MELTING THE ICE
Chapter 3: Draco's Lioness
Draco led a Hermione through the manor, pulling on the chain a little rougher than needed. Although she would never admit it to him, the mansion fascinated her. Hermione took in her surroundings with wide-eyes, trying to commit everything she saw to memory. Although she was seething on the inside, she followed him passively for the time being.
Draco walked ahead, his face stone cold. He never looked back at Hermione--he didn't need to. She was bound to him by the collar around her neck and the chain leading out from it to loop around his hand. He would be able to feel the slightest attempt of anything but compliance on her part.
To Hermione, the mansion seemed to go on forever. She was unused to seeing furnishings this luxurious, and would have relished the opportunity to take a look at the old tomes lying about if this house was anyone's but the Malfoys'. The halls blended together, one after the other, and she was positive that she would be completely lost without Draco there to guide her. Hermione made an effort to remember where she was going, but soon gave up when she lost count of the number of turns they had made so far.
After a long while, when Hermione was finally giving up hope that they'd reach their destination this year, Draco stopped. It took her a moment to figure out the reason they were standing in front of a seemingly blank wall. Draco was waving his wand and muttering a complicated charm under his breath. He stopped, and waited expectantly.
The glossy marble in front of him shuddered and gave way to the door materializing in the center. It was made of ebony, and obviously jinxed against intruders. Two words made of gold appeared at the top: Draco Malfoy.
He opened the door and Hermione gasped. Draco turned back to look at her with one eyebrow raised. She blushed.
"I should have known a mudblood would be so enthralled by my room," he drawled. She glared mutely at him, but left her thoughts unsaid, wanting to escape another beating.
Privately, Hermione thought the room was fit for a king. It was larger even than the Hogwarts' common room, with a magnificent bed in the center covered in a satin bedspread. The curtains were rich velvet, and the décor was all green and black, which Hermione found suiting for him. The Malfoy crest was emblazoned in a prominent place on almost everything, a large M with snakes twined around it. There was a fireplace in the corner, a beautiful ebony desk, and a large wardrobe, but what caught Hermione's eye were the four mahogany bookshelves in one of the corners, each filled with more books than she could count.
Draco followed her gaze and smirked. "I know what you want, Granger. I also know that you'll have absolutely no chance over ever reading any of them. Of course, if you're cooperative, I might be able to make an exception or two..." he leered at Hermione.
"In your dreams, Malfoy," she hissed before spitting in his face.
His suggestive expression darkened into one of hatred. "Stupid mudblood. You'll pay--that little action is going to cost you. You really should learn your place. I have no compassion for a recalcitrant slave refusing to bend before authority."
She turned away from him, refusing to acknowledge his power over her. He stepped closer, forcing her to back into the wall.
"How powerful do you feel now, Granger," he whispered, bringing his mouth close enough to her ear for her to feel his hot breath. Draco placed his arms against the wall on either side her, effectively trapping Hermione in place. He flicked his tongue out to trace around her ear. "You're mine, Granger," he breathed.
Her eyes closed.
"Don't try to deny it…"
Hermione shuddered.
"You want me," he whispered seductively.
For a moment, Hermione seemed to melt into his arms. It lasted a second that felt like eternity before the instant left and she came to her senses, immediately jerking away.
"Not bloody likely." she said. "No one could ever want a snake."
"Feisty," he murmured. "I like that." Draco moved his hand as if to caress her arm, but barely brushed her before he yanked his arm back and slapped her across the face. Her head snapped back from the force of his blow.
"That was for your previous outburst. You've really got to learn to control your temper, Granger, or you're not going to like the consequences. I have no interest in listening to you any longer. I want silence from you now."
He walked over to his bed, pulling the chain so Hermione was forced to follow. "As I was saying earlier, you will sleep on the floor at the foot of my bed, so you'll be there if I need anything. I'll arrange for the houseelves to bring a pallet up for you. Your job is pretty much to follow me around unless I say otherwise, and do as I command. You are to follow my orders at all times, except for the rare occasions when my father takes control of you."
Hermione's eyes widened. She hadn't even thought of having to serve Lucius as well, her thoughts were so filled with ways to lessen the awfulness of being subservient to Draco.
"That should not happen too often, though," Draco continued, "as he wants nothing to do with my slaves. He has his own to keep him busy, and I see no reason why he should be bothering my property. In addition, you will address me as Master, or Master Malfoy, at all times." He smirked at her. "I am going to make you pay for every time you scored higher than me, for every time you received a higher grade than me, for every time you bested me in any way. You will regret ever crossing a Malfoy."
"No, Malfoy," she began, deliberately forgetting to add the "Master" to his name. "I won't regret anything, except for maybe the few instances in which I showed compassion. You just don't get it, do you? You seem to have some idea in your head that I'm going to quietly listen to everything you tell me, nodding my head like a good little slave. Well, guess what? That's not who I am." Her voice rose as it filled with passion. "I don't think that you understand just how strong I am, or how strong I can be. You will never be able to control my actions, my words, and least of all my thoughts." Her eyes sparked with rage. "My name is Hermione Granger, not 'Draco's slave.' I will never regret anything I've done to make your life miserable. All that I'll regret is that I haven't done more."
She glared at him, her eyes daring Draco to challenge her speech. So he did the worst thing he knew of, the one thing he was sure would wound Hermione. He laughed.
"No, Granger, it is you that doesn't get it. You're mine. I own you. See, at Hogwarts you had your precious teachers to hide behind, and you had your supposedly brilliant mind. But here, those things don't matter. The only thing that will affect your future--and your well-being--is my opinion of you. Understand?" He stared her in the eyes.
Hermione found that she couldn't lock gazes with him for longer than a short minute before the coldness of his soul overpowered her and made her turn away. "So it's true," she whispered.
His curiosity won over his reluctance to engage in farther conversation with her. "What?" he asked.
"You really are like your father, with a heart of ice. I always thought… I always hoped… I guess I was just dreaming if I thought that you could ever be human, and act like it. Maybe I just imagined it, but there were times when I had this crazy idea that maybe, just maybe, you were a boy in the shadow of his father, but that you yourself might have a soul." She looked up at him, her warm brown eyes pooling with tears.
Draco looked at her for a moment, just looked at her. He pushed her away and turned to face out the window. She was just about to move, thinking that he had forgotten about her, when he spoke.
"You're wrong, Granger. I am not a boy, but a man, and it would do you well to remember that. You are nothing but a slave who has no right to invent stories about me and my family. I never gave you any reason to expect that I would be anything but downright cruel to you. I am a Malfoy, a pureblood. As a mudblood you are not worth any of the effort spent keeping you and your kind alive and healthy. You should be grateful for the compassion my lord has shown thus far." He turned to watch her.
"Compassion?" she laughed. "I'm sorry, but locking us into cages, taking away our wands, and selling us off into slavery is not my idea of compassion. You may forget it, but I am no longer the girl I was. I am a woman, and you are wrong in that I have no use for my wits. On the contrary, I have great use for my intelligence, as that is the last weapon I have available to me. Merlin help me if I ever stop fighting."
His scorn was evident. "Fighting? More like serving. Give it up, Granger. You belong to me now, and I plan on getting all the pleasure I can out of having you here."
He strode over to stand in front of her once more. Together, the two made an interesting couple. Draco was just over six feet, with a lean, muscular body, grey eyes, and silvery-white blond hair. He contrasted sharply with Hermione's petite, slender frame, chocolate eyes, and long brown curls that tumbled in gentle waves down her back. The two fit together, one feminine and compassionate and the other masculine and cold.
When Draco spoke again, it was with the ease of a boy who knows he has all the time in the world, but with an undertone of a man who expects his orders to be obeyed. "It's time to do something about your clothes. I can't have my servants dressed in rags, or it would reflect poorly on the Malfoy status."
"Is that all you care about? Power, money and status?" she asked.
His voice was toneless. "What else is worth caring about?" She didn't answer, so he continued. "I don't believe we have anything suitable, so I'll just have to transfigure those for you. Not magic I like to perform, so you should be grateful."
Draco talked his way through the spell, his voice weaving in with the motions of his wand to specify the length, size, and color of Hermione's new garments. When he was finished, she was left wearing a dark emerald dress, with a halter-top and a skirt that barely covered her thighs. Her back was mostly bare, save for the strap at her neck and the bit that went down from her lower back.
He looked pleased after it was over. "Not bad. You're finally clothed in proper colors, in a style that fits your current position."
"Not bad?" she shrieked. "This is--this is--scandalous! I can't wear clothes like this! In fact, there's so little material I don't even know if I'd call this clothes! More like indecent green strips of cloth." Her eyes narrowed to slits. "And if you expect me to parade around your house wearing this day in and day out, you've got another think coming."
He smirked. "Of course I don't expect you to wear that all the time," he said. Her sigh of relief was cut short by his next words: "Half the time you'll be in my bed, naked."
She screamed, utterly furious.
"Honestly, Granger, I don't understand why you'd think I would treat you any other way. After all, what did you expect when they put you in that marketplace?" He seemed bored by this time.
"Definitely. Not. This," she said, her voice strangled with anger.
"Get used to it," Draco ordered, his tone cutting off any further argument from her. "Just to ensure that I have you sufficiently trapped here, I'm going to add a little something to your current bonds. I like the snake collar, but let me see…" His voice trailed off as he waved his wand, a silver anklet warded against escape appearing on her left leg. She bent down to see it, and to read the words engraved in an elegant script: "Draco's Lioness."
They slept, or pretended to, each laying silently--Draco in his kingly bed and Hermione on the floor. Her thoughts were filled with her new role in life, and on how to turn it to her advantage; Draco's were on his desires from her. He wanted her; he lusted after her beautiful body. But there was something deeper that he didn't know was there, something he might have called admiration if she wasn't muggle born and if he recognized the feeling. Hermione had a vivacious personality and he liked it, not that he would ever admit it to himself. She was a mudblood, meant for pleasure and sex, nothing more. Definitely not on the same level as pureblooded girls.
Hermione realized that there would be a time and place for her to escape, but this wasn't it. So she watched, waited, and planned, biding her time. Hermione was the most intelligent witch to grace the halls of Hogwarts for centuries, and she knew that she could outsmart Draco. She would lull him into a false sense of security, and then make her move. She looked forward to the day when she would leave this life forever and rejoin Harry in the rebel movement. She knew that it would be awhile before the moment was right, but she had confidence that she could overcome the bonds of slavery that currently held her. She just had to be patient.
Draco held the reins of power and knew it. He was in charge, and Hermione was nothing but a weak mudblood slave. He wasn't stupid: he knew that Hermione had yet to be broken. He was waiting for the right time to show her once and for all that he was her master. He looked forward to the day when she would submit to him, but he knew it would be a while in coming. He could wait, biding his time until the right moment when she would succumb and he could taste the sweet victory of her defeat. He knew that she couldn't resist him forever. He just had to be patient.
