Originally written for Fandoms for Hope and Relief on Facebook, a fan event to raise money for hurricane relief following Hurricane Harvey and Irma. Thanks ever so much to my lovely beta DayDreamDreamer. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
Chapter 1
-oOo-
"This has to be a joke." It was more of a plea for help that a serious question. Unfortunately, Draco knew exactly what his mother looked like when she had bad news to deliver.
"Would you rather be insane? That's the other option, with blood like ours."
Other people being reasonable about problems not affecting them were rarely helpful; this was no exception.
"Remind me again why we signed up to fighting for the Dark Lord if this is what you get after twenty generations of pure-bloods," Draco mumbled, but his heart wasn't in it. Being told that he was a bloody Veela was enough to make any man depressed. It wasn't like he got any benefit from it, unlike the females of the species.
Draco's good looks were entirely natural – male Veelas looked like anyone else, up until the point where their beak came out and all aspirations to normality were lost.
"As no one bothered to ask my opinion before shackling themselves to that contemptible half-blood, I am unable to answer that question." Mother seemed to be full of barely suppressed anger these days; Draco should probably be grateful she hadn't brought out any fireballs yet.
"You could have told me you both have Veela blood before, though." Draco gloomily inspected the talon that had been his first clue something was amiss.
"Due to the pressure you were under, we were reluctant to tell you about what was a remote possibility at the time."
"Not so bloody remote, was it?" Draco said under his breath.
Narcissa had always had excellent hearing, especially where he was concerned. "There is no need to use vulgar language. I sympathise with your affliction, of course, but hopefully it can be managed. It need not disturb the natural course of your life at all."
She did not mention the Erumpent in the room – his mate, or lack thereof.
The reason the Blacks had managed to rack up twenty generations of pure-blood ancestors were that Veelas were not completely stupid, in evolutionary terms. Normally, Veelas attached themselves to a mate that they were attracted to before their heritage manifested itself and they erupted in feathers when crossed.
Mating required proximity and affection – it had been fairly easy for strict parents to manipulate, ensuring their offspring met only suitable partners during the crucial period.
Draco, however, had been working at the security desk receiving visitors to the Ministry of Magic for the last three years, as part of his probation. If there were any of his contemporaries he had not met in that period, it was probably because they had immigrated to Antarctica.
He was still no closer to knowing who it was that had triggered his transformation – the talons had emerged during an argument with his father, with the unexpected bonus of shutting Lucius up mid-argument for the first time. It probably wouldn't work the next time, but Draco planned to cherish the memory of his father's face, with the mouth hanging open and a look of what only could be fear, as Draco was waving a four-inch talon in front of him.
He ruthlessly suppressed the fluttering in his stomach that suggested very well he knew who he wanted his mate to be.
It would be fine. It would probably turn out to be Pansy. She would happily accept his proposal and move into the Manor, and as long as Draco developed selective deafness and several time-consuming hobbies they would probably rub along tolerably.
Flights of fancy were very good to keep him entertained when the endless stream of visitors to the Ministry subsided, but they didn't belong in real life.
"Walnut and phoenix feather, 11''." Draco flexed it. "Still unyielding, I see. One could almost suspect the wand of being metaphorical, Miss Granger."
She snatched her wand back, but her eyes were laughing. "Despite your best efforts, you might add."
"Just doing my job," he defended himself, trying to string out the moment as long as possible.
Hermione hoisted her battered messenger bag on her shoulder, stuck her wand back into her robes and went off in the direction of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Draco tried not to look like he had suffered a bereavement as the last strand of bouncing brown hair disappeared around the corner.
Right-o.
Now that he knew who his mate was, all he needed to do was to decide what to do with that knowledge.
Unfortunately, burrowing himself into a hole deep beneath Levels 11, 12 and 13 of the Ministry was not an option.
Whatever else he was, Draco was still a Malfoy and with that came certain obligations.
While he did not agree with his father what they were, they still required him to be a functioning member of society. Step one in this master plan had been to do the opposite of what his parents had suggested in the wake of the Battle of Hogwarts. Hiding away at the Manor pretending the war had never happened may have been a damn sight easier than facing his former enemies in the Ministry Atrium, but Draco would still have been an outcast and the Malfoy name mud.
Doing things his way had meant some uncomfortable months, but eventually everyone had gotten used to his presence. He had even been promoted. They needed all hands on deck to process arrivals in the mornings, but after that Draco had plenty of time to spend developing truly tricky spells to protect the Ministry.
It wasn't what he would have chosen, but then the results of Draco making his own choices had been appalling. Perhaps it was just as well that his subconscious picked a mate.
Only then did it occur to him that his parents' objections to his parole arrangements may have been linked to his Veela heritage, rather than a deep-rooted dislike of seeing a Malfoy work like a normal person.
"All right, Draco? You look like the Crup ate your dinner." Trust Perkins to pick today for being observant; they could have done with it last week when Internal Audit had been snooping around their Detecting Charms.
"If only," Draco mumbled absentmindedly.
He had got an idea.
"You want me to explain coffee pods to you?" Tracey Davis viewed the world with healthy scepticism at the best of times, but her reaction made Draco wonder if he had missed something essential.
Maybe the little capsules were made from lost children or something. Unlikely, considering Hermione's tendencies towards saving people, but a possibility.
"Draco, why do you care about how Muggles make coffee? You hate coffee."
Once upon a time, she might have said that he hated Muggles, but Tracey had always been very good at picking out which way the wind was blowing (as evidenced by having picked the right side to fight for in the war, instead of figuring out the hard way like most of the other Slytherins).
"Someone I want to curry a favour from drinks Muggle coffee."
"Ah."
Amongst Slytherins, it was never hard to find a plausible explanation. No one expected him to tell the truth, after all.
Hermione inspected her desk dubiously. The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures did not spend money willy-nilly – if something still worked, odds were it was still in place, despite it dating back centuries (witness the retrograde Magical Creature legislation).
Nothing had changed since last week – the battered mahogany surface was still covered with parchments, memos and reference books, with the occasional empty cup thrown in.
The chair was the same, too, as was the rest of the room – Whittlewaite did not move unless he had to, having wiggled out of field assignments several decades ago. These days, he seemed to have stopped leaving his desk, too, making full use of his wand to complete the minuscule amount of work he saw fit to turn in.
Thinking about Whittlewaite set Hermione's blood pressure soaring. Ironically, that's what tipped her off.
It wasn't the office that had changed, it was her: somehow, she had been more content, for want of a better word, in the last few days. It certainly wasn't due to Whittlewaite doing an honest day's work for once, so what else could explain it?
Her eye landed on the empty cups – wasn't there quite a lot of them?
After rounding up the cups, she counted them. Eight cups of coffee in two days was rather a lot. Deciding to do some fieldwork, she left the snoring Whittlewaite behind.
"Someone fiddling with your coffee machine to make it nicer isn't the Aurors' usual remit, Hermione." The more reasonable Harry became, the more irritating Hermione found him.
"But why would they do that? Are you sure there's nothing in those pods?"
"Nothing more sinister than some rather nice Ethiopian roast. Are you sure they didn't just get a new supplier?"
Hermione sighed. "This is the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Nothing has changed since 1893 unless I instigated it."
"A Ministry-wide change, then?"
"Nope. I checked your machine before getting here – it's the same muck as usual."
Harry pushed his chair back, stretching before he bounced on his heels. "Maybe you have an unknown benefactor, then. What's his name – Thistlethwaite? Maybe someone has the hots for him?"
"I'm not going for lunch with you if you're going to say things like that!"
The following day brought more decent coffee and a letter by owl.
Dear Miss Granger,
it began.
We are pleased to announce that you have been selected to participate in a random study to explore your preferences for a range of consumer goods.
Hermione moved to tear it up before spotting the penultimate paragraph:
While we recognise this will require a few hours of your time, we hope that 1,089 Galleons, 5 sickles, and one Knut will provide suitable compensation.
In addition to being frustrating, often boring and sometimes infuriating, working for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures also paid badly. If one considered her hourly rate, Hermione would earn more washing dishes at The Leaky Cauldron.
More than a thousand Galleons would allow her to go on holidays somewhere more exciting than Devon this year (while The Burrow certainly never was boring, warring siblings and impromptu Quidditch matches blurred into the same after a few years).
She could go to South America, to learn from the Creature legislation there...
Hermione's dreams of exotic bureaucracy were rudely interrupted by her common sense. Especially coming on foot of the mysterious coffee swap, anyone showing an exaggerated interest in her was suspicious.
Still, more than a grand – it was worth a few discrete checks, surely?
Hermione knew her Hufflepuffs, and Hannah Abbott was so straight the average arrow stood no chance.
From Hannah's account of her work, it wasn't very different from Muggle customer research outfits, and there was no obvious catch. Besides, if Hannah asked anything that conceivably could be dangerous knowledge in the wrong hands, Hermione could just cut the interview short. Whether she preferred Earl Grey to English Breakfast wasn't really of interest to anyone – was it?
Hermione almost dropped her cup of Earl Grey (only at breakfast, and it had to be Twinings or it didn't taste right).
What if someone would try to impersonate her? Knowing her preferences for seemingly innocuous things would make it considerably easier – hadn't she found out the hard way how many little things the successful impersonator must manage? A thousand Galleons was all well and good, but it wasn't worth compromising her security.
Regretfully, she pulled out a piece of parchment to write to Hannah. A holiday would have been nice.
To be continued next week