~o~
Lucius is still for the longest time before his mask seems to fall back into place and she can see the machinations in his head as he feigns complete innocence.
And damn him, it is such a convincing performance, so well played out, she almost doubts herself. Every word, every nuance of his body language, seems to feign innocence and ignorance of what she speaks of...but she knows Lucius far too well now to believe him he doesn't know what she's talking about. After all who on else could it have been that night?
It certainly was not Draco, he had no recollection of the evening. And Lucius was the only person who even knew they were fighting that night and closely followed her from the Manor to her flat.
"That night?" Lucius frowns down at her, imposing over her with his height and greater physicality as if to get her to back off. "What night are you talking about?"
"You know what you did," she repeats, almost for her own benefit and belief, as much as his.
Though her voice is shaky and sounds hoarse and it's overwhelming to finally confront him, her abuser, after weeks of silence and inner turmoil as she tried to hide it all from Draco, from work, from her family and even from Lucius himself..pretending she didn't know it was him. Well, the cat's out of the bag now; she can't lie to herself anymore, or let her silence destroy her. She only wants one thing: to know the truth, to hear it confirmed from his lips. Well two things, actually: the second is details of which she hasn't even begun to figure out yet.
At this moment, her eyes water and she just wants to stop feeling like she's going crazy, like she's been imagining the whole thing.
Lucius stares at her lucidly for the longest time again and words fail both of them. It feels like a staring contest, or some other growing tension between them.
"No, I don't think so," Lucius whispers and then that mask slips right back onto his face as he opts to cover his tracks. "I haven't the slightest, remotest idea what you are speaking about, my daughter. You sound positively disturbed," he insinuates there is something wrong with her.
"You bastard."
Hermione exhales heavily. This is a great blow, perhaps as heavy as if Lucius had physically pummeled her with his bare hands...It's worse then even Draco slapping her on the face, or during the war, Bellatrix hitting her so hard her neck snapped back as she burned her wrist with those words 'mudblood'.
...The effect of his words, his lies, his god damn denial, is like a million bruises to her being. It takes all of her willpower to not become hysterical or break down and cry begging him to admit it, or better yet, attack him and force him to tell the truth.
And she realizes how bloody naive she's been...again.
Lucius Malfoy is going to drag her to hell and back before he admits any wrongdoing. He's a Malfoy and Slytherin to his core. Was she really stupid enough to think Lucius Malfoy would come clean about anything that could possibly incriminate him? Of course bloody not.
But she refuses to relinquish her hold on the truth just yet. She is an adult, she can see through his lies.
"You know what you did," she repeats lowly and realizes her voice came out as a faint whisper. Almost as if, with his soul crushing, she has lost strength while he has gained some over her.
He sneers and curls his lip at her, almost as if he is offended, though the steely core in his grey eyes tell her there is some tension underneath the surface.
"Careful, Granger, you're making a lofty accusation."
"I thought you didn't know what I was accusing you of?"
"No, but it doesn't take much to elucidate from your extreme reactions and how upset you are, that is something grave and very serious you accuse me of."
"Not accuse. I know. There's no accusation here."
Lucius stares haughtily down at her. "Again I have no clue what you speak of, only that it is grave indeed. Why don't you tell me the details?" he drawls casually. "Refresh my memory."
The smallest of smiles played on his lips and they both know he has won at this point. Checkmate. Humiliation. Re-victimizing her all over again.
She manages to hold his gaze as his eyes burn into her but it's as if she's been gutted from the inside. Like there's nothing left inside her; Lucius has cleaned out her innards like a fish he's gutted out her clean so there is nothing left in her.
"Do you really expect me to go over my attack in detail?" she hisses and chokes on her words.
She is so ashamed they are even having this conversation right now, the wildly inappropriate way it is playing out, so out of her control. Somehow she imagined him confessing the truth or her taking out her wand and crucioing him into spouting the truth. She's so desperate for the truth, she's not beyond dark magic at this point. But then Lucius could easily take out his wand too and the situation could become even uglier and grislier than it already is. Yet she isn't going to let him walk away from this, no matter how much he denies it or pretends to know nothing. She has to get him to say the truth. She needs to hear it from his cruel lips whether it takes hours or days longer before he finally does of his own accord and she can make sense of the whole mess.
"If I am to be accused by you, I should like to know what you accuse me of, hmm?" he presses.
There are no words to encapsulate her anger or frustration. Perhaps a part of her mind has shut down and she has gone into a state of shock because she finds herself numbly going along with his suggestion of going over that night with him.
"Go on," he goads her.
Her cheeks flush and she is shaking so hard she is forced to sit down on the chaise lounge. When she speaks again, she can't even recognize her voice, it doesn't feel like it's her talking though the words slip out of her mouth true enough and it feels like the night happened yesterday.
"I came back to my flat after my fight with Draco, the night he slapped me. We'd been arguing. I came back to the flat, I was crying and upset. When I thought I was alone, I heard footsteps come into the house. I wasn't sure it was Draco at first, something seemed off. But when I turned on the lights, it was Draco, my husband. He told me he was sorry and..." her voice halts and she can't bring herself to say anymore. It cuts too deeply.
"And what?" Lucius raises his eyebrow and cruelly smiles. "That is it, you accuse me of Draco apologizing to you? How does that make sense for you to be so distraught and angry at me?"
Hermione's anger comes pouring back into her blood veins and revitalizing her with strength.
She stands up off the chaise and confronts the man who has caused her so much damage and grief.
"AND," she hisses directly at him. "The man who apologized to me that night, the man who I ended up having sex with the whole night, the man who I thought was my husband, turned out to be an imposter." A single tear came down her eye. "Draco was never there that night. It was someone else, who knew me, who knew I'd been fighting with Draco, who slipped into our house using polyjuice and got me to undress."
Lucius has an unreadable expression on his face. "So you did have sex outside marriage. And you said Rita spoke only lies.."
"I was tricked, I was basically raped!" she screams hoarsely.
Her breath came hard and fast. While Lucius stood stonily staring at her.
She felt ashamed a moment ago, but then she thinks: Why should she hide any detail? He knew as much as her. Lucius did these things to her, after all. She should not feel ashamed to tell him what he did to her.
"He violated me in every way there is to be violated. He placed his cock, disguised as my husband, in my mouth, down my throat and pretty much anywhere he could. The sex was unprotected, anything could have happened!" she screamed at him madly and wondered why she even bothered to say 'him' or 'he' when she should just scream 'you Lucius'.
"That sounds like quite the night." He looks thoughtfully down at his hands." Are you sure the article Rita Skeeter wrote about you isn't true? It wasn't Ernie or Harry Potter that night?"
"It was you!"
"Miss Granger, that is an astonishing claim." He pauses and his eyes flicker downwards over her as his long blonde hair fell over his eyes. "Do you have any proof?"
"I don't need any proof. This is between you and me."
"Or a guilty conscious, and lack of evidence, prevents you from taking any judiciary action," he finishes for her. Utterly defeating any hope of remorse she hoped to illicit from him. Is he even human, she wonders, behind the facade?
Something finally snaps inside her. She can't restrain her fury at Lucius for a second longer. Or this mutual tiptoeing around the truth. Lucius has had her dancing in circles like a monkey. But no more. No matter how much, or how elegantly, Lucius pretends it wasn't him who tricked her that night and raped her, she has never, and never will, lose sight of the truth amid all his clever lies. Perhaps she should get his confession now and be done with it, revealing the whole disaster to everyone, including Draco, consequences be damned.
She digs out her wand from her pocket and points it through the air towards Lucius.
"Careful," he warns her and removes his hand from the snake cane.
She ignores his warning and prepares to disarm him. If he weren't such a lying bastard, she wouldn't need to resort to forcing the truth out of him, yet she feels she has to before she goes mad.
"Expelleriamus!" Arresto momentum!" she fires off two spells aimed at Lucius's head in quick succession.
Lucius scoffs at her as he dodges her spell then deflects it back with a ramifying spell that disarms her own wand and stings her hand with an invisible burn when she tries to grab it back.
"You cannot win against me Hermione, do not even try."
In a split second, her wand has flown into his elegantly outstretched hand.
The sight of her wand, her most valued and intimate possession, in his hands triggers something inside her.
"Give me back my wand!"
She lunges towards him scratching at Lucius's perfect face with her hands.
The sheer physicality of her attack, momentarily, takes the blonde wizard off guard before his own temper rises and he body slams her against the wall to restrain her.
His hands clamp down on either side of her hands; she notices then how large and powerful his hands are, though he uses them so rarely in favour of magic. Yet she can feel the weight and strength of his biceps as he keeps her in place and she cant even squirm underneath his grip, though he does not hurt her, she is completely immobilized and this is humiliating beyond anything. He holds her hands above her head on the wall behind her. He leans in towards her and she is suffocated by his proximity...which she cannot endure.
"Why are you so angry about this attack? It sounds like you had an enjoyable night with someone you thought was your husband." His grey eyes bore into her. "Or am I mistaken in assuming you enjoyed every last bit of it? I imagine you moaned a lot, didn't you? I heard enough of your moaning with Draco in my house."
She burns in a thousand flames of humiliation at the partial seed of truth hidden among all his lies.
Yet there is something more going on here beyond the trauma and hate and anger she feels. There is something else...she can't quite put her finger on or touch for fear it will burn her even more than his spells did.
Their faces are only a few inches apart and more than once she thinks she catches Lucius's eyes dilate or linger a second too long than necessary on her lips or eyes.
This is dangerous ground they tread upon.
"Let go of me!" she hisses and shakes violently against his grip though it's like being incarcerated to be held in Lucius's hands.
"No, I insist on detaining you til you calm down," he chuckles as if enjoying her struggle. "You just attacked me."
"You deserved it!"
Lucius shakes his head, his long hair becoming unruly as it falls into his face again. "Whether I do or not, you'll have to try harder to disarm me."
His grey eyes met hers and her heart pounds in her chest a feeling of both hot and cold in her body.
Something too seems to churn inside his eyes though she can't say for sure either what it might be. Hatred, or lust, or more cruelty, she realizes she doesn't actually understand this man whatsoever...otherwise she'd never have allowed him to get under her skin.
Lucius breathes in sharply though his nose as he peered down his nose at her. "How can you say with so much conviction that it was me. What if you're wrong?"
"Who else would it be?"
"How many enemies do you have? It could be someone else coming out of the woodwork...like Rita."
"No, I know it was you."
"How?" His hands grips on her wrists tightens as he clamps them together over her head.
He frees his other hand to trace down her neck.
Hermione shivers and wishes she could block out both his touch and his presence but there is nowhere to run, not when he holds her like this.
His taunting eyes stare her down telling her to prove what she knows it was him, by showing him what happened between her and the doppelganger Draco.
"How can you know it was me, if you've never known my touch?"
"You're unimaginably scandalous." She bit out. "And indecent. I can't believe you would even suggest—"
"Miss Granger," he interrupts her. "It is you who suggests I slept with you under guise of a polyjuice. What reason do you have to claim it was I, not Draco?"
He strokes her lips almost lovingly with the his thumb, dipping her lower lip down to bare her teeth to him.
"Let go of me!" she hisses and flails wildly trying to kick him with her legs but he soon presses that too to restrain her. She swallows down the bile in her throat at having her touch her.
"No, let's not play around the truth. Let's be adults shall way? You want revenge. That is what you're after, isn't it?"
"No!" she screams finally at the top of her lungs; her voice so loud it hurts her throat. "I just want the truth! I want you to admit what you've done and I want you to tell Draco and Narcissa what a bastard you really are."
"That's not happening."
"So you admit what you did?"
"Not at all, I admit nothing. I just don't want you filling my son's head with fanciful lies about me."
"They're not lies! Why can't you tell the truth for once in your life!"
"What is the real lie, I wonder, Hermione?" he asks her scathingly, his voice heavy with insinuation as his eyes lower over her. But then he turns it around and finally gives her an ultimatum as his grey eyes stare at her pointedly. "But because I'm feeling generous: I will tell you the truth, under veritaserum if need be, after you sleep with me."
"That will NEVER happen."
She slaps him and, to her surprise, he let's her go.
She doesn't give Lucius a chance to change his mind, or risk a further battle. She bends to the ground to retrieve her wand then runs as fast as her legs will carry her out of Villeneuve.
When she reaches the outdoors, the sun is nowhere to be seen and rain is pouring down the perimeters heavily.
The awestruck brunette tries to apparate on the grounds but the wards disable her attempts. She has to reach the end of the lawn, of the property, to be able to leave.
As if all her liberty and life rests on this moment, Hermione runs, slippery and sliding, down the muddy hillside to the end of the Malfoy's Villeneuve property.
Her eyes glance one more time at the house, where she imagines Lucius is looking out a window at her, before she opens the gate up and apparates on the other side.
~o~
a/n: So Hermione has two choices: revenge or revenge. What is she going to do, or is Lucius going to beat her at her own game by destroying her life and reputation more before she comes crawling back to him? Is she in love with him or does she only hate him?
Is there any possibility he can seduce her again or is she already too far in this but lying to them both that she desperately wants his touch? and maybe also to strangle him...
