She wore trousers the next day. She'd had to push aside a number of lovely dresses and the like that Narcissa Malfoy had surely purchased – the idea of Draco shopping for her strained credulity – to find them. Hiding, however, at the back of the wardrobe, was a pair of what could almost be practical, serviceable trousers. She pulled the heavy fabric on, picked out a pair of trainers, and topped the whole thing with an actual Muggle t-shirt advertising a band she couldn't imagine any of her hosts enjoying. To be truthful, she was a bit flabbergasted the shirt was even in the drawer but the cotton was soft and worn and it clung with the comfort of clothes meant to make the wearer happy rather than look stylish.

When Draco arrived, knocking at her door with a polite rat-a-tat, she was pulling her hair back into a pony tail that exploded with every ounce of the frizzy, bushy fury he'd used to mock. He glanced at her, eyes sweeping over clothes no one would call alluring, and said, "That doesn't work, you know."

"What doesn't work?" she asked, half ready to fight.

"Friendship already over?" was his only response. He didn't even sound surprised, and she sagged a little, then a little more when he held out a vial of what she recognized as hangover remedy. She didn't need it too badly. A hot shower and a splash of cold water on her face had gotten rid of most of her headache, but she took it with a nod of thanks anyway. She wouldn't turn her nose up at the clearest head possible.

"Sorry," she said. She might as well blame the champagne and the hint of a hangover for her edgy mood. It was easier.

"I'll live," he said. "I always have so far."

He frowned at something behind her, and as she watched, perplexed, he drew his wand. "We keep the grates clean," he said softly as he vanished the ashes left from the note she'd burned. The ashes he'd seen instantly. The ashes he'd noticed as out of place and wrong and taken pains to hide for her.

She must have flushed with guilt because a weird little half smile tucked itself around the corners of his mouth as he put the wand away. "I did assume the messages went both ways," he said. "Just be careful."

"Draco," she began. "Ron –."

He held up a hand to stop her. "I'm not a cad," he said. "Let's not embarrass ourselves with more details than that."

"Friends," she said again, and his face relaxed.

"Yes," he said. She thought she might have seen a tiny sag to his own shoulders, but he didn't say more. He held the door and she followed him with trainers and messy hair to the same

terrace where she'd tried to kill a man the night before.

The blood had already been cleaned off the stones, and other than a faint trace of spilled alcohol that lingered in the air the whole party had been erased. The ballroom sat silent. The curtains were drawn. Breakfast included plates of toast and fresh berries but didn't come with tablets or vials intended to treat over-indulgence. She and Draco just sat down at a small, waiting table and tucked into the meal.

You could get used to having all your daily needs so effortlessly handled.

"More exploring today?" she asked. More espionage she meant.

"I'm up for it if you are," he said and, with toast eaten, tea drunk, and mouths wiped they explored their way back to Lollia's portrait, back through the narrow halls where the working poor had spent their lives waiting on generations of Malfoys and their guests, and back into the office turned morgue. The regime's documents sat in boxes, waiting for them as surely as the breakfast had.

They hadn't had much time before the tell-tale sound of the key in the latch had her shoving papers down into her waistband and Draco yanking her away, behind the tapestry with the orange cat and her boots and into the quasi-safety of the corridors. He seemed more tense than usual and too many years of reading battlefield glances sent and received kept her quiet as he dragged them both out a nearly hidden side door, into a small herb garden, and pushed her up against a brick wall.

The tiny door disappeared into the wall behind ivy, an illusion so perfect that even though she had walked through it she couldn't have found her way in again to save her life.

"Trust me," he muttered into her hair before he began fumbling with his belt. He bit at her neck with a sloppy abandon that seemed out of character and with a quick, cold assessment of his sudden amorous attack she began to bite at her lips to make them look kissed as she pulled his shirt free and ran her hands up his back along skin with too many scars. He had a map of war along his spine and across his shoulder blades. She'd felt one like it on Ron's skin, seen one like it on her own.

They were all topographies now.

"Miss Granger."

The voice was cool and amused and indubitably belonged to Corban Yaxley.

She raised her eyes from Draco's face to the man standing at the entrance to the small, walled garden. He smiled back at her and tipped his head. They might have been meeting at a cocktail party. They might have been colleagues. His manners ignored that she looked like a rumpled slattern pressed up against the wall, her clothes askew, her mouth swollen.

She stepped away from Draco and made a show of self-consciously tucking her hair back and straightening her clothes. "Mr. Yaxley," she said. Even here, even as the supposed defector, she wasn't going to call this man Lord. He could choke on that if he wanted.

"I am sorry to interrupt," he said, "but I understand I missed a bit of a show last night."

Hermione could feel her stomach lurch with immediate fear. She'd done too much, gone too far. Before she could say that Dolohov had nearly ordered her to do it, that it had been a proper duel, that she hadn't intended anything, Yaxley went on, "And I was sorry to hear that. Dear Severus' spells were tricky things, hard to master. They require more passion than the average curse."

He let his eyes run up her body, from the flat shoes to the way the soft shirt clung to her, and she suddenly wished she'd worn something more formal. A stiff set of robes, a laced corset, anything would have seemed less revealing than these Muggle clothes. He saw the squirm she tried to hide and his lips twitched.

She knew he'd wanted her to see that.

"I would like to see a demonstration." He stepped slightly to the side and she saw the boy who'd been almost cowering behind him. A wizard, surely, because he had a wand at his waist. He also had a smattering of pimples across a shiny forehead and his feet looked too big for his body. He couldn't be more than thirteen.

"I don't understand," Hermione said.

Yaxley pushed the boy toward her. "Young Lestrange here – one of Rodolphus' by-blows – will do. Show me your sectumsempra."

"But," she began. He couldn't possibly mean he wanted to her to curse this child right here on this sunlit morning.

"Do it," Draco said behind her. He sounded implacable. He sounded defeated. He even gave her a tiny nudge toward the boy and her feet moved a few steps.

She raised her wand.

Yaxley was right. Sectumsempra took a lot of concentration to cast. You had to be angry, or afraid, or filled with hatred. She didn't know what had fueled the creation of this one, but it was one of the angriest curses she knew, and she knew a lot. Her hand shook as she tried to summon the kind of rage she'd need to make it work. She thought about Yaxley, standing there, a look of cool speculation on his face, waiting to see if she could do it. To see if she would do it. She tried to not even see the shaking boy. He was just a target, not a person.

She looked away when he fell.

He didn't scream.

She wondered, briefly, what his life had been like that he could be hit with something like that and not cry out, then decided she didn't want to know. She met Yaxley's eyes and quirked her brows up. "You thought Dolohov was exaggerating?" she asked. They needed to get a Healer, or a blood potion, or something. Anything. Surely the monster smiling at her didn't mean to make this boy die at her feet.

"I did think Amycus might have been," Yaxley said. "He has a tendency to magnify his prowess, and with it the skill required to overcome it. I am pleased to see in this instance he reported correctly."

He snapped his fingers and one of his endless flunkies appeared. "Take him to St. Mungo's," Yaxley said, pointing at the boy. Then, with another nod and a curt, "Miss Granger, Young Malfoy," he strode off. The underling scooped up the bleeding boy – he'd slipped into unconsciousness by now, and apparated away. Hermione took a step backward, away from the tell-tale spot of soaked dirt and into Draco Malfoy's waiting arms. Now that everything was over, she began to shake.

What had she just done?

Draco didn't talk. He didn't reassure her, didn't tell her it was okay or that the boy would be fine. He just held her tightly as she trembled. When she fought her way free of him and collapsed to her knees, he held her hair as she threw up the breakfast she'd had. She heaved again and again until bile was burning her mouth and she could barely hold herself upright.

"It's what he does," Draco said at last. He'd settled next to her, his legs folded up, and he pulled her onto his lap. He drew a handkerchief from somewhere and wiped her mouth, and a glass appeared in his hand and he helped her rinse away the taste and the burning. She stared down into the water and didn't say anything as he pet and pet her hair and she held the glass. There was a ripple on the surface of the water.

She'd just cursed an innocent boy.

She'd stood there with a cocky smile on her face, her head tilted to the side, and smiled at Yaxley as a boy whose name she didn't know had lay bleeding at her feet.

"He wants you to be dirty," Draco said. It had been a minute since she'd cursed that boy. It had been an hour. It had been a thousand years and birds were singing in the trees and life was going on. The roses were waiting to be told they were pretty, and Ron was complaining no one would speak English to him, and she'd cursed a boy and now she sat huddled between sage and rosemary and the sun was going to set tonight and then rise tomorrow because the universe didn't care she'd cursed an innocent child.

"It's what he does," Draco said as his hand moved over and over on her hair. "He did it too. I read up on it. It's… you make people cross over their lines, do the things they thought they'd never do, and that's how you tie them to you."

Hermione nodded. Making it academic helped put a little distance between the reality of it and the feelings that threatened to choke her until she died.

"People, once they've done awful things," Draco said, "they don't quit. They can't."

"Fuck him," Hermione said in a whisper. "I've killed before."

Draco just shrugged. She could feel his shoulders move up and down and she knew, the same way he did, that it was different. It was one thing to curse Amycus Carrow, one thing to fight in a battle. It was another to just hurt a boy standing there, brought up before her to tame her and test her and probably punish an errant Death Eater at the same time. I can have the mudblood hurt what you care about most, he might as well have said to Rodolphus Lestrange.

"Who is he?" she asked. The boy she meant. Draco followed the jump of her logic and answered.

"Half-blood," Draco said. "Rodolphus says the kid is his, but the math doesn't work, so who knows. He took him in after the Battle of Hogwarts, said he was the father. No one asks."

"What's his name?" Hermione pressed.

"Oh." Draco let out a little, nervous laugh. "Archie. Archibald."

She would have expected something less ordinary from one of the Lestranges. She supposed the mother had named him. Probably best not to ask what had happened to her, or how she'd ended up with a half-blood baby. Romantic walks through the rose gardens seemed an unlikely backstory. "Does he like him?" she asked.

"Rodolphus?" Draco asked. He didn't wait for her to answer. "Yeah. I think so."

"We should go visit him at St. Mungo's," she said. She wanted to apologize. She wanted to expiate her sins, she supposed, but since that wasn't possible she'd settle for bringing Archie chocolate frogs and a magazine.

Draco helped her to her feet and as she moved she could feel the parchment she'd stolen earlier jab into her skin. "I guess," she began. She was going to say she guessed she should go copy this out. She should send him on his way. Watching her transcribe what was probably worthless was a waste of his day.

"We should stay out of sight for a bit," he said as if finishing her thought. "Do you mind if I eat lunch in your room?"

She grabbed at his hand and held on as if he were a life raft. She didn't mind at all.

. . . . . . . . .

A/N – Thank you to salazars for her sharp eye beta reading, and to all of you for your endless support of my storytelling.