a/n: To be clear, she IS furious at him. But her hunger makes her not throw something at his head and instead talk to him...after all she is stuck there. for the time being.

~o~

Hermione stayed in the closet about half an hour, it seemed bawling her eyes out, until she finally was done crying and being upset. Then she stood up, wiped her eyes and grabbed yet another of his relatives old, out of fashion clothes. This time it was a ruffled shirt that sort of halfway looked like a decent enough dress. It covered her legs at least, for which she was grateful.

Then she tiptoed to the bedroom, hoping to find it empty and devoid of that hated man. Which it was.

Presumably, Dolohov had gone back to chopping wood outside or maybe eating in town while she starved.

Cooking for him! On her knees for him! The dumb brute had all his ideas of romance wrong. And why on earth should she cook a nice meal for her kidnapper? Or beg your pardon, Husband kidnapper. What an oxymoron!

Furious, she sat down on the bed and grabbed the well-worn copy of Anna Karenina, to calm herself.

But another chapter of the infuriating Vronsky doing everything to drive Anna mad while she still tried to resist and hold onto her values and the affectionate, but not passionate, love she held for her husband...reminded her too much of her own situation here in Russia also and did little to alleviate her nerves.

With each page turning, minutes seemed to stretch out so slowly and hours more seemed to pass with the unbearable humiliation and hunger Hermione felt in her stomach growing worse and worse. Until she finally had to put the book down. She was too hungry to read. And too angry to even think anymore.

Damn him.

Antonin's little game of getting her on her knees, humiliated, just added to the hunger she felt. Like she was just an animal now without dignity. Clawing at herself.

A crazed hunger had set into her. Speaking to her in survival mode, her brain began to betray her and beg her to ask him for food or even cook..yes cook for that twisted bastard...just so she could eat. To alleviate that horrible, horrible emptiness she felt at the bottom of her stomach, churning with the acid, almost making her nauseous...

She wondered if her little stunt of defying him and refusing to cook for him had been worth it.

Would it really have been terrible if she had pretended to submit to him and cook something? Amuse his pretensions of getting her to submit to him. She could pretend surely. Such traitorous thoughts swirled around in her brain.

She grit her teeth together.

No, it was just the hunger talking.

No, it wouldn't be worth the indignity. Of serving him..yet again.

She wouldn't be her stubborn Gryffindor self, if she didn't keep up her resolve, despite this aching...and aching in more ways than one. Damn him. He was going to drive them both mad. Yet no matter how long he kept her like this, she couldn't submit. Anything, hunger, kisses, wanton looks, she couldn't simply give up and hand her dignity to him on a platter. That was not Hermione Granger, that was not who she was.

At most she'd be here two more days of the Russian marriage spell before she could leave for good. Would he really let her starve unless she cooked for him during that time. What if she didn't eat before her release, would she collapse upon her escape and be recaptured? Maybe her stubbornness would not serve her well.

Maybe she should try to negotiate something with him...

She was getting more and more desperate ploys and ideas of getting him to feed her, without further losing her dignity or something more, when Hermione heard a tap at the door.

It was Antonin, of course. Who else. Certainly not the genie in the bottle or a fairy godmother about to grant her freedom. Things did not work so nicely in the real world.

She immediately sat up from the bed and stared daggers at him though she knew she had nothing more than her eyes to disarm him. She was so completely at this man's mercy.

He could do anything to her, as he had more than proven only hours ago. He could turn her into his play toy and make her do anything he wanted. At the expense of her dignity. Which he had crushed under his boots.

...Yet why did she not feel any fear of him at this moment? Is it because she had no more dignity?

In truth, she realized she was relieved to see him. She'd been worried they might go on like this for hours more til he left inexplicably tomorrow..and then she wouldn't know what to do with herself or the hunger and aching she felt in her body.

However, she tried her best to conceal her relief at seeing his face and stared pointedly as his beard, rather than his eyes, as she tried to imagine one day making him dress in a tutu as she ordered him about and made him do ridiculous things...

"I'm v'sorry," Antonin said.

Wait what?

Her jaw slackened and she stared up at him in shock.

Did Antonin Dolohov, the Russian Death Eater, actually apologize to her? While actually sounding sincere? From his arrogant mouth?

She checked his eyes. Yes, he was sincerely staring at her, a softened kind of laziness or tiredness there.

His hand raised up to scratch sheepishly at his beard.

"I don't v'want to fight anymore," Antonin reluctantly told her. "V'is only our second day of marriage and v'well is not happy."

Hermione tried to close her mouth and cross her arms to look as angry as possible...thought it was nearly impossible that he didn't see the look of relief...on her face.

So he wasn't a complete monster.

Complete being the key word.

But it did not make him Prince Charming either.

"V'well?" he prompted.

Hermione rolled her eyes and made a disgruntled sound, but otherwise ignored him and picked up her book, pretending to read. Was he really complaining about the marriage? What did he expect out of a burlap sack kidnap-order-bride, happily ever after? Her relatives, including Harry and Ron, should've been burning down his cabin by now. The marriage certainly remained unconsummated...which meant legally Dolohov had only one and half more days left before the marriage would be rendered null and void. She looked forward greedily to that third day when she could tell him to get lost.

"I'm sorry I got a bit mean v'with v'you, but v'you were rude to me first."

She yawned at his half-assed apology as she dryly flipped a page of the book while not really reading.

"Are v'you hungry?" he asked more hopefully.

Now her ears perked up though she didn't try to show it. Her eyes stopped halfway on another paragraph about Vronsky. Her hunger was burning through her. As much as she hated Dolohov right now, she was too hungry to not pay him some attention.

She finally looked back up at him. His eyes were irrepressibly sad and red rimmed like he'd cried recently...or accidentally gotten Vodka in his eyes. Either one of the two. Maybe he really did just want to marry her and was upset by her saying she would never be his wife. Ah, the problems of forcing someone else to marry you!

"I'm still not talking to you," she said viciously.

"Let me feed v'you."

"How?" she asked. "Neither one of us has agreed to cook. I certainly won't."

Antonin winked his dark eyes at her. "Just this v'once, since v'you refuse to cook and vyou are not officially my wife yet..."

"Oh for once finally he admitted that she wasn't his wife! Score!" Hermione thought triumphantly. Her harsh words earlier in the day had done their job then.

"...V'well," Antonin continued and cleared his throat, almost embarrassed he was conceding to her will. "Just this v'once I vill order take-away. English like takeaway, da?"

"Da, da," Hermione agreed. "Yes, we English love takeaway and curry and Chinese food and other people's cuisines, as long as we don't have to prepare it ourselves."

"V'well, don't get used to it, ptitsa."

But he grinned at her and Hermione found herself grinning back at him.

"Vait two minutes, ptitsa." He hurried out of the bedroom and when he came back at around six minutes later, a steaming hot pizza sat in a box on their kitchen table.

"How?" Hermione asked, greedily taking in the delicious smell of the large pizza, and trying to not salivate on the floor. She was so hungry she could've eaten a piece of cardboard. But the sight and smell of real pizza was almost too much to take. Heavenly really.

Yet she couldn't imagine there was any pizzeria nearby that delivered to the remote cabin.

Antonin winked at her. "Don't worry how, eat, ptitsa, this is real pizza from Italia."

"You brought this all the way from Italy?" Hermione asked as she bit into a slice, genuinely impressed that Antonin had managed to use his magic or some other portkey to retrieve a fresh pizza from Italy and back to Russia in around six minutes flat. "You do know some good tricks," she said without really thinking, as she grabbed at another slice.

His eyes met hers over the pizza as he watched her eating rabidly in amusement.

"Oh many, I know many many tricks, 'Ermione. You need only ask."

Crap. There was that sexual tension between them again.

Fortify yourself, Hermione, she told herself. Only one more night and day, and you will be free of this burlap-sack-marriage binding.

If only resisting Antonin was as easy as resisting a steaming hot pizza on an empty stomach...both were equally difficult and required the utmost self-control and self-punishment to resist. Hang in there. Hang in there.

But then he caught her off guard again. "V'would you like to see St. Petersburg?"

"Pardon?"

~O~

a/n: oh no i hope i didn't make dolohov too romantic at the end of this, but i dont want him to be a total jerk, especially after his previous stunt.

tho what do u do when the guy you have intense chemistry with is just all wrong for you in every other way? girl run! or stay?

can it ever work with a 'bad' guy?