Hey there :D

Thanks to those, who started to follow and those, who reviewed! Like I said, the first chapter was just to inform people about how Draco became a baker. I was looking all over for a story, where he actually own a bakery but I couldn't find one, so I started my own! I hope you guys like the idea. I honestly just wanted to write how he bakes cupcakes, but now I decided to bring some plot into it. Let's see where it takes us :D

Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

Thanks for beta-ing, Gaeleria!

Otherwise enjoy~

Part 2: Chocolate

"Oi… Malfoy, are you ready to go?"

Draco stopped what he was doing and turned around sneering when he heard the familiar voice. Weasley was trying to get through to him. Diagon Alley was busy and most of the people Weasley rudely pushed aside called after him. Draco just raised his eyebrow at the redhead, not knowing what the hell he should do.

He was free.

A half an hour ago, the house arrest was lifted. His probation was over. They still monitored his wand; the Ministry would check it for dark spells every other month for another year, but he could live with that.

And now he had actually spent thirty minutes just standing outside of his shop, in the sun, without any care in the world.

"Malfoy!" Ron panted when he stopped in front of the blond, hands on his knees while he tried to catch some air. Draco scoffed.

"What's the rush? Potter said that we wouldn't leave until 12?" Draco reached into his black trousers to pull out a silver pocket watch and checked the time. It was only 10 am.

"Yeah, but there was a change of plan. We need to go now," Ron said, straightening himself.

"How do we get there?" Draco narrowed his eyes. He was not even an hour into his freedom, and his first trip was going to Muggle London. He probably would get killed before the hour was up. Run over by one of those silly cars or whatever.

Ron rolled his eyes, knowing exactly what the blond was thinking. It was almost unnerving how much they could read each other. "We officially connected Rosie's fireplace to the floo network yesterday, so we can use yours to get there. Harry told me that they unblocked it this morning."

"Fine, whatever." Draco tugged at the rolled-up sleeves of his white dress shirt. He had forgotten to pull the sleeves down before stepping out of the shop. Five years with a minimum of human contact and he had already forgotten about basic instinct.

When he was alone, he never thought to cover up his forearm. At home, he obviously never had to, even though his mother always had a particular disdain in her eyes when she spotted Draco's Mark. She had fewer problems with Lucius', maybe because he had it for all those years already, but seeing it on Draco's arm still made her uncomfortable.

He never bothered to cover it up around Potter or Weasley. They simply had been there from the beginning anyway. The house elves knew about it, but they didn't care. It was Luna that made Draco think about it for the first time. She still haunted his dreams, together with Granger. When they were captured during the war and brought to Malfoy Manor, Draco and his family couldn't do much but watch. Granger's screams followed him on his worst days, and feeling her blood in the manor didn't help.

The manor was a curious case. The building was full of ancient magic that no one understood fully. His parents told him that they never had to put protection spells around the property, that the house took care of that by itself. As a kid, Draco never believed it, which was ironic considering his heritage.

The day Granger was brought into the manor, he had felt it for the first time. When Bellatrix made her bleed onto the floor, Draco had felt the house question it. Lucius finally let the house help, making it possible for Dobby to enter and for the chandelier that had hung there for centuries to be dismounted.

After the Golden Trio had fled and Bellatrix went nuts, they had only a moment until the Dark Lord arrived. Lucius had pulled Narcissa over to Draco, hissing at them to listen carefully. They needed to understand what it meant to be the owner of Malfoy Manor. The house was upset that blood had been spilled, mudblood or not. It had been unsettled for quite some time now, considering who had been tortured and murdered inside for the past several weeks. They needed to be careful. If even one drop of Malfoy blood was spilled, the manor would avenge.

It was that exact moment that Draco realized that his elitist pureblood father had just saved a mudblood's life.

After that, the Malfoys had kept to themselves, even when the final battle was upon them. And after, they had waited for the Aurors to arrest them, ready to face the consequences.

The first day Luna had come to help out in the shop, Draco made sure to wear a long-sleeved jumper and sweat his arse off. At the end of the day, she was about to leave when she turned to him, their matching pale eyes meeting. She had smiled at him and told him that there was no need for him to hide the Mark. She already knew it was there, and honestly, all she could see was an ugly tattoo with an even more hideous history. Yet, there was no need for him to hide it. Not from her, at least, because she knew that he never meant for her to get captured.

"How do you know that?" He had asked, astonished.

She had just kept smiling at him. "Oh, your house told me while I stayed in its dungeons."

After that, he never thought about hiding the Mark anymore. But now he was standing outside in Diagon Alley in plain sight, and maybe the rest of the Wizarding World wasn't as forgiving as Luna Potter, so he should not parade it around.

"Juniper." He called as he entered the shop with Weasley, who made a beeline for the kitchen in the back.

The small elf appeared in front of Draco. "Master Draco called me? I thoughts the shop is closed today."

"Oh, it is, Jun. I have been waiting for this day for years, and I didn't want to spend it working. Closing the shop for one day won't hurt anyone." Draco smiled while he walked into the kitchen as well, Jun following him eagerly. "But I still prepared some chocolat... WEASLEY!"

Ron stopped stuffing his mouth with warm chocolate croissants that were laying on the baking tray, a warming charm placed upon them. He mumbled a complimentary sorry before swallowing while Draco waved his hand, levitating the leftover croissants into an awaiting black delivery box. "Could you bring those to my parents, Jun?"

The elf nodded, giving Ron a sizing glance before snatching the box and disappearing.

"Seriously?" Draco asked while walking towards the fireplace in the back of the kitchen. Ron just shrugged and followed, not really sorry at all.

Draco stepped aside, letting Weasley go first as he didn't know the address. They were each sucked into the floo and seconds later, Draco stepped out of the fireplace into a small cozy flat. A heavily pregnant woman awaited them, smiling at Ron while she presented him a plate filled with brownies. The redhead devoured them as if he just hadn't stolen half of Draco's chocolate croissants.

"Tell me again, what we are doing here?" Draco took a bite from the chocolate brownie. He and Potter were each saved one while Ron was busy finishing off the rest of the plate. Draco figured that he should eat his before Weasley had a chance to steal it as well.

"She lives across the street. We couldn't find her for two years, and it seems as if they had just moved here, so when Rosie told us that she spotted a woman looking like her entering the apartment building across from the shop, we checked it out," Potter explained, following Draco's example of eating the brownie before it was too late. They were sitting in a small café that was located under the flat they had flooed in earlier. Similar to Draco's place, there were only three tables scattered around in front of a counter with displays on. The kitchen was in the back as well, but everything looked slightly more shabby chic and rustic. Draco liked it, it was definitely more feminine than the one in Diagon Alley, but he had tried Rosie's baking before, and he knew that she was just as brilliant in the kitchen.

"Are you sure it's her?" Draco asked, looking out of the window and towards the plain apartment building across the street. It looked pretty unimpressive.

Potter nodded. "Yes, we've been watching her for two months now, and we are pretty sure it's her. But she changed."

"How?"

"We don't know. She just seems different. It's not as if we talked to her... all we did was watch her go to work and come back home." Potter sighed.

"I still don't get why you need me." Draco took a sip from his coffee, trying to ignore Weasley, who was busy stuffing his face with chocolate.

"We are afraid that she's controlled somehow. Imperioused, you know." Potter actually had the decency to look ashamed.

"Yeah, I obviously know. Are you fucking kidding me, Potter?!" Draco slammed the cup down, breaking it in the process which caused the coffee to slosh all over the table. Weasley grunted in dismay.

"I just served five bloody years because I was a Death Eater, and I've been free for not even an hour, and the first thing you do is drag me away to chat about Unforgivables." Draco gazed at the mess in front of him before he mumbled a wandless cleaning spell and another one to fix the broken cup.

"We just want you to take a look to see if you can spot any dark magic around her," Potter murmured, his eyes fixed on the building across the street. He looked truly miserable. "Hermione had abandoned us five years ago, and we contacted her. We know that she received our messages, hell, I sent her letters via muggle post, but she ignored them all. She never replied, not even to tell us that we should leave her alone. Nothing at all. Something isn't right; I'm telling you."

Draco sighed. "Fine, whatever, I'll take a look."

"Thanks." Potter smiled gratefully.

"So, tell me the whole story again, something seems off about it." Draco leaned back and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Well, after the war and all the memorials, Hermione went to Australia to find her parents and to lift the memory charm she had placed on them. She wrote us that her parents were angry at first but after a few days, they started to come around, and they decided to return to England together. When they came back, she wrote us again that she would stay with her parents for a while because they guilted her into helping them to rebuild their lives, contact family and friends and so on. No one really questioned it, I mean, we all went to spend times with our families before we had to decide on a career and whatnot. You know that McGonagall offered us to retake our NEWTs at the end of the summer, and it wasn't until then that we questioned that something was wrong. Hermione never showed up. Minerva sent me a personal owl to ask if everything was alright." Harry ran a hand through his hair, messing it up even more. "I mean that should have given it away, right? Hermione not showing up to take her NEWTs." He laughed desperately.

Draco furrowed his eyebrows before looking at Ron. "But weren't you two like together or something?"

"Nah..." Ron waved it off. "For a while, we thought there was something, but in the end, we decided pretty quickly that we were wrong, and we stayed friends." Ron sighed, looking at Harry, who still was visibly miserable.

"After McGonagall's owl, we went to visit her directly only to hear from her parents that she went to Greece on vacation with her new boyfriend. Apparently, the Grangers had a big welcome back party, telling everyone that they took a year off to travel, and there Hermione met the son of one of her father's workmates. After the party, they spent a few weeks together before deciding to go on vacation in the middle of August. We told them that Hermione would never do that because she knew that the NEWTs retake would be at the end of August, but her parents insisted that that's what she wanted. We tried to contact her, wrote letters, but they came back unopened. Everything got a little crazy because we had to start with the Auror training then, and there were still Death Eaters around, and somehow days went by and we never had the chance to try to find her. Around October we went to her parents' house again, and they told us that she and her new boyfriend moved in together. We tracked the address and found her, but when we tried to talk to her, she sent muting spells in our direction. Then we tried to write her notes that only she could read in case something was wrong, but she burned them and ignored us, cast banning spells so we couldn't even get close enough to gesture or something." Ron paused to think. "We decided to stay away for a few days and then try again, but when we came back they had moved and until two months ago we weren't able to find her again."

Draco followed their glances and looked at the building on the other side. "And what if that's what she wanted? If she had enough from all of us and just decided to leave?"

Harry shrugged. "Then I want her to tell us. I want to hear it from her."

Draco nodded. "That boyfriend of hers? He's a muggle, right?"

"We believe so. We are not sure," Ron admitted.

"I'm not just here to see if she is hexed, am I?" Draco frowned.

"No," Harry admitted. "We don't know how she would react to seeing us or if that boyfriend knows us, so we were thinking about placing someone she knows in front of her. Someone that isn't us but from our world."

"And how exactly are you planning on placing me in front of her?" Draco looked at them warily.

"Oh.. now see, this is where Rosie comes in," Ron said at the same time the woman joined them at the table. He smiled lovingly at the dark-haired woman, who leaned over to give him a quick kiss before she fell down on an empty chair groaning, rubbing her stomach in the process.

The pregnant woman smiled at Draco, having met him before when Ron had taken her to Diagon Alley to visit his bakery. Despite her being a muggle, they had quickly been able to bond over recipes and baking tips.

"Rosie won't be able to run her café any longer. The baby is due in a month, and we've been thinking about what we should do with the place." Ron answered while he looked over at his wife with a smile.

Rosie nodded and looked at Draco. "Yeah, at first we thought just to close it for a few months after the baby is born, but then those two came up with the plan of watching Hermione, and because she literally lives across the street, we thought that maybe you could come and manage the café for the time being."

"I mean, it's rather brilliant," Harry chirped in. "You know how to run a café, and from here you can actually watch Hermione, maybe even make sure that she comes in here one day. You just tell everyone that you want to expand your business, and it wouldn't even look suspicious."

"Why would it be suspicious?" Draco wanted to know, and Potter laughed nervously.

"Well, just because you are free doesn't mean that the Ministry stopped watching you. Your wand is still monitored because they want to make sure you stay in England and not run away to another country to torture people over there."

Draco scoffed. "Great to know that I'm so trusted."

Harry shrugged. "It's not like this is official Auror business. We tried to make it, but they wouldn't let us because apparently the evidence is not enough to make a case out of it."

"Well, to be fair, it really isn't," Draco stated. "And I knew this wasn't official Auror business, because if it were then Red over there wouldn't have tried to eat himself into a chocolate coma."

"Hey!" Ron said, offended. "So, are you doing it? We had to wait until you were actually allowed to come here, obviously."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Well, last week, Luna told me that she would be able to come back to help out in the shop again because Mrs. Weasley offered to take James in the mornings. I could look for another employee, so I wouldn't be needed in the shop over there and could come here instead."

He paused before he turned to Rosie. "Is it just you or do you have another employee?"

"I have two students that help me out, Anne and Seth, but Seth told me last week that he will go to Germany for an exchange year, so I haven't looked for someone new yet. I can't bake anymore, but if you would come then you could do that, and I could look after the register while Anne manages the barista machine. She only works in the mornings, though, so we would be alone in the early afternoon. I open at 7 and usually close around 3." Rosie explained while Draco nodded along.

"Ok, I do it," He finally said.

Harry let out a breath he didn't even know he was holding. "Thank you." He smiled at Draco gratefully.

Draco stayed emotionless. "When do you want me to start?"

"As soon as possible," Potter replied, and Draco acknowledged it.

"Let me make some arrangements, talk to Luna again, and I will start the upcoming Monday."

"Thanks, mate," Ron said, and he grabbed Rosie's hand first to smile at Draco and then at her. She squeezed his hand reassuringly.

"Just," Draco started, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. "Just don't blame me if Granger still refuses to come back." He sighed.