Questions
“There a lady for you, Miss.” Dobby entered the den where Hermione was reading Riddle’s most recent suggestion. He was away from the house doing whatever he did, and Harry had a new patient in his office.
“Who is it?” She asked, wondering who would be calling on her. Who knew she was there?
“She not say. She say she work with Miss. She not wants to come into fancy house. She at kitchen door.” Dobby looked a bit distressed, as if he was delivering grave news.
“Don’t worry, Dobby; I’ll go see.” Hermione set her book aside and wondered which of the girls had tracked her down.
But when she got to the back door, she didn’t see anyone. With a frown, she stepped outside and pulled a shawl around her arms to protect against the chilly air.
“Hello?” She called, wondering if the girl had hidden.
Dobby stepped out after her and grimaced as he glanced around. “She gone, Miss?”
“Maybe, Dobby.” She looked down at the boy; he hated to disappoint anyone. “It’s safe; you can come out,” Hermione called as she took a few more steps into the alley. “The Masters of the house are busy.” She added to assure the girl.
“Good.” An unfamiliar female voice came out of the shadow on Hermione’s left side. No one to hear the slag scream.”
The last thing Hermione saw was a bat swinging right for her face.
When she returned to the conscious world, she had an extreme headache but couldn’t remember how she had gotten to the too-bright room.
“I think the little bitch is waking up.” The voice brought the moments before she had blacked out back into keen focus. She tried to reach up and touch the knot she knew must be on her head when she discovered her hands were strapped down.
“You may have hit her a bit too hard, Vinda.” The new voice made her blood run cold. She knew that voice as the one who ordered someone to gut Rookwood after they couldn’t get anything useful from him.
Hermione blinked, trying to clear her vision and get a better look at her surroundings, but everything was blurry, and the bright light wasn’t helping her focus.
A dark shape appeared in front of her right before a large hand gently patted her cheek. “Would you like some water, dear?” The man’s voice had a slight German accent that she hadn’t noticed the first time she heard it.
“Going to drug me?” Hermione had read of drugs that could be slipped into drinks and lowered a victim’s inhibitions.
“I don’t need to drug you, girly.” His touch became more firm as he forced her to look where he wanted. Bright blue eyes were the first thing she could make out as her vision slowly cleared. “You are a smart girl. You will tell me everything I want to know.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I think you do. Maybe you just do not know what you know. How long were you Rookwood’s…” The man paused as he considered what to call her. “...companion?”
“I was his whore for six months.” She didn’t have a reason to lie.
“He must have mentioned the Death Eaters to you. Men talk about things between the sheets they would otherwise keep to themselves.”
“Rookwood never really liked sheets. He preferred his desk.”
“You know what I mean, girly.” His hand tightened painfully on her jaw. “He must have said something to you.”
“He never mentioned any of that.” Hermione closed her eyes as he pushed her head back into whatever contraption she was strapped in.
“We can make this a lot harder for you, girl.” His voice was still calm, but it held a promise of menace.
“I’m sure you can.” As he stepped back from her, she looked around, realizing she was secured to a dental chair. “But that doesn’t change the fact that he never told me anything.” What kind of people had a dental chair with built-in straps lying around?
“I hope for your sake that is a lie. Vinda, show the girl what we do to liars here.”
The man moved out of Hermione’s line of sight as Vinda, the woman from the alley, moved towards her with a vicious smirk.
“Sure you don’t want to tell us something before I start?” She held up a tiny wicked-looking knife so Hermione could see.
Hermione shook her head. She didn’t know anything they would want to know, and she didn’t know enough about any of it to even come up with a convincing lie. As the woman turned her wrist up against the chair straps, Hermione closed her eyes and started to build her perfect room once more.
She felt the sharp pain as the knife dug into the skin of her forearm, but she worked to block out everything but the room. Hermione made herself concentrate on what it would feel like to kneel on the rug and the heat of Riddle’s touch against her skin.
The exercise didn’t block the pain, but it kept her from focusing on it alone. It kept her breathing steady as she imagined how it would feel to have Riddle bind her hands and kiss the bare skin of her neck. She could almost feel his fingers in her hair as he tied it up out of his way.
“Now everyone is going to know what you are.” Hermione was so immersed in the fantasy it took her a moment to realize it hadn’t been Riddle’s voice who said the words.
“This is just the start if you don’t tell me what I want to know.” The German returned as Hermione blinked to look at the damage. Her arm was blood-smeared, but it was clear that the woman had carved ‘whore’ into her skin deep enough to scar.
“I don’t know anything about Death Eaters or anything else.”
“I find that hard to believe since you have slept with more than one known Death Eater.”
Hermione shook her head and wondered who else he could mean. The men who hired her tended not to flaunt their connection; for many of them, she didn’t even know their full names.
“He might be young and unimportant, but we are sure they recruited Tom Riddle over a year ago.”
Her eyes went wide with shock. Hadn’t Riddle said Harry and him were investigating the Death Eaters?
“You didn’t know?” The man smirked at her.
“If any of that is true, whatever this group is, their members don’t talk about it.” It didn’t matter if Riddle was a Death Eater. They had an understanding, not a relationship. He owed her nothing except her pay. “I know more about you than any of them. We both know how this is going to end. I’m not getting out of here alive. I know too much; I even know what you look like now. Why show me that if you weren’t planning to end me once you have what you want?”
“I am sure we can come to an arrangement; just tell me what you know about Tom Riddle.”
She shook her head and closed her eyes. “He is smarter than you will ever dream to be.” She thought of her room once more, knowing nothing she could do or say to change her fate.
“We are not playing around, girl.” His hand grasped her hair, pulling at her already throbbing head. “Look at me.” He shook her as she continued to keep her eyes closed. It seemed he didn’t like to be ignored.
If she wasn’t going to make it through the night alive, the least she could do was piss him off. When she didn’t answer, he slapped her hard, and she opened her eyes for a moment. She focused on a triangle tattoo on his wrist before she closed them again and dove back into her perfect room.
After that, her time became a blur of torment. Her mind drifted in her perfect little room as the man set Vinda on her to try and get the precious information she didn’t have. By the time she felt a gentle touch again, her eye was swollen shut, and she wasn’t sure if there was a spot left unbruised on her entire body.
She didn’t bother to open her good eyes when she felt the person lift her chin. She was done trying to talk to any of them. The Riddle of her mind was doing thoroughly wonderful and embarrassing things to her, and she had no time for anything her captors wanted.
“Can she walk?” Riddle asked, making her frown as it did not match up with how he had her stretched over the back of his couch.
“I doubt it; they’ve done a number on her. This ankle looks sprained, and I don’t even know if she’s conscious.” Harry replied.
Hermione opened her eye and looked up into the dark face she had just been imagining.
“Are you with us, Miss Granger?” She couldn’t read Riddle’s expression as she looked down at her marked-up form.
“They killed Rookwood.” Her voice sounded strange to her ears, rough from disuse and screaming she only half-remembered.
“We know.”
“They wanted to know about you.” She said as Harry worked to unfasten her restraints.
“Oh, and what did you tell them?” Riddle’s voice was as calm and even as always.
“They think you’re a Death Eater.”
Harry paused in his work before pulling her up into his arms. “How does she-”
“She overheard some of what they wanted to know from Rookwood,” Riddle answered the half-asked question.
“Don’t worry about any of that now, Miss Granger.” Harry tried to soothe her as he pulled her up into his arms. “We’re getting you out of here.”
“I’ll do it.” Riddle interrupted him and picked her up himself.
“I don’t think the German is the leader.” She murmured as he carried her through an unknown building. Her body was starting to give out again, running for too long on adrenaline and dreams. “He needed answers too badly.”
“We’ll talk about all of this when we get home,” Harry said from just beside them, he sounded tense, and she was sure the danger wasn’t yet over.
“Where do you think you two are going?” The German asked, but Hermione didn’t have the energy to open her eyes.
“I’ve come to retrieve my property; now I am returning it to its proper place.”
“We’re not done with her yet; I am sure I can arrange her return once we are.”
“I don’t recall lending her to you.”
There was a short silence before she heard the unmistakable cocking of a gun. “Leave the girl here, and you two are free to go.”
Riddle turned and lowered her to the floor, carefully bracing her against a wall. She didn’t blame him for choosing his life over hers. She would probably have done the same in his place.
A moment later, sounds of a fight followed by something sliding into her leg. Hermione forced herself to open her eye and looked down at the gun that had landed within her reach.
They were in a narrow hallway, and there were several men besides the German brawling with her two companions. She didn’t know much about guns, but she hadn’t heard it go off; it should at least still have been good for a shot.
No one was paying attention to her as she reached out and ignored the pain as she wrapped battered fingers around the handle and lifted it to point directly at the German’s back. She caught Riddle smirking at her, telling her everything she needed to know before she pulled the trigger.
The shot went stray as her whole arm jerked from the force of the bullet. Everyone in the hall stilled as they looked between her and the man she had shot.
“Grindelwald?!” Vinda cried from the other end of the hall.
She had hit her mark; only it hadn’t been the killing blow she’d wanted. The man turned on her, but Harry was faster and pushed past him to scoop her up. She held onto the gun even as pain shot up her side from being handled roughly. She wanted to blackout, but her stubborn nature kept her semi-aware.
There was a blur of color, and she thought she might retch as Harry ran down a maze of hallways.
“Hope you’re not afraid of heights.” He said just before he ran full speed out an open window.
It took Hermione a moment to realize they were not on the first floor, and she puked while they freefall to what she was sure would be their deaths. They landed in a heap of pain. Hermione was sure she had broken every bone in her body. She wasn’t sure how the day could get any worse.
“Hermione, open your eyes.” Harry wiped the mess from her mouth, and she chuckled as she shook her head.
“How is she doing?” He hadn’t come out the way they had, but it seemed the three of them had at least made it to the street.
“She’s alive.”
“Good enough, for now, get her back to the townhouse; I’ll take care of the rest.”
Hermione’s consciousness scattered after that. Harry kept waking her as they loaded her into a carriage and took her back to the home. Once there, he and Dobby cleaned her up and did what could be done for her injuries. The tiny bit of comfort allowed her to fall into a deep sleep.