-/-

CHAPTER 3: TORTURE

-/-

Hermione didn't get to see Lucius again for several days. Or however long it seemed since she had last seen him. She had no way to tell the time and the only time she got out of her cell was to be escorted to the washroom by a witch who never spoke to her. She just felt relieved they gave her enough dignity to use the washroom and it actually had toilet paper.

Hermione knew she couldn't hope for much more. Though she was slowly going mad with only four walls to look at and a quick, sparse meal of a bun and water shoved under her door everyday. A mockingly pitiful meal when Lucius could easily use his wand to give her a proper meal with actual drinks and a desert. What kind of sick, cruel people were these Death Eaters!?

Hermione moaned to herself, rocking herself back and forth against her cell wall. She wondered if this is how Sirius felt being in Azkaban. But then she remembers Sirius was guarded by Dementors, who were probably much worse, since they sucked out your soul, or at least, drained your life-force.

Though as her cell door clicked and Hermione looked up into the bespectacled eyes of Lucius Malfoy, standing there, the prim sod...she realized perhaps Lucius was worse than the Dementors. In cruelty and ingenuity of torture, alone, if nothing else, Lucius gave the Dementors a run for their money. And one thing is for sure: she'd be more likely to get a kiss out of a Dementor than from Lucius. The pureblood wizard was so digusted by her blood-status, he insisted on wearing disposable gloves or using handsanitizer if he ever so much as grazed her skin.

"Mudblood we meet again," he stated solemnly as he entered her cell and closed the door behind him.

What a master of the obvious, she couldn't help thinking. Of course she had nowhere to go so they would meet again. Everything is on the bloody git's terms.

She was about to say something cheeky of that nature when Lucius shook his head as if to silence her.

"Don't try my patience today, mudblood." His lips set in grim line. "We didn't get far, enough, yesterday."

"That was only yesterday?" she gasped.

Lucius tisked tisked her. "You mudbloods don't carry watches, do you? Otherwise you wouldn't be running around like headless chickens."

"WE invented wrist watches you absolute bigot!" Hermione scowled, her ire overflowing from her honey brown eyes.

"Lies! I won't hear you speak lies!"

"What do you think timex and all these muggle watch companies are, they exist?!"

Lucius's eyes lowered to take in her face before he hit her with a hex and she screamed in agony, though it was no more painful than getting sandpaper on your arm.

She glared up at him as she rubbed at her arm.

Lucius warningly pointed his wand at her. "You will not speak lies in my presence, mudblood, do you hear me?"

"They're not lies. You're wearing a muggle watch!" She pointed to his Rolex.

"My grandmother, a witch, gave me this watch! It was made my magic!"

"I saw the same watch in a muggle store," she hissed, not caring how angry she was making him. Good. She hoped he suffered and lived to question the sources of his pureblood grandmother's shopping choices.

Lucius used his magic to slap her with an invisible hand across her face. "You insufferable mudblood bitch, have you no limits or checks on you arrogance?! Look at you, just look at you!" He spat on the ground in disgust.

Then he stood back from her then, as if to show the great difference between them and his vast superiority over her.

Reeling from the brigade of slaps, Hermione raised her chin high to show she was not afraid or intimated by his words.

Though it was, truthfully, hard not to feel inferior when Lucius Malfoy, pureblood with magnificently lustrous long blonde hair with not one strand out of place, sneered down over her with unspeakable hatred in his cold grey eyes. Meanwhile, she stood in muddy torn muggle clothes with her hair so ratty and twisted it looked like Hagrid's beard.

"No I don't think so," he gritted out. "Today will not be a repeat of yesterday. We will get the answers out of you and you will learn to bow down before your betters, do you hear me, mudblood?"

Hermione bit her lip, drawing blood she was so mad. How she wished Lucius wasn't wearing his mind-proofing glasses so she could fill his mind with her bowing down before him doing something very different and not to his liking. That would disturb him. Unfortunately, his mind was inpenetrable behind his spectacles.

"I will NOT tolerate defiance, do you understand?" He waved his wand and the desk with quill and paper appeared again. She knew well now on how this set-up works and what he expected out of her. But she planned to give him no information, nothing that possibly could hurt Harry or Ron. And Lucius must've known this well by the glimmer of defiance still left in her eyes.

"I'm going to give you two choices here," he drawled with lips curled. "We can either do this the easy way or the hard way."

Hermione gulped. She had only been in Lucius Malfoy's custody roughly a day, but she knew by now he wasn't playing around when he warned her.
But that didn't mean she was going to make it any less easier to betray her friends.

She raised her chin in the air as she stared at him. "Is there a third option?"

Mr. Malfoy's cold white face cringed into absolute disgust and one of his hands shot out to slap her hard on the face, as if by reflex. Since meeting him, Lucius used a slap on the face as repetitively as some people use a comma, which is pretty often.

"Of course, there's no third option!" he hissed, "If there was, I would've told you so! The whole point of my little speech is for you to understand that I'm in charge here and there is only as many options as I give you, you insolent little mudblood!"

"Oh...really." Hermione's mind processed something to say to anger him further. Because, she realized, making Lucius Malfoy angry and foaming at the mouth was the only power she seemed to have left now. "I thought Lord Voldemort was in charge here?"

Lucius pale face, if possible, grew paler so that it was an ice cold mask, "Damn your insolence! ...I see it's going to take a lot to break you."

Lucius removed his Slytherin sweater vest and Hermione couldn't help raising her eyebrows at the muscles visibly rippling underneath his tight shirt.

Oh dear, she thought, this could get intense...Thank god she was wearing her good pair today.

"What are you going to do?" Hermione couldn't help asking hopefully.

Lucius looked down at her with a dangerous glint in his cold eyes, "I'm going to teach you a lesson you'll never forget."

One hour later...

Hermione was sorely disappointed. Her face was red from the many times he had slapped her and she was exhausted from the crucio curse. But there had been zero action yet, not even the suggestion of it or innuendo. Apparently, Lucius thought she was disgusting, either that or he was gay.

Hermione crossed her arms as Lucius yet again asked the question he had been repeating to try to break her down.

"What is your name?" Lucius' cold voice drawled impatiently from across the cell where Hermione stood completely defenseless without a wand.

Hermione's brain tried hard to think of an answer that would satisfy the cruel sadist without actually submitting to his intended design of getting her to call herself a "mudblood".

"Hermione."

"Wrong answer," Lucius lips curled snidely and he raised up his wand.

"Wait...Mione?"

He paused mid-slap to thoughtfully stare at her as his hand hung still in the air. "No...Though your cheek is almost admirable, if only you weren't a mudblood."

Hermione hesistated to speak, flinching as she knew any second his hand would swing down to her face again. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nevermind what it means!" He completed the slap hard across her face using his gloved hand. Then took out his wand. "Crucio!"

Hermione's body wracked with the most pain she had ever experienced since the last time he used the crucio spell on her. PAIN, pain pain! Heat! Someone singing the carlae rae jepsen song call my maybe on the top of their lungs right into her ears. She twists and turns in pain. The entire box set of Arthur, every full episode of the boring muggle children's show blasts through her brain one episode after another...relentlessly even though only a minute has passed. The compressed episodes kept playing in her head.

It was painful. But by god she wasn't going to let Lucius win by calling herself a "mudblood"!

-/-

Five hours later...

"What is your name?"

"Pippy Longstockings," Hermione muttered breathlessly. He had forced her to watch reruns of the entire series of Arthur.

She now lay on the floor exhausted and covered in sweat. Nearly broken but not quite yet. Because of her unbreakable Gryffindor spirit, which was indefatigable like the Energizer Bunny...it just kept going and going, banging it's drums and looking cool in its shades...even in the face of Death Eaters.

Lucius held his forehead in his hands. There was some static in his hair by now, so he was really getting pissed. If torturing her took any longer, he was going to miss his hair appointment with Cissa and the girls. And then he'd miss out another week of gossip, because he missed the last appointment due to his Dark Mark.

No one understood how hard it was to look this good and still be a full-time Death Eater.

He looked derisively down at the mudblood currently wasting his time. Though she tried to maintain her pride, she was so pathetic it was almost laughable.

Just look at that bushy brown hair and stubby nails, it was so obvious she'd never been to a beauty salon in her entire life.

"You clearly are having some trouble understanding the situation here. I'm in charge and you're a worthless little mudblood. So if you don't do as your told, I'm going to have to take it to the next level."

Her innocent brown eyes widened not so innocently, "What is the next level?"

Lucius chuckled softly, "Oh, mudblood, you don't even want to know."

-/-

end of chapter 3
-/-

a/n: Thanks!