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Daphne looked around the dingy tattoo parlour. Her father would kill her for being here, for even contemplating what she was about to do. Her mother and grandmother would’ve been proud, though.
“How did you start out?” She wasn’t all that curious really, but she needed him trained-- very well-trained-- for what she intended to do.
“I worked hard on a portfolio and then apprenticed for a few years. Not exactly fun, that, but not the worst either. Do you see anything you like?” Dean Thomas stood in front of her, hip cocked out, jeans slung low enough to be inviting but not obscene. He was casually polishing a silver instrument with a bit of cloth.
“Not especially,” she muttered, scanning the various daggers, skulls, lovehearts, and lettering. Heavily inked drawings covered every flat surface. “I’m looking for something a bit different.”
“I occasionally take on custom work”—he paused with a smirk—“when the price is right. What are you interested in?”
“Runic,” she said, gauging his reaction.
He let out a low whistle. “You sure?” She nodded, once. “With what intent?” he asked.
She raised a sculptured eyebrow. “You’re willing?”
“Sure.” He shrugged a lazy shoulder, but his eyes gleamed. “But I need to know the intent. And, we’ll have to practice.”
“Practice?”
“Yeah, on dead pigs. The flesh is closest to human. And for something like this, well, accuracy is important.”
“Dead pigs,” she whispered under her breath, a slow smile spreading across her lips. Perfect. “Right,” she turned toward the exit. “I’m working on the array, I’ll owl you when it’s ready.”
Three days later, she watched as his needles hummed and buzzed, laying down precise lines on the porcine carcass. She licked her lips and leaned forward.
Soon.
“Sweet Circe.” He turned his head to stare at her. “Why?”
So, he’d figured out what the runes did. It had always been a risk, bringing in an outsider, but she couldn’t tattoo herself. She could neither reach all the proper spots on her body, nor depend on her hands not to shake. She stared at him, assessing whether he’d continue or not. Why, he had asked. Why indeed.
“Because when you’ve seen your grandmother and great-grandmother, and cousins, and aunts, and si-sister,” she choked. “When you’ve seen them all in anguish, dehumanized, stripped of everything that makes them them, all for the entertainment and profit of your male relatives-- justice is not enough.”
He tilted his head as if to say fair enough.
“There were rumours at Hogwarts about a curse.”
She huffed, but never took her eyes off the array he was tattooing. “Curse, yeah. We’re all cursed,” she muttered.
“Not a curse?”
“Blood malediction.”
He lifted the tattoo needle and turned. “You’re kidding.”
She could see the intelligence behind his eyes, the calculation. He was reasoning out the other rumours about the Greengrass family: young brides, short courtships, wealth, the potions ingredients, the fucking trophy room, the–the menagerie.
“You know I’m not.”
“Who laid it down?”
“Maitland Greengrass,” she spat.
“The founder of your line?” he nearly choked--but his hands were steady.
Her eyes widened. What did he know about her family? She silently demanded an explanation.
“Did you think I wouldn’t do the background work? Runic tattoos aren’t for the faint of heart. They can cause catastrophic damage if miscalculated. I don’t fool around with this–it’s my career, not just a hobby.”
She nodded a silent apology.
“Are you–?” His question trailed away, and he stood there, staring at her. As though working out whether she’d change right in front of him.
She jerked her head at the pig for him to get back to work. “Not yet.”
“Yet?”
She sighed. She hadn’t explained herself to anyone. Ever. But he was easy to talk to, and at least he seemed pissed off about it, rather than fascinated. Rather than acquisitive.
“I have not yet had sex. That–” she waved her hand, “instigates the process. Pregnancy and childbirth exacerbates it. Most born-Greengrass women have only one child because the change becomes permanent by then. I have a sister only because my mother was a Yaxley before she married my father. It works more slowly on the wives.”
“But Astoria–”
“Yes. Which is why this needs doing now.” Her sister was pregnant with Draco Fucking Malfoy’s child.
“Did Malfoy know?”
She bit the inside of her cheek till it bled. “Finish the array.” She waved her hand at the pig. “Of course he knew. They all know. It’s in the fucking marriage contract. It’s always in the contract. Dispensation for the Spouse,” she sneered. “For other families, it’s the simple matter of an allowance after the dissolution of a marriage. For us, it’s always a return to the family. Sounds innocuous, doesn’t it? Return to the family. We return to be harvested or hunted or forced into service," she paused. "It depends on what we become. And when we are no longer of any use–” she choked. Composure. She had to find her composure. “Except for 'Story. The Malfoys, being Malfoys, get to keep her.”
“Keep her?” he repeated, his voice aghast.
“To add to their flock.” She bit every word out.
“Fucking hell.”
“Quite.” She took a deep breath. “So get back to work.”
“And this will reverse–”
“Yes.” Her smile became predatory. Yes, it would reverse Maitland's work, return in kind to the man--men-- who deserved it.
“The runes are beautiful. How did you calculate them?”
“I didn’t. Not all of it. This is generations of desperation, finally taking form. The work has been passed from sister to sister, grandmother to granddaughter, on and on. The secret opus of the Greengrass women.” She watched as the runes her ancestors had developed slowly took form in dead flesh. Once the final version was ready and he had had enough practice, her blood mixed with the magic in the ink would bring their revenge to life.
Then, she would wear the will of generations past and the salvation of those yet to come. All her daughters, and their daughters, and granddaughters till there was no more of her blood on earth. No longer would the women of her family be mere broodmares to the pureblood line of her fathers.
“Damn,” he breathed out. “True what they say about a woman scorned and all that.”
She just smiled.
They stood in the same stone ring that Maitland Greengrass had used seven hundred years before. Candles hung suspended in a circle around them, inverted, so the flame licked the bottoms rather than the tops. Earlier, Daphne had killed a falcon and fed it to a mousing owl, which now perched in the trees behind them.
In the twilight, Daphne and Dean shared a long, steady look.
“Last chance,” he said. “Are you certain? I cannot stop once we start.”
She returned his gaze evenly. She was not a fool. She had the certainty of generations before her, the certainty of her nephew’s impending birth, of her sister’s life in her hands, of her own life to be lived.
Dean chuckled. “All right, stupid question. Let’s do this.”
Daphne stripped without seduction or embarrassment. Businesslike, she lay on the stones and prepared herself.
“Circe, you’re beautiful,” Dean muttered. The blush barely showed under his dark skin and in the dusk of falling night. She suppressed her amusement.
“Thank you.” She took a deep breath. “No pity; this is my choice.” He nodded. “And you’re not so bad yourself.”
His blush intensified.
Then, he knelt over her and began to inscribe lines, circles, angles, glyphs, and runes over the pale exposed skin.
Daphne felt the whisper of the wind course over her exposed skin, raising gooseflesh and tightening her nipples. She closed her eyes against the night sky, and listened to the hum of the needle, the clink of the ink bottle, and Dean's shifting clothing.
Her insides warmed, slowly filling with magic. The heat of Dean's hand seared as he ran his palm over her breastbone before setting the needle to her skin. It acted as a conduit, penetrating her body over and over again, expelling the ink, blood, and potion, filling her up. She gave herself up to the bite of the needle as it swept down her center, around the curve of each breast, over the soft flesh of her stomach, up her ticklish sides. Dean inked the runes over her, and her skin gave under the gentle pressure of his fingers.
Dean had practiced but it had never felt like this. He had covered five dead pigs in runes, repeating each sweep of the needle until he could get each rune balanced and spaced perfectly, each line smooth and unbroken. For this kind of work, transfers were a joke. Not even a faint pen line could mar the skin before he began.
Unblemished.
She was gorgeous. Not a scar, not a freckle, not a single pimple or blister broke the perfection of her skin. It was a soft, supple dream to work on.
Her breath came in shorter and shorter gasps. The needle pierced the outer edge of her breast, slowly working in a spiral toward her pebbled nipple, and Daphne caught her lip in her teeth.
Dean used a soft cloth to wipe up the blood and ink, his fingers, sticky with the fluids, tracing the lines he’d left behind. He added the Sowilo for the sun right at the apex of her thighs, holding his breath as her skin twitched under his needle.
She was the perfect canvas.
Daphne rolled over at his urging, his palm caressing over her hip, and his fingers in her hair, sweeping it out of his way. He started on her nape, just below her hairline, a string of runes, one for each of her foremothers. Down her spine, over bone, between her shoulderblades, the dip of her back, 33 generations ending with her, just as her buttocks split. The delicate skin parting around his needle, splitting open, absorbing the ink. She bit her lower lip, closed her eyes and dug her fingers into the stones below her. Her legs spread wider, and her toes curled. The pain, sharp and biting, blended with the forbidden situation. She was naked, splayed out under the rising moon, exposed before a muggleborn boy, and the illicit sensations were laced through with the seduction of dark magic. She panted. If she could only breathe.
Dean watched her squirm under his hands. He had done that. He had filled her with magic, with power. She had submitted beautifully to the needle and ink, and on the unmarked canvas of her body, he had wrought, with ink and blood the most complicated tattoos known to wizardkind. The runes glowed with inner magic, adding to the golden-pale perfection of her skin.
And what an array! Circe, her ancestors had created a work of art. He had no idea why she had chosen him to ink it, but it was an honour to do this, to be a part of this magic.
Dean moved around her, extinguishing the candles surrounding them, placing them in a bag along with his supplies.
“It’s done,” he murmured, breaking the silence. She turned her head to watch. He moved with a fluid grace, rummaging around in his bag for something, his eyes carefully avoiding her bared skin now that he no longer had a professional interest in it. She smirked. She might be innocent–for now, but she wasn’t a fool. He wouldn’t not watch her like that if he didn’t want to watch her much more.
“Um, here?” He handed her a potion. “It’s to finish the tattoo, help it heal and set.”
She raised an eyebrow and passed it back to him with a slow smooth smile. She rolled to her back and let her legs splay open. She could feel the magic pulsing in the runes and knew. Finally, she was free to touch and be touched. Finally, she could indulge.
“Then, you had better put it on, hadn't you?”
Later, she was striding through the dew-damp grass on bare feet, not even a robe to cover her, wearing only the runes from neck to knee, a band of magic that supported and sustained all the women she called family. The runes drew on her magic with every step. Power flowed around her, sparked off in the direction of the menagerie, seeped through the inky darkness to fulfill her purpose.
Dean followed silently, a shadow at her back, strong and supportive.
She heard a crash from inside the manor, followed by the high pitched whine of an animal’s panicked squealing. Her grandmother’s voice rose clear over the noise, directing someone toward the barn. Her mother’s silhouette stood tall on two feet in the doorway, welcoming her back.
Finally.
“Dean, you can have all the pigs you want to practice on.”