Disclaimer; The characters, places and ideas taken from the Harry Potter series belong to J.K. Rowling.
A Never Ending Fight.
14th June 2003
Draco Malfoy hated his job, after the war he was left with the clothes on his back and his wand. His father was imprisoned, his mother escaped life in Azkaban by the skin of her teeth. He still had a criminal record, ordered to have a year long house arrest and two years on probation after that. He paid no attention to his final sentence, not hearing 'life in Azkaban' was a welcome shock.
His mother spent six months in Azkaban, leaving Draco Malfoy homeless and on house arrest. The boy-who-lived saved him, again, getting his apartment and making sure he had food and water for the duration of his imprisonment. Potter had been a distant benefactor. Draco never really saw him, and only ever actually spoke to him through brief, formal letters.
Five years since the war, at 22 years old, Draco worked in the department of Magical Law Enforcement, as a potions master. He had a criminal record; he would never be an auror, a healer or an unspeakable. He was left to his business in his too small office, no room for brewing or storing anything, little red airplanes constantly flying in his door with orders of potions, antidotes, to have this or that analysed.
Draco Malfoy hated his job.
It was half past four, and he had the thrilling choice of analyzing a potion given to him by the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office, or starting another stock of healing potions for Mungo's, and he didn't have the time before five o clock to brew the stock, so he grabbed the vial with the puce potion in it and looked at it.
Draco heaved a long suffering sigh and flicked his wand, making his desk straighten up and the papers fly into a rather large and intimidating pile. He hefted his cauldron onto the desk and lit the fire underneath, uncorking the vial and pouring it in.
"Mother-" Draco cursed, he pulled out his wand and cracked the vial, carefully pulling the glass off the solid thing inside it, and he dumped the puce-colored rock into the cauldron. It hit the pewter with a loud clang and Draco rolled his eyes.
"This is not a potion, this is a clump of misused ingredients."
Draco set about trying to de-solidify the damn thing, taking a lot more work than he first thought.
"Mother fucker!"
It was five to five, and now the rock sitting in the bottom of his cauldron, covered in acid, was emitting a thick black smoke. Immediately Draco cast a bubble head charm and sent his own little red airplane to the Magical Maintenance department. He quickly added chopped cucumber to the cauldron to cool the reaction and used his tongs to fish out the Muggle Department's rock.
"Bloody oath," He cursed again, grabbing what appeared to be a report due in weeks ago for a restricted ingredient that turned out to be mashed celery and blue metal, and wrapped the paper around the rock, leaving it on his desk.
Draco pulled a face at the thick smoke which was clinging along the ceiling like thunderclouds, and he exited his office.
The hallways and lifts were all packed, and becasue he was a dark wizard this one time, every Tom, Dick and Harry decided they were more important and pushed in front of him. Draco put up with it, completely certain any other wizard would not be elbowed in the ribs by the man carrying a flaming box, or be hit in the elbow by the mail lady pushing her cart.
The lines for the floo went fairly quickly and Draco took a half step out of the fireplace, launched himself across the room and flopped onto the lounge.
"Draco, is that you?"
Draco looked up from his ungraceful resting place and offered his mother a small smile.
"Afternoon mother, any news?"
She hurried across the room, reprimanding him for his slouched position and the ash covering the lounge, then began to tell him about the scandal in the Holyhead Harpies (apparently their coach was sleeping with three of them,) and how she heard from Llaria Zabini that Pansy Parkinson has gotten herself into some illict affair with a Gryffindor three years younger than her.
"Word on the street is she has a baby, can you imagine? At twenty two years old, her mother's been hushing the whole thing up of course, anyway, How was work today? You look a fright."
"Thank you, for that mother."
"Watch your tone, Draco," She snapped, standing again.
"Sorry," He said with out apology, "I'm tired, I had a rock cover me in smoke today, and Mungo's have placed another huge order."
"Poor dear, did you get that other thing finished?"
Draco smiled at her feigned interest.
"Yeah, the batch of Polyjuice for the Aurors is coming along and the poison catastrophe in Knockturn Alley has been cleared up."
"Wonderful," She said, snapping her hands together, "This calls for a drink!" Narcissa bustled into the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of wine and began cooking dinner.
Draco wasn't particularly hungry, the smoke had left a rancid taste in his mouth, he did sit up a bit and clean the ash off of the lounge, then he stood.
"I'm going to clean up for dinner," He called to Narcissa, who acknowledged him by rasing her glass to the stove she was busy at, and Draco went to shower.
Draco stayed in the shower until Narcissa came to tell him dinner was ready, he dressed in comfy pants and a tee shirt, and slipped on his slippers before going into the kitchen.
"Good to see you dressed for the occasion," Narcissa teased, Draco replied by shaking his wet hair, which she squealed and told him to behave.
Narcissa had already eaten, and went to read in her own bedroom, closing the door and leaving Draco to his thoughts (and food.) The food was simple and quick to be taken care of. With the rancid taste washed out of his mouth he realised he was hungry, but with nothing else to occupy his time he was left to think.
Draco didn't like thinking. He had never planned to be living like a commoner at this point in his life, he would be training to take over the Malfoy's business - they owned Nimbus and Cleansweep, as well as the company Marvelous Woods, which supply varieties of wand wood to wandmakers over the country. The Malfoys technically still own the companies, but with their assets frozen by the Ministry, Draco has no access to that money, and is not allowed to run the companies. The whole system was set up by the Minister to keep them poor.
Sulking, Draco decided he should go to bed, he had that Merlin be damned rock to deal with tomorrow and the order of pain relief and blood replenishing potions for Mungo's had to be filled A.S.A.P.
He went to his mothers bedroom door first, knocking gently and calling out goodnight, before he went to his own room and flopped into bed, with the thought that, all considering, he wa no longer in a acceptable enough situation to use the expression, any, Tom, Dick and Harry.
Narcissa always got up before him, which was amazing when you find out Draco usually wakes up at six in the morning. Now he sat at the table, Narcissa was cooking again, something with eggs, probably an omelette, for breakfast.
"Did you see the prophet this morning, there was a disappearance." Narcissa began, her back to Draco as she stirred something into the pan.
"Spoiler alert," Draco replied, putting the paper down. "Who was it?"
"Some muggleborn, don't quite remember the name, Creepy, Chevy, Daniel Chevy something like that, he was a couple of years younger than you."
"Who did it?" Draco asked. Narcissa shrugged.
"Haven't the foggiest. The Auror office are ridiculously understaffed, after the war they took in all those half ass children and trained them up, not nearly the sort of quality they're used to. Anyway, he's been missing for about a week."
"What about Potter, he's and auror now isn't he?"
"He works from home, Llaria was telling me he just wants to stay out of the spotlight, and hes been trying to find who killed Molly Weasley."
"Her husband was on the same wage as me, and they had seven kids -"
"Don't you dare say she died of poorness Draco Lucius Malfoy, I raised you to be more sensitive than that. Besides, its quaint."
"It's small, and hard to pay for." Draco took his breakfast off his mother, she was still glaring at him. "And I was marvelling. I wasn't going to say that."
"Well then Mr. Optimism," Narcissa started, "What do you suppose we do?"
"Haven't the foggiest," He echoed, "My motivation is understaffed, I'm going in early today-"
"Running away from your mother?"
"In part," Draco admitted, unapologetically, "Mostly I'd like to get ahead of the Mungo's order, they always leave me too little time, say they give me a week and show up three days after they place the bloody order saying their healers have needed to brew their own potions blah, blah, blah, anyway, I'm off." He kissed her goodbye on the cheek and grabbed his cloak off the hook near the fire, then he flooed back to the ministry for another fun filled shit fight.
The lifts were pleasant, with so few people coming in so early, and Draco made it to his office with no instances of physical abuse to speak of. But his office still had a wisp of the black smoke clinging to the ceiling and he had a rather awful looking pile of paper airplanes on his desk. Half of them were from Mungo's demanding he up the e.t.a. on their order, and the other half were from the minister himself. Surprised, Draco unfolded one from Kingsley, as another plane flew through his open door and poked him in the side of the head. He left the one he had picked up unread and pursued the most recent one.
My office Malfoy, now.
K. Shacklebolt.
Draco's eyebrows shot up, the only times he had been asked to Kingsley's office were for auror cases, he was rarely used for auror cases, only those where they had no choice but to admit he was the best potions master they had. Leaving his office and getting on the lift quickly, Draco jabbed the level one button and waited for the lift to ascend.
He stepped into the Minister's office the same time someone fell out of the floo. Papers went sprawling across the floor followed by an almost comical cloud of ash and smoke.
"Mr. Malfoy, thank you for coming" Kingsley wasn't behind his desk, but standing about three feet from the door, looking at the man who so ungracefully flooed into his office and was now crawling around collecting papers.
"Potter!" Kingsley barked, the clumsy tosser now identified as the chosen one, jumped about a foot in the air and stood, waving his hand and banishing the soot.
"Minister" Potter greeted, sparing a glance at Draco.
"Take a seat, Potter, you too, Malfoy." Kingsley strode around his desk and sat in the winged back chair. Draco looked at Potter, it was the first time he had seen him since the trials and war burial service, then the first anniversary of the death of the Dark Lord nearly three years ago, the last press appearance he made was to receive his Order of Merlin.
Potter was worn out, he had bags under his eyes, his skin was nearly transparent, his eyes dull and his hair was about shoulder length and messier than usual. His clothes were completely black with tears all over them and singed patches. Potter's shoulders slumped as if he were asleep – or nearly asleep.
"Malfoy, for the past three years Potter's been working on the Molly Weasley case. He's so far hit a great deal of dead ends until yesterday when a Potion vial was discovered at the scene of Dennis Creevey's death."
"Denis Creevey," Draco interrupted, "He was in the prophet this morning wasn't he?"
"Yes," Potter answered, "He's been missing for about a week, and turned up dead this morning. Minister, if I could?"
Both Potter and Draco looked at Kingsley, who nodded.
"Molly was poisoned, three years ago, and Denis showed up this morning, same poison. I haven't found anything so far, the poison isn't a regular kind, I'm not entirely sure it's actually poison, could you figure out what it is?"
Draco nodded.
"As long as there is some in the vial."
Potter nodded, "Little bit."
Kingsley drew their attention with a deep cough. "Here's a copy of the file, Malfoy, please remember this is confidential information."
The dismissal was obvious and both he and Potter stood.
"Come see me sometime this week," Potter told him, and handed him a key chain with a tacky golden snitch hanging at the end. "Activation word is Nimbus."