fate had already been sealed.

For any other wizard, it could be extremely exciting. The thought of having sex with a nymphomaniac, high on hormones, who would wriggle with pleasure at the slightest touch of any stranger, even an idiot with a triple chin and beer belly. This was the image of an omega that Rita Skeeter had planted into people’s minds thanks to her recently released series of porno romances about omegas and alphas. After reading a few passages, Draco concluded that her idea of ​​omegas and alphas had little to do with reality and was rather the embodiment of her sick fantasies.

The thought of casual sex without any consequences with a very horny omega appealed to many wizards. But Draco wasn’t one of them. Mainly because, in his case, there could always be unpleasant implications. It was difficult to predict how he would react to a particular omega’s pheromones. He could have the sex of his life without any unpleasant surprises, but he could also fall into hebetude, and before he knew it, he could end up magically bound to some random Mudblood who may have been a sex toy for half of the Death Eaters.

“It’s a common misconception,” he replied, glancing in the direction of the women’s powder room again. “An omega in heat can easily refuse anyone but an alpha.”

As far as Draco knew, an omega in heat was desperate to try anything to get off. However, an intercourse with a beta wizard or masturbation couldn’t satisfy her, meaning she hardly ever wasted her time on such pointless sexual activities.

He suspected that the whole mechanism worked for omegas just like it did for him. On a daily basis, he could have very satisfying sex with ordinary witches, but even the most perverse fucking wasn’t enough to slake a desire caused by pheromones. Unless the one being fucked was an omega, nothing could bring relief. Not a hand, not potions, not even a deliciously wet, tight, beta cunt of the highest quality (such as the one Astoria could boast of). Draco was horny as hell, and ejaculating only intensified the feeling of dissatisfaction. He learned that instead of trying to release sexual tension, it was best to stay at home, in bed, with his hands nicely placed on the covers whilst being intoxicated with strong psychoactive substances from the black market, which for a brief moment allowed him to forget about the burning need.

Luckily for him, alphas didn’t have a specific fertility cycle, so he didn’t have to go through this torture cyclically. So far, he had only been forced to go through this five times in his twenty-three years of life. The first two appeared as a necessary step in completing the particular stages of achieving the sexual maturity of an alpha. The three other cases were the result of being in unexpected close proximity to an omega. Draco “owed” these last “pleasures” to fucking Goyle and his bloody theatre of debauchery.

If it hadn’t been for Goyle, Draco may have gone through life without encountering any omegas, living like his beta friends. Finding an omega was extremely rare, given that over the last century, the omega gene had been discovered in only a few witches in the whole Empire. Not that the Ministry of Magic kept any records. The issue affected so few wizards that it hardly attracted any interest. Or rather, it didn’t until Rita Skeeter’s porn literature became a sensation. But even now, people’s attention was focused on their sexual fantasies. They didn’t give a toss about the research that would help alphas and omegas live a normal life. There had been a time when Draco had been no different. Until it turned out he was unlucky and a gene that had been dormant for generations decided to reactivate. His father almost immediately showered the Institute for the Study of the Nature of Wizards and Witches with gold, but even with the financial incentive, the scientists accomplished little.

The Institute  was not able to fully explain the origin of alphas and omegas, except that it was an inborn characteristic linked to the genes responsible for magic, and it could remain dormant for many generations. According to ancient records, this condition had historically affected a much larger percentage of wizards and witches, but in recent years, it had disappeared almost completely. Some scientists put the blame for it on evolution. They claimed nature itself decided that this characteristic was no longer needed as the world became much safer than it used to be. To substantiate their thesis, they invoked the fact that in some historical periods when wizards and witches had been at risk of extinction, the number of alphas and omegas had seemed to increase. However, opponents of this theory pointed out that there were many times when omega and alpha booms didn’t match a period of decrease in the birth rate.

Even though there were disputes about why the omega and alpha genes activated in some generations more often than in others and what exactly determined the manifestation of omega traits, everyone agreed on one thing. To activate the alpha gene, its carrier had to have contact with a non-blood related omega’s pheromones during his puberty. That’s why Draco was pretty sure that while he had been a student, there must have been some fucking omega at Hogwarts who had decided to make his life a little shittier, because why not? He didn’t know anyone from his parents’ or grandparents’ generation who was an alpha, but he could name several alphas close to his age who had one thing in common: they all graduated from Hogwarts.

Draco reluctantly returned his attention to Montague, who must have been talking for some time now, unaware that no one was listening to him.

“— to do with her. Goyle will break her as quickly as the last one. She was supposed to have served us at least for a month, but she lasted only three shows. What a waste of money! She would have earned more in a fucking brothel. On the other hand, from what I’ve heard, the new one is quite... feisty. Maybe she won’t die so easily.”

Draco cast another longing glance towards the powder room, calculating the number of colourful cocktails Astoria had consumed that evening. Five? Six? Either way, not enough to make her sick. What had she been doing in there for so long? He decided he would give her one more minute, and if she hadn’t returned by this time, he would  go to the bar for a refill.

Montague was looking at him, probably expecting some reaction.

“Did she strangle someone with a shoelace?” Draco drawled in a bored tone.

“Close. She’d stuck a quill in Davies’s eye so quickly that he didn’t even manage to pull up his pants.”

Davies. Davies. Roger Davies? The captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team? The same class as Montague. Draco straightened in his armchair.

“She hurt an alpha?”

Montague snorted.

“She stuck the quill so precisely into his brain that he died instantly.” He smiled widely, from ear to ear. “Trelawney foretold it to him, you know? She repeated this to him every other lesson. ‘Keep your pants on or you’ll be gone. There’s a quill ready to kill’. Looks like the crazy pisshead was right after all.”

“Since when has Davies been a Snatcher? Pardon me, was?”

“He wasn’t. He went out at night with his cousin and sister to collect ingredients. It was a full moon, and he was one of those freaks who believed that only the completely natural composition of the potion guaranteed its effectiveness. I guess he sensed her, that omega. Or maybe she was the one who lured him to her, since she milked every drop of his cum before she made him push up the daisies. His cousin had unbuttoned his trousers so eagerly that the idiot lost his wand in the process. By the time he realised what was happening, the cunt ran that fucking quill over his eyebrows. Blood flooded his eyes, and she could have escaped if it hadn’t been for Davies’s sister and the fact that the noise had alerted the Snatchers.”

Draco frowned. “You should have sentenced her to death,” he said. “Isn’t that the punishment the law provides for subhumans for hurting a pure-blood wizard?”

Montague put a silly smile on his face again. “But she’s an omega. I can think of plenty of more interesting things that you can do with her. Remember the last one? I still jerk off in the shower to the memory of her jiggling tits.”

Draco winced, remembering Goyle’s cutting curse that had struck the omega in the chest, exposing the raw flesh. A piece of soft, sweaty skin had separated from the body and hung desolately, holding on to single fibres. Selwyn, who had been fucking her then, hadn’t even slowed down. Draco swallowed, trying to push the image out of his mind.

“I feel sorry for you,” he said. “I don’t have to imagine female breasts as I have unlimited access to them.”

Montague chuckled and gave him a dubious look from under his thick, dark eyebrows. “Astoria’s don’t count. If tits don’t bounce while riding, they can’t be called tits.”

Once, in a fit of drunken honesty, Draco had suggested Astoria visit a Mediwizard specialising in aesthetic spells. She hadn’t taken it well, so he didn’t bring up this topic again. She was a hot witch, even with her small breasts. Besides, she liked sex. After all, enthusiasm turned him on more than big tits.

“Goyle’s pair must perfectly suit your taste, then,” he sneered and immediately changed the subject. “So she won’t be executed? The omega?”

If she were dead, she wouldn’t end up in Goyle’s theatre. If she were dead, she would end up in the grave, a place where Draco would be in no hurry to get into.

“It’s not up to me, but I don’t think so. Goyle has already asked for her. However, he got one earlier and failed to take care of her properly. We were supposed to receive large dividends from sold tickets, but since there were only three performances, the whole thing turned out to be a fiasco. So no one is eager to accept his application. On the other hand, rumour has it that she’s a member of the Order and if that’s true, the Dark Lord may want to make her the highlight of Goyle’s show.”

Draco swallowed the curse. If the Dark Lord graced Goyle’s theatre with his presence, Draco wouldn’t be able to get out of it. Officially, no Death Eater was required to participate in those sick evenings, but if the Dark Lord ordered invitations to be sent out  (which he commanded whenever he would visit his loge), refusing to attend was tantamount to losing privileges. Jugson hadn’t shown up the night Ernest MacMillan had appeared. (Draco later found out Ernest was his nephew.) The day before, he’d even received approval and a sympathetic pat on the shoulder from the Dark Lord himself. And yet he didn’t go unpunished. The next day, he lost his job at the Ministry of Magic, and his wife was kindly asked to vacate her seat on the Hogwarts Board of Governors. Even though no one ever said a bad word about them openly, in less than a week, the Jugsons were ostracised, and their name became synonymous with a wussy.

“The Dark Lord doesn’t show up for a pawn’s show,” Draco scoffed.

Montague nodded absently. “He didn’t when we were catching some members of the Order every day. But now there are so few of them left that the Dark Lord is likely to want to see the end of the last rebels with his own eyes.”

Draco frowned, alarmed by his tone. “It sounds like the Dark Lord has already declared an interest.”

Montague leaned over the table. He rested his angular chin on his hand and tapped his cheek with his fingers, pretending to be embarrassed. The light hit his face from a different angle, highlighting its sharp, square features.

“Seriously? Maybe you shouldn’t trust the words of a drunken man.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?”

Montague gave him a half-surprised, half-hurt look. “I told you before. I thought you might find it interesting,” he repeated, exasperated. “No one would be surprised if all of a sudden she died. I guess Davies’s sister could bribe a guard to avenge her brother, what do you think? Quite a plausible turn of events, isn’t it? Naturally, one would have to rustle up a body and then kill both of them, the sister and the guard. It’s always such a pity to spill pure blood, but even that has its price, doesn’t it?”

Draco laughed under his breath, genuinely amused. Montague couldn’t do worse. Draco would sooner pay him to get rid of her, which unfortunately didn’t seem to be an option for the time being. If the Dark Lord already knew about her and was actually considering public torture, it would be wise not to tempt fate and try to interfere.

“I’m not interested, but I think the Dark Lord will be when I tell him what you’ve just said.”

Of course, he wasn’t going to do that. Only a fool or a desperado would ask for trouble like that. His teenage service to the Dark Lord had given Draco enough stress for a lifetime, and now he was going to fully enjoy the privilege of being the victor, which means staying away from anything that looked more dangerous than petting a Pygmy Puff.

Naturally, that didn’t mean he stopped making mental notes about all his friends whenever they did something that the Dark Lord might not like. You never knew when leverage might come in handy.

Montague ran his tongue across his lower lip in a rather rat-like gesture. “I wonder what the Dark Lord will see in this scene when you invite him into your head.” He reached for the empty glass, tilted it, and spun it around on the table, making a soft cinnamon light flicker over it. “A devoted, loyal servant? Or…” He let go of the glass and it clinked back to its standing position. “...an afraid little boy? I’ve heard you threw up at la grande finale of that previous omega.”

“There must have been something off in the calamari I ate,” Draco replied, still smiling.

“Of course.”

“My elf paid for it. With its head.”

“It rings a bell. Refresh my memory. Where did you bury it?”

“Nowhere. It’s a fucking elf. It was probably used as fertiliser for my mother’s flowers. Who the hell buries a fucking elf?”

Montague burst out laughing and moved as if he were going to pat Draco on the shoulder. Fortunately, the table separating them prevented him from doing so.

“The Dark Lord only came to see her for now. He didn’t give any orders, so he probably doesn’t mind me selling her. I’m pretty sure he would actually appreciate my business acumen. Of course, the moment he decides that he wants her at Goyle’s theatre, my offer expires, so if you want to make your dungeons cosier, you should —”

“I don’t want to,” Draco broke in, irritated. “If you haven’t noticed, I don’t have to play in the mud to —”

“McLaggen almost shit himself when he found out who we had in custody,” Montague interrupted. “He’s already been to my office five times, begging for at least a single look at her.”

“Then sell her to him,” Draco suggested, scowling at the pleading note in his tone.

Something twisted Montague’s face. He was still smiling, but he seemed more tense than a moment ago.

“You greedy son of a bitch. How much did he offer you that you found it not enough? And how much did you think I would pay you for some stupid whore?”

“He’s already wasted all the family heirlooms and has nothing left to offer for such a treasure.”

Draco snorted. “A treasure, my arse. Whatever offer he made to you, it should have been adequate. He won’t be able to use her for more than a few days, given that the Dark Lord wants to see her at Goyle’s.”

“You can’t be sure about that. And if it were you who asked him —"

Draco laughed sarcastically. “You’re fucking nuts. Did you really think I would pay for her and then beg for her like a peasant? You must have forgotten she’s not a fucking princess, but likely a bloody terrorist, a blood traitor at best.”

“She’s an omega. McLaggen drooled all over her like a fucking dog, and Davies got himself killed to fuck her, even though he normally  never let himself be led around by his dick. This made me think. It can’t be just because she’s a fucking nympho and you can fuck her in any position and any hole. Or at least it’s not only about that. If it were so simple, any Muggle whore from the brothel would do, they are all under Imperius and non-stop on the lust potion. They’re so brainwashed that every one of them thinks sperm is fucking ambrosia. For an alpha, there isn’t a cunt as good as the one that belongs to an omega. That’s why every one of you is so desperate to put his dick in that hole at least once in your lifetime.”

“You know shit.”

“You didn’t fuck that last omega, did you?” he asked, and when Draco didn’t answer, he sank back into his armchair with a grin. “Of course you didn’t. You never take an active part. You always just watch. Astoria keeps you on a short leash, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t like getting dirty. Besides, I have fantastic sex at home, and, unlike you, I don’t need to stick my balls into public holes to prevent them from turning blue.”

“Or Astoria was afraid that once you tasted an omega, you won’t want her anymore.”

Draco had enough. He wasn’t going to listen to this arsehole any longer. He reached for his glass, but before he could stand up, a smiling waitress had approached their table and quietly refilled their drinks. When the girl pulled out her wand, Draco noticed distinctive binding runes on it and a simplified goat symbol on the sleeve of her uniform. A Mudblood, which didn’t really surprise him. The only places where Mudbloods could currently find a job were in the service sector: from brothels, through restaurants, to domestic help.

They were permitted to use their wands, provided they placed a runic seal on them. They could use basic spells, attend primary education in a special school, and even take part in public life. Yet their powers remained limited, and they were required to wear clothing marked with a symbol denoting their filthy origins.

There were still some wizards and witches demanding the complete extermination of Mudbloods, but the majority of society, including the Dark Lord, had different views. First of all, he believed that Mudbloods were necessary to maintain the proper hierarchy in society. Secondly, he didn’t dare to say it in public yet, but Draco knew he wasn’t keen on wasting talented witches and wizards for nothing. He would gladly turn a blind eye on their blood status as long as they swore to serve him. Not to mention that every month some of them received a summons to appear at the Institute for Research on the Nature of Wizards and Witches to perform their duties to the Imperium by participating in research and experiments. Officially, they only took part in the project aimed at explaining the origin of their magical ability, but in reality, most of them were assigned to a special unit created by the Dark Lord for Dark Magic tests. If any of them managed to survive a year, they were forced to make the Unbreakable Vow, and then they were hit with the Obliviate and received a perpetual annuity in excess of a paltry forty galleons.

The Dark Lord spared even the Muggles, claiming that killing them all would be an unnecessary act of barbarism. He locked them in several labour camps where they worked on farms and in factories producing equipment that, after being enforced with spells, could be used by wizards and witches who couldn’t afford to buy standard items enchanted by wizard craftsmen. They were allowed to intermarry, but they could have only one child. After its birth, both parents were sterilised. If a child turned out to be a Mudblood, they were taken away from their family and sent to a special school for Mudbloods. The moment a Mudblood graduated, they officially became citizens of the British Wizarding Empire and could — with the exception of areas for pure wizards only — move freely around the country. Their parents weren’t so lucky. They were sent to the laboratory to actively support the research into the origins of Mudbloods.

All this was achieved by the Dark Lord in less than two years after coming to power. The year his party won the elections, at the summit of the International Confederation of Wizards, he questioned the purpose of the International Statute of Secrecy and announced that the Empire would no longer adhere to it. Some European countries and the United States expressed their concern and exhorted the Empire to come to its senses, but for months they did nothing, allowing the Dark Lord to methodically cover more areas of the country with magic barriers until all of it disappeared under an impenetrable dome.

After centuries of tiptoeing, British wizards could finally relax. They no longer had to refrain from performing magic in public or hide in artificially created magical spaces. If you wanted to fly over Big Ben on a broom, you just took it and flew. If you got caught in the rain in Trafalgar Square, you pulled out your wand and cast a spell to repel the raindrops. If your Crup needed a run, you could take it to fucking Hyde Park.

And if you felt like pinching the Mudblood waitress’s arse, well, you could do that, too.

The waitress flinched when she felt Montague’s hand on her backside, but she was still smiling as she was cleaning the shiny table with a spell. Montague gave Draco a meaningful glance, then grabbed the glass and poured its contents onto the floor.

“Oops,” he said theatrically. “Clean up this mess.”

The waitress pointed her wand at the puddle, but Montague stopped her with a hand gesture.

“Not like this. Clean it up the way your parents taught you. Like a Muggle.”

Draco smirked when the forced smile trembled on the waitress’s lips. She looked at him as if she thought he could stop Montague.

“You heard my friend, didn’t you?” Draco drawled, hungry for simple entertainment, not those brain-fucking shows at Goyle’s theatre.

The waitress raised her wand, but Montague knocked it out of her hand. It fell a few steps away, however, the girl didn’t try to pick it up. She stood still, eyes down and her arms pressed rigidly to her sides as if she had been petrified.

Montague tutted theatrically. “No magic.”

The Mudblood opened her mouth, her lips so pale and thin, and said quietly: “I don’t have a cloth, sir. I have to summon it from the kitchen or go get it.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Draco objected, grabbing her elbow as she tried to turn towards the bar. “You have the perfect cloth with you, don’t you?” He ran his hand down her backside and tugged at the hem of her robe.

The girl clenched her fists, but the next moment she was already on her knees. She grabbed the hem of her robe and started wiping the floor with it. Montague stretched out his leg and lifted her chin with the tip of his boot, getting her attention. Her eyes were shining in the soft, dim light. She blinked, holding back tears.

“I said, do it just like your Muggle parents taught you. Clean it with your tongue.”

“I don’t think this one grew up in a brothel like your Mudblood whores,” remarked Draco with a chuckle. “She may have misunderstood your command.”

“Well, we’ve cleared everything up now, so get back to work, Mudblood.”

Draco watched with growing satisfaction as the Mudblood lowered her head, opened her mouth, stuck out her pink, velvety tongue, and finally licked the alcohol off the floor with it. First, with just the tip, like a kitten tasting water from a bowl for the first time, and then, probably realising the ineffectiveness of the chosen method, with the flat tongue and the nose gliding along the cold stone. The floors in the Ehwaz were probably cleaner than the plates in her house, since they were not only cleaned by elves but also — like all public buildings — with self-cleaning spells that were automatically renewed every few minutes. But this position and the Mudblood’s submission made him feel strangely satisfied. As well as the thought that just half an hour ago, the soles of his shoes were treading on the places she was so obediently licking.

At last, everything was as it should be.