Title: Vindicated
Author: eeyore9990
Characters/Pairings: Hermione/Lucius
Rating: NC-17
Kinks/Themes Chosen: humiliation
Other Warnings: sounding, nipple clamps, mentions of vomit, dub-to-non-con, sort-of-prostitution
Word Count: 3660
Summary/Description: Hermione finds a way to take back the personal power stripped from her during that interminable hour spent at Malfoy Manor.
Author's Notes: Okay, so this is the first time I've written sounding and while I'm pretty sure it's not too horribly wrong, there's just no guarantee that it's right either. Damn the internet for not having a play by play available for my "research." Deepest thanks to r_grayjoy for all her help with the research we were able to find. (By "we", I mean "her", of course.)

---

A frizz of curl sticking to the side of her face, Hermione looked at Lucius Malfoy with a catlike smile curving her lips. She watched, satisfied, as his eyes narrowed with distrust before she dropped the bag of coins on the ground between them.

His eyes immediately darted down to it; she could sense him measuring the bag for its potential worth.

"One thousand Galleons."

Malfoy snorted. "That bag isn't big enough to hold one thousand Galleons unless you shrank them—which would devalue the money."

Rolling her eyes, Hermione said, "There are fifty in the bag, which you surely knew as soon as it hit the ground. The remainder of the money is in my vault. This is merely a down-payment."

"Interesting." Calculation gleamed in his eyes. "Who do you want killed?"

"Funny. I knew you'd immediately assume the worst."

"Shouldn't I?"

Hermione smiled again. "What I want won't hurt anyone. On the contrary, one thousand Galleons," she stretched the words out, enjoying the way his eyes watched her lips as she rolled the phrase off her tongue, "will be enough to see your family through for several months."

"You've yet to tell me what you want."

"This really isn't the place to negotiate our business, Malfoy." Hermione waved around them at the empty corridor that could, at any moment, be filled with Ministry personnel. "If you're willing to hear my offer, take the money and meet me at The Witch's Tit." The Witch's Tit was to Diagon Alley what The Hog's Head was to Hogsmeade; seedier than the Leaky Cauldron in every way, and a place they could go and speak in relative obscurity.

A twitch was as far as he moved; irritation washing through her, Hermione stepped forward until her toe nudged the heavy bag of coins and whispered, "Take it, Malfoy. We both know you've no pride left."

She watched his eyes; it wouldn't surprise her to know his hands curled into fists, as icy as his gaze became. Finally, though, he broke.

"Very well, Miss Granger. I'll meet you at The Witch's Tit at seven o'clock on Monday evening."

"Make it six o'clock. We have much to discuss." After making that demand, Hermione stayed where she was. He was obviously waiting for her to move away before taking the money, but for her, this small beginning was part and parcel of what she wanted.

She was content to wait all day for him to bend to her, bowing and scraping for the money she was providing.

Time stretched out as he struggled against his pride. His gaze bounced from hers to the bag on the ground and when his hand twitched, she knew she'd won. The splotch of red that appeared in his cheeks when he realised just how precisely she'd orchestrated this moment was beautiful to behold; the sight of him kneeling at her feet to snatch up the bag of Galleons was sublime.

"Six o'clock, Malfoy. Every minute you're late will cost you one hundred Galleons."

Hermione turned and walked away, chuckling over the impotent fury she'd seen in his eyes.

---

At six oh five, Hermione removed the Disillusionment spell she'd been hiding behind and walked over to the table where Malfoy had been waiting for the past ten minutes.

"You're late." The bland quality of his voice belied the irritation she could plainly see in his eyes.

Hermione dropped a blank cheque on the table in the amount of one hundred Galleons. "Would you like to continue whinging, or shall we get down to business?"

A strained silence filled the air between them for a long moment as he visibly struggled with his anger at her impudence. "I've yet to ascertain whether we actually have any business to discuss."

"It's quite simple, Malfoy. I'm willing to offer you an additional eight hundred and fifty Galleons," she pushed the cheque toward him with the tip of one finger, "to spend the night with me."

He sat back, staring at her for a moment before a hint of smugness began to enter his eyes. "You want to sleep with me badly enough to pay for the priviledge?"

"Oh no, Malfoy. What I want is one night—eight full hours—in which you are obligated by Unbreakable Vow to do everything I ask of you."

"The stipulations?"

"No one else will be involved. This means that your wife will never be told of our arrangement, nor will your son or my friends and loved ones. The only two people who will be affected will be the two of us. I will not harm you physically, but you will surrender your wand to me before we begin."

"This meeting is over." He pushed his chair back violently enough to make the legs screech across the floor. "I surrender my wand to no one."

Hermione shrugged, picking up the cheque and tucking it away in her purse. "I understand completely. Consider the previous fifty Galleons my payment for your time this evening." Tossing a few Sickles on the table in compensation for the time they'd spent at it, Hermione stood. Pausing for a moment, she looked at Lucius, still in his chair, and said, "If you change your mind, feel free to owl me."

As she left, she could feel his gaze on her back, likely picking out the best spot to hex her.

---

It took less than four days for Lucius to send an owl. Satisfaction curling in her gut, Hermione replied with a time and place. Feeling magnanimous, she added, 'Leave your wand with your wife, if that makes you feel more secure,' before she signed the parchment with a large H and attached it to the bird that stood patiently awaiting her response.

As soon as the bird left, she walked over to her writing desk, unlocked the bottom drawer, and pulled out the contract she'd had her solicitor draft. She'd wait until the next day to send it.

And after that, she'd allow him a further few hours to agonize over his decision before binding him with an Unbreakable Vow.

She hadn't realised just how satisfying playing this game with Malfoy would be.

---

The warehouse was perfect. Seedy enough to make Malfoy curl his nose in disgust and dirty enough to ensure his knees would be filthy by the end of the night.

Because oh yes, he would crawl for her.

Hermione watched his undisguised reaction to her chosen location with glee. Once again she was under a Disillusionment spell, but she imagined that he wouldn't have bothered to contain his revulsion to the setting even if he'd known she was watching.

Poncy prig.

"Expelliarmus," she called out and snatched his wand from the air as it spun toward her. Removing the spell on herself, she stepped forward into the light and gestured at a thin mattress on the ground, the only 'furniture' in the room aside from a lone plastic chair. "Remove your clothing and place it near the bed."

A muscle twitched in his jaw before he said, "May I ask for a basic household cleaning charm on the room?"

Hermione smiled sweetly. "Unfortunately I spent nearly all my time at school learning useless spells for self-defence," lies, all lies, "so you'll have to simply accept the room as it is." When he continued to hesitate, Hermione narrowed her eyes and said, "Strip."

Vindication flooded through her when his hands went to the top closure of his robes. She made sure to watch him carefully; it wouldn't do to find that he'd hid another wand on his person. In theory her Expelliarmus would have disarmed him entirely, but she'd lived through too much to expect anything to go according to plan.

When he had stripped himself of the last garment covering his body, Hermione nodded and allowed herself a moment to study him. His eyes showed his disdain for the game she was playing, his body was as fit as could be expected for a wizard in his prime, his disinterested genitalia hung between his thighs, and pride kept his shoulders back and head high.

She would have to do something about that last.

"Crawl to me," she ordered him, her voice even. She'd been planning this night far too long to feel even an ounce of hesitation over her own actions.

He hesitated, just as she'd known he would, and the Unbreakable Vow he'd taken the day before began to take effect. As she watched, his face went first pale, then began to take on a bluish tinge. His hands went to his throat, his fingers clawing at his skin in an attempt to stop whatever outside force was choking him. Only there was no outside force.

Deprived of oxygen, his knees went weak and he collapsed forward, barely catching himself on his hands before his face hit the floor. As soon as his knees made contact with the floor, he was released from the effects of the Unbreakable Vow. He gagged until air began to once again flood his system, at which point he started coughing and choking. When he was finally able to speak, he looked at her through reddened eyes and hissed, "Mudblood bitch!"

She just nodded. The epithet no longer had any power over her; she could sense his fear underlying the word now in a way she hadn't been keen enough to realise as a girl.

Hermione snapped her fingers and pointed to her feet, a non-verbal reminder to him of his instructions. She heard his breathing go raspy before he dropped his head and began to inch forward.

"Good boy," she murmured, and as if she'd thrown a switch, he stopped moving. Pride would be the death of him.

She waited until he fell to his side, the veins standing out in his face and throat, before she leant over and said, "I have absolutely no interest in scraping what's left of your corpse off the ground. If you use the Unbreakable Vow to kill yourself, I will leave you here." To drive home the point, she whispered, "Imagine the shame that would fall upon your name if your body was found in its current state in this part of Muggle London."

Something, some dark emotion she couldn't name, flashed across his face before he pushed himself with apparent difficulty to his hands and knees once more. Instead of merely gagging this time when the constriction around his throat disappeared, he heaved up part of his dinner. Hermione wrinkled her nose at the scent, but said nothing.

Until, that is, he attempted to skirt the mess.

"Oh no," she said, shaking her head. "You made the mess; you can certainly crawl through it."

He paused, but not for long enough that the spell binding him could do more than cause laboured breathing. Muscles visibly twitching, he hung his head and crawled through the puddle of vomit, the ends of his still-long hair dragging through as well.

He came to a halt before her, his arms holding him stiffly from the floor as he stared up at her, his neck at an angle that could only be painful. Still too full of pride for her taste.

"Lick my feet."

He made no effort to conceal the way he rolled his eyes. "Honestly, Miss Granger. How trite and cliché of you."

Squatting to put them at eye-level, Hermione brought their faces close together and repeated, "Lick. My. Feet."

Shaking his head with a sigh, Malfoy lowered his head and then paused, studying her ultra-Muggle Doc Martens.

"Problem, Malfoy?" she asked, barely containing her glee.

"Not at all. I do hope you aren't hoping to win any fashion contests in the near future." Malfoy poked his tongue out and dragged it across the top of her shoe before making a face. "Disgusting."

"If you dislike it so, perhaps you'll find your next task more to your liking."

Hermione crossed to the chair, settling into it before she snapped her fingers once more and said, "Come here." When he made to stand, she tsk-ed. "Really now, Malfoy, do you honestly expect you'll be able to travel in any position other than your current one as long as we're here?"

He sneered at her, but behaved himself enough to crawl toward her, stopping between her wide-spread knees. "What now, mistress?"

Hermione ran the tip of her wand over the crotch of her denims, feeling the first hint of uncertainty since she'd begun this attempt to win back the personal power she'd lost at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange and the Malfoys during that interminable hour spent at the Manor. The thick material disappeared, leaving her bare to his gaze.

"Now you may lick me. You will continue licking until I've reached orgasm, Malfoy, so you'd do best to overcome your distaste of all things Muggle rather quickly. And if you even consider using your teeth on me to do anything other than bring me pleasure," she added, "you won't have to worry about the Unbreakable Vow. I'll bind you so well you won't be able to so much as twitch when I rip your teeth from your mouth." She relaxed back against the chair, her fingers tight around the handle of her wand.

She didn't trust him as far as she could kick him.

"Who knew you were so eager for me you'd pay for this?" he murmured.

"I have no desire to hear your voice, Malfoy. Don't force me to use a Silencing spell on you."

He shrugged, still so elegant and prideful even though his hair and knees were crusted with his own vomit.

Her gut clenched when he lowered his head to her lap, something almost like nausea twisting in her stomach at the thought of this vile creature touching her. But she'd come too far now to consider relenting over her own squeamishness.

The first touch of his tongue was almost hesitant and he drew back immediately, his expression that of someone who'd tasted something vile. It wasn't until his breathing rasped through his throat that he lowered his head again.

This time he drew his tongue over her labia before pressing his face more fully to her groin, the tip of his tongue dipping into her awkwardly before withdrawing and travelling up to circle her clit.

Hermione had begun to believe she wouldn't be able to reach even the first stage of arousal, much less orgasm, until that moment. Apparently it didn't matter to her body how vile the person attached to the tongue rubbing so teasingly against her clit was, as long as the rubbing continued. She shifted in her chair, raising one leg to give him better access before dropping her head back and closing her eyes to block out the sight of his too-recognisable head between her legs.

She revelled in the sensation of his tongue fluttering over her clit, closing her mind to all thoughts. Her hips began to rock against his face, forcing him to readjust again and again the closer she came to orgasm.

A combination of his spit and her own arousal began to run down her perineum, dampening the fabric of her denims. Her fingers tightened on her wand in her right hand and the seat of her chair in her left as excitement knotted in her belly. She flung her head backward, hips freezing in place as the first flutters of release began to overwhelm her.

She clenched her teeth and rode out the pulses of her orgasm as he continued licking and sucking at her. Finally, she could take no more and she ordered him away, her voice far too breathless for her own peace of mind.

"Satisfied?" he asked, his mouth shiny in the harsh light of the warehouse.

"That was the point of this part of our little exercise," she said. Straightening in the chair, she shook her hair back over her shoulders and gestured toward the mattress. "Crawl over there and climb onto the bed."

"If you're expecting me to perform for you," he said, sitting back on his heels and resting his hands on his thighs, "You'll have to think of a way to spark my interest."

Hermione's eyes were drawn to his groin where his cock still lay flaccid in its nest of hair. She shrugged. "I have no desire to have that anywhere near me. However, since you won't be leaving here unfulfilled, you'd best work at sparking your own interest. To the bed. Now."

He shrugged before resuming his position on his hands and knees and crawling toward the mattress. As he mounted it, Hermione went to a bag in the corner that she'd placed under a Notice-Me-Not spell. Digging through it, she withdrew nipple clamps, a sound, lubricant and a slim dildo. All the items were obviously Muggle-made, which was the point really.

Crossing to the bed, she instructed him to lie on his back before pinching up his nipples and the skin around them to apply the nipple clamps. His hiss of pain didn't affect her at all, and she moved on with a mechanical detachment. She lifted his cock, pouring lubricant onto the tip and working it into the slit with her finger before grabbing the sound and lubing it up until it dripped clear fluid.

"Try not to move," she said, her voice dispassionate.

"What are you…"

She pulled the skin surrounding his slit apart and began to ease the sound into his urethra, ignoring his groan as gravity took over and the sound began to slip into him under its own weight. To aid its journey, she massaged the exterior of his cock.

"The contract," he said through gritted teeth. "You can't cause me physical harm."

"And I'm not," she said, dripping more lube on the place the sound stretched his slit. "All my research indicates that you'll experience a pleasure from this so intense that you may lose consciousness. How is that in any way harmful? Now be quiet. I wouldn't want my concentration to be compromised to the point where I slip and force this into your prostate gland."

As she added lube to help the sound slide further into him, he grimaced, his hands balling into fists on either side of him. She found it curious that he hadn't attempted to overpower her yet and take her wand or his own to stop this. Shrugging that thought off, she reached for the dildo and held in the air before him, waiting until he opened his eyes and saw it. "You're to use this on yourself until you achieve orgasm. It will be a dry orgasm until you remove the sound, at which point I understand you'll achieve the strongest orgasm you've ever known."

"What is the point of this?" he asked, the words sounding as if he'd had to force them through a dry throat.

"There are many points. Everything you've experienced tonight has been of Muggle origin, from the neighbourhood to the building to these items… to me. After this evening, you'll never taste your wife without having known the taste of a Muggleborn. You won't be aroused without having known the pleasure of Muggle sex toys. This will be a part of you from this moment forward. Every time I see you look down your nose at a Muggleborn, I'll remember this night. And I'll smile."

Dropping the dildo on his chest, she kept a gentle grip on his still-flaccid cock and said, "Use plenty of lube. And be careful how you move. You don't want to jostle the sound."

It took him several long moments to find a way to manoeuvre so that he could fuck himself with the dildo without causing the sound to slip about. He slid the dildo in and out of his arse for a long while before his face began to twist with pleasure. It took even longer for his breathing to reveal the depth of his arousal. When his chest and face began to flush a dark red, Hermione reached out and pulled the nipple clamps off roughly, causing him to shout and jam the dildo into his arse, holding it there. She studied him as his mouth stretched open, his neck muscles standing out starkly at the sides of his throat. She lowered the hand not holding his now-erect cock upright and tapped the loop of the sound several times. As she did so, his shout turned into a scream, his hips bucking wildly from the mattress.

Gently she took the loop between her fingers and slowly eased the sound free of him. Free of obstruction, come spurted from him, landing wetly on his chest, and spattering her hand and wrist as well as the sound itself. Grimacing, she cast a cleaning charm on her skin, then looked back down at him to see that he had, indeed, lost consciousness.

Standing, she moved back from the bed before drawing her wand and casting, "Rennervate!"

He came awake slowly, blinking around the room in disorientation. She waited until he looked at her, his cheeks flushing dully, before she said, "You're welcome to take these toys or burn them. I've no use for them myself, though you certainly seemed to enjoy yourself."

Picking up his clothing, she dropped the pile in the congealing puddle of vomit on the floor. She felt no need to complete the eight hours she'd contracted him for; vindication was already hers.

"The Galleons will have transferred directly to your vault the moment you entered this room. I'll owl your wand to you when I've made it safely home."

The last echoes of the past fell away as she left him there, lying in the wet mess he'd made on the bare mattress. The image of Malfoy watching as Bellatrix Lestrange tortured her would no longer have any power over her.