A chapter that I haphazardly threw together. It was a long time since my last chapter and I was afraid that if I didn't have anything out soon, I might get too lazy to continue. So here it is. Thanks to my beta, Shiegurl and everyone else!

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to me, and pigs fly.

The Unforgivable Curses

Severus sprinted along the corridor. Crazy woman! He thought. I told her not to wander! Where is she now? Severus slowed to a halt and tried to reorganise his jumbled thoughts. Malfoy Manor was huge and she could be anywhere. But he had been standing outside the door leading to the hall for over an hour, if Mel left via that exit he would have known. And since no one came through that door since he went out, it left him only one other possibility: she must have gone into the garden. Changing his direction, Severus raced towards the garden and tried not to panic. The Malfoy's garden was twice the size of the manor; it would take him forever to search the whole place. Severus barely registered the fact that he had never known another woman who was half as good as Mel at attracting trouble when suddenly, he picked up a faint cry. Severus paused mid run and listened carefully. The cry came again, and he sprinted towards it, his heart pounding erratically from the running and the fear that had taken hold of his heart. As he ran towards the source of the sound, a peculiar sight greeted him. Severus narrowed his eyes. A skinny little creature was marching strangely across the garden; taking two steps forward and three steps back again.

"Dobby must help miss!" Severus heard the creature say as it struggled to put its right foot forward. "But master is not liking Dobby's nose in his business!" it continued, and stumbled backwards, his arms thrashing around in protest. To Severus, it seemed as though an invisible force was pulling the house-elf by the scruff of his neck, preventing it from moving forward. He strode purposefully towards it.

"House-elf!" he barked. The creature fell over in surprise and looked up at the Potions master from the damp ground. "Where is your master?"

Severus watched as the elf started to tremble. "M-Master?"

Severus glared at it and the house-elf glanced around nervously. "Where is he?" he repeated, grabbing the creature by his pillowcase.

"D-Dobby cannot say…D-Dobby is keeping m-master's secrets…"

Severus narrowed his eyes at the elf. Its eyes were flicking around nervously in their sockets, but he noticed that they lingered longer towards the direction that the house-elf was heading before. Trusting in the house-elf's incompetence in keeping its secrets, Severus dropped him and ran.
Hermione knew that from past experiences that Defence against the Dark Arts had never been her forte. Over the years, she had grudgingly accepted the fact that she could never be the best at everything she did. Harry had always been better than her in Defence against the Dark Arts, and Ron was the expert when it came to putting one's foot into one's mouth. Hermione also acknowledged that both Harry and Ron could beat her at Quidditch any day, but she never begrudged them for that. She wasn't very good at Divination either, but how could she be when she couldn't bring herself to 'ooh' and 'aah' the way Lavender and Parvati did at everything Trelawney said? Hermione's shortcomings in Defence had stopped bothering her in fifth year; she had come to realise that there were more important things than grades by then. Even so, she never stopped reading about anything and everything that she wasn't good at, hoping that the theoretical knowledge would help her when it came to practice. All her hard work had better pay her off now.

Hermione experienced a brief second of disbelief before a familiar fuzziness flooded into her. She closed her eyes blissfully, enjoying the almost-forgotten sensation as it coursed through her mind and body. How long has it been since she last felt as relaxed as she was now?

"Mel." A deep voice penetrated the thick mists in her mind. Whose voice was that? It sounded like Lucius Malfoy and it was warm and caressing.

"Can you hear me?"

Duh, I'm not deaf. Hermione replied inside her mind, and she nodded. Her head felt heavier than usual, but that was normal, wasn't it?

"Kiss me," came the voice again.

Kiss you? Gross! But okay.

Hermione stood on tiptoe and cradled Malfoy's face in her hand. She leaned forward and planted her lips onto his. Hermione barely registered that his hands had wandered over her breasts as she concentrated on carrying out his orders. She tilted her head to the side to allow him access to her neck.

"Crucio!" a voice rang out in her head. Hermione winced involuntarily as the curse streaked through her mind following the spell. Someone screamed and her stomach churned, but she felt no pain. Strange.

"Let your hair down," Hermione heard Malfoy say again.

Sure, Hermione thought, not that there's much to let down. Her left hand reached for the scrunchy that had held her hair together in a short ponytail throughout the evening and pushed everything else out of her mind.

"Tell me that you want me," Malfoy said again.

Hermione obeyed. She planted a trail of butterfly kisses on Malfoy's neck leading to his ear. She nibbled at his ears for a while and whispered, "I want you…to go to hell. Expelliarmus."

Severus arrived just in time to see Malfoy fly thirty feet and land with a dull thud onto the ground. "Petrificus Totalus," He heard Mel say as she pointed her wand at the now unconscious Lucius. Severus felt a slight chill at the frostiness in her voice. She was standing alone and rigid; the hair tumbling down her back seemed to crackle with some unseen power. She was a magnificent sight and she was all right, Severus felt the weight in his stomach lift. He started to move towards her, his shoes squishing noisily onto on the soft mud.

Mel whipped around. Severus had a split second to notice that her face was devoid of all her usual expressions before she pointed her wand at him. "Expelliarmus!" A flash of light shot towards him and Severus felt himself being flung backwards. It had taken forever, but his head eventually came into contact with something solid, effective ending his journey through the air. Then he knew no more.

The room slowly came back into view and Severus became aware of the dull ache on the back of his head his head. He shifted and groaned as his bones protested at his rough treatment of them. He flopped back onto the bed and contented himself with the minimum view that his current position allowed him. Severus realised he was in the hospital wing. He also spotted a small figure sitting on a chair at the foot of his bed. "Mel?" he said quietly. "What time is it?"

Mel peeled her hands away and raised her head and Severus realised with a start that her face was pale and the sparkle in her eyes was extinguished. She looked anguished. "What's wrong?" Severus asked her.

Hermione flung herself at him in answer, hugging him tightly and planting desperate kisses all over his face. "I'm sorry, Severus," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

The memory of the day's events flooded back. "It doesn't matter," he replied after a while, but Mel did not seem to hear him. She was gibbering rapidly. "I was so angry, and I was in my 'war mode', and someone said 'Crucio' and then you came up behind me. I didn't think. I never think when I'm in my war mode."

Severus frowned. Her 'war mode'? Was that what she called it when her face turned expressionless and her eyes glittered coldly?

"Say something, please."

Severus ran his thoughts over what Mel told him, and he found that he did not understand most of what she was talking about. "Crucio?" he said.

Hermione nodded. "I heard a voice in my head, but it wasn't Malfoy's. I don't know whose it was. Then someone screamed."

Severus growled at the mention of Lucius. "What did Lucius do to you?"

Hermione bit her lips, reluctant to give him the truth that he deserved. "He tried to put the Imperius curse on me." She tilted her head in a gesture of thought. "He tried to," she said, more to herself than to anyone else, "but I did it this time. I think I'm finally learning how to resist the Imperio. Finally."

Intent on finding the answer to his question, Severus did not hear her softly spoken words. "What did he do to you?" he said again. Severus could guess what Malfoy would do to Mel while she was under his control. He knew Lucius well, and the man was never known for his creative ideas, but he wanted to hear it from her. He knew that whatever happened wasn't Mel's fault, but Severus was unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Hermione looked at him warily. "He made me kiss him."

Her words confirmed what Severus feared the most, and his jealousy, unreasonable as always, raged out of control. "And you let him."

Hermione flinched. She did, didn't she? Hermione now knew that she was capable of resisting the Imperius curse, but she had led Malfoy to believe otherwise; she was in control of herself, yet she did what Malfoy asked her to do so that he would let his guard down. But she didn't have a choice, right? She wasn't confident enough to duel Malfoy in a confrontation, so she had to be sneaky.

"I Stupefied him," she replied eventually. "I don't think that counted as 'letting him'. Be reasonable, Severus."

The censure in her tone pushed Severus over the edge as all his insecurities came crashing down like an avalanche. He pushed himself off the bed and loomed towards Mel. "Be reasonable? How can I be reasonable? You kissed Malfoy!"

Hermione cut him off sharply. "He made me, Severus."

Severus hissed angrily and started pacing the hospital wing, trying to reign in his temper and recollect his wits. Why was it that every wizard of his age that Mel had met was as attracted to her as Severus himself was? Lucius lusted after her, that much was obvious. Besides, who wouldn't? And Lupin, too, Severus was never quite convinced that the werewolf felt only 'brotherly love' for Mel. He knew he wouldn't feel anything as innocent had he been in his shoes. Mel was a very attractive witch. What if, in the future, she finally found someone better than himself? Severus knew for a fact that he wasn't exactly the type of wizard witches would prefer. How was he to secure what he held dear? Severus had sacrificed many a sleepless nights to his insecurities, trying to come up with ways to secure Mel's attention to himself, and each time, could only come up with the same solution.

He took a deep breath, and on the spur of the moment, blurted out, "marry me?"