Chapter 15
Author's Note: This chapter contains torture and blood. Please prepare for the face of evil.
Hermione's Story
Someone's hand and a cloth covered Hermione's face and she struggled, unable to scream or see. She clawed futilely at whoever was holding her, scratching and kicking. Gunshots were followed by the sound of a vehicle's door slamming open. She continued to struggle against whoever held her, until the fumes from the cloth succeeded in knocking her unconscious. Everything went black.
...
Hermione always told people that she had been a late in life surprise for her parents, but she'd always left out the fact that she had been an unwelcome surprise. They'd never said that they hadn't wanted a child, but it had been clear in the way that everything about their day-to-day life reflected their prior child-free lifestyle. Very little changed when Hermione was born. The only praise she ever received from them was when she demonstrated intelligence and maturity, when she showed that she didn't need them to do anything for her.
"Our little genius."
"Hermione is such an old soul. She's so independent."
"Did you know she was reading at three?"
"She's been accepted to a prestigious boarding school for gifted children in Scotland. We couldn't be more proud."
Mrs Weasley had been appalled that Hermione would be gone for nine months at only age eleven and it had resulted in a schism in the friendship between her mother and Ron's. Hermione remembered over-hearing her mother's venom in talking to her father when they thought she was asleep.
"Molly is just jealous because besides being too poor to even consider such a school, all the brains in the family went with the three eldest. The rest of those children will come to nothing good. How dare she judge our parenting! She can't even tell her twins apart! What sort of a mother is that?"
But when Hermione got on the train to Scotland, the Weasleys were there to say goodbye and her mother was perfectly kind to Molly.
That was when Hermione realized that her mother could hate someone privately and no one would know.
She began to wonder how her mother truly felt about her.
When her parents rarely wrote and never visited when she was away at boarding school, Hermione had her answer.
It hurt more than it should have.
...
When she was fourteen, her parents went on holiday to Australia over Christmas leaving her at school. It wasn't the first time that it had happened, but she hadn't been informed until the last minute that they wouldn't be bringing her home. She'd already had her bag packed and had been looking forward to seeing her cat and sleeping in her own room for a few weeks. She didn't know why she even let the disappointment get to her.
Draco, her best friend and maybe beginning to be more than that, had looked at her with such sorrow when he left to be taken on the school's shuttle to the airport in Edinburgh. He was meeting his mother in Paris for the holidays.
"I wish I could bring you," he frowned. "I don't like that you're staying at school by yourself."
"I won't be by myself. Other students are staying over and the library will be open. And research laboratory sign ups were wide open. I'm going to have almost all my spring coursework done before you're back. Then I can do personal research all spring."
"If you say so," Draco sighed and then kissed her softly on the cheek. "I'll bring you back something from Paris."
As he disappeared out the front of the huge doors to the castle that served as their school, Hermione stared after him in shock, fingers on her cheek. Later she realized that she hadn't even said goodbye.
...
Professor McGonagall woke Hermione in the middle of the night just after the toll of midnight on New Year's Day. The majority of the staff had left the castle to go into Edinburgh in order to celebrate Hogmanay, but McGonagall, the assistant Headmistress and Hermione's physics professor, had remained with Hermione and the handful of other students.
Hermione was surprised to see the woman in her room and at first she thought it was a dream.
What it turned out to be was a nightmare.
Hermione Granger's parents had been killed in a car crash while on vacation in Australia.
She was now an orphan.
...
Hermione discovered that her parents had set up an elaborate trust for her, that included paying for her to continue at her boarding school. She supposed that was a good thing and smiled halfheartedly when the solicitor told her that the consistency would likely be good for her in the face of such tragedy.
Going back to her family home to get what she wanted before the house was sold had been extra painful, especially when she discovered that Crookshanks, her ginger Persian, was missing. The Potters and the Weasleys had helped her put up missing posters, but he'd never turned back up. His loss had almost been harder for her than her parents, which made her feel so guilty.
...
When Draco returned from Christmas hols, he knocked at Hermione's dormitory room door and she let him inside. As he consoled her, they shared their first real kiss. It wasn't long after that until they were openly boyfriend and girlfriend. He'd become her rock, the one person that she could always rely on to really listen to her.
...
Each summer, she stayed at school for whatever intensive summer courses that they were offering. There would still be two or three weeks when she couldn't be at the school. Her solicitor arranged for her to switch off between the Weasleys and the Potters. Harry and Ron had been her closest friends in lower school and it seemed to work well at first. Until Hermione started to realize that they didn't really have anything in common as they grew older. Mrs. Weasley wanted her to learn how to cook and do domestic tasks like mending, and Hermione would have rather slit her wrists.
She wanted to stab her eyes out whenever they started discussing sports and they couldn't understand half of what she was talking about when it came to her scientific interests. She couldn't connect with the parade of vapid girls that both boys dated who seemed to think that she was some sort of competition despite her being with Draco and her complete lack of romantic interest in her childhood best friends.
Luckily in Harry's case the vapid girlfriends had finally been replaced by Ron's little sister, Ginny. She was probably Hermione's only female friend prior to Pansy and Fleur. They weren't close by any stretch, but at least Ginny didn't think that Hermione was trying to steal her boyfriend.
She was grateful after she turned eighteen and started at uni and didn't have to stay with either family in the summer anymore. Although that was when her solicitor sat her down with all her finances and explained how little money that she had left.
She'd been living off the life insurance and the sale of the family home in Southampton, but the money would only hold long enough for her to finish university. And only if she was thrifty.
Hermione had never been so terrified.
Why hadn't they told her this before?
The solicitor had only been following Hermione's parents' instructions to keep her in the dark.
She didn't understand why they had done such a thing.
There wasn't a ton of money in physics research.
Hermione didn't know what she was going to do.
She didn't tell Ron and Harry nor Draco about her dire finances. Ron and Harry would suggest she drop out of uni and get a "real" job at the Met police with them. Both of their fathers worked as police officers as well as Ron's oldest brother who was an undercover detective now. It sounded like a nightmare to her. The only place for a scientist in criminal investigation was forensics and however much she tried to explain the difference between physics and forensic anthropology Ron and Harry never seemed to get it. They probably just chose not to, neither of them were stupid. They just directed their intelligence elsewhere.
And she didn't tell Draco, because she did not want Draco to think that she was using him. He clearly came from money. He had never complained about being broke in all the years that they had known each other. He went on international trips a few times a year with his mum and always brought her back expensive and elegant gifts.
They were so compatible as a couple too. They never fought. Draco always let her have her way if she felt strongly about something. He took care of her. He was the first person who ever had, the first person who had never let her down.
...
She'd thought no one could take care of her the way that Draco did.
And then Theo came along.
Theo showered her with gifts. He provided her with every meal. He took her and Draco to elegant restaurants that he owned. He purchased an almost entirely new California appropriate wardrobe when he learned that she'd only brought the tiniest of carry on bags. She could tell just from touch that the drawer full of vintage silk lingerie and slips had been especially dear.
Ron and Harry would have hated him. They would have taken one look at the way he lounged around the house in a three piece suit and had nothing but insults about it. Theo could be a little controlling, but Hermione found herself not minding it too much, because it freed her mind to other things like her readings and research, not to mention all the pampering.
Harry and Ron would have been a nightmare about everything that was going on right now. Maybe it was for the best that her phone had been run over. What would she even say? My boyfriend, who you hate, and I have a boyfriend here in California and he's richer than Croesus and spoils me rotten. Yeah, that'd go over really well.
Hermione was unsure about whether this was real. She knew that they had all been a bit messy about boundaries in the beginning. The night that she and Draco had their first threesome with Theo, she'd been horrified to realize that her sex dream from the night before had actually been her cheating on her boyfriend. Later when they were alone, Draco had reassured her that he wasn't jealous and that she could do whatever she liked with Theo anytime. He soothed all her fears.
Draco would never leave her, he told her. He loved her, needed her. Theo was a brilliant surprise that they could both enjoy.
Draco confessed to having had feelings for Theo for a long time. And Hermione could see why. The man was gorgeous and so attentive. He didn't just call her a princess, he made her feel like one.
She knew that what she and Draco had was solid, but what about Theo? Could a woman even have two boyfriends, two real relationships? She certainly didn't know anyone who did.
The day that Theo found her drinking tea in his kitchen, she had been wondering what people would think of her. She'd always been a people pleaser. She couldn't imagine Harry and Ron being okay with it. She shuddered to think of the names that Ron would call her.
They barely tolerated Draco and he was so easy going. Theo was the opposite of go with the flow; that man smashed dams to create his own flow, no doubt. Theo would never tolerate the disparaging way that Ron and Molly sometimes spoke to her, shaming everything that made her Hermione Granger. Draco would bite his tongue and very politely insist that they leave when such conversations happened in front of him, but Hermione was sure that Theo would put everyone in their place
Also the sex was unbelievable. They did things together that Hermione had never experienced, only imagined in her darkest fantasies.
She couldn't imagine even sex positive Ginny being anything but shocked at some of the things that Hermione had done since being in California.
But while the sex was a bit wild and sometimes excitingly extreme, it was how taken care of she felt afterwards that kept her coming back for more. It was Theo's willingness to provide for her and Draco too that made her want to linger, that made her wish that they didn't have to go back to London in a few weeks. She couldn't imagine going back to penny pinching and skipping meals because she didn't have the pounds in the budget. She wasn't even sure she could afford the cost of taking all the gifts she'd gotten back with her. That thought made her a little heartsick.
...
Slowly blinking her eyes, Hermione clamped her mouth shut, willing herself to not vomit. As her cloudy vision began to clear, Hermione at first thought that maybe she was still drugged. However, as her eyes adjusted to the dark, she was again blinded by a light shining in her face. Wincing and trying to move away, Hermione squirmed, but fear shot through her when she realized that she couldn't. Trying to pull her hands, she felt the bindings keeping her in place. She was tied to a chair.
"The whore is finally awake," a woman's voice cackled. The identity of the woman was obscured as she stood behind the light.
"I-I think you have the wrong person." Hermione began, turning her face trying to protect her eyes from the blinding light.
"I think not," the woman purred, knocking the light accent was not the same dragged Californian speech she had grown accustomed to, it was as British as her own.
Hermione blinked away the spots in her vision, the relief coming to her eyes, though her head was still pounding. Before Hermione could get her bearings though, a glossy photo of her riding Theo in the hot tub at his house was waved in front of her face. Seeing her nude form, her nipples on full display while Theo pinched them, Hermione felt her face heat. "You're little Nott's newest whore," the mystery woman said, pulling the picture away. "I was actually surprised when we saw you. The last one was a bit more on the masculine side, but that doesn't matter. You're still going to tell me everything that I want to know."
Theo had always kept his secrets, not telling Hermione full truths about what he was doing when he was out. She knew that his businesses were not entirely legitimate. He was always armed, but that was the extent of her awareness. She'd never asked more, realizing early on that it was probably better off for her to stay ignorant. And with his family being close to Draco's, what did that say about her first love? She knew Draco's father was in prison and she had an idea of what Theo's hand tattoos meant, but other than that she couldn't imagine that she knew anything that this woman would consider of value.
"And if I don't know the answer to those questions?" Hermione asked, terrified of what was going to happen to her.
A woman with a wild unbrushed mass of dark curls sticking in every direction stepped into the light. There was a madness in her eyes that made Hermione's stomach roil. In her hand, she held a wicked looking knife that she had pressed under Hermione's chin at lightning speed.
"We're going to have a little conversation, girl to girl," the woman hissed, smiling as she showed off rotting teeth. "And you better hope that I'm happy with your answers or this is going to hurt – a lot." She found the last bit hilarious and her manic laughter filled Hermione with terror.
...
Hermione's chin was to her chest, as her head hung. It was so heavy from the blood loss and the drugs that were still coursing through her. She didn't know the answers to the mad woman's questions. She had even tried to lie, but the evil bitch had seen through it, punishing Hermione with glee.
Every time she'd said the wrong thing or simply said that she didn't know, the woman would carve into Hermione's skin with her knife. Hermione's body burned with her arms and chest now covered in cuts and gashes.
The madwoman didn't seem to know about Draco, and didn't ask any questions about him. Hermione hoped that the gunshots she'd heard before being taken hadn't been at Draco. Theo was dangerous, but their dragon was gentle. She could only pray that Theo had him and he was safe. She wouldn't endanger him by asking these animals if they held him captive in another room.
She was still tied to the chair, her blood dripping from her wounds and onto the floor. Tears and snot ran down her face, as she had been reduced to weeping and pleading to whatever deity was listening for the pain to stop.
Every thump of her weak heart was Theo's name. She hoped he knew what had happened to her. She hoped that he would find her body and know that her last thoughts were of him coming to save her. She hoped that if he couldn't get to her in time that he protected Draco and spared him this awful fate. The thought of their gentle Draco going through this pain sent ice through her veins and a knife through her heart.
As she hung limp in the chair, she wasn't even aware that the woman had stopped asking her questions as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Unbeknownst to her, the heeled shoes had been replaced by men's shoes. It wasn't until long cool fingers gripped her chin and forced her to look up that she saw a man with ebony hair standing in front of her.
In the light his eyes took on an uncanny red cast. Even with her mind scrambled from the torture she'd endured, Hermione knew that she was looking in the face of true evil.
"Hello, Hermione," he purred, studying her face as he considered her. "My name is Tom Riddle. Are you enjoying my hospitality?" He laughed as though he had just told the funniest of jokes.
Tears began to slide down her face, only causing the man to laugh harder. When he leaned in, licking away the tears on her cheek, Hermione tried to pull away, but was unable to move.
"Mmmm," Tom Riddle smiled, pulling back. "Delicious. I can see why Theodore likes you."
Hermione only glared.
Theo would find her. He had to. Or she was going to die here alone. That was scarier than the thought of death itself. Just when she found a place where she felt safe and cared for, a place where she was never alone, a place of true happiness. Being alone seemed like her fate so dying alone ought to be no surprise.
As Tom Riddle moved away, Hermione watched him disappear into the dark room. As she began to fade again, Hermione's thoughts were only for Theo. How she needed him to find her, because he could save her. He loved her and she loved him as much as she loved Draco, she realized that now, and despite what anyone else thought about the three of them, Theo would never abandon her.
Never.
Everything hurt and that hope was the only thing Hermione had.
She held to it until the pain finally pulled her under.
...
