(The conclusion of this R-rated tale.)
Paralysis. Hermione's right arm throbbed because of the leather thong wrapped from wrist to elbow. She felt little else, save the pull as she moved closer to--
--Rita Skeeter, her face grotesquely gilded in firelight and wearing a serene smile that now made perfect, horrifying sense.
Why couldn't she move? What spell made her left arm hang uselessly at her side? And, why could she no longer feel her legs? Her head floated, disconnected, while her hips and those non-existent legs seemed a thousand miles away.
She was at war with herself. No, that made it seem too orderly, too deliberate. Sensations sloshed inside her like flotsam from a shipwreck bobbing on the waves, then sinking out of sight. Horror, fascination, and... other feelings, all surged within her. She was afraid even to give a name to some of those feelings, lest she be sucked into the emotional undertow.
Rita Skeeter trailed scarlet-taloned fingernails across one of Hermione's breasts, freeing it from the tight corset. Painful, yes, but she experienced flutterings of other sensations below the pain, robbing her of will and thought so that all she could do was watch as the fingers flexed, then raked her skin lightly.
"Give it a try, mmmm?. You might be surprised." Rita almost purred as her fingers stroked Hermione's shoulder and then pushed her down in a gentle, but insistent way.
And Hermione's legs buckled. Traitors! How can you fail me?
No answer, except for that insistent and unnamed throbbing.
"Ah," Rita said, drawing the sound out so that it encompassed both satisfaction and anticipation. She gave the enchanted whip the smallest of jerks and the leather began to slither down Hermione's arm, withdrawing on command from its mistress.
No...
Hermione's knees hit the floor and she felt the jolt of the hard wood. The shock roused her.
No.
The snakelike braid slid over her wrist, almost gone, as it returned to--
NO.
Soon it would be gone, this thin black thong, but would it return?
NO!!
Hermione clenched her hands and choked as if she'd forgotten to breathe and only just remembered how once again. Her fist closed on the leather of the whip. With a desperation that surprised her she yanked the braid and stood up, pushing Rita Skeeter backward so violently that she let go of the whip handle in surprise. The girl snatched and caught it, blind to everything else in the room except the woman sprawled on the floor reaching for her handbag.
Her wand. No, she mustn't--
Rita Skeeter, no longer smiling but grim, pulled out her wand and tried to get to her feet amidst a swirl of black robes. Hermione's hand closed on the whip's handle. She wouldn't let her rise. She would make her stop.
Crack!
The whip tore through the black robes, throwing a shower of red sparks in its wake. Stunned, the woman stopped moving. But, then she smiled and made to rise again, her eyes fixed on the girl standing above her.
Crack!
Hermione struck out again, half-blinded by some monster pounding her insides like a caged beast slamming into prison bars. The whip slashed across Rita Skeeter's shoulder, leaving torn fabric and another shower of sparks its wake.
A strange light glinted in her eyes as she laughed, "Think you can break me, Hermione?"
"Stop it!" Hermione pushed the words out from somewhere deep in her chest. The roiling confusion that burned within her an instant before coalesced into an icy cold resolve, a desire to take up the challenge, to force the woman to stop... Leave me in peace! I won't have you--
Crack!
The loud snap of the whip and the sizzle of red sparks caught Hermione by surprise as the lash struck Rita Skeeter on the cheek, opening a long crimson gash down one side of her face.
No. Hermione forced herself to look away, trying to regain a toehold in some other place, a reality that did not include what lay before her. Her eyes cast about the floor as she took in lungfuls of air like a swimmer who's been under water for too long. Feeling came back to her legs and arms. And she saw her wand.
She dropped the whip as if it had suddenly begun to glow white-hot and scrambled to pick up the wand. Almost without thinking, Hermione caused cords to shoot out and wrap around Rita, binding her arms tightly against her chest. She caught her breath, feeling some triumph in standing as she did, wand in hand, while the woman struggled at her feet.
"Of course. I should have seen it. Lovely," Rita said, her breath coming in shallow gasps. "But you really should read my book on the more... elegant use of ropes and bindings."
Why is she looking at me like that? Hermione wondered wildly, clenching her wand tightly enough that her fingernails cut painfully into her palm. Her heart thudded, the only sensation she felt as her world seemed to have contracted to the pounding in her chest and Rita's probing stare.
"Go on..."
A single heartbeat can seem like a year, a decade, a century sometimes. Hermione drew a deep breath and saw herself balanced on the edge of sharp precipice, knowing the choices even though she did not fully understand them.
"Get out," she said softly, and with a swift downward stroke of her wand she dissolved the cords binding Rita Skeeter.
"Don't want to play, Miss Granger? Too bad. You'd enjoy it. I can tell. I can always tell." The woman slowly got to her feet, hauling her handbag with her. She reached into it and pulled out a handkerchief that she dabbed on her cheek.
"A bit crude, I'll admit. You really must let show you a few..."
"Stop it!" Hermione cried. "Haven't you done enough damage? Just get out of here!"
"Perhaps you're right." A smile of delight inched its way across Rita Skeeter's face, now lopsided because of the gash running down one cheek. She replaced the handkerchief and held up the photograph once more.
Hermione started, having forgotten about its existence, as if it had been years since she had last seen it. Who was that girl in the picture? Someone different, someone innocent of... of what she ached to forget, longed to erase from memory.
"I shall keep this little memento of our... chat. If you want it, you can come and fetch it." She dropped the picture into her handbag and closed it with a loud snap. "But, keep the toy. You will find, my dear, that there are boys of your acquaintance who may be quite interested in what you--"
"I don't want it. Take it and--"
Rita Skeeter, who had slowly been raising her wand as she talked, Disapparated with a pop just as Hermione kicked the whip toward her. It clattered into a bedpost and partially disappeared under the bed, peeking out from under the edge of the quilt like a garden snake from under a bush.
Thus, there was no one left in the room to hear Hermione's shriek of frustration, relief, and despair as she tore off the hated satin corset and threw it into the fire.
When Crookshanks returned hours later, he found her sitting on the floor before the fireplace, wrapped in the quilt that she'd dragged off the bed. She looked around, startled, as the he rubbed his head against her side and yowled.
"Where have you been? Where?" Hermione scolded as she took the cat in her arms. He squirmed, then shook his head as hot tears splashed his fur.
"Meow," said Crookshanks and purred.
~~~~~~~~~
Hermione sat on the bed, her fingers playing over the polished handle of the curious black object that lay beside her. Crookshanks rubbed her ankles insistently, but she paid him no attention.
Tap-tap-tap. A hesitant knock on the door. She pulled her dressing gown close across her chest, as if to hide.
"Hermione? It's me, Ron."
Silence. Hermione didn't know what to say, so she stared at her knees instead, smoothing the dressing gown, although it was already pulled tautly across her lap.
"Hermione? I want to--"
"If you're looking for your Quidditch book, you left it under your chair at dinner." Hermione looked up and fussed at the door, which stared back at her blankly. Must she find every little lost thing for him?
"No, it's not that--but thanks. I didn't know it had gone missing." Ron paused, then pitched his voice lower in a hoarse whisper. "You feeling okay, Hermione? Anything wrong?"
"Fine. I'm fine." She called back, feeling anything but fine.
"It was the dungbomb, right? We shouldn't have--"
"Oh, for heaven's sake." She got up and opened the door on a concerned but sheepish Ron Weasley. "Let's not conduct our conversation in public. Er, come in."
She sat on the bed and returned to smoothing the dressing gown over her knees. Ron approached her, shifting about from one foot to the next, finally deciding to sit on the bed, too. He did so gingerly, as if any movement might make the whole thing blow up.
"I-er-that is, Harry and I were worried that you... didn't seem yourself today. Is everything okay?"
"What?" Hermione looked up at him briefly and then back down, not having realized that her behavior was odd until now. "I had a--I didn't sleep well last night and I'm a little tired, that's all."
"Uh. Oh." Ron stared at the familiar bushy brown hair cascading toward her lap, and tried to think of something to say. "This is going to be a great year at school. You know, we picked up a new Chaser for the team last year and Maxwell's a second year and can play now. And, er, you're going to be a Prefect and all." He cast around the room, trying to think of something else, and his eye lit on the black object lying on Hermione's bed, just behind her. "Hey, what is that? Isn't that a--"
She turned, an intense and painful blush coloring her cheeks and chest, and pushed the black handle and braided leather under a pillow and out of his sight, then felt more embarrassed for having reacted that way.
"That's.... oh, nothing," she mumbled into her lap again.
After a minute of silence that seemed to stretch into hours, Ron spoke again, traces of concern and confusion in his voice, "Are you sure you're okay?" He paused, not for so long this time, before putting a hand on her shoulder as if she were a statue about to crumble at any second. "Hermione...?"
She took a deep breath, then picked up her head and looked into his eyes. Oh, it was there! She had an inkling of what Rita had been talking about and bitterly wished that she didn't.
"You naughty thing, where have you been?" She stood abruptly and picked up Crookshanks, who mewed in surprise when she squeezed him rather tightly.
Hermione sighed and moved toward the door, her face half-buried in the rumbling mass of ginger fur.
"Some other time, Ron....You'd better go now. I'll--I'll see you tomorrow."
~~~~~~
The fire had burned out hours ago, but she hardly noticed and couldn't be bothered to re-light it, huddled under the quilt and staring blankly into the hearth. By this time, Crookshanks knew better than to pester her for attention. He curled up on the bed, dreaming his cat-dreams of crunching small furry things, while his mistress sat unmoving, as if in another country.
~~~~~ ~~~~~~
Author's Note:
This started out as an odd little idea for a slash fic, but...
Hermione refused to cooperate (although Mistress Rita was more than willing). Since I can't ask characters to act, well, out of character just to satisfy my idle
curiosity, the story took another turn into the darker country of how people deal with the knowledge of what lurks inside them.
It wasn't easy to write this (and perhaps it wasn't easy to read). I owe many, many thanks to Amy, Dave, Hyphen, Matt, and Mio for reading, discussing, and generally putting up with my verbal hand-wringing during this whole enterprise.
And, with apologies to MB, who will probably never read this, but if she does, I'm sure to be spanked.
Do tell me what you think, either by review or e-mail!
~ CLS
(lamia_borgheza@mindspring.com)