AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This was my 2013 HP-3Somes Fest (hp-3somes . livejournal . com) entry. The fest is over and reveals are out, so now I can post this for you here. This fanfic is multi-chaptered, but is already finished. I will post a chapter up every week until it's done. Here was the prompt I worked from:
Prompt: Draco x Hermione x Blaise, Non-con sex, Consensual sex, Explicit profanity, Bondage, Hair pulling, Spanking, Forced nudity, D/s (dominant men), A/U, Mindfuck, Unique Plot
Thank you to my last minute beta, L! Thank you to "darkly-exotic" for the inspiration for Blaise's character in this fic. Thank you to the Mods for putting on this fest. Fairy (scarletladyy), it was a great pleasure writing this for you (I was excited to get your assignment!), and I hope you enjoy your story!
DISCLAIMER: "Harry Potter" is the property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. This fanfiction was written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.
TIMELINE: Post-Hogwarts, A/U (story begins October, 2004 – Hermione is 25, Blaise is 25, and Draco is 24).
MAIN CHARACTERS FEATURED (alphabetical order, last name): Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini
SECONDARY CHARACTERS FEATURED (alphabetical order, last name): Regulus Black, Kreacher, Remus Lupin, Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Ginny Weasley, Molly Weasley
SUMMARY: Hermione is obsessed with finding out the secrets of a mysterious music box found at Grimmauld Place...
RATING: NC-17 (MA)
WARNINGS: Sexual situations - Non-con (explicit) and Consensual Sex (implicit), Explicit profanity, Bondage, Hair pulling, Spanking, Forced nudity, D/s (dominant men), A/U, Mindfuck, Plot,
Notes: This fic is compliant up to the "Half-Blood Prince" novel - the "Deathly Hallows" novel is completely tossed out, except for this: Secrets of the Darkest Art is a canon book from the "Deathly Hallows" novel. The Enchanted Music Box is an actual item from novel canon ("Order of the Phoenix", Chapter 6) & Ginny did have a brief encounter with it in the book. Refer to JKR's Black Family tree diagram for relationships, if you get confused. Threnody = a song, hymn or poem of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person.
THRENODY
By: RZZMG
Despite a number of misplaced bets by her friends on the matter, it was insatiable curiosity, not martial courage, that Hermione Granger felt was her most serious vulnerability.
Like Macbeth's hubris and Atalanta's vanity and Crookshanks' overwhelming need to chew on the ends of her feathered quills, she was plagued by an uncontrollable vice that was as much an integral part of her psychological make-up as her compassion or her sense of fair play. Inquisitiveness was her one doom, a curse hefted upon her by virtue of the nature of her parents' nurturing, and she'd always secretly worried that her need to know might one day get her into the type of trouble that no amount of cleverly-stored knowledge could hope to reverse.
That moment finally came the instant she'd noticed the lovely, silver music box sitting up on a curio cabinet's shelf in the living room at Number 12 Grimmauld Place was no longer warded against opening.
The antique box, slightly tarnished by age, was inlaid with the loveliest of blue sapphires. Birds were carved onto its lid, some in flight with wings spread, others landed and preening. Around the sides of the box, two long vines twined around and around, meeting at last in the front as budding flowers that pressed together in resemblance of a kiss. Hermione thought it a rather romantic design, actually.
The box seemed perfectly harmless upon first glance, but Hermione remembered a particular summer afternoon between her fourth and fifth years when she and her friends were cleaning up the ancestral house of Black to make it liveable, and the box had been opened. She'd been on the second floor, cleaning up the bedrooms with Mrs. Weasley, and so hadn't heard the strange, sinister tune Ginny had later described after her friend had innocently turned the crank and lifted the lid. It seemed the area effect of the song had been an instant spell, though, causing those on the first floor to feel wool-headed and sleepy. Thankfully, Ginny had slammed the lid shut once she'd realised its powerful sway over everyone in the vicinity, thus nullifying the box's magic and averting a potential disaster. The box had been returned to its shelf and a blue ribbon hit with a very powerful Sticking Charm wrapped around it to prevent its opening.
Of course, Hermione's curiosity had been piqued by that story, but there had been more important things to consider and to do than to investigate a charmed music box after that, and so she'd put the entire incident from her mind...
...until the ribbon that had kept the box closed had strangely disappeared just yesterday, with none of the three who lived in the house the wiser as to how such a thing might have happened.
Worse, when she'd contacted McGonagall about it via Floo-call, the elder witch didn't seem the least bit interested in correcting the problem right away, the war and trying to run a school in the meantime consuming her every action and thought.
Of course, that lack of precaution bothered Hermione. It was like a hangnail in her brain. That her most trusted and respected mentor seemed uninterested in rectifying the situation, and more importantly, that such a potentially dangerous box had not yet been removed from the house, had Hermione questioning just how terrible and dark a thing it might be. After all, wouldn't Molly, Arthur, or one of the other older Order members have confiscated the trinket if it had posed such a serious threat to the assigned residents and frequent visitors of the house? Or, at the very least, wouldn't that despicable Mundungus Fletcher have made off with it to sell after Sirius' death, as the vile man had done with many other such items in the house?
Why wasn't anyone interested in the box but her?
She looked at it now across the room from where she currently sat on the sofa in the living room, her fingers itching to find out if the box was still wound from the time Ginny had turned the crank. If it was, she could simply lift the lid and...
"Don't even think about it," Blaise warned from his lazy recline on the sun bench before the tall front windows that overlooked the street. He didn't glance up from his reading of Secrets of the Darkest Art, but Hermione knew he was quite aware of where her attention had shifted. "Leave it be, amante."
"It should be studied, though," she argued once more. "I mean, if it were truly an object of evil, wouldn't you think Moody or McGonagall would have removed it by now?" She made an exasperated gesture with her hand. "Why leave something potentially dangerous out in the open like that? And I still want to know who removed the ribbon Sirius had put on it. Tell me again it wasn't you."
Blaise chuckled, and the sound was rich and naughty coming from between those full, enticing lips of his. "It wasn't me, Granger. And perhaps the reason no one but you seems as obsessed with the thing is because: a. there's a war on which takes priority, and b. McGonagall and Moody expected some of us to have solid common sense and know not to randomly go about stirring up hornets nests."
"You poke around all the time without a care," she automatically countered, meaning his rather bad habit of going through her school trunk under the excuse of wanting to borrow from her rummaged book collection.
Blaise, of course, took her words to mean something entirely different. The man made it his life's habit to read sexual innuendo into everything she'd said, blaming the Latin half of his heritage for such deviance. And oh, did he love to tease her!
"Not all the time. I only do the 'poking thing' when the random, available female decides to drop in to check on us and relieve the tedium."
Hermione rolled her eyes and dryly muttered, "Oh, yes, you're a real ladies' man, Blaise - a true Cassanova."
Rather than feel shot-down by her sarcasm, Blaise's astoundingly huge ego accepted her words as a compliment. A heated smirk rose slowly up his cheek, tripping the same reaction in her that Draco's always did.
"Yes, I am, aren't I," he stated without an inch of modesty. "'Always leave a woman satisfied.' That's my life's motto."
She snorted in a rather unladylike fashion, used to this sort of banter from him after living seven months under the same roof as the man. "You know, I've always wondered: is that smug grin taught to all first-years in Slytherin? Because, honestly, that same expression is all-too common coming from members of your former House, and it's simply too effective not to be well-practiced."
His grin widened, showing off his straight, white teeth with startling clarity, and Hermione's blood quite unexpectedly quickened through her veins. Merlin, what a turn-on it was to see such lovely dental work - and all natural at that!
Trying to get her heart beat back under some control, as the thing was fluttering around under her ribs like it might fly away at any minute, she turned her head to the side, covered her mouth with her hand, and pretended to cough.
God, how was it he could always do this to her? From day one, since his defection to the Order's cause had been announced, she'd been prepared to dislike Blaise Zabini. And yet, three and a half years after his unexpected change of loyalty, when he'd first come to live here at Grimmauld, and they'd finally met again for the first time since the end of her sixth year at school, Hermione had found herself unable to stick to that resolve. Blaise's boundless charisma and playful wit made it difficult for her to stay angry with him for long, and he was intelligent enough to aid her in her research efforts, which was attractive to the scholar within her soul. He could make her laugh as no one else could, and he could make her want in a way she hadn't since she and Ron had broken off their attempt at romance years earlier. The sexual chemistry between her and Blaise was hot enough to burn through her core.
And in that respect, he was as dangerous to her as Draco was, for she felt the pull to the Italian wizard just as much as she did to Ferret Boy.
Ironically, both men were as equally tempting to her as that bloody music box, and yet neither man was a safe bet for her sanity. Blaise was a well-known philanderer, having made his way through most of the single witches in their class back in fifth and sixth years, and those in the Order since his desertion from Voldemort's ranks. And Draco... he was a tortured soul, who had only recently begun to smile and laugh, but there was still a lot of darkness in him. She'd heard him sometimes when he'd be sleeping crying out from whatever terrors haunted his dreams.
Why, oh, why couldn't she be attracted to morally upstanding, mentally stable wizards, like Charlie, or Neville, or Seamus, or hell, even Harry? What was wrong with her that she had this odd fascination for dangerous things?
Blaise abruptly closed his book and set it aside, and her attention was instantly drawn back to him. He turned on the bench, planting his feet on the floor, and faced her square-on. "Would you really like to know what they taught us way down in the secret nooks in the Hogwarts dungeon, Hermione? I'd be more than happy to enlighten you on the subject, if you're interested. I promise you'd consider the experience quite educational."
As was frequently the case whenever they were alone, the space between them suddenly became charged with sexual energy. He wickedly licked his bottom lip in a manner that drew her eye right where he wanted her to look – at his mouth.
Forget her heart trying to escape through her chest; it was currently crawling up her throat and attempting to escape past her teeth!
"Pouring it on a little thick, aren't you, Blaise?" Draco drawled with amusement as he sauntered into the room from the hallway as casual as a raven taking a stroll along the walls of the White Tower. He was dressed in his traditional all-black ensemble with the first two buttons of his collar rakishly undone, his longish, platinum bangs flopping across one eye... and smirking like the Devil, himself. "You know Granger's not one to be easily swayed, especially by a silver-tongued serpent like you." He took a seat at the piano bench nearby and leaned back to rest his elbows on the closed piano lid behind him. "She's got more class than that."
With the sudden appearance of their housemate, the moment between Hermione and Blaise abruptly broke apart, giving her a moment's respite to get her breathing back under control.
Blaise turned to his friend. "Hermione happens to like my tongue, you jealous git." He cushioned the insult with a cheeky jog of his dark eyebrows and a light-hearted tone.
Draco's grin fell quite abruptly and he barked a derisive laugh. For the first time since he'd come to Grimmauld Place, Hermione was surprised to hear no playfulness behind the sound. In fact, if she didn't know better, she'd say Draco sounded downright spiteful and mean, much as he had back in their school days.
"Is that why it's constantly flagging to your knees and flapping in the wind whenever she's around?"
Hermione's cheeks went fire-engine red and as hot as the sun at that.
"FYI: you might want to invest in a winding spool," Draco relentless continued, "so you don't accidentally trip and fall on that hunk of useless meat one day... because that would just be terribly tragic."
"Draco, stop," she growled, shocked by his words and his ill-behaviour. "What's gotten into you?"
In seven months, Draco hadn't once spoken to either her or Blaise in such a manner, despite the fact she'd expected him to treat her rather poorly from the very beginning. Harry had warned her that both men had changed since their defection from the Dark Lord's service, and it hadn't taken long after he'd moved into the house for her to see that fact, but right now, it seemed as if Draco had reverted. Shades of the cruel, young man he'd once been were showing, and Hermione didn't like that fact one bit.
Something was off. She had no idea what had caused Draco to be in such a bad mood, but she wasn't going to tolerate him picking fights.
Not to her surprise, Blaise didn't reply to his friend's taunting. Of the two, he was clearly the more mature. However, when he moved to his feet with a grim expression and hard eyes, clearly intending on not giving Draco's ridicule a free pass, Hermione felt worry gnaw away at the delicate lining of her stomach.
Blaise was close to six-four if he was an inch, and his muscles had filled in with age, putting him around seventeen and a quarter stone. His thighs were like tree trunks, and his shoulders were broad and powerful. He worked out every morning for two hours before breakfast and at least an hour or two more during the day, performing hundreds of sit-ups, push-ups, and using a magically conjured bar for pull-ups. He used hand weights that he'd brought with him in a charmed bag, and even skipped rope, shaking the whole house with the thump-thump of his feet hitting the floor over and over again. As a result, he was stacked with strength, physically fit, and quite intimidating.
Draco rose in riposte, meeting his friend's challenge head-on. He was a few inches shorter and at least three stone less than his friend, but he was no slouch when it came to the body maintenance thing, either. The exercise regime Blaise favoured was also Draco's daily training routine; the two had developed it together when they'd been lower-ranked members of Voldemort's Death Eater army, knowing that success on the battlefield wasn't just about magical strength and thinking fast on your feet, but also about physical speed and might, too. Draco had been equally as diligent in the care of his body as Blaise, so she knew he could certainly hold his own in a fight.
Good Lord, the two were going to get into it right here, weren't they? Holy Merlin, there was going to be a clash of the titans right here in the Black ancestral living room, and Hermione knew of no way to stop it except to use magic on the two – something strictly against Order code. You never turned your magic on a fellow Phoenix member except to save his or her life – those were the rules.
Well, this situation would certainly qualify, right?
She stood up as well, squaring her shoulders. She may have been only five-four, but what she lacked in physical power, she knew she more than made up for in magical strength. Her wand slipped into her hand from her side holster and she tapped it against the outer muscle of her thigh to get their attention as she stepped between the two wizards.
"Enough posturing, both of you," she warned, stepping equidistant between the two. She let her head turn from one to the other. "If I have to Petrify anyone, I'll put the body in the cellar with the rest of the vegetables and leave it there until Christmas."
There was a breathless moment in there where Hermione wasn't sure her companions were even listening to her, but then Blaise relaxed his fighting stance, conceding to her demand.
"As you wish, amante."
"Don't call her that!" Draco snarled, bringing the tension right back into the room. "She's not your lover!" He glanced down at her, uncertainty crossing his sharp, patrician features for the first time. "You're not, are you?"
Hermione couldn't have been more shocked than if someone had told her Snape had turned spy because he'd secretly loved Harry's dad and wanted revenge for his death. Numbly, she shook her head and turned to Blaise. "No, I'm not. And you said it was an endearment of friendship."
Blaise's dark, high cheekbones suffused with blood. "It is. You usually are friends with-"
He didn't finish, looking away.
She turned back to Draco. "How long have you known what that word meant?"
He looked at her like she was daft. "I spent summers at Blaise's villa growing-up. Our parents were friends."
"So, in other words, you speak Italian and you've always known what he was saying when he started calling me that," she guessed.
Draco shrugged. "I figured you understood. You usually know everything."
She frowned at that. "I do not know everything. And anyway, why is it an issue now? If you'd thought he and I were intimate, and I was permissive of the nickname since month two of you both moving in, then why is him calling me that now –five months later- an issue?"
Draco stepped towards her, and from her peripheral vision, she watched Blaise go stiff and wary again. Hermione didn't budge, however, refusing to be intimidated by Draco. She hadn't been when they were children, and just because he'd sprouted up over the years didn't mean she would be now.
"You're not sleeping with him."
It wasn't even a question.
Hermione's ego took the hit, but she tweaked an eyebrow at him in irritation. "And what if I were?"
Draco actually growled. Loudly.
Jaw dropping to her feet, her disbelief hit the roof. Was he really jealous, as Blaise had intimated earlier? No, that was... it was...
It was not as impossible as she would have imagined, actually.
Seven months earlier, when he'd first come to Grimmauld a week after Blaise, the change in Draco had left her dumbfounded. He'd grown from the sullen, malicious boy who had always craved the spotlight into a contemplative, stoic man of few words. She'd known the moment they'd locked eyes when he'd walked through the front door that fateful day this past March that he'd done unspeakable things in the course of this war that he'd regretted and was seeking atonement. Intuitively, she'd understood that that was why he'd switched sides years earlier, and also why he'd agreed to take on the assignment to guard Grimmauld Place for Harry (freeing up her best friend and Ron to go off hunting down all rumours regarding horcruxes).
That revelation is what had melted the defensive barrier she'd erected and fortified in advance of his coming to the house. After that, it hadn't taken them but a couple of weeks to feel comfortable in each others' presence, and he'd been the first to reach out an olive branch, offering her an apology for the unkindness he'd shown her in the past.
They'd fallen into a good rhythm then, with him helping her in researching horcruxes along with Blaise, all while the three of them guarded Grimmauld Place, the Order's most important, central safe house – and he and Blaise protected her, as she could no longer go out into the field, thanks to contracting Lyme disease while camping out in the wild with Harry and Ron during that first year of the war.
As a result, their friendship had blossomed to the point that Draco now felt comfortable teasing and pulling pranks on her. He'd swap her research books out with hardcover erotic fiction, push her off the piano bench here in the living room and take over at the keys (with a proficiency that awed her), and he never failed to comment on the horrific state of her "wild, Amazon hair" at every opportunity. She'd retaliate by tossing her red clothing into the wash with his whites, by eating every piece of chocolate in the house (he had a sweet tooth to rival Willy Wonka's), and by purposefully running the hot water in the kitchen whenever he was in the shower.
They'd developed a relationship that worked as a result, and hadn't deviated from that routine for the last several months...
No, wait, that wasn't entirely true, was it? Just this month, he'd cornered her in the kitchen, coming up behind her and caging her between his arms at the sink while he'd bent his mouth to her ear and asked her simple questions about what they'd plan to do for lunch and dinner. With his hot breath tickling her throat and his low, honeyed voice summoning her desire, her hands had trembled over the cup she'd been rinsing out.
That had been the first time she'd felt the unthinkable for Draco Malfoy, even though she'd believed he was just playing with her.
By then, however, she'd already decided she'd lusted after Blaise, too.
Torn between her growing feelings for both men, she'd gone out of her way since 'the kitchen incident' to rationalise the situation, and had decided it to be inadvisable to explore either option. She'd set her mind on other things to distract it - like the fact that that blasted music box no longer had a ribbon tying it off and warning her away.
"Why would it matter, Draco, if I was seeing Blaise in that manner?" she asked again, terrified of the truth, but needing to hear it aloud.
He stared at her with barely controlled fury, his cheeks as red as hers, his eyes as dark as storm clouds. His fists were clenched at his side, and his chest rose and fell with rapidly sawing breaths. "You know why," he stated in a tight, hard voice. Then, moving slowly, he uncurled a fist and reached up to stroke the tips of his fingers across her cheek. The anger melted from him the moment their flesh met, and he took a shuddering breath. Looking down at her from his greater height, he whispered again, "You know why."
"Fuck, no!" Blaise thundered, and Hermione jumped, pulling away from Draco's touch.
When she turned around, she was surprised by the expression upon Blaise's face: he was seething with jealousy. And he had his wand in his hand.
"You bastard! You know how I feel about her, and you're doing this just to spite me - and you're trying to confuse her at the same time! I won't let you."
Hermione's heart slowed the moment he raised his wand arm and pointed it at his friend.
"Blaise, drop your wand." She spoke calmly, but firmly. "We can talk about this."
Blaise rubbed at his temple with his free hand and shook his head. His arm shook.
Something was very wrong here. The aggression level in the room had just shot up by metres again, over an issue that seemed as though it could be reasoned through if they'd just all stop to do so. But how could she possibly diffuse the situation when it seemed that she was unwittingly the cause of the schism between the friends?
Opening her mouth, unrehearsed words tumbled from her lips in an effort to soothe Blaise's temper, trying to convince him to lower his wand all the while. Yet, even as she tried to reason with Blaise, Draco slyly stepped to his right and backwards until his shoulders touched the curio cabinet that lined the entire east wall.
Blaise kept his wand trained on Draco... which put Hermione completely out of the line of his fire.
"Blaise, listen to me-" she pleaded as his eyes narrowed and his arm went straight and true.
Oh, God, he was going to cast an Unforgivable, she just knew it!
Unfortunately, Draco couldn't seem to keep his mouth shut in the face of certain death. "You just want to add her to your collection, Blaise. That's all she is to you: a conquest. Just like every other person you've ever had."
Blaise snarled. "You're wrong! I love her!"
Draco laughed with contempt. "You don't know how to love, only how to fuck."
That, it seemed, was the wrong thing to say.
"Crucio!"
"Protego!" Hermione screamed, casting her spell at Draco right as Blaise's took flight.
Draco dodged both, jumping to his right and rolling behind one of the couches. Blaise's spell struck Hermione's shield and bounced at an odd angle...
... right into the curio cabinet, shattering the glass and knocking over the items inside.
Before any other spells could be cast, an eerie, bell-like tinkling filled the air, and all three of them simply stopped what they were doing to listen. It was a compulsion that could not be denied.
Hermione knew even before her eyes were drawn to the shelf where the strange music was originating what she would see.
The silver music box had been blown onto its side and it had opened. Ginny's previous winding of the mechanism had never been discharged, as Hermione had suspected, and the small, metal stop holding back the ratchet lever from turning had been waiting all this time for someone to release it by opening the lid. Now, the sinister lullaby warbled through the air, casting its enchantment as its revolving cylinder with its precisely placed metal pins stroked over the lamellae of its steel comb.
A strange voice whispered in Hermione's ear then, urging her to come closer. Unable to resist, she stumbled over to the cabinet, drawn to the magical device, the effects already taking hold of her. She reached out for the box, desperate to see inside. She had to know the answers to all of her burning questions, while there was time and opportunity! Was the box what she suspected it might be?
"Hermione, no!" Blaise screamed at her.
Too late, her curious fingers had caressed the antique metal lid, moving of their own volition, and consciousness was stolen from her. The sweet, creepy sound of tinkling bells followed her down, down, down into the deep, incalculable darkness.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author's Notes:
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