Prisoners of Love - A Mystery - COMPLETE

_______________________________________________________

Updated 7-30-07


Hugs to all my reviewers and readers. I had no internet for most of the time I was gone, so I was forced to do nothing but write. Plus, my family actually expected me to get out and do things with them! Can you imagine the nerve? I missed a lot of new chapters of the stories I'm reading and reviewing, and that's put me behind. So I'm glad to be back.

moxie I hope as the story continues, the mind bond is explained some more through their behavior. Essentially it is a gentle, but abiding connection that is rather ethereal, similar to falling in love, I suppose, if a bit more physically rooted in the brain. It binds a couple just that much more durably together. How can one explain the tie, the feeling of loving someone or how it comes about? The mental bond happens rather mysteriously just like falling in love. But the mental bond can be broken just like falling out of love if both people drift apart and TRULY have no more interest in their connection. It will fade naturally. Thanks for asking.

And sakura... anon Thank you for your compliment, but I feel like I'm flying under false colors with you. The story summary has the tag, 'preg' so you know someone will get pregnant in the story. I think you won't be disappointed though. I don't do mushy, lovey-dovey pregnancies. (Check out my other stories to see.)

And now, the story continues...

_______________________________________________________

Chapter Seven

Like Minds

Hermione greatly admired Lucius’ intelligence and his steadfast diligence in the face of a horrific existence, but she hated his narrow-minded opinions about other types of beings and his self-serving conscience, both of which had played significant parts in sending him to this North Sea rock. Unfortunately none of that was of much interest any more. Hermione was miserable about her affliction, seeing her heart and mind as terrible betrayers of all her prospective hopes and dreams. She raised her head suddenly as she felt a touch on her head. Lucius was bending over her, comb in hand, assessing where to start on her unruly bedhead.

He sat down next to Hermione, easing himself in close to her as he fancied he would approach a ticking time bomb. It was a sign of his inner chaos that the dark wizard was nowhere near the top of his game if he failed totally to understand that she wasn’t the only ticking time bomb in the cell.

Lucius’ innate and completely misplaced arrogant optimism was once more overpowering his normal mental acuity with his reckless assumption that her catastrophic revelations were merely inexperience talking – and talking and talking. Her vivid descriptions of her feelings had been uncomfortably close to his own, but he certainly hadn’t enjoyed the emotions roiling through him being couched in such repulsive and unflattering terms. Ants yet!

He was desperately hoping she had just been swept away by a physical surge of youthful hormones and he’d stupidly tripped them for her in a very incendiary way. She’d certainly tripped his libido into overdrive, revving his sexual engine riotously, but he’d had a lot of sexual experience and could control himself – if he could wrestle this excruciating internal pandemonium into submission. Oh, Gods, he prayed he was wrong – that this wasn’t what it felt like. For the rest, all he could do was keep his own counsel and hope his ill-timed and deplorably rampant feelings went away.

He waved the comb at her, “I said I would help you with the back of your hair. If you could scoot forward a bit, I can reach it more easily.” He wanted to do a bit of damage control, not only to her hair but also to their living arrangements and habits. Her reaction to him had to be addressed; his feelings were going to stay under wraps.

Part of his combing her hair for her was to be sure he could at least control the erotic shudders snaking through his body. It was imperative for him to rise above his base inclinations and succeed in his various plans of improvement. Having her help would make things go so much faster, and he wanted that cooperation. He didn’t think he could work with her if he was constantly reliving the perfect body hidden under her nightgown – Lucius inhaled shakily - and that perfect mind, now delicately anchored to his. Lucius firmly unplugged his thoughts from any closer inspection of his turbulent feelings for his cellmate by using his experience at staying remote emotionally, a trick he’d learned at great expense during Voldemort’s reign.

“I don’t want your help. Go away.” Hermione was ready to either scratch his eyes out or rape him on the spot. How could she live like this with him? Had it been only a day? What kind of demented pervert was she? Would she have fallen for any male she was caged with? She had thought herself so superior, pitying the other girls who had no control over their desires, shagging whoever took their fancy and then moaning about it to their girlfriends when they were thrown over for someone else.

Not for me! Hermione had thought. Oh, nooo. She was soooo much better, working in the Ministry of Magic as a financial liaison for Muggle affairs and planning for her future by saving her salary, buying her own little cottage, and avoiding the night life most of her friends indulged in, but which she had found mostly boring and unnecessary. She had congratulated herself for being so clever commuting through Harry’s disused property at 12 Grimmauld Place to her little home in the Muggle world, so it would appear that she lived in Harry’s house to any magic community outsiders.

Instead, she thought in some disgust, she was no more clever than the stupidest garden gnome, having saved herself for an arrogant, autocratic, supercilious, morally twisted, oh GODS, absolutely gorgeous man with whom she would have not a moment’s peace even if anything ever came of her fall from grace in his arms.

“Hermione, look at me.” Lucius grabbed her hair and jerked her face toward his. “We cannot just ignore our little mistake. It will be like trying not to notice a hippogriff in the cell.”

“OUR mistake? How do you include me in the blame? Oh, that is so typical of your Malfoy inability to accept blame - I saw it all the time from Draco.” Hermione swatted at his hand, dislodging it from her hair, then hunched her shoulders, hitching her butt away from him.

“I didn’t say your mistake, I said ours. Be reasonable. I’m not the one who bared their assets for all to see.”

“There was only you to see and I don’t know why you had to go off the deep end. You’d seen it all before,” she spat.

“Deep end? Of what?” Lucius shook his head to clear it. Mudbloods had the oddest idioms. “Oh never mind. Look,” Lucius tried heroically to justify his lack of control to both of them, “If someone had placed a slice of your favorite pie on your cot and said you couldn’t have it, but left it there for you to see and smell -”

“I don’t smell!”

“Shut up. I’m talking. If you had to see the pie but not have it, you know you would want it. Pretty soon you’d start to crave it. Then you would be thinking of nothing but that pie. And how good it would taste. You’d savor it in your mind, then maybe run your finger over it and lick your finger, then merely lick the pie, just to pretend to yourself that you weren’t really going to devour it when your willpower finally ebbed so low that the pie was more important than anything else in your entire existence. Then if someone placed a sliver of it in your mouth for you to eat, but said the rest of the pie was not for you, how would you feel?” Lucius ran his finger over Hermione’s cheek gathering up her lonesome tear and licking at the salty liquid with his tongue.

Hermione was succumbing to Lucius’ nearness again so she got up and walked to the end of her cot for a bit of space between them, wrapping her blanket around her for warmth, but she was already burning up from Lucius’ presence. Did he have to lick up her tear like it was a sugar quill? “So I’m a piece of pie?” she queried acidly.

“No, my dear, in my case, you’re actually a piece of tai-” Lucius laughed at Hermione’s outraged expression, starting to feel a little more positive about his admittedly difficult circumstances, trapped in a small chamber with an almost unbearable temptation.

“Oh, come on now,” he cajoled, “I was only joking. You must admit there is a funny side to all this. Or at least I’m trying to find one, while all you’re doing is behaving like a tragedy queen. Look around you. This is it. Our entire universe. We are stuck together for the foreseeable future, so if I can’t have pie, at least help me with my plans. We’ve already lost today because of your – I mean OUR - little dustup. I’m going to get back to my digging. Help if you want. Or not.” He knelt down on the stone floor behind her cot again.

“Not!” Hermione pouted and went to sit on Lucius’ bed once more, sulking at his cavalier attitude toward her fatal disease. If she had to suffer from him, she was going to create a whole host of palliative measures designed to bring herself relief and minimize his effect on her body and her mind. Her first move was to not watch him. Watching him dig only fed her irregular heartbeat, making it speed up with a slavish reaction to the play of his back muscles under those ludicrous stripes. “So you’re truly going to eat that piece of pie someday?”

“I told you yesterday I would. And if you keep kissing me like that, my piece is going to be eaten within the week. Just keep your nightgown down around your ankles and we’ll both have some peace. There’s a little pun for you to scoff at, while you start work on your hair. It really is a frightful mess in the back.”

Hermione would have liked to throw his assertion that she had kissed him back in his face, but honestly compelled her to admit if only to herself, that she had been devouring him as much as he had her. “Why do you care what my hair is like? I would have thought ugly hair would put you off me.” Hermione looked around for the comb, seeing it on her cot where Lucius had left it and reaching to pick it up.

“Two reasons,” Lucius replied, “One, I am offended by your slovenly unkempt hair.” He waited patiently for Hermione’s colorful animadversions on his prissy character to subside before saying, “and Two, you look like you just got out of bed after some hot sex and your slovenly, unkempt hair makes me want to tumble you right back into it.” He looked mildly sardonic at her shocked stare. “So, perhaps you’ll comb your hair, hmmm?” He got started on his dust seam again.

Hermione had worked out most of the tangles by the time the lunch cart rumbled into their corridor. She asked, “Are my sores still there on my face?”

Lucius looked over at her in surprise, “Yes, they’re all there. How very odd - I guess I don’t even see them any more. Are the ones on your torso still there? WAIT!” Lucius barked at Hermione’s automatic grab for her hem. “Sweet Goddess, don’t you ever learn? Let me turn my back.”

Hermione lifted her gown and saw all the sores were in place, as disfiguring as always and she realized she really didn’t notice them any more either. She supposed one could get used to anything no matter how disgusting. Her gaze lit on Lucius and she grimaced to herself. Yeah, probably anything, all right.

“Should you have a sore on your face to show that being around me means the disease will spread?” she asked. “If they think you’re immune maybe they’ll figure they are too and I’ll be in jeopardy again.

Lucius thought that idea over for a moment. “Let’s pass on that for now. I can always stick one on me later, if they get too interested again, but for now, I’d rather be able to trade items with them. They might stop letting me bargain for items if they thought they’d catch what you gave me.” He stood up and swung her cot back into place, then took his comb from her in order to work on his own slightly tousled hair.

Hermione nodded just as their door swung open. A guard came in with Lucius’ tray depositing it on his cot where Hermione sat looking as listless as she could.

The blond wizard had straightened Hermione’s cot, and now he sat on it, nonchalantly combing his own slightly disordered strands, which had been messed up from Hermione’s urgent arms around his neck. Lucius was glad to see this particular guard - he had his owl business through Otto and had traded with this guard before and now he wondered what he could get this time. His list was lengthy but Hermione’s clothes had to come first. He didn’t think he could bear to have her trying to keep warm at night by bunking in with him again, if he couldn’t touch her.

“When you’ve finished passing out the lunches, Otto, I’d like to talk to you a bit about some items we might be able to trade. I’ve heard you’re looking for a new fishing pole. I believe I can get one for you if we can agree on terms.” Lucius waited for the guard to indicate any interest in the deal. Lucius had unobtrusively touched the guard and met his eyes when the guard handed over the tray and Lucius read his simple mind easily, seeing a new fishing pole as Otto’s major thought besides his vague sadness at not being around horses.

Hermione watched the exchange, knowing what Lucius did to the guard and knowing she had better dust off her occlumency skills before Lucius turned that little trick on her. She didn’t think he had already or he’d be screaming to get her removed from his cell. Hermione smiled for the first time since her traumatic realization.

So, did she truly want him? This bigoted, dictatorial, sly, intriguing, shrewd, wicked, powerful wizard? Oh my, there were so many facets to this beautiful man, her head was spinning trying to catalog them all. Well, she decided, anyone who could kiss like that had to have some redeeming qualities. Given time and determination, and she had plenty of both, perhaps she could bend the rest of him to suit her ideal man. Little Miss Know-It-All had just taken on the biggest challenge of her short life happily unaware she was more tightly bound to him than she knew.

The guard returned after serving the other prisoners to talk terms with Lucius. Otto was hopeful; he had just one wish - a new fishing rod. His old one had broken trying to reel in too large a fish and Otto was determined to have a pole that could bring in anything smaller than a whale. If this wizard could get him one like he wanted, he would give the prisoner whatever he wanted in return.

Lucius looked into Otto’s eyes privately decrying the simple thoughts of fishing and his father’s horse farm in his head but using Otto’s burning desire to trade for what Lucius wanted: clothes and extra blankets for Hermione, more soap and some shampoo, plus deliveries of new water and waste disposal every other day. The bargain was struck and Lucius said he needed some old broken crockery or logs.

Before he left the guard conscientiously first asked, “Is the little miss okay?” He had heard several other guards discussing the setback of Hermione’s horrendous sores to their plans. A few of them had hoped to have a turn at the young witch once the bully guards, Jax and Ben, allowed her to be open territory.

For the moment the other guards were all steering clear of the two irate bullies who had been all set for an evening’s entertainment only to uncover what looked like an advanced case of leprosy on their victim. After checking her both fore and aft, they had grabbed her by her hair, loath to touch her anywhere else, and frogmarched her back to her cell, throwing her roughly inside to assuage their supreme irritation at having two hard-ons with nowhere to use them. Jax and Ben grimaced at each other, reluctant to go to their only other choices.

Currently, all they had to work with were two old whores from Knockturn Alley who had been caught red-handed trying to slit the throat of the wrong customer, an Auror who had been working undercover on several recent murders in the area. The two overblown, sociopathic harlots, now lifers in Azkaban, were regularly servicing so many of the guards, the men had to have appointments to get their rocks off, but it was a constant struggle to make sure the looney bitches didn’t try to slit their throats (or other things) with a sharpened spring from their cots. That sort of watchfulness unfortunately tended to lessen the enjoyment of a good blowjob. So a new, young, sane female prisoner had been hailed as a gift from the gods.

Lucius reassured the kind guard that Hermione just had a skin condition that, while ugly and oozing, wasn’t fatal, but he did emphasize that it might be contagious, if Otto happened to talk to anyone else. Otto nodded and hurried away to find what he could for his fishing pole and Lucius sat down to wait.

“Will he stay to see you transfigure the fishing pole for him?” Hermione didn’t think that was such a good idea, but Lucius was ahead of her, as usual. A tacit mutual agreement to ignore their recent ‘incident’ was holding for now.

“That’s not the way I work. The guards know they bring me items, but in their simple minds they think I trade those things to someone really stupid for what I give to them. Ironic, isn’t it?” Lucius shook his head at their gullibility. “No, I don’t do any transfiguring in front of them because I need to wait for Warden le Fay to slip off his bracelet for most of the things I make. The fishing pole is too close to a size and complexity that would alert him, so I watch the orb and when he takes off his cuff, I do the transfiguring as fast as I can. I’ve been doing so much of it I’ve gotten faster than I ever bothered to be before. Thank the Gods I can see the pole Otto wants from his mind.” Lucius grinned, “I do think I’ll neglect to offer a reel, so the poor sod will have to come back and trade me again. If he hasn’t his old one still. After all, it only costs him some broken crockery for the items I want.”

“About that, Lucius, I certainly hope you don’t try to get into my mind. I would take that very amiss of you. Remember what you said about having to sleep sometime?” Hermione reminded sweetly, avoiding direct eye contact more than was minimally necessary.

“Yes I do, and point taken. Your mind is your own. You would be able to repulse me in any case with your brainpower and magic, and I’d only wind up with a tremendous headache, so you’re safe.” Lucius regarded his little witch with a tinge more respect than before. She was becoming a worthy adversary and his consuming interest in her rose yet another notch, undesirable as it was.

His unfortunate, growing mental connection to her didn’t extend to knowing her thoughts for which he decided he was grateful. He didn’t want to listen in on her mind and he certainly didn’t want her to listen in on his. The bond was more of a subtle emotional tie than a telepathic one. It escaped him that he was now referring to her as ‘his’ little witch in his mind, but he would have said it meant little other than his normal controlling streak showing up and organizing his environs to suit himself.

Lucius went about his digging all afternoon but he was irritated that he couldn’t work on his absorption with his cellmate yet, to plan her seduction. That kiss had been hotter than dragon fire. She had finally gotten over her avoidance tactics and he’d been too busy reacting to her resurgence of questions, complaints, and problems to be able to grab some time to contrive any scenarios where he could take advantage of the petite miss with her believing it was her idea. Planting the disgusting sores was a bonus, but in the end not a terribly useful path to furthering his desires, except to keep the guards off her. He had to cross off his vague idea of mind-reading her now also. He’d had a great deal of success with the guards, but knowing she was aware of his legilimency talents and being leery of her ability to do the same to him put him off of that idea.

His other plan was to basically flaunt his own body – subtly – to entice her into wanting him. She was primed from their kiss now, so he decided to go with that strategy. A small, distant voice in his head decried his intentions toward such an innocent, but Lucius was very experienced at not listening to that either. He wanted the little madam, period. His own fierce reaction to her was conveniently, if erroneously, rewritten as simple if overpowering lust as he planned her downfall. How could his mind truly blend with that of a lowly Mudblood after all?

Hermione should have included the descriptions ‘bullheaded’ and ‘self-delusional’ to her litany of Lucius’ traits.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later that evening after their supper and the crockery and some logs had been delivered, Lucius broached a subject he’d wanted to ask, but been sidetracked by other more important issues. “Hermione, won’t your family and friends wonder what happened to you, if you weren’t able to let them know where you were sent? I really don’t know when Snape will visit again. It could be weeks.” Again, Lucius’ owl service wasn’t mentioned.

“I’ve thought about that, too, and I hope they investigate, but they’re only going to find an empty cottage with all my belongings still there. If the Ministry doesn’t tell anyone, I’ll be among the missing until someone discovers my whereabouts or Snape comes. Could one of your guards send a message for me? You could trade for some parchment and get one of them to send an owl.”

Did that little witch have better legilimency skills than he’d ever dreamed? She’d found out nearly everything he’d surreptitiously organized for months. And now she was almost onto his owl delivery. Should he just tell her he had the means or should he make it look like he was doing a one-off message for her? Lucius was starting to get a headache from his constant need to keep one step ahead of her. Her mind was so very… like…his. That comforting thought made his headache fade.

“I’ll work on it,” the blond sorcerer replied. “That’s all I can promise. Your turn. And don’t slide the checkers, tidbit, you’re erasing the board lines.” Hermione and Lucius were playing a game of checkers he’d transfigured from a bit of the crockery, doing a piece at a time to keep his magic well under the Warden’s radar. They had drawn the board in the dust from his excavation, and so far each of them only had five markers, so the game was more like Chinese checkers than the regular kind. It was entertaining as a departure from their other, more inflammatory amusements, which consisted largely of social cattiness and casting aspersions on each other’s ancestry and magic talents. Those pastimes were extremely pleasing to both and the honors equally divided, but the checkers helped clear the air when their tongues got too sharp.

The afternoon and evening had flown by quickly as they each increasingly frolicked in the other’s quick mind, happily finding similarities in odd places even though their individual political ideals were anathema and were avoided. Lucius discovered Hermione was a fount of information on arcane magic spells no longer in current use. Unfortunately, knowing how to repair chamber pots while the contents were still in them wasn’t much use in the modern world, but it passed the time and was entertaining. She showed him a couple she could do without a wand and he practiced them until he was letter perfect, annoying Hermione with his perfectionism even while she admired his tenacity and form.

Hermione in turn found Lucius was au courant with all the ins and outs of the Ministry of Magic and its legal tangles and she learned an immense amount of valuable information on how to work that system for her own gain. She was hoping his knowledge might help her if she ever was released from Azkaban or could present an appeal of her sentence through her friends. Their minds were so in tune with each other already they could almost finish each other’s sentences, so information flowed at a tremendous pace.

Lucius had decided to begin his plan of seduction that evening, so after he handily won the second game of checkers (she won the first but he was sure she’d cheated somehow, like he had), he took off his striped top to do his exercises. It was nearly bedtime, but he knew she was more rested this evening and would manage to stay up for his entire performance. He was going to make it memorable.


_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

Many stories have likenesses to fairytales. I love fairytales, especially the happy, romantic endings. I'm not sure how this tale is shaping up to resemble one of the major fairytales. Is there one where the hero is handsome but devious and the heroine brings him to heel?

Reviews are appreciated, savored, and wallowed in shamelessly so don't think yours will go to waste. 8-)

.
.