Hysteria

A/N: As always a big thank you to Softobsidian74 for her alpha reading and feedback and to robs55 for the great beta job!

Review responses can be found here:

http://lady-of-clunn.livejournal. com / 87195.html

Please take out spaces :)

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Luctuosa


He seemed to be stunned into silence.

“I will not send you anywhere.”

“Then where will the Ministry send me when they pull you off my case?”

There was no indication that he had heard her and she was about to repeat her question more forcefully when he spoke.

“That will not happen. I won’t let it. The Malfoy name still carries a certain weight. The Ministry will be very sorry if they decide to go to war against me.”

Her lips were a bit dry and she started biting at the already chapped skin until she could taste blood.

“I am afraid to be alone with myself.”

Malfoy looked down at her, at her closed up face, her arms constricted by his own hands and the nightgown still draped around her waist.

He suddenly seemed to have made a decision and stood, pulling her to her feet along with him. He picked her up and walked briskly out of the room. Being carried around by Malfoy seemed to be becoming a common occurrence, but Hermione found she did not mind. His shoulder was comfortable to lean on and her still unsteady feet would have made her stumble after him at best.

Soon, there was a marked difference in the corridors’ appearance. Gone were the white, plastered walls and the seamless stone floors. Now Malfoy was walking on thick carpets that masked his footsteps and sleepy portraits lined the panelled walls.

This part of the house appeared older, the hallway bending at odd angles, rooms branching off it in random intervals. It was much more secluded than the broad, light paths through the clinic.

Malfoy nudged a wooden door open and a single candle sprang to life, illuminating rich fabric covered armchairs, sofas and dressed windows. A large four poster bed stood in the middle, reminding her of Hogwarts; the hospital room a far cry from this country house splendour.

He lowered her to the edge of the high bed and waved his wand in a high arc, making magic encompass the room. Several small objects vanished but it happened too fast for Hermione to see what was being taken away.

Malfoy looked uncomfortable.

“Standard anti-self-harm charms. Sorry.”

Hermione bit her lip.

“No, that’s okay. I understand. Is that how you knew when to... stop me?”

He nodded.

“This room won’t so much remind you of a hospital; I thought you might sleep better here.”

He folded back the bedspread and the duvet underneath. A bit shaky, she crawled into the spot he indicated.

“I will leave a house elf to watch over you.”

Hermione sat up, wide-eyed and shook her head.

A frown creased his forehead.

“Should I call a nurse then?”

Again she shook her head.

“Please don’t tell anybody else!”

She extended her hand as if she wanted to hold him back, stop him from leaving. For long moments Malfoy looked uncertain and torn.

“Alright.”

Then he toed off his slippers and arranged his bathrobe tighter around his body.

Malfoy spread the duvet over her and waited for her to roll to her side before lying down next to her on top of the comforter. He slung his arm over her waist and stilled.

Hermione could hear his breathing; steady but not deep enough to signal sleep. His arm on her did not frighten her or make her uncomfortable.

If she could endure a man near her, she wondered what else was possible for her. Tentatively, she tried to ease her mind into a fantasy.

Light touches.

Whispered words.

A faceless man above her, kissing... rutting, thrusting, stabbing her.

Imprisoned on her back, her legs wide...

No!

Hermione snapped her eyes open, taking in the quiet room, the window with the serene night sky, this view unobscured by trees. Her heart beat fast in her chest, making each breath a little victory.

Malfoy must have felt her jerk beneath the covers, lost in her imagination. He tightened his arm around her and moved a little closer.

“This is highly unethical,” he spoke into the darkness of the room.

Her own turmoil and the abruptness of the statement made it difficult for her to understand at first. Realising what he had said, she spoke to the room, just as he had done.

“How is this unethical and sitting between my legs with a vibrating wand is not?”

He stiffened.

“It is because I barely held on to my professionalism with you. It is because I wanted to wait mere days after your treatment was complete and then send you an owl asking you to accompany me to supper.”

Hermione lay very still, not even breathing.

“And now I have frightened you.”

Hermione’s heart pounded in her chest.

“Maybe a bit.”

He started pulling back his arm but she caught his wrist, her fingernails digging into the skin. “I should leave.”

“No, don’t leave. I have been left too much.”

Reluctance in his movement, he lay back down and relaxed. When she was sure that he would not jump up and leave her alone in the darkness with its shadows, she released his wrist.

They lay awake and silent for a long time.

Hermione’s thoughts became fuzzy and disjointed as she wondered whether she could ever lead a normal life, whether she could ever bear to be married with all its implications and consequences.

Her eyes drifted over the stripy shadows of the window’s glazing bars against the silk-covered wall. Her eyes blinked now slowly. Pattern on pattern. Drifting shut.

The duvet was gone, the body behind her warm and firm. A gentle hand grasped her top leg underneath the knee and pulled it back over the hip behind her. Warm, open-mouthed kisses on her shoulder.

And then breaching her; mechanical movement neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just there.

A hand slid over her hip toward her centre.

This time, she did not jerk awake. Her eyes flew open and she took a deep breath, heart racing. She drew a shaky hand over her face.

Gods, she was damaged.

Feeling the steady breath of the man behind her, she lay awake through the light gray hours of dawn.


***


“Why do you not read anymore?”

“Read?”

When Malfoy had insisted that she join him in a curiously generic and bland office, she had expected all manners of horrible things to happen. But this?

“Yes. I know that Helia showed you the library, I was sure to find you there from dawn ‘til dusk.”

Her eyes flickered unsteadily, searching for an object to concentrate on but finding none in the near-empty room.

“It doesn’t seem important anymore.”

Malfoy looked at her for a moment and obviously decided to let it go, making a note in her file before him.

“How about your work?”

“Suspended indefinitely due to pending insanity, remember? First it scared me but now it feels like thinking about something I did a long time ago. Distant.”

“Have you thought about the future in general? I mean long term? Maybe you could work freelance?”

Hermione’s lips twitched and tightened. Thinking about the future was a detached and highly theoretical exercise.

“Malfoy, there were about fifteen apprentice healers in de Belleme’s group. Not to mention junior consultants, senior consultants, nurses, the cleaning witch... Even if the people who might be willing to hire me as a researcher have somehow missed the scandal in The Daily Prophet, how long do you think it would take until somebody would ask me how my stay was at the madhouse? Some... some of them have sketches maybe even animated illustrations of my treatment, which means they have a nice little home-made porn film featuring my ... my ... my pussy!”

She turned around to the window in a sharp movement. The leafless trees looked austere and wise in the light fog.

“I can picture it quite perfectly. The client sitting across from me, leaning back, and then: ‘So, Miss Granger, do you still shave?’ or ‘My nephew has some very nice illustrations from his healer’s curriculum that he shared with us last New Year’s Eve.’ No, Malfoy, I am finished in Britain.”

“In fact, I am finished full stop. I have been thinking about France.” Malfoy made an odd sort of noise that sounded as if he was choking at that. “But I have to be honest with myself. Talking to people, reading the occasional novel or watching a film in French is not the same as working in research in a francophone country.” She sighed. “It would take me years and years to get my language skills to the required level.”

Her hands wandered restlessly. Why was there nothing to occupy her with?

“Besides, my plans were never very enthusiastic to start with. It all seems very... petty.”

“Petty?”

“Yes. Looking back I can hardly believe how caught up I was in my work, how convinced I was that I, and only I, could do a thorough job. I don’t want that anymore.”

“What do you want?”

“Less. More. A job that I like and pays the bills but does not demand more than I am able or willing to give. Somebody to come home to.” A tiny hand on my breast...

Malfoy shifted in an uncomfortable way and leafed through her file until he had found what he was looking for.

“I would like you to tell me about your treatment in the ward.”

Hermione withdrew instantly, closing off whatever emotion she could shut away safely. She squashed the instinct to draw her knees up to her chest and wrap her arms around them. She would not appear weak.

“You have already read all about it, why do I have to say it?”

Hermione looked out of the tall window. Was there a way to flee from this?

“Granger, I think reading ‘pelvic massage administered’ in a file is quite different from actually experiencing it. Especially as I see it entered three times the same day. In close succession.” Malfoy smoothed the stack of parchment with his hands. “How did they even manage that?”

Hermione sat very still. Maybe it would pass.

It did not.

“I begged them to stop.”

She traced the edge of the wooden desk before her, regretting not having a tablecloth to pick apart at the edges.

“I tried to fight them, then.” Malfoy did not say anything, did not move to make notes in the margins of the parchments. “It just got worse and worse from there. The more I fought, the more severe and unusual the treatment became. And with that, there were more and more people interested. The crowd was growing and they were all gawping and staring at my... sex. It was like I had ceased to exist and all that was left of me was between my legs.”

“Have they ever penetrated you?”

She flinched violently.

“No!...Yes. You did! The keeper did once. With his fingers. At night. Why?”

Malfoy’s face flushed pink and he looked away, moving a small calendar of the kind that Gringotts owled to all their clients each Christmas for the fraction of an inch. Hermione remembered that the very same calendar sat on top of a small shelf near her front door.

“Yes. Internal massage was common practice until the eighteenth century. Now it’s rather controversial.”

Hermione faintly remembered him telling her of new methods.

“If you want to press charges, you need to prove that they actually did something they are not supposed to do. From what I read, de Belleme was going from one sort of treatment to the next without even waiting for it to take effect and the number of sessions exceeded the usual by far. However he did not stray from the accepted and widely practiced methods, so it will be hard to accuse him of anything, really.”

Hermione needed to take a deep breath and gritted her teeth, making her jaws hurt with the force.

“He can torture me and because he wears a healer’s robe he gets away with it? It’s that easy?”

Malfoy pressed his lips into a thin line.

“We could ask the nurse that alerted me after the cruciology session whether she would be willing to testify.”

“How did she know to alert you anyhow? Because you had been my healer before?”

He shook his head.

“No. Your belongings had been registered and locked away when you were admitted. They found my private floo address in your purse and she assumed that we knew each other beyond the healer-patient relationship.”

Hermione stared at the desk, not wanting to look at Malfoy, when something else registered in her mind.

“Testify,” she said slowly. “What exactly would it mean for me to press charges?”

He sighed.

“You would have to testify before the Wizengamot. In detail, I am afraid. They would also hear experts...”

“Wizarding experts, no doubt,” she cut over him in a scathing voice.

“Yes. Who else should they hear?”

“Who else, indeed.” Her hands balled into fists. “You realise that, in the Muggle world, Hysteria has not been treated in this manner for nearly a century? And you know why? They have finally recognised a female orgasm when they saw one and it dawned on them that a doctor bringing off his patients might be somewhat inappropriate.”

Her voice had risen with every word she hurled toward him.

Malfoy just looked confused, which infuriated her to no end.

“I know that hysterical paroxysm is essentially an orgasm. It is effective nonetheless.”

Hermione felt very calm all of a sudden.

“Effective.”

“You do not deny that there were issues you had to deal with?” He asked very gently.

“Issues! I was slightly depressed, probably burnt out, in need of a friend, and that led to me being intimidated into what you call effective!”

“And what does it change if you call it by another name?”

The gentleness in his voice was unbearable.

“The treatment, for instance!” She exploded, jumping from her chair and leaning over the desk panting.

After a little while, during which Malfoy just sat and looked up at her with his damn gentle patience, she straightened.

“I am done. I don’t want to see you right now.”

The door closed behind her with a satisfying bang.