Refuge Has Its Price

CHAPTER 13: THE AWARDING CEREMONY





(Or, immediately prior to Luna\'s deflowering)









Severus Snape shifted uncomfortably in his seat to the Dark Lord\'s left.





He\'d make certain that the poor little Fourth Year Hufflepuff girl that Voldemort had finally rather reluctantly granted to Crabbe for his years of loyal service would be the very last Muggleborn that twisted, sick, pervert ever defiled.





That girl was now a lost cause, as were countless others that had already been parceled out to various Death Eaters as \'play-things\'.





The dark Potions Master covered his moue of distaste at himself for having to let this horror happen to the young students with a seemingly bored yawn. Inwardly, it took every gram of Severus\' incredible skills at Occlumency and self-control to maintain his complaisant appearance.





He couldn\'t save them all. It was a cruel, brutal, fact of life; at least life as it would henceforth be in Voldemort\'s \'brave new world\'.





Severus silently vowed to his anguished conscience that, before this very week was out, that porcine pedophile, Crabbe, would \'disappear\' from sight. And good riddance!





The now satisfied smirk, that grimly curled Severus\' thin lips up with that thought, pleased Voldemort when he glanced over at his Potions Master.





So there Severus Snape sat, his saturnine features ever-deepening into what might have been a carved ivory mask of the consummate Death Eater; seemingly completely comfortable with the idea of the various sexual peccadilloes that would be indulged in tonight, and every night to come, for these poor young wretches.





He had to tamp down the urge to resist, to fight back. He forced himself to repress the urge to \'help the helpless\' that Dumbledore had fostered within his brooding dark soul, only to use it against the Potions Master to keep him in line, for years.





Severus struggled within himself to shield his true thoughts and emotions from Voldemort as his very soul writhed deep within his consciousness at this travesty.





Under no circumstance could he allow the Master to again have any doubts about his trustworthiness; how else could he salvage anyone, himself included?





No matter what else occurred, or to whom else it happened, Voldemort was now the one supremely in charge.





Severus grimly accepted that fact. Recently, however, Voldemort had been looking to him for advice and perspective in establishing his dominion over Wizarding policy and laws. Perhaps he could influence the Dark Lord just enough so that the Purges, that had led up to his First Defeat, might be lessened this time.





Far more likely not. At any rate, for good or ill, his fate was now sealed; he obeyed the Dark Lord.





Severus had existed in a kind of \'shadowland\' between two puppet-masters for years. It was almost a relief to now have to serve only one.





Except for the fact that the sole Master he still served was Lord Voldemort, a twisted megalomaniac who demanded completely loyal service under pain of death, it wasn\'t such a bad life to have to live.





Ah well! Perhaps it will be \'better to rule in hell, than to serve in heaven\', as the Muggle poet had once said.





Severus sighed again as he complacently watched Rodolphus Lestrange\'s choice morsel being led in. He stared hard once more at the lad. If the boy hadn\'t been truly Muggleborn, the dark Potions Master would have sworn him to be a young Sirius Black.





Now, looking with fresh eyes at the fire, fight, and sheer handsomeness of the dark-haired lad, Severus wondered yet again if perhaps either Sirius or Regulus might have left an unknown bastard up some pretty little Muggle skirt, roughly sixteen years ago.





Well, then the \'father\' would almost certainly have had to have been Regulus. Sirius Black had been tightly confined in Azkaban during the proper time frame for the lad\'s conception.





No. It couldn\'t possibly be so. Albus would have surely told him about it, prepared him for the boy\'s future arrival at Hogwarts . . . wouldn\'t he have?





The resemblance was uncanny but, as the present Headmaster, he\'d already carefully scrutinized the boy\'s documentation; there was no hint of irregularities anywhere within them.





Severus had simply chalked it up to \'everybody has a double somewhere\', and let it go. He had far too much on his plate to waste his time on impossibilities.





Perhaps if the Order had been victorious, instead of the Dark Lord, he\'d have researched it a bit further. There were several dark blood-spells that could confirm or deny a child\'s paternity beyond a shadow of a doubt.





As it stood, Severus simply accepted what the records said as truth, and \'wrote off\' his suspicion as irrelevant.





The wiry young Fifth Year wizard must have fought back furiously, in true Gryffindor style, when he\'d been taken from his cell.





Both of his deep blue eyes were now thoroughly blacked. His lip was split open and his left cheek was rapidly bruising into a nice shade of purple. His right arm appeared to have been broken, or it could have only been his wrist. Terry Gilliam manfully struggled to not favour it, so it was difficult to determine the extent of that injury with a mere glance.





The boy\'s disheveled black curls drooped, covering his face; his head now hung low, and his shoulders sagged in defeated self-resignation.





When he\'d been officially pronounced to be Rodolphus\' property, the older wizard had jerked the boy\'s head back by his unfashionably long, dark, hair and kissed him deeply, with fierce bruising force. It left the boy with absolutely no illusion as to his fate.





Other than his face deepening a more burgundy shade of shame, and the single hot teardrop of unwillingness rolling down his dirty face, Terry offered no further resistance as he grimly accepted his life\'s brand-new harsh reality.





Even though it would certainly mean his death sentence, when Lestrange forced his tongue down his throat, in prelude to later forcing other things into other orifices, Terry had silently vowed that he was going to kill the bastard.





Young Gilliam hadn\'t been sorted into Gryffindor by accident. He was a brave warrior, a member of Dumbledore\'s Army, and had idolized, as well as emulated, his fellow housemate Harry Potter.





He might have to endure countless buggering sessions to purchase his chance but by all the gods that ever were, Rodolphus Lestrange would surely die by the bare hands of a Gryffindor Mudblood one day.





\'Sweet Merlin! Let it be soon, let my chance come \'round quickly!\' That became Terry\'s mental mantra as he was forced to squat beside Rodolphus Lestrange\'s chair like a cumbersome lapdog.





His new master laid a heavy, possessive, hand on top of his head and ruffled the tangle of longish black hair exactly as if he were a curly black cocker spaniel. Another bitter tear slowly painted a trail down his dirty face to join that first shamed tear.





Terry could meet no one else\'s eyes in his utter humiliation; how could he?





Another rough ruffle of his hair, then a single long finger slid down his cheek and stroked away his embarrassed tear. His head jerked up, and Terry\'s sapphire-blue eyes widened in sudden sexual awareness of the older wizard.





Rodolphus stuck the tear-dampened digit into his mouth, and sensuously suckled the salty drop off his fingertip. "Mmmm. You\'re delicious," he purred, then lecherously smirked down into the boy\'s shocked face.





As she observed this by-play between her husband and his new human toy, Bellatrix leaned forward in her chair and mockingly addressed the boy, "Welcome to the family, Mudblood!"





She sniggered behind her black-lace gloved hand at the boy\'s open-mouthed shock. Rodolphus laughed loudly at Bella\'s antic, his head lolling back, genuine amusement shaking even the chair in which he sat.





When the next handsome dark-haired young man was led in before the Dark Lord, Rodolphus\' laughter slowly stilled. He was shocked into speechlessness that Bella was being granted, and was actually accepting, a Mudblood toy for herself.





What\'s this? For HER? A living, breathing, sex-toy for his wife, and on the Master\'s order!





His wife had never been so privileged before. Few, if any, female Death Eaters ever were. Now this singular honor proved Bella\'s loyalty and service to the Dark Lord to be equal of every wizard present.





Rodolphus was perturbed by this event, and Bellatrix\' behaviour along with it. His wife hadn\'t even consulted him beforehand concerning which slave to select. She\'d quite correctly chosen a male slave, which she must have surely meant for his benefit, then had managed to get his taste completely wrong. This one was too burly, too muscular . . . just too \'butch\' for his liking.





Handsome, tall, and dark, yes. Sleek, slender, and beautiful, no.





Rodolphus began looking over just who might possibly be willing to do a \'trade off\', and exactly what was available amongst them. Lestrange was simply gobsmacked when he heard Bellatrix politely thanking the Master for "her" first toy, after deeply kissing the boy, in acceptance of him as her personal slave.





Ah well. Perhaps they could share him after all. There was always Polyjuice, and he was an acknowledged expert at brewing that one particular potion.





That might be where Rodolphus Lestrange\'s skills at potions brewing began and ended but by Merlin\'s balls and Circe\'s eyes, the twisted dark wizard had truly perfected that one.





With his own secret alterations, it now altered the disguised person\'s voice to the assumed identity\'s voice. It could even trick a werewolf\'s keen sense of smell, as the disguised person also exuded the same pheromonal scent as that of the stolen identity.





It lasted up to three hours for just a sip or two of the vile tasting mess, instead of only an hour for a full cup\'s dosage of the original recipe. Severus Snape was extremely jealous of this single accomplishment of Rodolphus Lestrange; for all of his vast talent, the surly Potions Master had never quite managed to accomplish the same result.





Nor would he ever have copied Lestrange\'s recipe, not if he ever learnt its secret ingredient. Severus Snape could never cut an unborn child from its mother\'s living womb, only to boil it down, and distill it into a potion\'s ingredient.





No matter what he might personally believe to be the condition and colour of his dark soul, the sarcastic Potions Master would never become that evilly depraved.





Severus\' life had been fraught with unpleasantness since he was an unwanted toddler. Constant abuse, both mental and physical, would have turned any young man astray . . . given the same circumstances.





Miraculously, Severus Snape had found hope on his childhood playground. He\'d found Lily Evans, a green-eyed Muggleborn playmate, from near his neighborhood; later to become the only woman he\'d ever loved. That tiny spark of hope that Lily brought an angry, lonely, and unloved little boy, kept that little bit of Light within him from going completely out.





After her tragic death, Albus Dumbledore stepped into his life and became confessor, mentor, friend, manipulator, and secret Master of Light. Between the two of them, Lily and Albus, they managed to keep Severus\' heart turned in the right direction, and neither ever hesitated to give his conscience a thorough \'whacking\' as needed.





Then, they simply allowed him ample time to brood and mentally flagellate his own conscience into repentance.





Now their job on Severus Snape was finished. He just needed a new teacher now. Or perhaps . . . a student?





Severus allowed his onyx eyes to focus intently on the girl now stumbling her way down the long walk to the dais; even filthy, ragged, and bloodied, he still wanted her.





Hermione Granger\'s razor-sharp mind, powerful magic, and natural talents appealed to him, aside from a few other attractions, that he would prefer not to dwell on just now, all of which made this witch most desirable in his eyes.





She\'d even dared to attempt brewing Polyjuice Potion as a Second Year . . . and would have been most successful with it, had she not inadvertently added cat fur into the mix instead of human hair!





When he\'d been summoned as Potion\'s Master to provide an antidote potion to cure her unfortunate transformation, he had severely scolded her on all of that potion\'s now obvious dangers while she\'d been recovering in the infirmary. His amused memory of the \'tail swishing incident\', when she\'d been unable to suppress her irritation at his acrimony, now stretched Severus\' thin lips tighter up, into a full-blown smile.





By the time he\'d refocused his black eyes on her, she\'d reached the proper place in front of Voldemort and Rabastan shoved her down to assume the proper position of respect.





\'Here we go,\' Severus desperately thought, as he turned his amused gaze and anxious attention towards the Master, and waited.







s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s





(From Hermione\'s perspective)







The former Great Hall was temporarily serving as the Dark Lord\'s audience chamber.





Voldemort was using the Headmaster\'s impressive oak chair as an implied throne; it already stood in the center of dais anyway. His elite Inner Circle sat in a line of seats on either side of him.





It was indeed her Judgment Day. Rabastan shoved her down on her knees and went to take his seat beside Bella and Rodolphus.





"Ah, Miss Granger," the Dark Lord said pleasantly. "Still alive I see, and relatively unharmed?" he left his statement hanging as a question.





A question that she\'d best respond to . . . if she knew what was good for her.





"Quite . . . well . . . sir," as she struggled for a moment with just what to call the evil wizard ensconced before her.





"Good. That is well then. You will be in fine shape for your new position in life," Voldemort said with a satisfied smirk.





"My . . . my . . . new life, sir?" she dumbly parroted Voldemort\'s words, slack-jawed in her unexpected relief at being reprieved.





Hermione Granger hadn\'t expected to live. She still didn\'t fully comprehend her current situation, as a cold sweat of relief at her continuance overwhelmed her. She failed to consider that there were worse fates than mere death.





Voldemort\'s forehead wrinkled impressively upwards in amazed disbelief. "And THIS is supposedly the brightest witch of her age, Severus?" he incredulously questioned, with a mocking sweep of his long-fingered hand indicating the kneeling girl.





At the slight, amused, inclination of the raven-black head of his personal advisor and private Potions Master, the Dark Lord sadly \'tsked\' down at her once again.





He waved a dismissive hand at the kneeling girl and said aloud for the benefit of his pet Death Eaters, "Behold my loyal servants! The Brain of the old fool\'s Golden Trio; a pathetic Mudblood whore."







s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s0s







(From Severus\' POV)







Laughter and loud hoots of "stupid Mudblood" and "what else could one expect? She’s just a Mudblood" echoed throughout the chamber. Only Severus Snape, his cousin Lucius Malfoy, and his friend Rabastan Lestrange failed to join in the baiting of the battered and defeated girl.





Voldemort stretched himself up onto his feet; he was in a very good mood indeed, as he circled the kneeling, bleeding, Mudblood. He\'d just \'ticked\' another \'Thing to Do\' from his list with his Potions Master\'s reward about to be settled, and would soon be enjoying his very own reward. The delectable reward of never-touched prime pussy.





Strange that. Voldemort still couldn\'t rationalize to himself exactly why he was so looking forward to bedding his bride, but he was. Since the binding ceremony, there\'d been no help for it; his cock twitched in its support of and confirmation to his actual brain\'s thought.





Yes, he wanted his new bride more than any fuck that he\'d experienced in years. Time to wrap this shit up and go.





Voldemort returned to his high place on the dais, carefully adjusted his richly embroidered black velvet robes, and resumed his seat. He motioned for Severus to lean closer in to him as the kneeling girl stared at them all with confused, hate-filled, brown eyes.





The Dark Lord began to quietly speak to him from what little bit of \'heart\' that he had still beating within his pale hairless chest.





"Severus, of late it has begun to pain me that perhaps I didn\'t properly consider your feelings concerning the previous Mudblood witch that you desired. Perhaps, had I spared her and her son to you, he could have been turned to our side through your influence and would have become my loyal servant instead of my nemesis. I would not have experienced the difficulties that I had existing as a non-corporeal entity. Nor would I have had to endure the pain of being reborn into this incarnation," Voldemort looked to be extremely uncomfortable at his regretful disclosure, although no one else could hear a word currently being said between Master and servant.





Before he\'d spoken the first word aloud, the Dark Lord had cast a nonverbal silencing charm to cover just the two of them. Severus was simply gob-smacked. Lord Voldemort admitting to a mistake was indeed a red-letter day on anybody\'s calendar!





As soon as Severus had managed to snap his mouth back shut, Voldemort dropped the silencing charm and continued for the benefit of all present, "As you seem to be so very fond of Mudblood witches, Severus, I thought to give you this one to do with as you see fit. Whatever you want with or from her, the so-called Brightest Witch of Her Age, she\'s now yours."





Severus rapidly digested this unexpected twist in his life. Finally! He was stunned that he\'d finally gotten something that he truly wanted, the witch he\'d secretly begun to desire. Hermione Granger, now his property for the taking. He swallowed hard. He had to respond, to reply.





It was expected of him. It was common courtesy. It\'d keep him from pissing Voldemort off, thereby spoiling his good mood, and receiving a healthy dose of the Cruciatus for himself.





Slowly Severus unfurled his tall lean body from his high-backed chair, came to his feet, and descended the dais to stalk in a wide circle around Hermione Granger like a hungry black panther.





What a mess she was! He needed to get her back to Malfoy Manor. She desperately needed healing, and he wanted the chance to explain things rationally to the chit, all of which would be better done in private.





"Thank you, my Lord, for your most generous gift. She is indeed a worthy prize, and I look forward to mastering her," Severus said, with a polite inclination of his dark head to the Dark Lord.





At Hermione Granger\'s startled gasp, Severus threw back his head and actually laughed out-loud at her shocked reaction.





Sneering down into Hermione\'s bruised and bloodied face, Severus mirthlessly laughed again, then sarcastically continued, "All Mudblood witches are the same in the dark, after all, my Lord. Suitable cumbuckets all."





Voldemort threw back his serpentine head and roared with laughter. He waved a hand of dismissal towards the dark Potion\'s Master.





Severus jerked the terrified young witch up by her right arm, clamped her painfully tight to his left side, and covered her swollen bleeding mouth with a bruisingly forceful kiss, accepting her as his slave.





With barely any noise or effort, he Apparated them straightway into his private library inside of Malfoy Manor.









END OF CHAPTER 13









SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS



A/N: As I\'m being reminded, this story really is about Severus and Hermione. This is probably a good time to remind you, the reader, that this is a revolving-plot format. There will occasionally be "side trips" into other major players within the story. Hopefully the \'glimpses\' into the other characters will only enrich the read for you as that was my intention, but we will ALWAYS keep coming back to our Severus and his Hermione. **snickers**