DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling.
Hawkflight: I would only only ONLY do this for you. No one else in all of the internet can make me actually look forward to reading a fic with a Hermione pairing in it.
~ Poison as My Medicine ~
She is weak, a victim.
But she has potential. So much potential. So much magic. Such untapped reserves of strength.
He will test her, mold her, shape her. Shine her, polish her, perfect her.
If she does not break under his ministrations, she will become something so much more. So much better.
Blood is important, yes. But blood is not everything.
Power is everything.
His master taught him that. And he will serve his master well, preparing this vessel for him. HE will be the one to resurrect and re-empower his master, not that traitorous rat!
She screams and screams until her voice is gone and her throat is raw. Saliva stings as it flows over the cracks of her parched bottom lip and down her chin, where it goes on to splash onto her exposed breasts.
But the whole time, she never stops struggling.
The chains rattle as she flails uselessly, contorting her body in rage and pain, trying desperately to free herself even though she knows she will most likely never break free of this place - not under her own power, anyway.
"I brought you a drink," he says.
She glares.
He proffers the goblet but she does not reach out to take it. She could if she wanted to; there is enough slack in the chain.
He kneels and presses it to her lips.
She takes one shallow mouthful, then spits it out. Dark red liquid splatters onto the floor beside her. It is a different color than the fresh streaks of her blood that stain the stone, but nearly a match for some of the dried ones.
"It's just wine," he says, laughing. He finishes the cup in front of her.
The next drink he brings is in a champagne flute, but the liquid inside looks to be merely water. She readily accepts the glass from him this time, and gratefully partakes.
It is acid.
And she learns, when picking shards of the shattered glass from her feet and legs while his mocking laughter rings in her ears, to never never NEVER trust an enemy again.
"My Crucio is hardly a tickle anymore, is it? You've built up a resistance to it..."
She does not respond. She is used to his mind games as well, and has learned not to respond to verbal taunts anymore.
"You'll like this next spell," he says, smirking. "The witch who invented it died in Azkaban for it. If it had become well-known, it would have been classified as the Fourth Unforgivable, but the Ministry managed to hush it up. She taught it to me before she was arrested, though... Ha! You're wondering what kind of spell it is! I can see it in your eyes."
She slams her eyelids shut as violently as it possible for one to do so, her forehead scrunching almost comically with the effort she makes in shutting them as tightly as possible.
After all she has been through, she is still so defiant...
"Get ready for it," he says, pausing to let the apprehension take hold of her. The moment of anticipation before the pain can be just as tortuous as the actual act of torture, he knows. He watches the muscles tic under her skin as she tenses up. "Sentisphaera," he hisses.
She sings out as beautifully now as she did months ago when he first hit her with a Cruciatus Curse.
Sentisphaera, affectionately nicknamed Arachne's Arrow by its creator, is better described as the bastard child of Crucio and Sectumsempra. Small, fine cuts open all over the victim's skin, some just deep enough to draw a single drop of blood before the flesh can seal itself back together, some not even as deep as that. The pain is not simply an over-stimulation of the nerves, like the Cruciatus Curse. No, it is much crueler than that. It is the full physical reality of having a thousand papercuts all at once.
And still she fights.
She does not break, not even when he forces himself on her.
She seems to think that this is also intended to be part of the torture, but it's not. It is necessary for the resurrection of his master, which he has been working toward this whole time.
He doesn't make it unnecessarily painful or time-consuming, doesn't bother trying to humiliate her during or after the act.
He does not return to the cell for a long time, but food and water are delivered magically to her at regular intervals, all of which she finds very strange.
Is he expecting her to be so emotionally broken that she needs this long to recover before he can begin the physical torture once more, or has he merely been called away from this place for this extended period of time?
She wishes she knew what he wanted from her, but he never says, and she has long given up trying to ask.
It is weeks later, when he returns to the cell with an unbreakable jar filled with lurid green potion, and harvests the living fetus from her womb, that she finally finds out what this has all been about.
"What are you going to do with it?" she manages to ask, although her insides dance with pain at the sudden removal.
"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken; flesh of the servant, willingly given," he whispers reverently. "It will become the Dark Lord's new body."
He does not realize that he shouldn't have answered truthfully until it is already too late, for those are the words with the power to break her.
He intended to keep her all along, but he has no use for an empty shell whose soul-fire has flickered out.
~end~