"She's very pretty," Hermione said as Draco led her to another one of the portraits lining a wide corridor. So far, the tour of Malfoy Manor had been unpleasantly reminiscent of a school trip through a third rate museum. The Malfoys had a lot of art on the walls, mostly portraits of ancestors, and she had dutifully admired more badly painted pictures than she cared to remember. This one was, as she had said, pretty. A very pale, very thin woman in an overwhelming set of robes pulled back into a bustle tapped her fan against one hand as she looked out at them. Hermione had often wondered how much independent thought portraits had. The ones at Hogwarts had seemed like fully realized people but Walburga, probably still screaming her hatreds from the wall in Grimmauld Place, had been more of a film on short, eternal loop. She couldn't tell what this woman thought of them, or if she thought at all.

Maybe the blotches of paint left around her throat by an artist who seemed to have been dabbling in modernism before his time impeded her ability to tell them off.

"She was my great-great-grandmother," Malfoy said.

Hermione squinted at the plaque hung on the wall. Honestly, who hung placards near the art on the wall? The pretension made her roll her eyes. Lollia Malfoy it read. 1863 – 1971. Beloved wife and philanthropist. "She looks like you," she said.

Malfoy looked down at her and grinned. "Pretty?" he asked. For a moment, he seemed mischievous and delightful. She resisted the urge to smack him on the arm the way she would have with Ron or Harry if they'd been teasing her that way.

"Blonde," Hermione said. Blonde and too thin. Lollia looked fragile. She was young in the portrait and she looked like her giant black dress had swallowed her whole and it was all she could do to keep from dissolving within it. She'd lived a long life. Perhaps by the end she'd been less frightened looking and more formidable.

Draco stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her and she was about to protest when she heard the footsteps. "Showtime," he murmured against her skin. "Try to seem overwhelmed and a little scared."

She shivered. She might have snapped that he hadn't cared how she acted at dinner with his parents, or with the Carrows, but she shut her mouth when she saw Yaxley. He'd taken to having himself referred to as Lord Yaxley in the papers and then modestly refusing to accept the title whenever anyone asked him about it and she hated that as much as she hated everything about him. He was a vile man even for the company he ran in. He had several Ministry sycophants – or thugs – in tow but the way his stride stopped when he saw the pair of them sent a chill down her spine.

He wasn't here for the art.

Lollia had spread her fan and hidden her face behind it. Hermione wished she could do the same. It was easy to forget when you were sitting around a table calling him that memo-wanking asslick that Yaxley had presence. He radiated power and confidence and utter surety he could do whatever he wished. If he said a sunny day was damp, no one would dare argue.

Including her.

"Young Malfoy," he said in greeting. He didn't acknowledge her and Hermione hated that she was grateful he considered her too insignificant to greet. "I received your mother's owl."

"I hope you were pleased," Malfoy said.

"Very. But I was less pleased to learn that Potter has managed to slip the trap again," Yaxley said. "Your information would have had no value if he were dead."

Malfoy's arms tightened on her. "I'm not sure – ," he began.

"As he should be dead," Yaxley went on. "As he would be if they hadn't taken your interest in that one as reason to run."

"I didn't -," Malfoy tried again and Hermione shrank back against him. Her knees had become weak and every part of her mind screamed to run before Yaxley ordered her taken into custody. Before he ordered her hurt. Before he ordered her questioned.

He did none of those things.

"She had best continue to be worth it," Yaxley said. "What you sent – what your mother sent – was reason to let you go on."

"I - ."

"You will see me tonight after dinner," Yaxley said. He tipped his head to Hermione and briefly smiled. "I look forward to dancing at your wedding, Miss Granger, assuming your defection continues to prove worthwhile."

He glanced down at an antique watch that had to be more jewellery and affection than anything else, and strode off, a man with a country to run, meetings to attend, more people to terrorize. His gaggle followed after, one pausing to smirk at Hermione. The look stripped her down to her knickers. Her heart froze. She wanted to pull her wand out and go for him the same way she had attacked Alecto the day before, but Malfoy whispered, "Don't," in her ear and she clenched her fists instead.

When they were all gone, he pulled her through a small door she hadn't even noticed, down a dusty, narrow corridor, and then into a room that had to have been meant for a servant. The furniture had been turned into white ghosts by the sheets draped over it, but he yanked one aside, filling the air with dust, and pushed her down on the bare mattress huddled on a metal bed frame.

"None of them will come here," he said.

"They think I defected," she said at the same time. The words were almost a question and he shrugged. How many half-lies had he spun?

He sank down next to her and closed his eyes. After a few deep breaths he said, "I used to play hide and seek in the house as a boy. There are a lot of these old corridors with rooms for nursemaids, people like that."

"Hide and seek?" Hermione asked. She could hear the tremor in her voice. She'd hadn't come face to face with Yaxley in years. They'd tried to assassinate him often enough, but he didn't go anywhere without guards so fanatically loyal there'd been speculation he imperioused them. They threw themselves in front of curses. They used hexes so nasty people bled to death before hitting the ground just on suspicion of a potential attack. He'd said he'd dance at her wedding. Her wedding and she'd expected him to order her dragged away, to strip her wand from her. She wanted to talk about anything other than what had just happened. She didn't want to think about what might have been. "I thought you were an only child. Who played with you?"

"No one." Draco Malfoy rubbed his hands against his trousers. "I pretended someone was after me and I had to hide."

"Oh," Hermione said. How bleak she thought that sounded must have shown in her voice because he let out a little laugh.

"It wasn't that bad," he said. "I had a vivid imagination."

"Sure," she said. The dust lay so thick on the floor she could see their footsteps. "I used to read. Mostly history. Did you know we had a queen who only lasted for nine days?"

"Muggle queen?" She nodded and he asked, "What happened to her?"

"They cut her head off."

"Figures."

She wasn't sure whether that meant it figured Muggles were the sorts who cut off queens' heads, or it figured the only way to get rid of a ruler was to kill her. Maybe he meant it figured she read books about political upheaval. History was all about toilets, food, and upheaval.

At least her present had plenty of food and clean toilets. She'd learned to value those over the past few years. She'd still trade them for one good upheaval, though.

Malfoy stood up. "One of the things people forget," he said, "is that these old houses all have warrens of rooms like this."

"Don't want to see servants in the halls with the real people," Hermione said.

"Well, that was the idea, yes," he said. He held his hand down to her and she sighed and took it. No point in being stubborn about sitting on a narrow bed in a close room just to refuse to stand when he asked. "And people like my father like having their late-night drinks brought to them discretely."

"Isn't that what elves are for?" Hermione asked.

"You need a human staff too," Draco said. "You're lucky to get one elf to latch on to your family. Enough to keep house while you entertain dozens of people, keep them all fed, keep the place clean? Doesn't happen."

"Hogwarts," she said.

"The exception," he said. "Malfoy Manor, Nott Manor, even the old Crouch place – they all have rooms like this, halls like this, small doors that lead into private rooms so the women carrying your clean laundry don't clutter up the main hallways."

Hermione had to tamp down the class resentment she felt just burbling up in her soul and listen. "Where does this set of narrow passages lead?" she asked.

He smiled. "Trust me enough to let me show you?"

"I thought you said trust no one," she said, but she let him lead her onward.

The hall had more small rooms off it, each with a similar set up: sheet draped over bed or beds, a small stand for a water pitcher, no window. At the fourth room, Malfoy did more than just open the door so she could see. He held it so she could walk in and he pointed at the one thing that was different. This room also had a door at the back wall. He listened at it, then turned the knob very carefully.

Hermione looked through the doorway straight at the back of a tapestry. Malfoy listened again, then slipped along the wall and out. She followed him then sucked in her breath. Tasteless green curtains defiled what Hermione had already come to recognize was Narcissa Malfoy's taste. A green carpet with a dark stain had been thrown over the floor, but the rest of the room was a gentleman's office of sorts. A heavy desk loomed over two leather chairs that cowered at its feet. A long table covered with boxes sat against one wall.

She made a tiny, questioning noise, and when he waved her toward them, she almost ran. She pried off the lid of the first and began to pull out paper. With each fistful, her heart beat faster. There were letters. Notes. Copies of agendas collected after meetings. Someone had liked to draw dementors in the margins of hers. Records and records and records, all spread before her. She stared at Malfoy in near wonder. He had walked, quiet as a cat, to the main door and had his ear pressed against it. He smiled at her and gave her that little shrug again. Do what you want, the shrug said. She returned to pulling page after page out of just the first box. Most of it was worthless, she was sure. But some of it would be beyond price.

She'd been there an hour that felt like a moment, Malfoy never stirring from the door, when he suddenly moved back to the tapestry. She grabbed the three sheets she'd set to the side, shoved everything back, and followed him, back behind the tapestry of what she noticed for the first time was an orange cat sitting by a pair of black boots, and thence back to the servant's room and corridor.

She was afraid to make even the smallest of sounds but she flung her arms around Draco Malfoy and hugged him as hard as she could, crumbled sheets of parchment shoved down into her pocket next to her wand.

He stood within her embrace as they listened to feet moving around in the room they'd just left, and muffled coughing. At last, he raised his arms and returned the hug. She would have expected it to be polite and awkward but instead he clung to her like a desperate man.

She looked over at the narrow servants' door. Fuck you, she thought at whoever still moved around in that horrid office. I'll see you dead. We'll see you dead.

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N – Many thanks to Salazars, who beta read this chapter, and to all of you reading it.

Lollia was a Roman empress in case you are wondering where I dredged that name up from. History. It was dredged from history.