After Harry had killed Voldemort and the battle was won, they explored the Manner, securing all surviving death eaters. Ron, Harry, and Hermione formed one of the teams. They started down one hall and found three death eaters securely bound in the first room. This puzzled them slightly, but they took the prisoners out into the main hall and proceeded. They found four more in various rooms. Hermione was leading the last one out to the others when she heard Ron shout. He had apparently found one fully awake and still free.

She ran down the hall and burst into the room the shouts had come from, almost colliding with Harry. There, in the center of the room, was a large table. At one end was Ron, standing, and pointing his wand. At the other end was Malfoy, sitting, with his wand clearly out of reach in the middle of the table.

"Don't move!" Ron shouted. He took a few steps around the table and grabbed the abandoned wand. Malfoy just sat there, waiting patiently.

Ron's reaction confirmed his fears regarding Ginny's signal. He was still considered an enemy. He had made sure that he was in a non-threatening position when he was found and now he was merely waiting for orders. He had no intention of struggling. His eyebrows raised in curiosity when he noticed Hermione's expression.

Ron had tossed Malfoy's wand to Harry and moved around to Malfoy's side. "All right, stand up, and don't try anything." His voice was hard and angry. Malfoy sighed and did as he was told.

Ron shoved him toward the door, almost causing him to lose his balance and fall. As it was he stumbled a few steps before regaining his balance and straightening his robes.

"Ron!" Hermione shouted.

"What?" Ron turned to her. "He's the enemy, Hermione, remember? He tried to use Ginny." His voice was dark and threatening in his last statement.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. Wonderful, this was going to be fun.

As soon as they were in the main hall where all the death eaters were being gathered, Ron hexed Malfoy and he fell on his face, completely immobilized. Hermione immediately knelt down beside him, rolled him over, and made sure he was all right, glaring at Ron as she stood up.

Snape and Bill tried to make the trip to the ministry as easy for Malfoy as possible, but as they were the only ones present that thought him an ally it was pretty difficult for them to do so. Lupin had been at one of the diversion battles.

Once back at the headquarters, Hermione and the others told Ginny all about the battle. When Ron mentioned Malfoy's arrest Ginny barely strangled a scream.

"But he's on our side!" she shouted.

"Come on, Gin, you can't still be on about that! He was there! He was at the Manner!" Ron was turning red.

"Did he hex anyone? Kill anyone? Was a single Order member hurt by him in any way?" she asked.

"Well, no," he admitted reluctantly, "but we found him just sitting at a table with his wand out of reach. He just surrendered without a fight. I bet he's going to try to do what his father did last time, blame an Imperius or something. He's a coward, Gin, not a hero."

"But, Ron," Hermione spoke up, "what if he was the one to take out all those death eaters we found? No one else had been down there yet, and we would have been a lot of trouble if seven more of them had shown up during the battle."

Ron turned to Hermione with a look of complete disbelief and betrayal on his face.

Harry hung his head. "Gin, tell me you didn't contact him."

Ginny just glared at her brother. Ron turned to Harry. "She wouldn't! Gin! You wouldn't! Tell him you didn't!" He couldn't believe his baby sister would have betrayed them.

"From what Hermione says, he saved your ass." Ginny didn't know why she was so mad, but she was. She had known no one trusted Draco, well, almost no one, so why was it making her so mad now?

"Oh Gin," Harry sounded so disappointed. "That's not the point. The point is that you didn't know! He could have just as easily, easier even, exposed us. He could have gotten us all killed."

"But I did know!" Ginny shouted. "And he didn't get you killed! He saved you! He helped you! He's one of us!"

Harry got to his feet and looked at her very sternly. "No, Gin. He is not one of us! If he was one of us he would have come to Dumbledore a long time ago! If he was one of us you wouldn't have been the only one to know it! You were wrong to tell him what we were doing! We aren't going to tell anyone what you did, do you understand? He'll be tried like the rest of them and if he can prove himself innocent than he'll be released, but if we tell people what you did and he isn't found innocent then you'll be tried as well and I will NOT see you put in Azkaban!"

Ginny started crying and shaking her head. Hermione stood and tried to comfort her, but the other girl would have known of it. "NO!" she screamed, "I will NOT be quiet! If I don't tell people what I did they'll NEVER believe him!"She stopped screaming and her voice lost all of its anger. Expressing only pain, she said, "You're a fool, Harry, if you can't recognize what he did for you, for us; if you can't recognize what he sacrificed for us." With that she turned and left. She was going to find Snape or Lupin to ask them what she could do to help Draco.

When she was gone, Hermione turned to the boys. "I knew, you know. I encouraged her to contact him. He saved us, and you know it." She followed her friend out.