"For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere"- Donne

Draco Malfoy did not enjoy surprises.

In fact, he loathed them. But, oddly, he always enjoyed surprising others. And nothing seemed to astonish people more than when they came into the Department of Aurors and saw him sitting there, shirtsleeves pushed up past the elbows, deatheater tattoo on display. Draco liked to make people nervous, and never did they seem to squirm more than when he sat across from them smirking after asking them question after question relentlessly. Draco made most people nervous these days. This seemed linked to the fact that he had originally been hired to track down the people he used to call friends. He had a knack for this; people always spilled their guts when he was the one interrogating. So, after all of his old playmates had been rounded up, Kingsley Shacklebolt had come into Draco's office personally to ask him to stay on full-time.

The years after the War had been the worst years and best years of Draco's life. On the plus side, he didn't have to pretend with anyone anymore. On the down side, there weren't that many people hanging around for Draco to experience his new freedom with. To say that he was an outsider was an understatement. The first few months seem to pass in a daze. Even now, Draco had a hard time remembering any point in time between June and Christmas. The only day that stood out was one of supreme happiness, the day of his father's death. Draco had spent the morning roaming the Manor's forest. He had found himself increasingly attracted to the calm, penetrating quiet of the ancient woods. His contemplation was only broken by an earsplitting scream. When he entered the manor grasping at his stitched side, he realized the shouts were now sobs coming from his parents' bedroom. He saw the door ajar and could hear his mother's cries from within. On the floor was Lucius. Silver hair fanned out all around his face, his eyes wide open and already milky. He had done what came naturally to him and, yet again, took the easy way out. Beside him lay a dagger, his implement of choice. The knife had been in his family for years and years, far longer than anyone could remember. It was powerful. It was also the one that Bellatrix Lastrange had used to torture Hermione Granger on the Malfoy's floor. Carving into her like a Halloween pumpkin. Now it lay discarded after being used on its own master with his own hands. Lucius had turned his arms to ribbons, seemingly convinced that one slice was simply not enough. For the first time in a long time, Draco agreed with his father.

Draco had become sole possessor of the Malfoy fortune overnight. Obviously, one of the richest men in England (wizard or no) didn't need a ministry job to support himself. So, when he came to work for the department, more than one person questioned his motifs. Draco chuckled at that. Must he always have some underlying plot like some kind of scheming villain? Maybe some things never do change. It was true; Draco didn't do this for the money. He also didn't do it to save face or repair his reputation, as everyone believed. Frankly, he couldn't have cared less what the hallway gossips said about him when he walked by their desks every morning. He was doing this for his own reasons. So, he admitted, maybe everyone wasn't too far off from the truth. Besides, what good is a Malfoy without a motif?

Draco was sitting at his desk with his feet propped up, looking out a window. The first thing he had done when he got his office was to turn the desk from its original position facing the doorway to face backwards at a marvelous view of downtown London. For a muggle city, Draco had to admit it wasn't all that bad. When work became stressful or Draco felt his temper rise, he would simply look out at the cityscape and admire it for its complexity. Muggles were smart. That much he had to admit. They seemed to cope so well without magic. Their giant red trolley buses and telephone booths amused him greatly and on more than one occasion. He was fascinated with this world that he had never seen before. He was so enthralled with it that when hours of work had become long and Narcissa particularly distant, he had decided to take out a small flat here in the heart of the city. It had taken some convincing on his part to keep his mother from believing he had lost his mind.

As he watched from his office perch, his favorite game was to pick out one muggle and follow their course in this part of the city until he couldn't see them anymore. Some of them dawdled, going from store front to store front. Some of them walked quickly, looking straight ahead, never veering off course, never stopping. Those were the ones that Draco pitied. They always seemed to be on the go and never took the time to appreciate their surroundings. From his vantage point he could see the bigger picture. He had always despised those who could not. In honesty, it's what made him so good at what he did. He was cunning, and he could see all the pieces and how they locked together. He could also see when they didn't.

Just like himself and Pansy. He sighed lightly.

Thinking of her always caused a slight tightening in his chest. At first after the divorce, he had thought it was because he still loved her, still cared for her in some incomprehensible way. As time when on, he understood that it wasn't longing he was feeling. It was guilt, shame, and embarrassment that caused his breathing to cut short and his eyes to crinkle up in a pained wince. He had mistreated her. He had been less than the man he expected himself to be. That much was true, but she was so damn unbearable. She was unbearable because she was perfect, everything he could have ever wanted, but didn't. She was beautiful. He had never tired of her body. On lonely nights he still caught himself thinking of the dip of her waist and fullness of her hips, the skin, young and supple, drawn tightly over the bones and muscles, but even that was too much, too perfect, too symmetrical. Worse yet, she had loved him, truly loved him. That made it all the harder to look up at her at breakfast, her hair deliciously rumpled, her watery blue eyes locked on him, and tell her that he simply didn't. Never had. Never would. He had went to the office that morning and when he returned home all of her things were gone. No note. No good-byes, just the way that Draco had wanted it. Even in her departure Pansy Parkinson Malfoy had read Draco's mind and acted her part bloody perfectly. It only made him hate her more.

He let his eyes get lost in the knots of people pouring into the streets of the city. It was lunch time and he ignored the piled up inbox that desperately needed his complete attention for his favorite of past times. He chose a woman making her way through the crowds deliberately without looking up at anything around her. Draco had always watched people, from earliest childhood. His parents had taught him to be seen and not heard, which meant that Draco watched more, talked less than the usual child. For some reason, he had always loved the meditation of pure silence. He wanted nothing more than to retreat into his own head and watch the world go by. He focused on the woman now and noticed that he had seen her before. She was a regular on this street, though he had never tracked her. He'd seen her once enter a corner coffee shop, once stop and make a phone call to someone, once stop and buy a magazine from a newspaper hut. Always the same coat, always the same hat. Never changing, just blending into the scenery.

Her face was too far off to make out. They always were. She was easy to follow because of the riot of brown curls pouring from underneath her hat. They positively foamed against the paleness of her skin. She walked in an unyieldingly straight line, expecting lesser mortals to part on the street for her, which they did, it seemed. Her head was held high, and she looked straight ahead. She was not like the others that he had seen so full of hustle and bustle that they failed to notice any detail of the glorious city around them. She seemed like a queen, the city, her subject. Unafraid of her power, she chose to wear it as a mantle. He noticed that her hips did not swing like most confident women's. It was obviously not in her beauty in which her self-assurance lie, Draco surmised. She didn't want to attract people to her body. She walked like a man. Draco took a stab in the dark and assumed that this was a woman you didn't want to cross, one that wouldn't back down if you screamed, her eyes filled with crocodile tears, her upturned face begging for an apology. No, she was the type of woman that fought back with nails like claws, the type his father had always told him needed to be put back in their place with firm hands and harsh words.

Draco's eyes followed her. To his surprise, she quickly approached one of the telephone booths which the ministry used as an entrance point to the building. She tilted her head up to look at the "Danger, Stay Out" sign briefly before glancing around herself, entering it, and promptly disappearing. So, she wasn't a muggle after all, but why did he see her on these streets so often? And, why then did she choose to enter the ministry that way? As far as Draco knew, he was the only ministry employee that chose to live in this area of town, and the first thing he had done to his flat was to have the deep stone fireplace outfitted to connect to the floo network. Most wizards and witches, even those not employed by the Ministry of Magic opted to use this method or Apparition to get to the Ministry. No one had used that entrance in years. Draco shook this off and finally turned himself to his inbox, which had been quietly over filling with enchanted notes and reports since his little diversion had begun. He was in the middle of a case report when he heard a quick raping at his door. Draco didn't bother turning around. What would be the point when already knew who it was.

"Hello, Potter." He said nonchalantly. He turned his chair around to face the savior of the wizarding world.

"Malfoy, how's the Roderick report going?" Harry asked looking over Draco's shoulder. He wasn't meeting Draco's eyes, something very uncharacteristic for his earnest, straight-forward boss. At first, he thought it would be awkward to work for the Boy Wonder, but he had found that Harry hadn't forgotten his mother's kindness to him. The two found that working together was one of the most natural things in the world. Harry was in charge which made him feel like he had the upper hand over Draco's temper and ego, and Draco, ever the elitist, knew that his money and his name gave him a level of good manners and privilege that Harry would never quite understand.

Both men would have never admitted it, but each one was the only person that still treated the other as a person. Harry got so tired of people falling all over themselves when he went anywhere or did anything. Malfoy was about the only person he knew that couldn't have cared less that Harry had brought peace to their world. At the same time, Draco had gotten used to the whispers and sneaky glances when no one thought that he was looking. He had grown accustom to people staring at the tattoo on his arm and then quickly changing their direction on a street. However, Harry was one of the only people that didn't bring up Draco's past, who wasn't even a little bit afraid of him. In short, Harry was the only person Draco couldn't surprise. They had forged not a friendship but a level of mutual respect that hadn't existed when they were boys.

"It's going fine," Draco said speculatively, "Now, what is it that you actually need to tell me, Potter?"

Harry sighed heavily, "Look Draco, this is uncomfortable, but we have an issue." Draco's eyes narrowed as Harry continued on. "Blaise is back in England."

Draco's mouth dropped at the news. He had worked for the past five years to round up all of the supporters of Voldemort that were still out there. All major cohorts had been accounted for in some way except for Draco's former best friend. Blaise had entered the leagues of the Dark Lord two months after Draco had taken his oath to kill Albus Dumbledore, and it was no secret to any of those in the Dark Lords inner circle that Blaise had quickly surpassed the Malfoy heir in all ways. Blaise was ruthless in his work to assist He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. There was no work he wouldn't do, no matter how savage. Draco had chased Blaise all over the countryside, Blasie staying close enough to toy with Draco and far enough away to make it bloody impossible to find him. This pattern had continued for about 18 months until one day the trail went cold. He just disappeared. He was the only person that Draco had failed to catch. Draco hadn't forgiven him for that.

"How do you know?" Draco asked, wondering how he could have possibly missed a clue. Catching Blaise sat constantly in the back of Draco's mind, his white whale.

"We have a victim who was attacked by him last night," Harry said his voice tightening. Draco guessed that this wasn't just any victim. Draco straightened his posture slightly. He had to talk to this person immediately. Had to get into the memories and dissect them for clues about Blaise.

"She's here and I'd like for you to speak with her," Harry said, giving him exactly what he wanted.

"Well, by all means send her in. Would you like to assist me?" Draco asked, feeling slightly confident in his interrogation skills. Everyone in the department knew that he was the best at getting down to the information that really mattered in a case.

"No, no. She's told me all she needs to. And besides, if we need more from her I can just ask her about it later." Potter said. "It's not like we don't know –" Potter stopped himself and changed gears. "Well I suppose it'll make sense soon enough. I'll let you handle this on your own."

Draco wasn't exactly sure how to interpret this little interlude, so he merely cleared his throat and nodded as Potter began to leave the room.

"I'll go ahead and send her in, then," Potter said.

Draco turned back around in his chair to face the windows yet again.

"Oh, and Malfoy?"

"Yes?" he answered already looking out again at the pebble grey sky.

"I do hope you're in the mood for a reunion." Draco heard the door shut, and he stayed eerily still, letting all that Harry had said sink in.

He was in the middle of his contemplation when he was again interrupted by a quiet knock at the door.

"Come in," he said. His eyes locked on the clouds.

"Well, Malfoy," she said, her voice deeper than the last time they had seen each other, "I can't say I'm terribly surprised that your manners are as abysmal as they always were."