Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Distraction	By : Persephone3655 Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female Views: 20809 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own or profit from the Harry Potter Universe everything belongs to J.K Rowling

Chapter List
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The Harry Potter Universe belongs to Rowling, I'm just borrowing them. I make no financial gains from this
15 years later
Hermione stood at the Platform in front of the Hogwarts Express watching her youngest son happily board the train with his older brother. It was a day long time coming, and extremely bittersweet for her. Her children had eagerly been anticipating the day, she while extremely proud to be sending her two extremely smart children to school dreaded the day that she was mostly left alone at home with their father.
Their father, even after 15 years she very rarely acknowledged that Yaxley...Cassius was her husband. The morning after their binding she had woken up sore, scratched, and bound. She thought that it was her heart breaking that was causing the uncomfortable in her chest but she could feel him.
There was a feeling of contentment that did not go with her mental state at all, it was so self-assured and haughty that she almost gave in to her desire to strangle him in his sleep.
Her mind however talked her out of it, and told her to try and get out of here.
She had known that morning that there would be very little chance of escape but she had to try. She managed to disentangle herself from the muscular prison of his arms, and slip out of bed. By some small miracle he slept on completely unperturbed by her movements or her wrecked feelings.
Could he feel her like she felt him?
He had brought them back to his chambers after their binding was done, but there was still no trace of her wand, but she thankfully found a sheet and wrapped it around her to try and keep herself warm.
There was a cold dread that consumed her that she associated with dementors.
She quietly slipped out of the room and upon placing her left hand on the door to try and quietly exit saw the silver band with blue sapphires and diamonds around her ring finger. She steadied her breathing to stop the sobs that were found in her throat. She couldn't panic again. She had to find a way out. She hadn't been that desperate since being trapped at Malfoy Manor right before Dobby had saved them.
As she made her way to the library she made up her mind to try, once she was safely behind the library door called for Kreacher
Kreacher?” She whispered into the air, the sound of thunder filled the room, and before her stood Kreacher, in a clean towel giving her a deep bow of respect. Their relationship had improved after the war, and since Harry had given him a direct orders to answer her summons she wasn’t too surprised to find him in front of her.
The first words out of his mouth sent a shiver thru her body and she felt her heart break even more.
“Lady Yaxley, how may I help you” He was looking at her with a mixture of pride and admiration that he usually reserved for Black family heirlooms and portraits.
“Kreacher, can you please apparate me out of here?”
“Lady Yaxley leave the Manor on the morning after her binding, no it’s very improper for the Lady to leave without at least alerting the Master.”
He looked so concerned, and seemed to be fighting with himself. His deep bullfrog voice quivered a bit. “Please don’t ask me to go against such an honored Pureblood ritual as a binding Lady Yaxley, it would be a terrible thing to have a house elf perform”
“How about letting Harry know what has happened?”
He shook his head so that his bat like ears flapped, “Master Harry knows Lady Yaxley, and he seems displeased even when I tried to explain to him how much of an honor it was that Master Yaxley has chosen you as his wife. A Mud….. Muggleborn young lady as yourself has improved her standing in Wizarding Society with such a match. I told him this but he is still trying to get to the Manor and disrupt your honorable married state”
Hermione was trying to ask the right questions. “What do you mean that Harry knows Kreacher?” Her best friend couldn’t have set her up? Harry would never have agreed to this.
“It’s in the Prophet Lady Yaxley.”
“What?” She was louder than she intended to be and that must have finally alerted Yaxley as to her location. She jumped as his heavy footsteps sounded across the hall, he was still a ways off, and even though she hated herself for it she turned to Kreacher
“I didn’t ask you if you agreed Kreacher, I asked you to take me to Harry’s, now can you do it?” She was trembling slightly while she looked towards the door, she had maybe 30 seconds.
With his ears flat against his head Kreacher reached out for her hand, and apparated her away from there, Yaxley’s scream ringing in her ears drowned out the pop of apparition.
Once they landed at Harry's she was greeted by Harry and Ginny who were both wearing shocked expressions. Harry was holding a newspaper and her picture was in the front under a headline that read "HERMIONE GRANGER WEDS CASSIUS YAXLEY"
Her physical appearance, confirmed what Harry had thought, she had not chosen to voluntarily enter a marriage with Yaxley. His shock and anger grew when Hermione pulled herself together and went over what had happened to her since Harry had left Yaxley’s place.
Though she was mildly informed about bindings, it was Ginny’s look of horror at the mention of it that let her know that her life as she had known it was over.
Binding were unheard of these days, but Ginny had been warned by her mother anyways, she was after all one of the few pureblood witches left in England, and it had apparently happened to a distant relative of Mrs. Weasley over 300 years ago.
She gave into tears and sobbed her heart out with her friends. She was overwhelmed, and upset, and she felt rejection? That wasn’t her own feelings she recognized, it was a foreign feeling, an echo that she felt in her soul but again had no attachment to how she felt.
She knew before he got there that he would be heading for her. How did he know where she was? Was it because he had been part of her daily activities for so long or because she had been bound to him. She remembered reading that some bindings were made to order, to suit the wizard. There had been records of older, or ill wizards binding healthy witches to prolong their lives at the cost of the woman’s health. Of wizards somehow taping into their wives magical power to extend their own powers.
What had he specified during the ritual?
She half wanted to let Harry beat him senseless or at least have Ginny hex him into next week, but didn’t know how that would affect her.
She let Harry and Ginny know her concerns and they both agreed to keep the real situation between them, while they found out more about the binding.
.
As Yaxley made his way up the Potter’s front yard Harry went outside to meet him.
Harry dropped his wand, he had learned that in the pureblood echelons it was considered beyond the pale to attack an unwanded wizard with magic, so in the front of Harry’s yard they proceeded beat each other physically.
Yes Yaxley had the size advantage, but Harry wasn’t helpless, he had after all survived the Dark Lord. Yaxley earned himself a black eye for underestimating Harry.
Hermione was in no way satisfied but didn’t want the Prophet to show up and start taking pictures.
The second that she screamed at them to stop Yaxley did. His fist still pulled back, she nodded towards Harry and he understood her.
She felt a small stab of jealousy from Yaxley at her relationship with Harry. He hated that they could communicate wordlessly.
With Ginny and Harry’s agreement they headed back inside the Potter residence, and proceeded to talk.
During their discourse he said something nonsensical
“Isn’t Luna still single, if word gets out about what really happened at the manor it might give Blaise Zabini or Gregory Goyle ideas”
The statement took a while to process but it finally clicked, if she made a scene then everyone would know what had happened and though she didn't care about being in the spotlight or sending him to Azkaban she could not condemn other witches to her same fate.
That asshole knew what to say to get her to stay silent about this, at least till she learned more.
She willingly went with her husband, back to their house. She refused to call it her home, and enjoyed the further detached feeling of rejection that washed over her.
Was the blonde giant even crazier that she thought he was, did he really think that she was going to be delighted to be bound against her will?
The Manor was large enough that she could avoid him. He attempted to win her over, to seduce her. It wasn't until he agreed to help her close the loopholes in the Wizarding Laws that bound her to him that he made any headway with her.
Harry and Ginny kept on taking turns checking in on her, and fielding questions from the rest of their families.

The highly sanitized version of events that made it to the public made it seem that they had been deeply in love and eloped without alerting anyone.
Hermione and Yaxley were given a couple of weeks off from their respective positions in order to celebrate their marriage, and during this period of time they started their research sessions.
It was during the first session that he let her know that he enacted a ‘gentler’ binding than what was usually used by his family. He had not bound her power to his, or her will. She would be able to remain her own person.
He said that he loved her, and she saw him flinch at her rising anger.
“How can you possibly love me Yaxley!” He shrank a bit as she screamed at him, an impressive feat for him.
“I do, can’t you feel it? I added our emotional connection in hopes that you would let yourself feel the depth of my devotion to you so you would know that I did it because I love you. I didn’t need power like those other men that were chasing after you……” He was looking at her with so much sincerity
“I would do anything for you.”
Shock replaced anger and as her anger abated she could feel some sort of warmth from his end of the connection, but she was rightfully angry, and she knew that her anger could burn long and hot.
She managed to block out those feelings from him. She felt like she was practicing emotional occlumency.
He felt her shutting him out, and then he delivered some more details about their binding.
He let her know that her physical wellbeing depended on physical contact with him. At first she thought that he must have been lying, and at first he was the only one that looked under the weather, but after 3 weeks of “married bliss” she started feeling run down. Apparently anger had been able to carry her thru this effect of the binding but then it hit her with full force.
She felt physically exhausted and drained, it was like a lovesick flu. The physical aches and pains were awful, but the despair that she felt from Yaxley was making everything worse. Their feelings were mixing together because in her weakened state she couldn’t block out everything.
It was too exhausting to be angry with him all the time.
This was a nightmare.

She never wanted anyone to experience what she had been through. To be trapped in a marriage by someone they didn't know or love. To have continuous physical contact with the man that had sexually assaulted her become a part of her routine.
She had not agreed to sex yet, at first she thought that it was the smart way to go about it, but the small physical contact that she put herself thru to not make herself sick, holding hands, sitting close together with his arm around her, and the time that she spent one on one with him working on closing the loopholes fostered a fragile form of intimacy between them.
It was also impossible to keep shutting him out thru the emotional connection, and she couldn’t be angry for long periods of time without making herself sick
They had been in a different study in his manor, she still refused to go into the study were this travesty of a marriage had started when it happened. She had been serving some tea when she unconsciously served him a cup to his liking. As she was walking it over to him, she felt his foolish romantic hope flutter in her chest.
She chucked the tea cup at his head and walked out, slightly satisfied when she felt his sadness seep into her mood.
For his part he was solicitous and gracious and he tried his very best to please her to no avail. It had taken 3 months of them working together on their side project of closing the loopholes, and instead of making her happy to know that no one would be bound like this again, she was despondent.
She was also making herself ill, trying to keep up appearances at work. Having to stomach people coming up to her and congratulating her. Having unsolicited questions of when they were going to start a family be brought up.
Did people really have nothing better going on in their lives that the state of her uterus was something that actually occupied their minds?
Mostly it was the damn conflicting emotions that surged thru her on a daily basis and the confusion of feeling well when they touched that were driving her mad.
She felt like a schizophrenia patient.
She was still so angry at him, but the feeling of adoration that squeezed thru when her guard was down, along with the feeling of wellness when they were together was too much for her
Going over all the available materials and sources had cemented it in her brain, that there was no way out of this arrangement ever. She had lost weight in the last 3 months, something that even her supervisors at work could see.
Her work supervisors had forced another mandatory vacation on her. So there she sat in the study were this had all started with tears going down her face.
That’s how he found her
He kneeled in front of her, a bouquet of gardenias in one hand, she didn't seem to notice him, she was so deep into her anguish that she managed to block out the blonde giant at her feet.
He tentatively reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear
"Sweetheart please...." he rested his large hand on her lap and she still didn't react, except that more tears fell down her face. She was just heartbroken. For the first time in 3 months she had completely given up all hope. He hadn't hit her, berated her, or kept her from going about her social life or going to work, but she couldn't think her way out of this one and it had messed with her psyche.
If she forgot about the binding, and looked at the rest of their marriage she could objectively see that it was at least not a terrible marriage.
Cassius did love her, and he was very attentive to her she couldn’t deny that. She looked up at his face and saw the sunken cheekbones, the greyish pallor. She felt guilt, she wasn’t a mean person by nature and even her anger had dampened some after 3 months of exhaustion.
She had been thinking while she sat there, what were her real choices.
She wasn’t the first woman in history to go thru this, the only reason this didn’t happen in the Wizarding world more often was that it had fallen out of fashion.
Women throughout the ages had been thru what she had, even in the muggle world arranged marriages and bridal kidnapping excited.
Some of those women found some sort of happiness with the men that took them, but Hermione couldn’t truly forgive Yaxley.
Short of murder or suicide there was no way out of this, she could be actively unhappy for the rest of her life or try to make the best of it. Thinking about making Cassius happy made bile rise up in her throat.
She chose the least terrible of the choices, she would try to make the best of it while making him suffer. She couldn’t forgive him.
As she walked up to the Manor from the apparition point she decided to take a stroll to the gardens. Years ago she had them fashioned in a way that suited her more, she hadn’t been able to obliterate everything that reminded her of the night of her “wedding” but enough had been changed that it became her favorite part of the grounds.
She could see him sitting on a bench, he seemed to have had the same idea. To try and enjoy the milder weather before winter came.
He was still a wonderful physical specimen, years of marriage had let her learn his body, and she didn’t know if it was due to their binding or just spending so much time together but she knew his mind.
After years of isolation he had been desperate for love, genuine love and she had withheld it. His obsession with her had been due in part to a desperate hunger for virtues and qualities that had been missing from his life. He thought that by being with her he could experience love.
Love at least as he had understood it, possession of a woman that he coveted and in his own way admired.
His only source of genuine love as far as he knew were their children. He adored them and they adored him. Hermione didn’t have the heart to let them know that their marriage wasn’t a happy one.
They had been pretending to be normal for 15 years, but she had become good at hiding her feelings from him. To everyone else outside of Ginny and Harry their relationship had been impetuous and romantic.
She let him feel her sense of pride as she approached the bench, and then her surprise at finding him there. She could feel the hope rise in his chest, and knew that he would turn to look at her, it was with deliberate rejection that she let him see her walk away from him and into the manor.
Yaxley may have been a ravenous monster that took what he wanted, but Hermione was smarter. She was the monster that was going to make him suffer for the rest of their lives, by constantly holding what he wanted out of reach.
Her love.
The end
Not the happiest with this story but I am just glad that I finished one.
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Distraction