Wow, it's been a while since I last updated. A long loooooong time. Writer's block leaves no rest for the wicked. I totally just botched that quote, but screw it. Finally I wised up and got some caffeine into my system so I could sit down long enough to work on this.
Hope everyone is enjoying their summer back in the states, and if you're elsewhere while you're reading this, I hope that your weather has been significantly better than ours. The mix between hurricane storms and stifling heat just isn't helping.
Anywaaaaaay, I figured this chapter we would check back in on Jacob and see how he's doing, the poor thing.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do NOT own the Harry Potter series!
*Previously on The Beauty of the Beast*
Jacob pressed his back against the cold wall and shut his eyes.
"Bellatrix Lestrange."
Thoughts about what she could do to him if he got caught raced through his head before he could block them out. Images of him and Hermione, lying side by side on the cold floor, bleeding through deadly twin wounds to their own demises flashed before him, and he struggled to stay focused and steady his ragged breathing.
Hermione lay limp as a rag doll in his arms, her pale face reflecting none of the fear and worry that Jacob's did.
As the footsteps neared, Jacob seemed to snap back to reality. He lay Hermione back down on the floor, and arranged her in a semi-concievable state of false sleep, with her arm under her head, and her legs tucked up close to her torso, in a somewhat awkward fetal position. Lifting up a lock of her hair, he neatly cut it with his wand, until he had a few brown curls. He then quickly conjured a straight-backed chair in the corner, and sat in it, arranging his robes so that they did not brush the ground.
Having done this, he materialized a small blue flame, not nearly as beautiful as the ones that Hermione was apt at making, but a more hurried and purposeful one.
The footsteps finally reached the door, and before either of the figures could vocalize their surprise at the unlocked cell door, Jacob spoke, with a slightly deeper voice and sneering tone, "Come in. Unless you're squeamish."
Bellatrix's astonished look was quickly masked with a face of derision. "Finally decided to be a man, hmm Draco? I must admit, it's not like you to be so faint and girlish after a quick torturing session. Realized that the mudblood had more balls than you? Come to change that with what, a fire and is that hair?" She mocked, glaring at the figure in the chair.
Jacob (A/N: Hell, for the sake of it, I'm calling him Jacob. Just remember everyone thinks he's Draco.) sat a little taller in the chair and straightened his robes, brushing some imaginary grime off of them. "I would be surprised to find someone not as equally repulsed by such a primitive method of torture as I had appeared to be. And such means of torture need not be necessary, dearest aunt, as you could have caused, and may very well have caused, serious injury, that could result in the mudblood's immediate death, in which case, she would be no use to us whatsoever."
He fixed them both with a glare that he had come to perfect in the past 15 minutes of being in the ministry.
"And as to my current position, I am deducing the exact amount of time it takes for this mudblood's precious hair to burn." As if to prove his point, he let the lock of hair fall onto the fire, where it promptly burst into flame.
Bellatrix, unfazed by the outburst of accusations against her, simply shrugged. "How else should I have dealt with it, dearest nephew? It is not becoming of you to show such pity. I assume it is because of your mother, the weakling that she was. She never had a backbone, my sister, and she deserved the death that she got. I must say, I did enjoy watching it. But it seems that she has passed that undesireable trait on to you."
Jacob steeled his face into one of impassiveness. "You will answer to what you have said about my mother later, but for now, in answer to your questions of the girl. Give her to me. I have been perfecting safer, yet equally painful methods of getting her to talk. For unlike you, Aunt Bella, I am able to utilize more psychological fears than physical ones, and they have proven to be quite accurate at giving me what I want, if anything, more so than your primitive methods."
He didn't break eye contact with Bellatrix for a second, knowing full well that she would be looking for signs that he was lying.
"Show me one of these 'psychological' fears you have in mind, and I may consider it briefly." She smirked, calling his bluff.
Internally, Jacob paled, but on the outside, he remained as calm as before. "Very well."
He stood up and slowly made his way over to where Hermione lay. Her breathing had evened, he noticed, and he deduced that she would be in a state of REM sleep, by the way that he eyelids fluttered.
'I'm sorry Hermione.' He thought. Raising his wand (thankfully, Bellatrix and her companion were focused more on Hermione than his obviously-not-Draco's wand), he pointed it at her head, and muttered the start of the spell "Somnium Transferre*". Formulating gruesome and nightmarish pictures in his head, he let his subconscious thoughts stream into the connection formed between his mind to his wand, and from the wand, into Hermione's subconscious. Almost immediately, her face contorted in grief and fear, her limbs began to twitch, and she whimpered in her sleep.
Jacob had first learned this spell in his 6th year at his school in Romania. Following the gruesome murder of one of his father's co-workers, he began having uncontrollable nightmares, to the point where he was unable to sleep at night, and began failing his classes. The school's nurse, Madame Galena**, unwilling to give him a sleeping draught every night for fear of addiction to it, created a spell that would allow her to essentially control his dreams.
Every night, he would visit the infirmary, where she would place him under a light sleeping spell, and then commence to 'create' pleasant dreams in her own mind, before transferring them over to his own, until his subconscious took over and she would levitate him back to his own room, sleeping soundly. After a few months of this 'dream therapy', Jacob found he was then capable of lucid dreaming***, a supposed side effect of the spell, and was no more in need of the dream transfer. The spell was kept secret between Madame Galena, himself, and the school's headmaster, for the potential of the spell had not fully been discovered, and situations such as the one Jacob was in right now, could arise because of it.
While Jacob had never previously tried the spell on a human (he tried once on his cat, with terrifying results, but that's another story...), he was relatively confident in his abilities after studying it with his old nurse for so long.
Focusing now on the steady stream of terrifying images flowing from his wand to Hermione, he pictured her staring at the dead, headless bodies of those who had died in the Battle of Hogwarts, Lupin, Tonks, Colin, Fred, and finally Ron. It was only when Hermione began screaming and crying, thrashing wildly around on the floor before him, was he jerked back into the reality of what he was doing, and he lowered his wand, ashamed and disgusted at himself and what he was doing.
But no disgust showed itself in Bellatrix's face. Awe and pride radiated off of every inch of her.
"What did you do to her?" she cackled, clearly having enjoyed the show, and still watching as Hermione's form slowly stilled and her outright crying ceased into a soft sniffling.
Jacob shook his head, clearing his mind of the awful images, and feeling himself on the brink of tears himself, brought his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, trying to make it look arbitrary and nonchalant.
Unwilling to reveal the secrets of what he just did, he retorted with a sharp. "That, dear aunt, is for me to know, and you to find out. Now, I believe we had a deal to discuss about the treatment of the mudblood?"
Bellatrix, slightly put off at her nephew's disinclination to explain the workings of the spell to her, nodded slightly, befuddled. "You, leave." She ordered, pointing first to her companion, who had stood watching in silent fascination the entire time, and then at the slightly ajar door. He nodded, and shuffled out.
As soon as the third party left, Bellatrix fixed Jacob with an icy stare. He returned it all too willingly.
She stepped towards him, her shoes grinding against the stone, and stopped when she was 2 feet away from him. Raising one finger, it's long, black painted nail extended in his direction, she hissed, "I don't know what you're up to, or what you want, but I do know that your pretty little spells won't save you or the mudblood from the punishment I will give you, if I find that you are, in any way, showing her leniency or sympathy. She is a mudblood, and a dangerous enemy. I will not have your stupidity ruin us all, by letting her escape, accident or not, I will have your head. See that it does not happen. I will be stationing guards at all entrances to Malfoy Manor, as well as in it, and until I can trust you further, there will be a Death Eater of my choosing constantly with you whenever you are with the mudblood to ensure you don't do anything regrettable. I am only agreeing to this because I myself can not constantly be with the mudblood. See to it that you do not. Disappoint. Me." She spat each of the remaining words, and turned on her heel.
"Bring the mudblood, I will accompany you back to the Manor, to make sure you don't do anything stupid. I trust there is a cell for her there?"
Jacob mutely nodded, and stooped to pick up Hermione's still sleeping form, until Bellatrix's glare stopped him.
"Touching the mudblood with your bare hands? I'm surprised at you Draco. Levitate her if you must, but don't touch her, you'll get your hands dirty."
Jacob tried in vain to stop the flush creeping up his neck from showing on his cheeks. He busied himself with levitating Hermione until she was floating in front of him, and followed Bellatrix out of the cell and into the long hallway without a second glance back.
*280 more stairs later*
Bellatrix stopped in front of one of the giant fireplaces, with Jacob levitating Hermione right behind her.
"You go first." She said, pointing at the floo powder. "And take the mudblood with you."
Jacob nodded, and grasped a handfull of powder and threw it into the fireplace, where green flames sprang up soon after. Taking hold of one of the edges of Hermione's tattered robes, he pulled her into the fireplace after him.
Without breathing in the smoke and ash, he heard himself say calmly and loudly, "Malfoy Manor."
Seconds later, he was shooting out of a huge, black, hearth into a great and majestic room, with emerald green chairs and couches, and tall ceiling high windows whose emerald and black curtains were drawn shut to block the light from coming in. A few cushions were on the floor by one of the green couches, and an expensive-looking vase lay shattered by the opposite wall. On the table by the couch stood a bottle of Muggle Vodka. Jacob was struck with the elegance of the place, and would have complimented it in another time, if it was not also the home of several horrors. Seconds after he arrived, the whoosh! of the fireplace reminded him that he was not yet alone, and was still accompanied by his sadistic not-of-his-choosing companion.
She stepped up beside him, and he was surprised to see that with his new appearance, she only came up to his chin, though her hair made up for the difference. Looking around, she smiled a toothy and wicked grin, and said with a cruel irony,
"Welcome home, Mr. Malfoy."
*Dream Transfer
**Greek name meaning Healer
***For those who don't know, Lucid dreaming allows you to control you own dreams. I can't do it, but if you can, review to let me know how you do it! It sounds really cool.
So, there's another chapter done. Woohoo! That was all in one sitting too. I hope you are all duly impressed. So, we'll find out more about Jacob's troubles in the next chapter, like, for example, where's he going to get the extra polyjuice potion. Who knows? We'll just have to wait and see. MWAHAHAHAHAHA! I love controlling the plot.
Review if you want to find out what happened to Jacob's cat! If you are uninterested in the feline adventures of said cat, may the sparkly Edward Cullen sneak into your rooms at night and watch you sleep. Or just go step on a lego.
I hope you liked, and I'll try to upload faster in the future (hah, who are we kidding, this is me we're talking about) but for those of you who waited patiently for it, I appreciate your patience. Smooches!
'Til next time!