Abyss

Chapter 13

"Drink this, Severus," Dumbledore said, handing Snape a mug.

"Tell me it's not hot chocolate," he murmured, not even bothering to sniff at the brew before taking a deep swallow. It was only his experience with some of the most distasteful potions that allowed him to swallow without spitting it all over the Headmaster.

"It's coffee. Black. You need something strong to deal with this," Lupin said. "Drink all of it."

"Paying me back for all those years of Wolfsbane, are you?" Snape groused.

Lupin forced a small smile, but he was nonetheless recovering from the shock of the depletion of Hogwarts students as well as the state in which Snape had been after they had pulled off Hannah Abbott and told him what had happened. Of course, Potter had found him, and the arrangement had frightened two young Ravenclaws into near catatonia at the acknowledgement of Snape's basic masculinity, both of which were a blow to his ego.

But the look on Snape's face when he was told the sheer numbers of the dead... amazingly high according to the number of attackers. The juvenile Death Eaters had disappeared completely, their school possessions cleared from their respective Houses. It was after the statistical report Lupin gave him on the corridor floor that Snape's traditional, menacing mask had shattered and a jagged edge of fearful knowledge struck his countenance. He grabbed Lupin's robes and began asking the man nearly incomprehensible questions. The prospect of a babbling Snape shook Lupin to his inner core. Snape was such a controlled person that when he lost control, as he had been doing of late, the result was more than terrifying. It had the capability to make even Harry doubt the optimism of the prospective war outcome. An unhinging Snape did not bode well for the solidarity of the Order, regarding of how most members felt about him.

Dumbledore looked out over the Great Hall, observing the small sea of children huddled in their sleeping bags and talking as loudly as they liked. There was not going to be much order that night, and Dumbledore knew better than to expect it. The faces of the children... all scared, all gathered together, groups of young Slytherins lying on the ground and talking with Gryffindors and Ravenclaws. Young Hufflepuffs integrated themselves with the fifth- and sixth-year Slytherins. Among the seventh-years, lines were still divided--after all, their generation was the one that primarily turned traitor on the school.

"It is a terrible thing that it takes a disaster this close to home to bring these remarkable children together," Dumbledore muttered.

"It won't last for long," interjected the realistic, pessimistic, sarcastic Slytherin. "Most of the new Death Eaters and other followers of the Dark Lord are from my House. You'll see an influx of anti-Slytherin antagonism. Not least when they hear the Head of Slytherin House invented the bloody potion that let this happen."

"If not your potion, Severus, Voldemort would have found some other way of attacking Hogwarts," Dumbledore said.

"And don't think that those initiated this year are the only ones who follow the Dark Lord in this school," Snape continued without acknowledging Dumbledore's reassurance. "I can think of a few right now who would fit the profile."

"Severus," Dumbledore said sharply.

Snape stopped talking and downed the last of the coffee.

"You can't fix everything," the Headmaster said, surreptitiously placing a hand on Snape's shoulder, mindful of the Potions Master's reputation he wanted to maintain in front of his students. "You have the misfortune of leading a House whose children have been branded with certain expectations. If anyone mentions evil Slytherins or abuses them for their House loyalties, mention other Houses' contribution to the dark forces."

"Like Miss Granger?" Snape replied snidely.

"Innocent until proven guilty," Dumbledore snapped, removing his hand.

"What do you want, a Dark Mark on her arm and a hexed corpse at her feet?" Snape sneered. "She delved into Dark Arts, and it's nearly impossible to escape once you're in."

"Not everyone is like you, Severus," Lupin said.

"That was uncalled for, Remus," Dumbledore said.

"You just don't want to admit your pet Head Girl may turn out like I did," Snape shot at Lupin.

"You, too, Severus," Dumbledore said.

Lupin and Snape glared at each other, but they did not retort.

"Innocent until proven guilty," Dumbledore repeated.

"Professor, is Ron okay?" Harry asked, stepping into the small circle.

"Ron will be fine after a night in the infirmary with an Energizing Elixir," Lupin replied. "But I don't recommend you go see him right now. Best you stay here until Hogwarts has been thoroughly searched and protected."

Harry rubbed his nose, now free of warts, then his scar.

"Nothing's right without Hermione," Harry said.

Lupin elbowed Snape as he said, "You're right. But we'll get her back."

"If she were still here, she probably would have noticed something, even if she didn't put it together right away." Harry shook his head. "It's hard to think without Hermione bouncing ideas around."

"Maybe it's time you learned to think for yourself, Potter," Snape snapped. "Why don't you take something out of Miss Granger's absence and think independently?"

"I'm trying," Harry responded angrily. "I'm better at action. It's harder when there's no direct confrontation."

Snape snorted. "You'd better work harder. The Dark Lord is more subtle than direct confrontation. He will purposefully use more cunning means to confuse your Gryffindor mind."

"Yeah, well, I'm still alive, aren't I?" Harry said.

Snape opened his mouth, no doubt to explain exactly why he was still alive, all the sacrifices that had been made for famous Harry Potter's safety, but Dumbledore interrupted him.

"Try to go to sleep tonight, Harry," Dumbledore said gravely. "And if you dream..."

"I know, tell you." Harry sighed and picked his way through the crowd back to his sleeping bag.

"Snape watched him leave with a grim smirk on his lips. "The world is doomed," he murmured.

"Thank you for the maudlin announcement, Severus," Lupin said.

"Even I knew the dream team rested on Miss Granger's shoulders."

"Not all of what Harry has accomplished is the result of someone else's efforts."

"But a damn good lot of it is," Snape muttered, pouring himself another mug of vile coffee. "And now part of it has turned to the wrong side."

"Hermione is a good girl," Lupin said firmly. "She's lying in the midst of the enemy, but nothing short of death would break her. Or turn her."

~888~

The room was dark, just a simple candelabrum glimmering in a corner on the other side of the room. The covers were drawn up to their shoulders, holding in the warmth. There was a pillow between them, at Wormtail's permission, but his arms were wrapped around her, sheathing her in the warmth and blind security of human skin. One leg was curled possessively around hers. He was not the best-made man, but his chest was soft under her head, and his touch was gentle.

The shift from his first rape was subtle. The feelings of disgust had dried with his seed. He said he did not want to hurt her; she could close her eyes and pretend he was someone else. She did close her eyes, but she did not pretend. She took his invasion but took no pleasure in it. Her pity for him was submerged in a burning sun of what could be called hate that, in turn, was swept away with her own repetitive, overwhelming despair. In spite of his self-loathing and still strong desire, he held Hermione while she finally cried. She accepted the little-offered comfort, burying her face in his shoulder. A hero he was not, but he did not despise her or look down on her. It did not matter that what he was really interested in at the moment was the hot flesh against her thigh--he stroked her hair with something that was not domination.

He tried to kiss her, but she turned away.

"Why won't you let me help you forget?" Wormtail had said. "I've heard it can be comforting."

"If I had an orgasm with you or anyone else here, I might kill myself," Hermione replied.

Wormtail looked hurt again, and Hermione felt she should explain herself after what he had done for her.

"I've been called a Mudblood whore, or slut, or bitch, but I would never forgive myself if I lived up to their expectations." Hermione reached for the pillow and put it between them then, and Wormtail did not protest.

They had fallen asleep like that, and Hermione finally slept through a night when she did not dream about her parents' death.

She woke up to his lips against her neck. The pillow was set aside. Hermione clutched at the bed sheets and held on tightly. When Wormtail had spent himself, he slumped against her body, smearing her with his thin layer of sweat.

"I really wish you enjoyed it," Wormtail muttered breathlessly next to her ear. "It doesn't seem right to just take."

There, underneath a Death Eater as a reward--like a thing, a possession, less than human--something inside of her split, erupted angrily. She pushed Wormtail off of her, then climbed on top, straddling his stomach.

"You're right," she snapped. "It isn't right. Maybe it's time for me to take for once."

She plunged her tongue into his mouth, bit, grasped, clawed all over his body, torturing, then teasing him, rubbing against him, playing with his pain and pleasure until he was a wriggling mass of nerve endings, and he lost control inside of her. His last rape had made this one less rasping within her, and although she took no pleasure again, she felt grimly better because, for once, she had the complete power.

She gave him thirty minutes rest before she took control again.

---

She was naked as she stood in front of Voldemort's chambers with Wormtail. Her shift had been gently removed from her body at the beginning of the thirty hours, but just thirty minutes ago, Wormtail had ripped it off in a frenzy after she had manipulated his passions once again. She had a few bruises where his silver hand had inadvertedly clenched at her skin, but other than that, she was fine. More than fine. She felt shame and disgust for what she had done, but also a dark exhilaration that she could not quell. Her body and teeth ached, and her tongue still tasted of him, but she also tasted victory. Even now, Wormtail was behind her, although he held the chains. He let her lead even when he had the potential for the power.

She raised a hand to knock, but Wormtail slid his fingers through hers and pulled her hand away. He guided her against him and kissed her, a tender conclusion to what had been a rough-and-tumble day. Hermione let his mouth move over hers. It felt comfortable, if not sensual, and Hermione felt she finally had an ally among Death Eaters, no matter what it had taken to achieve it.

When Wormtial pulled back, he sighed. "You still don't feel..."

"No," Hermione answered. "But I felt enough." She molded her face into a forced sincere smile for his benefit. "Thank you."

He kissed her again, then knocked on the Dark Lord's door.

The door opened on its own, and a vial of potion hovered just out of reach.

"Let Hermione in, and you can have the potion," the Dark Lord's voice hissed from behind the door.

"Hmmm," Wormtail said softly. "Awfully tempting to just walk away."

"It's not a choice," the Dark Lord said. There was a touch of amusement there.

"Pity," Wormtail mumbled. He put a hand to the small of her back and pushed her in. The vial floated to Wormtail, and the door shut, revealing a rather serene Dark Lord.

"I should ask who was punished and who was rewarded," he said, his tone adjusting back to its usual clarity.

"What happened to..." she began, ignoring the insinuation.

"Oh, they're dead. No less than you expected or even hoped for." He stood away from the wall. There was an aura of renewed strength and collected vigor. His eyes glowed with self-satisfaction.

"The potion worked," Hermione said.

"I don't doubt Severus' abilities when he thinks that we won't discover the concoctions he makes on his own, and the potion has been practiced on a smaller scale. But this time... it's like eating lightning." He crooked his finger and led her to the foot of the bed.

"So, you're back." The words held deeper significance as he shared a glance with her. He took out his wand and pointed it at her wrists and ankles, slowly, knowing that at any moment she was going to...

Before he spoke the spell to bind her to the bed again, she knelt down at his feet.

"An hour," she said quickly. "In the bath. Please."

Voldemort smiled, his eyes slitting at her submission. "Feel a bit dark and dirty, do we?"

She was staring up at him. She did not say a word.

"How convenient that you are obedient again when you desperately want something from me," Voldemort continued, circling her. "It's a very Slytherin tactic."

"The Sorting Hat didn't even mention Slytherin to me," Hermione said.

"Then you must have been annoyingly innocent as a child."

"Anyone with any ounce of sense knows that sometimes the Slytherins do things the right way," Hermione muttered.

"There are an awful lot of senseless people in the world." He knelt down. "I have a few choices with what I can do to you. I could do as I have been doing: punishing you when you need punishing, indulging you when you're good." His hand settled in her hair; his fingers curled in the locks and ran through them in a gesture both pseudo-affectionate and dominating. "Another option is to punish you all the time, or indulge you all the time, which has its merits. Or I could alternate randomly between them so that you never know what to expect--that is an intriguing idea."

Hermione dared to look him in the eyes. "Indulge me, my lord."

Voldemort hid a smile. He stood up and gestured to the door where the bath was. "Go ahead," he hissed. "Wash Wormtail's sweat from your skin. Wash the sweat that you coaxed from him off. Tell yourself that you can't be that girl. Tell yourself that Wormtail needed that sort of experience. But it won't change how you intentionally aroused him, intentionally let him inside you, intentionally took advantage of him. Have your bath. But remember, Hermione, some stains will never leave your skin." His fingers brushed against the Dark Mark stark against her pale skin. "You're beginning to earn it, little one."

Hermione was shaking, but she lowered her eyelids for the purpose of hiding her shame and acting submissive.

"You have my permission."

She wrapped her arms around herself and got to her feet, still shaking as she went into the bathroom. She leaned against the door to calm her nerves.

Hermione remembered virginity and innocence, but it seemed so long ago. She remembered when she rolled her eyes at Ron's impulsive crushes and when she had to calm Harry down after some new indignity that he did not deserve. She remembered when the N.E.W.T.s were important to her. She remembered the vast difference, yet fulfillment, between Christmases at home and those at Hogwarts. But thinking of those memories now was like looking at snow on the television while riding Wormtail like a bicycle.

Voldemort's bath was not quite the ostentatious display of the prefect baths. It was more along the elegant lines of the baths in the Head Girl and Head Boy chambers. The gold and marble was understated, not the romantic or rococo extravagance of Malfoy's. It was practical while suffused with the sensuality of luxury.

Hermione was startled to find a warm bath already drawn and the appropriate potions lined on the edge. She looked back at the closed doors through which lay the Dark Lord's bedchamber. But she did not question him and stepped into the water, laid her head back, and closed her eyes. The warmth surrounded her, covered her with tactile sensations detached from sex, shut away her thoughts of his hands--there was only the movement of the water over her skin.

The time whiled away, and slowly something built behind her eyes, a dense knot of tension that melted down her cheeks and shook her frame in long-delayed release. Her restraint crumbled under the knowledge of solitude and under the flight of reason. Her lonely cries echoed mutedly against the room.

Thin fingers brushed gently against her cheeks, dribbling the warm bath water over her flushed face so that the purity mingled with the salt of her tears. Voldemort did not say anything while she cried, but stroked her face against her onslaught of feelings before leaning her face against his knee. Like she had done with Wormtail, she took the modicum of comfort offered to her until she wracked with dry sobs and became too tired to continue.

"It is a difficult thing," Voldemort murmured, "to endure the cruelties of a man. It is a different matter to endure the cruelties of yourself."

Hermione lifted her head and looked at where she had laid it. Then she dipped her head under the water, isolating herself for the last moment. When she finally surfaced, Voldemort had stood, the swirling, deep crimson of his eyes enigmatic. His feet were bare. This little detail caught Hermione's gaze--Voldemort never bared his feet before her unless he was preparing for sleep.

"With Wormtail monopolizing your attention, I was provided thirty hours to contemplate your position in this fortress and in my hands. I have come to the startling conclusion that there is little new material left that I can really do to punish you, short of feeding you experimental potions and subjecting you to curses, which does not seem appropriate for a girl of your... abilities. I can torture and kill or control any number of your companions, and while you would not be unscathed, you would not be permanently broken--if you have not been broken yet, you never will be. Eventually, the actions on my part would lead to a monotony that neither of us would truly appreciate.

"Now, your true friends, or your professors, or even that fool of a Headmaster, they would be a different matter altogether. After making you watch them die, you might break better than if one of my Dementors Kissed you. However, the Order will have their deaths at an appropriate and less impulsive time.

"All that is really left to me is your cat."

Hermione's head jerked up.

"What?" she said, earnestness stealing her breath. "My familiar? Kill my familiar?"

Voldemort began to walk the edge of the bath. "The idea crossed my mind until I realized after immediate observation that the creature is half-Kneazle. If you knew how rare something that fortuitous happens, you would have brought him to Hogwarts and made someone else acquire me as the snake so you could show off how wonderful your cat is. To kill such a cat would be foolish at best. I could hold the treatment of the cat over you, but I'd rather have the cat taken care of. Something that rare should not be dealt with so lightly."

"And how is Crookshanks being cared for?" Hermione asked in a level voice.

Voldemort smirked. "Ironically, Draco Malfoy is giving the cat what it needs." Before Hermione could respond to the shocking information, Voldemort said, "Draco is capable of good care when he is ordered. He has done well with the exceptional familiar."

Hermione shook her head. "I can't believe you let him take care of another pet after handling you."

"Proper motivation could make the earth reverse on its axis," Voldemort replied. "Besides, a cat is more... approachable and friendlier than a snake."

"Um-hm, that's why you slithered around my body and slept in my bed." Hermione let herself smile at the thought, but she repressed it quickly. "I hope Crookshanks sheds on his expensive clothes and uses his bath as a litter box. And there would be an extra mouse if he clawed Draco's eyes out..."

"They are getting along quite well," Voldemort interrupted. "A traitor familiar for a traitor Mudblood."

"Not a traitor at all, but a manipulated prisoner," Hermione said, once again aware of the essence of Wormtail that she still imagined permeated her skin. She sank under the water, rubbed away her tears and tried to comb out Wormtail's hands grasping her hair. She came up when she needed to breathe. "You know that."

"Or do you only want to think so?" Voldemort said.

"No, you want me to think that I am thinking so when, in fact, I know it."

"Strange how easy it is to be self-righteous after you've fucked Wormtail within an inch of his life. He would have died happy, the poor fool."

Hermione froze. She had never heard Voldemort refer to it in so vulgar terms, and he took such relish in saying it.

"And if I did?" she said carefully. "I did not take any enjoyment in it. I just... just wanted a little control."

Voldemort narrowed his eyes, not in anger, but as if he was savoring a particularly delicious bite of the rarest meat.

"Control," he murmured, almost like a hum. "You like control as I recall. Would not relinquish it without 'making me squirm.' And it seems to have taken four months of squirming to make you want it back."

Hermione was bewildered--all this just to watch her squirm? Rape, torture, death, and destruction so that he could get even with her for taking him as a pet?

"Good gods, woman," Voldemort said in response to her thoughts, "how trivial do you think I am? This was not just anything. I've told you many times, you've endured so much because I wanted you to; you are the most perfect hostage I've ever had my hands on, and the experience should not be wasted. So close to my enemies, and yet not so close, so alone. So... second or fourth priority."

He offered her a hand out of the bath. She accepted it by habit and stepped out of the water.

"You are an extraordinary girl, Hermione."

Hermione did not know what to think as she began to dry herself off. With the Dark Lord's towels. She glanced at him to see whether he would scold her, punish her for the breach when what he had said finally reached her. She straightened slowly, wary. His eyes were pensive as he stared back.

"I have your notes on many of your experiments regarding the defense of Dark Arts. I've read the commentaries in the margins of your books. I had Carmen request your transcript from the Ministry. Your history is... much like mine. Top scores, awards, academic superiority. Dumbledore is so preoccupied with Harry bloody Potter and how to defeat me that he lost something that could not be replaced. And here I am, presumably making the same mistake."

He took her wrist and led her into his room. She still clutched at the towel. She had no idea what he was doing--his behavior with her was foreign, and she resisted the knot of fear in her stomach begging her to run.

"I have been terrorizing you, torturing you, breaking you down to the most primitive, hopeless levels of hell. I almost succeeded, Hermione, I almost succeeded." He sat on the foot of his bed, released Hermione's wrist. He was looking up at her now, another new act that he had never done before until he was preparing for bed.

"But for all your Ravenclaw surface," he continued, "your inner Gryffindor seems bent on punishment, bent on living, on maintaining your courage, your mind, your control. And nearly getting yourself killed, if my mood was not more inclined to enjoy your company."

Where was the Dark Lord going with this? Why was there no malice on his face, no condescension?

"What you've done here, among everything that might have destroyed anyone else, is nothing short of admirable, but I imagine you would prefer being back at Hogwarts, learning what you want to know, being with your friends, on the other side of enemy lines. You've missed analytical and critical thinking. You've missed essays and spells and potions. Your brilliant mind atrophies in its attempt to survive. Well," he said, standing resolutely, once again establishing his authority, "that would be a tragedy, and I intend to remedy the situation."

"What?" Hermione asked, her brain spinning--confusion was too weak of a word. Disorientated was closer.

The Dark Lord smiled slightly, half-concealed amusement.

"Follow me," he said.