The Lost Horcrux

Night Terrors

Disclaimers: Dark themes, police state ideas, mention of spousal abuse on and off-screen, death of minor characters, graphic imagery and violence, frank sex discussion, copious bad language, bashing the fucking Weasleys and Dumbledore, liberties taken with mythical history.

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The crackling torches of the driveway were still lit. Hermione swallowed at the sight, her mouth dry and arid as she looked at them. Her skin crawled with roiling fear. But turning back was simply not on option. The wards to the house would have been activated by now, it would already be known that she'd returned. She felt sick every time she crossed the security perimeter, the darkness of the magic there always settled ill on her stomach. She dry retched against the sensation, then began a slow walk towards the house.

Over to her left, Hermione could hear the prisoners of the camp being worked away, even this late into the night. They were building a new block and the scraping of shovels and the sounds of construction drifted to her ears on the close, still air. Hermione didn't want to know what the new block would be used for. It was bad enough that Draco Malfoy himself regularly turned up to inspect its progress. If his Section Seven had anything to do with the place ... Hermione shuddered at the very notion. If he was going to be close by, it might be worth throwing herself from the roof of the manor house after all.

There was a crack somewhere in the camp. It may have been a whip, or the snapping of bone. Hermione had conditioned herself to be dully immune to such things. She'd protested once before, when they first moved here, begged Ron to soundproof the house at the very least. To keep them from hearing the misery outside. He'd punched her in the face for her insolence. These were the sounds of victory, of justice, he'd insisted. Then he locked her in the Black Room for two days without food. Or light. And just a canteen of stagnant water for sustenance, still there from her last stay.

It had taken two months before she could sleep again with the lights off once he'd released her.

But how she wished the lights were off now. Each torch she passed acted like a cruel pointer to her impending fate. Each one flickered out as she went by, marking the moments like the sinister conductor of the Devil's Orchestra. She knew what was going to happen when she reached the house ... it was just a case of how bad it would be. And, if she knew her husband, it would be pretty horrific. He was getting worse at his punishments, and by worse Hermione meant more effective, reducing her to a greater mess of a wreck each and every time.

It filled her with unspeakable anguish that they hadn't fulfilled their duty-bound marital commune this month. That was always something of an ordeal, but lately Ron had been experimenting in making it a new form of torture for her. She often heard his concubines screeching in agony as he tested out his new techniques on them, all to make them perfectly horrendous for her.

All permitted under the guise of a formal expectation as part of their marriage contract.

Hermione had no legal recourse to protest. Not that anyone would have listened to her. King Voldemort had enforced a raft of laws that made witches like her the property of their wedded Lords. She might as well have appealed for justice to a tree, for all the good it would have done. The Death Eaters of the legal courts would turn any complaint she made into an act of treason against the Dark King and his 'reforms'. They'd sooner burn her at the stake, like poor Hannah Abbott, than bring her husband to heel.

So, if Ron chose to torture her sexually, she had no choice but to endure it as best she could. Then cry her silent tears later in her separate bed, when she was sure he wouldn't hear ... and punish her for that, too.

Hermione really wished she could fathom what had happened to him, how power had corrupted him so greatly that he shirked off all sense of honour and decency. He had been an okay sort of guy once, during a time Hermione now honestly struggled to remember. She just never imagined Ron would become the devil she now knew.