Several years had passed since the Battle of Hogwarts. It had taken Draco Malfoy a long time to put his life back together, piece by piece. He'd been left completely humiliated and all down to his own stupid indecisiveness. Did he want to stand alongside his parents and fight for Voldemort for the sake of sparing his own life? Or did he want to help the other side, the right side, even if it meant his death was imminent? In the end, he'd just dithered between the two. The backbone wasn't quite there.
During the summer of 1998 he'd stood trial at the Ministry. It took every ounce of what little courage he had to stand before the courtroom and throw away his dignity, which, admittedly, had already been left in tatters. He'd had to explain his failure as a servant to Voldemort, recall the times he'd been controlled and tortured inside the walls of the place he'd called home and recount how he'd lost his wand - the ultimate degradation for any wizard.
Amongst the public gallery members shooting him filthy looks every five seconds, he'd had support. His mother and father had already stood trial and had escaped incarceration, though not punishment entirely. They had seated themselves as close to Draco as they possibly could have. Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass had been perched up in the top-most row, Blaise's face coolly unreadable. Daphne, however, had nibbled on the ends of her perfectly manicured nails, her eyes slightly wild with worry. Draco would have been grateful for the support if it hadn't have been for the embarrassment of retelling his story in front of two of his closest friends.
Draco had been ordered to pay a 600 galleon fine (which, obviously, had been withdrawn from the family vault) and had been sentenced to 250 hours of unpaid work at the Ministry, as well as being placed under a two year probation period. This had ensured that he remained living at Malfoy Manor, as he was required to reside at one single address for the entire probation period. That, in itself, was punishment enough, Draco had thought bitterly.
The unpaid work hadn't turned out to have been such a big a waste of time as Draco had assumed it would be. He had been placed in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, under the watchful eye of a senior member of staff. Draco had started off as a general lacky. Making drinks, filing parchment, even cleaning; they'd practically used him as a house-elf. But they'd soon realised that Draco wasn't your average skull-and-snake-stamped Death Eater. He was smart. As well as his magical accomplishments he could also speak Greek, the International Magical Language, and he had a remarkable way of handling himself and others; he read situations well and could react appropriately. He never became flustered or panicked. His brutal honesty was another trait the senior staff members came to admire. It hadn't been such a huge shock to Draco when, at the end of his unpaid work, he'd been offered a full time position within the department.
Six years later, Draco was sat at the very same desk he'd been seated at on his first day working for the Department of International Magical Cooperation. He was alone, and his head was pounding as the news delivered by his boss several minutes earlier slowly sunk in. His boss had 'left him to think,' as if he could do anything else right now. Draco had been offered a promotion. After six years of hard work and dedication, it was about time. Draco has transformed himself from Death Eater schoolboy to respected Ministry employee in a fairly short space of time. The promotion he had been offered was sought after by many members of the department, including Percy Weasley who, after all, had been working there a lot longer than Draco had.
If Draco were to accept the promotion, he would no longer be working at the Ministry of Magic headquarters in London, but those some three and a half thousand miles away in Washington DC. There was no denying that the chance to move away, so far away, was appealing to Draco. He would no longer be known as the employee who gained a job off the back of court-ordered work. He would be just the same as all the others. Several years ago he would have jumped at the chance. But now? Now, all he had was one thought running constantly through his mind as he sat in the empty office, head in his arms. Astoria Greengrass.