1,094A/N: *wanders in, crunching crackers*
*smiles at you through a mouthful*
*winks and hands over the chapter*
*hopes you'll fogive the long wait*
*loves you all*
*scuttles away to update other fics, too*
xx-Kitten.
Undisclosed Desires
By Kittenshift17
Chapter Eight
The first thing she spied when she entered the kitchen was the freshly washed teacup on the sink – an immediate crack in the façade of the abandoned house.
"Interesting," Hermione muttered before a god-awful shriek sounded from behind her.
She turned on a dime, her senses surprisingly sharp despite her months spent in a drunken stupor. A blur of movement burst through the kitchen door in the form of a five foot being shrieking like a harpy and hurling owl pellets and other nasty things in Hermione's direction.
"Repello!" Hermione hissed, slicing her wand through the air and repelling all the vile things being thrown at her. They bounced off her shield and back at the thrower, who looked alarmed and annoyed.
"Stupefy!" Hermione barked, twisting her wand sharply.
A shield charm blocked her, though it was spat through clenched teeth and spoken in Russian.
"Stupefy," Hermione hissed again. "Avis! Stupefy! Petrificus Totalus!"
More shield charms repelled her, but the shrieking had stopped and the "ghost" attacking her was on the back foot now, swiping at the birds that erupted from the end of Hermione's wand and began dive-bombing the other witch. Levka hurled hexes in return, silently throwing them at Hermione and Hermione had her work cut out for her trying to fend them all off in between throwing spells of her own.
She cast Avis again, setting more and more birds upon the angry Russian witch dressed like a ghost, and flinging more hexes at her, dodging here and there and doing irreparable damage to the kitchen as they dueled, but there was nothing else for it. The other witch certainly didn't play by any rules, firing off deadly hexes alongside harmless ones and not seeming to care that any of them might find their mark.
"ENOUGH!" A male voice intruded on the duel as Hermione hissed when a slicing hex caught her left arm before she nailed Levka with a Stupefy that flung the woman backward and slammed her into the man who'd charged into the kitchen to stop them.
Antonin Dolohov caught his stunned mother easily enough – not hard given that she was five foot nothing and scrawny as though she didn't eat enough. He cradled her prone form against his chest with one arm while he trained his wand on Hermione with the other.
"Enough, solnyshko,," he commanded, eyeing her dangerously and Hermione bared her teeth at him in a mean grin before she lowered her wand and straightened up her duel-messy hair.
"If the Aurors only knew how easy it is to lure you home," she taunted, smirking at him.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Meeting your mother," Hermione offered. "Thinking of investing in property. I've made some changes to my life recently, and all that overtime I work has paid off. My money's not doing anything for me just sitting there in the vault, now is it?"
"You attacked my mother," he accused.
"She attacked me first," Hermione argued, pointing to the mess of owl pellets, dung bombs, and dust bunnies the woman had thrown at her where they were scattered all over the floor. "I defended myself."
"You came here looking for a fight," he argued.
"I came here to inspect a property I might invest in," Hermione argued. "And I was attacked by the resident "ghost". What else could I do but defend myself?"
"You could've stayed away," he growled, narrowing his eyes on her and looking less than pleased with her reasoning and her actions.
"I could've," Hermione allowed. "But you've spent so long invading my home, it seemed only fair that I return to the favor."
"This isn't my home," he argued. "Not anymore."
"Semantics," Hermione said, flicking her fingers dismissively before twirling her wand to put out the spot fires in the drywall that had sparked amid their duel.
"Semantics?" he scoffed, looking less than pleased as he helped his mother over to a kitchen chair than remained unscathed and revived her.
"You can't win this argument," Hermione told Antonin, turning away and casting repairing charms and cleaning charms as she went, tidying up the mess they'd made.
"I could," Antonin argued.
"You stalk me," Hermione replied. "I have the moral high-ground."
"Semantics," he parroted to her and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, regardless of the danger he posed.
"Tend to your mother, Antonin," Hermione commanded, rolling her eyes and refusing to look at him and let him catch her smiling. The last thing he needed was additional encouragement. She wondered if she should be concerned that despite what he'd done to her as a teenager, and despite having kidnapped and blackmailed her, she found herself often thinking of the night she'd spent in his bed, and the morning after it. She was supposed to despise this man, not finding him amusing or, Merlin forbid, alluring.
"What did you do to her?" he asked. "What are these…. Things?"
Hermione looked back to see that her surviving birds were still dive bombing the stunned witch and she cringed when she saw the damage they'd done to Levka's wrinkled skin.
"They're birds," she answered. "Finite."
The bird exploded in puffs of feathers that disappeared before they hit the floor.
"They do a lot of damage," he complained, eyeing his mother's scratched and pecked arms and face.
"They're supposed to," Hermione offered. "Healing charms will fix those."
"This is how you seek to meet my mother for the first time? By injuring her and attacking her after invading her home?" he accused, healing his mother quickly while the woman slowly came around as the stunning spell wore off.
"If you're willing to leave her unprotected to the point that the Ministry means to sell the house out from under her, Dolohov, I can't be blamed for taking advantage. I'm an enterprising sort of witch."
"You're a mudak," Antonin corrected her.
"I don't know what that means," Hermione told him primly, crossing to the kitchen sink and turning on the tap to wash out the slice his mother had gashed in her arm. "But I'm sensing that it's rude. And that's no way to speak to the focus of your obsession, Mr Dolohov."
"Mister?" he scoffed, scowling at her and looking like he didn't appreciate the reminder of his age relative to hers.
"Is she going to be okay?" Hermione asked, nodding at his mother as she stirred and started to come around.
Antonin didn't answer, instead beginning to speak to his mother in rapid-fire Russian too quick for Hermione to make out even the most basic words. It'd been a long time since she'd considered anything written in Russian and her translation skills were rusty. The woman came back to herself with a growl and Hermione gasped when a hex hit her in the back as she washed her arm.
It stung like hellfire and Hermione slumped against the kitchen sink, the breath rushing from her lungs in an exclamation of pain. Her knees went from under her and her vision started to blur as Antonin yelled something in Russian. The last thing she knew was the feel of his hands sliding around her waist and leaning her back against his chest, muttering to her in his mother-tongue before everything went black.
~O~O~O~O~O~O~
Antonin scowled over his shoulder at his mother as Hermione lost consciousness in his arms, the breath sighing from her lungs softly and her body going lax in his hold.
"Mama!" he complained of the woman, having just finished trying to explain to her that attacking this witch was unnecessary.
"Who is she?" his mother demanded, scowling hatefully at the witch as Antonin stooped to scoop the curly-hair woman into his arm, cradling her tenderly.
"Her name is Hermione Granger," he told her.
"The one you cursed?" his mother asked, frowning at him. "She still lives?"
"She lives," he nodded.
"She knows you?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Beyond the curse?" she confirmed, frowning at him. "She is a mudblood, no?"
Antonin sighed.
"She is," he nodded.
"She crossed the wards without trouble," his mother told him. "She crossed them like you can."
"A piece of my magic is latched onto hers, from my curse," Antonin explained.
"Where?" she frowned.
"Where it struck her," he shrugged his shoulders. "Her chest, at the base of her ribs and the top of her stomach. It is marked with my magic, even now."
"How do you know?"
"I've seen it," Antonin offered, and his mother's eyes narrowed hatefully in a heartbeat, sensing the implications behind the admittance.
"She is a mudblood," his mother repeated, looking disgusted.
"And yet, she bested you," Antonin pointed out coolly.
"Irrelevant," his mother huffed. "She set birds on me. You know how I feel about birds!"
"How clever of her," he replied dryly.
"The other one is still here," Levka warned when he carried Hermione out of the kitchen and into the sitting room, lowering them both down onto one of the soft armchairs there and resting her prone form against his chest so he could begin healing her from the effects of his mother's unfriendly curse.
"Go scare him off, then," Antonin shrugged. "She can't leave in this condition and that one is too much a coward to come in after her. If you set the cats on him, he'll leave."
His mother smirked at the thought before whistling loudly.
Seven Matagots came at her call, materializing in the room and rubbing themselves against her ankles as they purred for their mistress. Antonin watched his mother turn on her heel and stalk out of the room in the direction of the front yard where Cobblestone waited, the Matagots at her side, intent on frightening the fellow off so that Antonin might have a while longer with Hermione all to himself.
He should've known that his mother and his obsession wouldn't get along. Of course, they wouldn't. Both were too powerful and too stubborn and too contrary for their own good.
"Wake up, pchelka," Antonin coaxed the witch on his lap, brushing his fingers over her cheeks and muttering spells to counteract the curse his mother had used.
Many a night in the past, he'd found her passed out, though then it was from the booze, and he had often held her like this when he had the chance. It felt nice to know this time it was only a curse and not the alcohol that had put her out.
After a few long minutes – wherein the man in the front yard unleashed a terrified scream before running for the gate calling over his shoulder for Granger to follow him or find her own way home – Hermione stirred. She came awake slowly with a rattling breath and she coughed into the front of his jumper, her hands gripping his arms and squeezing hard as she came back to herself.
"You're alright, solnyshko," he soothed her softly, smoothing a hand up and down her back to comfort her and assure her that she was okay. "You're safe."
"Dolohov?" Hermione asked quietly, her voice a little crackly from the magic his mother had used on her.
"Mmmm," he hummed, feeling her tense up on his lap in concern at their intimate position. "You fainted from my mother's spell."
"You're holding me," she pointed out.
"I am," he agreed. "It's been too long, hasn't it?"
"Not long enough by my reasoning," Hermione argued, and Antonin scowled.
"It was you who invaded my family home, Granger," he reminded her, his temper fizzing. "It was you who attacked my mother. It was you who sought to draw my attention by coming here. You knew when you crossed the wards that they were mine, and that I would be monitoring them."
"You're hurting me," she said quietly, and Antonin realized he'd taken hold of her firmly and begun squeezing her in his fury at her casual dismissal of his sentiments.
"Why did you come here?" he asked.
"I told you," Hermione answered. "You invade my home and my life all the time. Why shouldn't I return the favor?"
"I stayed away," he argued. "After our bargain was struck."
"You accosted me at work," she reminded him. "You invaded my office, scared my colleagues, and trapped me against my desk."
"You didn't curse me," he argued. "You didn't stop me. You could've, but you didn't."
"You kidnapped me," she argued.
"I woke you up," he said, and Hermione squirmed on his lap, pushing against his chest until she could lean back far enough to glare into his face.
"Meaning?" she demanded.
"You know what it means," he scowled at her in reply. "You've been stumbling through life since the used weasel vacated your bed, drunk and disorderly and damaging yourself beyond imagining. How many times had I invaded your flat without you knowing?"
"I knew," Hermione said. "I kept moving, didn't I?"
"You moved once for every thousand times I called upon you, zaika," he scoffed. "Even knowing someone was invading your home, you only bothered to move every now and then. Didn't report it. Didn't investigate. Didn't stop drinking. Did you?"
Hermione scowled at him hatefully, evidently not liking the words coming out of his mouth, but his witch was a prideful little thing, and stubborn as an old goat.
"How many drinks have you had since I brought you to my cottage?" he asked, driving home his point.
In truth, he didn't know the answer. He had stayed true to his word and kept away for a few weeks following their night together, so he didn't know what she'd been up to since then.
"Three," she admitted, and her voice was croaking and bitter at the admission.
"When?" he wanted to know.
"After I confronted Harry and Ginny about how I've been living and their lack of involvement," she said.
"Went well, did it?" he asked mildly, raising his eyebrows.
"Evidently my lack of maturity surrounding Ron's betrayal is my own fault and they've no more pity to offer me," Hermione retorted.
"Potter helped you home on more than one occasion," he offered.
"How do you know?"
"Because I was going to help you myself and he beat me to it," Antonin shrugged.
"How often?" she wanted to know.
"Maybe ten times in the past few months?" he said. "Last time he tried, he went to your old flat and frightened some muggles."
"He said that," Hermione nodded, frowning. "How often have you helped me home."
"Too many to count," he answered, though he didn't look overly concerned to have had to do so.
"Is that why you kidnapped me?" she asked, frowning. "To wake me up?"
"No, I just wanted to taste you," he confessed. "How you live your life is your responsibility, Granger."
"You don't think I'm some sloppy lush?" she asked. "A boozer? A drunkard?"
"So what if you are?" he wanted to know. "Still go to work every day, don't you? Still remember to buy food for that monstrous beast you call a cat. Still manage to order take-out when you get hungry enough, don't you?"
"That's not healthy," Hermione pointed out.
"It's better than letting the cat starve and forgetting to go to work and starving yourself in your hovel," he shrugged his shoulders.
"Because that's such a high standard of living to hold oneself above?" Hermione scoffed.
Antonin just looked at her in return, waiting for her to figure out that since he'd snatched her from her home and had his way with her, she'd gotten her life back on track, and if she'd really only had three drinks in the past few weeks, it was a wonder she wasn't suffering and detoxing, but then, she'd always managed to get by with limited fuss. At least she had for as long as he'd been watching her.
"Kidnapping you worked, then?" he asked when she said nothing else, looking somewhat ashamed of herself for all she'd done and didn't remember.
"You can't claim credit for it waking me up when it wasn't your intention to do so," Hermione told him. "You just wanted to shag me."
"That plan worked," he pointed out.
"Don't remind me," she muttered, and Antonin narrowed his eyes at her in annoyance, wondering when she'd decided being rude to people right to their faces was acceptable. "Where's your mother?"
"Scaring off the property salesman with her matagots," Antonin told her, grinning.
"He abandoned me, didn't he?" Hermione sighed, looking disgusted with the man.
"He did," Antonin said.
"And your mother?"
"Lurking somewhere, eavesdropping on this conversation, I'd wager," he shrugged his shoulders.
"And she won't think less of her precious son to hear he kidnapped a muggleborn just to have his wicked way with her?"
"I'm a bit too old to be concerning myself with my mother's opinions of my sexual escapades, zaika," he said.
"Oh yes, please remind me that you're twice my age, it's so endearing," Hermione grumbled, pushing against his chest and swinging her legs to the floor, evidently intent on rising.
"Didn't stop you back at my cottage," he pointed out, smirking.
"Because I had so much say there," Hermione pointed out.
"We've been over the fact that you had other options, Granger," he growled, letting her stand before following her to her feet and refusing to vacate her personal space.
"Must we discuss this if your mother is listening?" Hermione asked, lowering her voice and scowling up at him.
"Did you have another topic to debate instead?" he asked.
"Only a request for directions to leave the property," Hermione pointed out. "I expect Cobblestone will alert the Aurors if I don't follow him shortly. He's had a bad fright, after all, and left me here seemingly alone."
"I'd be more than happy to escort you from the property," he offered, smirking and plotting to lure her back to his cabin rather than escorting her home to her flat.
"I'm sure you would," she scowled, pushing around him and moving off down the hall.
Antonin let her get five paces ahead before recalling that that particular hallway had a trick board and hurrying after her. He snatched hold of both her shoulders and hauled her back against his chest as the floorboards gave way beneath her feet and would've sent her plummeting into the dungeons far, far below.
"Should have let her fall," his mother stated in Russian, and they both looked to the far end of the hallway to see his mother and her matagots looking spiteful and scowling at Hermione.
"You'd have had to clean up the mess," Antonin responded in Russian, even knowing it was rude to speak it in front of Hermione when she didn't understand it.
"The rats would've eaten her," Levka shrugged. "And the smell might've helped keep other invaders at bay."
"She's not an invader, Mama," Antonin told her, frowning.
"She means to buy the property, does she not?" Levka challenged.
"Zaika, were you just antagonizing me, or do you mean to buy the property?" he wanted to know, looking down at the woman he still clutched to his chest though she was relying on his willingness to protect her from harm by leaning out over the hole in the floor and peering into the darkness of the dungeons below.
"Maybe," Hermione answered. "I take it your mother isn't fond of the plan?"
"This is her home," he pointed out.
"Technically, it's not," Hermione argued. "As a non-British citizen and a widow, she would be deported if she was caught on the property. You are the sole heir to the house and the land, but you've sacrificed your rights to them by being a criminal and a fugitive."
"Do you want her to throw you in the dungeon and leave you for the rats, malnysh?" Antonin asked, shaking his head at the reasonable tone she used to discuss such things.
"I just want to leave," Hermione said. "Some rich chap will likely buy the property sight unseen and show up with bulldozers intending to level it, I'd imagine. At least, they will if the Aurors think that having the house on the market can't be used as bait to lure you into their grasp. If they don't figure out you were here today, even with me investigating the property, I expect they'll give up on you as a lost cause and they'll assume you've left the country and have no intentions to return."
"Was that your purpose for coming here?" he asked. "To prove I'm no longer in Britain by acting as the perfect bait."
"No," Hermione answered. "I just wanted to mee the woman who spurned such a wretch and find out if she was evil."
Antonin briefly released her shoulders while she was still leaning too far over the hole in the floor and she let out a meep of alarm and scrambled wildly to prevent herself from falling in the hole after being such a spiteful little bitch.
"Maybe that's what I should do," he mused evilly when she twisted around and clung to him, her arms looped around his neck to prevent her from falling. "Maybe Mama is right. We could feed you to the rats and I could flee the country once and for all."
"They'll still bulldoze this place eventually, and then where will Levka live?"
"In Russia, with me," Antonin replied, walking further forward until Hermione's feet hung off the edge of the hole in the floor and she struggled all the more, clinging to him before climbing him and wrapping her legs around his waist to keep from falling – or at the very least to keep from falling alone.
"Drop her, Toshka," his mother commanded, and Antonin smirked evilly when Hermione clung to him even tighter. "Drop her and be done with her. Filthy little mudblood. Shlyukha!"
"What do you think, kotik?" he asked. "Should I drop you? You have no interest in me and no patience for my obsession. Should I drop you and be done with you, once and for all? Kill you like I meant to when I cursed you at sixteen?"
"You wouldn't dare," Hermione said, her mouth by his ear as he clung to her.
"I have killed before, kotyonok," he reminded her.
"If you kill me here, Harry will know it was you. He knows you kidnapped me. He'd know it was you and he'd never stop hunting you."
"Haven't I already proven that your friends wouldn't come looking for you?" he asked.
"Cobblestone accompanied me here," Hermione argued. "The Aurors are probably already on their way, given that he left without me."
Right at that moment, the wards prickled with intruders and an echo of the invaders filled his mind's eye. She was right. The Aurors were here. Potter led the charge through the sludge-ward that guarded the gate, his blistering skin angry and red when he crossed over.
"She's right, Mama," Antonin told his mother, curling one hand beneath Hermione's bum to hold her against him a little more securely. "The Aurors are here. Make yourself scarce."
His mother scowled and cursed some more in Russian, commanding him one last time to drop the little harlot in the hole in the floor and flee the country once and for all before she turned on the spot and disapparated with a sharp crack. Antonin mimicked her, clutching Hermione to his chest and twisting sharply to the left, disapparating for his cottage no matter what he'd said about her next visit there being of her own volition when she might beg him to ravish her.
