A/N: And I'm back! Don't you just love it when I keep my promises? Thank you to all of you lovely people who read, reviewed, followed, and favourited. It really pushed me to get things done and it's always interesting to see what you guys think. Enjoy this next chapter! It's a little different.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series. I do however, claim full ownership over Andrea Saltzman and any characters that you do not recognize. Everything else belongs to the appropriate owners.

Rating: T for coarse language, adult themes, and violent Situations.

CHAPTER ONE: WHERE IN THE WORLD IS DRACO MALFOY?

Twenty Years Later: August, 2022

Introducing Andrea Saltzman, junior reporter at the Daily Prophet (and the only capable person on the entire staff, in her opinion), 24, female, a brunette, daughter to Ministry of Transportation workers Bob and Marian Saltzman.

Introducing Andrea Saltzman's extremely red face, as Ms. Saltzman fumes silently at her desk because her boss is a chauvinistic, bigoted, bastarding brat that couldn't see talent if it crawled its way past the huge stick up his arse -

Andrea immediately crumpled the piece of parchment she'd been scribbling furiously on as her said boss – The great and mighty Theodore Nott – passed just by her desk, shaking the hand of Jerry Sanford, who everyone said would get the promotion that Andrea so desperately wanted and deserved. And by hell did she deserve it! She was the one who put in the hours while everyone else was off doing whatever the hell people with lives did. She was the one who brought in all the great stories.

Hell, she was the one who got the most fan letters, much to the chagrin of her colleagues – who were primarily composed of ex-Slytherin males. She was the one who got the most ratings, the most popularity over her writing, the numbers. But there was obviously no way that she'd get the promotion because, hell, obviously slytherins didn't believe in raising females to a place of power. Who the hell would consider something so stupid anyway?

Screw meritocracy.

She sighed and rolled her shoulders as she watched Nott and his new little bitch go into the former's office, no doubt talking about how brilliant they were and how great it was to be a man in this world. Or more likely, they were talking about how much Sanford was going to get paid when the (fixed) promotion would be announced next week.

Seriously, where was the fairness in all this? Nott could have actually seriously considered who was best to take the spot of senior reporter, even if it wasn't her (which it totally should be because she really was the best out of all of them. Obviously). But he'd just automatically had chosen the male he'd liked best out of all of them. Or, more accurately, the junior reporter that kissed the most arse to the executives.

As Sanford walked out of Nott's office with a huge grin on his face, Andrea's heart sank. She knew there was absolutely no way that she was going to get that promotion, or any promotion in this place. She ought to really just take her lot in life and make peace with the fact that journalism was a cut throat, male driven business.

She had no place here. So, she continued with fact checking the latest issue going to press and tried not to cry until she'd managed to make it back to her (parents') house.

/

"Hey, did you hear?" Sanford said in his obnoxiously loud voice as they all ate lunch in their drabby little lunch room. "Lucius Malfoy passed away last night."

There were murmurs, none too interested.

"So?" someone finally asked. Quite rudely in her opinion. "Are you covering the obituaries now, Sanford?"

Snickers followed, but Andrea only rolled her eyes. Some glanced in her direction to see her reaction, but she kept her face composed. There was no use telling these people that just because one wrote about a broad range of things (including obituaries of people whom society had long forgotten) did not make you any less of a writer. These arses wouldn't understand something so profound. In fact, most of them probably didn't even know who Lucius Malfoy was, how could anyone expect people like these to appreciate the significance of his death?

Sanford scoffed and her skin literally prickled. One day, she would choke him in his sleep, she would. And then she'd be the queen of the Daily Prophet, the one getting all the good articles and promotions. Hell, she'd even torch his pretentious little house at the perfect location in London. His stupid pig nosed wife could go to hell with him. That would show the bastards who they were dealing with!

"... no one left to take his fortune, you know," he was saying. "The man was filthy rich, after all. The Ministry's talking about taking the whole lot of it on the down low. Heard it from Nott himself -"

"What?" she burst out, completely forgetting her own rules about not talking to any of the brats she worked with. "What about his son? Draco Malfoy?"

A silence swept over the room, which was rather remarkable considering that the room was filled with people who normally couldn't shove a sock in it if they sewed their own mouths shut. But she did not notice it whatsoever. It hardly mattered to her that the lot of them were shocked that she'd even deigned to participate in one of their conversations, as reserved as she usually was, nor the fact that this would probably come back to bite her in the arse later. Instead, she stared at him expectantly, waiting for the answer to her question. He cleared his throat uncomfortably under her gaze.

So alright, she could be a little unnecessarily intense and it freaked most people out.

"Well... his son's been missing for years, hasn't he? Nearly forever? No one thinks he's going to step forward now to claim his inheritance."

"Well..." she sarcastically imitated him, much to his irritation and to the amusement of the others. By Gods was it great to piss off the great and mighty Sanford. "Why not?"

"Well," he stressed, careful not to be outdone by the likes of her, "he's been rumoured to be dead."

The conversation continued without her as she'd long since zoned out. Draco Malfoy was an interesting case, perhaps one of the odder conundrums of the old war stories. She was one of the few people, at least out of her age group, that had actually paid attention to the war stories, the great figures, the excitement. No one liked to dwell on Voldemort's reign these days or Harry Potter's triumph, not unless you were fifty and boring. But she, the ever studious nerd, had soaked it all in.

She knew all about the battle of Hogwarts, who had died and how, how Albus Dumbledore had possessed the Elder Wand, and how Harry Potter had defeated Voldemort with a rebounding spell twice. She knew that Draco Malfoy had let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts and had been tasked to kill Dumbledore and how he couldn't go through with it.

And she was aware that Draco Malfoy had vanished off the face of the earth – quite randomly – exactly three years after the war. None of the books she'd read or the stories she'd heard had ever explained his longstanding absence. It was a really curious thing, but no one really seemed to care.

True, he wasn't the most heroic of characters. In fact, from everything she knew, he'd sounded quite like a jackass. But to vanish from the face of the earth and have that be the end of it? She supposed it was just a tiny bit strange. His father had never commented about it. It had been as if he'd never had a son from the way he'd behaved.

In light of the elder Malfoy's death, this would definitely sell papers, writing about the mysterious disappearance of a now very rich man. And if she could write a hit article, maybe she could get the attention of her boss. And maybe if Theodore Nott paid her a bit of attention, she could possibly convince him to dump the one hit wonder and give her the promotion instead.

It was a fantastic plan, really! But first she would have to do a little snooping.

/

"I want to write an investigative story on the whereabouts of Draco Malfoy."

Then he really did stop shuffling the papers on his desk and looked up (or actually down at her) to stare her right in her eye. Truthfully, it was a little nerve wracking, but she'd be damned if she would let him intimidate her out of this. This was her once chance! So instead of his sweltering gaze, she focused on...well, him.

He hadn't aged well, Nott. The wrinkles around his eyes, his receding hairline, his unfortunately paunchy belly. All these things calmed her for some reason she couldn't quite place. As he shifted uncomfortably before her, she supposed her scrutiny of him and his body unnerved him. Maybe the man before her actually felt self conscious for once. It would serve him right.

"Why?" he finally asked her. His tone was weary.

"With the death of Lucius Malfoy and the uncertainty surrounding the family fortune, I think the piece will spark a lot of intrigue," she said in her most formal tone (And by Gods was it fucking formal!) but Nott had a faraway look in his eyes. "Sir?"

"How will you proceed?" he asked after an unusually long silence. "No one has heard from Draco Malfoy in over twenty years."

This fact seemed to pain him and she almost smacked herself over the head. How had she failed to recognize the obvious? The very thing that would make her very dreams come true provided that she was successful? She tried to remain straight faced, to not break down in song and give herself away in front of him.

"Was he a good friend of yours, sir?" she asked innocently. Well, as innocently as her person like her could, anyway.

Which clearly wasn't innocently enough, because his gaze turned sharp. "You may write this article of yours, but I will read it myself before it goes to press. Understood?"

"Yes, sir!" she exclaimed before stepping out of the office, completely unaware of the incredulous and somewhat jealous stares of her coworkers following her behind out of the building.

/

As excited as she was about her new mission, the entire endeavour was an extremely frustrating chore. After all, how was one supposed to find a man that no one had heard of or from in over two decades? But moreover, how does one find a man that no one, absolutely no one cared about finding? He was not well liked. He almost had the status of a war criminal. That was about it, about all anyone needed to know.

So instead of asking people, she'd turned to the paper trail, of which there was also next to nothing. She'd painstakingly gone through all the old issues of the prophet, but the last time he'd been mentioned was at the Death Eater trials held after the war to account for his war crimes. He hadn't been spotted by any other news source, either. She'd checked and then double checked. She'd even gone through the despicable archives of Witch Weekly!

And all for nothing. There was no trace of the man.

Three days had passed in this fashion and she'd honestly been about to give up on the entire thing – screw going places in life, who the hell needed such things anyway? – when she realized how stupid she'd been. If someone were looking for a missing person, where were they supposed to go? Of course, the first stop would be to consult the grandest, largest, most comprehensible source of information in the entirety of wizarding Britain.

The Ministry of Magic.

After that it was almost ridiculously easy. All she'd had to do was discreetly sneak into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on the pretense of fact checking and then flirt on the side with one of their new interns. What's his name (but no really, what was his name?) then very nervously let her into the grandiose room of files that would end all files on the sly.

She'd never been there before, had only heard tales of it from just about every journalist and wanna-be reporter ever. And truly, it was a sight to behold. Rooms upon rooms, shelves upon shelves, piles and piles of documents just sitting there to be explored about everyone there ever was. Well, more accurately, everyone that had ever set foot in Wizarding Britain in the past 100 years. All older files were kept in storage on some other level – she didn't know where.

But that didn't matter. Draco Malfoy wasn't that old of news.

She itched to explore. Some of her stories could be confirmed with just a peak into some of these documents. Like, did the Wasps seeker Dana Richards actually get hauled in for questioning last June for suspected Goblin torture? Surely something like that would be in Dana's file. And she was in the proximity of it. All she'd have to do was look for it.

But she quelled the hunger, the curiosity. She was on a mission here and she only had so much time. Think of the bloody promotion! If she was found in here, she'd probably be dragged straight to the Auror department. And then Nott would have to be contacted. The bloody Slytherin that he was, he'd probably fire her for this. She hurried towards the aisle labelled with a huge letter M.

It only took her a couple of moments to find it. It was the only spot in the entire shelve that had disrupted dust – probably because someone had come in here to retrieve Lucius Malfoy's file. She greedily reached for it. It wasn't overly thick like his father's file, probably because Draco Malfoy hadn't been as important as he'd always said he was. But then again, maybe that was a good thing. Less to search through.

Draco Malfoy

Birth: 5 June 1980

Residence: Unknown

...

She thumbed through the rest of the thin folder, but it was all just junk about his war trials and how his Hogwarts Graduation Certificate had been rendered null and void. It was all very disappointing, but at least she knew he was alive. She could work with something like that. A dead man didn't really leave too many opportunities for research, especially one as mysterious as this.

She could hear footsteps.

Quickly, she began to furiously flip through the pages, skimming as fast as she could. Fuck it, but they'd charmed the files so that it was impossible to make copies of them – those damn Ministry workers! There wasn't much of note, except that he'd been charged with maiming a hippogriff three years after his war trail. It was entirely random and slightly amusing – not that she had time to be amused.

The footsteps were hurried and they were coming closer.

And then she saw it, at the very back of the file. It was a handwritten note, scrawled rather messily right at the bottom right hand corner of the file. It was so discreet that she wouldn't have noticed it if she hadn't been paying such close attention. Bringing the file closer to her face, she realized it was a series of numbers – nearly illegible and almost faded.

SC.998.997.56789

Memorizing it as quickly as she could, she shoved the file back into what she hoped was its proper place and turned to meet the footsteps that had reached it. She let out a breath when she realized it was only the intern (seriously, what was his name?). He seemed out of breath and out of patience because there was a panicked look on his face.

"Come on, we have to go," he whispered. "Lunch is almost over and you can't be here when they all come back!"

She just nodded, repeating the numbers inside her head. She didn't know what they could mean, but she knew that they had to have some kind of importance – otherwise, why the hell would it be there, right? RIGHT? The intern was pulling her none too gently by the wrist and that irritated her mildly. Or hugely. So, alright, she would have punched him square in the jaw if she hadn't been busy trying to memorize her ticket to making 20% more a month.

SC.998.997.56789

When they were safely in the grimy ministry cafeteria, intern boy looked at her relieved. As if he'd been the best thing that had happened to her since last Christmas's bonus. She tried to not glare at him, because he really could make a scene if he wanted to. And she needed these people to stay on good terms with her, because hell – information wasn't always easy to come by! She really ought to learn his name.

"So... did you get what you needed?"

"Yep!" Her smile turned slightly more genuine as she repeated the number in her head once again. He looked gratified. As if it would help him get into her pants or something as ridiculous as that. "Thanks so much, really. I don't think I'd have been able to get this story done in time without you!"

"I was thinking we could go out next Friday to this really cool place-"

"You know, my lunch break is just about over too, how about I floo you later and we can catch up, okay?" she said, already walking away from his suddenly not so happy face. "Thanks again!"

"Don't you need my address?" he was calling after her.

"See you!" she shouted.

The second she rounded the corner, she started off on a sprint to the Apparation points, just in case he decided to follow her to give her his address after all.

/

SC.998.997.56789

The numbers were haunting her.

It had been two days since her not so eventful voyage into the Ministry of Magic and she hadn't been able to figure out what the numbers meant or what they were for or why someone had thought to scribble them down into Malfoy's file. Hell, for all she knew they could've just been entirely random or meant nothing. Or maybe they were just a serial to help the interns file the stupid files. Nevertheless, she couldn't get the nagging suspicion that the numbers meant something and if she only just kept looking she'd find something that would help her.

But she'd found nothing so far, and it was very frustrating. And it wasn't for lack of trying either! She'd gone through everything there was possible to go through, every conceivable possible avenue for searching and had only ever reached dead ends. Even her parents hadn't known what it was or the great and bratty brownnoser that insisted on bothering her every so often at work.

"Hey Saltzman," some idiotic jerk shouted at her across the office, "these need fact checking. Up for it?"

She sighed as the only blond in the office walked towards her. To be honest, he was the nicest of the bunch. He rarely made comments about her behind her back because she was a woman. Actually, he was the second most industrious person in the entire office! (Her being the first, obviously). But as he dumped the large bundle of papers with a loud thunk to her desk, she was reminded of the fact that he was still an arsehole that thought her below him.

She rolled her eyes as he smiled at her. "Can't you at least untie the bloody knot?"

"Your wish is my command," he said with a disgustingly embellished bow in her direction.

And boy was the man clumsy. As he untied the string that was keeping the entire package together, he must have slipped or something equally as ridiculous, because everything went flying everywhere. As if she didn't have enough on her plate. As she got down on her knees, she fancied he'd planned this. Of course they all wanted her on her knees.

And then she saw it. The sheet with the numbers on it. The numbers like her number. And she'd had to snatch it like the psychotic nutcase she was. He stared at her rather oddly as her eyes quickly skimmed over the sheet, but the sheet didn't make any sense, probably because it belonged with other sheets of paper – and how was she supposed to find them in a paper mess like this? She began to panic.

"Are you quite alright?" blondie asked, waving his wand so that the mess reassembled itself neatly on her desk. "You could've just used your wand you know."

She blushed. Then unceremoniously shoved the piece of paper into his face. "What is this?"

He moved her arm back so he could stare at them properly, much to his amusement. "They're just old Azkaban numbers. You know, for the Lucius Malfoy obituary?"

"What do you mean old Azkaban numbers?" she asked sharply. He stared at her as if she was odd – which, admittedly, she was – and then placed the sheet of paper onto her desk.

"They used to write them like this," he said, borrowing a quill of her desk and circling the number that had caught her eye. "Serial code for the security status and then an eleven digit prisoner number. They changed their system fifteen years ago, but I bet you're familiar with that by now."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked absentmindedly.

"Just complimenting you on your knowledge, Saltzman," he said with a grin. "Take it easy."

But she wasn't paying attention, nor did she care. She had a number of a cell in Azkaban and it had been scribbled in the file of Draco Lucius Malfoy – handwritten by someone. Someone that had put him there? Or was he there at all? He wasn't dead, the file had proven that much. Could it really be that Draco Malfoy had spent the last 20 years rotting away in Azkaban? For what? And how? In secret? She realized blondie was still talking to her when she interrupted.

"What say you and I go to Azkaban tomorrow?"

But in her head she was thinking: Promotion here I come.

A/N: If you don't like Andrea's character or reading her point of view, don't worry – starting chapter three, we're switching away from it. Hope you enjoyed! Don't forget to read and review!

In the meanwhile, here's a spoiler from the next chapter:

A shiver of fear passed through her as the guard unlocked a huge iron door, gesturing for her to enter an unlit corridor. She hesitantly obeyed, keeping the grand prize firmly in her mind. She had to do this, there was no other alternative. The guard shoved a lantern in her hands, which she nearly dropped, and then slammed the door shut on her, trapping her inside with god knows who or what.

She had to bite down on her tongue to prevent herself from screaming.