Ascent

Chapter 19

Hermione gave him two days. Two days for him to come to her to explain the events of that night. She spent that time taking notes and double- and triple-checking previous entries in her journals, staying out of his way. This was not the first time he had withheld information from her, from his own Medicus. He had to learn that he was not to withhold anything from her. Even the smallest detail, the slightest anomaly or change, could be vital information about his condition. And this was no slight anomaly.

She gave him two days. When he did not come to her, Hermione went to him.

Hermione strode through the connected bathrooms and into his room. Voldemort was speaking to Draco and Blaise. Lucius stood to the side, nodding, and Wormtail was behind Draco. When they looked around at her entrance, Wormtail immediately looked to the floor again, eyes darting up now and then to peer at her in snatches. Hermione paid him little mind, no more than she paid the angry expression Lucius cast at her.

"I need to speak with the Dark Lord," Hermione said. Her expression betrayed no emotion, but her eyes locked with Voldemort's. "Leave."

Draco, Blaise, and Wormtail each started toward the door, but Lucius grabbed Draco's shoulder.

"You cannot just waltz in here, Mu-Miss Granger, and expect us to simply obey..." Lucius began.

Voldemort interrupted him without breaking eye contact with Hermione. "Leave. Medicus Granger and I have some business to attend to."

Lucius opened his mouth, then closed it. After the example both Voldemort and Hermione made of him, Lucius could not challenge Hermione's position again, nor could he undermine the Dark Lord's well-reestablished authority. Clenching his teeth and glaring at Hermione, he followed his son and the others out the door. Hermione wished that Carmen had been among their number, so that she could sense someone's quiet support. But all she had was herself.

When the door closed behind the Death Eaters, Voldemort locked it, not even having to look as he waved his wand. Once again, they stood on opposite sides of the room, almost like they had been when the girl burned between them.

Finally, Hermione broke the silence. "How many times do I have to tell you? You have to tell me when something is different. I can't always sense it myself, or sometimes when I do, I don't know what it means."

"It was irrelevant," Voldemort replied.

"Irrelevant?" Hermione gave an incredulous laugh. "I think I'm the one to decide if something is irrelevant to your case, and how can you possibly think that this is irrelevant? This is so far from normal for you that you have to murder the women you use. You kept it from me out of shame, and when was the last time you felt shame about anything?"

"I do not wish to discuss this now." He put his hands behind his back, squaring himself toward her in an uncharacteristically defensive stance.

"You don't get to decide what to discuss," Hermione said, stepping forward. "I am your Medicus. I need to know these things. The fact that you needed a Medicus must have been embarrassing enough, but you hired me anyway. Then you let me see the damage done. I've seen your mind and you've bared your soul. I don't understand how there is anything left to hide from me, Voldemort."

Voldemort did not move, even as she came closer. His hollow cheeks twitched as he clenched his teeth. "I am entitled to my privacy."

Hermione's hand waved through the air, brushing away his excuse. "Privacy from everyone else, yes. And you know I try to give you what privacy you can afford. But you cannot afford this kind of privacy. I needed to know this. You should have told me."

"I didn't want to tell you," Voldemort said. She was close enough that now he looked down at her.

"I don't care. You needed to tell me. If you didn't feel comfortable telling me directly, you should have told Carmen and told him to tell me."

Voldemort curled his lip into a sneer, but not directed at her. "I would tell Harry Potter before I would let Carmen gloat about this."

Hermione considered Carmen's obsession with Voldemort's lack of a love life and forced herself not to smile, even for the briefest of seconds. What was between her and Voldemort now was too important for that kind of distraction. "Then you should have just told me," she said. "That's what I'm here for; that's what a Medicus is. Whatever our history, we are connected now. Why didn't you--?"

"I don't want to tell you," Voldemort's eyes narrowed until they were red slits. He shifted on his feet, as though he wanted to walk away, but he forced himself to stay where he stood. He would not flee.

Hermione considered him - she did not think he was this uncomfortable even after those times she went inside him for her magical diagnostic tests. Moving closer, perhaps a little too close, she observed the quickening pulse on his temples, the still-heavy drape of his robes over his skeletally thin body, the tightness of the muscles of his neck and shoulders.

"Voldemort," she said quietly, "I think I know what is happening to you, and I might have known that much sooner if you had just bloody told me, about this and other things. I am of no use to you if you cannot swallow your damn pride and let me help you. I know it's easier to do that when I'm the one being violated and doing what you want me to do. But I cannot do everything for you on my own if you are not willing to help."

It was a moment. A single moment of unguarded expression that she never expected to see from him: desperation. It pulled at somewhere in her chest, not her heart, but perhaps in the place where her own soul-center rested. In that moment, she felt his desperation as much as she saw it.

It occurred to her that when she first came to him as a Medicus, she would have at the very least regarded it as a personal triumph. How often had he seen her at her lowest moments? How often had he seen her lost and broken? And how often had he exploited every opportunity to mold her into the image he wanted to make of her? Even as his Medicus.

It was only a moment, but it meant so much more than that. It did not matter that Voldemort did not mean to give it to her.

"Why don't you tell me what you think is happening to you," Hermione said, "and then I'll tell you what my research suggests."

His eyes were still slits as they considered her, guarded once again. Finally, he replied, "I do not know. I suspect they are connected to transfiguration spells that I cast upon myself, but I could not tell you which ones, or why they have this result. Why this particular symptom? Why this time?"

He moved to the fireplace and sat down in his chair. Hermione followed him and leaned on the arm of the other, allowing him to gather his thoughts in the heated glow of the fire. He crossed his arms, bringing his robes more closely about him.

"I will confess: I went through all of my old notes and texts before I hired a Medicus, but I hired one to find what I missed. Once you were bound to me, I resumed my original attentions to this war and left the problem for you." He looked up at her. "I am unable to explain the strange directions my malady takes me; you would know it better."

"Very well. Would you like for me to go into the specifics, or would you simply like a basic diagnosis?" Hermione asked.

"We can address specifics in applying a treatment ... or cure," Voldemort replied. "Just tell me what this is and how to end it."

She could feel his gaze on her even as she looked away.

"I think I know what it is, but I'm not sure that it can be stopped at this juncture. I will say that whatever uncharacteristic sexual desire you have been feeling, it will go away on its own in a few weeks or so," Hermione explained. "At least I think it will, if my hypothesis is correct. However, it should return in about a year."

"Stop equivocating. I am in no mood to let you ramble on as you do before you get to the point," Voldemort snapped.

Hermione swept a few wisps of hair behind her ears. "Okay. Your problem's origins, as you suspect, come from some of your initial transfiguration experiments, particularly the serpent rituals that helped determine your Animagus form. That, more specifically, is what's surfacing. In part because of the magical decay and the near separation of your magical and physical body, what's left of your magic is drawing upon your physical body." She stood up and began pacing the room, in part out of nervousness and in part out of restlessness after being cooped up in her room for most of the last two days.

"Unfortunately," she continued, "because the transfiguration spells went beyond simple Animagism, your magical form is drawing upon both your physical human body and your physical snake body that you created, which is as much part of yourself as the human. You've always had some elements of your Animagus manifest in your human self, the way that other Animagi do, in your appearance and behavior. The decay is causing your magical body to separate from you and causing your physical bodies to merge in order to compensate.

"To put it plainly, Voldemort, you're always cold because you're increasingly cold-blooded, and you find yourself wanting sex when you never have before because the king cobra wants to breed." She stood still then, looking at the floor in silence; she could feel his eyes on her.

Voldemort's voice was as cold as his blood, and it made Hermione's skin break out in goosebumps. "Are you serious? Please, Hermione, tell me that this is an elaborate prank that you concocted with Carmen, because maybe then I might understand this ... this ludicrous explanation. If you tell me now, I may spare him half the punishment I have planned. Has he or anyone else been putting a potion in my food? Some kind of..."

Hermione felt the chill of his regard, but she stood her ground. "With all due respect, you would probably notice if someone put something in your food. I see you check every time you're served, and sometimes you have the house elves taste it first. Besides, you know that Carmen would never do anything like this; the man is completely loyal to you. And I would never participate in any such prank. You know better than that."

Voldemort stood, and silhouetted by the fire he was a skeletal shadow, almost alien. He stepped into the light cast from the window, but that did not make him look any less threatening. "You were the one who wanted to remove the immortality spells - you threatened my life by removing them, and in doing so, you increased the speed of the decay and caused this, whatever it is. You are the one responsible."

"I already told you," Hermione snapped, "the removal of the immortality spells sped up the decay that you started by changing yourself in so many unnatural ways that you're rejecting your magic. Like people who develop an allergy to something they are overexposed to."

She began pacing again. Perhaps it was best not to present her back to him, like turning her back on a predator, but she was keyed up, anxious, frustrated. "You charged me to cure a disease no one else has had, something that you couldn't cure yourself. Your new symptoms offer me clues as to what your malady is, but for Merlin's sake, Voldemort, your bruised pride at your libido is hardly top priority for me, especially since it will go away soon. King cobras breed in January. So you have about a week or two more to suffer through it, and then we have another year to figure out how to fix this."

"I am not in heat!" Voldemort shouted, grabbing her shoulder and whirling her around to face him.

"There's nothing wrong with that!" she shouted back.

"You do not understand," Voldemort said. His voice had softened now, but not him. His fingers dug so hard into her shoulders that she winced, and he released her reluctantly. "I've tried the potions and spells I used as a student to quell the desire. I know," he interjected before she could challenge his use of magic, "no unnecessary magic, but for me this was necessary. You simply do not understand. You cannot possibly understand."

"Why don't you actually tell me this time instead of leaving me to guess too late?" Hermione said. "I've more than proven my worth as a Medicus to you; coursework and tests are over. Explain to me what I don't understand."

What little color Voldemort had seemed to drain from his face. Hermione could see the internal battle in his eyes, which was remarkable enough, but she was no Legilimens. She could only guess what he was thinking. People would kill to see this, she thought. Voldemort, completely at his wit's end. Hermione found the realization to be more bitter than sweet.

Voldemort stepped back, but he would not look away, would not walk away. Hermione had the luxury of turning her back, but even in the midst of this humiliation, Voldemort had no such luxury.

"You already know some of my views on the matter of sexual desire from reading my journals. In terms of my own, when I was still fully human, my adolescence began late. My peers might have mocked me for it as well as my Muggle upbringing, but by my second year everyone already knew not to cross me. It was third year before I started to physically change. I shot up a foot in almost a year, endured the cracking of my voice as it started to deepen, and then experienced the first stirrings of pubescent desire." Voldemort practically spat the words.

"Observance of my housemates taught me that my physical responses were normal, but I could not stand them. I was neither ashamed nor repressed. My hatred of sexual desire was and is purely practical, which lust never is. I watched my housemates lose all capacity for reason when confronted by anything with a skirt ... and sometimes other things, I suppose, but the point was that their minds were lost whenever their blood rushed elsewhere. And I, I had nothing other than my mind to keep me in control in that House - and as I grew older, of that House."

"You know that I tolerate the Harem because it helps to keep my followers loyal, relaxed, and focused," Voldemort explained, folding his arms. "But it also makes them weak. The Cat's Paws were recruited to exploit this weakness in the other side, but I also exploit it among my followers. I control Macnair because I provide him women. I control Carmen because I could restore his desire. I controlled Wormtail with you. I control Lucius by holding Narcissa and his son over his head. I control Bellatrix by using her desire for me. I controlled Rodolphus by giving him Bellatrix. I control Nott and Avery by providing them an outlet for their desires that society will never provide them. And none of them can control me by holding the object of my desire hostage, as I did to the Order with you. No woman can control me by showing a little skin and smile. I have no sexual ties, and therefore I have fewer weaknesses from which my enemies can draw."

"I would say that was a bit extreme, if it were anyone else," Hermione murmured. Her fingers tapped her wand, as it would be impolite to start pacing again when he continued to hold her gaze, as though pinning her to the floor.

"I am careful," Voldemort said.

Hermione shook her head. "Only in that regard, in that you think your desire makes you weak. If you were truly careful, my services would not be needed." She held up a hand before he could protest. "I know why you took those risks. My point is that you took them, which is the opposite of careful."

"That which you desire has power over you," he said. She did not flinch as he surged forward, but all he did was circle around her. "You desired freedom when you were mine; I was the arbiter of your freedom, and I had power over you because of it, among other things. It is not simply lust that can be used. But it is one of the few desires that can be so easily twisted to control the weaker vessel, as effective and sometimes more so than holding a loaf of bread before a starving man. A loaf of bread does not care whether you want it or not. A woman to a man who desires her, on the other hand...

"Every one of those women that I killed so that they couldn't tell what I had done ... every one of them, those nothings, had power. Over me." His robes brushed her feet as he whirled around her again, becoming more and more agitated. Her fingers drummed more forcefully against her wand, but still she stood her ground.

"I don't care about their deaths," Voldemort said. "You know that. But I do care about the reason their deaths were necessary. This needs to end, Hermione. I cannot stand another day of it."

"That which you desire has power over you," Hermione repeated softly. "It is not just your newfound lust that has power over you now. Do you not even realize that your desire for power and immortality is what has had power over you all these years, driven you to hurt yourself so terribly that I would be scrambling to find you a cure before the damage is irreparable?"

"Yes, I understand you have power over me!" he shouted at her. He was too close now, his breath not quite cool as it brushed her lips with the force of his exhalation. She could not help but flinch this time. "I am aware of it with each day's passing, as I am aware of my own magical power growing within me and destroying me from the inside out. Oh, I still have power over you, and you are well aware of that, but you... you..."

"That wasn't quite where I was going with that," Hermione said.

Baring his teeth, he flexed out those long, thin fingers to clench them around her neck but forced himself to stop. His hands literally trembled with the effort to keep from throttling her.

"Voldemort," Hermione warned sharply. She gripped her wand just in case this atypical level of frustration made him snap and almost do something he would regret.

He grabbed her shoulders and shoved himself away in disgust. "This is why I need a clearer head, not so easily distracted by errant blood flow in inconvenient places. This is why I magically removed all desire as soon as I could. I cannot make these mistakes! I cannot lose focus!"

"What I was trying to say was that sex may not have been your primary desire over these many years; it may not have been your weakness," Hermione explained. She loosened her grip on her wand and started tapping again. She barely noticed, so intent was she on Voldemort. He rubbed his temples, and there was a touch of color back in his pale skin, high on his cheekbones. "But your desire to achieve the greatest power led you to rising so high that you would only have farther to fall. You have your power now, but at what price?"

"I do not need a moral at the end of this story," Voldemort said, narrowing his eyes at her.

Hermione sighed at his objection. "I've told you before that if you were an idiot, you were at least a spectacular idiot, but again, that's not where I was going with this. The point is that you condemn sexual desire as a weakness but fail to see how your desire for power was yet another weakness, and perhaps one with as many consequences, if not more. If none of your usual spells and potions are successful at cooling your desire ... well, there are worse things to be subject to. And you are only subject to it for about a month, which is more than could be said for many other of your followers."

"So that is your brilliant and inspired piece of Medicus advice?" Voldemort snapped. "It could be worse?"

Hermione held up her hands in an emphatic shrug. "What do you want me to do, Voldemort? Numbing Charm? It won't stop your urges - after all, castrated animals still attempt to breed. Do you want me to remove the entire area? You might find that biologically inconvenient, and while it can be done, I don't think it's the best solution. Especially since it is temporary. For Merlin's sake, Voldemort, just a week or two and it'll be over. Are you honestly telling me that you can't wait?"

"I have a battle to plan, a battle in less than a week," Voldemort replied evenly. He seemed to have regained his composure, although the tic in his cheek remained. "I already failed at the first, and there is no guarantee that I can get through another like the last one, even with you at my side, if I cannot bloody concentrate on the task at hand. I cannot afford it."

Hermione was tempted to tell him that Harry and Ron managed to hold their own against him in their horniest years, but she thought it might not be conducive to the discussion. "Everyone else on that battlefield will have the desires that you've denied yourself, and I suspect they will all be able to ... perform in spite of their distractions."

"Then I need to be better than them."

Now Hermione felt like she needed to rub her temples. The man was giving her the start of a monster headache.

"Well," she said, "you haven't taken up my suggestion to emasculate you, so there's really nothing I can do on such short notice except wait for it to go away on its own. It's a symptom of a larger problem, and as I said, it's not the most important symptom at the moment. You managed to live with it for the last two days without killing another girl - I was paying attention this time. Surely you can make another four."

She did not like the way that Voldemort was staring at her now, an intense cold burn in his eyes, his body as still as a snake before the strike. As he came forward, it was as though he glided across the floor, his heavy robes hissing on the rug.

"Just another four days," he murmured. "Do you know how hard it has been to maintain my composure over the last two days? How difficult it was to hide what I need, to fight what I need?"

Hermione looked from Voldemort to her fingers tap-tap-tapping her on wand again. The urge to pace, the restlessness. It was not as bad as it was two days ago, and her sympathetic symptoms were so innocuous in comparison to some of the others, it had not been immediately apparent that it was a symptom at all. "Wait, are you...? Right now?"

He showed no signs of stopping, and she stepped backward as he came toward her, deliberate and steady. It felt almost like a dance. Hermione felt the tension of confusion and the sympathetic reaction tighten down her spine. Her legs stiffened until she was almost stumbling.

"You're supposed to be able to sense when something is wrong. How I feel? Can you even begin to know what it is like to need any warm body that crosses my path, particularly women?"

Hermione stopped abruptly when she hit the wall. She was scared again ... but not all of that fear was of him. The nearer he came, the more she sensed him, sensed the roiling, writhing, tumbling emotions he kept just beneath the surface.

At first thought, it seemed strange to her that those frantic emotions would feel stronger with his proximity although the pain he felt in the first battle had been stronger with distance. On second thought, she understood why the Medicus connection reacted this way. She shuddered, and it did nothing for the way her skin crawled with electricity.

"I was a teenage boy once, Hermione," Voldemort murmured. He was close enough that his breath was warm on her cheek. "I know the difference between simple lust and need - this is so much worse than when I was young. Until I found the spells that temporarily quelled the lust, I did learn how to use it to my advantage when I could. Even when I eliminated it completely, I could charm those who I chose. I learned what I needed to learn without making myself vulnerable to them. Distraction was that youthful lust; it could be controlled, even if it was better not to bother with it at all. But this... this I cannot control... long enough to..."

His breath was scorching now, so close was he to her skin, and it swept over her cheek in quick, trembling, harsh pants with the vain effort to hold himself back. But he simply could not, and his thin lips brushed her jaw before pressing against her neck. His kiss was surprisingly soft but thorough, up the cord of her neck to her ear, his chin pressing rhythmically against her as though milking the taste of her. Those long fingers, as cold as his mouth was hot, slid into her hair to cradle and angle her head so that he could bite lightly, sucking where her pulse quickened. His other hand curved around her waist to pull her to him even as he pushed her more firmly against the wall. Voldemort's robes were heavy enough that she could not feel anything but the subtle warmth of him, but Hermione could imagine what was underneath.

It should have been awful. She should have pushed him away, her stomach heaving and her skin feeling like it had been coated with slime. She should have remembered all the terrible words that came from that mouth, the terrible deeds that came from his hands. And it was not as though she forgot ... more that they were suddenly distant, not as important as the man before her, just the man himself.

Instead, Hermione's shoulders lifted with the rush of sharp, strange arousal that rose from her belly and down her arms to tingle in her fingertips. Her hands grasped, found the angled jut of his shoulder blades. Her dry lips parted as she let him bare her neck to him. She felt a profound, long-denied hunger, as though she were the one who had repressed that longing for decades instead of Voldemort. It stirred, stretched, strengthened. The other vice Voldemort had nurtured, the Dark magic within her, twined with this new desire like they were old lovers.

Hermione experienced a brief series of memory flashes as Voldemort's tongue found a sensitive spot under her chin. She remembered her nights with Lucius - most of them had been the degrading exercise they were meant to be. Yet, on very few occasions, there had been a stab of heady satisfaction when the silver-haired master closed his eyes and threw back his head, lost in his need. She remembered Voldemort standing before her after she awoke from her Nightmare, and realizing that he was as under the Snake-Charming Spell as his Animagus. So much power in him, and he could do nothing himself without her releasing him. But a lingering image surfaced as Voldemort groaned, as though in pain, and she could feel the vibrations all the way down her melting spine: her body willingly used by Wormtail, tears pouring down her face in the bath, his fingers gentle on her cheek as he rested her head against his knee, cold and cruel and manipulative and tender comfort.

She did not want him - she did not want to want him. Yet her hands curled to cup those shoulder blades and hold him. A gasp, almost inaudible, slipped from her lips, a "no" that was an utter lie. His kiss, his touch ... it was awful because it wasn't.

He pulled away, hissing through his teeth in what sounded to Hermione like a string of Parseltongue curses. Voldemort staggered one step back, then another. It was as though it took every ounce of effort to retreat.

She had never seen him like this - when he had taken the girl two nights ago, it had been dark, and she could only see the frantic movements. She had not seen his expression, not the high spots of color on his normally gravestone white face, not the prominent dilation of his pupils, nor his hunched posture as he fought with his own body for control.

He pressed a hand against his chest, physically holding himself back.

"The longest I have managed to resist was three days, but by the third day, I cannot think of anything else." He glared to the right of her, deliberately not looking at her. But not out of shame, Hermione thought. "Do you see? I cannot endure it another day, not without making a complete fool of myself. And you know I will not abide being a fool. I need... I will have another girl tonight if you will not help me. For Merlin's sake, you are my Medicus, and all you have done thus far is make things worse!"

Hermione swallowed; her throat caught on its own dryness. She wanted to touch the places where his saliva dried cold on her skin, where she was flushed red from the way he drew her blood to the surface. But she forced herself to straighten. She schooled her expression and hoped he had been so lost in his own desire that he had not noticed her unwelcome reaction.

"Forgive me if I ask the obvious, but have you tried satisfying yourself on your own?" Hermione asked.

"Satisfaction is not what I need, otherwise self-stimulation would be sufficient," Voldemort replied. "What more do I need to do for you to understand? Attempt to bypass the protection the Medicus spells offer you?"

"I know you're frustrated--"

"You know nothing," Voldemort spat.

"--but I would like for you to hold out as long as you can so I can see if I can find an alternative for you."

"This evening," Voldemort said. "I will give you until this evening to find something. I will give you a list of charms and potions that I used in the past, and the charm that removed my libido entirely. If you do not find an answer by this evening, I will not hold myself back and possibly jeopardize my position just to indulge your personal scruples."

"But--" Hermione protested, stepping forward.

"Hermione," Voldemort said softly. He looked straight into her eyes, and she did not have to be a Legilimens to see the intense heat within them, battling with the uncharacteristic self-loathing in his expression. "Leave this room. Now. And do not return unless you have a cure or a whore."

Hermione did not waste time edging along the wall to the bathroom door. She simply Disapparated. When she reappeared in her room, she immediately sat down at her desk and took out her journal. At the top of a new page, she wrote:

V insists that his desire is entirely unwanted and uncontrollable. None of the spells that he used in his youth appear to quell that desire. The only conclusion is that the symptom is not simply physical. If this is the king cobra's mating season, and if the king cobra imbues V with that same inner knowledge, it is possible that the symptom is purely instinctual in nature.

She set her quill down. If the symptom was a matter of deep-seated instinct, refusing it would be as fruitless as refusing the instinct to eat, drink, eliminate, and sleep. There were spells and potions to temporarily remove the urgency of those instincts, just as there were disciplines that challenged them. But in the end, the body needed what the body needed, and there was simply no time to teach Voldemort ascetic self-denial. If none of the spells and potions Voldemort used in the past eliminated his physical desire, Hermione was not sure there was anything to be done. In fact, most healing spells for instinctual needs centered around increasing their potency rather than dulling them.

A flying parchment squeezed under the bathroom door and fluttered over to her. She looked over the list that Voldemort made for her, nodding her head. It was comprehensive, all of the things that she would have suggested to him, plus a few that she did not know about. Everything from the standard Deflating Hex to the Eunuch Charm (also called the Eunuch Curse, depending on whether or not the recipient of the spell was willing).

If she had not found anything in the last two days that was different than this list, Hermione was not going to find anything to help him by that evening. The memory of the dead girl's glassy eyes and the smell of her cooking body surfaced, and Hermione slowly buried her head in her hands.

She was frustrated, but more than anything, she was simply tired. Voldemort was partially right - he had hired her to help him, and it seemed like his disease resisted all efforts to cure it by only getting worse for every step she took. He might have lived indefinitely, maybe with just mild discomfort, if she had not dismantled his immortality spells. Instead, that action had triggered a domino effect. In her mind, she knew that the real mistakes were Voldemort's. She knew that sometimes all the magic in the world could not cure some diseases, and Voldemort's disease was unprecedented. And now that she really wanted to help him, she was helpless to do so.

In the midst of her helplessness, and in the darkness afforded to her, her thoughts turned instead toward his kiss. She felt the same self-loathing she had seen on Voldemort's face swell within her, but infused with it was a different kind of swell. Quiet and still, she was cognizant of the Medicus mark on her back and the Dark Mark on her forearm. The Dark Mark had vibrated softly and steadily for over a month, so that she barely noticed it anymore. The dark blue Medicus tattoo, the six small circles connected by seven lines drawn on the expanse of her back at the moment of her binding to Voldemort, did not give her similar physical sensation. But she was keenly aware of it just the same, aware of her Medicus robes rubbing against it as she shifted.

For eight years, she had thrown herself into her work, content to depend on her own mind for companionship. The Medicus Order allowed her to socialize with people who didn't think she was a spy for Voldemort. She had maintained a few friendships from her old life. And of course, she had her Medicus clients. But she forged few intimate relationships and no sexual relationships at all. She barely even acknowledged that part of her, and unlike Voldemort, she had studied ascetic disciplines of controlling desires for the few occasions on which she needed it. Prior to Voldemort kidnapping her, her tame relationship with Viktor Krum and her crush on Ron was the extent of that desire. Even then, getting good grades and helping Harry were far more important than frivolous things like boyfriends.

Her experience with the Death Eaters, however, had been an exercise in sexual degradation. Not just degradation, but confusion as well. Captive though she may have been, there had been moments ... moments when she took control from Wormtail, moments when Lucius praised her like a dog, moments when Voldemort seemed to indicate his approval, even seemed to be grooming her to some higher end. As Voldemort said, sex was vulnerability, but it was also power, and while Lucius and Wormtail undoubtedly had power over her during most of her time with them, there had been the rare, twisted occasion when that scale tipped in her favor.

At that time, Voldemort had never used her for himself, only used her to control others. But that was not to say that they had been dispassionate toward each other. Hermione may have been beneath him, but she had never been beneath his notice. As he made Harry important to him by attacking him, he had made Hermione important to him by keeping her. It may have started by accident, but eventually she became his project, his pet.

The marks on her were mere formalities; she and Voldemort had been connected long before either of them had been branded onto her. Hermione had hoped to escape it after Voldemort released her, and she thought the last vestiges of her unhealthy attachment had burned with his cloak. But then fate, it seemed, possessed a sadistic and stubborn sense of humor.

Hermione turned her head so that it cradled in the crook of her elbow. Her eyes were glassy as she stared into nothing. At this point, all she could ever see was him. Her world was his. He had her more thoroughly now than he ever did when she was his captive. And yet, that possession was not entirely one-way, was it? The more hold he had over her, the more she had over him.

As she idly brushed her fingers over the places on her neck where his mouth touched her, she wondered if he kissed any of the girls he killed.

She believed that at no point during his time with her had he ever wanted her in his bed, nor had she wanted him. But the Oracle had chosen her for him. Hermione did not know, could not know, whether her reaction to his kiss was as sympathetic as her restlessness. What she did know was that it did not matter. The answer was clear. She knew what she had to do, and more importantly, she knew that she could.

v88888v

The woman whose arm was tucked into his was shaking almost too much to walk straight. His grip on her was as much to keep her walking as it was to lead her briskly to his rooms. She wore nothing but a sheer white shift - like a virgin sacrifice, although she was hardly a virgin at this point - and the material shimmered as she quivered. Some of the more familiar denizens of the Harem would flirt with him on the rare occasions he entered it, but they did so with the relieved knowledge that he would never indulge. He could sense their repulsion, their fear of him. He never assuaged their fear, and he did not care if he repulsed them more than the other followers who indulged their ugly desires on them.

In the last month, though, he would enter the Harem with a hood covering his head and a slight glamour, enough that none of them could guess his identity but for perhaps a shiver when his cold fingers wrapped around their wrists. Once he left, he cast a spell from the Harem to his rooms to divert anyone walking about - he wanted no one to see him like this - and removed his glamour. If he had to have these women, he would also taste their horror. All of them were well-trained. They did not start screaming until he took them.

He opened the doors to his dark rooms, making every effort not to throw her in and take her there on the floor. It had been too long since the last one, and his body screamed for contact and, yes, the heat of another body.

He knew what he really wanted, but he could not get it from these women - they were disposable. He could not stand to touch them longer than he had to. In the dark they would nervously take off what clothing they had, and he would remove his own, and he would enter her and fuck his way to an ending before killing her. But it was not a real ending. It was not the satisfaction that he needed, that he craved as thoroughly as he hungered for food if he starved himself. It was as though all the years of perfect self-denial suddenly flooded him. He despised every single ounce of raging desire, furious that it could not be sated once, twice, five times, ten times. He closed the doors behind him and fought not to vomit as he felt her hands on him. It was part of her script, those too delicate and trembling fingers pawing at his robes, the empty moans.

He struck her backhand, physical contact that was more satisfying to him than any of the perfunctory gestures she made. But many of the women of the Harem were used to pain, and she only whimpered a little bit, more out of surprise.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice high and grating to him. "What do you want? I'll do whatever you want."

"Yes," Voldemort said. "You will. Strip. Into the bed."

"Yes, yes, my lord."

Voldemort's mouth curled in a sneer that stopped before it became a snarl. He was physically ready, had been since the previous evening. He loosened his robes as he strode toward the bed. He was prepared to do what was necessary to be able to think, damn it all to hell. Glad though he was to have a body after thirteen years of living second by second by sheer force of will and the occasional possession, he resented being beholden to it. It was supposed to be his, his vessel, his temple. Instead, his skin tingled as though it wanted to shed, and his erection jutted defiantly against his robes, pulling him toward the body in the bed against his will. When had Lord Voldemort become a slave?

He hated Hermione for not coming to him with a solution in these the evening hours. But even more - and he would never tell anyone, not even Hermione - he hated himself. Voldemort was not accustomed to the keen blade of his hatred piercing his own flesh. Though he blamed Hermione at the surface of his mind, underneath that he knew better. The fault was his; that was the bitter sword to swallow.

As robes separated to reveal his thin, marble white chest, red eyes bored into the pale dead woman sullying his bed. Oh, she squirmed and tried to look seductive in the midst of her fear, but she was already dead to him.

"Obliviate." The spell was soft but powerful. Voldemort cursed his bloody lust for making him careless. His wand was in his hand too late to block the spell, but it was the woman who fell back against his pillows.

"You just wandered into the wrong bed," Hermione's strong, sure voice came from the darkness. "Go on back and go to sleep. You won't remember any of it anyway."

"Oh. Thank you," the woman said serenely, as though she had not been stuttering in the Dark Lord's bed fifteen seconds ago. She passed Voldemort's rigid body without even noticing him. His hand tightened around his wand reflexively; he hated being ignored. But he let the woman walk out of the room, with only a thick line of too bright light from the open door to announce her exit. Voldemort could not see Hermione even with that light, and it took him a few moments to adjust to the darkness again when the woman shut the door behind her. This time, Hermione locked it.

Furious, frustrated, he carefully calibrated his tone not to reveal the hope beneath it. "You lost me a body, Hermione. I assume you have a solution for me."

He still could not see her, but she sounded so close. "I do." Now he could hear more of her, the whisper of her crawling on the covers of his bed to him. The air shifted, brushed his hypersensitive skin, as she stood before him. She was only a shadow, but he did not need to see her to know her face, to know what she would look like looking up at him.

A sound escaped him - a wholly undignified, cracked cry - as her hands framed his thin face and she pressed her lips to his. The cry deepened into a low moan that was no less undignified. It purred over their skin in a rumble of vibration, and Hermione shivered. She shivered into him, her hips canting forward until they brushed against the physical center of his need. But it was not the very center of it. That was flesh on flesh, her warmth on his lips, those dry hands sliding around his head to cradle the delicate base of his skull to take him more deeply.

His tongue twined with hers in a wet slide that drew another moan from him. He drank her as if she were the potion she offered to cure him. His fingers gripped and slipped over the satin of her robes - formal Medicus robes, he thought blearily; she dressed for him - but he could not find purchase. Voldemort felt the room spin and blood rushed inside him in a frantic wave and he had nothing to hold on to.

He did not notice when she pushed the heavy outer robes over her shoulders and down his arms. They caught at his elbows. He did notice when she pushed the inner set down to join them. Every cell screamed at him as he jerked back. He felt the cold more keenly, felt that strange creeping sensation as his skin marbled and tightened in gooseflesh.

"What are you doing?" The words were little more than a rasp. If he thought he could not humiliate himself more before her, he saw how there was a whole level lower.

"You've already tried all the spells, and you tried the potions," Hermione explained. She let him draw away, away from her touch. Her tone was gentle, not patronizing. In fact, the touch of breathlessness he detected in her voice vindicated him, but only a little. "I could not find an alternative on such a tight deadline, as you well know."

"You should have kept the girl here." Voldemort wrapped his arms around himself, holding himself back again. He would not do this. Would not...

"I'm afraid your own words damn you." She was closer, but thank Merlin she still did not touch him. "You told me that I could not tell you not to kill those women unless I was prepared to take their place."

"I did not mean--"

"I know you didn't mean that," Hermione said. "But wouldn't you rather it be me?"

Voldemort saw it in his mind's eye, the way Hermione yielded her neck to him, almost had the taste of her on his tongue. He felt parched, starving, as though he had never been touched but for what she offered him. "Yessss," he hissed. It escaped him before he could stop it. "No. Damn you. Damn you to the coldest reaches of hell."

He sensed her magic swirl around him, and his robes fell to the ground, pooling at his feet. He stood only in his trousers. Even his wand was in his robes. He was so cold but for the fire that seemed to ignite him from the inside out. Now it had sampled what it really wanted, not a brief, mindless exorcism of base desire but an extended sensual indulgence. Whatever caused that fire - be it the serpent within or some other aspect of his magical decay that wore down the spells to protect him from these feelings - derived no satiation from his perfunctory attempts to rut it away. At its foundation, Voldemort understood that he did not just want to breed; he wanted to mate. But Voldemort would rather tear down the fortress brick by brick and torture a thousand prisoners of war than take Hermione in his arms and feel her, feel all of her over him.

"Voldemort." The sound of his name should not make him shudder this way. He needed to hear it closer to him. His arms strained around his chest. "You say that sex always makes a person vulnerable, gives the other person power. That is why you hate so much that you've been using those women. You may kill them afterward, but they had power over you because you needed them. But you see..."

And this time she did touch him, her hand finding his shoulder and tracing its way over his sharp collarbone and up his neck. His traitorous body made him lean into that hand, his mouth brushing her fingertips.

"For most of my life you had power over me. But once I became your Medicus, that changed. You've already relinquished some of your power to me. You made me your equal. We meet with the same power over each other. In any other situation, that would leave us both vulnerable." She reached for his hand and brushed it over her Dark Mark. He heard her sharp intake of breath, as if the contact gave her a static shock.

"This mark, though..." There was an answering hiss of fabric as her magic disrobed her. She brought his hand to her back, where he could sense more than feel the mark of the Medicus Order. He had never seen it, but he knew it was there. When she released his hand, he could not release her. He marveled at the contours of her musculature and the dips and valleys of her spine. As his hand slid lower, he learned that she was completely naked before him.

"This mark says that we can never use our vulnerabilities against the other. If you take me, you do not have power over me, and I don't have power over you. If you take me, you can be free of that fear."

His tongue felt leaden and slow as he replied, "I cannot take you against your will."

She pressed against him as she stood on her toes to reach his ear. "I can feel your need. Your desire is mine, Lord Voldemort."

Oh, there, that was what he wanted. He could destroy the world with a single curse in the morning, because he could not resist for another second.

His trousers slid off of him. He heard her drop her wand into her pile of clothes as he pushed her back. Her thighs struck the bed, and she tumbled back onto the sheets. He followed her down, kissing her again, and she was kissing him back. This time the undignified sounds came from her, and he found that he quite liked to hear them, like he enjoyed her tongue on his boot or the way she pointed her wand at Lucius when she Crucioed him. He held himself away from the other women, not wanting to feel them any longer than he had to. But Hermione would not lie there waiting for him to finish, and if he ordered her to stay still until he was done, she would not listen. Because she was not his servant; she was not his whore.

She was not something that could be discarded.

She was his.

Voldemort let her pull him down against her, felt her scorch him with the heat emanating from her body. He gripped her hips, her thighs, her calves, her arms, her shoulders. She was thin, a little too thin from of all the times she forgot to eat when she was obsessively researching for him. But her flesh was firm and warm, every curve and angle mapped with his hands. When he slipped his thigh between her legs, she stiffened for a moment, her breath intermittent in the dark. But then she slowly twined her legs with his in invitation. She slid a hand around his bare head to press him down to her neck where he had kissed her before, rewarding him with her cry as he bit down sharply. Her hips rose to meet his, her own teeth finding the base of his shoulder. Voldemort hissed in surprise as pleasure spiked down his spine. He licked down the cord of her neck, and her head fell back against the sheets.

He touched as much of her as he could, rubbing himself against her, moving his mouth over her and nudging her with his chin until he tasted the subtle salt of sweat. He could smell her arousal; he wondered just how much of his need she felt, and how much of it was her own. The thought that he was the one who heated her blood, that he was the one whose mouth made her gasp, that he was the one who made her legs wrap around his, made him irrationally proud. As if he had achieved something worth attaining.

She flinched as he entered her. Her fingers clenched his arms painfully, and he paused. She slowed her breathing as well as she could. Slowly, she propped herself up on her elbow to wrap an arm around his neck.

"It's been a long time," Hermione whispered. "Just give me a moment." The press of her lips to the corner of his mouth was not urgent, and Voldemort had the impression that the kiss was for her, then, not him.

He did not move, although he shook with restraint, and allowed her to kiss him. Now that he had exorcised some of his need for contact - that strange need to rub against someone - Voldemort was more aware of her, of Hermione, in his bed. With him. The quiet triumph he felt now was not the old triumph, any more than this desire was like the desire of seventy years ago. As she drew his tongue into her mouth, her nails digging slightly down his back, his hips jerked. He pressed her down again.

"Move," she said. And Voldemort did as his Medicus required.

One hand hooked under her thigh and the other grasped the headboard for leverage. The wood creaked under his grip, but he paid no attention to it. His existence narrowed - exquisitely, dangerously - to the feeling of her around him, to her mouth meeting his in a broken, frantic kiss, to her hands pushing him further inside of her. She curled her tongue around his moans, drank his climbing arousal to its peak.

His completion was not the end of his need. It merely allowed him to slow down.

He stroked Hermione everywhere he could reach. He slid against her until her scent covered him, played her with his fingers from distant but always clear memory, and he knew when she found her own satisfaction with a hiss, a shudder, and a swift bite to his lip. And then she let him continue to touch her, holding him lightly, until his body was finally sated and still and his smooth head rested against her stomach.

He could sense apprehension, and even fear, between both of them in the aftermath as their breathing slowed and their minds returned to them. But Voldemort was too exhausted to move after holding himself back for so long, too exhausted to contemplate how this destroyed and humiliated him, too exhausted to care. He sank into a dead sleep, the only kind of sleep he knew when he was not dreaming Harry's dreams. Hermione's fingers softly stroked his neck until his breathing was even and his mind empty.

She took longer to fall asleep, sore, filthy, and still unsettled. But she pulled the blankets over them, covering Voldemort completely and herself up to her chin. She thought she might have heard the slide of scales over the carpet, but if so, Nagini was not the jealous sort. Closing her eyes, Hermione eventually succumbed to the darkness. She woke only once in the night, her body twitching awake. But Voldemort never moved, and she never remembered what she dreamed. It was easy enough to sleep again.