Author's Note: I'm practicing gratitude this week. Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, and supported both me and this fic. Your time and energy mean more to me than you know.

Chapter 6

The first step in any archaeological excavation was observation.

The expedition lead was obligated to arrive first. Their task was to survey the site and create a map that would allow the dig to proceed efficiently. They would determine the location of the mess and sleeping tents; the boundaries of the dig site; the width of the grid; the stratigraphic depths at which to pause and take stock of what they'd found; the ratio of budget remaining to work completed, which ultimately determined the excavation's end point.

Only when this strategy was defined and rolled out to the field team could the actual work of archaeology begin.

They took the same approach in Mitchell's office.

It was not a traditional dig site. They would not be snapping chalk lines across his desk or prying up his floorboards to catalogue the treasures held within. Though after the morning's lopsided duel, Draco was sorely tempted. Destroying the man's office felt like fair repayment for him destroying Draco's last vestiges of innocence.

Such petty vengeance wouldn't have been fair to Hermione. Draco saw no change from his previous visits, but this was her first time. She needed to assess Mitchell's office in its original state to learn the landscape of his most sacred space and decide, using intuition honed by years of fieldwork, where to look first. The same scientific rigour she applied in her professional life was required here.

As such, Draco stood on the Floo's hearth, allowing her the space and silence she needed to form her preliminary impression.

Noontime sunshine provided adequate ambient light through the western window. The office appeared empty, but that subconscious awareness of another presence lingered. He was reminded of the Hogwarts ghosts. Though some preferred invisibility, Draco always knew when one was near.

He looked askance at Hermione.

Could she feel it too?

Or did she always grip her wand that tightly?

"It's tidy," Hermione said.

"Not all of it." Draco pointed at the moulding bite of the peanut butter sandwich. It had seemed innocuous a week ago, when Mitchell's disappearance had been a matter of professional truancy instead of… Whatever this was.

"He was definitely working on something." Her eyes lingered on the stack of scrolls atop Mitchell's desk and the books missing from his shelf. "You're sure he never mentioned it?"

"I'm sure he did. Just as I'm sure I ignored him."

"I'll never understand why he stays with you."

"Same reason you do, I suspect. He likes the abuse."

Hermione breathed a laugh. "I doubt that's the only reason."

"True, I also pay him. You're not so fortunate."

A friendly backhand against his chest spread warmth through his body. This was what it had felt like before, what he'd been missing for months. Being with Hermione had felt effortless once, as mindless as casting a Lumos. Maybe it could again. Maybe, once they were out from under the Sun Disc's shadow, once they'd either severed or settled into whatever connection existed between them, they could return to this easy back-and-forth.

Perhaps this was proof that what had existed between them wasn't extinguished, only temporarily smothered: a banked fire awaiting oxygen.

If only they could give it—give each other—enough space to breathe.

Hermione grew serious once again. "Mitchell didn't mention any upcoming travel, did he?"

"No, and there's nothing in the books."

"Would he tell you if he were to go somewhere?"

"On business? Yes. Any travel he does is usually accompanied by a permit request or a favour called in on his behalf. He's not asked for either in months."

"So there's no apparent correlation of travel to his behaviour changes. Whatever happened to him must have happened locally."

"That narrows it down…" The United Kingdom was a big place. Hell, Wiltshire was larger than ideal when searching for a source. They needed more.

"Do you know his routine? What does a day in his life look like?"

Draco rolled his shoulders in an uncomfortable shrug. "He starts work around eight in the morning and ends around five in the evening."

Hermione looked at him, expectant.

"Listen, we don't work together," Draco explained, feeling more inadequate by the minute. He didn't think there was anything wrong with his and Mitchell's professional relationship, but Hermione's questions made him wonder. "Yes, I hired him, but Mitchell prefers a self-directed, independent work style. He comes to me with problems or publications, and that's about the extent of it."

"Has he done either recently?"

"Not that I can recall…"

Draco shifted his weight; Hermione crooked a brow.

"He might have Floo called me a couple weeks ago," Draco admitted. "And I might have brushed him off."

"Draco…"

"It's not my fault."

"Whose, then?"

It was hers, of course.

Two weeks ago, Draco had Floo called Hermione. Shortly after, Mitchell had Floo called Draco. And Draco had been so consumed by mending the rift with the former that he hadn't given any consideration to the latter.

Only a fool would have told her as much. Tempting as it was to fall into old habits and blame anyone but himself for his problems, Draco bit his tongue and found a scrap of restraint.

"It's hardly relevant," he said. "I don't recall the conversation, so there's no need to dissect it."

Hermione frowned but let the subject pass. She scanned the office again and pointed at the wrapped, rectangular fixture leaning against the west wall.

"What's that?"

"A package, I'd think, judging by how it's wrapped. It's been there all week."

"Was he expecting anything that large?"

Draco gave her an incredulous look.

Hermione sighed as she realised her mistake. "Of course. You hardly bother to be friendly with this man. Why on earth would you keep up with his post?"

She stepped from the hearth and into the office proper. Draco released a slow breath. Why did he feel like they were in danger? He'd been here alone before. Walked around. Looked for clues. There'd been nothing then, and there was nothing now. The dread he felt was unfounded.

He was braver than this.

Or at least, he could be.

Draco followed Hermione off the slate. He stood behind her as she ran her wand around the long edge of the wrapped rectangle, muttering under her breath. They were Dis-Spells: a collection of charms designed to clear any magic not intrinsic to the object upon which they were cast. Curses, hexes, jinxes, wards, traps… Any spell a witch or wizard could cast to protect an object was vulnerable to the correct Dis-Spell.

But there was another type of magic that Dis-Spells could not remove.

Draco caught Hermione's wrist as she reached to remove the object's padded cover.

"Let me."

She shot him a glare. "I'm perfectly capable of—"

"I know your capabilities," he said, "and you know my family. There's a good chance this came from my vault. It might not be friendly to strangers."

To those not of pure blood.

Hermione suffered a moment of debate, then dropped her hand and stepped back. "After you, then."

Draco lifted the object from its lean against the wall and untucked the wrapping's first corner. As soon as he saw it, he remembered.

"A mirror," he whispered. "Mitchell was working on a mirror."

He pulled away the rest of the wrapping, revealing an ornately carved frame covered in pristine gilt. Fleurs-de-lys decorated each corner, the motif connected down the mirror's vertical edges by creeping vines that shifted and curled, as if searching for sunlight. Across the frame's bottom edge, carved in stylized script, were the words Fidelis et Formosus. At the centre of the top horizontal was the Malfoy family crest: serpents and dragons flanking a shield that rested on three crossed pikes.

Though they stood before it, the mirror's reflective surface remained empty, a blank canvas the colour of a neutral sky.

A chill crawled down Draco's spine as Hermione knelt in front of it. "Something's wrong."

It should have reflected her.

It didn't.

Hermione's fingers traced the intricate carvings, barely a centimetre away from touching them. "Why was he studying it?"

Maybe he'd spoken too softly. Maybe the mystery was too tantalising for her to resist.

Draco swallowed back his fear. He clenched his fists to keep from reaching out and dragging her away, back through the Floo to safer ground.

The instinct to flee was irrational. The mirror showed no reflection; that did not mean it was evil. That did not mean Malfoy Manor was any safer than Mitchell's office. In fact, considering Mitchell's presence at the manor, they were objectively safer wherever Mitchell was absent.

He cleared his throat. "I don't know, he never shared any of the details."

"Because you refused to listen!"

Draco swore. Hermione shrieked and skittered backwards, colliding with Draco's legs. He caught himself against the bookcase, heart racing as Mitchell appeared in the mirror.

Though they only saw him from the waist up, Mitchell looked much like he always did: dirty-blond hair parted to one side, brown eyes narrowed behind square-framed spectacles. He stood with his arms akimbo and the sleeves of his blue Oxford rolled to his elbows.

Annoyed was Mitchell's default setting, and being trapped in a mirror had not changed that.

"Mitchell!" Hermione lunged forward and gripped the frame, nose nearly against the glass. "What happened?"

"Don't touch it!" She dropped her hands as if they burned and fell back again. "Don't touch the glass," Mitchell said, somewhat calmer, palms raised in apology. "That's how he got me."

"How he got you?" Draco repeated.

"Are you okay?" Hermione asked at the same time.

"Am I okay?" Mitchell scowled at the surrounding frame, on the verge of a perfectly justified tirade. Then, he seemed to think better of it. His shoulders sagged, and he sighed. "Other than having been stuck here for over a week, I'm fine. I'm glad you're here."

"Of course." Hermione moved aside so Draco could sit beside her on the floor. "What happened? Who did this to you?"

"You should know." Mitchell looked at Draco. "He's family."

Draco could practically feel Hermione's smug, I-told-you-so look. "What do you mean, he's family?"

"You don't recognize your forefather?"

"How could I? He's wearing your skin."

A shadow fell across the office.

"It's Brutus Malfoy," Mitchell said. "And he's a real asshole, in case you were wondering."

"We've figured out that much." Hermione turned to Draco. "Have you heard of him?"

"Only in passing. Brutus is the subject of some darker family legends, which is quite the feat, considering my ancestors. I know that he was a philanderer, adulterer, and blood purist. He died young—and under mysterious circumstances—shortly before his wife gave birth. I don't remember how my line continued from there. Maybe it was Orion next? Or Septimus?" Draco tried to remember the foyer tapestry, then gave up; there were more important matters than the details of his lineage.

"Mysterious circumstances?" Hermione asked. "How did he die?"

"I'm not sure. Brutus isn't what my mother would consider appropriate dinner party conversation. We didn't talk about him much and, if we did, it was never for long. But he lived in the seventeenth century, so it could have been anything. Boredom, dysentery… Wasn't there a plague or two back then?"

"There was the plague," Mitchell said. "The Black Death hit London around the mid-sixteen hundreds. That killed plenty of grown men."

"Or any other physical ailment," Hermione added. "He could have broken a leg or had a foot grow gangrenous from undiagnosed diabetes. Back then, Healing was an arcane art. It was more superstition than science, even for magical society."

"I'm glad one of us paid attention to Professor Binns."

Hermione gave Draco a quick smile—he doubted it was the first time she'd heard such gratitude—before sobering. "However he died, it doesn't explain how he wound up in a mirror. Though perhaps that's the mystery of it. Unless you…"

She looked at Mitchell, who shook his head.

"We never got that far," he said, a bitter twist to his lips.

"He shouldn't be in a mirror at all," Draco said. "Brutus was entombed. I've seen his drawer in the family crypt."

"Maybe it's not his body in the crypt," Hermione offered.

"That's impossible."

"The property wards would forbid it," Mitchell confirmed. Draco's eyebrows rose. "You didn't give me much of a primer starting here, you know. I had to learn a lot on my own, most of it by trial and error."

Draco shrugged off Mitchell's accusatory tone. "It seems to have worked fine until now."

"I'm trapped in a mirror."

"Can we please focus?" Hermione looked at Mitchell. "Do you know what Brutus wanted? Why he sought to trap you?"

Mitchell turned his withering look from Draco to Hermione. "Is freedom not motivation enough?"

Hermione pursed her lips. "We're only trying to help you," she said with forced calm. "We need to start by understanding why and how this happened. You've been studying this mirror since Egypt, correct?"

"Since before."

"Where are your notes?"

"In my desk, the second drawer on the left. Look for the folder labelled Mirror No. 5. There are two books in there, we'll need those as well."

Hermione rose to gather the research as Mitchell watched with misplaced worry.

"How did this happen?" Draco asked, drawing Mitchell's attention. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I tried. Before we went to Egypt, I told you that this mirror had a magical signature I'd never seen before. And on our Floo call, I was going to tell you that Brutus had appeared, but you closed the connection before I had the chance."

Draco cocked his head. "Brutus appeared… He wasn't in there the whole time?"

"He was."

Mitchell sidestepped and disappeared behind the frame. Draco angled his head, trying to see beyond the edges of the reflective surface. It remained empty until Mitchell stepped back into view.

"Brutus was hiding. Listening. He appeared out of nowhere and told me he was trapped. I never considered that he'd been trapped for a reason, or what that might have done to him. He said that all I had to do was touch the mirror, and my questions would be answered."

"You believed him?"

Mitchell's cheeks coloured. "I wanted to help him. I wasn't making progress any other way, and since you couldn't be bothered to step in and offer your expertise…"

Draco shot a look over his shoulder. Hermione sat on the edge of Mitchell's chair, fully absorbed in his research. Draco leaned close to the mirror.

"Don't try to turn this around on me," he hissed. "This is your own bloody fault. You touched the mirror. You know better than that! You're supposed to be a professional!"

"I am a professional, and of course I fucking know better! I only touched it because you weren't helping."

"I didn't know you needed help."

"I tried to tell you!"

"Well, you didn't try hard enough."

Mitchell threw his hands into this air. "You're not listening to me," he said between clenched teeth. "That's the problem with you, Draco. You love the sound of your own voice and never listen until there's a problem. Even then, you only hear what you want. And most days? That's fine. I don't need you looking over my shoulder or getting in my way. In fact, I'm almost entirely sure that you don't have a clue what I actually do for you and that whatever your version of help is would almost certainly slow me down.

"But this was different. I'm your sole employee, the only one who can or wants to do this work for you. And when I needed you—when I actually, sincerely needed you—you ignored me for what? Her?"

He jerked his chin at Hermione, who pointedly ignored their argument.

Colour rose high on Draco's cheeks. "I don't need to justify myself to you."

"She hasn't talked to you in months. You know how I know that? Because I have. Forget being your only employee—I'm your only friend. And you ignored me."

"My friend? If we're such good friends, Mitchell, then why did you never tell me about your boyfriend?"

Mitchell took a reflexive step back. His cheeks, flushed with indignity, drained to a sickly white. His jaw slackened. It was as though Draco had sucker-punched him.

Perhaps he had.

"My boyfriend… That's not…"

"Not my business?" Draco finished for him. "You're quite correct. Because if we were friends, you would have made it my business, wouldn't you? You would have been honest with me, and then maybe I would have given you the time of day."

It was cruel. It was unnecessary. It was also impossible to stop.

Mitchell had activated the worst parts of him, had provided yet another reminder that he was a man unworthy of what he most craved. He understood Hermione's distrust. He'd earned that. But Mitchell's felt unjustified. It hurt more knowing that, on some instinctive level, Mitchell had identified something toxic in Draco. Something that made him keep his distance, as if whatever had damaged Draco would eventually hurt him, too.

"I'm going to need more time with these."

Hermione's voice ended the argument, but not the tension. Draco gave Mitchell one last glare, then looked back at her.

"How much time?"

"He had months," she snapped, gesturing at Mitchell. Apparently, bad moods were catching. "Can I have a day?"

"I can help you." Mitchell craned his neck to see past Draco. "There may be some sections that don't make much sense. Like that reference to Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes…"

"Yes, I've read it. It's a good starting point to understanding the mirror's magic, but I've found it needs supplementing with Tashe's Grimoire of Historical Spelles and Enchantments to be truly comprehensive."

"That was next on my list. Olde and Forgotten provides the context…"

"While the Grimoire provides clues to the incantations themselves." A wary smile passed between the two.

Figured that mortal peril would bridge Hermione and Mitchell's divide. It only ever seemed to widen the gap for Draco.

"As thrilling as I find this conversation," he said, not bothering to hide his pique, "perhaps there's a better place to have it than here?"

"We can't go to the manor." Mitchell directed his conversation at Hermione. That was just fine. Draco didn't want to speak to him either. "If Brutus knows you've found me, he's going to run."

Hermione frowned. "And with the Malfoy fortune at his disposal, there's no telling how far he'd get." The full magnitude of their problem settled like an anchor around their ankles. "He can't know that we're trying to undo whatever he's done."

Hermione stared at the mirror, and her eyes drifted out of focus. Draco had seen that look often enough to know what it meant.

She had an idea.

"Hermione?" he prompted. "Everything okay?"

She inhaled sharply and shook herself. Whatever it was, she wasn't ready to share it.

"I'm fine. If we can't go to Malfoy Manor, then where can we go? What are our next steps?"

Draco sat back on his heels. "If we want to get Mitchell out of the mirror"—and for Draco, that was quite a big if at the moment—"we need to know how Brutus got into it. The family histories would be a good place to start. But the histories are at the manor, and as previously stated…" He waved the conclusion away.

"Where else is there? Who else would know Brutus' story?"

The start of a headache lodged like an olive pit behind Draco's eyes. Only two other people could have the answer they needed. One was unreachable, locked away in Azkaban with little hope of release. The other…

Well, as much as Draco wanted to find a way around visiting his mother, he saw no alternative.

"I've heard Greece is lovely this time of year."

Draco's mouth quirked into a rueful grimace as Hermione frowned and Mitchell stared.

At least they'd all be miserable together.