Title:
Arsenic and Old Leather (Part 2/3)
Author:
Lucia de’Medici
Summary: Once upon a time, great families dominated the Renaissance world in
Pairing:
Blaise/Hermione
Rating:
R
Warnings: Despair, darkness, coercion.
Author’s
Notes: Somewhere in Solidarity-verse, a long time
ago where the Harry Potter reality overlaps on the events of the past. Loosely
related to the major fic, and defiantly AU – the dialogue and mannerisms have
been adjusted to suit the period.
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Act II: Scene I
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Hermione awoke to the tinkling of glass and the pungent scent of crushed roots. She found she was draped across a settee, her feet elevated and her forehead damp from a cooled cloth that covered her eyes.
Cautiously, she pulled off the dressing and glimpsed her surroundings. It was a dismal sight she was met with as she realized she was entombed well beneath the ground – the walls rank and dripping where there were no windows to let the humidity escape. The circular chamber was lined in shelves from floor to ceiling, and resting upon these were murky liquids contained within ornate glass bottles or every shape and colour, corked and dusting over.
“Still alive, carina? How tragic.”
Hermione leapt from the chaise, all sense of propriety falling by the wayside as she slapped the wet cloth to the floor and rushed across the room to the door. The large iron knocker was leaden in her small fists, and though she struggled, the door moved not a hairsbreadth.
“It will not open,” he murmured.
Despite that he stood across the room, leaning against a high oak table, the timbre of his voice chilled her flesh and sent her blood speeding once more.
“Does it thrill you, signora? The sudden loss of power can leave men bereft and bleating for the barest scraps when offered.”
“I will not beg for anything,” she spat, turning on her slippered heel and hitching up her skirts to storm across the room. “You will release me this instant! In the name of all things still sacred in this godforsaken place, I command you to let me out!”
“What words from an abomination such as yourself!” he chuckled, pushing himself off the high table and advancing on her with restrained enmity.
Hermione, however, stood her ground and thrust her heaving chest at him as he reared over her.
“How dare you?” she seethed, her hands squeezed into fists at her sides. “You speak of myths! This blasphemy has no place in our world – you’ll slaughter us all!”
Suddenly, he reached for her – grasping her by the wrist and dragging her forwards so that his dark features loomed over her.
“I think not, Signora Granger,” he murmured silkily, running the tips of his fingers across her forehead and down her cheek as if examining her. Vainly, Hermione struggled against him, throwing her head back and exposing the soft pallor of her neck.
“You see,” he continued, “it was your kind that nearly destroyed us all not more than a hundred years past. Your kind that set my ancestors ablaze and screaming atop the woodpiles where the villagers feared and loathed them…”
“There were spells!” she gasped. “They could have protected themselves!”
“Hardly,” he retuned darkly, dipping his head down to sniff at the exposed flesh of her throat. “A wizard cannot save himself if his wand has been broken or removed.”
Hermione whimpered, refusing to acknowledge the invasion of his warm breath where it spilled across her skin and the gooseflesh rose in greeting.
“The taint of the muggle-borns nearly destroyed my kind with their bumbling ways, their hysteria – exposing the secrets of our world for all to see. And you, my meddlesome beauty –” he tilted her chin to peer into her eyes. “You’ve come to my land to pilfer my family’s secrets and destroy us once again.”
“N-no!” she whimpered.
“Such a pity it is,” he murmured, closing his eyes but not relinquishing his grip, “that the one creature that should fall into my path, no more fit to lick the grime from these walls in my presence, should be such a feast for the eye.”
“You’re going to kill me.”
Her own candour shocked her – and much like the bumblebee, halted in its mid-air flight by the barest drop of raw poison from the fresh flower, Hermione knew it to be true.
Blaise opened his eyes.
“Not just,” he murmured, searching her features as if they possessed some hidden insight. “I’ve heard tell in the old lore of a rite so sacred that it would cleanse the blood. Your soul would be spared should you choose this indulgence.”
He released her, allowing his fingers to slip off the tight bindings of her dress with practiced grace, and took a step backwards out of respect. The gesture, however, merely prompted her roiling terror to return with vehemence.
“You wish to butcher me in the manner that you would treat your swine or cattle.” Her voice rose an octave, and to her own ears as she pressed a hand to her fluttering heart, it sounded ever the more a shrill plea for mercy.
The nobleman merely tilted his head to the side and peered at her through the curls that spilled across his brow.
“Do you presume that I follow in the footsteps of the great da Vinci?” he said, bemused. “Our science is not anatomy, so much you should know. There are whispers that follow in your wake, Hermione. They tell of wizard scholars from your lands that endeavour to breech the secrets of the bloodlines.”
Folding his hands behind him, he stepped to the side as if to examine her from every angle.
“Is that not why you’ve come?” he asked, moving behind her.
Hermione shivered at the gentle ghosting of his eyes as they took in her shape.
“I’ve not heard of such tales, signor.”
“Indeed,” he murmured, his breath hot against her neck. “Your thirst for forbidden knowledge wafts like the stench of your blood.”
His hands slid to her middle, warming her skin through the fabric as the roamed in exploration over her sides.
“I can almost taste it,” he hissed into her ear, and pressed his lips to her throat.
Such thrall held her then, lust sluicing through her fear as she leaned backwards into his embrace, and his mouth traced its searing course over the place where her pulse fluttered wantonly.
“Please,” she all but moaned, “please release me. Do not do this!” she half begged as his hands slid to her thighs, bunching the fabric of her dress and pressing her into his lap.
“You should have this honour,” he mouthed into the delicate dip where the bones of her collar arched.
Her hands fell to the sides limply, as his kneaded the curves below the heavy gown, trailing and tearing over the lacings and rising to the swell of her breasts where they were crushed by the corset.
“It is yours if you would bear it,” he murmured, turning her roughly to face him as his lips sought out her mouth, and smothered her protests before they could rise to the air.
She gasped, realizing for the first time the devilry he demanded. Just as suddenly, she tore backwards, still bound in his want though she turned her face away and breathed a shattering, “I will not!”
A moment’s pause uncoiled, seeming as if the air thickened and fell about the pair as they stood there.
“Of course not,” he said in false modesty, and with a wicked grin he released her so that she stumbled backwards a step, leaving her chilled and bereft as her eyes fluttered open in his absence. “I think we’ll see to it quite nicely that you do not,” he sneered bitterly.
With that, Blaise swept back to the high table – whereupon Hermione struggled to collect herself. In her mounting fear as her eyes fluttered open fully, she noted that a large, leather-bound book lay open on the pitted surface amidst a clutter of bottles and crushed blossoms.
Hastily, the urgency of her duty returning at full gallop amidst the rising drone of warning in her ears, she lifted her skirts and tore at her wand which rested against her upper thigh, just beneath the confines of her petticoat.
“That would not be prudent, Signora Granger,” Blaise murmured in an almost bored undertone.
Across the room he was pointing his own wand at her with one hand, while with the other; he closed the large tome. Its heavy gilt markings glimmered eerily in the low torchlight, and with rising understanding – she saw the curved edge of the seal on its cover. In an instant, where the Zabini rested his palm across the raised surface, the book’s bindings rose unaided, and bound the tome with several heavy, grinding clicks.
“The Principia Discordia –” she hissed at him.
“Do not speak its name!” he snarled, rounding on her and abandoning the text. “You who are not fit to know its mysteries, how dare you summon it so?”
“It is for all!” she all but screamed, her wand now aloft and pointed at the rogue himself as he stood fixed at the far end of the chamber. “It was meant for those of the same ilk!”
“You!” he bellowed, “are no more than a filthy abomination that rejects the gifts offered to you in good graces! You who could be our equal – untainted!”
“Your selfish desires have led you astray, Blaise! No magic can change the calibre of my blood.”
He scoffed, his wand held high and matching her in the stance of a duellist. “The book bears secrets far more ancient than wizards and mugellos alike. It is the beginning, the future, and the end to all things. The Great Book’s mysteries run deeper than blood,” he whispered menacingly.
“Then it will belong to the entire wizarding world,” she returned, narrowing her eyes and readying her aim.
He shook his head, his gaze fixed on her own. “It cannot. It will forever belong to the righteous, the chosen, and the pure. And you, carina, will die for your heresy.”
“For your wanting!” she shot back, and fired her curse as he sent his own, with as much fervour, across the room.
Hermione did not have a spared moment to see whether or not her spell caught him, for his reached her first – burrowing deep within her chest so that she shook with the force of it. For a moment, she hung suspended – before the world slipped to darkness and she crumpled to the floor.
---To Be Continued ---