Inside the Blackest Heart (Edit, Not Update)

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to JKR. All situations are mine. No $$$ is being made from this fanfic.
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Chapter 39 ~ Breakfast at Voldemort’s

Hermione entered the throne room to find Voldemort seated at a table covered in blue silk. Before him were several very small platters of food. Eggs, biscuits, ham, bacon, honey, strawberries and orange slices. There were also small pitchers of milk, orange juice and pumpkin juice. He rose when Hermione approached and moved fluidly toward her, his red eyes glittering as they swept over her, and slitting in approval before he pressed his thin lips to her hand and escorted her to the table. He pulled out her chair for her. She sat and he slid her closer to the table neatly.

“Thank you, my Lord,” Hermione said.

“You are welcome, Miss Granger,” he replied, seating himself across from her. His fixed his red eyes to hers.

“You look lovely,” Voldemort lisped.

Hermione lowered her eyes and blushed slightly at his compliment. Her response seemed to please him. He didn’t generally associate with women who could still blush. He liked that she wasn’t hardened yet. Snape, the brute that he was, hadn’t yet ruined her.

“I hope you find the offerings acceptable,” he said gesturing to the food on the table.

“Oh, this is fine my Lord. All my favorites,” Hermione said. She licked her lips. She was very hungry. She looked at Lord Voldemort to see if he would begin serving.

“Ah, my dear…you go ahead and serve yourself what you like. I, myself do not partake of food such as this. I have other means of gaining sustenance,” he said softly.

Hermione didn’t want to think what that was. Actually it was a mixture of snake venom and various potions Snape had created for the Dark Lord. But Hermione had the gist of it. The ingredients of those potions had required the loss of innocent lives. “Small lives” as Voldemort liked to refer to muggles.

Hermione began to fill her plate, and ate heartily as the Dark Lord watched her. He studied her face. It was a lovely face, but intelligent also. She didn’t have the vacuous look in her eyes that most of the women he had dealt with did. She was smart, this one. But young. So young. She was a small woman too. Small women were very pleasing to him sexually. They granted easy access and were easy to physically dominate and manipulate. He continued to watch her as she ate, occasionally looking up at him and smiling.

After Hermione had taken the edge off her hunger, she looked up at the Dark Lord.

“Everything is delicious, my Lord. Thank you for inviting me to breakfast,” she said, smiling at the dark wizard.

“I am glad you enjoyed it, Miss Granger. Now that you have been fed, I am hoping you will feed my curiosity about you. Tell me about yourself. How you came to be in the wizarding world,” he lisped.

Hermione told him how as a child, strange things would happen around her. Mirrors suddenly breaking, the telly turning on and off. Once a bully was thrown several feet when he yanked her hair. Things like that. The children used to call her “Stranger Granger”. She had no friends, so she read everything she could get her hands on. Books were her only friends.

Her parents worried about her so much. She was so withdrawn and self-contained. One day, Albus Dumbledore showed up at her parent’s flat with her letter to Hogwarts. He explained she was a witch, and had been accepted to Hogwarts. Her parents thought Albus was a nutter, until he took them to Hogwarts for a tour. She was enrolled.

Hermione hesitated. Harry was a large part of her life at Hogwarts, and she knew Voldemort hated him. The wizard noticed her hesitance.

“You may be candid, Miss Granger. I am well aware you are a friend of Harry Potter’s. I will not hold that against you. I am very interested in how you met,” he said, his red eyes meeting hers.

Hermione decided truthfulness was the best policy, and told him about being sorted into the same house, and meeting Harry and Ronald, the incident with the mountain troll that sealed their friendship and their adventures together. She also told of her classes, the subjects she’d studied, the growing responsibilities she had assigned to her. She left out her involvement with the Order however. Voldemort listened with rapt interest.

“And how did you find out you were a Primordial?” he asked.

“Strange things started happening around me. Things drying out at first. Then other things. Then I turned Ron’s head into an ass’s head after an argument. Harry helped me figure it out. I couldn’t do wandless magic, and what I did do was spell-less as well. Only Primordials could do spell-less magic.”

“You are only eighteen. A woman legally, but hardly mature. Most Primordials are well into their twenties before their powers began to manifest. What happened to speed up the process?” Voldemort asked, though he was aware it could only be one thing. Snape taking away her innocence.

“I believe it was my involvement with Professor Snape,” Hermione said, blushing furiously, “he took my virginity.”

“Surely, being fucked for the first time removes some innocence, but it hardly matures you,’ Voldemort said, pressing for more details.

Hermione blushed again, much deeper this time.

“The way the Professor took me, believe me, it matured me quickly,” she said candidly.

Voldemort chuckled.

“Yes, Snape has never been what I would call a “tender” sort. I imagine your first night was a thorough and rather brutal education,” he lisped. He felt a rise under his robes as he broached this subject.

“Yes,” Hermione replied, wanting to get off this topic, as the Dark Wizard was looking at her rather hotly.

“Tell me about yourself, my Lord. I have been taught things…horrible things about you all my life. I would like to hear your take on who and what you are,” she said earnestly.

The Dark Lord sat back and looked at the witch consideringly.

“Miss Granger, I adhere to the adage, ‘To the strongest go the spoils’. I am also a sensualist and believe that personal pleasure is a worthy pursuit. My early life was a nightmare and I was orphaned at an early age. Orphans are never treated well, Miss Granger. They are denied even the basic necessities of life, five and six year old children worked like full grown men and women, becoming victims of crimes too hideous to describe, violations and molestations and no one to voice the wrongs against them, despite the so-called government agencies meant to protect them. I felt powerless, and decided that I needed to become strong and claim the pleasures and spoils that the world had to offer. So I worked at it, Miss Granger, and earned the respect of others that were downtrodden. I lifted them up, showed them the power that could be theirs if they cast aside their preconceived notions of right and wrong, and focused on the self.

“I am a half-blood, Miss Granger, but discovered the weakest in the wizarding world were the purebloods. Generations of inbreeding and comfort had weakened them, and what they considered riches were not riches at all. I showed them a new way, and they flocked to me, hungry for the power and the pleasure and the freedom I could give to them if they only obeyed me. My deatheaters were formed. We dabbled in the old arts, searching for the key to immortality, that is how the name “deatheater” came into being. We were targeted for our beliefs. We did not look for heaven as our place of reward, Miss Granger, we sought our rewards here, on earth. We were deemed anarchists and atheists, because we did not believe in organized government which only bred vice and political avarice, or religion, which only restricts men and women from enjoying life and saddles them with guilt.”

Voldemort took a deep breath, and continued.

“My deatheaters were attacked in the streets, in the newspapers, and on the wireless. They were disrespected and degraded. War was declared upon us, Miss Granger, simply because we believed differently and exercised our Slytherin tendencies boldly, although not all my deatheaters are Slytherins.”

“Since all of my deatheaters were purebloods and muggle-borns not admitted entrance to our assembly because they were not weak, did not share the same history and gene pool as the purebloods, we were deemed a hate group. But we should have been entitled to admit whom we want to our own private gatherings. So problems with muggles and muggle-borns began as well, the muggle parents and relatives of muggle-born children targeting us, protesting us, attacking us, and beating us in the streets. So we fought back, and in the process gained the name of being evil, when evil was done against us.”

Here, the wizard paused, and wiped his face with his scaly hand.

“Eventually, even the mark my deatheaters carried was cause for arrest and Azkaban, sometimes without trial, their souls taken by Dementors. Albus Dumbledore led the persecution against us. Over time, constant persecution will make anyone lose his hold. Tired of being called evil, I became evil incarnate, driven to it by the unfair practices of the wizarding world. Now I strike at those who would strike at me and mine first. But I still have my dreams of complete freedom from organized government and religious beliefs. People could live freely and happily without such weights around their necks. But there are those, like Albus Dumbledore who refuse to relinquish power to the masses, where it rightfully belongs. They want to keep all chained to the machine while they work the buttons, Miss Granger and reap all the glory.”

Voldemort looked at Hermione piercingly.

“My fight is the fight for freedom, where all can follow their own path without restrictions and without restraint. Those who are strong will gain the most of course, but those who have less will find the means to survive as well, naturally falling into their roles as do all things in nature. Even the blackest heart longs for freedom, Miss Granger. Believe me when I say I do not want to rule the world, I want to free it.. It is the so-called “Light” that seeks to control every aspect of human existence.”

The wizard leaned forward, his red eyes glittering.

“You yourself have been a victim of that machine. They have directed your life, raped you for your intelligence, heaped unfair responsibilities upon you, and when you sought to follow your own path, they tried to kill the people you loved so you would have no where to go, and now hunt you like an animal because you would not submit to their directives and forced destiny. Yes, I know you were being groomed to serve the Order, Miss Granger, and now that that brush has slipped from their hands, they will not let you live. I believe you have a right to live, Miss Granger, but they will not allow you to. You will have to fight for your right to be. To exist, the same as I do. I am hoping we can end this unfairness together, Miss Granger. I hope that when the time comes to face the forces of the “Light” you will be on my side.”

Hermione looked at him. “I’ve never heard this side of your story. You’ve given me much to think about my Lord,” she said carefully, not wanting to commit herself.

Voldemort looked at her, his eyes slightly hard.

“You think about it, Miss Granger. Think about how you yourself have been rewarded for your loyalty. For your obedience. For your trust. You’ve been pulled up by the roots, and forced to flee everything you’ve known and loved. You can’t even visit your parents now. You have been marked for death. Even you cannot justify the ‘Light’ in the face of all this wrongness. You have a decision to make, Miss Granger, and I give you the freedom to make it. That is more than anyone in the magical world has ever done for you.”

Voldemort rose, and walked around to help her from her seat. He faced her, his red eyes meeting hers.

“Thank you, Miss Granger for hearing me out. I am tired now, and must nourish myself. Please return to your rooms and make use of them,” he said. “The throne room will be available in an hour or so. You are welcome to return then, if you like.”

Hermione curtsied.

“Thank you, my Lord,” she said. Voldemort kissed her hand once more. This time she didn’t have to fight a shudder.

“Miss Granger,” he lisped, releasing her hand. He tiredly walked to his throne and sat heavily upon it.

"Peter!" he called.

The plump little deatheater seemed to appear out of nowhere. He bowed deeply.

"Yes my Lord?" he squeaked.

Hermione returned to her rooms, dropped to the living room couch and stared into space.

She had much to think about.

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A/N: Lots of dialogue from Voldy. I hope it made sense. Please review.