The Taking of Tea

CHAPTER NINE: PRELUDES

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of the infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

“What in the hell—” Hermione exclaimed when they were again on solid ground. The night was pitch, and she couldn’t see a thing. With that knowledge, an intense fear came over her—the same unbearable fluttering of nerves she’d felt at the Ministry, this time low in the stomach, and sitting with the heaviness of dread.

“Malfoy,” he was directly behind her; she could feel his breath against her hair. “What’s this about? Where are we? What,”

“Lumos!” A new voice declared. She backed into Malfoy in retreat, and his hands took firm grip of her shoulders. The glowing tip of the stranger’s wand shot upward and the dark mark appeared suddenly in the sky, bursting forth like a firework, illuminating the ground beneath in its green light.

“Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.” Lucius whispered, his mouth at the shell of Hermione’s ear. Something went through her like lightening, and she shivered violently.

Before her was the Dark Lord, fixing her with an appraising glare, and he was terrible. Tall and broad, he exuded both physical and magical power, and Hermione was sure he could snap her neck as easily as he could kill her with an Avada Kedavra. His head was bald and his nose was unnaturally flat, giving the impression that his skin was stretched too tight. He was pale nearly to gray, with a strange translucence that showed the veins at his neck and temples. His fingers seemed impossibly long, and his black robe ended at bare feet, their toenails discolored and overgrown.

“Miss Granger,” he smiled, revealing rotten teeth, “I’ve so been looking forward to our introduction.” His voice, as she’d expected, was serpentine and cold as frost, its sibilants stretching and colliding in wicked exaggeration. Her sympathetic nervous system turned on with the intensity of a crossed wire, and all at once she ducked out of Lucius’ grasp and reached for her wand.

“Immobulus!” Voldemort shouted, pointing his wand at her. With a chuckle he stepped forward, reaching into her robes and taking her wand. Hermione was reminded of childhood nightmares, where monsters gave chase and she found her feet stuck fast to the ground. Within her enforced stillness, her heart was beating wildly in her throat, and her muscles ached with the urge to run.

“Now, now,” Voldemort admonished gently, “there’s no need for defensive tactics. I have every intention of keeping you alive, at least until Potter comes to find you. I’m feeling indulgent, as the fates have happened to conspire very much to my benefit.

“Potter’s wife was my first target, but she’s surrounded by her turncoat clan, so I had to develop a plan B. Admittedly, a school teacher doesn’t ordinarily provoke any particular interest in me, but I’m sure that your ties to Potter will flush him out and force him into a confrontation. And Lucius here is about to announce his departure to the continent, in order to search for poor grieving Narcissa. Which will allow him to abide with me, and keep an eye on you while I look out for Potter’s arrival. Don’t worry—I’m told his manners are exceptionally genteel.” His speech finished, Voldemort released her from the Immobulus, and Lucius snatched her up before she could react.

“Well done, Lucius.” Voldemort praised his death eater, “now let’s be off, shall we?”

Hermione woke, fittingly, to the sound of a crow. She turned over in the bed, and then realized that it wasn’t her own. Her own mattress was not this wide, her own pillows were not down. Her own sheets were not this fine cotton, so impossibly soft. A bit surprised to find that she wasn’t manacled, she pushed the warmth of sleep aside and got up. The room was small and Victorian, dominated by the enormous four poster she’d just climbed out of. She had expected black satin—really, she had expected a stone floor and a pile of hay—but instead the room was warm browns and bleached oak. At its south end was a fireplace, and the east wall was windows from floor to ceiling. Pulling the muslin curtains aside, she was met with bright day in a deep forest. The earth was leaf blankets and carpets of moss between dense clusters of oak and maple, their twisting bodies reaching up and beyond the window’s sight.

A voice outside the door made her turn, and it opened to reveal Lucius Malfoy. Holding two cups of tea, of all things.

“Good morning, Miss Granger. Something to drink?” He held the cup out to her. At her hesitation, he added, “it’s only tea, I promise you. No reason to slip you poison on the sly.”

She took the tea, giving it an experimental sip. English Breakfast.

“Something standard, I thought, since I’ve no idea as to your tastes.” There was a low bench at the foot of the bed, and he sat down there, resting his back against the bed and looking very much at ease. Instead of a robe, he wore trousers and an oxford, both black. The shirt buttons were black pearl and the trousers had the gleam of silk. Everything fit him perfectly, complimenting the long lines of his body and the broad length of his shoulders. His long hair, ever pristine, was held back with a gold circle pin. He raised the teacup, made from white china, to his mouth, and Hermione noticed the massive signet ring on his left hand, its emerald face winking in the sunlight.

His hands, dwarfing the delicate china, were not what she’d imagined. She’d thought they would seem soft and slender—aristocratic and useless. Instead they had the strong lines of muscle and vein, and those of his right knuckle bore a deep scar, vivid white.

As very rarely happened, Hermione had absolutely no idea what to say. She briefly considered screaming, throwing the hot tea in his face and tackling him to the ground, but that seemed pointless. The place was undoubtedly three-deep in death eaters, not to mention the presence of the Dark Lord.

“You are uncharacteristically quiet, Miss Granger.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Eventually, yes, but it’s not on today’s agenda.”

“Are you going to torture me?” This question was much harder to ask.

Lucius looked up from his tea, eyes slanted and lips turned in an expression of mild amusement.

“Do you think I’d like to?”

“Yes.”

“I am not a sadist, Miss Granger. If you had information we needed, I might deem it necessary, but you don’t. I’m sure you believe I derive some perverse pleasure from torturing and killing, but I find torture to be an unpleasantly messy affair, and killing is only enjoyable when presented with an enemy.”

“I’m you’re enemy.” She insisted, feeling the truth of it now more than ever, despite their civil conversation and austere surroundings.

“No. I’m your enemy; you hate me because I am your better.”

“Bullshit.” She spat, and Lucius could see that she was resisting the urge to lunge.

“Profanity is hardly necessary,” he admonished, “considering that I’ve had the restraint to refrain from the appropriate epithets.”

“So, what,” she said, her tone climbing with her incredulity, “we’re just going to sip tea and engage in polite conversation until you kill me?”

Again, Lucius smiled, and his clear amusement was infuriating.

“Had you imagined some other scenario in particular?”

Hermione blushed hotly, and he immediately understood. Loosing a sonorous laugh, he set his teacup carefully on the bench and rose to approach her. With the grace and presence of careful breeding, he moved towards her until she pressed her back to the window glass. His face read cruel delight, and something just this side of flirtatious.

“Really, Miss Granger.” He drawled, pulling a length of her curling hair through his fingers, crowding her close. “Is that what you’d imagined? That I’d chain you to the bed and tear the stays from your corset?” She moved to slap his hand away and he caught her wrist, holding it iron-tight. Very quickly the pressure was bruising, and she dropped her teacup with a sound of pain. Hermione watched the cup fall, hearing its soft “thud” and watching the tea soak into the thick carpet.

“Let me go.” She said softly, watching the stain darken.

“Answer my question first.”

Impossible. Her humiliation was already bone-deep. With his free hand, Lucius took Hermione’s face in a hard grip, strong fingers catching beneath her jaw and pulling hard until she faced him. The merriment was gone from his face, and in its place was something horribly intense.

“Is that what you’d imagined?” He asked again, and the now familiar scent of his tea came to her, falling like a veil against her face, and she breathed it deep.

“That you’d deign to fuck a mudblood? Yes. I imagined you’d try and humiliate me however possible.”

Lucius loosed her wrist to wind a hand deeply in her hair, pushing through curls to cradle the base of her skull. He dwarfed her by at least a head, and angled her face up to his so he could lean down without awkwardness. She braced for a kiss, the muscles of her jaw pushing against his fingers as she tightened the set of her teeth. It didn’t come. Instead, he brought them nose to nose, and breathed in.

“Lily of the valley.” He said, mouth brushing against her closed lips, his breath warm on her face. “I’ve fucked a few mudbloods in my time, if you’re curious about my sex life.” Tightening the fingers in her hair, Lucius moved his right hand from her jaw, sliding it from neck to breastbone with the soft noise of skin on skin. He left it there, thumb against her wild pulse. “And speaking of scents,” he said, drawing another deep breath, “something tells me you’re in the midst of a long dry spell.”

If she’d known how very much she resembled a snapping turtle in so doing, or if her common sense had blessed her with the realization that her hands were free, she would have reconsidered. As it was, the accuracy of his comment turned her ire to full blast, and Hermione moved her face to his in a quick strike, trying to bite him. She had every intention of cutting through the nose on his face until her top teeth met bottom. Instead, he anticipated her offense and made a strike of his own, catching her bottom lip. It was in no way a gentle prelude, and he drew blood as his canines cut into the flesh. He kept still for a moment, hands tightening in their grip as a reminder.

“I bite back, Miss Granger.” He told her, releasing her mouth. And then he gave the swollen lip a series of soft, quick kisses. For reasons she would not examine, Hermione closed her eyes, and did not protest when Lucius’ tongue slid into the valley between lips and teeth. He tested the texture of that strange, skinless flesh, moving next to the soft wall of her gums. He pushed his fingers further into her jaw, and she opened her mouth. His tongue stroked over the ridges of her hard palate, then traced the hard seam of bone until it gave way to soft throat, nearly tickling her gag reflex. He pushed her tongue into her cheek as though it were an impediment, then slid his own through the valley of her mouth’s bottom and against the chord of muscle that tied the two together.

Kissing was a strange thing—a weird, singular intimacy of penetration in reciprocity. The kiss was not heated. It was instead patient, careful, and absolutely thorough, and just like the man himself. He pulled his mouth from hers and stepped back to examine her face, hands still keeping their cruel grip. She was flushed and a bit out of breath, and her eyes were hard on his, demanding answers.

“If you want me to fuck you Miss Granger, I’ll certainly oblige; I wouldn’t deny you your last request.”

“As if I would ever touch you willingly.” She hissed, her body shaking with rage.

“Of course not,” he chuffed. “You’d much rather I indulge your rape fantasies, and give you what you so sorely need without your having to admit it. Unfortunately for you, I’m not prone to generosity.”

Her anger was skin-crawlingly intense, and had it not been accompanied by a deep sense of humiliation, Hermione would have thrown him her infamous right hook. As it was, she pressed her nails deep into the flesh of her palms, clenched her now aching jaw, and fixed Malfoy with a murderous look. Which only provoked laughter—deep, and musical, and unbearably confident.

A/N: the poem is more of Eliot, but he's dead, so hopefully he won't mind.