#big ol ty to miss Haveawhile for helping me sm with this labor of love!!! xx

[crushribbons]

𝓋𝑜𝓌

summary: Ominis Gaunt never makes promises he can't keep.

cw: 4k words, angst, SMUT (18+ ONLY), arranged marriage, technically cheating ig but not really, penetrative sex, fingering, vv small breeding kink, horrible family dynamics, fem reader. request

a/n: for jas 🤍 xx laney

Her eyes kept drifting over to him across the crowded room. Dozens of people flitted through the restaurant, stopping in front of her table to congratulate her and make her stomach churn with nerves, but there was only one man that she truly wanted to talk to.

He hadn’t come over to the happy couple yet, too absorbed in stirring his untouched drink with the tip of his finger. His lips were pursed like he’d just smelled something unpleasant. Blonde hair swept away from his face carefully, he looked every bit like the sophisticate he was known to be.

But she knew so much more of Ominis Gaunt.

“You’re my everything. The air in my lungs. I need you.”

“Ominis, please, we can’t!”

“You don’t want me to?”

“On the contrary. I want you far too much.”

Someone was talking to her, but her thoughts were a loud rush in her ears and she just smiled up at the buxom, middle-aged woman that was telling her and her betrothed how wonderful the look of young love was. The betrothed in question cleared his throat and gave a thin smile that was more grimace. His back was stiffly upright. 

As the woman drifted away, he turned to the girl to his left. “How much longer do I have to put up with this awfulness?” he asked, grit in his jaw. 

“Why ask me? Your father is the one who insisted on throwing a party and inviting the entire town, Louis,” she muttered back over the top of her water glass. Louis’ mouth did not soften. 

Power, status, and money, disgusting globs of money awaited her after her marriage to this man, and she was trapped, forced to take all of it and wanting none of it. It felt like a slap in the face to those less-privileged for her to be turning her nose up at the comfort and luxury she would enjoy as a Nott, and the guilt wracked her day and night. 

When her father had first told her that he would be offering her hand to the oldest Nott boy, she had wept. 

“You’ll be taken care of forever, my dear,” her father had cooed, attempting parental concern for her for the first time since her birth by patting her on the back. His hand hardly making contact with her, he coughed awkwardly and continued, “You’ll never want for anything.”

“I don’t want anything, father, except for the chance to pick the person I spend the rest of my life with myself!” she had cried.

She remembered the rest all too vividly: attending a dinner party whose purpose, she had been told, was mere “introductions”, and by the end of the night she had been engaged to the man across the table from her who was gripping his knife and fork and glaring at her as if she’d sabotaged the rest of his life on purpose. Since then, they’d spoken no more than eight words to each other (A squeak of “Lovely dinner” from her on the night of their engagement, and a brusque “You ought to have worn white” from him when she arrived at his manor in a somber black dress to have their marital portrait painted) and when she’d been instructed to arrive at the London restaurant they were currently seated at for a party celebrating their betrothal, she’d cried once more.

When she was a young girl, she used to picture the man she would one day marry. He was always fuzzy, nebulous. Kind, of course, and willing to give her the world. Perhaps an artist or some otherwise creatively-inclined profession. Tall and handsome, but his features never swam into focus when she imagined walking down the aisle of a church to him. 

Then, when she was fifteen, she’d met Ominis Gaunt, and the face at the front of the church became perfectly distinct. The demure Slytherin had taken some time to open up to her, but before their sixth year at Hogwarts was over, they were so enamored with one another that she sometimes had to look back at the unclear idea she’d had of love and laugh. It was always Ominis, forever.

Until it wasn’t.

At seventeen, she’d come home to her parents’ estate for the Christmas holiday with stars in her eyes and declared, “I’m in love, and we’re going to get married one day.”

“Really, dear? To whom?” Her mother had absently inquired. The glass of sherry in her hand lolled dangerously from side to side, but she didn’t seem to notice. When she’d told them about Ominis, her father, who until this point had remained silent and uninterested, had guffawed without looking up from the newspaper on his lap and said, “The Gaunts’ sightless little rat? I should like to see you try. That family has gone to the dogs.” Rage boiled up inside her and she opened her mouth to shout, but father had merely held up a hand. “You’re to be married to a strong family when you come of age, and I won’t hear another word about this silly idea of romance you’ve cooked up in your head.”

Since then, there had been a complete moratorium on the topic of Ominis or, indeed, the entire Gaunt family in her household. It killed her very gradually, in ways she didn’t notice until it was too late. She smiled less and less often. The things she used to look forward to, like quiet walks and pumpkin juice and pressing flowers, now seemed as gray as everything else in her life. 

After she left Hogwarts for good, they saw each other as often as they could believably make trips to Hogsmeade to meet up. Nervous glances over her shoulder had become a regular part of being with Ominis, but her passion for him outweighed any fear.

Sirona Ryan had become very adept at noticing dust on the bar when certain members of two of the most prominent families in the British wizarding world would dart, breathless, into her inn and throw several more Galleons than necessary down, pleading silently with her for discretion as they took the room key she handed them.

Ominis’ panting ran endlessly around his lover’s mind as she watched people celebrate the end of their relationship. 

“Come on, darling, come for me.” “C-can’t–S’too good, Om.”

“No, let me hear it, please. Don’t hold back. It’s all I get to bring home with me.”

The crooked and bent elder Mr. Nott was rising to his feet and knocking the side of his champagne glass with a butter knife. “Excuse me,” he thundered out, his gruff voice making the chattering guests and party-goers at their own tables turn their heads to look at him. “I’d like to say a few words in honor of my son, on this, the night before his wedding.”

Ice clawed up the inside of her body, frozen talons digging into her organs and causing fear to flood her throat. Her breath began coming in short, labored gasps. “What does he mean, the night before?” she hissed to Louis, who ignored her. 

Louis wasn’t physically cruel to her, but he made sure to keep her apprised of how unhappy he was with their union. As if she felt any differently.

“To see two great families come together like this,” the elder Nott blustered, “is truly a gift. Not only to us, but to the rest of the wizarding community…” 

She didn’t hear a word of the rest of his slimy posturing. The only word ringing around her ears was wedding, wedding, wedding. She’d been told that there would be a long engagement period to Louis, long enough to plaster their union in the Daily Prophet and throw several redundant parties so that everyone in the country was aware of just how much money her family and the Notts really had. 

But here she was, two weeks after meeting her frigid fiancé, learning that the glass of water in her hand would be her last as a free woman, and everything inside her was screaming for her to get out. How could they deceive her like this? Not only to be forced into a marriage, but blindsided by the actual wedding before she even had a chance to…

To what? she wondered frantically. To tell Ominis she loved him? He already knew a hundred times over, but as she looked across the room to him, she saw the same hard lines carved into his face that were always present when they had to discuss her betrothal.

“Do you hate me for it?” “Hate you? How could I?” A pause, and a bitter expression settled on his lips. “I hate him.”

“I hate him, too, but I can’t do anything to stop this.”

“We could run.”

“Be serious, Ominis.”

“I am.” She felt his hands close over hers and looked down at them. His were covered in scars and burns, faded and gray with age but still a part of him forever. 

“They’d kill you.”

“I’ll be dying either way, my heart.”

Her body ached for Ominis as she watched his jaw tighten further and further with every word Thelonius Nott said. She couldn’t believe he had come to this event. He’d been invited, of course, as had his entire family, but she had hoped for his sake that he would stay away and not have to endure this with her.

When the patriarch lifted his champagne (“To my son,” he said fondly, not sparing a glance at his future daughter-in-law) and commanded the rest of the room to do so, a hundred glasses flew into the air. 

Ninety-nine, at least.

She hoped no one would notice the younger Gaunt boy abstaining from the toast, but at the same time, she preened inwardly. Ominis may have been soft-spoken and calculating in what he chose to say, but his actions always broadcasted his feelings. 

“Excuse me,” she muttered suddenly, surprising Louis and herself by pushing her chair back and standing up. The rest of the party had gone back to their dessert, so hardly any notice was paid to her as she wove through the tables, save for a few well-wishes tossed at her that she returned with a weak smile. As she passed the Gaunt table, where Ominis’ parents and brothers were talking in low tones, she threw a glance back at the head table that she’d been at, making sure no one could see what she did next.

She tripped, just a quick, stuttered movement orchestrated by stepping on the train of her dress, and grabbed onto Ominis’ chair for support

“Are you alright?” squawked a man behind her that she’d bumped slightly. Before the Gaunts could look up from their plates and notice her standing there, she ran a finger subtly up the back of Ominis’ neck and twirled the small curl of hair on his nape around, just once. It took less than a second, but Ominis stiffened immediately, his breath cutting out and his fork falling to his plate with a clatter.

“Please,” she whimpered under her breath, quiet enough so that no one but him heard her. 

She felt him before she saw him.

“Om–” He cut her off and pressed her to the brick wall of the alley behind the restaurant, where she’d fled after stopping at his table. She hoped he’d had the good sense to wait a few beats before following her, but she also knew the effect that her touch had on him. She’d been rubbing his neck like that since they were sixteen, a silent way to let him know that she was next to him, with him, there for him. 

It didn’t hurt that it also drove him wild. 

She knew it was a horrible idea. Sneaking out of her engagement party to fuck another man when her fiancé’s family had people killed for much less, but her mind was such a whirlwind of fear and anxiety and the only thing she wanted was the feel of Ominis’ mouth against hers. Her constant, her grounding.

“Don’t do this,” he was moaning into her lips, grinding his hips against hers as she clutched at his suit like she would float away if she didn’t. “I’ll never stop needing you, so please–” “I don’t want to!” she gasped. Tears were pooling in her eyes, and she was grateful for a moment that Ominis could not see them. “More than anything, I want to be with you, you know that.”

“Then let me take you away from here.” Ominis felt around the back of her dress to determine how best to remove it. She swatted his hands away and took his face in her hands. Words wouldn’t come to her. All she wanted was to look at him like this, desperate and frazzled, his perfect silver hair already tousled. His pale eyes saw her in a way no sighted person ever had.

She pulled him into a kiss, softer and sweeter than before, and he groaned and pulled his fingers through her hair, inadvertently combing it, and she hiccuped a small giggle. 

“You can’t help but take care of me, can you, Mr. Gaunt?” 

“I can’t, Mrs. Gaunt.”

Hearing the title fall from his lips made her heart soar and plummet in the same breath. 

“Don’t say that,” she pleaded as he began kissing his way down her neck to the top of her cleavage. They’d talked about marriage, of course they had, but that had been lifetimes ago, when they were happy young things who didn’t know what cruelty life had in store for them. She’d even once filled a piece of parchment with the words “Madame Gaunt” in elegant flourishes, and when Ominis had found it in her school bag, he hadn’t stopped smiling for a week. After he’d finished teasing her, naturally.

“I won’t call you anything else,” he promised stubbornly. 

A shriek of laughter came from inside the restaurant, followed by a tinkle of broken glass. The noise shattered their isolated little bubble and they both stared at the back door they’d used to enter the alley. “They’ll notice me gone,” she whispered, feeling suddenly small underneath Ominis’ tall, lean body. “Or someone will walk out here and find us and–”

Ominis never gave her orders, preferring instead to worship the ground she walked on, but as he knelt down to grasp the hem of her dress, he said, “Stop it. Be quiet. If this is my last night with you, I won’t let anyone take it away from me.” He pulled the dress up so it bunched around her waist and slithered one hand inside her undergarments, and any protestations that she might have made fell off her lips, dead. 

His long fingers slid on top of her clit and rubbed them like he had all the leisure time in the world. Her core flooded, soaked after mere seconds with him, and the feeling made Ominis’ head drop to rest against her forehead. 

“Let me ask you once more,” he breathed.

“No.”

“Please.”

“Ominis, they–” Her words were cut off as he pushed two fingers inside her and pumped slowly.

“Let me ask,” he said again, and this time, it was not a request.

Pleasure was wringing her out and weakening the little resolve she had. “Ask me,” she consented with a whimper.

“Run away with me. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, show you anything you want to see, and we’ll be together.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked her. It wasn’t the second; in fact, she’d lost count of how many times he had begged and pleaded with her to flee their lives and go somewhere where they could live as they wanted. It had become his way of saying “I love you.” 

It was everything she wanted, and she would never do it. She still remembered when her father had found her holding a letter from Ominis and ripped it out of her grasp. 

“If I see you anywhere near that boy or having anything to do with him, I’ll kill him,” he had growled as he ripped Ominis’ words to shreds and threw them into the fireplace. “And Thelonius Nott will do a lot worse, you can count on that.”

“Ominis, I can’t, I just can’t,” she sobbed, half in anguish and half in pleasure as he continued fucking her with his fingers and mouthing along her flushed neck. “I swear, I want nothing more, but I won’t put you in danger.” His hand slowed, but he said nothing. The white heat twisting itself in a coil in her stomach threatened to unravel and she whimpered. 

“I don’t care about any of that,” Ominis said. He pulled out of her and stuck the two fingers covered in her wetness into her mouth. Her own taste against her tongue made her moan shamelessly, and Ominis drank the sound down like the finest wine. He pulled her into another kiss, and she felt his erection grind against her core. A sudden thought floated into her lust-hazy head and she pushed hard against his shoulders to stop his kiss. 

“You know, I don’t know much about Louis Nott, but I know how he likes his women,” she said, gritting her jaw in annoyance at her intended.

She could tell that her lover bristled at the mention of Nott, but he raised his eyebrows. “And how does he like them?”

“Thirty galleons for the night.” He sucked in a breath that might have been a laugh in any other situation. “Darling, I may have to read vows that someone else wrote tomorrow,” she continued, nerves making her shake slightly, “But let me make my own now, please.” Ominis furrowed his brow. 

She took a deep breath. Ominis’ face was still there, in that church in her mind, but that church was now a brick-paved alleyway behind a restaurant in Diagon Alley. The only guests were a few curious rodents that kept their distance and the only decor were some potholes filled with water from the rain that afternoon and a streetlamp whose flame spluttered feebly every few seconds. 

And it was perfect. 

Taking his hands in hers, she took a deep breath and released it. “Ominis Gaunt, I will love you with everything inside me until the day I leave this earth to meet you again in heaven.” Ominis was silent, or maybe speechless. “And…” 

She took his right hand by the wrist and pressed it against her heart, which was hammering wildly. “No other man will ever have my body. It’s yours.”

“It’s yours,” Ominis replied, and the simple statement made her choke. It wasn’t true, never had been. Since birth, she’d been used as cannon fodder in her family’s war for power. For anyone to give her autonomy felt like being a timid, scared little bird released from its cage for the first time. She leaned in to kiss him, but he sensed her nearness and held a hand in front of his lips that hers landed against, and she gave a small grunt of frustration. 

“My turn now,” he whispered. He bit his lip, pulling it through his teeth for a long second as he considered something. Then, in one fluid motion, he pressed her back against the wall, pulled her underwear down her waist, pulled his aching and dripping cock from his trousers, and grabbed at her thighs. With a little yelp, she realized what he was doing and accommodated him, wrapping her legs around his waist. His hard cock pressed at her entrance and the two panted with desperation for a moment. Ominis seemed to be fighting the urge to fuck her before he got his words out. 

“You are my heart. Every day, when I wake up, I thank the gods for giving me you, and then I curse them for taking you away.” She couldn’t make a sound, wound too tightly by the desire to feel him inside her. “There is nothing in this world that could keep me away from you, except at your word.” His cadence was that of a prayer, and as she was considering what he said, he pushed his cock into her, holding her ass to guide himself inside, and the two moaned in mutual pleasure. He was so thick, so full inside her, and when he began moving, bouncing her back against the wall with one hand braced up beside her glistening face, her mouth fell open. 

“Fuck, darling,” she cried. “I–fuck, I love you so much.” 

The extraordinarily touch-sensitive Ominis couldn’t continue his vows for a long while, clearly too caught up in the feeling of her cunt wrapped around him. His mouth was agape as well, and his cloudy eyes were wild and frantic. He fucked her slow, then fast, then slow again, dragging himself in and out in agonizing torture and muttering in drunken reverence about how tight she was.

“Even if I never see you again, not an ounce of my love will be found missing,” he swore through his teeth once he was able to speak again. “And if you ever crave the freedom they all deny you, I will give it to you in an instant. We’ll run, anywhere, and we’ll do it hand-in-hand, my heart.” His thrusts were losing rhythm, the extra flood of slick from her core making him slip out of her a few times, but he righted himself and tried to give her everything he was promising. The feeling of slamming down on his cock was enough to drive her senseless. The muted sounds of their fucking filled the alleyway and echoed off the damp brick wall.

He reached down between their intertwined, sweating bodies and pressed one torturing finger against her clit as he muttered, “My fucking perfect wife.” An orgasm tore through her like a wildfire and she screamed, so hard that Ominis shoved his extra hand into her mouth so she could bite it and silence herself. He supported her with just his hips as he rubbed her clit gently through the blaze. Her teeth were still sunk in his hand when he came with a groan and a sigh, thrusting his load languidly inside her. 

If she’d been able to notice anything, she might have noticed that it seemed Ominis was more than usually determined to fuck every drop into her and make sure it stayed there. After several minutes of panting and murmured kisses and affection while Ominis leaned against her, he pulled off and out of her, and she slumped to the ground before he caught her, his own legs looking slightly wobbly, as well. He felt her dress and hair, smoothing any wrinkles and knots his fingers found.

“You really won’t sleep with him?” he asked her in a small voice she’d never heard before, and her eyes flew to his to see a vulnerable and heartbroken Ominis she wasn’t familiar with. 

It was a very easy promise to make. “As long as I have any say in it,” she whispered back, pressing their foreheads together once more and drawing a tiny, hopeful smirk to his lips. “I don’t think it will be much of a problem, though.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“I charge thirty-five galleons for the night.” She held out an open palm and tapped him in the chest with it so he knew that she was waiting for payment. Ominis actually laughed, and the sound bolstered her. The prospect of walking down the aisle to meet Louis tomorrow seemed significantly less terrifying now.

“We ought to get you back inside,” he said, but before she could agree and wonder at how long the two had been gone, Ominis had scooped her into his arms, ignoring her cry and giggle, and drew an invisible line on the ground with his toe.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“The doorstep,” he replied simply, and carried her over it.

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