Dressing for dinner seemed to be a thing at the Malfoy estate, and though she wanted to lie down and let sleep hide all the stress of the day, Hermione dutifully pulled on a dress fancy enough to be polite, the highest heels she could find in the wardrobe, and a necklace she found sitting on her desk. A quick check assured her it wasn't hexed and it was pretty enough. Maybe Narcissa thought she needed more accessories.

"So," Lucius said as she and Draco arrived in the dining room, announced by the steady tapping click of the heels on their floors. "You're still here."

He looked like he was half way through a glass of wine and she suspected it wasn't his first.

"I am," Hermione said. She let Draco pull out her chair and settled down into it with a smile forced onto her face. "Draco and I are a couple, Mr. Malfoy. I think we're getting closer and closer with each day. Maybe tomorrow we can look through his baby books together."

Lucius snorted.

"They are becoming quite adorable, dear," Narcissa said. She took a dainty sip from her own wine glass. "Do you remember how we met? I was not enamored of you at first, either."

"You were a snob," Lucius said. "Noble and Ancient House of Black. Your father thought you were too good for the likes of me."

"Well," Narcissa said, "it is an ancient and noble lineage."

"Inbred," Lucius said. "Shows in some of you, too. Malfoys have always been smarter about not shopping for wives at family reunions."

Hermione thought of Bellatrix and had to cough to hide her snicker. Narcissa ignored them both and picked up her little bell and rang it. Food appeared and, grateful to be able to avoid conversation by chewing, Hermione stabbed her fork into the lettuce leaves and pushed them into her mouth. Narcissa took a much smaller bite. "Dear Bella always had her problems," she said, "But it is unkind to speak ill of the dead. De mortuis nihil nisi bonum."

"Speaking of the Lestranges," Draco said as he pushed a tomato around his plate, "We went to see Archibald at St. Mungo's today. Ran into his father."

"That is not his father," Lucius said. He drained his wine glass and poured himself another. Hermione tried not to notice he hadn't eaten any of his salad. Was not eating an aristocratic thing? Was she supposed to just nibble at foods like a rabbit, too delicate to eat? That struck her as ridiculous and she took another large bite of the salad.

"He is as good as," Narcissa said with a serenity that seemed too forced to be authentic. "Rodolphus has always said the boy is his and, certainly, he acts as though he were. Family is more than genetics, my love."

"Rodolphus can say whatever he wants," Lucius said. "I could say Draco's tart here is a pureblood. Doesn't make it so."

"Father," Draco said with a gritted smile, "Be nice or Hermione might decide she no longer wants me in her life."

Lucius looked at Hermione but before he could open his mouth Narcissa said, "Lucius," in a warning tone that stopped whatever he was going to say.

"As long as you're happy," Lucius settled on.

"Hermione is the love of my life," Draco said. "How can you doubt that she makes me happy?"

Lucius gave him a long, level look before taking another sip of his wine and Hermione was reminded that under the drunk lay a man who wasn't stupid.

"And how was dear Rodolphus?" Narcissa asked in a deliberate and obvious change of subject.

"Crazy," Hermione said.

"Inbreeding," Lucius said.

"Probably Azkaban," Draco said.

"He was always a bloody loon," Lucius said. He poured himself more wine. "I think he would have humped the Dark Lord's leg if he thought he could have gotten away with it."

"That," Narcissa allowed somewhat delicately, "Might be true. He was always very… intense… in his passion for Voldemort."

"Is he happy with the current regime," Hermione asked. She picked up a knife and began cutting a cucumber on her plate into smaller and smaller pieces so she could focus on that and not have to look at Narcissa. Eye contact struck her as a bad idea when asking these sorts of questions.

"Perhaps not," Narcissa said.

Hermione chewed. She swallowed. She waited for someone to say something else but a heavy silence had fallen over the table. They stayed in awkward, miserable, conversation-less silence until a chime pealed and Lucius, wine glass half way to his mouth, said, "I thought you said we'd be spared any of the idiot brigade tonight."

Draco coughed into his napkin. Hermione looked at his plate, looked at her own, and frowned. Before she could pursue the thought nagging at the edge of her mind, the door to the dining room opened and Antonin Dolohov strode in.

"Antonin," Narcissa said. "What a surprise."

"It is still my house, am I not correct?" Lucius asked.

Antonin ignored him to level a look at Hermione. She could feel herself wanting to shrink under that stare and forced herself to stay erect in her seat. "Mr. Dolohov," she said. "What a pleasure."

"Do you take the paper, Miss Granger?" he asked her.

Whatever she had expected him to say, that was not it. "I have in the past," she said. "At school. Over the past few years I have been too unsettled in my living arrangements to read much of anything and I have barely settled in here." She set her fork down, folded her hands in her lap and tried to channel Narcissa Malfoy. "Have you taken up selling subscriptions?"

Draco kicked her under the table.

She ignored the sharp throb in her ankle and kept smiling.

Dolohov's smile would have frozen a hot spring. "Then you won't be disappointed tomorrow when The Daily Prophet doesn't arrive."

"I can probably survive," Hermione said. "Their reporting is a bit shoddy of late, anyway."

"What is this about, Dolohov?" Lucius demanded. He probably meant to sound authoritative and dominant but ended up seeming more petulant. "Why come storming in to disrupt dinner to tell us the presses are behind schedule?"

Dolohov pulled out a photograph and tossed it on the table in front of Hermione. Flames licked at the building that housed The Daily Prophet. She could still see the paper's name above the door, and someone was climbing down a ladder propped up to one window. It didn't look like a total loss, but she could see there would be no paper the next day, or the one after that. She didn't think it much loss. They'd printed tripe when she'd been a child and they printed tripe now. She supported the free press in theory but this particular paper had never seemed that accurate to her. Even the tabloids got it right more often. "Someone fall asleep at his desk with a lit cigarette?" she asked. "Boiler accident?"

Dolohov shook his head. "Arson," he said. "And right after you come and join us so, forgive me, but I am interested in your - assessment, shall we say – of the event."

"I've been with Draco all day," she said. "We went to Diagon Alley, had ice cream, went to Saint Mungo's."

"And saw dear, touched Rodolphus, I know," Dolohov said. "I hope he wasn't too upsetting to you."

"He seemed lovely," Hermione said.

"Stopped in a little antique shop, too, didn't you?" he asked.

Hermione could feel sweat begin to trickle down her sides. "We were in a shopping area," she said. "I went shopping."

"Caught up with old friends?" he asked.

Draco's fork tines scraped against his plate.

"I am a friendly person," Hermione said. "And a war heroine. I know a lot of people."

"A lot of Weasleys," Dolohov said.

"Is that a crime?" she asked. She was afraid it might be.

He dropped another photograph in front of her. "Given how popular you are, I'm sure you can identify who this is," he said.

It was Percy. She closed her eyes as if that would make the picture of him, sleeves rolled up to flaunt his tattoos, go away. It didn't. When she looked at it again he was still there, tossing a bomb through the glass. He tossed it over and over and over again as she watched, the picture on the eternal loop of all wizarding photographs.

Dolohov had gotten this printed quickly, she thought as she touched the black and white moving arm with one finger.

Percy tossed the bomb again.

She wanted to scream at him. How could he be so careless. Constant Vigilance, Moody had said over and over and over again. She'd grown to hate that phrase but his insistence had worked. They'd never gone out into the field unless they were disguised. Percy should have taken Polyjuice. That was the standard operating procedure. She should be looking at a forgettable man, the lookalike of one of any number of band Muggles whose hair they'd taken from barber shops. Instead she was starting down at a man obviously himself. He'd rolled his sleeves. She could cry.

"Percy Weasley," she said. "Oh, Percy."

"I believe we call that terrorism," Dolohov said.

Well, Hermione thought to herself. You would know. Her shoulder still pulled sometimes where he had struck her. They'd been the sorts to blow up bridges and kill Muggles in the streets. She looked back down at Percy.

"Don't you agree, Miss Granger?" he asked. "Surely you don't support such, well, I hate to call it hooliganism. It's a bit more serious than that."

She pushed the photograph away. "I may not care for every aspect of current Wizengamot policy," she said, "but reasonable people can debate such things without descending to violence."

"Reasonable people don't bomb newspaper offices," Dolohov said. "I assume you abhor such goings on."

She could feel the trap closing. Was everyone at the table staring at her? "No," she said. "They do not." She forced a cool smile to her face and looked up at the waiting Death Eater. "And yes, I do. I suspect I can lead you to where he's gone to ground. There are only a handful of places he would be and I should know them all."

Dolohov held out his hand. "No time like the present, Miss Granger." He glanced down at her shoes. "Though I think perhaps we should delay long enough for you to put on more appropriate and practical footwear and perhaps trousers. Not that you do not look lovely as you are."

She let him help her to her feet and managed not to snap that she was perfectly capable of standing without help.

Draco pushed his own chair back. "I'll escort you back to your room," he said.

"Yes," said Dolohov. "I'd hate for her to get lost and somehow end up across the channel." His smile grew sharper. "You would hate that too, surely."

"Indeed," Draco said. He held the door for Hermione and she kept her composure intact until it shut behind them and left Dolohov and his wretched photographs on one side with Draco's parents. On their side, Draco looked at her. "Do you want a portkey?" he asked quietly.

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N – Thank you for all your ongoing support. It means so much to me.