"I knew that was my bad side."
Draco Malfoy waved the paper at Hermione with a crooked smile. Lucius, who'd roused himself from bed and was grumbling his life into a cup of coffee raised his head long enough to look at his son and snort with derision before returning to his own copy of The Daily Prophet. Hermione could almost feel herself respond to the son's charm, and even the father's irascibility, but the paper stole that away. Former Order of the Phoenix Member Testifies read the headline. Someone had gotten an angle of Percy where the slight man seemed to loom up. Whoever the photographer was had to have laid down on the floor to make his subject seem so threatening. Hermione admired the technical skill required to distort truth so well in something as seemingly objective as a photograph. She also despised it.
The paper had opted to present her in a much more flattering light. Percy might be the frightening, tattooed, terrorist but she was a slight figure sheltering under the wing of the Malfoys. She looked brave and defiant and shaky. She looked like a woman going to tell the truth no matter the cost. It was a well-done bit of propaganda. It was hard not to admire it.
"Don't you agree?" Draco asked. "I look much better if you get me from here." He turned his face and posed like a classical Greek portrait.
"The article isn't about your vanity, dear," Narcissa said. "Have another slice of toast."
Draco's toast had gotten cold and the butter had recongealed on it. Hermione's was just as untouched but no one nagged her to eat. She took another sip of tea. Tea her stomach could handle.
"Thank you, mother," Draco said. "I'm happy with what I have."
"As you wish," Narcissa said. "Do you children have any plans today? A new art exhibit has opened. Oil portraits of historical witches. You might like it."
"Maybe another day," Hermione said.
"I really think you should go today," Narcissa said. "If you don't have other plans, of course. You need to take your mind off strife and just admire beauty. I'm a tremendous fan of this particular artist and have been considering hiring him to paint a portrait just to have some of his work in the house."
Draco cupped his hand under his chin and coughed expectantly in his pose.
"I think you're too young for a formal portrait," Hermione said.
"If you say so," Draco said. He held the pose a moment longer and she laughed. He grinned his crooked smile at her and she rolled her eyes.
Lucius coughed again, and amidst a flurry of concern from Narcissa as to whether he was well, Hermione and Draco escaped into the corridor, though not without promising to go to this art exhibit.
"I had no idea your mother cared so much about art," Hermione said under her breath as they passed yet another one of the horrible portraits that already populated Narcissa Malfoy's house. Why would she be at all interested in an exhibit of yet more of the same?
"Maybe she just wants to get us out for a bit," Draco said.
"Another public appearance," Hermione muttered. "Great."
The sight of Alecto Carrow lumping her way down the hall with her wide feet and her wide neck and her small brain made the idea of getting out suddenly much more appealing. The vile woman sneered as they stepped aside to let her pass. "Little traitor to your own kind," she said. "What the Mudblood'll do for you, Malfoy, she'll do to you, mark my words."
Draco shuffled his feet and took another step toward Hermione's suite, but almost without conscious volition Hermione had her wand out and a petrificus totalus cast. Alecto froze and, with one push of a finger, Hermione knocked her over so she toppled to the floor. She pushed the tip of her wand into the woman's throat. It took only the tiniest, whisper of a cutting charm to draw out a trickle of blood. "I don't like you," Hermione said. "And I'm pretty sure no one else does either."
"Hermione," Draco said. It was a warning. She ignored it. Alecto Carrow was a monster. She'd made people's lives miserable at Hogwarts. She'd taught children to torture. She'd slavered at Voldemort's feet and then moved seamlessly to Yaxley's. It was easy to hate her.
"In fact, I bet if I killed you right now, it would be recorded as a tragic accident," Hermione said. "You'd rate maybe a paragraph in the obituary section of The Daily Prophet, but probably just a single line. Alecto Carrow, former Death Eater, found accidentally dead."
"You'd be crucioed," Draco said. He set a hand on her shoulder which she shook off. "Yaxley is fond of her."
"It might be worth it," Hermione said. She pushed her wand harder into Alecto' throat. If she pushed hard enough, would she be able to kill the woman with force alone? Did she want to? "Call me Mudblood one more time and I'll find out. Bother Draco one more time, and I'll find out. Are we very clear?"
She looked at the tiny red stain dripping down her victim's neck and took a deep breath, then put her wand away and straightened up. "I want to change before we go to the gallery," she said. "Something in this hall smells and I'm afraid it might have seeped into this shirt."
"Okay," Draco said. He glanced nervously back at Alecto, still lying on the floor, as Hermione walked off. "Are we just going to leave her there?"
Hermione stopped walking and looked at him. He'd done that to Harry once. Broken his nose, too. She remembered those days. Those innocent, innocent days. "Are you really asking me that?" she said.
Draco followed her train of through with no difficulty. "I was a child," he said.
"And if she crosses me again, I'll do more than leave her there," Hermione said. She smiled back at Alecto, who could hear every word, then turned and stopped where she stood. Dolohov had rounded a corner. It was, it seemed, another day of fun, secret meetings here at the Manor. Looking at art was sounding better with every passing moment.
"Miss Granger," he said and nodded his head. "Mr. Malfoy."
"Mr. Dolohov," she said with every bit of courtesy she could muster.
He stepped over the prone Alecto without so much as glancing down at her and kept going.
By the time they reached her room, Hermione was beginning to wonder if breakfast was too soon for a drink. No wonder Lucius had become an alcoholic with these people coming and going all the time. "So," she said, a little shakily, "art."
"I like art," Draco said.
They seemed to have decided to not talk about the trial, or what she'd done to Alecto, or what had happened in the courtroom, or anything of substance. She checked her desk to see if there were any messages from the Order. She didn't expect to see anything. Even before yesterday, they hadn't been exactly communicative and the protean charm wouldn't let Molly yell at her the way a Howler would. Under the top sheet, however, she found a short note in Molly's neat handwriting. Please look for more information on RL.
Her hands started to shake.
"Are you okay?" Draco asked. She passed the page of parchment over and he read it. When he met her eyes, his brow has creased into utter puzzlement. "That's it?" he asked.
"That's it," Hermione said.
"Maybe they haven't gotten the papers yet," Draco said.
"Maybe," Hermione said. She sank into a chair as her gut churned. It wasn't what she had expected and she didn't understand it. Everything was topsy-turvy and no one was acting predictably. She felt Draco Malfoy brush his fingers over her shoulder in a silent question and she began to laugh, half-hysterically. Another person who wasn't behaving the way he should. Next thing she knew, Yaxley would want to set up a May Pole and dance around it crowning people with flowers. That thought sent her into even louder whoops and she doubled over as the laughter alchemized to equally hysterical sobs.
"It'll be okay," Draco said, the emptiest, falsest reassurance ever. She looked up at him and he shrugged. "Or it won't," he said. "But at least she didn't say she hated you and that you should go to hell."
"Give it time," Hermione said.
"Change your shirt," he said. "Let's go."
She did and they did and the museum – more of a hole in the wall, Hermione thought with a sniff and a thought spared for the National Gallery – had brought white walls and three rooms with sniffing, smug portraits, benches, and a slim witch at the front door in expensive robes and a severe bun who sniffed at them with the same contempt as the old ladies in the pictures even as she passed over a flyer telling them about the artist and the exhibit.
Draco shoved the flyer into a pocket and snickered as he led her back through the foyer, through a larger room, and into a side room that seemed to be given over to the painter's brief modern period and had far fewer visitors than even the nearly empty main room. Hermione sat on a bench in a dim corner and sighed. "What's so funny?" she asked.
"That," he said, "is the little sister of a girl in our year."
"That sniffing bunhead?" Hermione asked.
Draco nodded. "She had a crush on me," he said. "Of course, all the girls except you did."
Hermione snorted at the improbability of that.
"They did," he insisted. He poked a finger into her thigh. "I am very handsome."
"And very rich," she said.
"And good at Quidditch," he agreed. "That you were impervious to my charm doesn't mean everyone was."
"You were a shitehead," she said.
He pouted – actually pouted – with his lower lip thrust out so dramatically she began to laugh. "Draco," she said. "You look five when you do that."
He laced his fingers through hers. "Made you laugh," he said.
"You did," she agreed. She leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. The portrait across from their bench looked like a third-rate art student had tried to mimic Picasso, which would be bad enough in Muggle art, but the magical figure was trying without much luck to rearrange himself back into a coherent whole.
"My transfiguration teacher," the plaque beside the picture read.
"You could help," the painting said. He'd managed to find his mouth and slapped it back onto his face, but his one eye was still on a hand.
"I doubt I could do much," Hermione said.
"People always underestimate what good they can do," the painting said right before his mouth fell off his face again, down to the edge of the frame, and he became preoccupied with groping around to find it.
Hermione watched in horrified, tired fascination while Draco pulled the flyer out of his pocket and began to read the predictably dull artist's statement. He read snippets of it out loud in a ponderous, exaggerated voice. "…the relationship between postmodern discourse and the banality of evil… orderly narratives of rebirth… viewer is left with insight into the fiery outpost of future possibilities." He made a face. "This is utter drivel."
Hermione, however, sat up and looked at him. "Read it again," she ordered.
"It's crap," he said. "The guy had to make something up to sound important because I like messing around with paint isn't good enough."
She leveled a long, annoyed look at him and he sighed and read the whole thing again.
"Is there any kind of reception?" Hermione asked. "A meet the artist kind of thing?"
Draco turned the paper over. "Tomorrow night," he said. "With wine and cheese, God help us all."
"We're going," she said.
"What?" Draco sounded incredulous. "Please tell me you're joking."
"But we're using polyjuice," she said.
"Why?" he demanded.
"Trust me," she said.
. . . . . . . . . .
A/N – Many thanks to Salazars who beta read this for me!