"That wasn't even nice," Theo glared at Daphne across the kitchen. "Sending your father to talk to me like that."

She tossed him the jar of chili sauce and said, "Season the meatballs."

He grabbed the jar and muttered, "I mean, really, what was I supposed to say?"

The two of them had been working all day on the changeling project. Draco had found the basic spell-work long ago but the practical steps still needed to be refined. Take the living being you wanted to duplicate and tie an illusion of them to an inanimate object using yet another living being to hold the spell. It was trickier than it sounded. They'd been working with feeder mice Daphne had picked up at some Muggle pet shop and they were making progress. Even a mouse, it turned out, could hold the spell but only at short distances. They needed bigger animals, more research.

Daphne was pretending to consider Theo's possible reactions to her father's matchmaking idea as she puttered about her kitchen. "You could have told him you thought I was an unrepentant whore and you were hoping for a pure bride?"

Theo choked. When he recovered she was leaning against her hideous counter and laughing at him. "You are a bratty minx, that's what you are," he said. "You know the reason."

"I know," she turned to pull some lettuce out of a bag and start rinsing it. "Trust me, I nearly lost my head I was giggling so hard when he said he planned to marry me off to you. It was a relief, though. I'd been trying to keep from telling him where he could shove his marital plans."

"So you made me do it?"

"What are friends for," she grinned at him.

"Apparently," he muttered, "they're for arranged marriages."

"Well," Daphne stopped making the salad long enough to catch his eye, "I've no interest in marrying for position or power. I think I'll have quite enough of that on my own in the new regime, thank you very much. You're quite safe from my clutches."

"I sometimes wonder," he said quietly, "whether Æthel needs a mother to help her navigate all the wondrous complexities of our inbred aristocracy. Hermione adores her, but she's – "

"Both out of her mind and not exactly adept at the rules anyway."

He nodded. "She's managed to position herself as powerful enough to be able to flaunt most of them but the next generation of - "

He hesitated and Daphne said calmly, "of royalty," and he nodded.

"The next generation of royalty are going to have to be master players, and I want her at, if not the absolute pinnacle of power, then very close."

Daphne began emptying cherry tomatoes into her salad and asked, without looking up, "Isn't Narcissa Malfoy enough?"

"I don't know. I didn't grow up a girl in our world. You tell me: is she?"

Daphne frowned as she said, "I'm not sure."

. . . . . . . . . .

Eustacia Parkinson looked at her granddaughter with some irritation. "Pansy," she said, and the girl smiled - simpered, for Merlin's sake - at her across the tea set, "I do realize you aren't a beauty but I had always nurtured what appear to have been vain hopes that you were at least clever."

Pansy dropped the simper and narrowed her eyes at her notorious grandmother. "What do you mean?"

"Beauty is, of course, a short cut to power for women," Eustacia said, looking the girl over with resignation. "And where beauty fails to materialize you can nurture a certain something that captivates. I can't hold your looks against you; sometimes the gods are just cruel. But you should have cultivated something - spirit, wit, eccentricity, style - that took their place. I blame your mother for that. A girl needs a good mother to learn the skills to survive in our world. But your sheer and utter density in the face of things that should be obvious: that, I think, is solely your own fault."

Pansy tightened her jaw and exhaled. Controlling her urge to tell her grandmother exactly which hell she could go to, the interfering old bat, she said, "I don't follow you."

"I will try to be clearer," Eustacia said, pursing her lips. "I realize your education at that school of yours was woefully lacking but what do you know about elementals?"

"Water, air, fire..." Pansy began.

"No," the old woman snapped. "Those are elements. Elementals - archetypes if you prefer - are forces that you can tap into during complex magical workings. Or, as is more often the case, they are forces that tap into you."

"Well then," said Pansy, wondering if her grandmother had started to suffer dementia, "I'll be sure not to do any complex workings, whatever those are."

"Blood sacrifice is a pretty basic one," Eustacia said, eyeing her as if willing her to understand.

"Well, I wasn't exactly planning on sacrificing anyone so..."

"You already did." Eustacia said flatly. "Or, rather, that little blood traitor brat did and, if we want to be really technical, Draco Malfoy may have as well as that worthless Weasley boy virtually offered himself up as such. Now there are consequences to be dealt with and while, by and large, I'm perfectly happy to have your Hermione able to access that kind of power, as dreadful as the reason is, you might not be if you persist in your antiquated notions of blood purity. She's not going to have the patience to deal with that much longer."

"Hermione's a pureblood," Pansy said, looking at her grandmother and trying not to roll her eyes. "Why do you think she's so passionate about the orphan issue?"

"You really are an idiot," Eustacia said, banging her cup down on the table with enough force to rattle the sugar bowl. "If you weren't my blood kin I'd wash my hands of you. I might anyway. I certainly won't bother demanding any sort of wergild if she should decide to do away with you because of your refusal to let your obsession with blood purity go."

"Hermione's a pureblood," Pansy said again, though she sounded less sure this time.

"Are you always happy to eat bullshite like that?" Eustacia asked, tapping her fingers on the table and examining the girl. She did blame this on the chit's mother; her own son wasn't nearly idiotic enough – though he was certainly close – to be responsible for this.

"She's..."

"She played a part to get power, clever girl that she is," Eustacia said. "But, unless I'm quite wrong about her, she's going to purge her inner circle of anyone who objects to her actual blood status; she'd be a fool not to and, whatever else she may be, she's no fool. And whatever squeamishness she might have once had about killing people, well, I suspect she doesn't have that any more now that's she's… more."

"She's a pureblood," Pansy said. "No mudblood could be that powerful. Draco Malfoy..."

"Would have married a frog to get power, much less an attractive woman, even one he didn't like as a boy." Eustacia said. "He grew up and, honestly, he probably orchestrated the whole charade because he's just that cold. Pragmatism. Cunning. Any means to achieve our ends. Did you listen when that absurd hat explained what it meant to be Slytherin or did you really think it was about blood purity?" She shook her head. "No one who matters cares about blood status; it's a tool to manipulate the masses, it's the sort of thing idiotic men go to war over, but it's not something any member of our class should let herself be limited by; not ever, and certainly not now. Decide if you want to be purged as untrustworthy, Pansy, because, if you can't grow up about this, you probably will be."

. . . . . . . . . .

"Let me see Alicia," Harry begged, his head down in his hands. "Let me see my daughter."

Draco laughed at him as he leaned up against the wall and watched Hermione study her old friend. He wouldn't let her come down here alone, was afraid of what she'd do, was afraid too much contact with Harry would drive her further down into spiraling despair. She clearly didn't know what to do with the man. Kill him, torture him, release him. She'd come down and stare at him, usually without speaking. Sometimes she'd go back upstairs afterwards and review reports and plans as though nothing had happened; sometimes she'd rage, sobbing against Draco until she fell into an exhausted sleep.

"How about," she said now, looking at Harry, "you get to see your daughter when I get to see my son?"

. . . . . . . . . . .

Luna sat in the greenhouse watching Neville put seeds into small pots, one at a time. She'd offered to help but he'd waved her off, muttering something about how the germination requirements were very particular and these were hard to cultivate and if the conditions were even slightly wrong and, well, he was sorry but her history with plants just wasn't...

She'd laughed and cut him off. "Fine," she'd said, "don't make me get my hands dirty. I can live with that."

"You should take the Longbottom seat," she said as he worked. "Hannah's going to take the Abbott seat."

They'd been sitting in silence in the warmth, so welcome in the grey winter day, and Neville didn't even look up at her suggestion. "I don't think so," he said. "I'm not that interested in the Wizengamot or politics."

"Politics is interested in you, whether you want it to be or not," Luna observed. "Refusing to take a seat is as much of a statement as taking one." She'd pulled herself up to sit on the worktable and was swinging her feet as she sat. These silver shoes were really fabulous; who knew Blaise had such an eye for sparkly things.

"I thought ravens liked shiny things," he'd said when he tossed them to her.

"That's a bit of a myth," she'd said, "but I like them anyway." And she quite did; they caught the light as she swung them back and forth in this warm and lovely greenhouse where she was cultivating Neville. She wanted a greenhouse; it was glorious to not be cold while being surrounded by living things in the winter.

"I don't want to make any statement," Neville muttered, a faint pigment of frustration coloring his tone, "I just want to..."

"You don't get to choose silence," Luna interrupted him. "Not really. Not you. You're a hero of the war, you were friends with both Ron and Hermione, and you're the last scion of your house. Everything you do will be read as meaning something, as choosing a side."

"I don't want to be some kind of mouthpiece," Neville said at last, his hands never faltering as he put seed after seed in pot after pot. "I won't just rubber stamp whatever it is Hermione wants to do. If I don't agree with her - "

"Then vote against her. No one wants you to be anything other than what you are," Luna said, watching him out of the corner of her eye as she looked up at the roof. "You have a bit of ivy trying to escape up there."

Neville glanced up. "Plants. Some are hard to get to start, some are hard to keep contained." He sighed and, with a quick flick of his wand, burned back the tendril of the vine that had almost gotten away. "As much as I love the way that one adds color and life, let it get away and it'll break the glass, let the cold air in and everything else would whither."

"Language is easier," Luna said, still eyeing him. "It never tries to run off and break things."

Neville snorted at that. "No one ever said ivy was mightier than the sword."

"Maybe," Luna went back to watching her shoes catch the light. "But in the end it's the ivy that wins every time."

. . . . . . . . . .

Hermione sat down at the table, surrounded by men with wands in their hands, a room choke with filled chairs facing her. Daphne had the reporters and photographers neatly cordoned into a small area, keeping the illusion that this was an intimate gathering as best she could, just the Lady answering the questions of some of her closest supporters.

The armed and wary men did make that illusion harder to maintain.

"Aren't Aurors usually, well, subtler that this," one woman leaned over to her partner and asked. The man eyed the men on the platform.

"Those aren't Aurors," he said. "Some kind of private security force. Can't say I'm surprised after what happened." The woman nodded. Blaise, once he'd sobered up, had been quick to plant the idea throughout his network that the Aurors had deliberately refused to help the newly elected Minister and had thus enabled the Order of the Phoenix, in the form of Ron Weasely, to attack her.

Hermione raised a hand when the room had settled, when Draco gave her the signal from the back before making his way to her side. "Thank you all for coming," she said, "your support matters more than I can say. Our…" she broke down for a moment and swallowed hard, "our personal loss has not lessened my commitment to the wizarding world. I will not let a…" she stopped again. "I will not live in fear." She finally said. "My team is working hard to prepare for a smooth transition when I take office in slightly less than two months and I think we have some fairly exciting ideas. The one I want to talk about today is one near to my heart, namely the Order of the Phoenix Memorial Orphanage."

She looked up at Daphne, standing slightly to her left, and the woman slid a pile of papers into her hand. "My assistant, Daphne Greengrass, has been working with her sister to take on the task of finding homes for all the children who currently live in that facility. They're still working through the details but, once I'm sworn in, we plan to ensure that families who bring these children into their homes have some generous tax stipends to help pay for school expenses; even though Hogwarts is, of course, free, we all know school supply bills can seem monumental."

"What about people like your brother?" Someone called out. "He's rich – he doesn't need any bloody kickback from the government."

"I plan to donate my portion to the orphanage for general maintenance," Theo said with total ease. "As you rightly point out, I don't need any financial help, and no one will be forced to take any. We just want to ensure that no one is prevented from considering adoption because they fear school expenses. We want these kids to find families that love them, not just wealthy parents."

"Leave her alone," someone hissed at the heckler.

"No," Hermione smiled at woman defending her. "We want to put this plan out there now so the public can comment on it. We want to know what you think; my advisors are bright people and I trust them implicitly but there are lots of people with good ideas and we want to hear from you. From all of you."

"Well done," Draco said afterwards, kissing her. "You did it. Your first public appearance since…"

"Yes," Hermione said, her voice water sliding over rocks.

. . . . . . . . . .

The first time she'd walked through the Weasley wards Hermione had left a bit of a back door so any of them could come and go as they pleased; this time they'd opted to leave her at home. She didn't need to know everything.

"Molly," Theo greeted the woman as he ambled into her kitchen and she looked up, perplexed.

"How did you get in," she asked, not even pretending to be gracious.

Blaise laughed and Draco playfully smacked him. "She doesn't remember. Don't mock."

"That's right," Theo said. "We're here to hurt her, not to make fun of her. Try to not be a total arse, Blaise. It's like you were raised in a barn."

"My apologies," the reprimanded man said, no actual regret in his tone. "I'll try to do better next time."

"And there will be a next time," Draco said, stalking over to the woman. "We can't kill your wretched son slowly, as we've all dreamed of - "

"Some of us since we were eleven," Blaise snickered.

"- but we can hurt you. And then we can obliviate you. And then we can hurt you again. And again. And again. I wonder when you'll actually break, when, even without conscious recollection of what we're going to do to you, your mind will just snap."

Theo had helped himself to an apple from a fruit bowl and, taking a bite, made a face. "This a bit mealy," he muttered and Blaise rolled his eyes.

"Did you really eat something you found in this house? What is wrong with you? Talk about being a total arse."

"Would it be possible for you two to stay focused?" Draco complained as Theo took another bite and, wrinkling his nose, tossed the offending apple into the sink.

"You hurt my sister," Theo said, looking at Molly. "And, really, a good bout of pain for that apple wouldn't be amiss either. But, the main thing is you helped your loathsome child hurt our Lady with your little portkey-snatching trick. Nifty spell, that. Percy told us all about it, once we knew what to ask thanks to our last little session with you. Stands to reason, I suppose, that any woman who raised your brats would have had a knack for pulling unwanted things out of pockets."

"My mother preferred the stare of death," Draco said, pointing his wand steadily at the red haired woman. Molly watched them with a grim and determined scowl on her face. "One learned quickly enough to not cross her. But some families keep their children in line and some families are the Weasleys."

"My mother just didn't care what I did so long as I stayed out of her way," Blaise shrugged. "And I'm sure your nannies all had tricks like dear Molly's. Your mother didn't need them because the help ensured you didn't try to smuggle frogs to the table in your pockets."

"Can you imagine," Theo laughed, drawing his own wand, "anyone having the nerve to pull a frog out of his pocket at Narcissa Malfoy's dinner table?"

"Not really," Blaise was twirling his own wand between his hands, ready to get started.

"You boys need to leave now," Molly Weasley sounded firm, her feet braced against the floor, her hands on her hips, and all three of them laughed. She'd spent a lifetime herding recalcitrant boys and a dreamy husband into line and she seemed to think she could use the same force of will, the same tone of voice, to compel the three men who'd let themselves into her house, who'd come into her kitchen, to leave.

"I think the phrase you want," Theo said, eyeing Draco, who appeared speechless that the woman he was about to torture was trying to order him about, "is 'make me'."

"Thank you, Theo," Draco nodded, a gracious little nod of his head as though he were acknowledging an introduction at a charity banquet. "Mrs. Weasley," he smiled at the woman. "Make me."

She had her wand out before he'd finished speaking but, before she could get a shot off, Blaise had snagged it and Draco whispered, "crucio".

Without Hermione there to limit their time they had to exercise self-control and, as Blaise admitted later over a pint, self-control had never really been his strength.

"Still," Theo said, "she lives to make another meal. A meal of mealy apples." He made a face again. "Bad apples are really so awful. They look so tempting but then you bite into them and - "

"Stop," Blaise said. "Please. Enough about your obsession with fruit."

"It's hardly an obsession," Theo objected. "I just really like apples."

. . . . . . . . . .

Molly Weasley sat at the table she used as a desk rubbing the back of her neck. She wasn't sure why she'd been having such horrible headaches lately but this was the second one that made her feel like she'd just gone a round with a batch of Death Eaters. Still, time, tide and paperwork wait for no woman and she had a bunch of financial reports from the orphanage to doctor before that harlot took power. Hermione's people were already making noises about investigating where all the funding had gone in detail and about setting up special committees to investigate possible misuse of monies.

They talked about using the orphanage budget to place those little brats with families who wanted them.

As if anyone would want them. She supposed bribing people to take the kids was as good a way as any of shutting the orphanage down. Probably cheaper too.

Molly rubbed her head again and muttered as she changed numbers and edited the reports to hide all the money they'd skimmed. George was right behind her, reading over her shoulder, before she noticed he was there.

"So you did know," he said, and when she didn't answer he asked, his voice louder, "Did you care about those kids, suffering in poverty? Were you trying to punish them for the sins of their fathers? Or was it all about the money? Greed or vengeance? Or a little of both?"

"Their parents killed your brother," Molly hissed and George stared at the back of her head.

"But they didn't. They're kids." He was breathing hard, she could hear him, could hear something shatter in his voice when he asked, his voice quiet again, "Did you know about Ron too? Did you know he planned to – "?

"I knew he was going to confront her," Molly snapped. "She needs confronting. She's a monster, George, she left your brother, killed Ginny, took up with all those boys. They're practically the next generation of Death Eaters and who cares if she's hurt? Who cares? Our world would have been better off if someone had murdered Tom Riddle as a boy and it would be equally better off if someone – "

"Stop." George was very quiet. "Just stop."

He was gone before she turned around.

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco sat on the bed, finger-combing out Hermione's curls. She was having a good day, no screaming. No sobbing. He'd never have believed, when they started, even when she'd become pregnant with his child, that she'd be so nearly broken by the loss of their son. Seeing her this way had almost broken him.

"I want to move," she said, breaking the silence. "I can't stay in this flat. The nursery – "

"Done," he said. "Do you want to keep anything or do you want everything new?"

"Everything new."

He nodded and twined some of her hair around his finger and watched the way the browns and golds and hints of red shifted in the flickering candlelight. "I'll have us moved by this time tomorrow."

He didn't tell her he'd had another flat ready for a week, had known that sooner or later she'd want to go. This place was a swamp of memories. This was where she'd told him about the baby, this was where she'd sworn at him as she struggled with morning sickness, this was where she'd decorated the nursery. He'd be as relieved as she to leave those ghosts behind them.

"I want another baby," she said then, still not turning around. He closed his eyes, pain and fear and love struggling for control as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. "Not to show at the election, like Theo wanted, not to put on a throne. I want your baby." Hermione continued and Draco felt his eyes begin to burn as he held back the tears.

"Our baby," was all he said and she nodded.

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N - Thank you, again, for reading and following and reviewing.

Some responses to those people who review without logging in, thus keeping me from PMing them my thanks: Goose (Well, OOC is a given in a Dark!Dramione and Mary Sue is, of course, a matter of perspective, though I certainly hope I don't see myself as someone who would use the speech she uses to get power. That would be creepy, even for me. As to all the Gryffindor's being scum, well, Neville's not being scum is going to turn out to be pretty important but, well, you'd have to read past the first chapter to start to get the hints of that (err – spoiler) and, well, those Slytherin boys do have a penchant for torturing people, which I wouldn't call "do no wrong" but maybe your moral code is different than mine.) nangijala (Thank you! And, yes Luna's not an airy pushover.), Kitty (I know, poor Harry.) just because you said so (I agree, this has been a little light on the dramione lately, so I've added small snippets of them to the next few chapters.) General Mac (Thanks, and more is on the way. I've outlined though ch 41, have rough drafts through 39, and have the whole arc in my head, so, barring illness, I think a chapte a week is likely for months. It's a long story arc.) Guest (Thanks for all your thoughts. Harry is, indeed, somewhat fooling himself if he thinks he can trust Hermione and, long term, Hannah's innate goodness is going to be valuable to our heroine in ways far more important than bringing her into the political circle), BBG336 (The Weasleys, well, they might continue to suffer.), jadedlady (Nailed it on the reason for death by drowning.).