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Refined Punishments of a Spiritual Kind

Author: MelWil
Rating: PG13 - strong allusions to sex
Disclaimer: These are not my characters - they belong to JKR et al. I’m just rearranging them and breaking them.
Feedback: is beautiful - lina_wilson@hotmail.com
Summary: She was a Mudblood in the bed of an enemy.
Author’s notes: Liz deserves kudos for the beta. The title is a manipulation of a D. H. Lawrence quote: “The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.”

~*~

With the clarity of hindsight (and a glimpse of what might have been), Hermione admitted that it may all have been a great mistake. But when she was there, when his arms were wrapped around her, when she was drowning under the weight of his softly spoken promises and muttered apologies, there was no place she would have preferred to be.

After all, when you’re hanging onto a very tall building by your fingertips, it’s difficult to let go.

“You can’t leave me,” he whispered, his breath hot behind her ears. “I won’t permit it.”

She was stronger that him now, and they both knew it. Still, it was a nice pretence.

She allowed a shiver to run the length of her body as he leant his head forward and his hair brushed against her bare back.

“I will never leave you.” Another lie, belonging to her this time. But it rolled smoothly off her tongue and they like the sound of the words.

“They wanted to kill me,” he told her. (Kept telling her, over and over again. Did he think she wouldn’t believe him? Did he just want to make a point?) “I thought they would kill me. They could have killed me.”

But they couldn’t have. They needed him, needed his spells to save Ron and Ginny. And then Harry couldn’t say the word, couldn’t destroy an old nemesis. (It was becoming a problem, the Ministry agreed. They should talk to the boy about it.) And then, when the waiting continued too long, there was Hermione to consider . . .

They didn’t want to hurt her anymore. They were tired of the twists and the turns, all the actions putting her - putting all of them - through infinite pain. So they let her have him.

They let her keep Lucius Malfoy.

There were . . . punishments, of course. They limited his power, confined him to spells so simple that a first year student using them would have blushed in shame. They confiscated most of his considerable wealth; talked about distributing it between the victims, and then stowed it in a vault at Gringotts and promptly forgot about it.

Money and power. Given in exchange for freedom and the warmth of a Muggle-born witch. Even the simplest wizard was able to see the irony in Malfoy’s predicament. But he was heard to say that she saved him, while she told friends that she loved him . . .

Her friends didn’t believe her. They crossed their arms across their chests, looked down at her with disapproving glares. They said she was throwing away a glorious career, told her of the risks involved, told her dirty stories about the most powerful Death Eater to ever walk down grimy Knockturn Alley. They threatened to use force to keep her away from him.

But she cried. And they remembered that they loved her. And they let her go, let her love him. They promised to leave their arms open for when it all turned bad.

It was going to turn bad.

“There’s nothing as sweet as a Mudblood in my bed.” His voice was raspy, hard, uncompromising. He stroked the length of her arm with his fingertips, traced lazy patterns around her shoulder blades, blew gently against the heat of her inner thighs. He moved carefully, anxious not to hurt her, desperate to please her.

He bit on her earlobe and said horrible things.

And she let him.

It didn’t hurt as much as he thought it did. His taunts of ‘Mudblood’ and allusions to dirt had the strength of a little school bully. They were easily cancelled out by his soft caresses, by the way he kissed the smooth skin under her belly button, by the way he cradled her in his arms. And when his tongue grew vicious, when he discovered a shadow of his old menace, she became angry.

And anger was better than the pain inside.

“Are you happy, Hermione?” Ginny asked, one day. Ginny ate her ice cream sundae slowly. Her arms didn’t have as much control as they had when she was younger.

Hermione’s smile was wry. She wasn’t supposed to be happy.

“Ron and Harry worry about you,” Ginny said.

“Why don’t they tell me this themselves?” Hermione licked cream from the tip of her chilled spoon.

“Mum worries about you too. She wants to know if you made the right decision.”

Hermione wondered if the right decision would have been easier than the choice she made. She wondered how long the pain would gnaw at her insides, how many years she would spend feeling guilty about her friend’s disabilities.

She knew that the pain would fade. She would leave him then, walk away from the anger, move away from the warm arms and gentle caresses. She would search for a new life, a new vocation that didn’t involve former Death Eaters and their little power trips. She would become a new woman.

But until that day she would be the Mudblood in the bed of a Death Eater.

It was the best punishment she could devise.

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