Disguised Affections

A/N: Here’s the next chapter. WARNING: GRAPHIC VIOLENCE DEPICTED AND IMPLIED RAPE. BE WARNED AHEAD OF TIME, AND DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE UNDER EIGHTEEN. For those who are not into smut, if you just push ahead to the italics, you will avoid every mention of it (although there isn’t much.)

So here’s chapter seventeen. I hope you guys like it!

A couple of aff.net specific notes:

Aya-Chan: I appreciate that you like my story! It means a lot to me that you are reviewing. However, I can't post more than once a day because this is getting written as I go along. The chapters are not already completed. Yes, I am just that cool and prolific. ;P

Mia Madwyn: You are everywhere! You've now left me comments on all three of my main sites. Lyke, whoa.

Cole: Sorry for the misunderstanding, but they were never waiting for marriage. This is aff.net, after all. They were waiting to get to know each other better. Big difference. :)

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Chapter Seventeen

“Perfect. The base is absolutely perfect.” Hermione sat back and looked at the vermillion potion in front of her. “Thank the gods, because we only had two jenetts left.”

“Well done, Hermione,” Con said proudly.

“Well done, Constantine,” she said, smiling.

“We have just enough time to brew the Wit-Sharpening Potion and send it off to St. Mungos for testing.”

The two seventh-years smiled at each other, perfectly in accord, and set to work.

Hermione ground the scarab beetle carapaces in an alabaster mortar and pestle while Con powdered the centaur hoof. They moved seamlessly, each seeming to know instinctively what the other needed. She handed Con the stirring rod before he asked. He diced the crottin roots at a glance from Hermione. They were done in thirty minutes. They decanted the Potion and portioned it out into thirty individual doses in preparation for clinical tests.

Con wrapped his arms around the girl’s waist. “We’ve done all we can for now, Hermione. We’ve got thirty minutes until dinner.” He kissed her on the lips. “Want to play? The Potions Lab hasn’t been christened yet.” His lips closed around her earlobe.

“Honestly. There’s a reason for that, idiot. Whatever happened to practicing safe Potions procedu-” Her voice broke in the middle of the last word as he lifted her up to sit on her workstation. The man made short work of the buttons on her shirt, and smiled when he saw that she was wearing a front-clasping bra. That too had to go.

He reached forward and pressed her breasts together so he could suck both of her nipples into his mouth.

The smell of smoke hung heavily in the air, and the man heard sobbing.

Con raised his head. “Do you hear-” Hermione lunged forward and covered his mouth with her own. Her small hand slid down his front and worked at his belt buckle. He groaned happily, and his fingers tightened on her thigh.

There was a bonfire in the middle of a clearing surrounded by figures covered in pristine black robes, their faces covered in silver masks. Kneeling at the foot of a tall-backed chair was a woman. Her hands were bound tightly behind her back.

‘Dorcas Meadows,’ his mind supplied.

Hermione was placing biting little kisses down his neck. “Stop.” She didn’t, and Con pushed her away from him. “Stop for a moment.” He craned his neck. “I hear-”

“Little Dorcas… So difficult. So beautiful. So meddlesome. Do you have anything to say for yourself?” The voice came from nowhere, a rich black tang of shadows.

“Anything to make your life more difficult, half-blood.” The woman laughed fiercely and then spit on the ground. Her spittle was tinged red with her blood.

“I don’t want you to think I don’t… admire your spunk. In fact, I think you are quite fascinating. It will keep you alive a bit longer.” Glowing red eyes appeared deep in the shadows near the throne-like chair. “…Although you may wish it hadn’t.”

Con pulled back completely from Hermione. He didn’t want to touch her while he experienced this nightmare.

“Are you okay?” Hermione was clutching the edges of her shirt together, and looking at him with a concerned expression on her face.

He waved her off and turned away, trying to grasp at the tenuous thread of memory. It was horrifying and left a rancid taste in his mouth, but it was who he had been, who he was, who he might still be. Con wrapped his mind tightly around the glare of those red eyes, and the fear he could taste on the back of his tongue.

“Lucius, why don’t you make Ms. Meadows more comfortable?”

A man with a platinum waterfall of hair stepped forward and eagerly dropped his mask. Malfoy’s grinning face swam before his eyes. The pureblood pulled something from his pocket and set it on the ground.

“Engorgio,” he hissed, grinning at Dorcas while the object grew in size. It was a fame of wood and metal, cruel and impersonal in its simplicity. Four manacles graced the edge of the contraption, and Lucius strapped the captured member of the Order into them while he whistled a jaunty tune. “There, my dear! This becomes you so well.” Malfoy leaned forward and wrapping his fingers around her face to hold her still, he gave her what appeared to be a tender kiss.

The man watching knew better.

When Lucius pulled his face away, her blood dripped from both of their faces. The blond spit a gobbet of her lip from his mouth. A slow, genial smile spread over his face, growing like a living, organic creature, and his eyes burned in pleasure.

Dorcas Meadows said nothing, did nothing, showed nothing. She was an impassive, fearless creature, and the man watching felt his heart feel with a fierce pride in her strength of will.

Malfoy pet her hair softly. “I rather fancy myself in love with you. I’ve always been rather shallow, though so I can’t be sure that what I call love is what everyone else would. I’ll elucidate, Dorcas. I love the softness of your skin.” He ran the tip of a wickedly sharp boning knife down the underside of her arm. The faintest line of red bloomed on her skin, crawling drops of blood blossoming like a fairy tale vine on a tower of white. “It gives so nicely to my knife. Perhaps I’ll keep it? Keep your softly turned limbs and winter-fair skin.” Lucius pinched the top of her arm and pulled fiercely. The thin line on Dorcas’s arm split open, gaping like an unwholesome invitation from a Knockturn Alley whore.

Dorcas Meadows said nothing and did nothing. However, a tear trickled down her freckled cheek.

Malfoy’s mouth was puckered and his eyebrows were perched together like doves before a snow. “This will never do. The skin is all stretched and bloodied now.” He looked at the girl with a quizzical expression on his patrician features. “You’re not very good at love, are you? It’s a good thing I am, or we’d have done with you now. I am very magnanimous with my lovers.” He licked the trail of tears off her cheek. “I love the way you can say so much with silence, darling. Your silence means so much to me because it makes me look forward to when I finally get to hear your mellifluous voice as you cry out to someone, anyone to ‘Gods, help me! Please, help!’”

The ring of black-robed figures laughed, breaking the solemnity of their previous monk-like stillness.

“And sweetheart, I’m going to love helping you.” Malfoy rubbed a hand over the front of his trousers, where an erection was already becoming apparent. “Believe me. And then, after I’m done helping you – well, there are lots of other men here who care about you just as much as I do. And love is so scarce in this world, don’t you think? I couldn’t find it in my heart to deny them – my brethren, every single one. If you could choose a way to die, wouldn’t you choose being fucked to death by people who love you?”

“I get it, Malfoy. You’re laying it on a bit thick, after all. You always did lack subtlety.” Dorcas grinned smugly around her bloodied, torn lip. “I’m not afraid of death.”

Lucius looked surprised. “Of course not! Death will be a welcome release for you. No,” he said, smiling. “No, what you should be afraid of is your life between this point right here, and that sweet moment when you slip away.” He wiped his boning knife on the hem of her shirt. “Now, whatever happened to that lovely silence I enjoyed so much? Open up dear, so I can cut your tongue out.”

He played with her for hours, and when Dorcas Meadows finally broke and called for the Gods to help her, Lucius laughed and teased her. “I’m sorry? What was that? You need to enunciate your words better. I think I know what you said, but all I heard was ‘Gaah, haaah meeeh.’” The humor dropped from his face immediately. “Cat. Got. Your. Tongue, Ms. Meadows?”

Sheathing his knife, he stepped away from her. His blond hair was sticky and matted to his head from her blood, and his eyes burned with insanity as he loosed his bulging erection from his pants and took his pleasure from her.

The black-robed figures queued up, each awaiting their turn, and the man who had been watching was relieved when he discovered that she was already dead by the time his turn came.

“Isss there a problem, child?”

The man who had been watching turned to face the voice, and saw that the throne was now occupied by the creature whose eyes he’d seen earlier. A scabrous, reptilian man with blood-filled irises that glowed in the flickering firelight sat before him. He looked… unholy. Unbalanced. Unwholesome.

“My lord, she’s dead,” he heard himself say, petulantly. “It’s no fun when they don’t squirm.”

The Dark Lord smiled, baring his horrible, sharp teeth. “Your distaste for taking your pleasure from a body enjoyed by so… many of your brothers is understandable. However, you turn down the bounties received from my right hand at your own risk.” His smile grew, and he pointed his wand at the man before him. “Crucio.”

He fell screaming.

Con fell to his knees, retching. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” Hermione’s arms were around him tightly, so tightly. He couldn’t think. Con had to get away from her, but she wouldn’t let go.

“What did you see? What did you see, Con?” Her voice was tight with grief, and her hands searched over his body, trying to pull him in closer.

Gods, he couldn’t breathe. She needed to let him go. Her arms were softly turned limbs that were pulling him too far under; her winter-fair skin too much like Dorcas Meadows’s. He gagged again and tried to disengage himself from her.

“Let me go,” he whispered.

“I’ll never let you go,” she cried.

“Please, I’m going to be sick. Let me go. Oh Gods! Help me, please!” Con was sobbing like a child. “Hermione, let me go. For now, just let me go. Gods, I was a Death Eater. I have to get away from you for now. I was a Death Eater.”

She still wouldn’t release him, so great was her fear that he would do something rash to himself. Constantine pulled out his wand and whispered, “Incarcerous.”

He left her there, lying on the floor, while he rushed out of the Potions lab. He ran through the dungeons and up a flight of stairs and out into the cold December evening.

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Con sat huddled in the corner of Greenhouse Eleven, reliving the memory. The pleasure he’d seen on Malfoy’s face as he tortured Dorcas Meadows caused his stomach to churn in discomfort. He’d tasted his counterpart’s emotions while he watching the girl’s blood drip down her face and arms and legs, and the predominant emotion his other self had felt had been pride. True, he’d felt nausea and horror and fear and a crippling paranoia, but Con could not understand why he would feel pleased that the girl had given the Death Eaters a good show.

He was not so far removed from his emotions that he was unable to tell that his other self had loathed being a follower of Voldemort. Con didn’t think his heart was bad, but there was no question that he was a terrible person who’d participated willingly in blood and fear-mongering. He was a man who was capable of standing and watching a sociopath torture an innocent woman. His face had remained impassive behind his Death Eater’s mask as she screamed wordlessly, blood dripping from her tongueless mouth.

That kind of horror left scars on a man. He’d never be whole. His insides were just as ugly and marked as his outside.

Hermione deserved better than him, a soul-dead, ex-Death Eater. She deserved someone less broken – someone untainted by the war who could be a father to her children… A man who wouldn’t look into their child’s eyes and think of the cornflower blue gaze of a victim. He had to leave her.

That man… that man had tortured her. Lucius Malfoy had Hermione in his clutches for three weeks. What kind of hell must she have gone through?

As much as Hermione deserved better, the pureblood deserved worse. Lucius Malfoy merited every torment that Constantine Prince could heap upon his head before he broke and killed the aristocrat. He’d never be as imaginative as the Dark Lord’s right hand had been, but Con was far more interested in justice for his love – a tit for tat of scars. Of course, he didn’t expect to derive any pleasure out of the torture, really.

He pictured the tree of scars crossing his lover’s back, and smiled. Maybe he would enjoy it a little bit. Con knew Hermione’s body so well that he would have no problem marking Lucius with the twins of her own scars.

Yes, Lucius Malfoy deserved death, and Constantine Prince would deliver it to him.

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