October 7th, 1888 — Oakshire Hall, Kent

Tig sprinted up the stairs soaking wet and fighting the urge to shiver. She was aware that Tiberius was back but had spent most of the time since his return avoiding life in her animagus form well away from the house. She hadn't actually seen him or spoken to him but she'd glimpsed him and heard him existing in the general area in the brief time she had spent home. It pleased her to live like a wild animal, she felt free for the first time in years and being the largest predator in the English countryside made her feel powerful. The only reason she'd come home today was because of the relentlessly heavy rain, all she could think of was a hot bath. It shouldn't be too difficult to get that bath and leave again after a good night of sleep without seeing Tiberius.

Her bedroom door was in sight but she instinctively stopped at what she was fairly certain was the sound of someone else coming up the stairs. Tig glanced over her shoulder automatically but no one had appeared yet. What she did see was wet footprints and a gathering puddle at her feet. Oops. She gathered the bottom of her robe and wrung it out onto the floor. Ha. Someone was going to have to clean that up later. She continued towards her bedroom door, starting to remove her robe as she walked. That is, until she heard a floorboard creak. Tugging it back down again, she whirled around and scowled in the direction of the noise. Upon seeing that it was her husband she sneered. She was about to reach for the doorknob of her bedroom door so she could avoid him but then thought it might look as though he was running away from him. Her pride kicked in and she resisted the urge, holding her ground and hoping he'd silently walk past her.
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Upon his return from the woods, Tiberius had holed himself up in his study with the door locked, and had hardly stirred. He didn't want to be disturbed, and the study was the only room in the house where he could be entirely certain that the servants would leave him be and not knock to offer breakfast or tea if he locked himself in. He'd slept there on the sofa by the fire, although even with some transfigured alterations it was nowhere near as comfortable as his bed. Not that he was sleeping much anyway.

The only thing that had caused him to stir was the sudden remembrance that he was not the only one with a key to the study door. He'd given one to Antigone, though now he had no idea what demon had possessed him and driven him to such idiocy. He didn't want to see her — her, of all people, who had been haunting him these past few months, hounding his thoughts across the sea to the continent and through the mountains and driving him through all this madness — and it was worth the effort to replace the lock. Mechanically, he had decided; he wasn't sure exactly what her skill level with transfiguration really was, since he had never expected her to make the leap to become an Animagus, and he didn't trust that any retransfiguration of the lock he could work could not be undone by persistent attentions from his wife. No, he'd go in to London and order a craftsman in to replace the lock as soon as possible, tomorrow if he could — but that required him to look presentable, and since he hadn't changed his clothes in two days (and had last worn them outside in the midst of a thunderstorm), he certainly was not.

Of course he would head up to his bedroom at the one moment Antigone happened to be in the hall. He scowled at her, sure that she had planned this — had she been stalking the house in cat form, listening for him, waiting to ambush him after the storm? He made a conscious effort to straighten his shoulders and stand tall as he approached her, despite the sharp pain that spidered out from the back of his neck at the motion.

  

Without thinking about it she mirrored his behavior, straightening her spine as far as it would allow and tilted her chin a fraction higher than was normal. He wasn't saying anything, would she be forfeiting power in the situation by speaking first? Would it bother him more if she did speak?

After some deliberation, she decided she'd break the silence and risk the chance that he'd see it as some sort of weakness rather than an annoyance. Tig raised her eyebrows, completing her haughty stance. "So you're back then." It wasn't a question.

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She looked even more out of sorts than he did, with her wet dress and frazzled hair. While he was curious as to what had caused her state of disarray, he wasn't willing to longer in the hallway to question her and risk her returning the favor. No, he'd rather walk by and say nothing. Perhaps he'd look into where she had been later; more likely, he'd decide her didn't care when he had the lock sorted and he could be sure of a sanctuary there, free from the chance of encountering his wife.

He hesitated at her question, sure at first that it was referring to his absence from the house during the storm and might be some sort of coded jab. He realized after a second's reflection that they actually hadn't seen each other properly since his return from abroad. That was a slightly less provocative subject, but he still had very little desire to discuss it.

"Yes," he said curtly, moving to pass her. Had she noticed a difference in his posture before he straightened up? Could he hold this until he was safely out of sight? He didn't know whether she even cared enough to notice, but wanted to take no chances.

  

She scowled again. Was he brushing her off? How dare he! He'd used the imperius curse on her, reacted improperly to her transformation, and then barely communicated with her since! He wasn't going to sweep her under the rug like dirt beneath his feet.

"I don't think so," she snarled, clapping a hand to his shoulder as he tried to pass her. She wanted to push him against the opposite wall to show her displeasure but settled for simply impeding his progress.

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"Let go of me," he snarled, reacting before her hand had even made contact with his shoulder. He wrenched his arm back, but not quickly enough to avoid her entirely. The friction of the fabric moving against his still tender skin was painful, but less so than what he'd caused himself with such a quick movement. Would it stop hurting when he's healed, or was this his new normal? Would he ever feel confident using the gift range of motion of his arms again without giving something away? Or would that slight trembling, the sign of weakness, stick with him?

Nonsense. He'd been on the bottom floor when the Ministry had collapsed on top of him, and he'd found a way to erase the scars from that. He would not live his life a cripple; he would be made whole. In the meantime, though, he wouldn't let Antigone see what had happened. Given that she would hardly expect him to visit her bedroom, that should be fairly simple, provided he could end this interaction without giving anything away. He needed more time.

"What do you want?" he demanded, turning his back to the wall so that she might be less likely to notice if his posture began to suffer. His face was more composed now, though he hadn't been able to entirely stop himself from flinching at her touch.

  

She could hardly have expected for him to respond positively to her accosting him, but something struck her as off about the way in which he responded. He seemed particularly unwilling for her to physically obstruct him, almost as though the very thought of her touching him disgusted him in some way, but why would she disgust him? It wasn't as though she had some sort of violently contagious and hopelessly incurable magical disease.

Had Tig not settled on disgust as being the cause of his somewhat abnormal reaction, she might have taken more pleasure in exploiting a perceived weakness. Instead she was a little affronted, but mostly agitated; what about her could possibly be disgusting? Certainly she was soaked through to the skin but she couldn't imagine that would particularly bother him.

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion as she eyed him. "You're behaving abnormally." With the same hand as before, she made a grab for his forearm. "Why?" It was not the reason she had initially stopped him from going about his business, but it was now her main focus. Was it her touch in particular or her overall presence? Would he react as violently if she touched him without the element of surprise?

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He had expected her to just know, somehow, even though his every thought for the past two days had revolved around keeping it from her. After so many months of effort devoted entirely to this subject, and all those months thinking about her, picturing what she must be doing and thinking, it was impossible to believe she had not been as singularly occupied. And if she had been mentally tracking his progress the way he had been imagining and anticipating her reactions every step of the way, it was foolish to think she might not have also guessed at the climax. If she hadn't been sure before, certainly she would be, now. Could she see it in the way he held himself? Smell it leaking from his pores like sweat?

She must have been taunting him with the question. She wanted to force him to say it. His lip curled in derision as he pulled his arm back from her touch again.

"Fuck off," he growled, turning towards his bedroom door.

  

It only took those two words to make her see red. "How about no." The urge from before returned and this time she went with it. She moved her one hand back to his shoulder and simultaneously pushed him towards the wall while she slammed her other hand against the wall just in front of him to bar him from moving any closer to the door of his room.

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Mostly on instinct and reflex rather than any form of conscious thought, Tiberius returned her violent gesture with one of his own and struck her across the face with the back of his open hand. It wasn't the first time he'd hit his wife, but it might have been the first time he'd done so with so little apparent provocation. He certainly didn't make a habit of abusing her in hallways where any servant might happen by and become a witness, but he had been restless and irritable since the storm, and he was clearly in no mood to be detained so that she could jeer at him.

  

She hadn't been expecting him to sit back and let her push him around but the strike still took her by surprise. The hand she'd had on his shoulder had immediately withdrawn to clasp her stinging cheek but Tig had stopped herself halfway through the motion so now it remained by her side. She was still seeing stars but was determined to act as though it had been had been no more than a gentle tap.

He really didn't want to be around her, did he?

While her face still smarted, the smack had at least dulled her temper for the time being which meant she could actually think. Why would he be so apparently desperate to avoid her? It wasn't as though he'd ever implied that he found her physically repulsive, unless he had a violent aversion to the damp but that seemed silly. It also wasn't really the first instance in which he'd behaved so seemingly irrationally, the last time she'd seen him he'd used the imperius curse on her. He'd used it on her to make her go away...

Her eyes widened with realization and her lips twisted into a smug grin. "I know what you're not telling me," she murmured tauntingly. It wasn't quite true, but she was confident now that the root of it lay in her becoming an animagus. Whether he'd achieved it himself now she wasn't sure. If it were her she wouldn't have come back until she'd succeeded, so why was he still put out? Had he only completed part of it and come back to await the final stage? There had been lightning just the other day, but wouldn't he be treating her normally if that were the case? Unless he'd ended up turning into something humiliating or botched it, those had been her greatest fears and ones that would have made her furtive and irritable. However, he looked perfectly human as far as she could tell and she couldn't believe he'd be so incompetent as to make a mistake. He must have turned into something pathetic like a pigeon or a snail.

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Fire flashed in his eyes at her defiant words. His hand twitched at his side. He wanted to do something, but he wasn't sure what. Hit her again? Draw his wand? Neither would really solve anything. He could silence her, either through magic or force, but he wouldn't be able to take that smug look off of her face. She did know — or had guessed, at any rate. Nothing short of muddling her memories would take that knowledge from her. The idea bounced around his head once, but then he discarded it — even in the heat of his anger in this moment, he had no use for a witless wife. Lucius had had his mouse long enough to get half a dozen children from her, but Antigone couldn't even do that; if he ruined her mind, there would be no reason to keep her around. He may as well just kill her — and after working so hard to keep her alive during her last pregnancy and through the disastrous labor, letting her die now seemed almost like a personal failure.

Tiberius Lestrange was not a man used to failure, and he'd had quite enough of it already. He wouldn't let her ruin everything with this one needling moment in the hallway. Shooting her an ugly look, he shoved the arm she was still holding across him out of the way and turned back towards the door.

  

His apparent rage only spurred her on. Her recent lifestyle choices might have left her starved of human interaction but she was solely motivated by her favored past time of getting under his skin. It was proving to be particularly easy this evening. So easy that she was starting to runaway with herself. Somewhere between The Easter Incident and her ferality, her respect for personal space - certainly his personal space - had diminished and what little impulse control she might have had, had all but died.

Case in point, the fact that she had let him shove her arm away only to accost him again from behind with no thought for how, what was essentially an embrace, would have at another time seemed vile, demeaning, and utterly beneath her dignity. Of course she was hardly clinging to him like a groveling lover, on the contrary it was to provoke him, just like the low, taunting murmur she breathed against the side of his neck. "What are you?" Had she had more presence of mind Tig might have realized that her cold, damp clothing was probably working against her. Some instinct she didn't question had her tightening her grasp and pressing herself as closely to him as was possible, like an octopus encircling prey.

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Had she not reached out to grab him, he likely would have just kept on towards his bedroom. As it was, she'd hit on exactly where his still-healing scars were, though she couldn't have known that. He stumbled under the sudden and unexpected pain, putting a hand up to the wall to keep himself from crumpling in the hallway. That, more than anything else — that display of weakness — pushed him over the edge.

"Nothing!" he exclaimed, the word exploding out of him. He wretched around to throw her off, lashing out blindly to push her as far away as possible. "Leave me alone, slag. When I want you for something, I'll call you." He glared, then added contemptuously, "Maybe I'll put a dish of milk out in the hallway."

  

Tig's grip slackened as she processed his unexpected reaction. Was he injured? Had something gone wrong after all? What other explanation could there be for the way he was behaving? For some reason it wasn't smugness that she felt at this, it was something else altogether. He had said 'nothing', hadn't he? What was he implying, that he wasn't even an animagus, had he failed that spectacularly? How had he let it happen? Tig had felt magically inferior to him from day one, he was older and more experienced and he'd only reasserted this by occasionally teaching her things she hadn't known before; that he could fail at something that now seemed simple to her, contradicted her ideal of him. If he was weak and fallible, then what did that make her?

She didn't resist him when he shoved her away from him, only stared at him impassively. If she'd been smirking before she wasn't now. "I do wish you hadn't said that, it makes you seem pathetic as well as a failure. Believe me when I say I'm too disappointed to take any pleasure in it." Surprisingly she wasn't trying to be spiteful, Tig was genuinely disappointed in him, to taunt or tease him would only destroy what respect she might still have for him. "If you'll excuse me, I want a hot bath." She started off hastily for her own bedroom, now intent on being the first to leave.

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Tiberius deflated almost immediately as she pulled away. He shouldn't have said it, even if she already knew or suspected. At least a moment ago he'd still had some level of deniability, though he couldn't have kept it up indefinitely. He'd need at least another six months, most likely, before he could attempt it again — if he was even willing to attempt it again. The only thing he had to show for his last six months of effort was a web of raw scars over his shoulders and upper back, and a ruined suit. He could have died, or gotten stuck in some sort of mongoloid half-man hybrid form. Was it worth the risk just to prove to her that he could do it?

Tiberius would have sworn he didn't care what she thought, and would have said as much to anyone — but there was something in the look she gave him, before she made her excuse and left, that hurt worse than the scars on his back.

He said nothing. There was a bad taste in his mouth.

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   Antigone Lestrange