Prisoners of Love - A Mystery - COMPLETE

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Updated 7-4-07

I loved all the reviews. Thanks guys!

So many questions! I can't answer most of them without giving away the plot. Sorry! But if you've read any other of my stories, you know I don't get too dark and angsty - not without having a brighter day to look forward to.

So - for those who may be a bit squeamish about the prison cell atmosphere, have faith. I don't write downer stories. I don't like to read them so I don't write them. And as many of you already know, my tolerance for suspense verges on the minuscule, but I wanted to try my hand at a bit of a mystery so the suspense element comes with it.

My promise to all of you is I may take you on another roller coaster ride, but you'll wind up safely back at the station. And Sheherazade, yes, you may get back to the station around Christmas. And to wicraven, hugs for my personal reviews. Much appreciated.

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Chapter Two

Shall I… Touch?

Hermione hmmphed and slumped a little more. This was turning into a nightmare - a wrongful conviction, Azkaban, and him. A five meter by five meter square cell provided for no privacy whatsoever and she had to pee something awful. Her first humiliating experience was fast approaching.

“Please, tidbit,” Lucius sighed wearily after a few silent minutes, “put me out of your misery. Watching you wriggle is making me cringe in painful sympathy. I said I’d turn my back. It has to happen sometime. And that tent you’re wearing should cover everything anyway.” He muttered under his breath, “I didn’t know they even made monstrosities like that.”



“Will you please stuff the nightgown jokes? I’m so sorry I couldn’t have been at a formal, fancy-dress ball when I was arrested.” Hermione looked at him in acrid contempt, “Perhaps you haven’t noticed that your own garb leaves a bit to be desired also? Those black and white horizontal-striped pajamas you’re sporting not only make you look fat, they do absolutely nothing for your pasty coloring. If you had advance notice, why didn’t you wear something more useful, like an iron file?” Hermione’s bladder was almost at the breaking point and her sense of humor was currently nonexistent.

Lucius had worn more appropriate apparel, but he hadn’t figured on the guards who stripped him immediately he set foot on the prison grounds because they wanted his clothing for themselves. He’d been wearing Death Eater garb the first time and no one had wanted to touch that. Luckily they hadn’t searched his hair where he’d hidden his collection of orbs magically shrunk and illusioned to look like more hair strands.

He’d quickly discovered the guards hadn’t been chosen for their intelligence, only for their gorilla-like physiques. Even conversing with them had to be done in simple words or they got testy. Lucius’ jaw had required two weeks of careful tending after his ill-considered remarks during his stripping, when he had tried to explain his clothing wouldn’t fit them, albeit not in the most flattering of terms.

Lucius, vastly entertained by her bitchy banter, tossed back, “I beg your pardon, I have lost weight in this hellhole, so these garments can’t possibly make me look fat. I admit however, that overall, stripes are not a favorite with me although I do like the black ones.” Lucius was waiting for Hermione to give up and use the bucket and was passing the time by riling her with any inanities that came to mind.

He went back to gazing at his orb and his surveillance of the prison’s interior areas, but her constant movement kept distracting his concentration. After ten more minutes of ignoring Hermione’s increasing discomfort, Lucius called a halt to her idiocy and got up and marched the two steps to her cot. He dragged her up by her elbow and pitched her at the loo bucket, knocking off the lid and saying, “If you don’t take care of your business, I’ll sit you on the bucket myself after I’ve stripped that hideous flannel tent off you. Now get to it and drop your knickers yourself or I’ll do it.” Lucius stood with crossed arms, blocking Hermione’s route back to her cot.

“You said you’d turn your back. And, Mr. Know-it-all, I’m not wearing knickers,” she ripped into Lucius, angry at his insensitivity. “Do you wear knickers to bed?”

Lucius chuckled at the little spitfire’s defense of herself, “No, actually I don’t. I usually don’t wear anything to bed, but I suppose that will have to change now.”

“Ewww. Please – keep your perversions to yourself.” Hermione didn’t want the visual, which foggily flashed into her mind, raising her temperature uncomfortably for a brief second before disappearing under her other physical stress. “Turn your back!” Hermione couldn’t wait any more; she was now so desperate, what with Lucius jiggling her around that she didn’t care if she had to pee in front of the entire British Parliament. Embarrassment was no longer an issue.

Hermione waited only until Lucius turned his back and immediately lifted her nightgown, squatted on the bucket and let loose with a deep groan of relief. It seemed almost surreal to her to be peeing into a bucket in a small stone cell with Voldemort’s most evil Death Eater standing two feet away, ostentatiously not looking at her.

Hermione’s innocent mindset was undergoing a wrenching change from normal, law-abiding, privacy-minded citizen to a hunted, hardened desperate witch who had to adapt and survive or die in miserable circumstances that she didn’t even deserve. She didn’t know if any of her friends or her parents would ever be able to learn what had happened to her.

Lucius did deserve his miserable circumstances but he was also a survivor and as wily as they came. In his case, he had soon learned how to deal with the greedy guards by transfiguring small gifts as bribes from useless items they brought him. The checkerboard and checkers set was one of the gifts.

Lucius mentally wrote off the human behemoths, scorning them as useless, while bribing them not only for his space, but for the few luxuries to be had on the barren rock, including a few of his clothes back that had survived being tried on by someone five sizes too big. His most notable re-accessions were his shoes and socks which had been too small for any of them and were now back in his possession and tucked carefully under his cot. Being from the lower echelons of the magic community the behemoths’ knowledge of advanced wizardry was slim to nonexistent, so their demands were correspondingly simple. It was lucky that they didn’t know what they had in the extremely accomplished wizard and he was going to keep it that way.

Lucius had been caught sneaking around the prison grounds, placing his orbs because the prison owls had set up a racket when he placed an orb in their cote. From that experience he decided his prearranged system of secret owls needed to alight elsewhere. So he had bribed one of the more willing and goodhearted of the guards, Otto, to help him pass messages from various business colleagues to himself and back by retrieving and sending owls at night on one of the remote pylons of the prison.

Unlike Voldemort, Lucius had never wanted to rule the magic world - he just wanted to own most of it. It had amused him when the Gringott goblins grumbled about opening a second vault for his money because his original one was too full. The irony was not lost on the blond wizard that he currently had only the cheap uniform he stood up in, his shoes and socks, a small sliver of soap, a bit of rag, and a comb to his name. But his wealth would be waiting for him when he was released, if he made it out of prison. He had a bad enemy in Minister of Magic Scrimgeour.

The guards hadn’t figured out how Lucius had escaped his cell when they caught him in the owl cote until a few days later when they had felt a fresh breeze along the corridor and traced it to his cell and a new balcony the wizard had transfigured. At that point the Warden had been brought into the problem and Lucius was thereafter adorned with his cuffs.

Lucius admitted that the balcony had been a mistake, but he’d been nearly asphyxiated from a stench that wouldn’t dissipate due to some clogged drainage used for throwing out waste. The guards had failed to report the problem because they knew they would have to clean the noisome detritus caught in the pipe. In the stifling environs, the fetid air had been nauseating and ultimately dangerous to the other inhabitants of the cellblock. The clog had caused the waste occasionally to even back up through the floor grate into the cells. Several of the prisoners had to be hospitalized on the mainland for a few days.

The only good thing that had happened was exposing the sloth of the guards to the Warden’s notice. Thereafter, the prisoners had regular water changes and removals of waste. And several of the guards themselves were changed. The average intelligence quotient of the guards hadn’t risen, but the conscientiousness had increased. Apparently guard duty at Azkaban wasn’t a much sought after career for anyone with even a modicum of brains or ambition.

Lucius knew he was exceptionally fortunate that the Dementors had never returned to the prison or his existence would have been miserable and probably brief, although his particular personality might not have interested the creatures who were drawn to positive, cheerful emotions, sucking them out of their victims, leaving them soulless. It was questionable if Lucius still owned his soul. However, his potent magical abilities would certainly have doomed him to annihilation under their tender mercies as they also prized a strong magic talent.

“If you’re ready for some tissue, you’re to use those old newspapers in the corner. I’m afraid I forgot that detail in my guided tour. And from now on, if you’re able, my suggestion is to wait until it’s dark and your bunkmate is asleep for your relief. It affords more privacy.” Lucius politely waited as he heard the rustle of the newspaper, then he sat back down on his cot and pulled up his feet onto the faded blanket as he began gazing into the orb again. Perversions indeed. Could his new roommate be any more naive? Lucius snorted in derision laced with reluctant amusement.

“I’ll try to follow your suggestion, but I can’t promise anything.” Hermione stood up, feeling miles better now and ready for more verbal skirmishing with the coldly handsome, pretentious autocrat. There was nothing like being forced to share private bodily functions to break the social ice. But she still wasn’t looking forward to doing the same for Lucius. Maybe he would wait until she was asleep. One could hope.

Hermione looked more closely at the unused portion of the newspaper in her hand, “Hey, these newspapers are only a few days old. How are you getting them?”

“Well, they don’t exactly deliver them to my door, if that’s what you’re asking.” Lucius quirked an eyebrow at her in faint contempt. “As it happens, Severus visits me occasionally. You missed him by two days, hence the recent Daily Prophets.

“Headmaster Snape actually comes all this way to visit you? I didn’t know you were such friends.” Hermione was astonished at the strange connection.

“Not that it’s your concern, but we have business interests together. I’m still needed for my signature on various documents and we often need to discuss our ventures in some detail. My being in Azkaban didn’t negate all my other financial dealings.”

She said excitedly, “Then the next time he comes to see you, he can alert my parents and my friends that I’m here!” She twirled around once belling out her nightgown and clapping her hands at the news that there appeared to be a way to communicate with all the people who would worry about her disappearance. Hermione’s mood took an upward leap of happiness.

She was still surprised at Lucius’ business disclosures but when she saw his eyes were now boldly raking her ankles exposed by the flight of her flannel nightgown instead of concentrating on his orb, her mind reverted to a more pressing subject. She was trying hard not to face the possibility that she was going to be an unwilling victim of his infamous libido.

A couple of the guards had already grabbed her inappropriately and whispered their intention to visit her later. She wasn’t vain, but even though she was young and still naïve in many ways, she was also a realist and her availability and vulnerability to both the guards and her cellmate started to weigh on her. How did one bring up the subject of not wanting sex with someone who hadn’t yet asked for it?

In this Hermione was definitely being naive. She hadn’t been shoved through the door two minutes before Lucius was assessing how to seduce her. He was never one to rush his fences, however. He was certainly clever enough to know that a lone female in a prison cell would be bait for any number of predatory males, including several of the guards. Lucius planned to be the one winning the prize.

It would obviously do him no good to take the leavings of someone else’s rape; he had already taken her measure enough to know force would be required, and if a guard or two got to her first, she’d be so traumatized she wouldn’t be of any use to him for a long time. So his first step was to make her undesirable to anyone else. He reserved his knowledge of his owl system to himself for the time being. He wasn’t interested in having any interference in his cellmate’s accommodations for a while.

Lucius cogitated for a few moments, finally deciding on a skin ailment that would look so nasty no one would want to touch her. How to talk her into it, though, was another matter. It would be easy enough for him to do it with a verbal or even a nonverbal spell. But the results would look rather disgusting and she might not care for it. Maybe he should just tell her the truth – that she probably had less than a day before a guard would try to take her someplace private for a few minutes.

He went back to looking at his orb but sought her attention by the simple expedient of idly remarking to the room at large, “I wonder how long it will be before the first guard gets up his courage - and his appendage - and comes to take you to a broom closet for a little one-on-one?” Lucius then turned his icy gaze on Hermione in speculation. He didn’t have to wait long for the exigencies of her position to show clearly in her face.

“They’ve already been…well, I have a few bruises in places that don’t show. They would dare..?” Hermione looked simultaneously scared almost white and fiercely bellicose.

Lucius was a little impressed with her attitude, and oddly, he was rather incensed that any of those cretin guards would touch his property. He saw he was exactly right that she would fight any attack with everything she could. “I’ve been thinking about your predicament, having some experience listening to Bella’s screams – that was, of course, before she became so vicious that the guards let her alone.” He noticed that Hermione’s face drained of the last of its color. “My thought is that if you were incredibly repulsive, they wouldn’t want you and you would be safe.” From them, he added silently.

“You mean be disfigured?” Hermione wondered if the trade-off was worth it.

“No. Merely look like you had something communicable or so disgusting to touch, they wouldn’t want to be near you. Perhaps pustules…” Lucius gave it some more thought. “You could be allergic to something in the prison, never identified, that made you break out in horrendous open sores.”

“That sounds more painful than being raped. That is what you were referring to, wasn’t it?” Hermione shivered in her nightgown and pulled her thin blanket off the cot, covering herself with it before remembering it was extremely dusty. “Achoo!” she got a lungful of the dry cloud she’d unknowingly created. Where had all the dust come from? Had the cot been covered in it when it was moved into this cell? Hermione slid a sample between her fingers feeling the tiny grit. It looked remarkably like Lucius’ dusty fingers and Hermione filed that away to be analyzed later.

“Oh, I would create a glamour for you so it would appear horrible, but it would only be an illusion. If need be I could complain that you might be communicable and you should be taken to the doctor. I happen to know the doctor decamped last month after an argument with Warden le Fay, and no one has come to replace him. Then you could explain it’s a condition you get whenever you are near the sea, or some such.” Lucius grinned, “I think that should do it.”

Hermione was intrigued by her insider’s view of Lucius’ celebrated Slytherin mind at work. He really was frighteningly devious. Luckily it was working on her behalf for the moment. At that point, Hermione’s intellect kicked in, flaring with warning lights.

Suspicious brown eyes met benign pale gray, “I do appreciate all your help in attempting to protect me. I, too, believe it’s only a matter of time before their slow minds decide I’m more fun than a game of checkers. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, Mr. Malfoy, but I’d be stupider than the guards not to ask two questions. One, how can you do a glamour if you’re wearing those dampening cuffs? And two, just what is in it for you?”

Lucius’ smile became more natural and less calculating as he replied with a chuckle, “Please call me Lucius. I think we’ve gone well past the social barriers already, don’t you, tidbit? The cuffs report any major attempts to transfigure to Warden le Fay, but he doesn’t know the half of what I can do without a wand. I wish to keep it that way.”

Hermione interrupted, “Is it the dark magic that you use? Does that give you powers le Fay wouldn’t think to counteract?”

Lucius raised an annoyed eyebrow, “If we are going to be casting unfounded slurs I may rethink my offer of help.”

“Oh, pul-lease! You’re known far and wide as a minion of the Dark Lord. Why are you…” Hermione started to laugh, “Oh, good try, Lucius. I can’t believe you don’t have the guards in your pocket already. I imagine you have them all on your payroll. They won’t touch me without your command. So I repeat, what’s in this for you? Is this little scare tactic for…what? Herding me into your protection? Then as the grateful recipient of your help I fall into bed, excuse me, cot with you?” Hermione gazed sardonically at her cellmate. “Lucius, just how – and where - were you going to effect the glamour without your wand?” She already knew the answer to her question, she just wanted him to say it.

“First off,” the Pureblood Malfoy chin climbed into the air, “I am no one’s minion. You make it sound like I was an exploited slave performing menial tasks and being kicked for my efforts.”

Hermione interrupted again, “No, that’s a description of your abused house elves. I wouldn’t compare your selfish, racist subversions to a hard-working, reliable elf.”

“Can we get back to the main point?” Lucius had heard vaguely of her campaign to free the elves and had not been amused. “Without my wand I would simply have done a verbal spell.”

“And?”

“Placed the sores by touch.” He smiled engagingly and Hermione blinked at her first frisson of awareness of her cellmate as a man, a very magnetic man.

He sat back and admired her blank stare. She was finally seeing him as something more than a one-dimensional, ruthless Death Eater. That was enough for now. He shook off his reaction of being perhaps too pleased about her awareness of him as a man. Really, he fumed to himself castigating his own attraction to her, she’s only a Mudblood, even though her mind, oh my Gods, her mind - he stamped on his unruly libido, ruefully seeing and fearing his own weakness for a first-class mind wrapped in a young, pretty, feminine package. All he wanted was the package he assured himself.

“You give me too much credit if you think I can control the guards.” Lucius denied, trying to yank his own mind off her mental assets, instead angling to view her physical ones. “I can get small concessions now and then but keeping men who are stuck on an isolated rock away from a young, lovely, vulnerable female prisoner unfortunately is more than I can accomplish with threats or bribes alone.” Lucius held up his hand and extended his index finger, “So shall I…touch?”

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So - a bit more backstory as our hero and heroine skirt each other, assessing strengths and weaknesses. Reviews will be welcomed with much anticipation (and a bit of anxiety). I hope this story will meet your expectations.

LaBib
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