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They say insomnia can make you see things. It can kill you. They say breathing camphor, likewise, can make you hallucinate and seize. And they say that van Gogh used to douse his pillow and mattress with camphor every night just to lull himself to sleep. I didn't sleep at all after speaking with Lucius. I lay there, wide awake, burning between the sheets into the early hours of the morning. When, at last, lying in bed became unbearable, I rose, wraith-like, and left my room on tiptoe.

Casa Valentina always seemed a little larger, more labyrinthine, to me at night. Barefoot and dressed only in my nightgown, I ambled my way through the darkness, exploring entire corridors I'd not previously known to exist. All the while, I was tailed by some several hundred sets of leering and oil-painted eyes. Only the occasional Sleeping Venus seemed to ignore me. I crossed my arms, grimacing as I passed by them, envious of all their serene and satisfied faces.

I know he intended for me to suffer. He'd said it outright. And I accidentally disobeyed him. The frustration of doing so was far worse than I ever could have anticipated. It kept me up. It kept me on pins and needles, pacing.

A chill raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I started to see things, catching odd shadows on the walls. I shivered and quickened my pace, convinced I must be on the verge of cracking up. I recalled the ridiculous histoire de fantôme Astoria had shared with me, how he truly believed that the ghost of Countess Isabella still roamed the lonelier corridors at Casa Valentina. Tonight, at least, I suppose she was right, but it wasn't the shade of who was haunting these halls. It was me.

It must have been a little before dawn when I found myself sauntering down to the terrace and sinking onto a plush chair. I must have dosed off when Astoria discovered me there mid-morning.

"Good morning," she said.

"Good morning, Astoria," I replied as I raised my eyes to her.

She was followed by a house-elf with a little brass tea cart replete with coffee, figs, and a small sliver of quiche.

"Your breakfast. Please, do not hesitate to tell me or the house-elf should you require anything else." She poured some steaming coffee from a silver carafe. "Bon appetite."

I nodded my thanks, and in the far periphery of my vision, I saw her disappear.

Stay. Read. Eat.

Lucius's imperatives reverberated in my head. By and by, I did manage to munch on a fig or two. I bit my lip and sipped my coffee. Banished to the wilderness. Sentenced to starve.

Sighing, I walked into his study and began reading as well. I was determined to obey the rest of his commands. I was marking off items ahead of schedule. I'd stayed in. I'd eaten. I'd read. I'd done almost everything that he'd asked of me, and it was only a little past noon.

Almost everything.

My smile sank.

Perhaps he knew I would fail. I was certain he just wanted another chance to censure me, to leave me flustered, flushed, and falling to my knees for his forgiveness.

Well. Why give him the satisfaction, Hermione? I sighed hotly, and stood. You know precisely what you need to do.

So I did it. I clenched my jaw, and left the study, interring myself upstairs in the bedroom to do his obscene and duplicitous bidding. I let my nails scrape across the frame, sighing as I surrendered, and fell face-first across the bed.

To be absolutely honest, touching myself in an unlocked room was perhaps the last thing in the world I wanted to endure that afternoon. I didn't want to turn myself back into a moaning, mournful shadow like I had last night. Nor, for that matter, was I especially worried about what might happen if I failed to obey him again. Fear had never really served to inspire my compliance. It only inspired defiance. And while it may sound a bit moralizing, and maybe even metaphysical, if anything between the two of us was truly forcing my hand that afternoon, it was merely that I'd already given him my word. His annotations in the Dickinson book were splayed beside me on the nightstand. I snatched it up once more, nestling deeper into the linens and, with another steaming sigh, set to work.

In those first few moments, I think I actually felt a faint sliver of deliverance. But it was fleeting. It gave way, just as I'd anticipated, just as I'd feared, to more misery, chagrin, and a profound finale of nothing. All told, I was probably masturbating for less than ten minutes, yet it felt like two-thirds of eternity. I gasped and gritted my teeth, begrudgingly hoisting myself off the bed just before I utterly lost control. Had I tried to make it last any longer, I'm not convinced I could have stopped myself. It wasn't weakness. It was simply physics; a matter of momentum and inertia.

Stiff, sniffling a little, and embarrassed beyond words, I trudged back to his study, and tried once more to get lost in written works.

There was a sadistic sort of symmetry to that day. It disintegrated around me just the same as it began. The house-elf wheeled his little cart back onto the terrace just before sunset. Again, I coerced myself to swallow something. Though food turned to ash on my tongue, Lucius had assured me he would rebuke me if I let myself starve. I wandered around in the garden afterward. I plucked a blossom from the flower bed, and knelt near the edge of the fountain, tearing its delicate petals in two.

I thought of the roses he'd brought me on Valentine's Day.

You don't think your flowers feel pain, Hermione?

I let the redolent shreds fall into the water.

I do. I think they feel more than most.

The shadows in the garden grew longer, shading in the paving stones like smudges of soft charcoal. It was past dusk when at last I returned to the bedroom, to torture myself one final time before our fire-chat.

I kept my eyes closed this time. I wanted to pretend it wasn't happening. I wanted to pretend I was asleep, or comatose. Even so, with each insufferable stroke of my wrist, I swear I could see strange lights dancing before me in the darkness. Phantasm. Phosphene. Scintillating scotoma. I was miserable, but I was mesmerized by them. Inside of my eyelids, floating on a grim pool of eigengrau, I watched the lights wither, bloom, and wither again like glimmering water lilies of white, violet, and red. I let them linger, I think, a little too long. When I came to, and finally quit abusing myself, my mouth was open; I was moaning and had to wipe acrid tears from both of my eyes.

The clock's face taunted me as it came into focus. It would be another half hour at least. He'd finally done it. He'd wrecked my head, excised my mentation, enslaved me to my senses. My nerves were on fire. I had never, ever, ever needed release so badly. I needed it more than water, more than air. In that moment, I might have murdered for it. I might have died. The feeling was that dire, that desperate. I sneered and staggered my way out into the corridor.

He'd better realize what he's putting me through. This is… I mean, this is just—

I froze before an ormolu mirror in the hall, arrested by my wild-eyed reflection. I crossed my arms, shivering stiffly. It's precisely what he said it would be. I blushed and tucked a matted lock of hair behind my ear.

You've made a proper mess of me, Mr. Malfoy.

I wiped my eyes. They were already bloodshot from my night of insomnia, but my tears had turned them to rose quartz.

'It pleases me, Hermione, to know that you're suffering.'

I watched the girl in the mirror begin to quiver. I could see him there, obscured by the bleariness. He stood behind her, a whole head and a half taller. His arms around her waist, holding her still. His lips, and his whiskers bristling against her ear.

'Do I make myself clear, Miss Granger?'

As glass.

I was shaking still when I turned back to his study. His chair stood empty at the far end of the room. I tiptoed toward it, quivering still more with each step.

I waited there, too anxious to sit.I haven't any idea how long I stood, but at the tidal end of each breath, I counted 'one one-thousands', as if tallying the time between lightning and thunder. The sky, by and by, clouded over; shifting from violet to black, just as huge, amorphous raindrops began to hurl themselves against the windows. That storm was maybe the ugliest I'd seen all winter, but the one stirring inside me was still bleaker. My eyes locked upon the fireplace. Any moment now.

His permission. My release. I waited, and waited longer, aching for him, burning alive just to hear the mere timbre of his voice.

A sound split through the room, and I nearly doubled over. The sound came again, and my heart fell to the floor. It wasn't the fireplace, but footsteps. Solemnly, I saw Astoria in the doorway. She didn't enter. She stood at threshold, her hands on her round belly.

"Hermione," she began, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I have received a message from Mr. Malfoy's assistant in Antwerp."

"A message?" I glanced up at her warily.

"Yes. You're to know that there has been a change in his affairs. A setback, it would seem. I am afraid Mr. Malfoy will not be making any personal calls until it is settled."

I felt my blood run cold and flecks of frost began to crystallize in the crevices of my chest.

"A setback," I repeated, hissing like a viper. "What sort of setback?"

She dropped her eyes, apologetic. "I don't know. It wasn't explained."

"Alright." I tried to swallow, and nearly choked. "Well, did he ... um... did he at least say how long it might take?"

She stepped forward. "He did say that Mr. Malfoy will call you again tomorrow, same time."

My veins, already ice blue, froze solid, even as my skin seemed to flicker, and burn.

"Is there anything at all I could do for you?" Astoria asked.

"No, thank you." My voice was weak and windless. I felt as if he'd just struck me in the stomach. "I think ... I think I'd just like to be alone."

"Let me know if you change your mind. You can come to dinner at our place."

I gave a slight nod, gazing leadenly at the ground, as I heard her footsteps recede in the hall. And then, I heard nothing at all. I stood stone still, the silence boring into me like a trepan, uncertain of whether I wanted to weep, whimper, or scream.

Until that moment, I think Evelyn de Morgan's Hope in a Prison of Despair had always struck me as rather too histrionic for the context. The poor girl she depicted in that painting was not being maimed like Saint Agatha, nor assaulted like Susanna, or burnt alive like La Pucelle. She was only alone, isolated, forgotten; yet somehow her suffering seemed so much more palpable than the others', so much more salient, slaying, and acute. I drew my fingers into a pair of blanched and trembling fists. Now, at least, I felt I understood the incinerating, electrical arc of that woman's agony. 'Cruel and unusual' didn't begin to cover it. Without risking irreparable damage to my sanity,I doubted I'd survive another hour on my own, let alone another day. My knees begin to quake beneath me, and I steadied myself against his desk, glaring down at the inanimate fireplace.

'A matter of some urgency.'

I wetted my lips, reawakening the taste of him from two nights earlier. Whenever he kissed me, like a serpent, some deadly residue of his venom always seemed to linger on my skin. Samael, Seducer of Eve… I bit harder. I wanted to sink my teeth into him. I wanted to taste him. I wanted him to taste me. I wanted to get his poison inside me again, to let it seep back into my blood, and intoxicate my body.

I closed my eyes, and he was there with me once more; his form conjured from the cold and rarefied air of the storm. I leaned forward slowly, arching my back for him and set my forearms down across his desk. His gravity seduced me. My breasts felt heavy and full. I felt my nipples tighten as they grazed the cool surface of the desk.

He stood behind me, silent, erect, savage. I was hardly half-dressed. I was hurting for him. Utterly vulnerable, utterly his. He ran his fingertips slowly along my spine, down to the hem of my dress. I felt him lift it, exposing my pale cheeks to the chilling air. He spread them gently, and I held my breath.I wondered, in that dizzying and delirious moment, if perhaps he was deciding whether to sodomize me. I wondered, in that moment, how such a thing might feel.

He held me. He held me struck each cheek sharply, and left my white skin crimson, and throbbing. He struck them again, a little bit harder. I had to bite my tongue to keep from whimpering as he silently freed himself from his trousers.

Do not look back. Do not look back.

I squeezed my eyelids tighter. I swear it was real. I swear, I could sense him there—the heat of him; a flame's tongue growing hotter, beginning to singe the tender skin between my thighs. I couldn't endure it any longer. I couldn't. I couldn't wait. I needed him — right then, right there. I needed to see him, and either prove to myself that I truly had lost my mind — that I was floridly hallucinating in a haze of unrequited lust or else that Lucius truly was my incubus, my curse, my own private and preternatural daemon lover.

Risking a gaze that I full well believed could destroy me, that could turn me to stone, I opened up my eyes. I curved my spine. I craned my neck. I turned back — and like salt in sulfurous spring water, my feverish illusion dissolved.

Why? Why did I look? I laid my cheek upon his desk, dejected. Why did Lot's wife look back? Why couldn't Psyche just keep her stupid eyes shut? A sigh seared through my throat, curling off into a snarl. Very slowly, I stood up, and readjusted the hem of my dress. I was alone. I'd known it, of course, all along. But some foolish part of me really did wish I was crazy. Even insanity was preferable to remaining even one moment longer lucid and alone.

I left his study briskly, and by the time I arrived back at my bedroom, I'd made up my mind that I was furious with him. That he wished to be cruel to me, I could accept. Cruelty, at least, required his attention. But his real sin was much worse. He'd neglected me. He'd taken me for granted and defaulted on our agreement. It was all too clear that my place in the hierarchy of his priorities was far lower than I'd allowed myself to suppose. And if that was somehow meant to seem impressive to me, then he'd missed the mark completely. It didn't impress me. It made me feel cheated, and it made me feel cheap.

And that , I hissed, after I obeyed him. I did every degrading thing he asked of me. I narrowed my eyes. And he can't find time to make a fire call?

I cast myself down on the bed, fuming from every flushed pore on my body.

Lucius could not be bothered with romance, and whispers, and wine.

My molars began to grind, and I scraped my nails across the duvet.

You know what he really wants, don't you? To let his pathetic, little slave girl languish here. Lying precisely where he left her. Pining after him at all hours. Already naked.

A blue fire was flickering behind my eyes. I closed them tight, trying to smother it. You, I reopened them slowly, carefully, and stared up into the folds of the canopy overhead, have been his perfect fool for him, Hermione Granger. But you'll show him now, won't you?

I rolled over slowly, my lips curling into a hateful and half-demented grin. You will. You'll show him what happens when he treats you like his toy. I ran my hands through my hair, braiding the tousled strands between my fingers. Something to play with until he loses interest, then cast away in the corner until he comes back.

I didn't know how just yet, but lying there, obsessed and steaming, I resolved to revenge myself upon him. It would require a little cleverness. It could not, after all, be something he could construe as insubordinate — not when I'd already come so far. I needed to have the high ground when I brought it all down upon him. I needed to stay chaste, angelic, and guiltless as a virgin martyr. However heavily it might weigh upon my shoulders, however much it might hurt, I had to keep the halo upon my head, bearing it gracefully like some golden scold's bridle.

My body, meanwhile, had its own ideas. All day the throbbing had been insufferably cyclical. Every time I thought I was finally rid of it, it rekindled itself like a malarial fever. By now, my misery was almost intractable. I sighed and writhed and moaned over the duvet, slowly incinerating in the flames of my own frustration.

Anticipation/Algolagnia...

Even the air itself put me in agony, with its heat, its heavy, asphyxiating fingers reaching over my throat and choking me. Unless I could find some way to shatter it myself, the fever, I knew, would not break.

I suffered that way until just after midnight, when in a last act of desperation, I slipped out of bed and undressed, leaving a little trail of garments and linens on the ground as I crept my way into the bathroom. I flipped the faucet and watched the cold water shoot from the shower-head, hissing against the porcelain tiles, and over the ice-white marble of the walls.

I shivered at the edge of the stream, gradually working up the courage to step in. It shocked me, really, realizing what I was about to do to myself. It seemed so iniquitous, so profoundly unfair. Had not I suffered enough already? Was it necessary, now, to add injury to insult? Truly, any day of the week I'd rather be burned than be cold. Yet trite as it was, a cold shower was the only improvised remedy I'd ever even heard of for the embarrassing malady that had beset me. Like an electroconvulsive pulse, I hoped it might shock my body back into balance.

Camphor, too, can kill you. It can make you see things, and seize.

I shrieked when the water hit my skin. Each droplet pierced me like a liquid needle. It impaled me and left me pale. But little by little, my body did begin to acclimate. I breathed a little easier. I no longer felt I was falling onto a bed of nails. I shut my eyes, rotating slowly beneath the stream and worked a snowy lather of suds into my hair. I let it trickle over me in rivulets of white lace. I felt the bubbles prickling my skin as they popped. I rinsed. I trembled. I stared at the water, glistening against me like shards of glass, like diamonds, dangling from my fingertips, from my nipples, lips, and the tip of my nose.

I sighed and turned off the water, slipping out of the stall just as soon as I'd shaved my legs. I needed to extricate myself from temptation. Had I let it run much longer, there's little doubt in my mind that even the cold water, with its dull, rhythmic pulsations, may have lowered me into an unlooked-for and frostbitten climax.

Still dripping, still bare, I blew my hair dry before a beveled mirror. Even under a jet stream of hot air, I never quite managed to get warm again. The cold, I suppose, had cut into me too deeply. My teeth chattered. My shoulders shook. Worst of all, the shower itself had failed me. I was still thinking of Lucius — perhaps even more now. I was thinking of how he'd mistreated me, and of my dazed, undiminished desire to have him back. I still wanted him. I wanted him to take me. I wanted him to make me come, over and over, until my body turned to cinders and smoke.

Then, at least, you'd be warm, Hermione.

Those were the thoughts that had flooded my head, drowning out all the others. Like frozen water, cooling off had only made them more crystalline, more solid, voluminous, and clear. I skulked back to bed and buried myself beneath the blankets. I closed my eyes and let a black veil of sleep put me out of my misery.

The memory of how I survived the next morning and afternoon was hazy, but I seem to remember sitting at his desk for at least a dozen hours, a book straddling my nose. I don't think I quite read, per se. I just thumbed indolently through some several thousand pages, letting the words spin past me like the shadows of a magic lantern. It was an idle pursuit; a ploy to keep my hands occupied and out if trouble.

There's'a sinister adage about idle hands.

By nightfall, I let my eyes lose focus. I stood up from his desk straight, pretending to salvage the last dregs of my dignity — that they hadn't been washed away down the shower drain the night before. I was nearly out of the room when a harsh hiss split through the air. My heart quit beating. My face went ashen. I couldn't believe it. It was absurd — it was utterly and revoltingly absurd. It was as if he could hear me. It was as if he knew.

His face soon appeared in the flames.

"Hermione."

I sneered at him, "Mr. Malfoy."

His greeting was brisk, but mine was solid ice.

"I'm glad I caught you. I wasn't sure you'd still be in the study."

I squinted. He sounded a little breathy, as if he'd been walking somewhere in a hurry.

"I wasn't waiting," I muttered.

It was a pitiful lie, but I wasn't about to tell him the truth. I glanced down to the desk where I'd wasted away the entire afternoon for him, and at the little mound of novels I'd erected, like a sepulcher, to inter his Emily Dickinson.

"I just came in to return your book." I crossed my arms. "I guess you got lucky."

"My book," his words were clipped. "Finished reading already?"

"You told me to read, so I read." My lips grew tense. "I did everything you asked me to, Mr. Malfoy." I felt a pair of fiery red blossoms spread across my cheeks. Everything.

There was a heavy and pregnant pause before he spoke, "You're upset." His tone dropped half an octave. It sounded as if he'd stopped in his tracks. "You're upset that I didn't call."

Give the man a medal. I bit my tongue. Nothing escapes his colossal comprehension of the wide, blue world. What acumen! What stunning percipience and wit!

"I may be a little miffed," I murmured. "It was rude of you, wasn't it?"

"It was," he admitted. "It was conduct unbecoming of a gentleman." He paused. "But then, I've never claimed to be a gentleman, have I, Hermione?"

Is that true? My brow furrowed. Granted… he's certainly never been especially gentle.

"Well," I breathed hotly, "are you sorry, at least?"

"No, Miss Granger. I'm not."

I beg your pardon? My blood skipped boiling and turned directly to steam.

"Would you care to know," his words were wolfish, "why I didn't call you last night? Would you like to know what kept me away?"

Oh, very much so. Please. Please, tell me what precisely gives you the right to treat me like shit. Impress me, Mr. Malfoy.

I seethed at him softly, "Do tell."

"The opportunity arose," his voice cooled, "to finish up much earlier out here than I'd expected. But to do so demanded my immediate and undivided attention."

"Earlier," I echoed, my frown slightly slackening. "How much earlier?"

"I can Floo home in less than an hour, Miss Granger. Be ready."

On a personal note, this chapter was inspired the first time my Lucius was detained on business (right before Christmas) and I was an irrational, pouty mess. So, while it may seem like Hermione was overreacting, this stuff is intense when it's happening to you.

Off to update more!

Lana