They made their way to one of the larger rooms where the music was loud, but not too loud to speak over. To the side was a bar where a Slytherin that Bones recognised vaguely as someone who had been a few years down from her was mixing drinks.

Draco procured barstools for both of them, down the shadowy end of the room, slinging an arm around behind Bones. "Oi, Baddock," he called and the Slytherin set down the tequila and came down to where they were. "Cocktails," said Draco, cheerfully. "Loads of them."

With an unconcealed look of disdain at Bones, Baddock pulled out the gin and began mixing up two glasses of Negroni. Now that she had a name to the face, Bones could remember more about Malcolm Baddock, though none of it was from Hogwarts. His family had been involved in the Dark Arts and the Ministry had sent Hottie extensive files on him just in case he began to show signs of going the same way as his parents. Bones had never paid much attention to families though. Proof needed to be more substantial than that.

Bored with Baddock, she glanced across the room at the make-shift dance-floor.

"Tell me about the Revenirs," said Draco, leaning close to mitigate the music.

Bones glanced back at him in surprise. "It's not very interesting," she said because she didn't usually talk about her work to anyone who wasn't a part of it.

Draco merely smiled. "Bore me then." He actually was interested though. His eyes were a little brighter than usual and he was concentrating on her wholly. He was a part of Hottie now, even if the part he played was small, so perhaps he wanted to know how much he had helped in the Revenir situation.

So she told him about the Revenirs; how they'd found them, tracked them and taken them down. They had gone through Firewhiskey, champagne and incredibly vintage cognacs before Bones had finished.

"Are you drunk enough to dance yet?" Draco asked when she was done, in that ruthlessly single-minded way was not unusual among Slytherins.

Rubbing the back of her neck, Bones nodded.

For some reason that made Draco laugh, low and dry. "I think I'm too drunk," he said, stretching his spine and flicking his gaze across at the dance-floor. He was taking his time enunciating words, as though worried that if he didn't he'd lose control of his voice.

Bones lifted her head and smiled at him; the smile that usually made her acquaintances step away from her.

"Ah," said Draco, eyes running over her in resignation. "Was that the plan?"

Bones shrugged. "You were drunk when I arrived. You had to know that getting me drunk enough to dance would get you too drunk to stand."

"Intoxicated," said Draco primly. "Inebriated. Soused, if you must."

Bones grinned at him, a flash of sharp teeth and steely gaze. "Pissed." She dropped the word into the silence with a delicacy that made Draco laugh aloud. "Wasted. Hammered."

"You, Bones, are sullying my reputation. I am a Malfoy. We do not get pissed, wasted or hammered."

Leaning so far over the bar that she almost fell off her stool, Bones caught up the bottle of tequila. "In that case," she said, sitting back in her seat to study the amber liquid. "You're disgracing your family name."

Draco smiled. "Yes," he said. "I know."

She took a shot of tequila, creased her nose and pronounced it foul before jumping over the bar lightly to look for salt and lemon wedges. Not finding any, she stole Baddock's rum and coke instead, downing it in one long swallow.

Theodore Nott was standing by Draco when she lowered her glass; leaning close to talk to him. Bones couldn't hear what he was saying over the music. Draco turned his head to reply, lifting his glass to shield his mouth as he did so. Evidently they didn't want her overhearing whatever it was they were discussing. Bones licked droplets of rum from her upper lip, watching the way that Draco's knuckles went white against the glass that he was clutching too tightly. Nott had angled his body so that Bones couldn't see his face clearly either, but his shoulders were bunched just as tightly under the shirt that he was wearing.

She stepped forward and put her pilfered glass down with more force than necessary, to let them know that she was there. "I'll go," she said casually.

Nott turned to look at her, mist-blue eyes running across her and face implacable.

Draco lowered his own glass and shook his head. "You've got nowhere to go."

That made Bones laugh. "I have a family," she said, because she knew that Nott didn't and she wasn't going to ruin his Christmas. Hottie would be empty, and Bones knew where Krum kept his stash of Chocolate Cauldrons so it wouldn't be a complete waste of a night.

Draco reached for her hand. "Stay," he said, voice softer and smokier. "I want you to. I could give you a tour?"

Bones was about to shake her head when Nott caught her gaze. "Take a tour," he advised, voice grave, as though there were layers to this conversation that Bones couldn't hope to comprehend. Mostly that was just Slytherins though. Their comments had been as ink-black cryptic in school as well.

Draco hadn't been going drink-for-drink with her but he was still well past inebriated. "You have to be able to walk if you want to give a tour," she pointed out.

For a moment Draco looked as though he was trying to decide whether to laugh or scowl. He settled on smirking. "I can walk. I have been doing so for most of my life," he said with disdainful dignity, pushing himself off his barstool and holding a hand out to Bones as he braced himself against the bar.

With a low laugh, she slid back over the top of the bar, landing a little more uncertainly beside Draco. She tucked a bottle of merlot into the crook of her right arm and let Draco take her left one.

They wound up sitting in the long family portrait gallery, curled up against the wall beside each other as Bones worked through her wine with slow but steady determination. Cradling the bottle between her knees, she studied the portrait of Lucius Malfoy. It had evidently been painted some years before his death, but the personality had been the same even when he had been younger. "Bit weird being surrounded by so many dead people," she commented, though her parents had walls full of photos for the dead.

Draco yawned and rubbed his eye with the palm of his hand.

She leant back against the wall and smiled an ice-cold smile that was so utterly unlike her Hogwarts smiles. "He deserved to die," she said.

Draco straightened, body tensing like a cat getting ready to attack. "Stop it."

Bones shrugged. "Hey, I didn't kill him."

"Stop it." Draco's voice didn't get any louder, but there was a ferocity to it that was almost violent.

Bones tilted her head to look at him. He was breathing faster, eyes narrowed. "Did you use the Avada Kedava?" She wasn't feeling impassive, but was aware that her voice sounded as though she was.

He pushed his back against the wall, working his jaw hard enough to grind his teeth down.

"Funny sort of curse, Avada Kedava," Bones commented. "That you have to mean it. Imagine meaning it – really meaning it – on your father."

Draco shoved his fists into his pockets as though he couldn't trust himself not to hurt her without that precaution. "I did mean it," he bit out, breath and voice rasping in anger. "And I'd mean it again if I had to. Difference between you and me, Bones? I stayed with my family until there was no family left to stay with. You can't even bear to look at yours."

Some things didn't change and Draco couldn't hurt Bones any more now than he had been able to at Hogwarts. She merely laughed, the sound echoing hollowly up the portrait gallery, and raised her wine bottle in silent salute before taking a swig. "I'm not judging," she said finally, wiping the back of her free hand against her mouth. "You killed your dad, I can appreciate that. Sometimes I think…I mean…" With a harsh sigh, she threw herself back against the wall, body making a dull thump of sound. Her eyes were so dark that there was barely any green to them as she studied the opening of the wine bottle, considering her next words. "I want to kill people too." Her voice was so low that Draco had to piece together what she'd said from the parts he heard. She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. "I won't, of course."

For a moment Draco simply stared at her. "That's…Bones, you can't be jealous of me because I get to kill people and you don't. That's just…It's really screwed up."

Bones laughed again, cheerfully incredulous because, of course even he should have noticed that she was screwed up.

Draco reached out and touched two of his fingers to her hand gently, as though he was afraid of hurting her; or of her hurting him. Hooking her thumb with his index finger, he brought her hand back to him and pressed a kiss into her palm. He'd had a lot to drink, but was feeling almost sober with how much she'd rattled him. "Bones," he said, voice soft. "My father…He was attacked by a Dementor before I ever did anything to harm him. If he had his soul, I'd never have…Killing has consequences for everyone. I did mean it; because he would have chosen death over that existence. But if I could have him back alive, then I would."

Bones studied him a moment before creasing her nose. "You are crushing all of my dreams," she said. "It is not kind."

That surprised him enough to laugh, though his throat was clogged with emotion and it came out strangled. He didn't let himself consider that she hadn't shown the least bit of compassion about his father, because then he'd have to consider that she really was broken and he couldn't face that. "What do you want?" he asked, because there had to be something. If they could figure it out then maybe things would be okay after all.

A frown creased her brow as though she wasn't sure what he meant.

"You're not happy," said Draco. "So what's your plan?" He knew that it couldn't be something as simple as her smiling and detailing an exercise regime to stimulate endorphins and make her normal again.

But he didn't expect her to straighten her spine and put the merlot bottle aside and say, "I want to find the remaining Death Eaters," as though that encompassed the entire plan. As though that was her entire reason for living.

It couldn't last forever though. "And then what?" Draco asked, wondering whether she had considered that Death Eaters were not an infinite resource and even now the fugitives were running low.

Bones turned her head to look at him, gaze steady. "That's all that's left for me."

An icy claw trailed its way down Draco's spine, and for a moment his breath stuck in his throat. "That's it? You take down the last Death Eater and then kill yourself?"

She shook her head, looking tired. "I'd never do that to my family," she said, eyes very hard. "Just…I don't think I'll care about drinking once I'm done."

It only took a moment for Draco to understand. Right now Bones only drank on her birthday and Christmas. Draco sank his teeth into his lower lip, not stopping even when he could taste the metallic tang of his own blood. It didn't work. He couldn't shake the image of Bones drinking herself to death in some run-down Knockturn Alley pub; and he knew that she'd do it with that same steely determination that she'd used to found Hottie and to drag her team through the war and to win 49 medals.

Draco reached out and took the bottle from Bones. He took a swig from it; feeling too fragile and far too sober. Sometimes it had to be better not to have tried, because Draco had tried so hard to keep Bones alive and he'd failed. Somewhere along the way she'd been damaged and even she had given up hope of fixing herself.

She reached out and rubbed his shoulder. "I told you, Malfoy. Skip the ones who are beyond help."

Panic suffused Draco, dragging him under before a memory came back to him with blinding clarity. "You kissed me back," he said, voice miraculously calm.

She shrugged, still rubbing his shoulder like he was a spooked Thestral. While he thought it was a bit condescending, it was also soothing. "Bit weird," she said. "Usually first kisses are so awkward."

Draco tried not to wince because, of course, their first kiss had been incredibly awkward and he had wished that she would forget it for months before finally, she did.