After Hermione asked if that was a challenge, Amycus' wand in her hand, the man lunged toward her. Maybe he thought to pummel her into submission. Maybe he wanted to wrap his thick fingers around her throat. Whatever his intention was, he never got the chance. Halfway on his path to Hermione, he froze, petrified, and then topped to the floor with a loud crash, carried on by momentum the spell didn't halt.

Hermione's assumption that Draco had cast the spell disappeared when Antonin Dolohov appeared behind her and plucked Amycus' wand out of her grasp. "Miss Granger," he said with such perfect courtesy a chill settled around her heart. She didn't trust Death Eaters when they were spewing their hatred but she trusted them even less when they bowed over her hand. Especially not this one. "A pleasure. I do not think we've been formally introduced?"

Draco shakily did the honors, and Hermione shivered as Dolohov turned from her to eye the man he'd incapacitated. "Your reputation precedes you, Miss Granger," he said too silkily. "You are the scholar turned warrior turned… turncoat?"

"Not the term I would use," Hermione said as calmly as she could. The tremor in her soul didn't come out in her voice and she was pleased she sounded level and polite and perhaps a tiny bit put out.

"Oh?" Dolohov had begun to roll Amycus' wand back and forth between his hands and test the springiness of the wood. She struggled to keep from staring at it. She wouldn't have been surprised if he'd snapped it in half. She wouldn't have been surprised if he'd turned it on her. The room seemed to have hushed, and someone had snapped off the music as everyone pretended they weren't listening but were just suddenly out of things to say. "What would you call it?"

"Complicated," she said. The word seemed very loud.

He laughed. "I'm sure it was. I knew Molly back in the day, and she never liked other women much. Being under her thumb had to grate." He leaned over conspiratorially and whispered so his words would carry through the whole room, "Did she try to teach you to cook?"

"Yes," Hermione said. She met his eyes. "It was a bit of a failed attempt, I'm afraid. I'm better at combat."

"Are you?" he asked. "Let's find out." He tossed Amycus' wand down and, only after it had hit the prone man in the face, released the Petrificus Totalus he'd cast. "Unless Amycus would prefer to not."

"You think I'm afraid of a Mudblood?" Amycus asked. He sounded derisive.

"Language," Dolohov said. "You're at a party, Carrow, one for adults, not some bash in the alley behind your favorite pub." He bent down and held a hand out to help Amycus up. Hermione tried to think what his game could possibly be, but nothing made sense. Dolohov could have killed her with a single curse and no one in the room would have stopped him. She still had the mark from where he'd landed a spell on her years ago in the Department of Mysteries. He'd left her shoulder so puckered by the long white scar it looked as if a seamstress had tried to mend her, leaving the fabric of her skin pulled into permanent wrinkles and waves.

"Shall we take this outside?" he asked. "I'd hate to risk harm to any of Madam Malfoy's lovely home."

Draco took her arm in his and led her out, only the way his fingers dug into her betraying anything he might be feeling. Much of the assembled crowd trooped out after them. She supposed they were eager to see the duel, though whether they were rooting for her, for Carrow, or just liked a good fight she didn't know. The back terrace was pronounced an excellent spot for her to demonstrate her prowess, and Amycus took a stand, hunched over his wand like a gargoyle out of a children's story. He grinned at her with a mouth surely too wide, and eyes too dark, to be real. Alecto laughed a wild cackle and clapped her thick hands but a warning look from Dolohov kept her wand holstered. She was only going to be permitted to cheer.

That was too bad. Hermione would have liked an excuse to go after her. Instead, she pulled her own wand with the economy of movement Molly had liked to teach and pushed the soles of her feet into the ground. Years ago, when her world hadn't had real magic but only odd things people explained away as coincidence, she'd taken ballet. Her teacher had said you found stability not by rising up on the balls of your feet but by pushing the ground away from you. She'd never forgotten that advice because it worked. She pushed and rocked a little on her feet and then, when Dolohov said "Begin," she twirled to the left, shot off a nasty slicing curse that she didn't think would land, added an immediate Protego so she could study Amycus Carrow's response.

He had blocked the slicing curse. She'd expected that. A man didn't make it this many years in combat with people trained by Moody and Molly without learning to dodge. What she'd wanted to see was how he'd done it. She'd probably fought him often enough, both in skirmishes and battles, but when they had the masks on it was hard to know who was who. Did he tend to go left? Right? What mistakes did he make. What patterns were there in his movements? Did he waste time talking?

Talking he did.

"Stupid girl," he said with a sadly predictable leer. "Is that all you have?"

He tried a hex that she'd seen hit Seamus. It was a nasty one, so cruel it made it clear there were very few rules to this. She could do what she liked when her time came. She blocked his attempt and tossed off another trivial curse, blocked him, and observed.

He sidestepped it, moving right and laughing. "That's for children. You're not quite the treasure Malfoy claimed."

"Too bad for him," Alecto said. She sounded far too pleased by that possibility.

Hermione cast another minor curse at him. Even Molly would have given her an odd look for using something that insignificant but she was starting to think she had this. Amycus side-stepped it by moving to the right again, and began to laugh with delight as he threw another bit of vile destruction at her. She tested him one more time as he taunted her, he moved right again, again not bothering to shield. That was sloppy. Moody would have yelled at him for an hour for that. Never don't shield in battle. Never.

Constant vigilance, though, didn't appear to be part of Amycus Carrow's playbook. He wasn't even raising his wand to begin to cast a Protego. He was just taunting her lack of skill and strength.

"You worthless bint," he said. "Blood always tells, and yours is - ."

She wondered as she let first a minor wart spell, then a Sectrumsempra to the right, followed by the very same spell Dolohov had used on her all those years ago even more to the right, why he hadn't realized nothing he threw at her had so much as singed her hair. It was a brief worry that perhaps he was cleverer than he let on, but as he danced out of the way of a faceful of warts right into the path of the spell Snape had labeled 'for enemies' and collapsed, that worry disappeared.

He really was just that stupid.

She supposed she'd never get to hear exactly what it was her inferior blood told him because he was screaming and clutching at his chest where the fabric hung in shreds and blood poured out onto the flat stones of the terrace. Alecto had screamed her fury and fallen to his side, trying to staunch the flow with inadequate spells of her own.

Hermione leveled her wand to strike again when Dolohov grabbed her wrist. His smooth, easy gesture caught her by surprise. "That will be enough, Miss Granger," he said. "I'm sure you don't mean to kill someone on your own side."

She looked at him for a long moment, then, as she moved to drop her arm, he released his hold. She sheathed her wand in the pocket so cleverly sewn in these robes and said, "Of course not. My apologies. Habit is all."

"First Alecto and now you," Dolohov said. He didn't offer Amycus a hand this time. "I think I'll go with young Malfoy's assessment."

"And Yaxley's," Malfoy said.

"Yes," said Dolohov. He snapped his fingers, waved over a caterer, and as Hermione stood in stunned disbelief handed a full bottle of something to Draco. "Take your lovely girlfriend for a stroll. I understand moonlight and rose gardens can lead to romance."

"Do Muggle-borns – ," someone began to ask, but they were hushed and the guests all slid back through the wide doors into the ballroom. Even the Carrows went back inside, though they skulked more than slid and left bloody footprints in their wake. Alecto must have managed to stop the bleeding. Maybe she kept a blood replenishing potion in her purse. Hermione didn't care. Let them both die.

The doors were closed behind the last person with a definitive click and Draco and Hermione were left outside, alone, with a full bottle of what a lumos charm revealed to be champagne.

Hermione looked at it somewhat dubiously.

"It's an excellent vintage," Malfoy said in what she supposed was reassurance that he wouldn't expect her to drink bad wine at his house. Fight a duel, sure, but drink cheap swill? Never. He grimaced at the bottle with an expression she couldn't quite read but that looked oddly displeased and relieved at the same time. "Dolohov felt free to be generous with my family's cellar it seems."

She glanced back at the closed doors, then out at the dark gardens. She could see the milling guests through the glass, and a braying laugh snuck out. The better choice was obvious. "We shouldn't waste it," she said. "Now that it's been opened, I mean."

Malfoy looked at her and in the light from the party she could see him begin to grin. "Better a drink with you than in there," he said. "Off to the roses again?"

She hooked an arm around him. "Lead me away or lose me forever."

That earned her a full laugh and he took one swig, handed her the bottle, and began to pick his way down the steps and through the garden as she drank. It was excellent. The bubbles tickled her nose and the champagne almost evaporated on her tongue. If she ever decided to make a list of all the things that were wrong with the Malfoys – something she was sure would take days to do – she wouldn't include bad taste in wine. She took another swallow, and then another.

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N – Much love to salazars for beta reading. This chapter I seem to have attempted to spell Dolohov every which way but right.

And thank you to you, gentle reader, for your eyes, your time, your comments. They are all a gift.