"Any news?"

Hermione shook her head and tried not to sag. Every day that went by without a personal greeting from the Order chipped away a little more at her sense that this was worth it. Percy sat in prison, Yaxley sat in the Ministry, and Ron couldn't even send her a hullo. Weeks. It had been weeks since she'd gotten a message back more than, "Got it. Thanks." No one had ever acknowledged what she'd done in court. They hadn't said they were angry. They hadn't said they understood. It was just silence. Silence was somehow worse. Silence felt like a punishment.

Draco rested his hands on her shoulders and began to rub, tentatively at first, then, when she didn't twitch away, with more assurance. "I'm sure it's fine," he said. "They just don't want to expose you."

"Don't want to turn off their information faucet, you mean," she said. Her hand still hurt from that day's copying. She stole memos. She copied them. She put them back. It felt so pointless. "Even if they aren't doing anything."

"I'm sure they're doing something," Draco said. He slid his thumbs up the sides of her neck and pressed in, working out the ache she felt from bending over her desk so long.

"Spray painting phoenixes on abandoned buildings," Hermione said. "Whee."

His hands stilled briefly in their massage and she summoned an apology. This was hard on him too. "I'm just in a mood," she said. "The dinner tonight."

He began to rub again until she pushed him away and stood up. They knew the routine by now. He'd slip the papers back, she'd get dressed for another meal where, on a good night, Lucius Malfoy would make casual slurs about Muggle-borns she would ignore while he drank too much and, on a bad night, Death Eaters would join them as if they were welcome guests.

Tonight would be a bad night.

The wine was better on the nights they weren't there. The quality of the food went down too. Narcissa got her jabs in where she could. "I'll see you at dinner," she said.

He nodded, took the results of the day's spying, and disappeared. She curled her lip at the parchment in front of her and put it away. The protean charm wasn't that hard. Yes, it was N.E.W.T. level material, but Ron wasn't stupid. He could do it if he wanted to.

Those angry thoughts kept cycling through her head as she put on that evening's costume. Another gracious set of robes. Another pair of heels. More jewellery. Pity she'd never really cared about clothes and makeup or any of that. She was living some other girl's dream, with a wardrobe that never ended and anything money could buy that she wanted laid at her feet and all she wanted was for it to be over.

When she reached the small room where the Death Eaters and their evil friends had gathered before the dinner, pretending to be civilized people who chatted over drinks instead of murderous thugs, Draco took her hand and brought it to his lips. "You look beautiful," he said. "As always."

"Young love is always such a lovely thing to see."

Hermione turned and found a smile deep in her lying heart to display to Antonin Dolohov. "I hope we aren't too unpleasant to be around," she said. "I always used to hate the way some of my friends just fawned on each other in public."

"Some things are best left for the private domain," Narcissa said. She handed a glass of champagne over to Hermione and, with a single sip, she knew why. This wasn't the weaker vintage she'd brought out for her unwelcome guests.

"Thank you," Hermione said. She took another sip.

"You have always been a paragon of discretion," Narcissa said. "Only fools wear their hearts on their sleeves."

Hermione wasn't quite sure, but she thought that might be a compliment. Combined with the good champagne it made for the heady realization that, somehow, Narcissa Malfoy had decided she liked her. Life was very strange.

"Well," Dolohov said, "some of your friends were always a bit… passionate."

Draco positioned himself slightly behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist in a manner that erred more on the side of excessive public display but he was probably afraid she'd hex the man in front of her. It was certainly tempting.

"We were all so young," Hermione said. "And there was the war."

"Poor Harry Potter," Dolohov said. "Still fighting it in his head."

That was an opening and she sighed and looked down into her wine. "It's hard for Harry," she said softly. "You have to understand, that family…." She trailed off as if she couldn't find the words and, in truth, Harry's Muggle relatives made her so angry she wanted to see them dead. "Not all Muggles are like that," she said. "My own parents were… but they starved him, locked him in his room, put bars on the window."

One of the sycophants whose name she'd never caught looked horrified but also hungry for more. "That poor boy," she said, pressing her hand to her chest.

"And Dumbledore," Hermione said, trying to make it sound as if the words were being pulled from her with the greatest of difficulty. In her mind, she apologized to the man for what she was about to do. It's for the greater good, she told him. "He spent years teaching him his whole purpose for being was to fight Dark wizards."

"And then the Dark wizard was dead," Dolohov said musingly. "It must have been hard for him."

"Hard for everyone," Hermione said. Hard for Luna, who'd retreated to the boundaries of madness. Hard for George, who couldn't look in mirrors still. Hard for her, standing here. "Change always is."

"A man adrift," Dolohov said. "It is an interesting way to look at him. It's so easy to see Potter as just a fanatic, you know. You paint him as tragic."

"Moody's a bit of a fanatic," Hermione admitted. That made the assembled group laugh with far more comfortable cocktail party amusement. They'd all met the Auror with his magical eye and his paranoia. "Harry," she said. She swirled the wine in her wine glass and counted to five so it would sound as though she were struggling to force the words out. "He's just a lost soul."

"Some people need demons," Draco said. The words were very soft and far too serious. "If there isn't one to be found, they'll make one."

"But you're here now," said the woman who'd loved the tragedy of Harry Potter. "Away from all that madness."

Hermione flashed her a sad smile. "I do worry, though," she said.

"Because you are a good friend," Dolohov said. "And loyal, but also an intelligent young woman, the example of what a Muggle-born can be."

"Here, here," said the woman, and raised her glass toward Hermione or, more likely, to the glory of her own tolerance. The scar on Hermione's shoulder itched under the force of Dolohov's smile. He raised his own glass toward her, the smallest of gesture, and she could almost feel the tissue burn.

She looked down. "I'm nothing special," she said.

"You are to me," Draco said, and then Narcissa was waving them toward the dining room and dinner. Part one of the excruciating evening over, part two to come.

Rodolphus Lestrange stopped her before she could go all the way in. "You need to believe," he said. He'd set his hand on her sleeve and it was all she could do not to twitch it off. His eyes shone with a horrible gleam and she remembered Bellatrix and her fanaticism. "I know it's hard, but you are the right hand. You are the foundation."

"She's trying," Draco said. "The wheels move slowly."

That seemed to satisfy him and he nodded. "Yes," he said. "And we must all play our parts."

By the time Draco pulled her chair out, Hermione had gotten her shaking under control and was able to thank him with a steady voice. Lestrange had snapped back into being a bit odd but not noticeably mad, and he had started arguing with a dull man in faded black about Quidditch and which teams would go all the way this year. The rest of the meal went without any special horrors. The wine was mediocre. The food uninspired. The company appalling. But she didn't end up dueling anyone. She didn't end up bleeding. She didn't end up in the garden trying to get quietly drunk, drunker, drunkest.

She figured, all in all, it was a win.

Draco fawned on her, which had gone from grating to amusing, especially when she caught his eye and he squinted with a tiny conspiratorial gleam she knew was just for her. They're all so stupid, that gleam said. It pulled her into a private circle with him and she was content to rest there and smile back.

They were, after all, supposed to look like young fools in love. You were supposed to smile at that person.

When it was all over and he walked her back to her room she even had a slight spring to her step as he hooked a hand over her elbow and whispered nasty observations about some of the Death Eaters in her ear. Draco Malfoy was a bully, all right, and had a vicious eye for human weaknesses. She'd hated it when he'd been calling her Mudblood and making fun of her teeth. It was hard not to appreciate the same quality when he was pointing out that the Carrows had identical moles with matching hairs on their jaws, or that Dolohov still checked which knife Lucius used before he picked up his own utensil.

"You are such a jerk," she said as they flopped down in her room, free at last. She pried her shoes off with her toes. "Tell me again why I like you?"

"You like me?" Draco asked. He picked her foot up and began to press his thumbs into the soles, rubbing away the pain of heels. "I can only assume it's because you've had so much wine you've lost control of your wits."

"With what she served tonight?" Hermione said. "Hah."

"Then war has addled your judgement," Draco said. "No other explanation."

She grunted at that and accioed over the parchment from her desk. It wasn't that she expected Molly to have sent her anything and, honestly, if she did it would just be a request for more information on this Death Eater, or more information on that Death Eater. Endless requests for information, none of which seemed to result in any actions on their part.

She knew government was weighed down by bureaucracy to the point of inaction, but she hadn't expected a rebellion to be. "Oh yeah," she said. "Right there." She wiggled her foot in his hand and he laughed but did as she asked and pressed his thumbs harder into the part of the arch that hurt the most.

She unfolded the paper.

She read it.

She read it again.

She pulled her foot out of Draco Malfoy's lap and curled as tightly as she could around herself to read it a third time. Then she folded it up as carefully as she could and said, "I think I should go to bed now."

Maybe it was the tears streaming down her face that alerted him. It was a hard change of mood to miss. He pushed himself forward on his knees and reached over to take the paper from her hand. She didn't stop him. She wasn't sure she could.

He opened it and began to read.

Hermione. I am sorry to be the one to send you this news. I asked Ronald to do it and he refused. I believe he is ashamed now that he knows the whole story but what is done is done.

The night he heard you had testified against Percy he drank to excess. He and Gabrielle have become very close and he spent the night with her and a pregnancy has resulted. He has decided to do the right thing and marry her so his child will not grow up a bastard. Obviously, this means the end of your relationship.

I am very sorry. I thought of you as a daughter.

Please forward any information you find on the Carrows and how much trust Y places in them.

Destroy this note.

He folded it up with movements as precise and careful as hers had been. "Hermione," he said.

"Don't talk," she said. It would make it worse. She didn't want to hear that he was sorry, or that Ron was a jackass, or that Molly was lying through her lower-class teeth about thinking of her as a daughter. She didn't want him to say any of that, no matter how true it was. She just wanted to cry.

So she did.

He held onto her, he burned the note, he transfigured the ashes and set a tiny glass owl on the floor in front of her. All she did was cry.

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N – Much love to Salazars for beta reading. She is a gem.