Pansy and Ron were still arguing about the condition of the rugs in the upstairs hallway when Hermione walked past them. She didn't say anything, just opened the door to what had been her room, closed it, and sat down on the bed. At some point, Kreacher had changed the sheets. That was good. The room didn't seem too dusty either. She pried her flat, sensible, boring shoes off, set the folders she still had in her hand down on the table where she'd kept her potions, lay down, and stared up at the ceiling. She'd always liked the ceilings in this house. A plaster medallion sat in the middle of the ceiling of her room, unchipped and perfect despite the ravages of time. She looked up at its white ridges and swirls and when her brain began to wonder what Draco was doing she shut it off.

She wouldn't think about Draco.

The stunned silence her appearance had wrought didn't last long. Nor did her privacy. Pansy Parkinson pushed the door open without so much as making a token knock and stood there, brash, heeled, still in need of that shower.

Hermione already missed the water pressure at home.

No, not home. It had been a gilded cage. Never home.

"What are you doing here?" Pansy demanded. When Hermione didn't answer, she took the few steps needed to cross the small room and glare down. "Need to gloat up close, Granger?"

"If I'm unwelcome, I'll find another flat," Hermione said. Her voice sounded far away, and she was vaguely aware that Ron and Harry had crowded into the room behind Pansy. They filled the tiny room. She'd read once that old houses had small rooms because that made it easier to heat them. Hogwarts hadn't followed that architectural plan, but the rooms had always been so drafty she'd often worn her scarf indoors. Maybe it didn't work here either. She certainly felt cold enough. She was cold as ice: unfeeling, uncaring ice. "I should do it soon, though, while I still can."

"Of course you're welcome," Harry said. He sounded confused.

Ron wasn't the slightest bit confused. "What did that rotter do?" he asked. "Draco-fucking-Malfoy. I knew it was too good to be true, his little act. I can kill him, Hermione. Just ask. No one would mind."

"Kill him, you kill her," Pansy said cooly. "And I would mind."

"Maybe not," Hermione said. She didn't want to explain. She didn't want to have to say it out loud.

"No one who matters would mind," Ron said.

"Ron," Harry said. His voice was low and as dangerous as Hermione had ever heard it and he stepped forward to position himself between the two and the part of her brain that still cared about things thought that was interesting. Pansy lay a hand on his sleeve and simpered at Ron with sarcasm that cut though Hermione's fog. She felt her lips turn up in an involuntary smile and then sighed.

"Hermione," Ron said. "Tell him just because he has to save that crazy snake's life doesn't mean the rest of us have to like her."

"I don't like you, Weasley," Pansy said. "But that doesn't mean I'm telling people it would be okay to kill you."

"She's right," Hermione said. "You can't kill Draco."

"Because you'd die," Pansy said.

Hermione's tiny smile tightened and then disappeared. "Yes," she said. She hadn't spent a single night away from him since he'd bought that flat. He might have still slept in his own room some nights - fewer and fewer lately - but he'd always been there. She wondered how long it would take for the pain to return.

"You won't die," Ron said. "We'll drag him back here and make him do his touchy-touchy thing then let him go again."

"No," Hermione said. She knew that sounded sharp and hard and cruel and final all at once. The tone was so harsh even Pansy drew back a little. "I never want to see him again."

"Bit much," Pansy said. "You'll go crawling back when the pain gets bad."

But Hermione shook her head. She'd lived a long time with the knowledge every step was knives in her hips, and every movement of her head brought a clamp to tighten around her skull. Sometimes she had dug her fingers into the places where the pain had seemed to come from, and sometimes that had helped. She knew how bad it got. She wasn't going back. Pansy must have read that in her eyes and the set of her mouth because she let out a low whistle. "He really buggered things up, didn't he?" she said. "Given the idiot's crazy in love with you, how'd he manage that?"

She shoved Harry out, and glared at Ron until he bowed his head and shuffled away. As soon as the door clicked, Pansy asked again. "What did he do?"

Hermione was going to just shrug and turn away but the bile and the fury forced its way out of her mouth. "Sorry about this, Pans," she said, turning Draco's nickname for the woman into a spiteful epithet. "I know you were jealous and now that he could be all yours, you're stuck with Harry. Irony."

"Stuck?" Pansy snorted. "I get the Chosen One, who can no more turn away from saving people than you can from a thick, boring book, and you got stuck, as you put it, with Draco."

"Who you wanted."

"At fourteen," Pansy said. "When, if I recall correctly, you were overheard sobbing because your best friend Ron didn't love you back."

"What's your point?"

"That I'm quite happy to not be stuck with his paleness," Pansy said. "And his parents - oh Merlin, his awful parents."

Hermione's eyes twitched at that and Pansy pounced. "It was his parents, wasn't it. Did he make you go to dinner with that mother of his?"

"Not exactly," Hermione said. "I've had lunch with Narcissa. She was - ." She wanted to say she was lovely but the words didn't exactly come out. Narcissa had certainly behaved well enough, but now that she knew what Lucius was up to, every one of the woman's courtesies seemed suspect. "She could have been worse," she settled on.

"She can always be worse," Pansy said. "She's an utter bitch."

Hermione just looked at her at that. Pansy had her mouth turned up in a sneer, and her heels still let her tower along. They had to hurt her feet but she had yet to take them off. That she would call any one else a bitch seemed funny. "I'm just mean," Pansy said, clearly reading her thoughts. "But that woman will destroy you."

"Says the gossip columnist," Hermione said.

Pansy shrugged. "People who like meeting with barely not underage witches in sleezy pubs aren't the group I'd think you'd be defending, Granger. Or that novelist who stole her stories and obliviated the original authors. Or are you are riled on behalf of that singer who turned out to be selling illegal love potions?"

Hermione closed her eyes. She hadn't ever been one to read Parkinson's column. Muck-raking gossip hadn't ever interested her. She really had no idea what the woman had written about in the general scheme of things. She certainly knew about one column she'd wanted to write, though. "How about rare strains of Veela?" she asked. "You know, old school rivals who suddenly aren't human anymore?"

She didn't know if Pansy had the grace to blush about that but at least her voice sounded defensive. "You are a public figure, Granger. And Malfoy squashed that anyway, so you're safe from my quill."

"Lucky me," Hermione said.

"If it wasn't Narcissa," Pansy said, "was is that father of his?" Hermione could hear her drag a chair across the floor. The wooden legs scraped against the old floor and Pansy made a bit of an unhappy huff as she settled onto the stiff leather seat. Hermione could have warned her the bits of old horsehair stuck out of the tear in the covering and jabbed themselves into you if she'd cared about Pansy's comfort. She didn't.

"Lucius?" Hermione asked when it became obvious Pansy wasn't going to leave. "Tall? Long blond hair? Distinctive cane? Had no problem firing curses at school children just a few years ago?"

"That's the one," Pansy said. "It was Lucius. What did that bastard do?"

Hermione tried to decide if the slow pressure building behind her teeth was the creep of her illness returning or just a headache spawned by Pansy. "How quick you are to turn on your own pureblooded kind," she said. "I thought you were all a united front."

Pansy snorted. "Lucius Malfoy and I have about as much in common as you and I," she said. She tapped her foot as she seemed to consider that statement. "Less, probably, these days."

"Our special sisterhood," Hermione said. Saying that out loud made her realize that it was somewhat true and that if anyone needed a warning about Lucius it was Pansy. "He wants to manufacture us. Turn himself into a supplier of willing pets for the elite."

Pansy sucked in her breath. "Draco knew," she said. It wasn't a question and Hermione could feel her gut clench. It would have been better, somehow, if Pansy had insisted Draco couldn't have known, that he'd never have countenanced that. "That little cowardly idiot," she went on, seeming to struggle to find the words she wanted. "He never could stand up to his father," she said conversationally after a moment where Hermione could hear her heart beating. Was she far enough away from Draco her heart couldn't sync itself to him, or was her body still struggling to tune itself to him as though they were paired instruments in some magical orchestra? "He idolized the man, you know. And Lucius spoiled him bloody rotten."

"Not an excuse," Hermione said.

"Plus the plan has more than a few practical problems," Pansy said. "How was he going to match his created Veela to the men he wanted to cultivate?"

"He and Draco were researching the way the - "

"If you say 'mates' I will hit you," Pansy said. "I don't care how slimy you feel."

"Fine, the way the partners were selected." She opened her eyes and pointed to the pile of paperwork. "I took all the files when I left."

Pansy reached over and picked one of them up and opened it. "Nine children?" she asked in disbelief. "This one had nine children."

"I haven't read them yet," Hermione said.

Pansy skimmed the file and, despite Blaise's assertion she wasn't the brightest witch, she did a neat job of summarizing the information. "Didn't know her partner before bonding. Turned out they had been in the same fire. Nine children." She looked up. "Must be some kind of Weasley cousin."

Hermione had to smother the disloyal laugh.

Pansy saw it anyway and smirked before she picked up another file, and then another. "Already married. Lovers. Lovers. Neighbors. Already married. And co-workers in a some dreadful retail shop in shop in Hogsmeade."

"No common thread."

Pansy smiled. "Well then," she said. "Good thing you're the smartest witch of our year."

"What?" Hermione asked, not sure she'd heard her correctly.

"Well," Pansy said, "I think it behooves us to figure the pattern out before Lucius Malfoy does. Knowledge is power, Granger."

"Says the gossip columnist." Hermione closed her eyes again, but she'd already set herself on the same course.

"Get your arse up," Pansy said. "I've got an errand to run, but when I get back we'll sit down over tea and figure this out."

"Draco's been working on it since - "

"And we're smarter and probably more motivated," Pansy said. She stood up and threw the folders down. "Get out of your funk, Granger. I expect you in the kitchen when I get back. Merlin knows it's the only clean room in this whole place. I'm sure as Nimue lives under the lake not going to sit in that excuse for a parlour until Clotilda has done her magic."

And then she was gone, and Hermione stared at the closed door and began to laugh. Research partners with Pansy Parkinson. Could life get any more peculiar?

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N - Thank you, again, for all your kind words and support. They mean the world.