the oldest of the lot - a large, furry yellow affair whose ears looked like they could do with a re-stitching.
He turned to give Pansy an incredulous look, but she was wholly occupied explaining the composition of the bed hangings to him.
Draco barely held on to his tongue.
There was a chance he was making a highly incorrect assumption, but he doubted it.
They visited his father's study next. Or rather, they stopped at the door. They were standing in the exact spot where he had nearly kissed Hermione the day they visited his father.
Pansy misunderstood his hesitation. "Would you like a moment alone?"
He dredged up a suitable reply. "No, it's alright. I think I'll skip this room for now. Plenty of time to get reacquainted later."
She nodded, took his hand and led them to the nearby drawing room.
"There wasn't much to do in there, anyway. Toolip kept it spotless even after your father left. She said that was how he would have wanted it."
"Where is Toolip, by the way? You haven't retired her have you?"
"That elf?" Pansy scoffed. "I'd have more luck seducing Harry Potter. She' s in the village running errands."
"Speaking of Thimble Creek. The change there is nothing short of remarkable," Draco noted.
Pansy grinned. "It is isn't it? It's all because of Hornbeam. I'm having the villagers plant it. It would have been impossible to maintain the place with the small amount of money the Ministry allotted to me to stay here. So I had to find some other way to generate income. The soil on your estate is apparently the best in the country for it. Took us a while to work out how to process the wood, but once we did, we've been selling it directly to the wand-makers and a few apothecaries. The village has benefited from the profits, as you can see for yourself."
They entered the drawing room and were seated at opposite-facing, striped satin couches beside the fireplace. Pansy stoked the fire while Draco removed his gloves and put them into his pocket.
"They' re nice," Pansy said, admiring the cashmere lined leather. It was obvious the expensive gloves did not match the rest of Draco's arguable basic attire. Pansy was big on details.
"They're Potter's. Along with everything else I'm wearing at the moment,"
he admitted, with some resignation. "I' ve been threatened with decapitation if I don' t return the gloves in particular."
Pansy smoothed her skirt and then stared at him for a moment, hey eyes huge with wonder. "I still can't believe it really is you sitting here across from me."
Draco gave her a fond look. "Have I aged that horribly?"
She laughed. It was the same laugh from school, girlish with a dash of condescension. "Draco darling, even with that haircut you're sporting, you'll be beautiful when you're a hundred and eight." She turned serious. "But was it so very awful as the papers are suggesting? They say you were in Africa for a time. Is that true?"
"I ended up in Egypt," Draco confirmed. "I was in Europe for two years before that."
"What happened in Egypt?"
For a moment, it looked like he wasn't going to go into detail, but then he said, "I tracked Bellatrix to Cairo, and then she fled to Kenya. I ended up catching her in Nairobi and brought her back to Cairo before we came here. That's the short of it."
"Yes," Pansy said, shuddering. Her eyes were wide. "And I bet all the bits in between would give me nightmares. Tell me something? Could it have been done if you'd come back to the Ministry with the information they needed to find her?"
The Committee had of course covered this question from all angles. He told her the same thing he told them.
"Possibly," Draco allowed, "but I think I only managed because I was able to immerse myself in her operations, so to speak. It took a very long time to get close enough without her knowing. I can't begin to describe how paranoid she was towards the end."
"And with good reason, it would seem," Pansy surmised.
His sardonic smile was his reply.
"Do you still have feelings for Granger?" she asked, with an almost cruel indifference. "Only you've been here for over an hour and you haven't once mentioned her name. One can hardly forget the circumstances in which you left,"
Pansy pointed out. "Or speculate as to why you've come back, for that matter."
"My feelings in that regard are unchanged," said Draco, evenly.