Author's Notes: Why are the chapters so short? Because it's drabble. A series of extended drabble.
Bride
Part 2: You Will Be My Equal
By
Callisto Callispi
"Wh-oo amm ah-I?"
"I do not know."
"You...l-lie."
Hermione stared dumbly at the paper. Her eyes struggled with the words on the pages of the leather-bound book.
"I shall teach you to read. I shall teach you anything you wish to know. You will be my equal."
Poisonous heat surged within her. Perspiration beaded her forehead. The symbols, those little drawings covering the pages! WHAT WERE THEY!
RIP! CRASH!
Books flew across the room. Pages torn out by the fistfulls. Sheets shredded. Hermione breathed harshly in the middle of the cluttered room. A mess. A mess that she created. Anger.
She began to ran but shrieked as she tripped over the hem of her skirt.
Clothes.
"AHHHR!"
Wings of fabric. A haze of silk. Discarded.
And she ran. To where he was.
Pale silver flickered in the firelight. "What are you doing, Hermione? Dress yourself. You are a lady, not some heathen barbarian."
"H-heathen..."
Bare flesh softened by purple shadows and golden flames. Copper ringlets of uncombed hair. But he stared at her. She felt something in her chest, something like calm and fear. Anger left her.
"Yes. Heathen. Godless creatures." His lazy eyes shifted back to the book he read. "Savages that will eventually burn in the fires of hell. You know of hell, do you not?"
She blinked slowly. The polished stone floor under her was cold. Not hot. Not like fire. "Helllll. Firrrre."
A little smirk. "Yes. You are learning, Hermione. I am proud of you."
Lightning once more. Hermione sat on her bed, visions flashing through her mind. "Helllll. He-ell." The word was candy to her tongue.
But it was the fire that she feared.
"She lives?"
Fire ravaging the stone building.
"She lives."