Shades In Between

The elf, whose name she had been unable to extract, refused to say a word and left as soon as the tray was placed on the floor. On what she figured to be the eighth day of her captivity, she was laying on the green bedspread when Rabastan stumbled through the door of the tiny room.

“Hello, little wren.” The smell of firewhisky assaulted her senses and his bloodshot eyes made her wonder just how long he had been drinking. “You will be happy to know that the Dark Lord believes you to be safe with Potter.” He looked at the woman, her curves showing through the robes he instantly recognized as his mothers’. “Where did you get the clothes, Mudblood?” The bitter acid in his voice came so fast, her head spun. Sitting up on the bed and fighting the urge to back up, she looked at the fury evident in every inch of his body.

“The... the elf brought them. With the food.” Resisting the urge to babble was difficult under the still furious gaze, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying anything further. She started to worry for the poor house-elf, and cursed herself for betraying the blameless being. “I asked it to bring them, its not his fault.” The rushed out statement was met with an ugly sneer, as he advanced on the bed.

“You will at once remove my mother’s robes from your body, or I will rip them off myself,” he growled as he continued the slow advance. Her brain seemed to shut off, and she started struggling with the fastenings of the rust red robes. She quickly shrugged them off and threw them at him, scrambling to put the bed between them.

“You... You beast!” Against her better judgment she felt her temper flare. How was it her fault he had her stuck in this house, with nothing to wear except his mother’s old clothes? How was any of this her fault? “You stay away from me, Lestrange!”

For a moment Rabastan paused, looking at the woman across the bed, clad in bright purple underwear glaring at him for all she was worth. A pulse of arousal made his breath catch, and he was pissed enough not the feel the accompanying disgust that sobriety would have assured him. Hermione noticed the moment that his gaze went from angry to something else, no less intense. Her breath caught as his sky blue eyes darkened. Without warning he leapt across the bed, and with feline grace caught her upper arms in a bruising hold.

“Amazing what those robes hide, little wren.” The whisper against her ear made the bottom of her stomach fall out, and she shuddered. Her situation started looking a lot worse as she began recalling the whispers in Gryffindor Tower about the revels and all the awful things Death Eaters did. Lestrange’s grip tightened and he threw her on the bed, covering her body with his much larger one before she had a chance to squirm away.

The alcohol in his breath made her gag, and she suddenly wished she’d taken Dean Thomas up on his offer of, “A shag before we die.” It seemed she was going to be getting both, and according to the stories she had tried not to overhear, it would not be in that precise order.