Narcissa Malfoy, predictably, wore black robes. She sat on a little bit of spindly furniture, ankles crossed and nose wrinkled, fully confident no couch would dare break under her. Hermione stood in the doorway of the sort of pointless room only the very rich had and wondered if Malfoy's crazed aunt had tortured anyone on these rugs, or did they try to keep that sort of thing contained to only a few rooms. She didn't move until Narcissa waved Hermione over with a gesture so imperious it wouldn't have bene out of place on a queen, though probably no queen would have needed to make it. Narcissa patted the cushion next to her in an unspoken command and Hermione obediently perched on the edge of the silk cushion. She folded her hands in her lap and eyed Malfoy's mother.
It was hard to imagine a less comfortable social encounter.
Draco Malfoy – she couldn't think of him as just Malfoy when there were two of the clan in the same room – sat down across from them in a rather more solid bit of carved wooden ugliness. Hermione forced a strained smile to her face as Narcissa Malfoy looked her over with a decidedly critical eye. At last Narcissa frowned, tucked an errant blonde lock behind one ear, and said, with what might have passed for graciousness if you were a bit hard of hearing, "Welcome to Malfoy Manor."
"You have a lovely home," Hermione said. It was the appropriate thing to say and, since nothing else came to mind, she fell back on safe banalities.
"War is such an odd thing," Narcissa said, continuing to study her. "The violence is like a storm at sea, dredging things up from the muck and tossing them to the surface. Rot, most of it. Long sunk rubbish. But now and then a pearl rises up."
Hermione had a terrible feeling this was supposed to be a compliment or an excuse for her background. She choked back the urge to reply. Nothing good would come of telling this woman where she could shove her judgement.
"Draco talked about you for years, of course. On and on about the Muggle who had better marks." Narcissa glanced over at Draco and Hermione looked too. Draco was frowning. "I always assumed he was just put out one of the little nobodies Dumbledore was always on about could match him."
"They do say little boys yank on the pigtails of girls they like," Draco said. He sounded bored and aristocratic but, under that, perhaps, sat a warning to them all.
"Yes," Narcissa said. "And so here you are, the girl he fell wildly, passionately in love with. Quite a coup."
Hermione wished there were an answer as proper as 'you have a lovely home' for that statement.
"And," Narcissa went on, "Because I will do anything for Draco, I procured him the portkey he needed to get you. Making a portkey is a trivial enough task if one knows how."
"Portkeys," Hermione said. Draco had had portkeys. Plural. And she was quite sure making one wasn't the trivial thing Narcissa claimed.
Narcissa frowned at her. "I thought you were clever, Miss Granger, and I did so hope your grammar, at least, would be acceptable. Portkey. Singular."
Hermione glanced down at her hands and at the bracelet locked around her wrist. How did Malfoy's little monitoring spell work? Could he feel the way her blood pressure was rising as her temper caught?
"You'll do, I suppose," Narcissa said when she didn't respond. She rose to her feet and looked down her narrow nose at Hermione. "I need to go look in on my husband. He's been unwell for some time and the coming and going of visitors in the Manor upsets him."
"My father was weakened in Azkaban," Draco said. "Where, as you may recall, your friend Potter sent him."
Was she supposed to apologize for that?
"Go for a walk," Narcissa said. "The rose garden is especially lovely right now, though it's a bit of a ways from the house. It's where Lucius courted me and the joie de vivre are in full bloom right now. You might enjoy it."
"Thank you for the suggestion," Hermione said. Narcissa was all the way at the door before she managed to get out one last thought. "Madam Malfoy?"
"Yes?"
"War raises people from the depths but it casts them down too." She kept her gaze fixed on Narcissa Malfoy as she added, as sweetly as she could manage," 'Those are pearls that were his eyes' after all."
Narcissa sniffed and then she was gone, sweeping from the room with furious, controlled dignity.
"Well, that was opaque," Hermione mattered as she let Draco lead her out of the house through a set of wide French doors, down a stone path that reminded her of parks she had visited as a small child and passed a tall hedge.
She assumed he was taking her to this rose garden that his mother had recommended and when he asked, "Do you know roses?" Her suspicion was confirmed. Suspicions. They were going to the rose garden and he had no intention of enlightening her as to whether or not his mother was in the know about his real feelings.
"Everyone likes roses," Hermione said. "They're beautiful flowers."
"Symbols of love," Draco said.
"Then I assume these will all be made out of plastic," Hermione said under her breath. To her surprise, instead of being offended by that, Draco Malfoy laughed.
"The flower gardens, at least, are completely authentic," he said. The real amusement turned his posh accent from condescending to conspiratorial and she felt she had been let in on a private joke. Even knowing he didn't like her she felt warmed and included. Even knowing what a sneering bully he had been – what a coward he still was – she smiled back in return. No wonder the Malfoys had been able to accumulate power over so many generations. No wonder people had been willing to overlook Lucius' abuses during the first war. The bastards could be charming when they wanted to.
The sound of someone else walking warned her they weren't alone, and the sound resolved into the thick-faced and thick-footed Alecto Carrow. She'd never been introduced to the woman, but she'd met her in battle more than once and Ginny had shared unpleasant stories. Her smile disappeared. "Nice company you all keep," she said. "Another gem thrown up from the muck?"
"The Carrows come and go as they please," Draco said. He was back to bland, polite, and noncommittal.
"How often are the -?" Hermione cast around trying to think about how she should describe the Death Eaters. They had some choice phrases they used in the Order but facing a boy who wore their Mark she couldn't bring herself to say fucking tossers or wanking twatdicks.
Draco answered her question and more. "They are here quite a bit, though we aren't graced with Yaxley's presence on a regular basis.
"You needn't hesitate about calling them Death Eaters," Draco went on. "Not even to their faces. Having been admitted to the highest levels of the Dark Lord's service while he lived and thus being permitted to call yourself such is considered quite an honor. They all bear it with pride." He paused for a moment and then corrected himself, "We all do."
"I'm sure," Hermione said.
They were almost at the rose garden. Bright shocks of pink and yellow sat among thorns, all behind an intricately constructed stone wall. The wall was slightly above waist height, more of a visual demarcation than any real barrier, and when they reached it Hermione put her palms flat on the wall, pulled herself up, and sat. From there she could look out at the estate. Rolling lawns stretched out dotted with other flower gardens, a duck pond and a hedge maze. She saw what at one point had probably been stables and a dark strand of trees that looked to be the edge of a substantial forest. Her new home.
"Pretty property," she said. Draco just shrugged and joined her on the wall. She supposed it was hard to be impressed with a vast estate what it was what you knew. She was probably equally blind to the comforts of her ballet-classes-and-trips-to-France childhood. Everyone assumed what they had was ordinary.
She could still see Alecto Carrow. Draco followed her gaze and his mouth tightened. "She's too lazy to walk this far out very often," he said. "No one comes here except for me, my mother, and, occasionally, the gardening staff." He glanced down behind the wall at the neatly mulched bed. Several weeds had poked their way up. "Too occasionally."
Hermione had no opinions on that, and swung her feet as they sat in silence for a while. A bee buzzed near her, then took off in search of sweeter nectar. "Sorry I'm not Ginny," she said at last. It galled her that his comment had bothered her at all, but Narcissa's description of her as a pearl dredged out of the muck made his idle preference seem even more grating. She hated these people with their thoughtless prejudice. "I didn't realize you two were so close," she added.
Draco snorted. "I don't think I've spoken more than three sentences to her in my life," he said. "She's just a pureblood."
"And that makes her better," Hermione said.
Draco had the grace to look a little uncomfortable. "It means it would have been easier for her here, that's all," he said. He hunched his shoulders forward a little and added, "I didn't mean to imply I had any sort of tendre for her, if that's what you were thinking."
Hermione didn't know quite what she had been thinking. She had been irrationally insulted and irritated but thought hadn't really played much of a role in her response. "Well," she said, trying to make a joke out of it, "Harry will be relieved to hear that. He dislikes you enough as it is. I doubt he'd like hearing you had some sort of a thing for his fiancé."
"Your Harry can feel confident that I have no interest in his girlfriend," Draco said. "Dating has not exactly been one of my priorities in the last few years."
"What has?" Hermione asked.
"Survival," he said baldly and she looked back down to her feet. She was all too familiar with the way survival could come to dominate every thought of every day. It seemed sad to her, though, to not even have the solace of romance to sweeten the darkness. She closed her eyes to squeeze away any memories that threatened to leak out. She was fine. She could handle herself without needing to lie in some man's arms at night. She was fine. Ron was fine. She was here to keep him – all of them – safe, and tonight she'd get a charm set up to send messages back and forth and make this even more worthwhile.
When Yaxley it is here," Draco said, "you'll probably want to stay out of sight as much as possible. If he really takes interest it's not like you can avoid him, but up until now he shown very little interest in the sex lives of the Death Eaters and I doubt you and I will be any different."
"Despite the mudblood thing," Hermione said. It was half a question, half a bitter statement.
"Muggle girls are actually very popular," Draco said. He kept his voice the kind of careful neutrality she had already come to realize meant he was saying something horrible. "Less likely to come with wizarding relatives who object, you see."
Oh, she saw. How she saw. She wanted to be ill she saw so clearly.
"What does he want?" she asked. She'd known what Voldemort wanted. He'd wanted eternal life. He'd wanted power. He'd wanted glory. He'd wanted people to kowtow to him. Yaxley was more of a mystery. Was he an ideologue? Power hungry? He'd managed to turn a group of sadistic fools into an army so one thing he was was competent.
"Well," Draco said, "he still has a bee in his bonnet about that prophecy."
"The prophecy?" Hermione asked in disbelief. "The one about Harry?" That was hardly secret. Every single person in the Order knew what the prophecy said. Parents defied Voldemort three times, marked as an equal, neither could live while the other survived. It was considered absurd, not classified information. And, besides, Voldemort was gone. Who cared about that now?
"The prophecy," Draco confirmed. He touched her with his elbow and said what he clearly thought was a joke, "I don't suppose you know it and can tell it to me?"
"I can write it down for you if you want," Hermione said. "It's nonsense of course, like all divination, but if you want it I'll be happy to give it to you."
She'd managed to stun Draco into complete and absolute silence. He stared at her, his mouth agape, and, ever the daughter of dentists, she noted that he had perfect teeth. At last he said, "I don't want you to betray your side."
"I won't," Hermione said. "Trust me, this is trivial."
Draco looked out across the lawn. They could both still see Alecto, who'd been joined by her twin brother. The two dark-robed figures had their heads together in a tête-à-tête. One of them pointed toward Draco and Hermione and any question as to what they were talking about disappeared.
Hermione felt grim worry at being object of their curiosity and speculation and, as the twins started to walk toward them Draco said, his voice choked with something she didn't want to understand, "I can't tell you what that will mean for me."
. . . . . . . . .
A/N – Thank you to UnknownAuthoress for the British insults. Thank you to lilikaco for catching a major continuity error which has been fixed.
Hermione quotes either Shakespeare or T.S. Eliot, depending on your preference.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange. – Act I, scene ii, The Tempest
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations. – The Waste Land