Don't you try to take me down,
Don't you try to take me over,
Won't you try to break me?
The complexities moving in,
And I feel that I do not have the strength,
Tragedies plaguing me solemnly
It's affecting my will

Grim Goodbye, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

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CHAPTER 4: Hated

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Leaning casually against the stucco surface of the wall, Draco stood in the den just outside the dining hall, his face carefully circumspect. His gray eyes were downcast – he seemed fixated on the elaborate designs of the plush emerald green carpet. Hermione stood before him, shuffling her feet anxiously, with butterflies even fluttering in the pit of her stomach – but she refused to show these weak emotions. Instead, she stood proudly, that little bit of dignity radiating from her stance (despite looking like a whore). She lifted her chin and stared at Draco, and although he didn't meet her gaze head-on, a corner of his mouth twitched unpleasantly.

It was Draco who broke the heated silence between them. "Poppy," he said in a low, controlled voice.

Hermione felt confused at first, wondering what – or who – Poppy might be, but suddenly, a CRACK! sounded just behind the blond wizard. A tiny house-elf wearing what seemed to her a shorn and dirty table cloth appeared behind him, her ball-like eyes darting around the room. Hermione gave the elf a kind smile, but the long-nosed creature shifted her gaze away quickly and turned to look at the blond wizard tentatively. She began to shuffle those long feet of hers too, much like what Hermione was doing now. "Y-yes, young Master?" squeaked Poppy, her high-pitched elf voice trembling. Hermione wasn't the only one afraid of Malfoy, it seemed.

Draco took a deep breath – probably to calm himself – before speaking. "Owl the Ministry for me. Tell them I won't be reporting to the meeting today because of… pressing matters," he commanded gruffly. "That will be all."

Poppy bowed low until the tip of her long nose touched the carpeted floor. "Yes, young Master," she squeaked once more, and with another CRACK!, she Disapparated.

Horror pooled into the depths of Hermione's soul. Was her rude gesture at breakfast enough for Draco to choose to skip work for the day and punish her instead? Merlin, what did Draco Malfoy have in store for her? Her imagination started to reel. Suddenly, she had a fleeting vision of chains bound at her wrists, something cloth-like gagging her mouth, leather whips lashing at her skin, sharp objects piercing through her flesh… if Draco truly had lived up to his Death Eater status, those images were not too far-fetched then…

But her fury at the man overrode all sense of irrational fear. She silently berated herself for letting her imagination run wild. She shouldn't fear Malfoy, she furiously reminded herself. He never got the better of her while they'd been in Hogwarts and she wouldn't let him now. If his father, the one person he looked up to with utmost reverence, had openly berated him at the table, she could do the same to the bastard as well because, after all, she meant nothing to him. Maybe she could even wipe that conceited smirk off of his face once and for all.

Before rounding on Hermione, Draco made sure that the doors were closed with one swish of his wand. Hermione envied him slightly for his flawless nonverbal magic. "You spat in my food," he finally spoke to her in a foreboding tone. "I could have you flogged for your insolence."

Hermione snorted snidely. "Your father is still ashamed of you, Malfoy," she pointed out heartlessly, choosing to ignore his hovering threat. She spoke with a mocking sympathetic tone. "You should be worrying about that, and not about your Mudblood servant's antics at the breakfast table."

"Shut up," he hissed in a low voice.

Hermione was pleased to hear the slight trembling in a voice that he tried so hard to keep calm. "Of course, I really can't blame him for wanting to disown you. Coupled with the fact that you're the biggest asshole, the Malfoy ancestry has never had an heir who was a bigger failure."

"I'm warning you, Mudblood – one more word and I'll –"

"What?" challenged Hermione boldly, presenting to him her cheek. "Slap me around, hit me, tell me I'm nothing – you aren't gaining anything by belittling me, other than pumping your deflated ego. You're pitiful, really," she went on, "because you haven't gotten yourself an actual, fruitful hobby. You enjoy pushing people around because you've never been good at anything else but tormenting others, so don't act all mighty just because –"

"I SAID SHUT THE FUCK UP!" bellowed Draco, his voice rising for the first time, and before Hermione could realize that she'd hit a rather sensitive nerve, Draco had pushed her against the wall, pinning her against his warm body. For some reason, the close contact with the blond made her heart thud louder and harder against her ribcage than when he'd harassed her earlier in her own chambers. His furious breaths stirred the loose hairs from her ponytail, made the back of her neck prickle, and she wished that she'd been dressed in more substantial clothes so that the way the tops of her ample breasts heaved with her heavy breaths wasn't too visible – or in this case, tempting.

Draco didn't seem to mind, though. Instead, his top lip curled with evident displeasure, and he raised a hand to pull at the bunch of hair at her ponytail, yanking her head up again much like how he did last night. "I told you NEVER to bring that subject up again," he growled.

Hermione repressed the squeal of pain that threatened to escape her lips. The way Draco held her was so very different from how he held her last night – this time it was more painful somehow. "Can't bear to hear the fact that you're a coward?" she retorted.

"Will you miss your voice once it's gone, Mudblood? A twitch of my wand and it's Silencio for you –"

"I never realized you couldn't keep up with simple verbal sparring."

He yanked her hair this time to a more excruciating extent; her scalp throbbed with the burning sensation. When she still didn't release any sound that indicated pain, he pulled harder and harder until a betraying squeak left her lips.

"My patience and your breaths are very limited," he hissed. He tugged harder at her hair. "Does it hurt?" he taunted. "Do you want me to stop? Beg for it, Mudblood."

"I won't beg you for anything," she squeaked, and was pleased when her strained voice still came off sounding haughty and proud.

He smirked. "Really, now?" he said, and he tugged harder at her hair until Hermione screamed in pain.

"Does it hurt?" he asked louder this time, making sure he was heard despite the screams. "Does it hurt… princess?"

That brought Hermione's screams up short and she looked, her amber eyes tear-filled, up at Draco in surprise.

"Isn't it painful, princess?" mocked Draco again, drawing out the last word slowly.

"Don't call me that." Hermione's voice slightly trembled.

"You are in no position to order me around, princess." He grinned broadly, wickedly, showing a set of perfect ivory teeth.

"I said don't call me that!" Now tears really were escaping the edge of Hermione's eyes.

"Do you miss him, Granger? Do you miss Muggle daddy?" Hermione couldn't help but wince at that particular word. "That's right, Granger. I heard your daddy call you princess at the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of second year," he stated harshly, making her eyes swell with the sudden rush of painful memories. In the back of her mind, it surprised her to know that he recalled so far back. "Too bad for you that he's dead. My father might be… ashamed of me, as you said so yourself, but at least he's alive; while your daddy's remnants rot in the ground, never to be seen or heard from again. Now, who do you think is more… pitiful between the two of us?"

Hermione saw red through her tears, and before she could come to terms with her succeeding actions she found herself clenching a fist and swinging an arm forward. The white-hard knuckles of her fist hit his jaw with a loud pop and his face twisted to the side. Taken aback, he dropped his hold on her hair with a muttered expletive.

Adrenaline and possibly idiotic valor pumped at her system. She just wasn't satisfied with that solitary punch. She was adamant on the idea of causing him as much pain as was possible, as much pain as he cost her, even curling her small hands into fists and pummeling his solid chest with hard smacks. "Fuck. You!" she said angrily through the tears streaming down her cheeks, still hitting him. "You don't have any right to call me that!"

One never did anything logical while upset or angry.

With one hard shove Draco pushed her off him and she fell to the ground, crushed, with her head bowed in defeat. The scuffle resulted in the loosening of her ponytail and her wild curly hair fell to both sides to frame her body like curtains.

In frustration, Hermione hit the carpeted floor with her clenched fists, bruising herself in the process, finding no real outcome. Why wasn't he affected by it, by her, when his mere words affected her so much? He considered her attacks like those of a tiny bird's clawing the muzzle of a dangerous wolf. Defeated, her legs curled underneath her as her shoulders shook with huge sobs, and fat tears dropped off her chin and trickled at the stilled, tightly-clasped hands on her lap. She suddenly felt much, much older than her mere eighteen years.

"I want to go home," Hermione blubbered, her words mingling with powerful, gut-wrenching sobs. "I want to go home."

Draco didn't even falter in his harsh, cruel retort. "You have no home."

Hermione couldn't respond to that, sobs the only reply sounding from her clenched lips. Suddenly, Draco crouched down right in front of where she sat, weaved his long, pale fingers almost gently into her mane of brown hair and prodded her head up until he could look her in the eye. The dead, apathetic gray eyes of a soulless man met her fiery amber ones, which until this moment had shone with nothing but courage. Now however, the fire seemed to flicker and die slowly, like flame without oxygen. As she looked into the eyes of the personification of Hated, foul words – words she normally wouldn't utter – abruptly spilled from her mouth.

"You're… despicable," she spat out, her voice trembling with emotion. "And I actually thought you weren't so horrible after all when Harry'd said you wouldn't have killed Dumbledore – when you didn't sell us out to Bellatrix –"

Draco smirked, unaffected. "I don't give a bloody hell about what you Mudbloods think of me," he said coolly.

"I was wrong about you being good –"

"Serves you right for being an insufferable know-it-all."

"I loathe you," she went on spitefully. Her vision of his vile face cleared when tears leaked out of her eyes. "With my very soul I despise you –"

Draco cut her off once more, this time with a sneer. "You loathe me," he mocked her. "Isn't that something new." He paused for a while and leaned his face closer to hers before continuing, unweaving his fingers from her hair and letting them trail along her jaw with a faux gentleness. When he spoke again bitterness radiated from his tone of voice. "But tell me this: if you felt differently, that would be hell of a lot more complicated, wouldn't it?"

Hermione's mouth slammed shut, not finding any concrete comeback. For once they agreed with each other, but she was not about to tell him so.

"See? It's easier this way, between the both of us." And with that, Draco dropped his hold on her as though it burned him, stood up, and walked away without a backward glance. Moments later, when Hermione found the innate strength to move from where she sat, she got up, too. She retired to her chambers with sluggish movements, despite the day only half done. She wanted to sleep through the day – but found herself wetting her pillow instead with salty tears, draining her entire body of its fluid. And it was only her first morning in her new personal hell.

Neither individual had noticed that someone else was a witness to their intimate scuffle, as she peered through the small crack between door and wall – and sometimes, spectators perceived much, much more than the actual participants.

She'd noticed the way the blond wizard craved for close contact as he'd pinned his servant beneath his own body against the wall, and the way his hand curved protectively around the brunette's bare waist as he tugged painfully at her hair – his action, plainly, contradicted the other. The way his eyes pooled with black lust as he'd gazed upon the scantily-clad Mudblood. The way the witch, although aggravated, shivered from her oppressor's very touch, craving for contact herself as she'd hit his jaw with her hand. The way she kept lowering her lids and glancing furtively upon his parted lips so close to hers.

The way he'd said princess with a soft undertone that only someone who knew him well enough would recognize…

The way she'd said she despised him, yet didn't shy away in the least from the light grazing of his fingertips upon her skin…

With her mouth curled in a derisive, scornful sneer, Pansy Parkinson's eyes darkened with rage and jealousy at the denied – although obvious – attraction between the doomed pair.

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[A/N: So, here's the new chapter, hope it's not too bad… *nervous gulp* (sorry for taking quite some time to update!)

Just want to thank all the readers who've favorited, alert-listed, and especially those who've reviewed! I am thankful that this one is receiving such great feedback from you people.

HUGE thanks again to my beta Chaz (wrackspurtsarereal) for looking over this chapter for me. You're the best. :)

Drop me a line and tell me what you thought of the chapter! Thanks for reading. :) –Nina]