Rabastan was always interested in the Runes translation that his wife was working on. The Dark Lord did not tell him why he had asked Hermione to translate that particular book — a children's story book — and Hermione never specified what it was about that specific text that made her work on it. Of course, he never asked her, either, but it was something that he wondered about.
She was able to translate the work at a surprising rate, her neat little notes in rows on spare parchment and alternative translations available for certain parts of the text. From what he could tell, she was able to translate most of it just from memory, which was quite remarkable.
At dinner, they rarely discussed the content of what she was translating, but he did ask her in generalities — how things were going. She would always answer that the translation was easy going, but the questions would put her in a mood. She hated the idea that she was helping Voldemort in any capacity. But, whatever her reasons for translating the text were strong enough that they outweighed whatever good it would do the Dark Lord, in her mind at least.
That was why, he was surprised, when at dinner one night, she brought up Tales of Beedle the Bard on her own. "Rabastan, I still need a copy of Blishen's Advanced Runic Translation, the fourth edition," she said, barely looking up from her food.
Rabastan felt a smirk settle onto her face, knowing that he was being given a beautiful chance to tease his little wife. He loved to tease her. She would first blush, and then, she would become angry, her passion transforming her face, and her hair would become wild. It was rather arousing. "Of course, darling, I can get that for you, but as you know, there is a price. I will require a kiss," he told her.
Hermione stilled and immediately looked up at him. "Are you joking? What makes you think that I would make a trade like that?" she demanded.
"Well, because I think your curiosity will get the better of you," he answered, his green eyes bright with mischief. "There is something in that book that you need to figure out and you won't rest until you do. And," he let his tongue wet his lip, "I think you are very curious about what it would be like to kiss me, wife."
"And just what on earth are you going to tell Voldemort when I have to tell him I was unable to complete the translation because my husband was unwilling to give me all the resources that I need?" Hermione asked, with that waspish look on her face.
Rabastan laughed. "Hm, if I tell him it's because you don't put out, then he might think I'm a bit touched. Most Death Eaters don't think twice about taking whatever it is that they want from their wives. But if I tell him that it was a rare text and I had trouble locating it, I think he would understand," he explained.
"Really? The man...if you can still call him that...is insane," Hermione pushed him. Didn't he see that Voldemort was incredibly fragile, and he had huge emotional swings? She sometimes didn't understand why Rabastan had devoted his life to the man.
"Watch yourself, Hermione." Rabastan warned, feeling his jaw clench in annoyance. He knew, of course, that Hermione was on the opposite side of the war, and incredibly outspoken about it, but sometimes she took things too far. He had grown fond of coming home to her every night, and he would hate for something to happen to her should the Dark Lord catch wind of her words. Other Death Eaters had been killed for less.
"No, I won't hold this back, Rabastan," Hermione said fiercely. "Can't you see that he has changed since before the last war? Or was he always this temperamental? Is there even a hint of the man you sold your soul to when you took that mark on your arm?"
He looked down at his left arm. "Of course he's changed. We all have changed over the years. That's part of growing up. I am not the same person I was before I went into Azkaban," he answered, his mood going dark.
Hermione did soften a little bit at that. She remembered how broken Sirius seemed after he escaped from Azkaban. He was there for about the same amount of time as Rabastan, but Rabastan had gone in when he was much younger than Sirius was, much less equipped to deal with it. She wanted to offer him some comfort, but then pulled back, thinking that it wasn't her place. "Of course people change, and they grow up, but surely you must see that he is barely human anymore? Don't you wonder why?" she asked gently.
Rabastan stared into her eyes. "Of course he doesn't look the same, but that is just the result of the ritual that brought him back. It's unfortunate, but the Dark Lord was never obsessed with his looks."
"That's not what I mean," Hermione said, looking at him sadly. Merlin, this was awful, telling him this, but she knew that Rabastan had to find out somehow. "It's because he's made horcruxes. Seven of them," she whispered, not wanting to disturb the energy of the room. "Two of them have already been destroyed. That's two parts of his soul he no longer has."
"Horcruxes?" Rabastan asked, himself a little bit surprised. The ceremony to create one was said to be horrific and nearly impossible to complete, so to have done it seven times seemed unimaginable. Still the Dark Lord was very persistent.
"Yes, he is obsessed with living forever. And I think his little pureblood agenda is just a side project," Hermione sneered, standing from the table. She had to get away from this man, who was as much a part of the pureblood agenda as any of the other Death Eaters.
"The pureblood agenda, as you call it, is what's necessary to make the magical world as powerful as possible. Letting Muggles in...it wastes resources and brings in possible exposure. The muggles are weaker than us," he answered.
"Did you forget that I am one of those Muggles?" Hermione asked. "That I have lived here for seven years without exposing our world to the rest of the Muggles. And don't give me any tosh about muggleborns being weaker. I could take down Crabbe and Goyle without a second thought even though they are pureblood and I am not." She turned on him.
"But, you are an exception, Hermione," he replied. Rabastan stepped closer to her, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. "You are exceptional. And you are my wife."
"Oh yes, how could I forget? Even the most sacred Lestrange family has turned to those with lesser blood purity to make babies," Hermione hissed, pushing his hand away from her face. "Just remove their dirty names from the family tapestry and erase that they were anything less than pure."
Rabastan looked at her dumbly for a moment. "It's not like that," he tried to tell her, although, now that he thought about it, she was speaking a bit of truth.
"Oh, if anything it should mean that us non-purebloods are a little bit better, a bit more powerful than the purebloods, who can't even produce an heir. It's the only thing pureblooded women are good for, after all," Hermione argued, annoyed with the position that she'd been put into.
"Not every pureblooded woman is barren, just Bellatrix. We just drew the short straw when my brother was betrothed to her," Rabastan answered, growing annoyed with his wife.
"Hardly, it's genetics, simple genetics," Hermione told him, with a smirk on her face. "Muggle genetics. Small communities have less genetic variation, meaning that unwanted traits are more likely to be passed on. Soon, your little pureblood agenda is going to need more people like me, or you risk dying out. Think about it...how many only children are there in my generation? Even the most ancient and noble house of Black has died out."
"Genetics?" Rabastan said, confused. "What good are Muggle genetics to wizards?" He had never heard of genetics before, but Hermione was making a lot of sense with the number of only children. The Malfoys, Nott, Parkinson all had one child only. He thought that maybe the Greengrasses had two daughters, who would surely be less trouble than Hermione. Maybe he should have petitioned for one of them instead.
"Yes, why don't you find a book on genetics, and then learn something about it. It's only the fate of your world view on the line," Hermione hissed again. "In fact, you wanted to be an Arithmancy master and you consider yourself smart in the subject. Why don't you go ahead and run the long term calculations on what happens when you rid muggleborns from this world? Or, for that matter, the probability of success when you split your soul seven ways."
Merlin, Rabastan didn't know that arguing with her, debating with her, would be so arousing. Her hair seemed to crackle with energy — magic perhaps. Her face was flushed and her mouth parted, allowing her to steady her breath. And her brown eyes seemed to nearly sear his soul with lust. He had to have her. He needed to show her who was in charge of this conversation.
Taking one step closer to her, Rabastan pulled her smaller body against his. She gasped in surprise at feeling his hard cock pressed against her belly and looked up at him, confused. Rabastan grinned at her, before dipping his face to hers, pressing his lips against hers in a searing kiss.
She didn't pull back from him, but rather, pressed her lips more firmly against his own, moving against him, caressing, though her arms stayed firmly at her sides. Catching her lower lip between his teeth, he soothed her lip with his tongue before entering her mouth, tentatively touching her tongue against his own.
Although hesitant at first, she was soon eagerly returning the kiss, letting her body melt against him, like silk. Her hand came up to touch the scruffiness of his beard, surprised to enjoy the feeling beneath her fingertips. When she gave a little moan, unintended, she seemed to come back to her senses, and pulled her mouth from his, breathing heavily.
Rabastan let go of her, and took a step back, seeing the confusion in her eyes as she brought a hand up to run her fingers over her lips. Surprised by how far he let it get — he promised himself at the beginning of the marriage that he wouldn't push her sexually into something that she didn't want — he turned and left the room without a second thought.
Hermione, now left alone, was able to think about everything that had just happened. She couldn't believe that she had just kissed Rabastan Lestrange, but more, she couldn't believe how much she'd enjoyed it. He felt so strong, holding her to his body, and her core was tingling in unshed desire. She wanted more.
Biting her lip, she threw herself onto the bed, and let her fingers trail up under her dress and into her knickers. She gasped at feeling how wet she was, but she didn't hesitate in delving into her heat, her thumb pressed to the small bead at the top of her sex, desperate for any kind of friction.
She closed her eyes, but Rabastan's green eyes still haunted her, as did his smirking grin that he would give her. Biting her lip, she tried to hold back the little mewls of pleasure that wanted to escape as she pushed herself closer and closer to orgasm. Finally, with a little sigh, she felt herself fall over the edge.
Keeping her eyes closed, she couldn't believe that she had just done that, but she felt like she was floating after so much sexual tension was released. She drifted into a comfortable sleep.
Rabastan didn't return to their rooms the night that he kissed her. He didn't come back all the next day, or the day after that.
Hermione wasn't sure what to think. She thought that he was likely avoiding her, but she also knew that it was possible that he could be out, doing some nefarious task for the Dark Lord.
Still, it gave her time to work on something other than translating Beedle the Bard.
And she wasn't sure that she was ready to face him yet either. He had certainly stirred up some feelings in her, and she didn't want to examine it yet. Rabastan had been very kind to her so far, and he was so unlike what she was expecting, but he also wanted to get rid of Muggleborns in the wizarding world.
The fact that he was a fantastic kisser didn't make matters any easier to sift through.
Hermione knew that she wasn't with Harry and Ron, but she was still going to do everything that she could to get information to her friends. She couldn't help them find or destroy horcruxes, but she could help them figure out what the remaining horcruxes were.
She knew that the one Harry and Ron were currently in possession of was Slytherin's locket. Further, she knew that Voldemort would choose things, items that would lend legitimacy to his stature in the wizarding world. Logically, she thought, if he used one of the Founder's artifacts, he would use the other ones as well.
When Draco was there last and they had formed their tentative friendship together, she had requested a book on the Founders. He was able to quickly choose one from the library in his home. He didn't ask what it was for, and it was all the better for Hermione. Although Draco seemed unhappy at Hogwarts, she didn't know just how far he was willing to go. Did he still fundamentally agree with the Death Eaters? She would try to figure that out next time.
The book itself was incredibly dry and lacked many pictures. She had greatly enjoyed reading about Godric Gryffindor, but she didn't think that Voldemort was likely to choose anything that had to do with Gryffindor. She wondered if the boys had found the sword of Gryffindor yet. She read that it was goblin made, and thus had likely been impregnated with basilisk venom when Harry killed the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, so it was likely one of the only things that could be used to kill a horcrux. She just wished that there was some way to get this information to the boys.
Reading up on Salazar Slytherin yielded no further artifacts that Hermione thought would be used, but she did read up on the locket anyway. It seemed that it was passed down from generation to generation, much like the ring that had also been destroyed by Dumbledore, according to Harry. She thought that the illustration of the locket was beautiful, but was horrified to read about how two brothers in Slytherin's line had killed one another over possession of it.
She also read up on Rowena Ravenclaw, and this was when she actually found something new and worthwhile. It seemed that she had created a Diadem and that it had been lost for centuries. Hermione didn't know if it would ever be found, but it certainly sounded like something that Tom Riddle would be interested in — exclusive, mysterious and most importantly, lost.
Hermione turned the page of the book, and was surprised to see a beautiful illustration of the Diadem. It was beautiful, Hermione thought, with silver and sapphires covering it. She didn't know what to do with this hunch that she had. For one, it had been missing for centuries and further, it wasn't as though she could look for it being trapped in the room.
She bit her lip and thought about Draco. Perhaps he would look for it around the school? She wouldn't have to tell him what it was, but would it make him suspicious of her intent? She would have to see what he was acting like the next time she came to visit.
Marking the page in the book, Hermione set it aside so that she could begin practicing her wandless magic again. Rabastan was a pretty adept teacher, she could admit that. It had taken her a long time to locate her magic and push it to her fingertips. She was so used to using her wand as a conduit, it was difficult to call forward without her wand in her hand.
But soon, after much practice, she was able to do that. Next, Rabastan had shown her the subtle way that you should move your hand to perform the spell. You didn't need to move your fingers nearly as much as you did your wand, and there weren't really distinct movements. The intent of your spell, in your mind and in your words was much more important.
Just this week, she had successfully summoned something that was a few inches away from her body, but she now needed to increase the strength of the spell, moving things further and further away. Today, she was trying to get a piece of paper to summon across the breakfast table to her.
The paper fluttered at first, before slowly — achingly slowly — it inched across the table and into her hand. Hermione felt a wave of success fill her body, as she tried it again and again, and it moved faster and faster, until it responded the way that it would if she had a wand.
Hermione smiled, before locating a small candle holder from her bedside table and set it down on the table. It was time to work up to something a little bit heavier.