I'm sorry it's taken so long to update, but I was having writers block. However, I'm pretty sure I've got my act together so I have a good idea where this is going, so there should be more updates on a more regular basis. I'm also working on all my other stories, so there should be updates for those as well. I hope you enjoy this and that it was worth the wait. Istalindar.
&
In the coach, Lucius turned to Hermione. "Are you alright?"
"Fine." She answered flatly. Lucius reached out to her mind and was slapped back more effectively that he had ever been. "I don't want company." She said quietly.
When they arrived at the Manor Hermione leapt out of the coach and nearly ran to the imposing building, Lucius following more slowly. Her legs gave in halfway up the stairs and she fell onto her stomach before sliding back into a sitting position, sobbing.
Lucius gathered her up and carried her the rest of the way to her room and laid her gently onto the bed, the way he had when he rescued her from his own dungeon. She curled on her side, drawing her knees to her chest and sniffing. He sat beside her and stroked her hair, an act entirely different from what Voldemort had done. When her sobbing had abated slightly, he handed her a hankerchief. She blew her nose and wiped at her makeup smears, succeeding only in making them worse.
"What did you see?" He asked softly. She didn't shuddered, opening tear-shiny eyes and looking up at him.
"Hundreds of little…things. They crawled all over me and up me and scratched and bit and…" she trailed off, squeezing her eyes shut and biting her lip. Lucius knew what she was talking about and said nothing. The creatures, whatever they were, were one of Voldemort's favourite ways to instantaneously break someone. "I feel so disgusting!" She hissed suddenly, tearing at her clothes. Lucius watched as she writhed on the bed, shedding black fabric like a second skin. When she was down to her underwear and looked likely to take that off as well, he interceded, taking both her wrists in one hand, his other hand caressing her face.
"Stop it." He ordered sternly. Hermione whimpered.
"I can feel them crawling all over me." She said, twisting on the bed. "Get them off!" She shrieked.
"Hermione, there's nothing there." Lucius tried to explain. She ripped her hands free of his grip and started clawing at her skin, heedless of where she was drawing blood with her nails. Lucius grabbed a wrist in each hand and leaned down, kissing her hard. She froze underneath him and he drew back.
"There is nothing on you, Hermione." He said clearly. "You're safe and clean." Hermione didn't respond immediately, but then she slowly nodded. "Are you going to be alright?" He asked. Her fingers clenched convulsively on his where he held her hands down. He bent and kissed her again and she sighed against his mouth, her mouth opening so his tongue could slip in. He kissed her thoroughly before pulling away.
"You should sleep." He said quietly, releasing her hands. She grabbed for him.
"No!" she cried out. She took a deep breath. "Stay with me…please?"
So he did.
&
Hermione's legs were improving, albeit slowly. She still had exercises to do, and she did them faithfully because whenever she considered skipping them, just this once, Lucius was in her head with a curt, if affectionate, reminder that if she ever wanted to walk again unaided she'd spend half an hour of her oh-so-busy day doing them.
She usually sighed at that, but did them anyway.
Lucius didn't spend as much time with her anymore, aside from her occlumency lessons and of course, the nights he spent in her bed. She didn't mind all that much, because he popped into her mind every so often, and they often had conversations while he took a break from whatever it was that he did. He was remarkably open: Hermione had yet to find a topic he would not speak to her on, although asofyet she hadn't dared bring up his rather dark past.
All in good time.
That, my dear, is a topic best left alone. Hermione sighed with a small smile. Hearing his voice in her head was as real as having him stood behind her, and when he laughed, as he usually did at her mushy thoughts, it was quite infectious.
It was the Christmas holidays, not that it affected Hermione's days much. All it meant was that she had to remain within her suite of rooms, and have the house elves or Lucius bring her books from the libraries, due to Draco's return from school. Lucius had assured her that Draco had been told her little area of the Manor was off limits, but had warned her that Draco might come wandering.
That was fine, Hermione would just lock herself in her room if she heard him coming. The House Elves would warn her anyway.
Hermione glanced up from her book and refocused her thoughts. She had been staring at the same page for the last ten minute, ruminating on Draco and Christmas and Lucius. It was ridiculous. Outside it was snowing thickly, the thick white drift obscuring anything more than ten metres from the window. Strange for Christmas, but not unheard of. Hermione shook her head, sitting the book on the windowseat of the hall. Not that she was making it a habit to hang around in the hallways, it was just sometimes nice to get out of her rooms, plus the halls made for a long clear walkway for her to practise her exercises in.
She was on her second lap, walking hesitantly with the staff a few centimetres from the floor, when a voice made her jerk and spin so violently that the staff crashed into the small table standing by the wall, the no-doubt priceless vase falling off it and crashing to the floor.
"Well, this is interesting."
When she had sufficiently recovered herself to reaccess her brain cells, getting past the 'oh shit' reaction to the vase and the 'dammit' reaction to standing on a piece of glass in her bare feet, she hopped onto the window seat to inspect her foot, paying no attention to the schoolmate standing in front of her.
"Seriously, you were rude before. This is ridiculous." Hermione finally looked up and saw Draco standing in front of her, looking as handsome as his father in black slacks and a tight-fitting black turtleneck. His arms were crossed and he had an incredulous expression on his face.
"Hello." She said grudgingly, looking back at her foot. It wasn't bleeding much, but she was sure there was still glass in it.
"Reparo." She felt a rush of envy at Draco's casual use of magic while she hadn't seen a wand in sixth months, but didn't look up. This was more than awkward.
"Fancy you being here." Draco said, bouncing onto the window seat next to her and sitting sideways, bracing himself against the window jamb. "Missing for oh-o-long and you're here. How…unexpected." He sighed. "Aren't you going to say anything?"
"You aren't meant to be here." She said grudgingly. He shot her an incredulous look.
"Well, well done cupcake." He said sarcastically. "Neither, funnily enough, are you. Have you been here the entire bloody time?" She shrugged. "Mudblood! Granger, snap out of it!" He frowned, grabbing her chin and pulling her head up roughly so she met his gaze.
"Oh my god." He breathed, appalled. "You're doing him, aren't you?" Hermione glared.
"That's none of your business." She said flatly. Draco shook his head, climbing off the chair.
"It's un-fucking-believable, Granger. That's what it is." He said, his voice dripping contempt and disgust, like she had just offered him a slug to eat. "Because the only way he gets his thrall on is if stupid little bints like you sleep with him. Ugh." He turned and strode away, and Hermione rolled her eyes, turning back to her foot. Barely a minute later she heard familiar footsteps and looked up.
"Draco was here." Lucius said flatly, grey eyes angry. Hermione rose to her feet hesitantly, and he looked down at her feet. "You're hurt."
"He surprised me. I broke the vase and stepped on it." Hermione said sheepishly. Lucius shook his head with a smirk and healed it. "He was here, but he basically insulted me and just left." Lucius frowned.
"What did he say?" Hermione shrugged, a voice inside her warning against repeating Draco's exact words.
"He basically said it figured I'd be here, then he called me a mudblood and left." Hermione resisted the urge to embellish her story…with Lucius' easy-access to her mind, lying was risky enough as it was. Lucius smirked.
"Well, then that's good. It won't hurt him to see that the Dark Lord has one of the 'Golden Trio' in his grasp. Might reassure him of our cause, sometimes I have fear that that boy may be losing faith in our mission." Hermione declined to answer, and Lucius smiled, kissing her hard on the mouth. "I'll see you tonight, pet." He said. "It might be best if you stay in your rooms from now on." She nodded with a smile and let him push her gently to the door, passing her her book and staff before striding back to his office or wherever he had come from. She watched him go, then turned back into her bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind her.
&
Lucius didn't come to her room that night, and she spent the night awake and staring at the uncurtained window across from her bed, watching the dark shape of snow drift past her window. This much snow was ridiculous. Seriously, they were in southern England not northern Scotland. She sighed. Just thinking of Hogwarts made her miss it terribly.
A knocking at her door made her bound from bed, pausing briefly when she realised that Lucius never knocked. But by that point it was too late, and she watched as the lock clicked back and Draco pushed the door open, shutting it silently behind him. He seemed taken aback to see her standing there in the middle of the room, dressed in the virginous white nightdress Lucius liked.
"I thought you were asleep." He said. She raised her eyebrows. "Granger…Hermione…say something. Anything that will reassure me you're not completely the dimwitted idiot you look."
"What are you doing here?" Hermione asked tiredly. "I was trying to sleep."
"You look awake." Draco commented, sitting in the armchair Lucius always sat in when he visited her room. "We need to talk."
"You've made your opinions on my position abundantly clear." Hermione replied, grabbing a blanket off the bed and wrapping it around her shoulders, perching on the end of the bed.
"That's just it." Draco exclaimed. "Your position? For fuck's sake, Granger, you're my father's sex toy! What part of that is not wrong?"
"I'm not." Hermione said with a small smile. "He's my keeper, not my lover. I'm not so naïve as that."
"Thank heaven for small mercies." Draco muttered. "Granger, you are aware, I hope, that you are not the only woman my father is fucking. You are of course his only casual fuck, but apart from that beautiful little virtue, you are so far down on his list of priorities that you barely show up on his radar." Hermione glared.
"I am not a casual fuck." She replied. Draco snorted.
"Oh please. You are the only one he's not gaining anything from except somewhere to stick it. All the others he's after something. From Forsythe he's cultivating financial backing from the Dark Lord, not to mention a pureblood mistress for either himself or Voldemort or both. Brookwater has contacts in the Ministry that keep those nosy sods out of our house. Cartridge…I think he's doing her for fun, because she amuses him, and because while he has that leverage on her she's another little puppet on a string. There's others, but it's pretty much more of the same." Draco shrugged.
"You're lying." Hermione said. "He's fucking all of them for a reason, and there's a reason behind me too." Draco rolled his eyes.
"Granger, just shut up. You're blind, deaf, dumb, thicker than two short planks and painfully, dangerously, heart-achingly naïve to think that you actually mean anything to him. Hell, they don't and they can actually give him something."
"Well," Hermione drew herself up. "Not that you're right, but even if you were it wouldn't really matter." Draco raised his eyebrows.
"Oh really? And if he dragged one of those darling ladies back here and wafted her under your upturned little nose, are you gonna be okay?" He smiled condescendingly. "It'll break your heart and you know it as well as I do."
"I don't love him, you moron." Hermione snapped.
"Of course you don't." Draco agreed. "But with him, you don't have too." He shrugged. "Let me break it down for you Granger. He will leave you. He will emotionally destroy you by waving a pretty rich cow under your nose, my money's on Forsythe, by the way, and you will have nothing. You'll be utterly broken. And that, my dear darling annoying little harpy, is the whole point of it all." Hermione looked at him levelly.
"Even if he does do that, you've forgotten one thing. I won't be losing much."
"And how's that?"
"I'm Voldemort's pet. What's he gonna do?" Draco leapt to his feet and stalked across the room before Hermione could blink.
"You stupid little bint." He said venemously, taking her shoulders and shaking her, not at all gently. "Are you even hearing what you're saying? 'Even if Lucius does dump me I'll still be Voldemort's pet'." Draco raised his voice an octave to imitate her, then shuddered. "Merlin, Hermione. Where are you in there? Because all I can see and hear is one of Lucius' thralls, and I never thought I'd see you as one of those mindless whores. And frankly, even at the height of my hatred I would never have wanted to." Hermione pushed him away, if only so she could regain her equilibrium. Around Draco she found herself mentally cursing Lucius, but keeping her mental walls way up just in case. It was harder to justify what she was doing here, just wasting time, when Draco was around. Draco reminded her that there was a whole world out there, with Hogwarts and Harry and Ron and everyone else.
"I've made you think, haven't I?" Draco asked, stepping back with a satisfied look on his face. "Finally."
"It's not like that." Hermione said feebly. Draco raised his eyebrows.
"Yes it is." He said, his voice gentle. "And what's worse is you know it, somewhere inside there."
"I don't understand." She said, covering her face with hands and trying to bring herself back to reality. This had to be some sort of twisted dream, and in a second she'd wake up and Lucius would be asleep next to her and-
"It's a form of control, subtler than Imperius." Draco said, taking her hands and pulling them away from her face. "Look at me." She reluctantly dragged her gaze up to his eyes. "Keep looking at me Hermione, it'll make it easier for you to concentrate."
"How do you know?" She asked, her voice soft. She had such a headache, and it felt like there were two people in her head, one raging that she was here, that Lucius had the nerve to make her a fucking thrall, demanding immediate plans for escape. The other one was sceptical of Draco's arguments, constantly remembering that Lucius had saved her from the dungeons, had taken care of her when she was scared, was teaching her occlumency…
"I know my fair share." Draco said drily. "Now. Have you been here all this time?" She nodded.
"I was in the dungeons with Madeleine. Then your dad came and kicked her out, brought me out of there and healed me." Draco snorted, shaking his head but not letting her gaze go.
"You do realise that that's merely a simple act designed to infatuate the victim with Lucius, right?" He asked. Hermione shook her head.
"He didn't know I was there." She said.
"Bollocks." Draco replied. "I wasn't allowed in the dungeons all summer, and that's why. You were in there because my mother was home and she won't stand for his ladies when she's at home. Not because he didn't know."
"He told me." Hermione said stubbornly.
"He lied." Draco replied. "And that shouldn't be too hard to believe. And if it is, you're further gone than I had originally thought."
"Of course it's easy to believe." Hermione retorted. "But he wouldn't lie to me." Draco stared at her.
"Oh for fuck's sakes." He muttered, then crushed her mouth against his.
He kissed very differently from his father. While Lucius was very elegant with his kissing, Draco kissed with purpose, like he was forcing reason back into her head. It caused an uncomfortably stirring in Hermione's stomach, a tight twisting that made her press into him.
It also caused her head to be clear for a few seconds. The sheer horror of what she was doing at the Manor (with Lucius, not Draco), and at what she had become (a fawning syncophant), made her recoil from Draco.
"Oh my god." She gasped. Draco watched her anger and disgust surface through her suddenly clear eyes, but then observed it dwindle as the clarity faded and Lucius' control returned.
"You shouldn't be here." She said. Draco nodded, stepping back from here.
"You're right." He said. "But I'm gonna come back." He kissed her once more on the mouth, just briefly, then turned and strode out of the door. Hermione crawled into bed, feeling faintly sick, and concentrated hard on going to sleep, until she finally did.
And then, of course, she dreamed of Hogwarts and got no rest at all.
&