Hermione picked up the piece of parchment and blew on the ink with more satisfaction than she'd felt since arriving at Malfoy Manor.

"You could use a drying charm," Malfoy said.

She looked over where he sat. The empty tray with the tea that had indeed proved to be calming still sat on the table next to him. They had stacked the sandwich plates in a neat pile and the peels from their oranges peeked out from under the cloth napkins. He met her gaze far too smugly for her liking and she made a point of blowing on the ink again. She'd dry it however she liked.

Tea had been calming, lunch had been early but good, and, with that done, she'd sat down to write out the prophecy. Well, almost the prophecy. She'd added one extra line. It barely seemed like artistic license. It was a grace note. A flourish. She hoped it would get under Yaxley's skin and keep the bastard up at night.

"You know all divination is absurd," she said. "I can't give this to you without making it clear that you shouldn't trust it. Everyone in the Order thinks the prophecy is ridiculous."

It also seemed wholly irrelevant by now.

Malfoy's look was measuring enough that she thought he might have heard what she didn't say. "I wouldn't expect you to be able to get it word for word perfect," he said, and with that she was sure. That made her feel a little better. Their not-quite-agreement to be honest with one another despite the situation was a fragile and delicate thing. She didn't want to violate it so soon.

"Why does Yaxley care anyway?" she asked. "It's not like it's about him."

Malfoy accioed the parchment from her fingers and read over the words with greedy desperation on his face.

"Harry Potter just won't go away," Draco said. "None of you will. Yaxley has the Prophet, he has the ministry, he's getting awfully close to having Hogwarts, and yet there you all are. Radio broadcasts. Little hit-and-run attacks that always seem to manage to find his most vulnerable points." He looked up at her. "Potter is good at this."

"Molly is," Hermione said. Molly and Ron and Moody. Moody was a paranoid freak, and Ron had a quick temper and acted before he thought, but people who underestimated any of them were fools. People saw the poor housewife with her dumpy clothes and people saw the cripple. People saw Ron's broad, simple face with that shock of ginger hair. They forgot Molly had fought in two wars. They forgot that she had seen brothers die, seen children die, that she had turned her own wand on Voldemort's most trusted, most dangerous ally and taken the woman down. More, people never stopped to ask where Ron had gotten a mind that saw so many moves ahead on a chessboard or, now, in war. He certainly hadn't gotten it from Arthur.

She looked at her hands. There was a tiny spot of ink on one thumb and she charmed it away. She missed them all so much already. "He has good help," she said. "Loyal people."

"Loyalty is the most important thing," Malfoy said.

"Not a quality I would have associated with the Death Eaters," Hermione said.

"Not one a lot of them have," Draco said.

There wasn't much to say to that. She agreed with him that loyalty meant everything. Loyalty to the cause was why she was here. With that thought in her head she pulled out a new sheet of parchment, flicked her wand and whispered the charm that turned it, ever so briefly, into a Protean.

L. ill. Y. v. interested in prophecy. Gave him a version. Added a bit. Not sure reason for interest.

She hesitated for a moment, then wrote down the whole of the line she had added to the infamous prophecy. A quick second murmured charm and the words disappeared on their way to the small book Molly kept that served as a central communication point. Only a handful of people could manage the charm, which frustrated Hermione to no end. Neither Harry nor Ron could do it. Molly Weasley, however, was a remarkable witch.

"Sending out a report with all our secrets?" Draco asked.

"One good spy can save 100 lives,"Hermione said, not quite saying yes. "And you brought me here."

"I did," Draco said. He stood up, the secret she'd given him held so tightly in his hand the paper was wrinkling, and said, "I'll leave you to a quiet afternoon, if you don't mind. I should visit my father."

"How is he? "Hermione asked.

"You can ask him at dinner," Draco said. His smile bloomed at whatever look he saw before she was able to control her expression. "I am madly in love with you, darling," he said. "Of course we'll eat with my parents. Make sure to dress for dinner. They're old fashioned that way."

Then he was gone and she glared at the door in a fury before stomping to the wardrobe and throwing it open. There had to be something in there she could put on to dazzle that bastard.

There was something.

It was black. It was silk. It wrapped around her waist as though she were buttoning it on and the collar stood around her shoulders with stiff propriety. She smiled at herself with grim satisfaction and had the pleasure of seeing Malfoy's eyes widen when he came to fetch her. "At least you're pretty," he said, and her satisfaction deflated a bit. It wasn't the most effusive compliment she'd ever received. The collar, however, remained unbowed and she let her spine follow its lead.

"You as well," she said. He had black on, of course, and the tight shirt made him seem even thinner. He looked almost gaunt, and pretty wasn't really the word she'd use to describe him. Dramatic, maybe, or haunted. You look like you could use a week at the shore and a lot of starchy food, however, would sound like she cared.

The thick carpets absorbed the tread of his shoes and the click of her heels and when she asked, "What happens if I leave my room without you," it was into oppressive silence.

The silence continued for several steps and then he said, "You are a guest, here, Granger, not a prisoner. No one is locking you in your room."

"Then I think I'll just take myself home," she said. She'd thought about that all afternoon as she paced from the sitting room in her suite to the bedroom. She'd thought about it as she stood under the hot water and tried to wash the feeling of his hand holding her down against that stone wall away. She'd thought about it as she resisted writing a desperate note to Ron, telling him how much she missed him.

Love notes that had to get passed on by your boyfriend's mother weren't quite the thing.

"And give up the perfect opportunity to spy?" Draco asked. "Free range of Malfoy Manor, wand in hand, trusted by the besotted and indulged only son of the house?"

He tried to hide the slight tremor in his voice but she heard it anyway. It made her stop walking. "Malfoy," she said. "What happens to you if I leave?"

"Nothing that hasn't happened before," he said. "Though I'm not sure where you would go. That safe house was burned to the ground."

Hermione pictured the tiny house where she and the rest had stayed. It hadn't been glamourous. The paint had been peeling, the sashes had sagged, and the faucets made a loud clonking sound before they spit out water that was sometimes brown. It surprised her how much it hurt to think of it raided and destroyed. "Since last night?" she asked. Now it was her voice that shook. They'd had no warning that the Death Eaters were so close. They'd had to clear out of places before, and more than once. But this time, other than Malfoy's scramble to get them the portkeys and to get her into his house, there had been nothing.

"They've learned to move fast," he said.

"You have," she said.

He shrugged.

"What would they do to you," she asked again. "If I took off?"

He took a deep breath. "Yaxley isn't a sadist, you have to realize that," he said. "Not like…not like He was. But he thinks fear is an effective policy." He looked down. "I think it makes it worse to watch," he said. "He was horrible. He'd laugh, and his eyes would gleam, and you could tell watching someone be crucioed did something to him, it excited him. But Yaxley… he has someone time the torture. If he's sentenced you to ten minutes, it doesn't matter if he gets bored, or someone comes in with news. If he turns his attention away to other matters, the spell goes on until your time is up."

"How many times?" she asked. Her eyes had been pulled to the hand that had shaken that morning over breakfast. It wasn't shaking now, but he had it pressed against the side of his trousers a little too casually and with a little too much pressure. "Malfoy, how many times?"

"Six," he said. He kept his voice remarkably steady.

Her throat went dry. "Once," she whispered. She'd endured it once.

"I know," he said. "I remember."

"And if you go?"

"My parents," he said. A simple phrase, utter in its finality. He'd never leave.

"Well," she said. She wanted to reach over and take that hand he was keeping still but she thought he'd probably jerk it away from her touch. "Good thing for you your secrets are so interesting."

"The food is also good," he said. "I recommend we stop dawdling here and go eat it. My mother has a knack for letting you know she doesn't approve of late arrivals and I'd hate for her to dislike you."

Hermione snorted at that. Narcissa Malfoy disliked her for existing. She had to do mental gymnastics to find a way to accept the idea – or maybe the pretense of an idea – that her son might have fallen for a filthy, debasing Muggle-born. Being on time to dinner wouldn't uncondemn her.

"Well," Malfoy said, "dislike you more."

"Could she?" Hermione asked.

Draco Malfoy smiled at her with his perfect teeth and his narrow face and every edge promised, for just a moment, that under all those layers of self-preservation lay a predator. A sly one, maybe, but this man was not a rabbit hiding in the underbrush. He was the hawk. "I wouldn't recommend underestimating how deeply my mother can hate on my behalf," he said. "There is nothing she wouldn't endure or do for family."

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N – Thank you all for your support, and beta love to the amazing Salazars. All remaining typos and errors belong to me.