"Are you angry because I'm right, or because you're wrong?"

She paused in the middle of tossing ingredients back in their jars. "You are not right."

And she swore she could hear him chuckle behind her.

Whipping around, she extended the wand out to him. "Why don't you tidy up, if you know the right way to do everything?"

His mouth twitched as he took it from her, and she narrowed her eyes. "I'm going to bed. I'm exhausted and you're making me angry."

Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she turned on her heel and headed to the door. She paused at the threshold. "And you better take care of those mice."

She caught a glimpse of him as she left, and saw a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

After trudging up the stairs, she shook off her shoes, tore off her clothes, and slipped into bed, drifting off as the dawning sun glowed through the curtains. It wasn't until an hour later when Draco joined her, freshly showered and curling his body around her, that she groggily realized she'd chosen his bedroom on instinct.

~*~

They slept late, and when they woke, the breakfast tray on Draco's desk contained both coffee and tea. At lunchtime, Hermione went downstairs to see Narcissa and return her wand. Draco only showed at the very end, his face pink as his mother embraced him and kissed his cheeks.

They learned from Narcissa that Lucius would be gone for at least another two weeks. He was still in Belgium, and was scheduled to begin interrogations in Poland later that week.

Draco was still nervous about being interrupted, so Hermione agreed to wait until after dinner to work on the potion. But apart from giving Hix instructions to deliver ten field mice to his lab, Draco hadn't said much when she turned the conversation to the potion or the tattoos. So she began asking questions.

Draco told her that the Death Eaters had failed to locate any True Order members on his mission. The few trails had gone cold, and the Dark Lord believed them all to be in France now. She asked him what he knew that hadn't been in the papers. Albrecht Berge had strengthened the U.K.'s Anti-Apparition line before he left for France. He was expected to institute new wards at Edinburgh at the end of the month. There were whispers that the Dark Lord was planning a counterattack, but no one knew where or when. Information was even more tightly controlled than it had been before, and the Dark Lord was still interrogating his own followers.

They took dinner in his bedroom, and at nine o'clock, they tiptoed down to the lab. Hix had left ten field mice in a cage, just like Draco had asked. She set Draco to work on brewing the tattoo potion while she brewed the antidote next to him. While they added ingredients, she explained the trials she'd done in his absence and every step she took to reach her conclusions. He didn't seem to be listening, though he followed the directions in her notes perfectly. Several times she caught him watching her as she gesticulated with the bloodroot, or when she twisted her expanding hair off her shoulders into a knot on top of her head. Each time he looked away quickly, wearing an expression she couldn't place.