Entry tags:

my fic

Snape/Hermione fic: THE PRICE OF TRUTH
Title: The Price of Truth
Pairing: Snape/Hermione
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Some things are worth knowing ... no matter the cost.
Warnings: Dark!fic, moral ambiguity, non-con, drug abuse, creepy imagery
Wordcount: Approx 3,600
Author Notes: Written for my dearest sbrande , I really hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. *leering grin*

Thanks to natashavonsnape for the beta! My other beta is ill, so we can blame Natasha for all the errors you find. Just kidding! Still all mine. ETA: Wonderful Elizabeth has sent me her edits, and I have done a bit more editing.

*~**~*

“I’m going out tonight,” Hermione whispers into the darkness.

The man sitting inside the doorway of the study flicks his wand towards the fireplace, causing a bright orange glow to spill across the room before he grunts in acknowledgement.

The internal struggle waging war on her insides goes unnoticed by her husband. Her guts squirm and thrash like a snake pit during mating season, but Viktor Krum is oblivious, as usual, to her turmoil.

He has grown even more cold and distant to her during these last few months. Hermione tries to come up with plausible excuses for it, such as her busy work schedule as an Auror. The job has her away from home more often than not, tracking down the last of the Death Eaters since Lord Voldemort’s fall. Viktor also works for the ministry, during the off season of Quidditch, but what he does there is a mystery to her – he claims he cannot say.

She watches him as he twirls a small silver pendant in-between his forefingers. It mirrors the orange-yellow of the fireplace and the colour is reflected in Viktor’s dark eyes. He glances up at her then, watching her as closely as she watches him, with a down-turned twist of his lips.

“I haff business to do as vell.” His tone is quiet -- mysterious, and Hermione is reminded of all the secrets they keep from one another.

It makes her wriggling insides calm a fraction with the thought.

“You von’t see me for avhile. Do not vorry … a veek at most.”

Viktor stands then, approaching her frame as she leans against the doorway to the study. He stares down into her eyes, and for a fleeting moment she feels an overwhelming sense of terror. Then, in the same instant, it disappears, as he lifts his hand and trails a gentle thumb across the ridge of her cheekbone.

“I luff you, Her-mi-nee.” He never has got her name quite right, even after three years of marriage. But the gentleness in which he says this sentence has her insides fluttering with something other than worry and fear.

“I love you too, Viktor.” She rises on the tips of her toes and brushes her mouth against his, the briefest of contact, before he glides past her and out the doorway.

Out of the home, out of her life (forever? a part of her wonders), out of the way for her to slump to the floor and reread the blasted note she had received hours earlier.

I am aware of a matter which concerns you greatly, Mrs. Krum.
Many matters, in fact …
Do come by --- tonight 10 p.m.

Bring no one.
S.S.

The spiky scrawl had been recognizable immediately. He left no address … but she knew, knew, that he meant his childhood home at Spinner’s End. His inherited home had been searched many times over by the Aurors of the ministry, including herself, for his presence as well as any clues to the whereabouts of other known Death Eaters.

Nothing had ever come of those searches … and this letter is like striking gold.

It is protocol that she alert the investigative team of Aurors immediately. Protocol that she does not go alone. And a niggling voice in her head, tells her that she should have at least told her husband of where she is off to tonight. But Hermione Granger is stubborn. Stubborn and arrogant of her own abilities. She will go alone, and she will see what he has to say, and then she will decide what needs to be done with the information. Her and her alone.

***

She Apparates to his doorstep with five minutes to spare. There are no wards up and she wonders why he is so certain that she will follow his orders. Does he know her too well?

As she balls up her fist to knock against the heavy, dark oak the door flies open, revealing a sallow skinned face, with an overlarge nose and curtained by two sheets of greasy black hair.

“Mr. Snape,” she says automatically, having schooled herself to not call him Professor.

She isn’t twelve anymore, and she will be damned if she lets him make her feel that way.

“Mrs. Krum,” he responds, sounding as if he himself has memorized the words for her arrival.

He holds the door open for her as she passes him, and she has to fight the urge to spin around and watch him as he closes her in.

This isn’t safe, her mind warns her.

Hermione balks for a moment as she stares at the threadbare sitting chairs that occupy the space before Snape’s fireplace. She has been to his house several times before, although never with him present, and knows without looking that the walls are covered in dusty bookshelves, that behind two of the bookshelves there are hidden doors, and that while one hidden door leads to the kitchen, the other reveals a staircase that leads up to a series of rooms which consist of a few bedchambers, a bathroom and a small study.

A warm hand rests gently on her shoulder and she flinches out of her reverie, aware that the gesture is entirely too intimate for the relationship she has with this man. And then the hand is gone, replaced by a cold voice that says,

“I would suggest sitting, Mis- … Mrs. Krum.”

Snape moves to sit before her and instinctively she turns towards the door, eyeing it to make sure he hasn’t cast anything that would make her unable to flee.

He scoffs when she turns back to him, a sneer settling on his pallid face. “Are you satisfied that I have not trapped you, now?”

She stares at him, her mouth opening in protest, when he grunts (Much like Viktor does, her mind supplies unhelpfully.) and gestures towards the opposite chair.

“Tea?” he asks, as she sits herself across from him.

Her mouth is dry, and she is trying desperately not to tremble. Once again she feels the desperate need to prove that she is not some child, not a pupil for him to harass and belittle. Not someone who can be made a mockery of.

“Please,” she says, in a voice too confident to be realistic at the moment.

Snape smiles then, a thin upward curve of his lips, as he summons the teapot and pours her a cup of murky brown liquid.

Hermione watches as his face turns back into that impassive mask of mystery as she takes her first sip.

“Why did you call me here, Snape?” She tries to use an assertive, self-confident tone, but her voice belies her security.

Snape’s eyes glint sharply and she is once again reminded of her husband – the previous way the fireplace had reflected in his dark irises’ is mimicked by the man who sits before her.

“I called you to issue a warning,” he says softly.

Hermione’s body goes rigid at the connotation of the word ‘warning’, assuming that he means to threaten her against pursuing the likes of himself, and his fellow Death Eaters.

“I won’t call them off, Snape. You and your friends –”

“No!” he growls, and his body lurches forward as hers recoils away from him. It is like a knee-jerk reaction. “This isn’t about that. This is about your husband, Vik-tor.”

He spits the name out as if it were an expletive, and she wonders what Viktor could have possibly done to offend a man like Severus Snape.

“What has he done to you?” She is ashamed at how shrill her voice becomes when speaking of her husband, but the thought that Snape might in some way harbor ill will against Viktor makes her feel quite sick.

“Nothing to me,” he answers evasively, eyeing her as she takes another deep swig of tea. “It is what he is planning to do to you.”

Hermione scoffs and finishes her tea before responding. “Why would you care what goes on between me and my husband?”

Snape gives her another thin smile before asking, “Would you like more tea?”

A trickle of fear begins to creep through her veins at his solicitousness. Severus Snape has never been one to be concerned of another’s comfort or well being, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by her that he seems a bit off.

“No, thank you.” She stares at his lips and waits for them to resume their usual sneer. “Just what is it that you believe my husband is going to do to me?”

“Your husband wears a silver pendant, yes?” Snape asks, in that usual low voice of arrogance that she had grown to despise during her childhood years.

She still does.

“What of it?” Hermione no longer cares if she sounds rude or abrasive towards this man, his very existence disgusts her.

“Tsk-tsk, Granger.” He smirks when she glares at his use of her maiden name. “Perhaps these years out of Hogwarts have made you extraordinarily dull …” He pauses as she snorts before his smirk becomes broader and his voice even more arrogant. “That symbol Mr. Krum wears is the sign of a new power rising. A new Dark Lord if – ah – I am to be precise.”

“Piss off,” Hermione hisses as she tries to stand, but somehow her legs betray her and she can do nothing more than squirm in her seat.

“Do think about it, Hermione,” he says, his eyes following the way her legs thrash uselessly against his sitting chair. “Are you aware of a mysterious job that he conducts for the ministry? Not really a mystery at all … more like a Galleon feeder … much like Lucius Malfoy – if you remember?”

“He’s not!” Hermione gasps, as she gives up the futile struggle between her brain and her legs.

Snape rises. His ugly face appears only inches from her own and his overly-large nose almost brushes her cheek. “He is. Viktor fully intends to use you … if he has need to do so … as payment towards our new Lord.”

When she doesn’t answer he continues. “Your side may have taken down the old Dark Lord, but never, never believe we won’t rally around a new one!”

“Vik … Vik-tor loves me,” she gasps, a strange tingling coursing through her body and numbing her mind.

“If that is so,” Snape whispers, with his lips now almost touching her own, his breath assaulting her face and filling her nostrils. “Then he will promise your whelps as servants for our new Lord and make you into some kind of perverted breeding factory.”

“N-no.” Hermione’s mind spins with his words and attaches them to the many strange events she has had with her husband the last few months.

“Marrying Muggle … no. You haff to keep the blood somewhat pure to insure the Wizarding kind.”

“What!? You sound like you actually believe the filth coming from your mouth, Viktor! Honestly, statements like that … you’ll be made out to be a supporter for the other side.”

“No … filth is not vhat I speak. Only truth, Her-mi-nee.”

It had been hard to resist the urge to smack the surly expression off his face but somehow Hermione had managed. Instead she had shrieked, “I am a Muggleborn, Viktor! A Muggleborn! How can you say such nonsense to me?”

The argument had escalated to carelessly thrown statements of idiocy and resulted in Viktor sleeping on the couch. They did not speak for a week. Although Viktor had eventually apologized, claiming stress for the reason of his outburst, Hermione had never forgotten the quarrel. Its memory always drowned her in a sense of unease.

Her mind began to spin. What if Snape’s telling the truth?

“So we understand one another, I take it?” Snape smiles in a way that is not only unfriendly, but terrifying.

She briefly remembers other odd moments between herself and her husband. A flash of her accidentally touching the pendant that was fastened around his neck, during a moment that was most intimate, the odd way he had recoiled at that touch --- his face taut and angry as she questioned his reaction.

A glimpse of discussing their careers with one another, the odd pauses and stops they both made when talking about the ministry … as if afraid to offend each other’s delicate sensibilities.

And more over, Hermione remembers the sense of mistrust that always seems to linger between Viktor and herself.

She jolts back to reality when Snape’s lips begin to drag lightly across her own.

“Sss-top,” Hermione hisses, trying once more to push her legs against the wooden floor and free herself from the confines of this awful chair.

And that is when she finally realizes the harsh facts of reality: She’s been drugged. She can feel the heaviness in her limbs, like she’s been filled with bags of sand, and she tries – tries – so hard to lift her arm and push him away, but her arm lifts only momentarily before it falls and he laughs, a bitter, hollow sound that fills the room as her arm collapses heavily beside her.

“Bastard,” she chokes, as his mouth descends onto her jaw, trailing wetness along her cheek to her ear, and she shudders.

The taste of dirt mingled with tea is heavy in her mouth, and she wonders why she didn’t notice that the tea he served her was poisoned, because it’s all too apparent now. All she can do is stare at his face, which is blurry and distorted, his harsh black eyes seeming to multiply before her own in a swirling whirl of confusion.

“Rape.” She tries to tell him, though the word is garbled in her throat, and her head is spinning so fast she can barely speak at all.

“You want this,” he whispers, mouth pressed against the shell of her ear.

No, she tries to respond, as his fingers fumble with her robes before pushing aside her knickers, sliding easily into her, despite her unwillingness.

“A price must be paid for the information I’ve rendered,” Snape whispers, waiting only the briefest of moments before sucking her earlobe into his mouth with a disgustingly wet “slurp”.

A burst of colour explodes before her eyes as she squinches them shut so tightly a pain flares with the force. They fly open at the harsh sound of his next words.

“He will use you Miss Granger …” Snape exhales a heavy breath against her cheek as his fingers continue to assault her.

She can feel the coolness of his touch against her insides, although only distantly. Her mind feels as if it has been captured inside a big balloon and set free against a windy sky. Everything is distorted, from the many sets of gleaming black eyes that stare at her to the quickly forming reality that her husband is a fraud.

A Death Eater.

Through the haze she wonders why she had not truly questioned Viktor’s loyalties before now.

“How long has it been, I wonder? Since you have been properly fucked?”

Snape’s cold voice pulls the string that carries her floating mind, and she gapes at him, although the horror is slow to set in.

Something in that tea makes her unable to respond, and she only garbles something that comes out as “Mrhhh” as he unfastens his trousers, revealing a hideously purple-red erection.

Now, he is dragging her limp form from the chair up into his arms. As much as she tries to struggle her limbs feel like dead weight and all she can do is twitch. She can’t even concentrate on her surroundings as he walks – with a quick stride towards somewhere – all she can focus on is how the colour of everything is off: like a television screen that is too old and dying.

For a moment everything appears green before her, until it shifts to yellow, and then to blue. She is aware of being set down, heavy and weighted against the softness under her. Hermione feels as if she just might sink through.

A hand comes up to stroke her face, and she can smell the thick scent of her own musk on it. Her bleary eyes turn towards the dark wizard that kneels over her and her mouth and vocal cords try desperately to form her question.

“W-what … wh … drug?”

“Hallucinogenic mushrooms.” Snape’s voice sounds proud, and if she could she would lift up her wrist and cuff him across his smug face.

The slick slide of fabric against her thighs is torturous under this Muggle drug as Snape drags her robes up and settles it around her waist. She knows her body well enough to be sure that her cheeks are flushing a bright red, and that the red is spreading down her neck, her chest, mottling between her legs like a bright flag of submission.

“You want this,” his rough voice repeats, no longer sounding so silky … instead his voice sounds like she’s ran it through a blender.

Before she can choke up the word ‘no’ his face disappears between her pushed open knees, settling against the crux of her. Viktor isn’t keen on the pleasures of oral sex, especially when it comes to giving, and so the liquid heat of Snape’s tongue is startling … mesmerizing … and Hermione can do nothing but choke and cough as the soft press of flesh invades her.

She tries to ignore what he’s doing, tries to hate it, but it is nearly impossible. Her drug induced mind transfigures him into a pale, white Octopus arm that ends with beetle black eyes and a red gaping hole. Snape’s giant wet suction cup drags over her labia and clit where it licks and pulls and sucks so softly … so very gently … that a jolt of raw pleasure courses through her, knocking the wind from her lungs and catching in her throat as she utters a strangled cry.

Large white spiders crawl up her thighs and move their bony legs, fleshy at the tips, around and around … massaging her flesh and sending shockwaves of stimulation straight to her numbed brain.

Hermione feels the pressure building in her gut, creeping slowly downwards as her muscles begin to tense and ache in preparation for what is sure to be a series of violent contractions.

The Octopus stops then, stops the insistent teasing of her quim to morph into something else. Something dark, foul, and faceless … a mist of black that glides over her, up to her face to stare down at her without expression. Hermione screams.

But the creature’s mouth isn’t grey and cold, nor does it try to suck out her soul in a great rattling gulp. Instead its mouth is hot and insistent, pressing against hers until she has to open to breath and then swooping in with a long, velvety tongue.

Snape … human. Or almost.

Hermione’s body still thrums with interrupted release, and she gasps when she feels something heavy and wet dragging across her thigh. Her mind is too muddled to process things clearly and all she can concentrate on is getting off. A quick thrust fills her with burning heat, a throbbing mass of slimy flesh that is nothing like the gentle ministrations of Snape’s tongue.

There is a moment where nothing moves, time stands still, and Hermione is unsure if she’s lost consciousness or if she’s just lost it. Then Snape groans and bucks gently, massaging her insides and grinding softly against the swollen nub between her legs. She splutters something nonsensical and writhes against him, half in struggle and half to increase the pressure that is crushing down on her like the weight of a thousand bricks.

The man above her jerks violently as she thrashes and then it’s all cursing and pushing and pulsing as they struggle against each other. A black tidal wave crashes down and she can’t breathe … can’t thinkseemovejustfeel as every nerve in her body sings with euphoria --- every muscle tightens and spasms as she comes, her body shaking like tremolo.

And he’s shaking and shuddering too, filling her with startling blasts of slick heat.

“Ah… ahhh …” Snape groans, so softly that were his mouth not pressing against her ear she might not have noticed.

Then with a final spasm of release the world crashes around her: black and unyielding.

***

When Hermione awakes she is wrapped in a towel and naked in a threadbare chair that sits by a fireplace. She blinks several times before she realizes just where she is, and just who might be present.

Lurching out of the chair proves not to be such a good idea when she winds up on the floor with a dull thud, her knees smashing painfully into the splintering wooden floor. Her clothes sit next to her, folded in a precise manner, and a scrap of parchment lies on top next to her wand.

Apologies are trivial, though I wish things could have been different.

S.S.

P.S. I wasn’t lying. Stay with Viktor and I shall see you again. Run.

Hermione knows without checking that Snape has long fled the walls she is currently surrounded by. Her pride is wounded, her body violated, but a small, miniscule part of her can’t help but be thankful for his warning.

It takes less than an hour to clear all her belongings out of the house she shares with Viktor. As she flees to another country, with another name, Hermione vows to herself that she will never again associate with any man or wizard who bears a hooked nose and soulless, black eyes.

*~**~*



All drug references were based on true experience ... unfortunatly (or maybe fortunatly - since I was with my father at the time) without the coercive sex/orgasms.