“One minute till midnight!” a witch with a sonorused voice called out gaily, interrupting Hermione's thoughts. “Get ready for your New Year's kisses!
Astoria swept back into the room. Her robes were straightened and her expression innocent but there was a faint sense of dishevelment about her person that seemed obvious to Hermione. Her lipstick was faintly smeared so that it didn't rest entirely within the lines of her lips. Not an overt smudge, but enough that the shape of her mouth was carelessly softened. Her expression was smug.
Hermione watched Astoria make her way over to Malfoy. Astoria's expression schooled itself into that of affection as she drew closer but there was a spark of something else in her eyes.
Malfoy looked her over carefully but his expression didn't so much as flicker. Hermione couldn't see Astoria's face well from her angle.
“Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!” The room started chanting a countdown to the new year.
As the numbers wound down Malfoy reached forward, his expression still blank, and ran his thumb across Astoria's mouth.
At zero he leaned forward and pressed his lips against Astoria's. A camera flashed. The room exploded with magical fireworks and cheers and clanking glassware as people toasted.
Malfoy's lips remained pressed against Astoria's but as he kissed his wife he raised his eyes, looking over Astoria's head. His cool, grey eyes immediately locked onto Hermione's face.
Hermione forgot to breathe.
She stared back. Frozen.
Her stomach flipped sharply. Her heart started pounding until she could hear it in her ears. She shivered. She felt she should draw back out of sight but found herself trapped, as though she were locked in place by the cold silver.
He continued to stare up at her until Astoria broke off the kiss and turned away. Then his eyes dropped and a false, aristocratic smile curved across his lips as he glanced around the room, clapping without enthusiasm for several seconds before snatching up a flute of champagne from a floating tray.
He knocked it back as though it were mouthwash.
Hermione sat back and pressed her hands against her chest and willed her heart to stop pounding.
The party lasted for hours. Hermione watched the social interactions carefully. Looking for signs of tension and alliances. Trying to identify the social order that existed in order to understand what was left out by The Daily Prophet.
She spotted Graham Montague mingling and watched him for some time, trying to discern if there was anything familiar about him. He seemed entirely foreign to her.
Malfoy did not mingle. He stood and let other people mingle with him. It grew steadily apparent to Hermione which people knew him to be the High Reeve and which were unaware. There was a sort of reverence and delicacy in how young Death Eaters approached him. Older Death Eaters like Mulciber and Nott Sr and Yaxley treated him with a mixture of deference and resentment.
While others there might not have known why Malfoy was treated so carefully by the Death Eaters, the respect was contagious. The room oriented itself around Malfoy in a way that was unnerving.
Malfoy played his part like a benevolent king. The coldness and the sense of danger to his person was undeniable but he layered it beneath aristocratic courtesy. The hard unyielding expression he wore around her was absent. He looked indulgent. He smirked and engaged in what appeared to be endless streams of small talk with anyone who approached. But to Hermione, unable to make out his words and simply watching him, he always seemed cold and bored.
It was nearly four in the morning before the last guests departed.
Hermione made her way cautiously back to her room. She didn't want to run into Astoria again, or any stragglers. When she reached the hallway leading to her room, she peeked around the corner and found Malfoy standing there.
He glanced over and caught sight of her immediately.
“Have fun?” he asked.
She hesitated for several seconds before she walked around the corner and came toward him, shrugging.
“It was more interesting than just reading about it,” she said.
He snorted.
“Words I would never have expected to hear from you,” he said. Then he stared at her, his eyes narrowed.
“Why is Montague interested in you?” he inquired, arching an eyebrow.
Hermione glanced up at him. Of course that was why he was there.
She was surprised he was asking. He had, she'd realised, a schedule for examining her memories. Approximately every ten days. He'd skipped the last session and left it to Voldemort, but she was expecting him to show up at some point the next day. If he wanted to he could have just waited.
“I don't know,” she said. “I barely knew him in school.”
Curiosity bloomed in Malfoy's eyes.
“Really? How intriguing,” he said in a musing tone. “You are so full of surprises.”
Hermione rolled her eyes.
“Do you say that to every girl?” she said in a sarcastically sweet tone.
He looked at her sharply and then chuckled.
“Go to bed, Mudblood.”
Despite the phrasing it didn't feel like a command. Hermione stared at him for a moment longer before she walked into her room anyway.
He was still standing in the hallway when she shut the door.
The next morning's paper had a picture of Malfoy and Astoria on the cover. It captured the moment Malfoy reached forward and ran his thumb across Astoria's lips before leaning down to kiss her, fireworks and streamers exploded behind them.
It looked sweet and romantic and intimate.
On the next page was a picture of the High Reeve killing several people in France. One girl looked vaguely familiar. Hermione thought she might have visited Hogwarts during the Triwizard Tournament.
Hermione hadn't realised Malfoy had left the country earlier in the week.
Hermione folded the picture of Malfoy and Astoria into a herringbone tessellation and amused herself by making Malfoy and Astoria bounce apart and then squash into each other.
She tore the picture of the High Reeve into tiny strips and wove it into a coaster. In another life, she thought, perhaps she might enjoy creating complex lattice-work pie crusts.
Then she stood up and started her exercise routine.
She was getting ridiculously fit, which was a satisfying although mostly pointless feeling. It didn't really matter how much of a punch she could pack if she wasn't able to actually drive her fist into Malfoy's face. There wasn't much point in stamina when she nearly had a panic attack every time she pulled her hand away from the yew hedges or tried to move at a speed that wasn't glacial.
Malfoy appeared late in the afternoon to go through her memories. He didn't seem to find anything of particular interest in her recent past. He didn't even react when he encountered her memory of Astoria shagging someone in the hallway. The portraits had probably already informed him. When he finished sorting through her memories he straightened.
Hermione blinked away the headache and sat up, looking at him.
“I'll be sending a final vial of the potion up tomorrow,” he said.
Hermione nodded. He didn't say anything else before he turned to go.
That night Hermione laid out a careful plan for the next day in her mind. If it was indeed her last dose of the potion then there were a number of things she wanted to try to attempt before the effects wore off.
The next morning she did not pause to read the newspaper. She knocked back the potion before she could hesitate or dread the withdrawal she'd suffer later. Then she headed out the door with cool determination.
Her first destination was the South Wing of the manor. The only part of the house still unexplored. She started on the uppermost floors and worked her way down. They were the ones in which she was least likely to encounter anyone so she could move more quickly.