Hysteria

A/N: My eternal gratitude to Softobsidian74 for alpha reading and feedback and to robs55 for the fantastic beta.

Please note that this is one of the darkest chapters. Nearly all warnings apply. It is possible to read this story even if you skip over this one. From the second half of the next chapter, Draco will be back.


It has been brought to my attention that I have not been clear enough about the point that much of this story is historically based. 'Female hysteria' was a commonly accepted diagnosis for at least 2000 years (in words: two thousand) All treatments described were at some point used for hysteria treatment. Most women only received pelvic massage therapy but they could also easily be carted off to an insane asylum and were headed for a lobotomy. Many quotes I use are 'wizardised' and reworded quotes from doctors, who have treated hysteria patients in Victorian times or earlier.

I have been asked not to answer reviews within the chapter. Review responses and the story banner can be found here:

http://lady-of-clunn.livejournal. com /78790.html

Just take out the spaces :)

Cohibeo


The keeper came back as he had promised.

“You are one of the girls they don’t hear.”

He loosened her hospital robes and pushed them down to her elbows, exposing her breasts to the cool air of the nightly ward as he had done for several nights now.

“The pure-blood girls never stay long; a week, maybe two. Then their families arrange a marriage contract and the healers agree to outpatient treatment.”

Hermione followed his large hand as he trailed a fingertip from one tip of her breast to the other.

“You don’t have anybody to arrange a contract for you, do you?”

Fingertips grasped a pebbled nipple and gently rolled it.

“Girls never paid attention to me. I did not have the brains of the Ravenclaw boys or the looks of Cedric or the wealth of the old pure-blood families.”

The keeper, whose name Hermione still did not know, stepped to the foot of her bed and folded back the white duvet with the white, heavily starched duvet cover.

“I had nothing to offer.”

His palm slid along her calf and then her thigh. Gently, slowly, reverently.

“You never looked my way, either.”

A finger separated her nether lips.

“I understand. You had a lot on your mind, right from first year.”

He circled her clit with a light touch.

“They say never to penetrate you. You should not be aroused, they say.”

He raised his gaze to look into her eyes and inserted two fingers deeply into his mouth, bringing them back glistening with saliva.

Hermione did not dare to beg the gentle giant of a man, all alone in the silent ward.

The fingers penetrated her and stilled for a few heartbeats. Hermione could see that he had closed his eyes, relishing the wet heat at her centre in wonderment.

“I want to arouse you.”

The fingers slid back and forth.

“Am I doing this right?”

A thumb found her clit.

“You are so wet.”

His left hand tugged and tore at his light blue robes. She could not see what he was doing, but suddenly a hard, hot rod of skin-covered steel was thrust between the mattress and the iron bed frame and into her hand.

“So good.”

He covered her fingers with his hand like an iron clamp.

The thrusts of his hips came in tandem with the thrusts of his fingers into her pussy.

“Hermione!”

Wet, hot splats landed on her exposed stomach and his hand between her thighs was still.

Her hand was released from the crushing grip and he withdrew his softening cock from her.

“Did I do well?”

He tenderly stroked her sex.

“Can I arouse you?”

The duvet was placed over her legs.

“Can I satisfy you?”

He stared at the streaks of his seed marking the skin of her stomach and vanished them with a hitch of hesitation in his voice.

“Can I bring you pleasure?”

Her hospital robes were drawn up to her neck and fastened.

“I never had something to offer, but now I have, and for you.”

He leant forward and kissed her cheek.

“I offer you freedom.”

A kiss to her other cheek where he lingered; cheek pressed to cheek, a whisper close to her ear.

“I will ask the Ministry for permission to marry you.”

Hermione could not take her eyes off his retreating back when he left the ward to continue his nightly rounds.

Somehow, she feared that his idea of freedom was quite different from hers.


***


Day was not her friend, either. Day brought healer de Belleme and his eager students. Day brought treatment.

Day brought apprentice healer Payne.

“Traditionally,” de Belleme paced the length of the room and turned back sharply to walk into the opposite direction. “You should never look at the pelvic region of your patient. I know that some younger colleagues do not agree.”

Draco?

“Nevertheless, I urge you to maintain the proper decorum when treating your private patients. Do maintain eye contact at all times. Payne, demonstrate.”

“Sir, there are not enough subjects.”

“Do not be ridiculous. You have your patient right in front of you!”

De Belleme motioned toward Hermione.

No!

She was still feeling numb from the earlier treatment just minutes ago.

She hardly registered as her legs were positioned.

For the first time, healer Payne made eye contact with her.

He fumbled blindly between her thighs, concentrating hard not to break eye contact with her.

When he finally assumed a sliding movement with his hand, Hermione decided to take the risk.

“Please stop. It’s too much; too soon. Please.”

Payne froze in shock and resumed the rubbing and circling of his fingers but he stared at her in bewilderment.

“Please, it hurts.”

He did not dare to look away.

“Sir, she is begging me to stop.”

“To stop? Payne, who is the healer? You or her? You know the clinical picture. Ignore her.”

She could feel the dreaded tears again.

De Belleme was addressing the other apprentices.

“Under no circumstances should you penetrate the patient. We are here to administer medical treatment, not to arouse the patients. Hysteria is found in particularly passionate witches. We should strive not to heighten any form of unnatural feelings.”

“Sir, I think she is in pain.”

“She can handle it! Be persistent. Play with her; vary your movements.”

Being touched was becoming increasingly torturous. Hermione could not help it. Her hips tried to jerk away at every contact.

“She is trying to evade you, Payne!”

Large hands slammed down on her hip bones and pinned her lower body to the mattress.

Her fight or flight instinct flared up brightly and she tried to struggle against the healer only to find the hands replaced by more restraints.

“This subject has a history of trying to reject treatment. It calls for a belt and braces approach. Do not let up!”

Apprentice healer Payne stared into Hermione’s face. She could no longer help but sob openly, knowing full well that her tears and apparent reluctance to comply with treatment would bring repercussions later on.


***


They had taken her sight.

They had taken her hearing.

They had cast a permanent Levicorpus spell and a half-hearted warming charm.

The world was dark and silent and lukewarm.

The potion in her system was effectively paralysing her, she could not even rub her fingers together in an effort to confirm that she was indeed still there.

Or was she?

How she was able to breathe and keep her heart beating was beyond any scientific explanation.

Magic was at work. The same magic that permitted her to blink and protect her eyes from drying out during... treatment.

Fighting against apprentice healer Payne had been bad.

She had been unable to stop crying and found herself in a state that even she herself would classify as hysterical.

The memory was hazy, but healer de Belleme had shouted and the apprentices had suddenly looked keen and hungry and had closed in on her around her bed.

After forcing several potions down her throat, her hospital bed had been wheeled into an empty room illuminated dimly with light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

Sensory deprivation.

To settle her womb.

Hermione had no sense of time, but soon after the start of what was between then and now and eternity, her skin had begun to itch.

Panicked, she had tried to flex muscles; say something; alert the fucking apprentices and the fucking medical staff supposedly monitoring them and her to the fact that she was trapped.

And that she was going insane.

Only that they were curing her of the exact same thing.

Hermione started blinking furiously.

Desperate to maintain all the control she had over her body, every blink made sure she would not fade into nothingness.

Her body wanted to hyperventilate, but the potions maintained a slow, steady inhale and exhale.

In between blinks she could now see shadowy shifting shapes above her head. Or was it underneath?

A sudden sense of vertigo made a wave of nausea gather low in her stomach, rising to her throat but unable to relieve her of the feeling of being disoriented and lost.

The world was dark and silent and lukewarm.

Were they still standing around her bed in a circle?

Did they eagerly note how often she blinked per minute on their pristine, white clipboards?

So dark and silent.

Or had they left?

Had they gone on to the next patient, or to lunch or home at the end of shift?

They would not leave her like this over night, would they?

Was that allowed?

...

Trying to centre her energy and magical force, Hermione reached out into the dark space that was the treatment room.

Nothing.

Empty.

Alone.

Hermione closed her eyes to the blackness and pretended to be at home in her bed, after a long day researching at the Ministry.

She wanted to jerk awake, but even this was denied to her.

Had she fallen asleep or simply lost any sense of passing time?

How long had she been here?

Where was ‘here’?

Still dark and silent and lukewarm.

Her body breathed steadily.

Her arms and legs had been stretched out so they would not brush up against each other or her body.

She assumed that she was still in the same position; floating above her hospital bed in that empty, dim room.

Although it did not matter, she hoped that the bed was still underneath her body as if an object in the room could anchor her to the real world and would stop her from floating away and out of reach into the dark, still, lukewarm ocean.

Maybe she had fallen asleep again or she had lost grasp of her mind for a while.

Malfoy was standing—or floating?—next to her, looking out of proportion and larger than she remembered.

“Granger, Granger. Had I not told you that you need a man? A virile husband, engaging you twice or thrice a week.”

He shook his head in disapproval.

“And what do you do? You let your womb take over your mind; spreading your legs for all and sundry to see, making your cunt a public place.”

He raised his gaze to something or somebody at her other side.

“She calls for a belt and braces approach, Keeper. She might even need more than three sessions per week.”

“I will do my best to engage her every day,” the voice of the night shift keeper said before he came into view.

“Good man, good man. I would even say more often than that. Mornings and evenings. Yes.”

Malfoy’s face had slowly morphed from pale to white to a greenish tinge. His eyes and mouth looked cruel and unforgiving.

“Mornings and evenings, yes sir, and more often during my nights off duty.”

The keeper had come closer and closer, his now familiar features turning into something else, something frightening.

Both Malfoy and he were now bent over her, twin pairs of Voldemort’s red eyes staring from noseless faces.

Virtually in a blink of her eye, both were gone.

Around her the still darkness persisted, but now something seemed to linger just outside her line of vision.

An evil presence; slithering along the floor; hiding under her bed that was maybe there.

Harry?

Evil curled around one leg of the bed underneath her and slid upward onto the mattress where it poised and waited. A feeling as if the warming charm had failed in between her shoulder blades and along her spine.

Mummy?

Mummy!

The world was silent and dark and lukewarm.