Refuge Has Its Price

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A/N/WARNING: This chapter contains psychological torture and graphic imagery. If reading such content is distasteful to you, please skip this chapter. ~~the author~~



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CHAPTER 14: HEALING HERMIONE: Part One









With a dulled \'clap\' of Apparation echoing throughout the room, Severus Snape and Hermione Granger were instantly inside of an elegantly simple, small, walnut-paneled library within the South Wing of Malfoy Manor.





The floor-to-ceiling shelves surrounding the perimeter of the room were filled to over-running with books and manuscripts of all types and sizes. A small fire cheerily burned in the hearth of a petite, carved marble, fireplace; all in all a room, that under different circumstances, Hermione would have loved to be in.





Severus immediately let go of the young witch, who\'d suddenly begun to desperately struggle within his arms, like a rather smelly, slippery, fish.





He walked over to a nearby sideboard, reached for a beautiful crystal decanter setting on top of it, and calmly poured himself a drink.





"Professor Snape?" Hermione softly whispered, swallowing hard. Her lips still burned with his unexpected kiss.





A kiss that had sent more electricity surging through her body than any brief snog she\'d ever shared with anyone before; even the earthshaking kiss that had been the last one that she would ever share with Ron.





Her heart thumped in a painful staccato, as it attempted to escape from her chest. The Professor\'s kiss hadn\'t been merely earthshaking; it had been earth shattering! It had been a revelation.





It left her mind whirling in a hazy fog of confusion and possibilities that she now mentally stumbled through.





Hermione was still processing all of the data that she\'d gleaned from her recent evaluation before the Dark Lord; as she understood the general gist of it, she must now be in the unconscionable position of a slave.





Her former Professor\'s slave, to be exact.





Those bottomless black eyes swiveled back in surprise, at her form of respectful address, to meet her honey-brown eyes. "Yes, Miss Granger?" he softly queried, matching her formality.





"Please sir," she hopefully began. "Let me go. I\'ll leave the country. I . . . I\'ll Portkey to Australia or Canada. I\'ll never use magic again. I\'ll . . . I\'ll disappear, back into the Muggle world, somewhere far away. You can tell Voldemort that I bored or annoyed you, and that you killed me . . . ," Hermione let her voice fade away into silence, as his black eyebrow continued to rise higher and higher, in amused disbelief, with each word that tumbled so quickly from her mouth.





"The Dark Lord would expect to view the corpse, Miss Granger. Then, there is the distinct probability that he\'d take a most . . . severe . . . exception to my so cavalierly disposing of his carefully chosen personal gift to me," his words, spoken so calmly, as if he were discussing the weather instead of her fate, only added to the surrealism of the scene for Hermione.





Her teacher of the past seven years allowed his unfathomable obsidian eyes to slowly roam over her face; they took in every detail. Hermione thought she could feel him counting the individual grains of dirt and grime clinging to it.





The Potions Master walked over to a black leather wingback chair and made a show of taking a seat. He still hadn\'t offered her a seat, and she was unsure of what would happen next.





"Sir?" she tried again.





At his focusing on her hopeful amber eyes, she let her fierce desperation shine out of them in a blinding glow, "Please, sir! Then really do it. Kill me. You know my temperament and personality; you\'ve given me detention often enough for it. I\'ll never \'know\' or be able to \'keep\' to my place in Voldemort\'s world. As you told him yourself, \'all Mudblood witches are alike in the dark\'. You could easily replace me, and I could escape years of torture and servitude."





Those black bottomless eyes, staring at her, widened in shocked amazement.





\'She\'d actually prefer death, instead of my touch? After all that I\'ve done for HER? After all I\'ve done for the side of Light . . . all that I\'ve suffered? My loneliness is to remain unassuaged? I\'ll be DAMNED! And I\'ll be damned if I\'ll explain any of my secrets to the hard-headed little know-it-all, not until she\'s at least more receptive to listening to the truth. Does she actually think that I will torture her? Right, then. Let it be as she believes, then I\'ll show her better.\'





"Miss Granger. What makes you think that you are immune to the same fate as every other young witch of your heritage? Are you truly that special?" His raised hand halted the rash words that had rushed up to hover on her lips.





Severus continued, with all sincerity, "The answer to my question is \'Yes\', Miss Granger. To me, you are indeed that special. Every form of refuge has its price, you silly, foolish, girl! I\'m offering you refuge with me; you will never be a \'Mudblood\' in my eyes, Miss Granger. In my eyes, you will always be the brightest Muggleborn witch of your age, at least within the privacy of my home."





Hermione swallowed hard, when he paused for a moment to allow his words to sink in. That hadn\'t sounded so bad to her; however, the Professor spoiled it by continuing on.





"But kill you? Never! You BELONG to me now," those furiously glittering black eyes of his burned into her own, as he emphasized the final coup de grace of his monologue, "and, my dear Miss Granger, I NEVER accept less than full value from ALL of my possessions."





Hermione drew in a sharp breath, even though it pained her side terribly.





\'Dear gods! What\'s he going to do to me?\' she frantically thought, staring with wide, terrified, amber eyes at her former Professor, while he calmly sat, comfortably ensconced in an armchair just over a meter in front of her.





He slowly swirled his brandy in its very expensive crystal snifter, as he perused her with those unfathomable black eyes, and lecherously smirked at her.





Hermione shifted nervously from foot-to-foot, and longed to sit down. She honestly didn\'t know if her legs were going to continue to support her much longer; she felt faint from hunger, pain, and thirst.





After three days of imprisonment in the cramped holding cage, both witnessing and experiencing firsthand how Death Eaters treated or, rather, failed to treat their prisoners, Hermione had few illusions left as to what her future life would most likely be.





She\'d even bartered her shoes away to a former classmate, now a novice Death Eater, for a melting, half-eaten chocolate bar, before the young Death Eater minions charged with guarding them smartened up and began to steal from the prisoners.





It was the first scrap of food that she\'d consumed in over twenty-four hours, and she even greedily sucked the last chocolate smears from the wrapper. The slender nutritional value the candy provided versus the chilly discomfort of bare feet on the cold dungeon floor was a quite acceptable trade-off to Hermione at the time





Professor Severus Snape was simply another dark wizard; a twisted perverted Death Eater, just like the rest of Voldemort\'s mongrel horde. He hadn\'t been working for the Order and the Side of Light after all!





However, he would still be playing the tune and she\'d still have to dance to it, just as she\'d already been doing for seven years as his student; nothing was different about that.





Well, Hermione realistically accepted that one thing would be vastly different in their arrangement now.





She now belonged to Professor Snape, and he\'d already spoken of it to his Dark Lord. He\'d called her a \'Mudblood cumbucket\' to her face, right there, in Voldemort\'s audience chamber; she was now a slave, a present, a commodity to be given away . . . or taken. She shivered, as the ramification of her reality shredded what was left of her composure.





Her former Professor would be shagging her, whenever he desired her, as well as having her do anything else that he damned bloody well commanded!





Hermione Granger was now a slave; however, she was extremely grateful for one thing. Out of the many sociopaths and psychopaths serving Voldemort, that could have claimed her as such, she belonged only to Snape.





He\'d promised not to kill her, and had said that he valued her. Her fate could have been worse.





Sweet Merlin! It could definitely have been worse.





Luna Lovegood had let her in on an undercover sting operation that her father had going on at the Quibbler. It was set to be an exposé into the customs and habitual practices of Death Eaters, focusing on their moral standards, as well as their conduct towards Muggles and the Muggleborn.





Luna had to make her Gryffindor friend swear a wizarding oath of secrecy, because Hermione had wanted to call in the Aurors right then and there, upon learning the details of it.





It concerned pedophiles, and sex crimes against Muggle children; Crabbe Senior had featured prominently within it. He\'d given Hermione such a vicious, vindictive look, as Rabastan Lestrange had paraded her past him, that her blood had felt frozen in her veins.





Luna Lovegood\'s \'spying\' on Crabbe Senior had eventually led to her capture, from her hiding place in the beautiful and expansive Manor garden, and thus her confinement within the cellars of Malfoy Manor. Luna had been grateful that she\'d been captured by Narcissa Malfoy and, because of that lady\'s strong maternal instinct, was semi-protected by her so that Crabbe had never gotten near Luna while she was being held prisoner there.





Thank the gods that they\'d all finally been able to escape from the Manor, even though it had eventually brought about Dobby\'s death.





Hermione was startled out of her reverie as the Professor snapped out in his surly teaching voice, which brusquely scraped over her fragile nerves, "Strip off your clothes, Miss Granger."





Hermione gasped, as her shocked amber eyes flew back to meet those twin bottomless black wells of the Professor\'s once more.





\'Surely he doesn\'t want me NOW, like this, covered in blood and dirt and stench?



Merlin! It wasn\'t as if I were simply gone away on spring holiday; baths weren\'t provided--or healing either, for that matter.



Oh please, dear merciful gods! What if he\'s a sadist, like Bellatrix Lestrange and Anton Dolohov?



What if . . . what if . . . Oh gods! Oh gods, ohgods, ohgodsohgodsohgodsohgods . . .\'







Hermione reddened from her toes to her hair-roots; embarrassed, she dropped her gaze to her pale-pink painted toenails. She swallowed hard, then slowly lifted her hands, her arms feeling heavy as lead, to catch hold of the hem of her filthy, ripped, jumper.





She winced, and sharply sucked in her breath, as the dull ache of the broken, unset, ribs within her ribcage, caused by Voldemort\'s Cruciatus of her at the Great Defeat, seared brightly alive again in white-hot agony.





The many untreated, festering, blood-crusted cuts and gashes on her upper arms, throat, and formerly satiny smooth abdomen, bled afresh as she groaned against the pain, and slowly tugged the days old, thick, dried scabs away from them, along with the stained article of clothing.





Dear gods! It was like simultaneously ripping off a hundred plasters, and the piercing agony of her broken ribs sharply took her breath away!





She suddenly tasted fresh blood in her mouth as she bit deeply into her tongue, stifling back an anguished scream. It choked out of her any way, in an agonized groan, pried from her throat as she stretched her arms over her head to pull them loose from the dried-blood encrusted sleeves. Trembling racked her body from shock and the pain.





Hermione finally managed to get her filthy jumper over her hopelessly knotted, frizzy hair, dropped it onto the smooth dark parquet of his private library floor, and silently prayed to sink through that intricate flooring herself.





That wasn\'t happening for Hermione tonight; her miracles were all used up.





A slow smirk curved up one side of his lips as Severus contemplated getting back at the know-it-all for being such an irritating swot all those years in his classroom; waving her hand and blurting out answers before being called on. She\'d always wanted \'front and center\', demanding his attention as her teacher; all right, now she has it!





"I am waiting, Miss Granger," Severus impatiently drawled, then took a leisurely sip of his brandy, crossed his long legs, and made a show of getting more comfortable; his dark eyes never leaving the young witch or her torturous striptease. "Continue."





Hot tears of humiliation and agony now ran freely down her cheeks, to mix with the blood from her gashed open left cheek and split bottom lip, stingingly exacerbated by the salt in the tears that slowly dripped down her chin.





Hermione fumbled in the heavy denim fabric with fingers made clumsy by her nervousness, as she sought the snap and zip of her ripped, burnt, and disgustingly filthy low-slung jeans. She knew that the pain she\'d felt before would be as nothing when compared to what would be coming.





Hermione steeled herself against the torment she knew was about to happen to her, but she wouldn\'t give the sadistic bastard the satisfaction of screaming for him. Goddamn it, she was a bloody Gryffindor! She would hold it in, even if she had to bite her tongue off and swallow it!





Her jeans were crusted with the dirt of days, a large quantity of dried blood, as well as being stuck down hard to several deep cuts. There was also that one painfully deep hex-burn charred into her left thigh; it was the size of one of Hagrid\'s handprints.





She sucked in as deep a breath as her agonized ribcage would allow, then hooked her thumbs into the waistband, and shoved her jeans down as quickly as she could. The burn-weakened denim tore away from her jeans where she was burnt. It remained behind, deeply embedded in the blackened, oozing, flesh of her thigh.





Unable to hold it back, Hermione screamed her agony out loud as fresh blood instantly oozed down from the huge charred wound, dampening the stuck-on melted fabric, the blood so dark that it looked black; her pain redoubling with the fresh torture of the jeans suddenly going down around her ankles.





Hermione\'s knees wobbled as she tottered on her feet for a long moment, her chest heaving raggedly painful, pitifully small gasps of air because of her throbbing, broken ribs. Her face turned deathly white beneath the grime encrusting it. Hot tears ran harder down Hermione\'s pallid cheeks as she uncontrollably jerked from the trauma and pain, her nerves and composure now completely shattered.





The room nauseatingly spun and went darkly grey around Hermione, as she took a wobbly step completely out of what used to be her jeans; a ringing sound filled her ears, warning her that fainting wasn\'t far behind the sound. She barely managed to retain consciousness, as she swayed and listed to one side and then the other, rather like a drunken sailor, silently dry heaving as cold pain-sweat broke out all over her battered body.





Finally, Hermione Granger stood bruised, bloodied, dirty, and stinking to high-heaven, in a plain, greyish-white, sweat-stained cotton bra, a serviceable pair of once-white knickers, and nothing else . . . except a bit of pale-pink polish on her toenails.





She stood there bravely, on her own two dirty feet, a true Gryffindor, shaking all over as her teeth chattered from the excruciating pain, almost nude . . . before an immaculately groomed, and completely dressed, solemnly observant Professor Severus Snape.







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Hermione had actually developed a brief crush on her Potions Professor during her Fifth Year.





The reality of her present situation was nothing like the simple schoolgirl fantasies that she\'d had from time-to-time concerning her darkly handsome, at least to her way of thinking, mysterious, and intellectually demanding, teacher.





The Professor had been magnificent in her eyes, standing resolute and dignified, under that bitch of a witch Delores Umbridge\'s needling inquisition of him, there in his classroom. That twisted, pink, bitch had embarrassingly grilled him right before his students, instead of questioning him privately, in her office, as his tenure and position rightfully deserved.





That was also the year when she\'d first learned that Professor Snape had been acting for years as a spy against Voldemort, and that he was a valuable and valiant, if not always thoroughly trusted, member of the Order of the Phoenix. She suddenly saw the teacher that she had always respected as being noble . . . tragic . . . and honorable.





Hermione had began to have foolishly idealistic schoolgirl wet dreams about the intelligent, gifted, powerful spy and Potions Master, as her budding feminine sex-drive had began to truly come alive that year.





She\'d been far more attracted to the Professor than she\'d ever been to poor Viktor, only the year before. Really, could she ever have had an intelligent conversation with the goodhearted, but rather dense, Bulgarian Durmstrang student?





But oh, what interesting conversations she\'d dreamed of sharing with Professor Snape, with him speaking in that deep, chocolate-rich voice before a cozy and very private fire. Never, even in her wildest fantasy, had it went further than wondering just what his kiss would feel and taste like.





That had all just been a girlish fantasy. Now she knew exactly what his kiss was like, and it would go much further than a mere kiss this time.





This time it would be for real.





She\'d heard that "it" hurt. She already hurt; what would one more pain be to her now?





The brandy snifter suddenly appeared in her tear-blurred line of vision just beneath her chin.





Hermione hadn\'t even heard or noticed him moving. She\'d been staring at her naked, pink-painted, toes. The toenails that Ginny Weasley had painted for her, only the night before their defeat.





"Drink, Miss Granger," came the soft command.





Hermione had rarely heard Professor Snape speaking in such a kindly tone to anyone. She shook her head, declining the mercy of alcohol\'s delirium. His authoritative, and irritated, reply to the gesture came back, "Drink at least one healthy swallow. That\'s an order . . . slave."





His pale long-fingered hand pressed the glass into her hand. She dully raised it to her lips and choked a tiny swallow down. Gods! How the alcohol of the brandy stung her lacerated tongue and lip, as well as its fiery burn sliding down her scream-raw throat to instantly take her breath away!





After her excruciatingly painful, gasping, coughing fit subsided, Hermione dared to meet Snape\'s black eyes once more. She was surprised to see a look of distress and honest caring on his saturnine face, for just a split-second, before he swiftly hid it again.





The Professor had taken the snifter from her, just before her paroxysm of coughing. He strode the few steps to a side table, set it down, and carefully drew his wand.





Hermione no longer cared. Did he believe that the Cruciatus could make this suffering any worse? If anything, its effect might now bring her the same blissful \'unawareness\' that it had bestowed upon Neville\'s parents.





Instead, the Professor gently went over every bare centimeter of Hermione with his ebony wand, as he examined her injuries as precisely and thoroughly as any Healer would have done. He carefully checked, and then re-checked, all of his findings of her many injuries, but never actually touched her body in any way; oddly enough, Hermione almost regretted not experiencing his long-fingered touch she\'d tensely stiffened herself to endure.





He removed his black Death Eater dress robe, covered the shivering young witch with it, and then sympathetically said, "Prop up on the sofa, Miss Granger."





A quick \'foolish wand wave\', and he softly continued, "There. I\'ve conjured you a pillow to lie back against. You really should rest for a bit. The Sorting Hat was certainly right about you, you know. You are indeed a Gryffindor. Only Hufflepuffs, in their tenacity, can withstand more pain without fainting than I just witnessed you bearing. Now, should you accept my offer of it, I will heal you."





Hermione tightly clutched the proffered robe against her, like a shield protecting her bruised honor, and choked back a grateful sob. Words were just now completely beyond her, an astounding first, at the sheer gentle kindness of the Professor\'s tone and words.





"Miss Granger?" he softly prompted.





Hermione\'s tear-glistening amber eyes darted up to meet an inscrutable jet-black stare. "Yes. Please sir. Would you heal me?" she hoarsely whispered, no fight or pride left at all within either her or her stilted words.





Those intense, onyx eyes shut for just a moment, a pained frown of self-contempt creasing his brow. Severus drew in a deep breath, and slowly exhaled it in a quiet sigh. Then his whole demeanor changed, as he assumed his teaching voice and stance, just as if he\'d slipped into a costume to perform a role in a stage play.





When the quick, sharp question, "Miss Granger, what is your favourite flavor of hard candy?" shot from her Professor\'s mouth, she instinctively blurted out the first answer that popped into her still dizzy head, just as if they were back in his classroom, "Wild cherry, sir."





"Of course it would be," he smirked, with a small, wry, grin and an amused slight quirk of his right eyebrow.





Hermione did as he\'d ordered her to do; she painfully limped over to his sofa, gingerly eased first her arse, then tenderly propped her back, against the large down pillow he\'d provided. She drew the soft cashmere of his black Death Eater robe more snugly around her throbbing, shivering body, like an embracing, warm, dark cocoon.





She didn\'t know what else to do, except obey his order.





Severus stood silently watching her for a few more moments.





Her exhausted, tear filled, amber eyes slowly drifted shut; her raspy breathing slowed to a steady, but uneven push; in-and-out, in-and-out, as exhaustion and nerves finally caught up with his wounded young lioness.





Severus sharply turned on the heel of his black boot, filled with self-loathing for what he\'d just put her through. He strode to the wall to the right of the fireplace and pressed the second book to his left, on the fourth shelf down; that section of the bookcase silently swung outward.





He stepped inside the secret passageway, then onto the first rung of the iron-fretwork spiral staircase that led down to his private corner of the Malfoy cellars, and to his personal brewing laboratory.





Ever so quietly, Severus left Hermione to her fitful slumber.







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The cauldron was just beginning to simmer; Severus quickly added the first three ingredients to the already simmering Aqua Vitae, and stirred it the required number of counter-clockwise turns with a white willow ladle.





He swiftly moved over and pinched off bits of this and that herb, that were hanging in many twine-tied aromatic bunches, drying from the rafter above his workbench. The faint \'pop\' of a house elf\'s Apparition heralded the entrance of his personal house elf, Gristle.





Gristle had been Severus\' naming day gift from his uncle, Ethan Prince; his uncle had been the only member of his mother\'s immediate family that had even acknowledged his birth.





Gristle had served as a sort of "nursery elf" to nine generations of the Prince family, his uncle and mother included. Gristle had been rarely called on anymore, and his uncle hadn\'t thought that she\'d even be missed, not amongst so many others waiting to willingly serve.





His Uncle Ethan had been right; the house elf was never even missed from Prince Hall. But to the young Severus Snape, Gristle had truly been a god-send!





By secret elfin magic, Gristle had managed to secure bread, cheese, bits of meat, and occasionally even milk, each night, for the undernourished and mistreated young boy. Her gentle hands had healed many stripes, bruises, and small, broken, bones.





It was Gristle\'s lullabies that Severus had heard echoing throughout his earliest memories.





Gristle was as damned-near a mother to Severus as his real mother, Eileen, had been; perhaps even more so. Severus Snape loved Gristle for it.





"Yes, Gristle?" he exasperatedly sighed. She stood with her arms belligerently crossed across her ample elfin chest, her greying, fuzzy, head tilted sideways, disapprovingly frowning at her Master.





Severus moved around her to add the required herbs; the blue smoke wafting from the bubbling cauldron turned a lovely shade of lavender, as he slowly stirred it ten times clockwise. Essentially, the Nourishing Potion was now complete, and he could have stopped right there.





Instead, Severus carefully sifted through two shelves of various extracts, essences, and essential oils, before he finally found what he\'d been searching for . . . a single small, brown, vial. He poured a hefty Hagrid-sized spoonful of its contents into the brew, and the pale lavender vapor now curling up from the cauldron mellowed into a rich, deep, purple.





Without a word to her Master, Gristle silently began ladling the hot potion into the proper sterile bottles. She\'d been helping her Master with his brewing since his first childhood attempts at potions brewing, which usually ended up more herbal soup than working potion.





She was accustomed to every aspect of where to help, and where to simply leave it for him, alone, to tend to.





"Proceed, Gristle," Severus said as he left the boring, but necessary, work to her. "You may speak freely." He was already moving from shelf to shelf, pulling down several vials here, a pot of unguent there, carefully adding them to the growing collection of pain and healing draughts in his rapidly filling, travelling-potion\'s case.





"I\'s sees that the Master has him a witch now," the disgruntled house elf sniffed. "Poor Master. First He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named saddles my Master with the dunderhead of the long bottoms; now it\'s burdened with Missy Fuzzy-haired Know-It-All, that he is."





Severus snorted at how Gristle had so amusingly, but succinctly, worded it. However, it had been the touchstone he\'d desperately needed at that moment to restore his humor; humor that was a vital balance for a horrible situation sadly lacking that very ingredient.





As he carefully selected the few surgical implements that he\'d need to cut away the burnt flesh of her thigh to prevent infection, he softly spoke, half to Gristle, half to himself, "I\'ve only recently begun to believe that the young witch might possibly be acceptable to me. Whether I\'m acceptable to her, or not, remains yet to be seen."





At this vulnerable statement of her Master\'s, it was Gristle\'s turn to snort her amazed disbelief.





She smartly answered her Master back, with the bluntness of extended time\'s acquaintance and much love, "Then the missy is not so very know-it-all, after all. House elves always know exactly what is needed. Master is needing Missy Know-It-All, yes; but, even more than him, is Missy Know-It-All needing of the Master."





Severus\' black eyes widened in shock, but the magical truth of the elf\'s statement struck a chord of absolute rightness, deep within his Eildarvitch blood, and suddenly caused his heart to pound with fresh hope.





As impossible as it currently seemed, somehow he and this very special witch had always been destined to be paired together.





It had only taken the Dark Lord\'s victory to finally make it happen.





How bizarre!









END OF CHAPTER 14







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A/A/N: To all of the AFF readers who have left a review of this story:



My heartfelt thanks, and humble gratitude, for the time you\'ve taken to review what you\'re reading.



I wish that AFF provided a link-feature for my replying, individually, to every one of you. Alas, it does not.



However, I have read each word that you\'ve left regarding my story, and just wanted to say, "Thank you!" to you all. AFF also does not provide any indication of exactly which chapter you\'re reviewing; this simply makes me go "gggrrr" as I\'d really like to know.



Should you choose to review in the future, I\'d take it as a personal favour if you\'d refer to which chapter # that you\'re reviewing. It would be truly helpful to this most frustrated, and nosy, author. (snickers)



Gratefully yours, Victoria Prince, author of REFUGE HAS ITS PRICE



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