The Worst That Could Happen

Draco Malfoy wondered down to the Slave's Room early the next morning, fully intent on breaking the Mudblood who resided down there, hopefully chained in place as all of his previous captors had been. Chained was the way he liked them best. Chained meant they couldn't get away, no matter how hard they tried. Chained meant that they were his for the rest of their lives--or for as long as he was interested.

He wasn't likely to lose interest in Hermione soon; he'd wanted her for too long for that to happen. He had been overjoyed at the sight of her, still alive, staring after her fallen friend who had failed to save her. He would change her into the killer he was if it was the last thing he'd do.

Hopefully it wasn't. Hermione had a nice body, elegant even if it was tainted by filthy Muggle blood. How such beauty could be contained in something so foul, Draco had no idea, though he sincerely hoped he would be the first to touch her. She was his now, she had no say in what he did.

He walked down the stairs with a slight bounce in his step, his excitement only just under control.

When he saw her, she was already awake. He wondered briefly if she'd even gotten any sleep that night. He hoped so; tired victims were never fun.

He knelt in front of her frail form and held her chin in a vice-like grip, forcing her to look him in the eye. Her eyes were bloodshot, leading to the assumption that she had been crying. The elves cleaned her up nicely, he noticed. The cut on her forehead was healed; there wasn't even the slightest hint of a bruise on her pale skin--a slight scar, but other than that, there was nothing.

There was a fury in Hermione's golden-brown eyes that Draco had never seen before. He assumed it was meant to scare him, however that fury had only succeeded in exciting him. Yes, Hermione would be a hard one to break...a challenge. Draco loved a challenge.

He unlocked the shackles holding her arms up. They fell limply down, the loss of blood having caused a loss of strength in them.

Draco then pulled the Mudblood up by her hair and dragged her upstairs to a room in the center of the house used for torture. He shoved her into a chair that was hard and cold and walked around the room, wondering what to do with her. There were all sorts of torture devices in the room. Everything from your standard whips and chains to the more elaborate magical bondages.

Draco was in for the pain however, knowing that would be the quickest way to break the woman's soul. That was what he was after after all.

He looked over at Hermione and laughed when he saw her eyeing the instruments in fear. She flinched and averted her eyes, clearly not wanting him to notice what it was that had struck the fear in her.

"What could possibly strike fear into the fearless know-it-all Gryffindor?" Draco asked, his mouth right next to her ear.

Hermione did not answer him. She stared forward, her eyes never moving from the spot on the wall they had glued themselves to.

"Silent," Draco muttered. "Well, I know you have a voice, so SPEAK UP!" he yelled right in her ear, causing her to flinch. He backhanded her face, his hand meeting her cheekbone. She went flying again and let out a small squeak. Draco was pleased.

"I told you," he said, pulling his wand out of his robes, "I want to hear you scream, Mudblood. Now scream," he ordered before saying the word to cast the Cruciatus curse on Hermione.

She writhed in agony, yet somehow managed to keep her mouth shut. It wasn't until Draco saw the blood at the corner of her mouth had he realized she had literally bitten her tongue to prevent a sound.

Draco lifted the curse, and Hermione lay on the floor, gasping; tiny flecks of blood escaping her with every gasp she let out.

Draco saw the blood and smiled. He had a new reason for punishment.

"You've done two things wrong," he said, slowly walking around her limp body. "First, you disobeyed a direct order when I told you to scream. The second is amazingly the same flagrant dismissal for my rules. I told you not to get blood on my carpets.

"The key to your survival depends on you following these rules. You may not wish it now, but eventually you will want to live. I will not let you out of my clutches until I have broken you, Mudblood. You will be the model for the rest of the world to follow. I have been granted this opportunity to be the one who breaks you, and I will relish in your pain and your suffering until you do. I will keep you until the end of your days, Mudblood, and you will enjoy me by the time I am through with you."

Hermione made an incoherent sound that made Draco lean in close to her. "What did you say?" he asked, barely above a whisper.

"Never," Hermione whispered.

Draco laughed. It began as a low rumble resounding in his chest before mounting into bulbous roaring laughter that echoed in the room.

The laughter stopped so suddenly that Hermione flinched. Getting close to her ear again, Draco said, "You are going to be fun.

"NOW SCREAM!" he yelled, still right next to her ear.

He cast the curse again, and Hermione nearly let out the scream. Instead, the only sound that came from her was a muffled moan she had let out before biting her bicep.

Draco was laughing again as he released her from the curse and saw that the bite she had given herself had begun to bleed.

"The pain you have caused yourself will last so much longer than any that I can cause you," he said, manifesting salt from his wand into his hand.

Ruthlessly, Draco shoved that salt into the wound on Hermione's arm. This time, she couldn't stop the scream. The pressure he was putting on her wound, plus the salt had pushed her over to the extreme. She'd completely forgotten that she had promised herself that she would never give into the monster that was Draco Malfoy. She didn't care that she had fought a scream while under Cruciatus twice already--this was too much.

And Draco's laughter, echoing in her ears, only made her scream louder.

Which in turn made Draco laugh harder.

And so the cycle went. Hermione would scream louder trying to drown Draco out of her mind and Draco would laugh louder hearing her scream that was filled with fear and agony. He loved it; she hated it. He pressed harder, she screamed louder, he laughed louder, and so she screamed louder still.

Finally, Draco removed his hand from her arm and watched as the bloody salt fell to the floor in wet clumps.

"Clean up this mess," Draco ordered as Hermione lay on the floor, sobbing from the pain and the fear, and the disappointment she felt in herself for letting them down. She had given into the monster once, though she was certainly far from broken.

Somehow, she managed to clean the red salt and blood from the floor, noticing with every painful movement that there was still salt in her wound.

"ELF!" Draco called once she had finished.

An elf appeared and Draco instructed it to take Hermione away and clean her up, but not to heal the wound she had caused herself. They could heal any injuries she had as long as she had not caused them--and he instructed them not to clean the salt from Hermione's bite wound.

Fearful, the elf nodded and led the Mudblood away from the torture room.

Laughing, Draco followed them out, but turned to retire to his room rather than to follow them. He would know if they disobeyed him, and they would be severely punished if they did. They knew that.