Chapter Text
Harry Potter had always been a man defined by his scars, but lately, it was the one he couldn’t see that weighed the most. The safe house was a miserable, draughty little place in a corner of London that seemed to have been forgotten by the sunlight. The wallpaper, a sickly shade of mustard, peeled away in damp strips while the single candle on the table sputtered. Outside, the rain lashed against the grime-streaked windowpane.
Across from him, Draco Malfoy was leaning back in a rickety wooden chair that creaked ominously under his weight. He looked remarkably out of place in the squalor, his robes made of a silk so dark and fine they seemed to absorb what little light the candle offered.
"I’m not asking for your redemption, Malfoy," Harry said, his voice sounding flat and strangely old. It was a professional voice, one he had spent the last two years perfecting in the Auror cubicles. "I’m asking for a strategic alignment. You’re an asset with a name that people still fear, and right now, that makes you the most useful person in Britain."
Malfoy exhaled a long, thin stream of smoke from a silver pipe, watching it coil into the damp air. "A name," he repeated, his voice a sour, cutting rasp. "You’ve spent half a decade trying to make sure nobody says that name without spitting, Potter. Now you want to use it as a lure? It’s tedious."
"It’s necessary," Harry countered, his fingers twitching toward the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, a habit he only succumbed to when the collateral cost of a plan began to itch. He pushed a thick dossier across the table. It was filled with names that made the air in the room feel colder: Selwyn, Nott, Burke.
"They aren't falling for the standard stings anymore. They spot an Auror's boots a mile off. But they’ll trust a Malfoy who’s finally snapped. They’ll trust a man who builds them a place where they can indulge their... appetites."
Draco didn’t pick up the file. He merely looked at it as if it were a particularly unpleasant species of flobberworm. "A club," he murmured. "A temple of sin. You want me to play the part of the fallen aristocrat so you can catch your ghosts in the act."
"I want to neutralize the threat before someone else gets hurt," Harry said, his jaw tightening. "In exchange, the Ministry clears your record. Every last liability, gone. You get your life back, Malfoy. Total deniability."
Malfoy leaned forward, the candlelight catching the sharp, pale angles of his face. For a fleeting second, he looked less like a businessman and more like the boy Harry had once cornered in a bathroom, desperate and afraid. "You’ve finally learned how to play the game, haven't you, Potter? It’s almost a pity. I quite liked it when you were too noble to lie."
Harry didn't answer. He watched the candle gutter in the draught.
The Department of Magical Law Enforcement held a silence so thick it felt like physical resistance. In the small hours of Friday morning, the usual purposeful clamor was replaced by the dry hum of cooling enchantments and the distant, rhythmic ticking of a Great Clock somewhere in the atrium. Hermione Granger did not mind the isolation; the stillness allowed her to hear the whispers in the data that the daytime bustle usually drowned out.
Her desk was a landscape of illuminated charts, the light from her wand-tip casting long, dancing shadows that stretched toward the darkened cubicles of the Auror office. She was deep into a performance audit of the London Floo Network, a task her colleagues had mocked as a 'sentence to death by boredom.' But the numbers were telling a story, and Hermione was listening.
"There it is again," she whispered. Her quill hovered over a jagged line of silver ink on a displacement map.
At precisely 10:07 PM every Friday for the last month, the East End grid experienced a micro-surge. It was a mere flicker of magical pressure, lasting less than half a second. To anyone else, it was a ghost in the machine, a hiccup in an aging network. But Hermione’s eyes tracked the silver line to its conclusion.
There was no exit record. The energy surged, the grate activated, and then... nothing. No registered traveler, no soot-signature, and no fee collected. It was as if people were stepping into the green flames and simply ceasing to exist.
"A breach of the 1996 Floo Regulation Act," she murmured, her jaw setting. She reached for a heavy volume titled 10th Century Masonry and Secret Passages, the vellum cover cool and slightly tacky under her fingers. "An unregistered grate. A private exit in a condemned district."
It wasn't just a technical anomaly; it was a scratch at the back of her mind that had started three days ago near the Fountain of Magical Brethren. She could still see Pansy Parkinson, draped in robes of a suspiciously expensive, light-devouring black silk, leaning against a marble pillar. Pansy’s voice had carried that sharp, aristocratic edge that always made the hair on Hermione’s arms stand up.
"I’m afraid Friday is out, Millicent," Pansy had drawled, her eyes alight with a predatory glee. "I have a standing engagement at the Seventh Gate."
The phrase had stuck like a splinter. Then, an hour ago, she had found it again, scrawled in the margins of a confiscated letter from a dark-arts peddler. Meet me past the Seventh Gate. The Host expects perfection.
Hermione cross-referenced the coordinates of the Floo surge with the street names in the East End. The surge occurred in a three-block radius of an old, abandoned silk mill.
"The Seventh Gate," she repeated. The sound of her own voice felt thin in the empty office.
She reached for a fresh scroll of official Ministry parchment. The texture was familiar, stiff and slightly abrasive. With the practiced speed of a woman who found safety in procedure, she began to draft the Formal Incident Report.
Subject: Unregistered Floo Transit and Structural Anomalies, District 12 (East End). She detailed the displacement maps and the energy spikes, her quill scratching a frantic, rhythmic beat against the desk. She signed it with a flourish, Hermione J. Granger, Senior Research Lead, and pressed her official seal into the purple wax. The smell of melting lavender and scorched wick filled her lungs.
She walked to the internal Ministry post-box. The brass flap clicked shut with a sharp, metallic finality. Hermione stood there for a moment, her pulse settling into a satisfied hum. She had identified a hole in the world, and she had reported it. Now, the system would function.
The morning air in the Ministry always felt recycled, filtered through a ventilation system that seemed as old and tired as the stone walls themselves. Hermione stood outside the heavy oak door, clutching a cup of lukewarm tea. Her finalized report was a weight in her other hand. As she watched the golden letters of the sign shimmer, Harry Potter, Senior Auror (Special Operations), a prickle of unease moved down her spine.
"Come in, Hermione," Harry called before she could knock.
He sat behind a desk that looked like a battlefield of parchment and half-empty mugs. The shadows under his green eyes were deep, bruised pockets of exhaustion. He offered a smile, but it didn't reach his eyes; it was a shield, polished and practiced.
"I’ve read your report," Harry said, skipping the pleasantries. He tapped the purple seal on her scroll, which sat precariously atop a mountain of urgent-looking dossiers.
"And?" Hermione prompted. Her voice was crisp, the professional edge hiding the pulse thrumming in her throat. "The displacement maps are undeniable. There is an unregistered portal operating in District 12. It is a direct violation of the law."
"I know the law, Hermione." Harry’s tone was kind but firm, the voice of a man who had grown comfortable making impossible choices. He leaned back, his chair creaking under the shift in weight. "In a perfect world, I’d have a team of six Aurors down there by noon. But look at this desk."
He gestured to a board pinned with photographs of ruined homes and the charred remains of Dark Marks. "Corvus Selwyn is active again. He’s left a trail of victims from Dover to the Highlands. That is my priority. It is my only priority."
"But this 'Seventh Gate' could be connected," Hermione argued, her jaw tightening. "The socialites using this phrase and the linguistic overlap with the criminal fringe, it’s a pattern, Harry. An organized subculture."
Harry exhaled a long sigh of heavy, professional weariness. "It’s a gossip circle, Hermione. Bored aristocrats playing at being rebellious because they miss the old days. It’s an administrative nuisance. I cannot divert resources from a mass murderer to go chasing an unregistered fireplace because you overheard Pansy Parkinson being cryptic at a fountain."
"It is not just a fireplace." Hermione’s voice rose, the sharp, instructional edge of it cutting through the cloy of stale coffee in the room. "It is a deliberate bypass of the system. If we allow these pockets of lawlessness to exist, the entire structure fails."
"Then the structure survives another day because we caught the man actually killing people," Harry interrupted. His voice dropped into a low, certain register that allowed no further argument. "I am marking this as 'Pending Review.' Put it out of your head. Focus on the Law Reform drafts for the Wizengamot. That is where I need you."
Hermione stared at him. The rejection felt cold and heavy, settling in her stomach like lead. She looked at her report, discarded on his desk, and then back at the man she had fought a war alongside.
"Pending review," she repeated, her voice low and clipped. "Which means it will sit there until the ink fades."
"It means I am making a choice for the greater good," Harry said. His eyes met hers with a terrifyingly calm certainty. "Go get some sleep, Hermione. You’re seeing ghosts in the data because you’re tired."
Hermione didn't argue. She turned, the click of her heels against the stone floor sounding like a countdown. She didn't return to her desk. She didn't go home to sleep.
She walked toward the lifts, her mind already dissecting the three-block radius of the East End silk mill. If the system was too busy to uphold the law, she would ensure the law was upheld herself.
The night air was a razor, sharp and glass-cold against the small patch of skin Hermione left exposed above her collar. She stood at the edge of the Shambles, pulling the heavy wool of her traveling cloak tighter until the hood obscured her profile. Behind her, the rhythmic pulse of respectable London was fading into a dull hum. Here, the air was different, cloying with the scent of damp brick, coal smoke, and a faint, metallic vibration that made the fine hairs on her neck stand on end.
"Just a verification," she whispered. Her breath bloomed in a jagged white cloud, vanishing into the dark.
She reached into the silk-lined pocket of her cloak, her fingers closing around the familiar grain of her wand. With a sharp, practiced flick, she cast the Disillusionment Charm. The sensation was immediate and jarring, like a cold egg being cracked over the crown of her head, the icy contents sliding down her spine and over her limbs. She watched her hand blur, then vanish, until she was nothing more than a ripple in the soot-stained air.
She moved with a ghost’s caution. Her boots, softened by a quietening charm, made no sound against the uneven cobbles. Following the mental map of the displacement charts, she navigated the labyrinth of the East End, turning past boarded-up storefronts and rusted cauldrons that smelled of stale rain.
The silk mill loomed out of the shadows, a blackened, decaying carcass of brick and shattered glass. But as Hermione drew closer, the "Intellectual Scalpel" in her mind began to dissect the image. The decay was too perfect. The jagged edges of the broken windows didn’t catch the moonlight; they swallowed it. The iron gates weren't rusted; they were humming with a ward-web so dense the magical pressure thrummed against her teeth.
Then she saw the mark.
Etched into the stone above a side door was a small, unassuming circle bisected by seven vertical lines.
"The Seventh Gate," she breathed, the words barely a vibration.
A shadow detached itself from the gloom of the alley. A man, dressed in robes of a cut so exquisite they seemed to shimmer like oil on water, stepped toward the door. He didn't hesitate. He pressed a gloved hand to the stone carving. The wards rippled, a deep, bruised purple light bleeding through the cracks of the illusion before the door simply melted away.
In the heartbeat before it solidified, a scent spilled out, a heady, intoxicating crush of jasmine, expensive tobacco, and a sharp, spicy undertone that made her lungs ache. From the depths of the mill came a sound that felt wrong in the dirt of the East End: the low, mournful thrum of a cello. It vibrated at a frequency that bypassed her ears and settled directly in her marrow.
The door snapped shut. The alley returned to its cold, silent stasis.
Hermione’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, trapped thing. Harry had called this a gossip circle. An administrative nuisance. She looked at the door where the "Host" expected perfection, and she knew the Senior Auror was dangerously wrong. This wasn't a gathering of bored socialites; it was a sanctuary built with a level of magical precision that rivaled the Ministry’s deepest vaults.
She should turn back. She should take this physical proof to Harry’s desk and force him to see the anomaly. But she remembered the way he had dismissed her logic, the way he had treated her expertise like a symptom of exhaustion.
If she went back now, he would only find another reason to look past the truth.
She took a step toward the door. Her fingers hovered inches from the cold stone circle. She wasn't an Auror, and she wasn't a spy. She was a researcher who had found a hole in the world, and she was the only one willing to step through it.
The club was not at all what Hermione had imagined in those fleeting, disapproving moments when she had pictured the clandestine gatherings of the pure-blood elite. She had expected something garish. She had anticipated crimson velvet and gaudy gold, the sort of ostentatious decadence that Pansy Parkinson might have crowed about in the Ministry corridors. Instead, the vast hall unfolded like a dream half-remembered. It was a place where shadows held more substance than light.
The ceiling soared impossibly high, lost in a haze of drifting silks that caught the glow of floating orbs. These were soft, amber things that hovered like fireflies charmed into stillness. The air was thick with scent. Jasmine dominated, but it was laced with something darker and spicier. It reminded her oddly of the potions classroom at Hogwarts, of cauldrons simmering late into the night. Music threaded through the space. The low thrum of a cello was underpinned by the delicate pluck of a harp, weaving a spell that seemed to settle directly into her marrow.
People moved through the hall with the languid grace of those who had no fear of being observed. Masks concealed their faces. Some were elaborate confections of silver filigree and feathers. Others were simple slips of black silk like the one now tied across her own eyes. Robes whispered against the polished floor, fabrics so fine they might have been spun from moonlight. Everywhere, magic hummed. Faint green glows of consent wards pulsed gently around each tableau, ensuring that no touch came unbidden. No boundary was crossed without welcome.
Hermione's heart hammered against her ribs as she drifted deeper into the hall. Her glamour-held features and muted scent were her only shields. She was here to observe, she told herself fiercely. She was there to catalogue violations and note unregistered magic. She needed to gather proof that this place was the festering anomaly she had suspected. Yet her feet carried her forward as though pulled by an invisible thread. She passed low couches where masked figures lounged in murmured conversation. She moved past alcoves curtained in gauze where softer sounds escaped. A gasp. A sigh. The rustle of silk against skin.
She found a shadowed nook near a two-way mirror, cleverly enchanted glass that reflected the main floor while granting the illusion of privacy. She stationed herself there and forced her breathing to steady. From this vantage, she could watch without drawing notice.
A witch lay bound upon a nearby dais. Golden ropes of light coiled around her wrists and ankles, pulsing in time with her quickened breath. Her partner traced a wand along the ropes, murmuring incantations that made the bindings tighten and loosen in exquisite rhythm. The witch arched, a low moan escaping her lips, and the consent ward flared bright green. Approval. Invitation. Safety.
Hermione's cheeks burned beneath her obsidian mask. This was not mere debauchery. It was artful, controlled, and consensual in a way that twisted something deep inside her. She should have been repulsed. She should have been reaching for her wand to summon Aurors, to shatter the wards and expose the entire operation.
Instead, she felt a strange, unwelcome heat coil low in her belly.
And then she sensed him.
It was not a sound or a movement that alerted her. It was a sudden prickle of awareness, as though the air itself had shifted. She turned slowly. There he was. He was a tall figure at the edge of the opposite dais, clad in robes of deepest black that seemed to swallow the light. His mask was plain silver, stark against pale hair that gleamed like moonlight on water. He stood utterly still, watching her with an intensity that made the vast hall feel suddenly, shockingly intimate.
Their gazes locked through the masks.
Hermione's breath caught. There was something unbearably familiar in the set of his shoulders, the aristocratic tilt of his head. It tugged at memories she could not quite place. He inclined his chin fractionally. A silent acknowledgement. An invitation.
Her feet moved before her mind could protest. She moved across the mosaic floor until only a few paces separated them. Up close, he was taller than she had realized. His presence radiated a quiet, coiled power that reminded her of a serpent poised to strike, or to protect its own.
He smelled of cedar and sharp spice, expensive and understated. His gloved hand rose with deliberate slowness. He gave her every opportunity to step away before the back of one finger brushed a stray curl from her cheek.
The touch was the barest graze, yet it sent fire racing along her nerves.
"You look," he murmured, his voice a low, melodic rasp that seemed to resonate in her chest like the cello's deepest notes, "like a woman who is finding the reality of the night less impressive than the invitation promised."
"I am difficult to impress," Hermione said. Her voice was thick with a borrowed, aristocratic frost. "I find that people often mistake spectacle for substance. I am merely here to assess the decline of standards."
The man in the silver mask paused. He tilted his head. "A critic," he murmured. He took a step forward, the Consent Charms between them humming with a golden vibration of resistance. "And what is your verdict? Are we falling short of your expectations?"
"The foundation is interesting," Hermione countered, her mind racing to maintain the lie. "But the execution is loud. I prefer to catalogue the inconsistencies before I make a final judgment."
The man let out a short, soft laugh. "Then stay as long as you like. But be careful. Sometimes when you look for inconsistencies, you find that you are the only one who doesn't fit the pattern. Right now, you look as though you've spent years holding your breath. You look like you're waiting for someone to grant you leave to exhale."
Hermione's lips parted, but no words came. The consent ward between them hummed with a warm, green resonance. It was a gentle question hanging in the air.
His thumb traced the edge of her mask. He did not quite touch her skin. "One word from you," he said softly, "and I stop."
She ought to have said it. She ought to have stepped back and revealed herself as the Ministry's instrument of justice. But the word lodged in her throat. Instead, she found herself leaning into the space he offered. His hand settled at the nape of her neck. His gloved fingers threaded gently through her hair. He was not restraining her. He was merely holding her, claiming the possibility of more.
Around them, the club's symphony faded to a distant hum. There was only the warmth of his proximity and the weight of his unseen gaze. It felt as though he were stripping away layers she had not known she wore.
"Breathe," he commanded. It was quiet and inexorable.
Hermione did. It was a deep, trembling inhale, as though she were surfacing from depths she had not realized she was drowning in. The night stretched before them, vast and uncharted. For the first time in years, Hermione felt the terrifying thrill of not knowing what came next.
His hand lingered at the nape of her neck. The butter-soft leather of his glove was a shocking contrast to the feverish heat radiating from her skin. Every breath she drew carried the club's heavy perfume. She smelled crushed jasmine petals bruised underfoot, the dark bite of expensive tobacco, and beneath it all a sharper note of arousal. It hung in the air like incense. The low thrum of the cello vibrated in her ribcage. It synced with the frantic hammer of her heart.
Hermione felt pinned. She was not held by force but by the sheer intensity of his presence. She felt the faint rasp of his robes brushing her thighs as he shifted closer. The subtle heat of his body cut through the club's warmed air. His scent wrapped around her until she could taste it on the back of her tongue. It was cedar smoke laced with something green and biting.
His thumb swept slowly along the delicate skin just below her hairline. He traced the fine down there with deliberate cruelty. Gooseflesh raced down her arms. Her nipples tightened painfully beneath layers of cotton and wool. They ached for a touch that had not yet come.
"You’re burning," he murmured. His lips barely moved behind the silver mask. His voice was a low, resonant rasp. It stroked along her nerves like velvet dragged over bare skin. "All that fierce control, and your body is already begging to be undone."
The words slid into her bloodstream like warmed firewhisky. They were slow and intoxicating. Hermione’s lips parted on a shuddering inhale. She tasted jasmine and her own desperation.
He leaned in until she felt the faint disturbance of air as his mouth hovered beside her ear. "I can smell you," he whispered. The confession was filthy and reverent at once. "Through all these layers. Sweet and wet and aching. Tell me, how long have you been this ready for someone to notice?"
A broken sound escaped her. It was half protest and half plea. Heat flooded her cheeks beneath the mask. Lower, between her thighs, a slick warmth pulsed in helpless answer.
His gloved hand drifted down the column of her throat. He paused to feel the wild flutter of her pulse before continuing to the hollow at its base. There he pressed lightly. He was possessive. She felt every thundering beat echo against his palm. Leather creaked softly as his fingers splayed wider to claim more skin.
When he finally closed the last inch between them, the shock of contact stole her breath. The hard length of him pressed against her belly. He was hot and rigid. He let her feel it fully. He rolled his hips once in a slow, deliberate grind that dragged a whimper from her throat.
His knee nudged between hers with inexorable patience. He parted her thighs until the firm muscle of his leg settled against the soaked seam of her knickers. The pressure was immediate. It was exquisite. Her swollen anatomy dragged against damp cotton and the unyielding strength beneath it. She felt herself clench hard around nothing. A fresh rush of wetness soaked through the fabric.
"Move," he ordered. His voice was roughened now, fraying at the edges. "Let me feel how desperately you need this."
Hermione’s hands fisted in his robes. Her knuckles whitened as her hips rolled forward of their own accord. The friction was maddening. Each grind sent sparks skittering up her spine. Her pulse throbbed with every deliberate slide. She could hear herself. She heard the wet sound of fabric shifting and her own ragged breathing.
His hands settled on her hips. He guided her into a rhythm that was torturously slow. Every time she chased faster relief, he held her back. He forced her to feel every pulse of aching need.
"That’s it," he praised. His lips brushed the shell of her ear. The faint scrape of stubble through silk sent shivers racing down her neck. "Soaked through already. I can feel you fluttering against my thigh. Do you have any idea how obscene you look right now? Trembling and dripping. You are riding me in front of half the room like you were born for it."
The crude words, delivered in that cultured, velvet drawl, undid her. She buried her face in his neck to muffle a cry. She inhaled the salt of his skin and tasted the faint metallic tang of anticipation.
When his hand finally slipped beneath her robes, cool leather glided over the fevered skin of her inner thigh. She nearly sobbed. He did not ask permission. The consent ward had already flared bright emerald between them. Instead, he traced one gloved finger along the sodden edge of her knickers. He gathered wetness and spread it upward until he circled her with devastating precision.
Hermione’s knees buckled. Only his arm around her waist and the pillar at her back kept her upright.
"Please," she gasped. The word was torn out of her, raw and aching.
"Please what?" His finger stilled. He denied her even that small mercy. "Tell me exactly what you want while strangers watch you fall apart."
She could feel their eyes now. Masked figures paused in their own scenes, drawn by the raw energy crackling around the dais. The knowledge should have horrified her. Instead, it coiled heat tighter in her belly.
"Please let me come," she whispered. Her voice broke. "On your fingers. On your thigh. While they watch."
The growl that rumbled from his chest was almost feral. Two gloved fingers pressed inside her without warning. Thick, unyielding leather stretched her open. He curled his fingers to stroke that devastating spot deep within. His thumb settled on her, rubbing in tight, merciless circles.
She came instantly and violently. Her body clamped down on his fingers as waves of pleasure crashed through her. Her vision whited out. He dragged it out, stroking through every pulsing aftershock until she was sobbing into his shoulder. Her thighs trembled. Wetness slicked his glove and her own skin.
When it finally ebbed, he kept his fingers buried inside her. He let her feel the aftershocks flutter around him. His other hand stroked her back in slow, soothing passes. He was grounding her as she floated in the haze.
Hermione became slowly aware of the hush around them. She felt the appreciative weight of dozens of unseen gazes. The faint flare of consent wards acknowledged what they had witnessed. The air smelled sharply of sex now, layered over jasmine and smoke.
He withdrew his fingers slowly. He brought them to his lips. Even through the mask, she heard the soft, wet sound as he tasted her. He savored the leather.
"Next Friday," he said. His voice was husky with restraint. "Come back bare beneath your robes. I want to slide into you the moment I touch you. No barriers. Nothing between us but heat and need."
Hermione’s answer was a shattered breath against his throat.
"Yes."
The Great Hall of the Ministry was a space of aggressive elegance. For the annual Charity Gala, the towering statues of the Fountain of Magical Brethren had been draped in enchanted ivy. It shimmered with a soft, silver light that felt cold rather than welcoming. Enchanted violins hovered near the ceiling, playing a medley of waltzes that felt as forced as the smiles on the faces of the gathered dignitaries. The air was thick with the scent of lilies and expensive perfume. It was a cloying sweetness that made Hermione’s head ache.
Hermione stood with a small group of researchers from the law reform office. They were nursing glasses of lukewarm punch and discussing the recent budget cuts. She felt stiff in her periwinkle-blue robes. Her mind remained a fortress of logic, still occupied with the unregistered Floo surges she had identified in the East End. She was trying to ignore a lingering, phantom restlessness. It was a strange buzz beneath her skin that had refused to fade since the previous night.
The group next to them shifted. High-profile donors and board members moved in a tight, expensive cluster. At the center of the circle stood Draco Malfoy.
He looked every bit the legitimate businessman the Ministry had invited. His robes were made of a fine charcoal wool that seemed to drink in the golden light of the fairy-lights. He held a crystal glass of amber liquid with a casual, predatory grace. He listened to a senior undersecretary complain about the slow pace of reconstruction in Diagon Alley with an expression of bored tolerance.
"Efficiency is a lost art in this building," Malfoy said. His voice was a low rasp that carried easily over the music. "The Ministry spends so much time polishing its image that it forgets to maintain its foundations."
One of Hermione's colleagues nodded in reluctant agreement. "It is frustrating. We try to keep things moving, but the bureaucracy is immense."
The two groups merged for a brief moment as people reached for the refreshment table. Hermione found herself standing less than a foot away from Malfoy. He did not look at her at first. He continued to speak to the undersecretary about the rising cost of dragon-hide imports. He seemed older than she remembered. His movements were more deliberate and less frantic than they had been in their youth.
"I have little patience for institutions that mistake noise for progress," Malfoy drawled.
Hermione turned her head. Her chin lifted. "Perhaps if you spent less time criticizing the noise and more time following the actual regulations, Malfoy, the progress would be easier to measure."
Malfoy turned his head slowly. His grey eyes were cool and observant. He looked at her not with the old sneer of their school days, but with a sharp, calculating interest.
"Ah, Granger," he said. He gave her a thin, polite smile that held a certain appreciative glint. "Still the Ministry’s resident expert on everything. I suppose you are finding the evening quite productive."
"Hardly," Hermione countered. She shifted her weight, her jaw setting into a line of stubborn determination. "I am difficult to impress. I find that people often mistake spectacle for substance. I am merely here to assess the decline of standards. The Ministry seems to be setting a new record tonight."
Draco’s glass paused halfway to his lips. For a fleeting second, his composure fractured. His eyes searched her face with a sudden, piercing intensity.
"An exhausting task, I imagine," Draco murmured. His voice had dropped an octave. It was smooth and dangerously quiet. "Though I’ve always admired your stamina for lost causes. It’s almost refreshing."
Hermione felt a traitorous flush creep up her neck. It wasn't the backhanded compliment that bothered her. It was the way his gaze seemed to linger on the pulse at the base of her throat.
"It isn't a lost cause," she said. Her voice was a fraction faster than usual. "It’s a matter of integrity. That is something you might find unfamiliar, despite the expensive wool."
Malfoy took a small, slow step closer. He brought with him the scent of cedar and something faintly medicinal. It was the smell of high-grade potions. "Careful, Granger. Your halo is slipping. If you spend too much time looking for holes in the system, you might find yourself falling through one."
"I have a very firm grip on the floor, thank you," she snapped back.
"Do you?" he asked. He tilted his head, his eyes tracing the line of her sensible robes. "You look quite tense. Perhaps you’re over-taxed. Even the most dedicated researchers need a release, or so I’m told. Or is your life all parchment and principles?"
The word release sent a sharp, involuntary jolt through her marrow. It was too close to the words the Host had whispered in the dark. It was too close to the thoughts she had been fighting all day. Her blush deepened, turning from a faint pink to a hot, undeniable scarlet.
"My life is perfectly balanced," she said. Her fingers tightened around her goblet. "The system is riddled with holes, as I said. I prefer to catalogue the inconsistencies before I make a final judgment. It is the only way to ensure the law survives the people who try to bypass it."
Draco did not laugh. He did not even smile. He stared at her for a long moment, his grip tightening on his crystal glass until his knuckles were white. He took a slow, deliberate sip of his drink, his gaze never leaving hers.
"Catalogue the inconsistencies," Draco repeated softly. He gave a sharp, sudden nod to the undersecretary, breaking the spell. "You really are a ray of sunshine, Granger. You are starting to talk like a surveyor's manual. It is dreadfully dull."
He turned back to the other group without another word. The parties began to drift apart. Hermione’s colleagues moved toward the main hall; Malfoy followed the donors toward the VIP lounge with a step that was far more rigid than he intended.
He found a shadowed corner near the balcony and looked out at the dark London skyline. The cold winter air bit at his face. He did not look at the crowd. Instead, he watched the reflection of the ballroom in the glass, his fingers tracing the rim of his goblet.
Something about the encounter sat heavily in his chest. It was a jagged piece of a puzzle that did not fit. He felt a phantom prickle of heat, a strange echo of a voice that seemed to vibrate in the back of his mind. It was a rhythmic, clinical cadence. It felt entirely out of place in the brightly lit Atrium.
He looked back toward the potted evergreens where the Golden Girl stood in her sensible blue robes. She was adjusting her sleeve, her expression one of focused, academic boredom.
A cold, inexplicable weight settled in the pit of his stomach. It was a sense of recognition that remained just out of reach, like a name on the tip of his tongue. He tried to shake the feeling, chalking it up to the exhaustion of maintaining his public mask, but the restlessness remained.
He did not move for a long time. He stared into the dark as the festive music behind him began to sound thin and hollow.
The fire in the library of Malfoy Manor had burned down to glowing embers. Distorted shadows stretched across the floor-to-ceiling shelves, reaching toward the center of the room like grasping fingers. Draco sat in a high-backed leather chair. A half-empty glass of Firewhisky rested forgotten on the side table. The silence of the manor usually brought him a sense of cold, predictable control. Tonight, it felt suffocating.
I am difficult to impress. I find that people often mistake spectacle for substance. I prefer to catalogue the inconsistencies.
The phrases looped in his mind. They echoed with a haunting, rhythmic persistence. At the gala, he had dismissed the similarity as a trick of his own frayed nerves. He had told himself that Granger simply spoke like a researcher. He had convinced himself that his guest from Friday had merely been mimicking the clipped tone of an academic.
But the cadence remained. It was the exact, clinical choice of vocabulary.
He closed his eyes. Suddenly, he was no longer in the library. He was back on the dais. He felt the heat of the club's wards vibrating against his teeth. He heard the ragged, desperate breath of the woman beneath his hand. He heard her whisper those same words. She had not used the frost of a Ministry official. She had spoken with the raw, trembling vulnerability of someone being undone.
Draco sat bolt upright. His heart hammered a frantic, uneven rhythm against his ribs.
Granger.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. It left him breathless. She was not just a guest. She was investigating. The Ministry's most relentless bloodhound was hunting for a crime in the very house he had built to catch others. She was already at his throat. She did not even know it was his hand she had been biting.
Panic set in, cold and sharp. If she returned next Friday, if she came bare beneath her robes as he had commanded, the risk was no longer just about the operation. It was about her. It was about him.
He could not blow the operation. Harry Potter had made it clear that failure meant a permanent cell in Azkaban. But he could not let Hermione Granger walk back into that trap. He could not be the one to strip her of that insufferable, principled light.
He had to scare her off. He had to make the Seventh Gate so terrifying and so repulsive to her sensibilities that she would never dare to step foot in the East End again.
He stood up. His mind was already churning with dark possibilities. He had a week to turn his sanctuary into her nightmare. He would be the monster she expected to find.