Full Circle

The soft ‘clink’ of metal on metal made you reopen your eyes






The soft
‘clink’ of metal on metal made you reopen your eyes.

 

He was
naked now, as naked as you, standing at the foot end of the bed. What
frightened you more? The sudden sight of a naked man with an erect penis, or
the array of… instruments on a small table next to him? The table and
instruments hadn’t been there before, you hadn’t even heard him summon them,
maybe they had just been dissimulated by an invisibility spell. You didn’t
move, you just stared. At the naked body, aggressively towering over you, at
the gleaming devices. And knew you had to get out now, this was the last
moment, another threshold you had to avoid at all cost. Even at the price of
appearing in Diagon Alley naked, without a wand. You forced yourself to relax,
block out the fear, and concentrate. You had never had any difficulties
Apparating, but weren’t sure you could manage in these conditions without
causing severe damage. But you had to try. And so you tried.

 

The pain
you felt when you crashed into the wards was indescribable, searing and hot, a
needle through every fibre of your body. You blacked out, mercifully. When you
came to, you were again on the bed, restrained by invisible bonds, unable to
move, but your muscles were still twitching. Your eyes hurt, too, it was
difficult to open them. You would have preferred to keep them closed. A
lifetime of admonitions drummed into your skull—first by parents, then by
teachers, and last and most effectively by a merciless enemy—had taught you,
though, that danger had to be looked at in order to be coped with. Not that you
had many illusions left at that point. Coping, in this case, meant bracing
yourself for the inevitable, not finding ways of rescue. So you opened your
eyes.

 

Lost as you
had been in the haze of pain, you hadn’t realized he was laughing. The sound
kicked in together with the image. He was standing, almost in the same position
as before, still naked, still aroused, his red-tipped penis—Little Red Riding
Hood, the association spun through your mind—bobbing slightly as he shook with
laughter. At your pain. At your helplessness. At your naked, twitching body
strapped down and open. And something was glinting in his hand, you couldn’t
make it out very well, for there were still tears of pain in your eyes. You
blinked, once, twice, and identified the object, or objects rather, he was
holding pinched between his right thumb and index. Needles. Thinner and shorter
than any needles you had ever seen before. Another disconnected image shot
through your head, the first time you visited Diagon Alley, before starting
school at Hogwarts, you went to buy robes with your parents, and Madam Malkin
had to shorten them. She, too, held the pins in the same fashion. Lucius Malfoy, tailor extraordinaire. Little Red Riding Hood, teasing the
wolf with pins. You felt the muscles of your throat slacken, felt your head
fall back onto the mattress. You heard him move, the soft crunching sound of
carpet fibres bending under his weight. Then the mattress dipped underneath
your legs. The sound, reawakened when you had opened your eyes, had stayed. And
you heard his voice—Don't be afraid, it’s not as dangerous as it looks, not what
you use is important, it's how you use it. You heard your own voice,
a ridiculous whimpering sound, inarticulate first then begging, please don’t,
please let me go, please I won’t tell anybody, pleasepleaseplease, a useless
mantra.

 

He didn’t
even respond. He merely waited until the flow of words stopped. He then
extended his hand, the one that didn’t hold the needles, and caressed your
hair. His fingers brushed a few strands off your forehead, where they were
glued to the moist skin. A gesture of gentleness, soothing, then a fingertip
stroking your eyelids, left, right. Closing your eyes. As if you were a corpse.
It hurt, too; the effect of his wards hadn’t yet worn off. You braced
yourself—you had seen the needles, they looked malicious, they looked like
intense pain, but you had no idea where they’d go. You were almost grateful for
the invisible restraints biting into your wrists and ankles, for you could tug
at them, to create pain, a pain that was yours, made by yourself. It meant
control, in a way. And the possibility to concentrate on something that
belonged to you.

 

The seconds
passed, and nothing happened. You could have opened your eyes, but you were
afraid of seeing his face. Blackness was preferable by far. And it was easier
to focus on your wrists and ankles, and on the slowly-subsiding muscle spasms,
in the illusion of darkness your closed eyelids were providing.

 

You waited.
And waited.

 

Why didn’t
he start? Was he biding his time again, until the moment of greatest fear,
until the point where your tension and the will to fight the pain had reached
their highest level, before they turned into resignation and numbness?

 

In the
total silence—you didn’t even hear him breathe—time lost its reality as did
everything else. With your eyes closed, it was easy to imagine you were only
dreaming. Maybe that was what he intended. If it was, he had certainly
calculated well, because the first contact between his skin and yours, after
that timeless eternity, made you jump in a mix of fright and relief. Relief,
because it wasn’t a needle that brushed your breast. It was his fingertip.
Circling, wandering, testing. Almost, almost, erotic, if not for the terror the
still-present image of those needles caused you, those needles in his other
hand. The pad of his finger continued its meandering path. You cursed your
body—not because it felt pleasure. There was no pleasure, just dread. No, you were
furious, because you felt the goose-bumps rising, and you felt your nipples
pucker under his touch, go soft again after a while, and stiffen again when the
finger returned. You knew it was merely a physical reflex—you’d been
embarrassed often enough when it happened at the gynaecologist’s—and you knew
that he knew. But maybe he took it for a reaction induced by pleasure, and you
didn’t want to give him that satisfaction.

 

So you gave
another sharp tug at the bonds, content to feel them cut into your skin.

 

The finger
stilled and left your breast. You held your breath, suddenly you felt hot and
then icy cold—he had seen the movement, of course he had, and now he was going
to immobilize you. He was going to take away the last bit of control that
remained. And so he did. But not as you had thought. He didn’t cast any of the
many immobilizing spells. He cast a numbing spell, slowly, taking his time, on
the left wrist, on the right one, right ankle, left ankle. He wanted your full
attention, only the pain he inflicted was allowed, nothing else. He knew
that your straining against the bonds wasn’t meant to free you but to distract
you. And distraction wasn’t allowed. Just he, and you. And the pain.

 

A few
moments of silence, just to permit you a tentative tug, so you could feel that
it didn’t hurt anymore. Then the fingertip returned to your breast, searching,
attentive. The briefest of pauses. Then the needle, at the most sensitive spot.
It took a fraction of a second for the pain to hit fully.

 

Had you
really believed you knew what pain was? Maybe, if you had experienced the
Cruciatus Curse like Harry, you might have been prepared. But—you knew it
instinctively, in spite of never having undergone the torturing curse—this was
different, because it didn’t affect the whole body. Just one point, searing,
hot-cold, too overwhelming to resist screaming, but too focused to give in to
it and simply succumb. It was a pain too sharp and well-defined to just close
your eyes and give yourself to it, you couldn’t let it overtake you. And you
had to scream. You felt weak and humiliated by the necessity, but you had to
feel your voice scratching your vocal chords, so as to remember that your body
had other parts, too, that your breast and the needle were not the only real
piece of you that existed.

 

You felt
the mattress move; he was sitting back on his haunches. You heard him exhale
deeply, then a sharp intake of breath. You told yourself that now he was going
to do the same to the other breast, this was an advantage, wasn’t it, because
you already knew the pain. But he shifted and went down to the hollow of your
right knee. Then your left ear. Then between your legs. The sole of your right
foot. The right breast. Your lips. And still there wasn’t enough pain for you
to let go. Every time it was new, sharp and clearly separated from the previous
one. Your body had become a map of agony, like you had seen in war movies,
positions of troupes and equipment flagged out in different colours, a
battalion moved and the pin with its red or blue or yellow head moved, too.
When the needle went through your right nipple, you felt something warm, hot
almost, and wet between your legs, spilling, gushing. You hadn’t been aware of
the urge to pee, but obviously your bladder had been full, and the body too
busy absorbing pain to pay much attention to your urinal tract. The sharp,
humid scent wafted up to your nose. This was your undoing—some detached part of
your mind was even surprised that it should be this, painless and relatively
harmless, occurrence that broke you. You hadn’t a s a single tear before, but
now you started crying. The warm gush of urine, more than the pain and the
fear, had made all this real. Everything could be nightmare or delusion, but
not the simple act of wetting yourself.

 

He laughed,
just like before, when you had tried to Apparate out, and cast a cleaning
charm.

 

Then he
lowered himself onto you, the whole weight of his body crushing you, driving
the needles further into your flesh, and entered you.

 

In your
fantasies, you had been ready for him, slick and wet, relaxed by the
ministrations of his hands and mouth. Just a small dose of pain,
pleasure-enhancing pain really, that was how you had imagined it, because you
were a virgin after all, and it was expected to hurt, just the slightest bit,
an exciting kind of pain. In this reality, though, that smelled of your sweat
and fear and a few drops of blood from your tongue, pain had lost all its
previous splendour. You didn’t play victim, you were victim. You didn’t
feign resistance, you hated this hot hard body invading yours. Hated it, wanted
it out, wanted it away, wanted the pain to go away. But the pain remained, just
as the piece of disgusting heated flesh remained inside you, and his breath
made your forehead feel moist and hot and cold and hot and cold and in and out
and in and out until you fainted.

 

When you
awoke, the pain was gone. The light had changed, and you felt… you felt just
normal, just… fine, like you always felt, no hurt, no pain, it was all like a
distant memory, still ghosting through your body but almost forgotten. Then,
you noticed the noise around you. You became aware that you were standing,
fully dressed, surrounded by people, wearing dress robes, chatting. Impossible.
You shook your head, unsure whether you really wanted it to clear up—maybe that
would only make the pain return. But it didn’t. You were there, at the wedding
reception, and as you turned your head, you saw Him standing there, platinum
blonde hair cut to perfection, black velvet robes half-revealing the powerful
body underneath, the sultry bored grey eyes, the hands.

 

You froze
in shock. You wanted to scream, to run, out, away, regardless of the other
guests—and then, something strange occurred. Your mind seemed to split in two.
The panic was still there, and so was the urge to flee. But at the same time,
another layer of thoughts slithered through your mind, exactly the same
thoughts you had already had, a mental echo—that man would nesparspare you a
second glance. The Master of the Manor, subtly pulling the strings of a
perfectly arranged celebration, the wedding of his only son and heir. Why would
he waste another look on a perfectly plain Mudblood, invited only—like many
other guests—to keep up appearances? So you did what you always do when the
grapes are sweet and alluring, tantalizing but out of your reach. You put on
your haughty face, shot him one sideways glance, just one, smirked and turned
your back to him… deeply stricken by the knowledge that from now on, the
faceless He would have distinct features, thin but sensuously curved lips
descending on yours, hands of silk and steel holding your wrists just so,
hovering on the edge of pain. You tried to suppress the thought, keep it for
later, because it made you hot and tingly, and you’d already had two glasses of
champagne on an empty stomach. A tray was hovering near you, and you grabbed
another glass—more champagne, but who cared, it was cool against your
cheeks—and slowly, so as not to give the impression of a hasty retreat, moved
to the far side of the room, pretending to scrutinize the portrait of some
long-dead Malfoy.

 

You tried
to drop your champagne flute, hoping that the dreadful realization would
shatter together with the glass. But only your mind was free, or half-free rather,
because one half had to do and think what it had done and thought before; the
other was reeling with fear. Your body did not obey its commands. Your body
stood there, sipping your drink, still susceptible to the low voice murmuring Are
you unwell, Miss Granger, you are shivering, let me…

 

You turned
away, you stayed at the reception a little longer, you went home, you
fantasized, one day, two, three, one week; the invitation arrived, you
accepted… It went on and on, inescapable. Until the moment when you fainted,
and woke up. Again at rec reception. Three voices in your head instead of two.
Your mind and your body trapped in sticky cobwebs that grew tighter the more
you tried to get out.

 

The small
part of your mind that was still free knew that after a few more repetitions,
you’d be insane. Because of the pain, yes that too, but mostly because you were
struggling against yourself and thus destroying yourself. You didn’t let go,
not yet, but you knew that you would not last much longer. Are you unwell,
Miss Granger. You are shivering. Let me. Let me. Let me.

 

*

 

“Headmaster.”

 

“Lucius.
Thank you for coming.”

 

“Don’t
mention it, Headmaster. I felt it was my duty, after all the incident occurred
at my house.”

 

“Yes. That
is why—please, have a seat.”

 

“Thank you,
Headmaster. How is Miss Granger?”

 

“Worse.
Worse, and I’m afraid we… will lose her unless some remedy can be found.”

 

“Oh. I am
truly aggrieved, Headmaster. If there is anything I can do…”

 

“As a
matter of fact, that was the reason why I asked you to come here. Hermione…
Miss Granger is very dear to me, apart from being a member of the faculty, and
therefore… May I speak openly, and without reserve?”

 

“Of course,
Headmaster. We are both adults, and the situation doesn’t seem to allow for
niceties.”

 

“Very well,
then. I’m going to offer you a deal, Lucius. If—and this is no accusation,
merely a… let us say, a hypothesis. If you have anything to do with Miss
Granger’s current situation, I offer silence in exchange for her life. You, I
and Miss Granger are currently the only people aware of her condition—apart
from Madam Pomfrey, but she can be obliviated. If there is anything you can do
to help Hermione, I swear that the authorities will never hear a word about
this matter.”

 

“I…
Headmaster, I… am speechless. Why would I—”

 

“Come now,
Lucius. I thought we
were to skip the niceties. We both know, don’t we, that there is no love lost
between you and Hermione. Had it not been for her quick reflexes, you’d have
Disapparated right after Voldemort died, and no-one would have been the wiser.
Not to mention that Draco spent two years in Azkaban because of her.”

 

“I remember
Miss Granger’s, er, accomplishments only too well. May I remind you, though,
that I decided to betray Voldemort after my son had been thrown into that… that
hellhole? Because I recorecognized which fate my loyalties, my misplaced
loyalties, might lead me to? Or has the fact that I provided valuable
information—you wouldn’t have won the war without it, would you? Has that fact
slipped from your formidable memory?”

 

“No,
Lucius. I know very well that our victory was partly due to the information you
gave me. But I also happen to know that you never actually renounced Voldemort.
You played for both sides, you simply ensured that, whatever the outcome of the
battle, you might stand next to the victor and reap the benefits.”

 

“Interesting.
Especially as we all, including yourself, testified under Veritaserum. That
would have been the appropriate moment to utter your doubts on my behalf,
Headmaster, not now, when the life of a faculty member is at stake. But rest
assured: Miss Granger’s current state has nothing to do with me. Miss Granger
and her fate are as indifferent to me as the next House-Elf. I don’t know what
happened to her, and I cannot do anything to help her.”

 

“Lucius, I
implore—”

 

“Good bye,
Headmaster. The best of lucks to Miss Granger. And… it might be a good idea not
to repeat your slanderous accusations to anybody. I have lost enough during thar, ar, and I do not wish to lose my reputation as well.”

 

*

 

Back at the
manor, Lucius stepped out of the fireplace and patted the soot off his robes.
It was late; the last guests had already left. The house was his again.

 

Frowning at
the last vestiges of the celebration—there were still some empty glasses, and
the carpets bore visible traces of hundreds of shoes that had trodden on
them—he made his way to the library. It was dark and empty. Lucius nodded timseimself. After lighting a fire on the grate, he returned to the door, which he
locked, both with a key and magically, and then warded.

 

After
pouring himself a drink, he took a small object from the pocket of his black
velvet dress robes and, with a sigh of relief, slipped out of the heavy
garment. Underneath, he wore only black trousers. A shiver ran over his naked
torso—it was quite chilly in the room, despite the roaring fire. A summoning
spell later, he was clad in a dressing gown of thick, burgundy-coloured silk.

 

Glass in
hand, he moved towards the fireplace, the small object still glinting between
the fingers of his other hand. He sat down, took a first gulp of his drink and
closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair. Once the glass was empty, he put it
down on a small side table and focused his attention on the object he had been
playing with. It resembled a miniature hourglass, finely crafted. Its top and
bottom looked like dials; instead of numbers, however, runes and arithmantic
symbols were engraved on the shiny golden surface.

 

He held it
for a long time, as if scrutinizing it. His face was expressionless, although
from time to time his lips seemed to move, forming unspoken, noiseless words.
The flames in the fireplace burned lower, their colour changing to a darker
orange, until only embers were left, the red glow of the dying fire scurrying
up and down the ashes like a myriad of tiny insects.

 

Finally,
Lucius rose, drawing himself up to full height. “No,” he murmured. “No. You
shall pay, Hermione Granger. I will not—” his fist clenched around the time
turner “—lift the curse, nor will I unbind it from the time turner. You shall
pay. Again.” He dropped the hourglass. “And again.” He stepped on it with the
heel of his right shoe. “And again.” He twisted his foot, and the glass broke
with a soft, crunching noise. “And again.” The metal frame yielded to the
pressure with a sharp crack. “And again.”

 

A flick of
his wand undid the wards. A House Elf scuttled into the room, responding to its
master’s call.

 

“Clean that
up,” he said, pointing at the patch of greyish glittering dust and metal pieces.

 

And left
the library.