From the solitary pink armchair by the door, Hermione kept shooting glances at the clump of people sequestered from the post-dinner conversation in the far corner of the drawing room, by the curtains. Lucius Malfoy, both of her parents, and Cormac McLaggen had gone directly there from the dinner table and remained there for almost an hour— an occurrence that surprised Hermione, given how insistent Lady Amelia always was on flitting around her numerous guests any time dinner let out, considering the drawing room conversation even more important than the act of eating. In a circle, whatever it was they were saying or doing was impenetrable; the broad back of McLaggen and the tall figure of Lucius, both turned away from the drawing room, kept her from seeing anything. In any case, she didn't like it: to say that she had been antsy around Cormac lately would be an understatement, and to have him speaking so closely with her parents knowing what he held over her head was unnerving.
A knock at the door to the drawing room startled her; she began getting up to see who it was, seeing as her mother was otherwise preoccupied, but Orlando beat her to it.
"I'll get it, I'm already standing," he offered, walking past her armchair and toward the door. In his wake, he left Harry and Draco, whom Hermione saw looked just as sour and sullen as they had since breakfast those two or so days ago.
Orlando opened the door to find Ron and his toolbox. Upon seeing him, Ron became flustered. "Oh, I'm sorry, Orlando," he said, already making as if he were turning to go, "I wasn't aware that now was not a good time. See, the drawing room is usually empty at this time—"
"What's the matter?" Orlando said, grabbing Ron gently by the wrist to stay him.
Ron sighed: he had let himself be swept off by his nervousness (at the prospect of entering a room where, most likely, Hermione and McLaggen both were), and had failed to begin with the most elementary of explanations. "Gramsley pointed out a broken latch on the window by the near wall before dinner. It's nothing serious, but he asked that it be fixed before tomorrow, so I'll come back later."
"Nonsense, I'm sure no one will mind if you do it now," Orlando said, pulling him in gently. Ron was too stunned to resist. "After all, it's just a quick fix, isn't it?"
Ron entered the room reluctantly and gulped back his nerves. "Yes, it is," he responded almost imperceptibly. He looked around the room nervously, as if trying to get a sense of its occupants. He noticed Hermione first, still seated in her armchair but looking absentmindedly toward the door; her eyes widened when she spotted him, though she said nothing nor made any other sign of recognition, leading Ron to think that...
And sure enough, there he was, at the far corner of the room: McLaggen. Ron caught a glimpse of his back at the corner of the room, by the other window. He felt a mix of fear and loathing well in his chest, but stifled it as best he could and merely kept walking toward the window he was to mend. He kept his eyes firmly trained ahead, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, and set his toolbox gently on the floor by his feet when he reached the window.
The soft thud of the toolbox on the wooden floor, however, caught Cormac's ear by the window just a few feet away. He disentangled his gaze from the discussion around him ("So it's all settled, then?" Lady Amelia was saying) and let it trace to Ron, who was focused on not seeing him. A smirk twisted onto his face.
"I think," he jumped back into the discussion, but his eyes were still fixed on Ron, "that now would be a good time to announce it, then, don't you think?"
"I think you're right, Cormac," Lady Amelia said eagerly. "Don't you think so, Philip?"
Beside her, her husband looked less enthusiastic. However, he sighed and nodded gravely: "Yes, dear."
His assent triggered the explosion of unbridled delight across her face. "Splendid! Shall I do it? Can I? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm just so very excited."
"Do us the honors, Lady Granger," Lucius said in his slow, measured manner.
Lady Amelia practically squealed as she stepped out from between the throng of men to face her drawing room. "Excuse us, please!" she called, her voice almost shrill enough to match the pitch of the glassy sound emitted as she tapped her fingernail against the rim of her small amaretto glass. "On behalf of Lord Malfoy, Mr. McLaggen, and Philip and myself, I have an announcement to make."
In the silence that came over the drawing room then, Hermione could almost hear her stomach drop.
"Speaking with Cormac, he has very kindly let us know that he would much prefer to marry a Scottish woman, though he has much appreciated the attentions of our daughter Hermione during his stay at Rosebury."
It was then that the true purpose of the McLaggens' visit dawned on Hermione, though she had already suspected it. To hear it put forth so outrightly, however, only stoked the flame of dislike she harbored toward her mother, almost to the point of hatred. How dare she— and how dare she make such little an effort to conceal it!
"However," Lady Amelia continued, her eyes deliberately avoiding Hermione's, "he has expressed discontent at the idea that he should disappoint me as a guest by leaving my daughter unbetrothed. Though I have assured him he is nothing close to disappointing, as a guest or otherwise, he seemed very concerned by this. But he is a resourceful young man, a great quality in a someday lord, and of course he came to me with a solution."
The silence in the drawing room was positively burdensome now. But Lady Amelia remained undeterred.
"At Cormac's suggestion, I have spoken to Lord Malfoy, who, as you know, has been a guest at Rosebury for long, as he is working tirelessly with my husband to establish a successful urban expansion project, seeking to widen the reach of our families from Kent into London. Lord Malfoy —and I really hope this is alright of me to share, Lucius— has also made me privy to a similar concern he has regarding his son Draco's marital status. And so, to him as well, Cormac's solution came as the perfect way to both put at rest our worries concerning our respective children and strengthen our families' business ties."
"Mother, will you just get to this magical proposal already?" came Orlando's voice from the other end of the room, where he was leaning against a wall, growing increasingly irritated at his mother's rambling diatribe.
Unfortunately, Lady Amelia was more happy to oblige. "Hermione and Draco are to be married!" she squealed.
All around the room, a plethora of shocked reactions was unleashed, like a chain of dominoes weaving its way around the room. Hermione was frozen to the pink armchair, her hands gripping its arms with white-knuckle force, as if seizing the couch was the only way of keeping herself upright and from crumbling. Orlando had peeled his back off the wall and was staring, speechless, at his mother, all the fight drained from him and his mouth agape. Beside him, both Draco and Harry seemed to have been struck by lightning, their faces equal parts jarringly surprised and thoroughly distraught. From the remaining adults —Lady Aileen, Lady Narcissa, and Lord Angus—, only a few raised eyebrows denoted their reaction to the announcement.
But most conspicuous of all reactions was a loud bang that came from the near window, as a pair of pliers slipped from a hand and clattered to the floor. With one hand still on the latch, the other one (that had held the pliers) dropped at his side, Ron had turned a ghostly shade of white.
Evidently angry at how nobody in the room seemed to share in her excitement, Lady Amelia took it out on Ron. "What is he doing here?"
"I let him in, mother; he had to fix the latch," Orlando said dully.
"And a fine job he is doing!" shouted Amelia, anger flushing her cheeks. She stomped from where she stood by the wall toward Ron, broaching the distance of the drawing room in a few strides. "Dropping the pliers like that! Who are you again?"
"H-handyman, milady," Ron muttered.
"Handyman!" Lady Amelia cackled. "You oaf, you can't even repair anything right, and what's more, you disturb me and my guests!" With a sweeping of her skirt, she turned away from Ron and faced the room with the air of a preacher. "I've said it before and I'll say it again: the service should be neither seen nor heard."
This was enough to bolt Hermione out of her stupor and to Ron's defense. Hurriedly, she stood up from her armchair and turned sharply to face her mother, her features twitching with the rage she was only now beginning to assimilate. "How dare you, mother, when you couldn't even know one end of a pair of pliers from the other—"
"And ladies," Lady Amelia cut in, raising her voice to drown out Hermione's even as she pierced her daughter through with a stony stare, "should only be seen."
Stupefied, Hermione let her mouth hang open as if to say something else, but then found that it was quivering not with the impulse to say something else but with the tears she was finding it harder and harder to hold back.
Still by the far window, Cormac McLaggen surveyed the scene with all the pleasure of a dragon taking in the smoldering ruins of a town it has obliterated. The smug grin on his face was a far cry from the expressions of the rest of the players in the act: though Hermione's shaky rage and watering eyes were particularly amusing, he took a special pleasure in the dumbfounded heartbreak of Ron across the room, noting how his hands shook as he struggled to fix the latch as quickly as he could to get out of there. With some delight, Cormac remarked that, if he looked hard enough, both of them seemed to squirm under his gaze.
"I told you, Hermione Granger," he murmured, calling back the image of the other day by the stairwell, and the threat he had promised her then. "I'm a man of my word."