Harvest Moon

Hermione sighed and stifled the urge to start banging her head on her desk. The Dawn Morris case was going absolutely nowhere. Nothing fit no matter how she turned the facts around in her head. Every lead they had came back around to Lucius Malfoy who had a rock solid alibi in the fact he was at the Ministry’s Mabon Ball. He had been well in sight of the Minister himself for the better part of the night and with others until long after daylight. She had been informed by Kingsley to drop that line of investigation after she’d contacted several of the higher ranking officers and various foreign dignitaries about it.



Draco had finally gotten frustrated and had left to go on a date with some woman he’d met in a pub. He’d also told her it was getting to be late on Saturday evening and they technically shouldn’t even be at the office in the first place. Then he’d told her to go home, go to a movie, drink, find someone to shag, something to take her mind off of the case. The look on his face when he’d said go find someone to shag had made her want to smack him until his ears rang.



She sighed in frustration because she just couldn’t let it go. Something wasn’t right about the way the evidence turned and it bothered the hell out of her. Everything pointed in one direction, Lucius. But he had solid alibis for the time frame even before and after the Ball. She kept turning the night she’d questioned him at the Gilded Lily over and over in her mind, trying to find some discrepancy. Unfortunately, what she kept coming back around to was not any useful part of the interview but a bit of conversation after the initial questioning that bothered her a hell of a lot more than any murder investigation ever had.



She’d been looking around in disgust at the various instruments of injury in the room where she and Lucius were interviewing, trying to figure out why on earth anyone would enjoy being tortured in that manner. She could vaguely see where the person on the handle end of a whip would find it stimulating. Gods knew she’d seen the malicious glee that had lit Bellatrix Lestrange’s eyes when she’d been pointing a wand at her and firing off Crucios one after another.



“You’re wondering why anyone would enjoy this sort of thing,” Lucius had remarked, taking hold of the simple metal bar suspended from the ceiling and leaning forward. “No magick, just the expression on your face gave it away,” he’d said, sounding amused.



“That was my thought. I can somewhat see what the abuser would get from it but not the person on the receiving end.”



“And what, Miss Granger, do you think a top gets out of it?”



“Power, control over another person, the ability to abuse someone at will without consequences.”



Lucius smiled a little, looking vaguely sad. “The first two, yes, to a certain extent. The last, not at all.”



“What do you mean?”



“There are those who use the BDSM community to selfish purposes. That is certainly true. You will get idiocy and evil in any group no matter what it is. But the legitimate individuals operate on safe, sane and consensual. As any good top or dominant will tell you they are not the ones in control. One has responsibilities as a top that have nothing to do with what you want.”



“Then what’s the point for a . . . top? What pleasure do they get out of it if it isn’t about them?”



“As a top you’re giving someone what they want desperately sometimes and can’t find elsewhere. A good top will gauge his or her sub’s needs and try to make the experience a good one for them. There are always negotiations in advance. Often times there are even contracts drawn concerning what a sub wants and expects from a top. A dominant will almost always try to see to it that those wishes are fulfilled unless it is something they find they are not physically or emotionally capable of. Then they will more often than not suggest alternatives to what the sub wants that will garner the same effect. Barring that they will recommend another individual who might be able to provide what they can’t. The submissive or slave is the one in control.”



“Then I really don’t see what a top gets out of it.”



He’d simply chuckled and leaned forward a little more while still holding onto the bar. “Come now, Miss Granger,” he’d all but purred. “You can’t see, for example, what you would get from having me chained, willing and utterly at your mercy within certain guidelines? I believe you can. I certainly see the benefits of it.”



Hermione shook off the effect the conversation had on her. Even when she remembered it a week or so later it made her feel strange. Partially because she now had an image of Lucius Malfoy burned into her brain. One of him bound to the bar he’d been holding onto, all of that beautiful silver hair pulled forward over one shoulder, back completely bared to her sight and striped with welts. She shook her head again to clear it, feeling uncomfortably warm and decidedly odd.



She put her head into her hands, running over the more innocuous bits of the interview and stumbled across something odd that Lucius had said to her. Not in the interview itself but when she had first told him about Dawn Morris being the woman found dead on his property. He’d said he hadn’t recognized her. If she recalled correctly and she was fairly certain she did, he hadn’t come onto the scene until after Dawn’s body had been taken to the MME.



She grabbed her coat and contemplated contacting Draco but thought better of it. She wouldn’t disturb him while he was on his date. That would just be rude. She was also quite certain he wanted no part of it if she needed to arrest his father for murder.