AN: Right, so this was written all the way back last June (which was, essentially, one whole year ago) and posted up at dmhgficexchange. So it isn't new, but I'm going through the files on my laptop and deleting things and I figured I might as well upload this. Enjoy! The request is at the bottom.

Following Hammurabi

The smell of the musty room penetrates her nose, slowly awakening her as broken fragments of memories flashes through her head. Bright lights and grey eyes devoid of everything except for malice are the only things she remembers.

She muffles a groan of pain that threatens to escape. Every inch of her body is screaming with pain right now and she knows she must look a sight. In this dark and dank room, focusing on keeping her breathing even is a task that seems to take strength she never knew she had. Training tells her that she must have at least one broken rib.

She listens intently to any sounds that might help her work out where she is at the moment and is disappointed when all she hears are the high-pitched squeaks of scampering rats.

…rats.

Wormtail.

Voldemort.

Shit.

But she is still undeniably happy when she knows that her mind isn't broken yet – only her body. But she is aware that that might not be the case for long. A clanging noise fills the cell-like room and makes her flinch instinctively. She curses herself for letting her guard down, and the phrase Mad-Eye Moody always utters – Constant Vigilance! – runs through her mind like a mantra that can't be stopped. So she opens her eyes a little, just to see her surroundings.

There is no medieval torture device in the middle of the room. There are no chains or padlocks. There are no decomposing bodies or skeletons. There is only stone and slime.

Stone and slime…

It is only due to the cruelty of fate that the one of the most attractive man she has ever met also happens to be one of the biggest monsters she has ever known. His patrician nose, high cheekbones and full lips suggest nothing but generations upon generations of high-class breeding. She is staring, she knows. But in this society where family genealogy is more important than talent, he is of the top tier.

She's fascinated with his movements and knows there is no possibility of her moving – even if she wasn't hexed. How he has changed since she first met him, she thinks. How he looks so much like the man who is more of a man than any other male she has ever known, even Ron and Harry. And that opens a door she promised she wouldn't open and a barrage of memories and tears and questions and whatthefucks pour out of her.

He smiles at the pathetic figure she cuts against… against what, exactly? It's brave of her to lift her head to look straight at him, he thinks. Oh but how stupid…

Legilimens.

Pleasenopleasenopleaseno, she begs silently. Trying so hard to call upon the lessons she has learned from Harry and from Moody, she fails horribly. So now, it's all she can do to stop the scream of anguish and horror from escaping her mouth. She bites down hard on her tongue, mixing tiny rivulets of blood with her saliva. He's not going to kill her – no, the memories are going to kill her.

Voldemort has been in control of the world for so long, nearly ten years. Huddling around a dying fire, amidst the dilapidated ruins of what was once the Gryffindor Common Room, is a mismatched group of fifteen or so. They are, as they like to call themselves, the Lost Generation. Lost, because of the inability for them to graduate – not because they failed their NEWTs or their OWLs – but because of the untimely death of Dumbledore, and only a few months later, Minerva McGonagall.

With the murder of Dumbledore, Snape is never fully accepted back into the Order. It doesn't matter if Dumbledore's Pensieve reveals that Snape had been ordered by Dumbledore himself to kill him if it ever came down to it. Bitterness over the death of their leader consumes the Order until it is nothing but a hollow shell, fighting not for a cause they believe in, but in the memory of the one.

Faced with the knowledge that only grunt work is given to him and ill treatment despite his near constant self-endangerment, Snape cracks and leaves the Order. He tells himself that if everyone believes him to be a traitor of Dumbledore, then he damn well will become one. He is now allies with Voldemort and he tells him every single secret held deep within the hearts of the members of the Order, every single secret passage they know, every single potion they make, every single spell they conjure.

And when he finishes telling Voldemort everything he knows, he is killed. Voldemort has no more use for him. In Voldemort's mind, what is the point in keeping a half-blood wizard who told Dumbledore things that had killed Death Eaters? There is none. If there is anything Voldemort hates more than a Mudblood, it is a traitor. So Snape is hanged. Hanged right on the traffic light in front of the phone booth that was once the porthole to the Ministry of Magic.

It is Hermione Granger, on a reconnaissance mission with Susan Bones and Ginevra Weasley who finds him. It is Hermione Granger who is the only one who sheds a tear over her former Potions Professor.

And it is Hermione Granger who is the only one haunted every night by the look of terror and sorrow on the face of Severus Snape, Potions Master.

His mouth with the ohsoperfect lips curled into a smile, knowing that he only has to do so much before she breaks. It will give him so much pleasure if the girl beneath him breaks.

She's too nice, he acknowledges. Too nice for the gruesome details of war, too nice to live with the memories of the dead, too nice to not be haunted by what she has seen. That will be her downfall. She's too soft-hearted and that will kill her. It won't be him that kills her. No. To do so to such a beautiful creature would be a sin. He'll enjoy pushing her to the breaking point, maybe even beyond it. But he won't kill her. In spite of everything, maybe because of everything, he still believes in Hammurabi's Code. However, in his point of view, her living with the taunting images of glassy-eyed children without mothers or the bruised and broken faces of girls just past puberty, wailing with horror of foreign objects tearing them from the inside out, is the only just punishment for him living the way he is right now.

"Hello Hermione, long time no see."

War is taking its toll on what is left of the Order. Slowly, one by one dies and there is nothing Hermione can do to stop them from dying. There isn't enough food for them and rummaging through trash never really works for anyone. It isn't like they can slip into the Muggle world and act as beggars because, honestly, what Muggle world? It was the first thing Voldemort did when he gained power.

She picks her way through the rubble of the old church she was sent to. It is her turn to scrounge for supplies. Anything, bed sheets, empty syringes, cotton, glass, bottles, canisters, anything is useful. Dumbledore and McGonagall were the only ones capable of conjuring items out of thin air. With them gone, the most anyone can do was transfiguration.

Snap.

Hermione freezes, knowing that someone else is there.

"Sectumsempra!" The words fly out of her mouth before she even sees who the person was. A cry tells her that she has hit her target. Curiosity has Hermione going against one of the most important lessons she has learned throughout the course of the war. She turns to see who it is she has hit so effortlessly. But it is too far for her to really see the face of the barely movie body. As she walks towards it, she smells a horrible stench which alerts her that she has hit her follower's intestines.

She prepares herself for a mercy killing – she hates those. She hates to see the faces of people moments before she kills them. She hates to see the begging and the hatred and the pain in their eyes. It might be that she is the only one left in the entire world who still does mercy killings. Everyone else doesn't bother. According to Harry and Ron, war does not require mercy killings. Plus, in their eyes, all associated with the Death Eaters are evil and evil does not deserve any mercy.

But Hermione knows that if a man is hit in the stomach, he'll die in a couple of hours, crying for his mother until his throat is so sore and he is unable to make any more noise. He'll die with his hands trying to stem the blood from flowing out of his body as his blood turns from red to dark red to black, poisoned with toxins that escape from his liver. And because she is weak, she continues performing mercy killings.

The body is oh so familiar, and so the person is laying face down. Praying to any deity that might just happen to be listening to her, she hopes with all her might that it's not really him. She couldn't bear it if it was him. He is all that she has left, the only one to show her beauty in war. War has diminished her brain from a logical one to a sentimental one. It seems as if all she does nowadays is wallow in self-misery and cry.

She cries for the fallen, she cries for the wounded, but most of all she cries for others just like her.

Knowing where the memory is going allows him the privilege of stopping. In his mind, making her go through the event again and again mentally is not torture. And while it may break her, it isn't how he wants to do it. He wants to taunt her until she breaks. He wants to fuck with her mind.

"Well, Mudblood, did you ever find out who it was? Who you so callously left behind to bleed to death?"

She curls into a ball, her hands coming up to shelter her ears. She hears a soft grunting sound, the sound of innocence and depravity clashing together, and she wonders who is making the sound as her feminine side comes out – wanting to comfort the poor soul in pain. It is only after she starts rocking back and forth that she realizes that it's all in her mind and it is the sound that the man who she accidentally killed was making when she turned him over.

"Did you see his face? Did you see the pain he was going through, you filthy Mudblood?"

Her hands curl around her face now, as she willed her nails bitten down to the bone to become the sharp talons she had always spied on those Muggle Goths who used to walk around in so many of the once major cities of the Muggle world. She wanted them to dig in and gouge out her eyes. If she couldn't see, then the vision of the little boy with his intestines peeking out from the wound would disappear.

"It's too late, Mudblood. You killed him. You let him die as he cried, howling for his mummy. Did you feel any sorrow? Why is it, I ask you – that you didn't even give him a mercy killing. You're the only one in the entire fucking world who still does mercy killings. But you can't even grant that to your own lover can you? Tell me, Mudblood – did you get off on it? Did it satisfy you like Wonder Boy and Weasel or even HE never could? Come on, Mudblood. Answer me."

Her body shakes with the effort of trying to hold back her sobs. It seems as if his last words to her – Don't worry, it'll be okay. You were always too nervous anyway – are playing on loop inside here head. She shakes her head from side to side knowing that because she has killed him, because she was such a neurotic person, it will never be okay.

"You're pathetic," and he leaves the room, knowing that his work today was done.

Hermione knows she should have turned away, scratched at his eyes, or at the very least, closed her own eyes. But she doesn't, because, despite knowing that what is about to happen is gruesome and perverse and horrifying, it is still the most beautiful thing she has ever seen or experienced in her life. It feels as if her brain has gone on autopilot. She wishes she could plead temporary insanity, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows she's doing this purposely.

He had offered, late last night, to show her beauty, in the lobby of the rundown hotel. To show her beauty amidst a world where beauty no longer existed. "Come on, Hermione Granger, just one night."

His lips leave a burning trail wherever they touch. She wants to wrap her arms around him, never to let him go, but she finds her hands above her head, trapped by his. He knows that she wants to go slow, to find the beauty in this act. But it's impossible. He hasn't so much as sniffed at feminine flesh since nearly two years ago. Going into hiding after failing to perform Voldemort's bidding doesn't really allow much time for sex. It is too much to ask for him to go slow, and she realizes this. So she bucks against him, begging. After all, they both rationalize, war has already stripped the beauty from everything it touched.

One finger enters her and begins to pump in and out. In, out, in, out, in, out. The two words are the only things she is capable of thinking of right now. Waves of pleasure are lapping at her feet, and all she wants to do is dive headfirst into the ocean. But something's holding her back. She moans, praying under her breath to any deity that will listen.

"You'll never get the full meaning of it if you don't let go."

So she lets go of all of her inhibitions just as he enters her.

He has seen all he needs to see. "How was that for your first time, by the way? Did you enjoy him? Did he promise you the moon, the stars and everything you ever wanted just to get you into bed with him? Did he promise you things knowing that couldn't even afford the clothes off of your back? Or did he promise you love and protection and a family? Did he promise you that? Did you even know that he could never ever provide for you? And when you did jump into bed with him, did you moan out his name when you came? Did you!?" By the end of this, he realizes his voice is screaming. With jealousy, a voice in his head says. No. I'm not, he thinks back, making excuses. Who can be jealous of a Mudblood?

After all, Draco was always a weak child.

67. Penname OR Livejournal Username: firsttoblink
E-mail Address: beetlestobuttons AT you over the age of 17? Oh, yes.

STORY REQUEST
Briefly describe what you'd like to receive: Set during the war, Hermione or Draco captured by the other side (writer's choice), some mention of Ron
What rating would you prefer? PG-13 to Nc-17
Deal Breakers (what don't you want?): Death fic, Extreme Makeover Hermione, or too much OOC-ness

--