A/N: Many thanks to those of you taking the time to read and review. Much love! xx-Kitten.

Splinter

By Kittenshift17

Chapter 11: Beneath the Murky Surface

"Are they... asleep?" Rabastan asked, turning his attention away from the sandwiches they'd all fallen to eating in silence. Thorfinn glanced towards the three witches over on the picnic blanket, surprised to see them all lying down. Stepping closer slowly, he noticed that Granger was lying in the middle on her back. To her left Lovegood had her back pressed against Granger's side intimately, cuddling Granger's left arm. To her right Weasley was curled into her as well, facing towards Granger. She had her head pillowed on Granger's shoulder, her arm thrown casually over the other two girls protectively.

All three of them were sound asleep.

Thorfinn hated them a little bit for looking so... normal.

They were captives, curse it all. They'd been brutalized and tormented, held prisoner and trapped with three of the Dark Lord's most valued and formidable generals. Yet together, the three of them looked more like a litter of sleepy kittens than the powerful witches he knew them to be. In sleep, curled together so casually and intimately, it was as though they had no fear of their jailers; no despair over the loss of their freedom. They looked relaxed. Almost content.

A rumble of thunder overhead warned against the oncoming storm that heralded the Dark Lord's return and Thorfinn's gaze clashed with a pair of muddy brown eyes when Granger's eyes snapped open at the sound. He was standing over her, looking down on her, his feet by her head at the edge of the picnic rug. Thorfinn felt a little sliver of begrudging respect and annoyance when she didn't recoil in horror or even seem to mind that he loomed over her.

For a moment he feared she'd returned to her catatonic state, but then she blinked at him.

"Not yet," she said, as though knowing he was going to tell them it was time they returned to their cages, "Please? Just a little longer?"

Thorfinn didn't think he was the only one caught off guard by her request. Rabastan and Antonin had come up on either side of him, peering down at them, and yet Granger's eyes remained on him.

"Storm's coming," Thorfinn told her, "The Dark Lord is returning."

"I know," she said, all without moving from her place on the ground. She laid sprawled on her back, looking at him upside-down and yet she didn't seem to mind her vulnerability, "But just a few minutes more... please?"

She glanced at Rabastan and Antonin then, before returning her gaze to his. She looked hopeful yet resigned that he would tell her 'no'. His comrades glanced at him seriously before looking to the skies.

Thorfinn gave her a single nod and she smiled.

He hated himself a little when he realised he'd not really ever noticed her smile before. It transformed her face and Thorfinn was surprised to see it at all. Given the circumstances.

"Thank you," she murmured, holding his gaze and shocking him with her expression of gratitude.

She looked away from him then to the red-head sleeping on her shoulder and Thorfinn watched the way she leaned over a little until she could kiss Weasley's forehead.

"Wake up, love," she said softly to the girl and Weasley opened her eyes slowly. She blinked at Granger before smiling sweetly. For just a moment, Thorfinn knew the redhead had forgotten their captivity. Then her gaze lifted to him and she looked resigned and annoyed to see him.

"Time to go," Granger told her softly, curling her arm around the girl in a hug before Weasley sat up slowly.

"Is Luna alright?" the redhead asked glancing towards the still-sleeping blonde.

"She's exhausted," Granger sighed, curling around to spoon the little blonde for a moment. Thorfinn put out a hand to stop Rabastan when the man took a step, clearly not liking to see his captive touched by Granger. She cuddled the girl carefully.

"Don't wake her, please?" she asked, looking directly at Rabastan.

Rabastan stilled under Thorfinn's hand, tilting his head at the mudblood as though considering the idea.

"Ready, Kotik?" Dolohov asked of Ginny and Hermione slid her arm out from under Luna, pressing a kiss to the girl's temple before she sat up slowly.

"Almost," Weasley sighed, reaching out and wrapping Granger into a tight embrace. The women clung to each other for a moment before letting go. Thorfinn looked on as Rabastan bent, intent on picking up Lovegood, while Antonin lowered his hands towards Weasley. Before they could touch either girl however, Granger reached out and took hold of one of their hands each, startling his companions.

"Thank you," she said to them both seriously, holding their gazes, "I know you didn't have to let them out to help me... so, thank you."

Thorfinn knew she'd shocked the two Death Eaters into stillness, but she didn't show that she realised what she'd done. She just released their hands and turned her gaze back to Thorfinn. He stared at her when she held both hands up towards him.

"I can't stand on my own," she admitted to him as Rabastan recovered enough from her expression of gratitude to scoop Lovegood into his arms almost tenderly. Weasley accepted the hand up Antonin offered her but chose to walk on her own.

Thorfinn sighed before he reached down, scooping Granger up into his hold. His skin prickled when she wrapped her arms around the back of his neck, clinging to him as though she feared he would drop her. She didn't make any sound of protest as he carried her inside, his companions following behind him silently. Weasley brushed her hand over Granger's hair when they parted ways and Thorfinn carried the witch back into his chambers where she belonged while the others made for the Floo.

"You owe me," he told her quietly when he carried her into the bathroom and set her on the edge of the tub, waving his wand to make it begin to fill.

"For letting me see Ginny and Luna?" she asked, watching him as he moved about the bathroom, adding things to the bathwater, including a potion to improve her current exhaustion.

"I had to pay to get Rabastan to let Lovegood loose. She was trussed up in ways your brain couldn't begin to fathom."

She looked puzzled at that.

"You'd be surprised what I can fathom, Thorfinn Rowle," she told him truthfully, "What payment did he ask for?"

"Rabastan has a fetish for blonde hair, and he doesn't particularly care what parts a person attached to that hair has. He's been trying to convince me since I was at Hogwarts to shag him, but I don't swing that way. He wouldn't let Lovegood out until I let him run his hands through my hair and he licked my chin," Thorfinn told her, shuddering a little at the memory.

"How awful for you," she retorted in a conversational tone and Thorfinn eyed her suspiciously. Her expression belied her sarcasm.

"Indeed," he agreed, "He also tried to suggest I lick Lovegood's cunt because he's completely perverted, but I punched him."

"Not interested in Luna?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at him sceptically, "Is it her lack of filthy muggle blood in her system that turns you off?"

"I'm not about to put my tongue where that twisted bastard has had his cock and Merlin only knows what else," Thorfinn told her, curling his lip in disgust. He almost fell over when a little giggle escaped her.

"Imagine where he's had his tongue... and he licked you," she pointed out and Thorfinn felt nauseous. Scooping up a handful of water he scrubbed furiously his chin where Rabastan had nipped him and licked him.

"Don't laugh," he warned her, "I'm going to make you pay for what he did."

"It's hardly my fault he wants to shag you," she replied almost flippantly, still giggling as she watched him scrub at his chin, "You can't just take it out on me."

"Yes I can. It's your fault I had to endure that because Weasley said she needed Lovegood's help to reach you."

She bit her lip then, looking down at her lap and Thorfinn felt the oddly friendly moment they'd just shared fade away. She grew sombre and serious, her hands fiddling with the fastenings of the cloak he'd wrapped her in. When she undid them, the cloak slip off her shoulders, pooling around her waist and Thorfinn startled to suddenly be assaulted with the sight of her dressed in the purple silk teddy he'd put her in before taking her outside. He paused in his scrubbing when she slipped the straps off her shoulders too, before experimentally getting to her feet. She wobbled precariously, clinging to the basin as both garments slipped down her body to puddle at her feet, leaving her body bared to his gaze.

Thorfinn's cock throbbed painfully in his trousers at the sight she made.

Her pale skin made his brand on her all the more prominent. She had some residual bruises too from what he'd done to try and rouse her, though she didn't mention them. She'd lost an alarming amount of weight since her capture, and especially since the war. He didn't remember exactly how she'd looked before it, though he recalled her wearing frumpy clothing that didn't flatter her figure. He wondered why he couldn't seem to recall. He'd thought enough times about shoving her against a wall and shagging her mercilessly back then that he thought he ought to.

"You're staring," she warned him as she climbed back onto the edge of the bathtub, curling in on herself as she leaned forwards to dip her toes in the hot water.

"You just stripped in front of me without my... assistance," he said, hedging over the word when he realised he'd been about to say with him making her take her clothes off.

"Did you not carry me in here for the purpose of a bath?" she asked, still not looking at him.

"I did," Thorfinn answered, a frown creasing his brow.

"I've found that doing so naked is often the most productive way to bathe..." she said, "Unless... were you planning to be the one undressing me again?"

She glanced at him then, quizzically, as though she was genuinely curious about what he'd intended and Thorfinn had the feeling she was uncomfortable, though not about being naked before him. She seemed to have either gotten over her shyness - unlikely - or she had simply resigned herself to the fact that he had seen it all before, had touched it all before, and would again. No, the uncomfortable vibe seemed to stem from embarrassment over the idea of her being catatonic in his presence for a week, with no recollection of the time, because of what he'd done to her.

She slipped into the bath then, not waiting for him to get in first or to prompt her too. Before he could even think about disrobing she slipped right down until she was laying on her back on the bottom of the tub. She had her eyes closed tight, and her legs bent up like a pretzel. She swayed slightly under the water, clearly trying to make sure her hair was thoroughly wetted. Thorfinn watched her, fascinated, when she sat back up and reached immediately for the shampoo, scrubbing it through her hair before she slid underwater again to rinse it clean. He crossed his arms over his chest at her for that. He'd meant to get in with her but she was clearly more intent on cleansing herself right then, rather than soaking.

"Could you hand me the conditioner?" she asked softly, her eyes still closed, hand groping for the bottle blindly as she tried to wipe shampoo from her eyes with the other.

"I could've done that," he told her, handing over the bottle.

"I think you've done enough for me in the past week," she replied and Thorfinn realised she was embarrassed he'd been able to make her take a mental vacation.

"Should we discuss the reason for that?" he asked her, unbuttoning his shirt slowly and stripping it off his body.

"Do you really see any point in that?" she retorted.

"Since you're acting completely normal again now, I'd say yes. What caused you to check out? I assumed it was the fact that I'm a monster, but you didn't seem to care when you were being flip a moment ago or when I carried you inside."

"Does it matter?" she asked, "It's not like you actually care about my opinion of you. You're a Death Eater, Rowle, a loyal one who does the tasks he's asked to do with a brutality mirrored only by the two companions you seem to keep closest to you. And me? I'm just the insignificant little mudblood burden you've been charged with harassing and cajoling into Stockholm Syndrome or madness. To you, I'm not a person. Not something with feelings, hopes, dreams and magical abilities. You've been raised to believe that people like me are little more than scum; something to be ashamed of and ridiculed if you deign to acknowledge our existence at all. Why would you care what caused me to take a mental vacation, outside of you clearly being a monster?"

"I'd prefer to keep it from happening again. I'm supposed to keep you alive, which is not easy when you won't eat, drink or move on your own," Thorfinn answered tightly, his face losing all expression at her words. Nothing she'd said was untrue and yet... yet, he had begun to think of her as a person. He'd always known, subconsciously. It was obvious, but it was true he considered her and people like her to be far beneath him on the hierarchy ladder.

"If you don't want it to happen again, don't force yourself on me after you've been out committing murder of people I dedicated my life to keeping safe," Hermione informed him primly, combing her conditioner-coated fingers through her long mane of curls, "And don't surprise me if I'm reading a novel. Novel reading is a form of escapism and I wasn't here when you turned up. Not really. Mentally I was in another realm where things were exciting and happy, not war-torn and broken. Being raped by you whilst you displayed the horrifying acts of war all over yourself was too shocking a jolt back into my horrible reality."

Thorfinn supposed that made sense. Not that he had to like it.

He was supposed to be breaking her but he realised then that it had been a mistake to think of tormenting her with his own triumphs on the battlefield. Not because it didn't cause her significant anguish to know he and his brethren could decimate the illusion of safety she worked so hard to build. But because it didn't serve his purpose. His purpose was to alter her opinion of him so much that she would want to stay. Not because he wanted her to, but because the Dark Lord had commanded it, knowing how it would strike a sizable blow to Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to know the three women leading them could be so easily swayed to the Dark.

Making her catatonic didn't serve that purpose and so Thorfinn supposed he would simply have to refrain from doing what he'd done again.

"Do you have bubble-bath?" she asked, startling him out of his thoughts with her entirely absurd request.

"Do I seem like the type of person to possess liquid soap to make my bathes bubbly?" he asked in return, quirking an eyebrow at her and entirely stumped by her random question.

"I suppose not," she answered, her brow wrinkling a little, "Flick?"

Thorfinn glanced down at his elf when Flick popped into the room next to him. Flick startled horribly to find them both naked, and clasped his ears, dragging them over his eyes absurdly.

"Miss?" Flick asked and Rowle found himself glancing at the mudblood in his bathtub in confusion when she giggled at his reaction.

"Could you bring me some bubble-bath please?" she asked politely.

"Right away Miss," Flick answered and Thorfinn was shocked by the uncomfortable squeak in the elf's voice a he disappeared again.

"That was unexpected," she commented, slipping down under the water once more and swooshing her head about, trying to wash the conditioner from her hair. Thorfinn – who had been in the process of unbuttoning his trousers – stared at her in complete confusion.

She seemed like an entirely different witch to the one who'd been handed over to him in chains.

"Did you know elves could cover their eyes with their ears like that?" she asked when she'd washed her hair out sufficiently. Thorfinn watched her mutely as she pulled the plug from the tub, the soapy water draining away.

"Because I didn't. I'd seen Dobby wiggle his when he was anxious about something. I suppose I've never surprised an elf by being naked in their presence before…. Are you still staring?" she went on as though she were his houseguest – his lover – only too comfortable being naked and conversational in his presence.

"Are you mental?" he asked mildly, a niggle of concern prickling at him as he watched her sit in the empty tub, clearly planning to refill it just as soon as Flick returned with bubbles.

"Why would you ask me that?" she countered rather than offering an answer.

"You're talking to me like we're actually friends or something," he pointed out, tensing in surprise when Flick popped into the room again, one hand clamped over his eyes and the other blindly holding out a bottle of bubble-bath.

"Will that be all Miss?" Flick asked.

"Yes. Thank you so much Flick. I'm sorry I surprised you," she replied entirely too cheerfully, her eyes sparkling with amusement when Thorfinn took the bottle of bubbles from the elf and handed it to her.

"Master, do you need anything from Flick?" the elf asked.

"Not right now," Thorfinn answered, amused when the elf wiggled his ears nervously and disappeared again.

He watched in silence as Granger upended the bottle of bubbles, spreading her knees and dumping the liquid on the floor of the tub between them before she turned the taps on and watched the tub begin to fill. He noticed idly that she'd claimed the far end of the bath for herself, reclining against it lackadaisically and eyeing him strangely.

"Are you just going to stare or are you going to get in?" she asked eventually as the bubble began to foam, hiding her body from his gaze, "Only, if you are getting in, you need to do it now. Otherwise I'll overfill the tub and water will go everywhere."

Had being allowed to see her friends had this effect on her?

He'd never seen her acting so…. Human. Oh, he'd noticed her activities plenty of times when they'd been at Hogwarts, but he'd always been subject to the venom she hissed at the sight of him and to the dirty looks she threw in his direction whenever he tormented her.

"You're sitting at the wrong end," he said finally, watching her face as he dropped his trousers, baring his body to her gaze.

"I'd be in your way if I were sitting the other end," she disagreed with him and Thorfinn felt her gaze travel down his body like a hot caress. No particular expression came over her face as she inspected him. She simply stared as though disaffected by his naked form. Stepping into the tub, Thorfinn settled himself in the warm water, already deciding that he hated bubbles. They got in the way of being able to see her naked body beneath the water.

She watched him the entire time, eyeing him with that same blank expression on her face and he hated her for it. How dare she scrutinize him? How dare she act like everything was fine and dandy? He mustn't be doing his job as her captor if she could be so comfortable in his presence.

He tangled her legs with his as she sat the other end of the tub regarding him coolly, dragging her feet over his thighs to rest them either side of her hips whilst burying his own feet under her.

"So, what now?" she asked him seriously, still watching him.

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

"What now?" he repeated.

"Well, I assume part of your plan is to somehow convince me that you're not a monster. So what happens now? Because I still think you're a monster."

Thorfinn narrowed her eyes on her.

"Is this you asking me to fuck you again?" he wanted to know, trying to unsettle her. He preferred Granger rattled. He didn't at all trust her when she was seemingly calm.

"Good heavens, no!" she replied, looking mildly revolted by the very thought, "Feel free to refrain from ever fucking me again."

"We had an agreement," he reminded you, "You checking out on a mental vacation doesn't change things at all."

"Of course it does," she countered, "You went out of your way to make sure that I'd check back in. And while I don't doubt it was to avoid angering your master, you still did it. You acted to make sure my continued health was a priority. So where does that leave us?"

"I would think the answer was obvious," he replied coldly, not at all liking her insinuation.

"Oh?" she asked, raising her eyebrows,

"You're merely a chess piece waiting to be put to use," he told her nastily.

"You really ought to stop objectifying me, Rowle," she told him, "You'll develop objectophelia. And then I'll walk in here one day to find out shagging a conditioner botte or something. It's not healthy, you know."

"You think you're worth regarding as human?" he asked nastily, eyeing her in annoyance.

"I'm sure my thoughts don't matter to you," she shrugged, "So what happens now? How do you plan to have me fall for you? That was your plan, wasn't it? Abuse me into falling in love with you and so psychologically wound Harry and Ron by doing anything you ask of me?"

"I find your voice incredibly irritating when you're not cursing me or begging me to fuck you harder," Thorfinn told her, "As for my plan, I don't need one. All I have to do is keep you locked in this room, routinely shagging you, and eventually you will begin to crave my attention and my company. All too soon you'll feel a little rush of happiness at the very sight of me."

"I doubt that very much, given that the sight of you makes me queasy," she replied coldly.

"Now," he shrugged, "But when mine is the only face you see; when my voice is the only voice you hear; when my scent is the only one you breathe; eventually you will come to depend on me. You require human contact and human interaction. And I'm all you've got."

She glared at him hatefully and Thorfinn knew he had her.