Illumination

That night, he is waiting for her in the room they share.

“I believe it is time to decide if I have indeed had my vengeance,” he says, and she looks up, surprised.

“Vengeance?” Hermione chews on her hair, forcing herself not to think of the experiment she is working on or the potion that is brewing.

“I told you, Miss Granger,” he hisses, and she blinks and moves back warily. Just because he is no longer the enemy he once was does not mean she does not fear him. All servants of the Dark Lord fear him, if they have any sense. “I believe I have profited the most, you see, from our experiment. You are indeed clever, and you have studied the Dark Arts and all I have to teach you most admirably. You refer to me as ‘my lord.’ My Death Eaters bow to your knowledge of the dark arts. Tell me, Hermione, have I succeeded in turning you to the darkness?”

She stares at him, nonplussed. “There is no such thing as the dark arts,” she tells him, an imperious tone in her voice. “There is only magic—and those too weak to use it.”

He laughs quietly in the darkness. “It would appear I have indeed succeeded.” He bows to her neatly. “You have betrayed them all, you know. Your friends, your family, all those who you fought with against me. You sleep in my bed and are counted amongst my most loyal of servants. What have you to say to this?”

Hermione thinks about it long and hard before she answers him. “I have come to the conclusion that the past problems were the result of pretending the Dark Arts were some evil brand of forbidden knowledge,” she says. She paces around the room, tapping her wand in her hand thoughtfully. “If we had never locked away this knowledge then there would have never been a problem. I blame this mostly on the Ministry, you see. They insisted upon treating all witches and wizards like idiots who would be so easily corrupted by the dark arts. Why, that is simply ridiculous. I am still Hermione Granger, and I am far from corrupt. I owe it to the memory of my friends to work with this knowledge for the greater good.”

She does not realize what she is saying, because he is correct. The dark arts have seduced her, she has lost herself to them, and the secret of it is that she does not realize it. He smiles but she cannot see it.

Her dreams that night are more intense—the pleasure is mixed with pain, and she awakes moaning and shifting in the bed. She sees him standing next to her, watching her. They stare at each other while she writhes under his scrutiny. “Why do you wear the hood, all the time?”

She thinks she hears him suck in a breath. “You do not wish to see what I am, what I have become.”

The answer is so unexpected that she laughs. “You are doing this to me, aren’t you? The dreams, the hands that caress me—they are yours.”

His head inclines to her, slowly. “Yes,” he says, the word a hiss.

Her heart is pounding. “Why do you not just take me?”

She has said it, finally, and feels relief in doing so. The final horror has been confronted; the last vestige of her resistance has crumbled.

“I do not destroy that which I find valuable, Hermione; I have told you this before.” The intensity of his gleaming red eyes unnerves and excites her.


Hermione runs her tongue on her bottom lip, grasping at the sheets beneath her. Her body feels overheated; she desperately wants to cool it. “You think it would destroy me?” She surprises him by saying, “you’ve already destroyed me.”


“I didn’t think you noticed,” he says, and he moves closer to her.

“I noticed,” she says, her voice tremulous. “I just did not care.”

She watches his hands go up, pushing the hood off his face. She sucks in a breath, but does not scream. His face is harsh and as serpentine as his glorious crimson eyes—but she cannot find the fear that should be inside of her. This is what the magic has done to him, she thinks. She raises a hand up to him, almost in supplication. The desire swirls around her; she can no longer stand the torment. “Please,” she whispers, her voice a sob.

When he comes to her, his body is cold, and it feels good against the heat of her own. She presses against him, running her hands over his smooth skin in furious delight. Those deadly cold fingers slide over her body, and she throws her head back and moans as her dreams have become shattering reality. The very thought of who he is, of who she is embracing, fuels her fear. Fear, in turn, fuels her desire, and she grasps at him in pleasure as his mouth bites at her neck.

She has studied the Dark Arts, she has given herself to the darkness in every way but this one. It seems only right that she should give herself to he who embodies all that is dark and deadly, he for whom she has forsaken what she once was. It is painful and violent, dark and sinister, and she loves it. Her hands scratch at him, she likes that she has drawn blood on his skin as he has done on hers. His tongue is wicked as it moves down her body, and she smiles in delight as it flickers over her ear, enticing her. She feels him pressing hard against her, and is almost sobbing in her terror and her desire.

His voice is still cold and harsh in her ear, but she finds it erotic. He tells her things that should horrify her, but instead they drive her desire further. His cold fingers caress her and roughly thrust inside her, the feeling is pure bliss. She comes, and she cries his name, and his laugh against her skin is a hiss. She arches into his body when he fills her, she stares into his crimson eyes as he claims her. She kisses him, and swallows his exultant shout when he spills himself inside her.

She sleeps in his arms, his face against her neck, his cold, long fingers curved possessively over her.