I am not afraid of you.

Hermione took a deep breath before repeating the words. Not for the first time, she believed them.

Malfoy's face, gaunt and weathered with the seven years past, rose mournfully from the black-and-white page. He looked as tired as Hermione felt. No, it wasn't fear that rose in her at the sight of him, nor hate. Perhaps there lingered sympathy, similar to what she'd felt running into other Hogwarts survivors after the war. But Hermione hadn't yet decided if Draco Lucius Malfoy deserved it.

"Of course I felt bad!" Harry's raised voice drifted in from the kitchen, accompanied with Ron's snigger, pulling Hermione from her thoughts. "She was pissed as hell, after all. But she really wanted me to get lost."

Hermione folded the newspaper, hiding Malfoy's sunken gaze from view. She tucked the paper under her arm and made her way to the kitchen.

Morning sunlight glittered against the olive-and-gray tiled backsplash and the marble countertop. It had been six months since Hermione and her husband had bought and remodeled their flat, and she still hadn't gotten used to how perfect it felt. Watching Ron and Harry chat across a platter of hash browns, amongst the shining colors of the kitchen, felt familiar. Homey. But this morning, the feeling was marred by the headline carving itself into her mind.

"Hey, 'Mione," Harry greeted, and pushed a mug towards her.

"Thanks." Hermione wrapped her hand around the mug of tea, but her stomach was twisting too much to sip it just yet.

"You don't look so good, love," said Ron with a furrowed brow. He ran a comforting hand through her curls and kissed her temple. "Nightmares?"

"No. It's…" Hermione shook her head. "Sorry. I don't want to interrupt your story, Harry."

Harry gave a noncommittal shrug. "Eh, I can finish it later. Things didn't work out with Shelly."

"Oh." Hermione struggled to remember the face of Harry's latest fling. "I'd offer my condolences, Harry, but you don't seem too devastated."

"You're right on that count. You look like you've got news. So?"

It was only her imagination that dimmed the light of the morning, that turned the dust motes illuminated by the window into flecks of ash. Hermione comforted herself with the fact that she was home, surrounded with friends, in a time of peace.

"Have you two read the Prophet yet?" Hermione asked, and at the shake of Ron's and Harry's heads, she tossed the paper face-up onto the counter.

There were sharp inhales of breath at the headline: Draco Malfoy Released Early from Azkaban. And beneath it: Former Death Eater, Hogwarts Alumni "Grateful for Second Chances."

Ron was the first to speak. "Merlin. He looks like hell. Well, I suppose one year in Azkaban will do that to you. Let alone seven."

Wordlessly, Harry slid the paper over to himself for a closer look at Malfoy. The young man in the photograph did not react to his presence, except for a slow, disinterested blink. Harry tightly clasped his hands in a gesture that Hermione knew all too well - he was trying to stop them from shaking. She couldn't imagine how he must be feeling.

No one in the wizarding world was surprised when Draco Malfoy, along with countless other Death Eaters, was caught and immediately sentenced to Azkaban. His arm, pale as bone, bore the Mark. To some, there was no question that the youngest Malfoy should be shut away for life, like the rest of his ilk. Others believed that a boy as young as he should not be held fully accountable for his own actions at sixteen - nor the actions of a coercive, intimidating Dark wizard.

Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, had been one of those few to stand up for Draco at the long, drawn-out trials. Hermione remembered those days vividly: Draco in chains, wan and sickly with the burden of knowing that his father had killed himself and his mother had gone into hiding. Harry at the stand, speaking sincerely, telling the Wizengamot and jury what little difference there was between him and Draco - both raised from birth as a means to an end, one for light, and the other for dark.

Hermione thought that Harry's pleas had largely been a load of tosh. But he apparently believed it, despite never meeting Draco's eyes in the courtroom. Hermione never asked whether Harry had spoken one-on-one with his old enemy in the weeks leading up to the latter's imprisonment. She'd driven the whole thing out of her mind completely until today's headline. Then it'd all come rushing back.

"I wonder," Harry began softly, "How he finagled out of three more years. Slippery to the end." He almost sounded impressed.

Hermione leaned over his shoulder to read aloud a particular paragraph. "Camilla Thistleton, Malfoy's probation officer, has assigned him to training at the Ministry. 'Mental rehabilitation is only the first step in re-introducing prisoners to society. I look forward to the day Mr. Malfoy repays his debt to the wizarding community.'"

"That's a way to put it," Harry said, downing the rest of his tea.

"What do you mean?" Ron asked.

"Saying he has a debt to repay."

"You don't agree?" Hermione said, leaning over to sample the hash browns.

"Whether I agree or not isn't the point." Harry moved to the sink, where he began rinsing out his mug. "Printing that sort of statement only embarrasses him."

"You think he doesn't deserve it?" Ron asked, but Harry only glowered into his tea in reply. "I wonder how much of that sentiment is real."

"We won't have long to wait," Hermione said grimly. "We may be seeing him at work."

-.-.-.-

At the first stream of warm water, Draco realized he wasn't dreaming. He stood, stock-still beneath the showerhead, until he was sure that two minutes had passed. This couldn't be Azkaban, with the icy, government-limited showers. This was some other place, outside of the towering walls, beyond the tossing, unforgiving sea.

Draco lifted a damp hand to his ear. The voices had quieted. He inhaled, taking in the steam, the lingering scent of cheap chamomile soap. No, this was no dream - his eyes were open, and none of it had faded. The nod of a cloaked judge, the chains falling away from his limbs, the hooded trip back to…wherever this was.

"I'm free," Draco muttered, and he half-believed it. He cleaned himself slowly, the slick bar of soap running over the raised lines on his arms, over the sores, and because there was no shampoo, through his tangled, fine tresses.

"Mr. Malfoy?" Camilla leaned forward, blue eyes wide and earnest. "Do you understand everything I'm telling you?"

I need a shave, Draco thought, then he registered her question, and nodded.

"A verbal response, please."

"Yes." Merlin, did he really sound that hoarse? He was thirsty, but he'd drunk all the bottled water he'd been given. Would it be too much to ask for tea?

A pot of rose, or jasmine, or earl grey, shared on a Sunday evening in the chambers beneath the lake. It was tradition for seventh year Slytherins to buy and brew it for the rest of the house every week. Draco had never gotten the chance to participate.

Camilla sighed loudly, for the hundredth time since their first meeting. "Well, to reiterate and summarize: you will remain in my custody over the next three months. You will attend therapy sessions once a week - I will conduct these. During these three months, you will be required to train as an apprentice in a Ministry department of your choice. After which, you will be released from said apprenticeship. For a year hereafter, we will continue therapy sessions, but you will be allowed to spend your time as you please and find a home elsewhere."

A home. Black marble floors, stained windows, finely embroidered rugs. Draco's stomach turned. "Do you know what happened to my family's estate?"

"That matter is not under my jurisdiction," Camilla said primly. Something in Draco's expression must have alarmed her, for she grew pale, and added, "I heard it was seized by the Ministry just after the war, for inspection and confiscation of Dark objects. After that, I don't know."

The news was predictable, but Draco was surprised at how much it stung. He had no wish to return to Malfoy Manor, but now he probably didn't have a choice.

"Do you know which division you'd like to train under?"

"Excuse me?"

"For your Ministry apprenticeship."

Camilla unrolled a sheaf of parchment before Draco, listing all the departments, divisions, and their descriptions. He stared blankly at the page, unable to take in any of it. A steady pain began to throb in the back of his head. Merlin, I'm exhausted. He wondered where he would be sleeping. Probation officer or not, Draco doubted Camilla would stand to live under the same roof as a Death Eater. At least not without a handful of wards.

Draco flexed his fingers as something occurred to him. "Where's my wand?"

Camilla's expression soured slightly. "You are not permitted to use magic outside of your apprenticeship, and only with permission from your supervisor."

"Which is you?"

"No. Your supervisor will be someone who works in the division of your choice."

Choice. Free will was a stranger to Draco; it sat precariously close, like a long-lost sibling, looking over his shoulder at the list of departments and divisions. He wasn't sure what to do with it. A few of the divisions he recognized immediately, thanks to his father. Hurriedly, Draco looked away from those, his gaze falling upon the word Auror. Surely, he would never be allowed anywhere near the people who had captured him in the first place. And why would he want to be?

The color of Auror robes had buried itself into his mind. A militant charcoal that turned oil-slick black in the dark, the fabric covering his eyes as a knee pressed into his spine, the taste of shame and dust in his mouth.

"This one," Draco blurted, pointing to a different division in the Magical Law Enforcement Department. "Defence Bureau." It sounded easy, a job spent behind a desk instead of in the field. Something he could pick up, something that didn't require a lot of magic.

Is that all you can handle? A disdainful voice within him asked. After all those years of training? Is this how you reach your potential?

Draco gritted his teeth, burying the voice. He was a worthless heir, a dropout, an ex-convict. He was being given a second chance, and he couldn't mess up. Best to stay in his lane, to follow the rules. Like he always had, only this time, he could be on the right side.

"Defence Bureau," Camilla repeated. She tapped the parchment with her wand, and it rolled up tightly with a snap. "Led by Hermione Granger."

It didn't take long for Draco to recognize the name. Camilla continued speaking, but her words were lost. Draco's headache spiked.

-.-.-.-

The golden grills of the lift rattled, not quite loud enough to drown out the chatter of the half dozen witches and wizards within. Hermione slipped into the lift, and a few of the Ministry employees nodded in recognition before returning to their conversation. She ducked beneath a peacock feather protruding from a woman's hat before retreating into the corner. The stack of files in Hermione's hands, alphabetized and color-coded by decade, threatened to spill out of her control. She clutched them tightly to her chest, trying to let the chatter of the others in the lift distract her from her thoughts.

"Don't know why Wilbur is holding a garden party this weekend, with all that's going on," muttered a stern-faced witch in the pearly gray robes of Magical Law.

"He assured me he'd put up plenty of protective spells," her friend replied. "No reason not to celebrate our small victories in safety. We're in a time of peace, after all."

"We are not safe," the witch hissed in reply, and a titter rippled through the lift. She looked around archly, as if daring anyone to disagree.

Hermione ducked her head to avoid the witch's sweeping gaze and realized she had been picking at her cuticles. She clutched the files even tighter. Trouble was coming, and the entire Ministry had been gossiping about it for the past few weeks; even the release of a former Death Eater hadn't swayed the topic of conversation. What the trouble was exactly, Hermione didn't know, and seemingly, neither did anyone else.

Perhaps rumors were just rumors.

She ran her thumb gingerly across the edge of one of the pieces of parchment. Not for the first time, she felt too young and inexperienced to deal with the problems the Ministry was facing. Despite attending Hogwarts after the war to finish up her seventh year, Hermione always felt that she had much more to learn. Especially since most of the Ministry had been inside the government once it fell - an experience that had been harrowing, but valuable. These people had dealt with real disaster. Hermione hadn't.

Not yet, at least.

"Department of Magical Law Enforcement," spoke the disembodied voice as the lift ground to a halt. Hermione took a deep breath and straightened her posture as the wizards and witches in front of her disembarked. Despite it only being her first year as Head of the Defence Bureau, Hermione knew that her leadership could make a real difference in the months to come. If she could at least act confident and do her job well, others would follow.

This floor was one of the few that did not appear to match its employees' stern profession. The woven carpet was faded enough to seem stately, but the paisley patterns had clearly once been colorful. The bright light of orange-yellow enchanted torches illuminated polished oil portraits of past heads and notable figures of the department and its divisions. Hermione nodded, as she always did, to the portrait of Mad-Eye Moody, who acknowledged her with a stiff twitch of the head.

Hermione turned, walking into the hallway that held the Aurors' offices, and stopped in front of one particular door. Before she could knock, it opened, and Harry's expectant face peered out.

"Ah, Mrs. Granger. Thought I heard your heels."

"Did you?" Hermione lifted her foot, inspecting her black ankle boots.

"It's a distinctive noise, I think," Harry said with a shrug, then his easy expression sobered. "Come in."

For the office of someone who only became Head of the Auror Department in the past few months, Harry's looked very lived-in. Hermione felt a rush of nostalgia at the Gryffindor banner, the wall of photographs - mostly of her, Harry, Ron, and other Hogwarts alumni, though a few were of Teddy or the original Order of the Phoenix - a couple of sports tapestries for Quidditch Teams, and a cheekily autographed Undesirable No. 1 poster.

Harry settled into one of the worn wooden chairs in front of his desk and Hermione followed suit. A teaset decorated with fingerpainted patterns - his godchild's work - sat upon the desk. Harry tapped the teapot with his wand and muttered a spell, and steam issued forth from the spout.

"Rose?" Harry asked, already pouring two cups. He knew it was her favorite kind.

"Thanks." Hermione set the stack of files on the desk and picked up a teacup, not yet taking a sip. She couldn't find it in herself to relax.

Harry laced his hands. The pale band on his left ring finger, Hermione noticed, had finally faded. "Any progress on your end? Though…" He hesitated as Hermione slipped the top sheaf of parchment from the pile and began to unfold it. "I know we haven't had a lot of time. This is all very new. And confusing."

Hermione let out a frustrated sigh. "You're telling me." She smoothed the parchment out; it was a map of the British Isles, marked with several red dots. Each signified a disappearance that had captured the Ministry's notice over the past few weeks. Each represented a person of magical blood, at least eleven years of age, that had vanished, leaving a strange phenomenon in their place. What exactly that phenomenon was, Hermione didn't know. Whatever the Department of Mysteries knew, they apparently weren't yet willing to share.

Harry gave the map a quizzical look. "Ireland is blank."

"Their Ministry isn't exactly cooperative," Hermione said with a frown. "I don't have to tell you that."

Harry shrugged sheepishly. "I haven't dealt with them yet, actually. We try to keep things pretty domestic."

Thirteen red dots, representing thirteen victims, scattered in a seemingly random configuration across the map. Hermione could only guess at patterns. And if this thing, whatever was happening, did not have a pattern - well, that was worse.

"I can ask Charli about Ireland," Harry suggested, his brow furrowed in concern as he looked between her and the map. Hermione knew he could read her flurry of doom-stricken thoughts like a book. "Xe owe me a favor." Charlemagne Wells, the Head of International Magical Cooperation, was one of the few people who was willing to bypass the Ministry's antiquated and complex communication system for the sake of efficiency. "Gosh… I would really rather this all gets put on one division. Spreading the pieces out is so frustrating."

"I know the feeling." The parchment crinkled as Hermione folded up the map. "I wanted you to see something else." She shuffled through the files; some were older than others. "A list was compiled of all the magical signatures identified at the sites where the victims disappeared. Obviously, the strongest traces were from the victims themselves. But there were a few others." Hermione paused, finding the right words. "From wizards and witches who were thought to be dead."

Harry's eyes widened curiously. "Anyone we know?"

Hermione slid over the file. Across the top, in jet ink, was the name Sirius Black.

-.-.-.-

Don't force it. That's what Draco's mother would tell him, over and over, when he was first learning to cast spells. She'd bought him a wand three months before the start of term so he could get ahead of his peers. Yet despite showing promise in raw magical power, Draco had struggled with channeling it into such a delicate, precise instrument.

The wand that lay before Draco now hadn't just known the difficulties of a frustrated schoolchild. It had been coated in ash, in blood. It had festered in a locked box for seven years, imbibing the screams and pleas of prisoners and faceless monsters.

Before his fingertips even brushed the handle, Draco started to hear voices again. The words were the same. The shrillness, the sense that he knew who was screaming, yet he couldn't put a name to the sound.

Let go! Let go, please, you'll hurt her!

Draco winced, his fingers recoiling. He'd never understood, all those years, what the plea meant among the chorus of so many others.

"Your holster," Camilla reached over, sliding the wand into a slim leather sleeve, attached to a sort of harness. She handed the contraption to Draco, who awkwardly slid it on. The straps were snug around his shoulders. "It's enchanted. I will know when it's out of the holster and what spells are cast."

Is that permanent? Draco almost asked, then realized how it would sound.

"Do you understand, Mr. Malfoy?"
"Yes."

"I will escort you to the Ministry. You will be your supervisor's responsibility until this evening."

"Understood."

Incense burned in the room Draco had been given. The smoke, trailing upwards in an innocent curl of silver, was the brightest thing in the chamber, illuminated in a single beam of sunlight. The heavy velvet curtains were partially drawn, throwing everything into shadow: the embroidered duvet, the dusty painting of a bowl of fruit, the gold-brocade wallpaper that had once been beautiful. The citrusy incense hung over a buried, subtle scent, like something had rotted into the walls.

Draco stood before the mirror - its glass was stained at the edges. He buttoned down the collar of a charcoal-gray shirt, tightened a black tie.

"Younger wizards these days combine Muggle and magical fashions," Camilla had advised. It was Draco's first clue that she cared about his transition into the free world; Ministry paycheck or not, she wanted to help.

Draco wet his lips, recalling that hardly a week ago, they were chapped and cracked with thirst. It didn't matter how long he was out. He couldn't forget the taste of his own blood.

Draco adjusted his holster and reached for his wand; despite the slight discomfort of the straps, he could see how accessible it made one's weapon. Draco hesitated just before touching the handle; he turned and walked back towards the bed, where he'd arranged piles of clothes from his old room. He tossed aside a winter coat and a Slytherin-colored scarf, uncovering a pair of gloves. They were of black leather, thin, ending right at the wrists. Not nearly warm enough for winter, though Draco hadn't ever thought to part with them. He picked up the gloves, slid them on, flexed his fingers in the tight yet supple material.

Slowly, Draco reached for the holster at his waist. His fingers wrapped around the handle of his wand, firmly gripping the polished wood. The voices did not reappear.