Nobody's Girl

Hermione stood nervously in the cold stone cell. Not her own, but the one the servants had led her to when the time had come for her lashings. She had fooled herself into thinking Draco had been joking. Now she was paying the price, for she had not mentally prepared herself.

Her mind raced as she imagined a huge, hulking man with a black mask coming in to lash her. How disgusting. She eyed the chains and shackles hanging from the ceiling and imagined herself in them. A shiver ran down her spine.

When the door to the cell opened, Hermione was quite shocked when two very small women walked inside. "We've come to prepare you," one of them said quickly, reading the implications on Hermione's shocked face and eager to let her know that they were not lashers.

Hermione wondered if she should feel relieved or not. The two women began measuring Hermione's wrists and adjusting the shackles. One of them turned to her. "You'll have to remove your robe."

Hermione clung to the thin cotton. "Why?!"

"You can keep everything else on."

"Oh, everything else? All two pieces?" Hermione asked, then immediately regretted her sarcasm. These women weren't to blame. They were just doing their job. No doubt they'd be lashed if anything were to go wrong.

"Actually, four, if you count your socks," the woman said with a faint, weak smile as Hermione handed her the robe. "I'll be waiting outside with it. I'll bring it right back in after it's over."

Hermione wondered if the woman had heard about what Draco had done to her before. "How long does it usually last?" she asked her, as they lifted her arms and fixed them into the shackles. Hermione's toes barely touched the ground after they pulled a lever which lifted the chains.

"It depends on a lot of things," she replied uneasily, then followed the other woman out of the cell and closed the door behind them.

Hermione stood, extremely uncomfortably, for at least ten minutes. She was shivering from the icy air of the dungeon, and also from her nervousness. She was so very vulnerable, and the idea of some stranger just walking in at any moment to see her in such a position was dreadful.

"No," she said to herself, "whoever the lasher is, he'll tell Draco everything that happens! I can't let him get the satisfaction of hearing I'd screamed like a child!"

A moment later she heard the door creak open. Her back was to the door, but she could hear the door closing again, and then soft footsteps approaching. The only light came from three candles positioned around the room, and the atmosphere of the situation was terrifying to say the least. She was shivering much worse now, to the point that her teeth were chattering. She closed her eyes tightly when she heard the footsteps work their way around to the front of her. If she could help it, she'd rather not even look at them.

"You're that scared of a little lashing, Mudblood?" she heard, with horror, Draco's voice ask, "You're shaking like a bloody leaf!"

She opened her eyes and looked at him with shock. "You're doing the lashing?!"

"Of course! Do you think I'd trust anyone else with my personal slave?" He mouthed the last two words seductively, then laughed when she blushed. He seemed very amused that he could make her turn red so easily, and even more delighted that he could play with her feelings without ever revealing his own. "I guess my supposed 'plan' that you thought up worked then."

"What do you mean?" she asked with narrowed eyes.

"I made you fall in love with me! You poor, pathetic little Mudblood! However will you cope with falling for the most powerful, handsome, rich wizard in the country?"

Hermione forced herself to laugh. "Now that is funny. I couldn't even imagine a pure witch falling for you, let alone a Mudblood that you've abused and ridiculed so enthusiastically."

"Say what you want, but I know the truth. I can see right through you, right through those big wet eyes of yours, which happen to get so glossy and bright when I walk into the room."

"Funny, I had always thought they slammed shut when you walk into the room, to avoid looking at your pasty face!" Hermione yelled at him. She was getting madder by the second. Deep down, she wondered if she was so mad because he might be right.

"Well, putting aside your romantic delusions of me, I think we need to get down to business." He disappeared into the darkness and reemerged with a huge stick that was covered in thorns. "This is the lashing stick we use on the very bad servants. Unfortunately, I can't use it on you."

"Because I'm not bad?"

He looked at her very slyly. "No, because a hundred lashings with this would kill you. You'd bleed to death before I could get to fifty, especially since you're such a fragile little thing." He reached up and ran a hand gently through her hair, his cold hand brushing against her neck and shoulder, causing her to shiver almost violently.

He stared at her for a moment, with an unreadable expression, then abruptly walked away. He came back with a smaller stick that had no thorns. "This is what I'll be using on you."

Hermione sighed. She could handle that. She'd had worse beatings on the streets, from the angry merchant or from wizards or witches who just enjoyed dragging her out of her cell to rough her up or spit on her. The only thing she was worried about was the emotional beating she'd endure tonight. Draco was taking full advantage of the fact that she was attracted to him. He'd come to the cell in nothing but very loose-fitting black pants that were nearly falling off his body. His hair was purposely in his eyes, and he made a habit of running his hand through it and letting it fall right back in his face. He may have been beautiful to Hermione, but she was beginning to despise his mind and heart.

He gave her the sexiest smile he could force onto his face and walked around behind her. "Let's get started then," was the last thing she heard before the sound of the lashing stick smacking hard into the flesh of her back. She grunted, refusing to cry out. She wouldn't allow herself that. He lashed her again, and then again, and then yet again. After about twenty or so, she finally yelled. The stick was beginning to hit directly into previous hit spots, ripping the clumped blood from the wounds and tearing them open again.

Eventually she was screaming with every hit, and after forty, her legs gave out and she collapsed. She had thought the chains would hold her up, but they dropped enough so that her knees were slightly bent and her feet dragged the floor.

Draco stepped around and bent down to face her. "You've broken already? After only forty?"

"What... do you mean?" she muttered, panting.

"These shackles are rigged. They hold you in place until you physically give out, and the entire weight of your body pulling on them at one time triggers them to drop you a foot. It's how we determine a servant's breaking point." Draco looked sickeningly smug.

"So then... it's over?" she asked, looking up.

Draco laughed breezily. "No, you were sentenced to a hundred, not forty."

Hermione's face fell, and the pain and frustration of the situation took their toll as she groaned loudly.

Draco leaned in very close, and whispered to her "If you want, I could switch to lashing you in the front. Maybe we could avoid ripping your back to hell that way."

Hermione glared up at him furiously, making her answer clear.

Draco grinned. "All right then." And he resumed lashing her back.

After a good half hour, the hundredth lash came, but by that time Hermione had stopped screaming and was near unconscious. Draco roused her by walking around to the front and lifting her face up. "All done!" he said in an eerily cheerful tone.

Hermione snapped to attention. "You mean it's over?"

He nodded. He pulled the lever on the wall that made the chains lift her back up. He walked around behind her again and inspected her back. It was a bloody, mangled mess. He traced the wounds with his eyes, examining how the dark, matted blood contrasted so sharply with her creamy skin, and how the opened flesh was pinkish and raw. He carefully pressed an icy fingertip against one of the larger wounds, and ran it slowly down the length of the cut.

Hermione gasped at the feeling, and struggled against the shackles to edge away from his touch.

"Does that hurt?" he asked, and she noticed that he seemed sincerely curious.

"Yes! Very much! Do I at least get bandages?"

He ignored her question and touched another laceration, rubbing it in the same way. She let out a tiny cry of pain and struggled again to scoot away. "Stop it!" she screamed.

He stared at her back for minutes longer, as if he'd never seen real injuries before. Then, suddenly, he lunged forward and embraced her from behind, pressing his bare chest against her back and wrapping his arms around her stomach.

Hermione cried out, the freezing cold feeling of his skin on her raw wounds sent shocks of pain up and down her spine. "What are you doing?! Let me go! You're... aggravating the wounds!" She struggled for a moment before realizing that it only hurt worse to do so, and then went still.

He leaned his head around to her right side, so that he could look her in the face. He reached up with his right hand and tilted her head to face him. "I'll have the healers take care of your back in the morning," he whispered, "and they'll erase these ugly scars."

She looked at him in amazement. "I'll be healed tomorrow? So the punishment was only to last one night?"

"I decided on this just now. Your back is so hideously marred, I'd throw up every time I saw it if I didn't allow them to fix it," he told her coldly. His left hand snaked up her stomach to land on her left breast. He groped the flesh almost gently, never taking his eyes from hers. He watched her cheeks turn rosy again.

"S-stop," she said loudly, though without much force. She was getting weak from the blood loss.

With only his left hand he unhooked her bra and it dropped to the ground. He then resumed his groping, and shortly switched over to the right breast. Hermione jerked her body, trying to shake him off her, but all that did was send searing pain up her back. "I said stop!" she yelled, this time more forcefully. The situation was getting out of control.

Draco watched her face carefully, as if he were trying to read her mind. Then said smoothly, "Exactly who is the master and who is the slave here?"

"Who is the pure-blooded wizard and who is the tainted Mudblood?" she asked, hoping against hope that it would scare him into stopping.

It didn't. He smiled strangely, almost a genuine smile, or as close to one as she could imagine from him. He moved his hand down and squeezed it between her legs, rubbing her body through the fabric of her panties.

This caused her to panic, and she kicked and jerked wildly, screaming for help in the hopes that the seemingly compassionate servant would do something. No one came. No one could help her. And when she felt his hand slip into her panties, she let out a horrified scream that pierced the silent hallways of the mansion.

Draco was still holding her face to his, and still watching her, though his smile was gone. Instead, he looked far more serious. Now probing her body with his fingers, he gave her a dark look. "The more you scream, and the more you struggle, the more you hurt yourself."

Hermione tried to shake her head, but he was holding her face tightly. She screamed again, then panted as she regained her senses. "Please..." she whispered, so lightly that he could barely hear her, "beat me with the thorned stick until I die, boil me alive with that curse, stab me through the heart, before you rape me again."

"Why? Why is it so horrible this time?" he asked with a frown.

She looked at him with tear-filled eyes, "Because this time..." She trailed off, feeling him tear the panties from her body.

"What is it?! Why are you fighting now when you accepted it before?!"

"Because this time it's different!" she cried. "The situation is different!"

"What's different about it?!"

She wanted to scream out "My feelings are different!" but she couldn't force the words out. And even if she did, Draco would try to make her explain herself. And how could she when she didn't even understand herself? What did she feel for Draco? Surely she hated him, but why did she find herself more and more devastated when he showed less and less regard for her feelings?

Her strength, and her will, weakening, she closed her eyes and sobbed. Draco cursed under his breath and withdrew himself from her. He released her arms from the shackles and she fell to her knees. "I'm satisfied with the punishment," he said simply, and walked to the door.

Hermione sat on the floor, her arms crossed over her chest. She couldn't stop the tears from coming down her face. "Draco," she said hoarsely, and when he turned around she asked "why did you stop?"

He stared at her for what seemed like forever before he answered. "I told you it was a one-time affair. I won't touch you like that again." Then a grin crept over his face. "Unless you beg for it!"

Hermione's eyes widened in disbelief. He was joking, wasn't he? He had to know that she would never come to him for such a thing. "I'd never-!"

Before she could finish, Draco had walked out and slammed the door hard behind him, leaving Hermione very confused and very, very tired.