Captured

Chapter Six: Defiance

"Here's how this will go, mudblood." Draco spoke calmly, only showing any sort of emotion as he spat out the word 'mudblood.'

"You're going to resist, I'm going to force the information out of you anyway, and then you're going to lose and be in pain. Or, you can just give me what I'm looking for and at least avoid a nasty cruciatus curse."

"I think we both know I'd never give you anything willingly." She kept her tone neutral and her stare cool, but her heart was slamming against her ribcage like a bird trying to get free before the inevitable pain that would be inflicted upon it by the predator lurking outside, trying to get in. She was doing everything she could to keep her hands from shaking, to keep herself steady. She'd never been on the receiving end of the cruciatus curse, but she'd seen the reaction of the spiders in her fourth year. She'd read about the horrors that haunted its victims long after the curse had been inflicted upon them.

She'd seen Neville's parents.

"You Gryffindors are always so bloody noble. I'd think you, Granger, unlike the dumbarse twins you hang around would at least be smart enough to know you're going to lose either way. At least one way you avoid the pain. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you lot were simply masochistic. Of course," and he gave a cruel smirk here, "I do know better. If I learned anything at that pathetic excuse for a school it's that Gryffindors are as brainless as a bloody mountain troll."

Hermione could feel the heat rising as she tried to control her temper at the insults to her friends. But she knew she needed to keep her composure. Regardless of whether he'd be starting with crucio first or some other form of torture, it would be harder for her to keep her mouth shut if she had already lost control.

Malfoy sighed at her lack of response, as if this were simply a minor inconvenience in his day. As if torture were second nature to him now and an unwilling victim was as much of a hindrance as needing to grab a new piece of parchment.

He didn't give her a warning before he pointed a lazy wand at her and said simply, "Legilimens."

Hermione felt herself gasping as memory after memory was suddenly dredged up. It felt.... Wrong. Like it was her turn to play the part of the books she loved so much, while someone simply rifled through her pages for the information they were looking for. A memory of Harry and Ron, in a forest they had luckily left weeks ago, swam forward. Heat pricked at the edges of her closed eyes as tears began to form. The memory was closer to the beginning of their journey, when spirits were still relatively okay. The three of them were laughing around the table in the dim candlelight, rehashing a time when Fred and George had convinced Percy that he was losing his mind by levitating the book he was reading to a new spot every time he set it down, so that when he came back, it wasn't where he left it. Seeing the three of them relatively happy and laughing physically pained her, especially as she could feel derision at the scene from the mind currently invading her own. He began to sift again, just brief flashes of memories appearing before they were quickly cast away. Hermione struggled desperately to shove the feel of Malfoy back out of her mind, but he had too strong of a hold on her.

She had never practiced occlumency, had never had anyone to practice with. She was wholly, and completely unprepared and it was not a feeling she was accustomed to. Try as she might, she found it impossible to remove the piercing claws that just continued to dig deeper and more painfully as Malfoy continued his search.

But she had read about it before, and if she couldn't push him out then maybe she could redirect him. She began focusing her efforts on harmless memories, things that wouldn't give up any information too important for the Death Eaters to have. Malfoy seemed to sense what she was planning to do, and she let out an involuntary cry of pain as those claws seemed to dig deeper. She would give anything to have her wand right now, and unbaden a memory from their third year swam to the front of her mind. Desperately she latched on to it, like a flotation device in a raging sea that was keeping her from going under and drowning. It helped that the memory was of a time where she had the upper hand with Malfoy, something she much preferred to the current situation she painfully found herself in.