Chapter 5: What's in it for you, Mr Malfoy?

Two days later after Harry's visit in his office, Draco was sitting next to Harry in an urgent Auror meeting, eyed suspiciously by about everyone else in the room—they weren't going to like what Harry would tell them in a matter of moments. As much as they liked the devices his company has been developing according to their needs, they still didn't like his persona that much, probably all siding with Hermione anyway. However, he wasn't here to make new friends, so paid little attention to their mistrustful looks.

"As I can see, everyone has received the note and found their way here," Harry started, taking a look around. His face was rather grim, his lips pressed together when he wasn't speaking. "The only one being excused is Theodore Nott, who is on a mission abroad, and couldn't make it back on time." He sighed, and briefly flexed his fingers. "I'm sure you all know Draco Malfoy," he continued, letting his gaze wander over the people assembled in the room once more, "Without wanting to lose more words, he has offered to help us with Hermione's disappearance–"

"No!"

"You can't be serious, boss!"

"Malfoy? No!"

"QUIET EVERYBODY!" Harry let out, demanding authority. "You all know full well that we have run out of options to find her. I had a very long discussion with the Minister himself about this, so the okay for this comes from the top—and I'm not going to be swayed in my decision. Is that understood?"

Draco still only watched the group of Aurors intently: he would have been surprised if their reaction had been different. Instead, they were all glaring at him now, even Weasley to some extent—as if he was going to be intimidated by a bunch of unhappy boys, just because he wanted to join their playground. No. After all, he led a very successful business...

One of the Aurors stood up, one of the more bulky-looking guys with a face that Draco thought he knew. "He's a civilian, boss, and he isn't exactly known to play well with others. My wife used to work for his company... She used to say that he is very hard to please in any way, and that he makes decisions based on a whim. Do we want that? Someone who rushes into things?"

Draco straightened himself in his chair; it wasn't the first time he heard someone say this. "Potter, may I?" he asked, not lifting his eyes off the still standing Auror. He leaned forward with the shortest of smirks when he saw Potter nod briefly. "Riverside it is, right? Now that you mention your wife, I remember you. And I remember your wife very well, she was a great asset in my Financial Department. I hope the children are doing fine... However–"

Another Auror stood up, a rather sinewy type with a hardened look; his eyes were made of piercing disapproval. "What's in it for you, Mr Malfoy? I mean if we succeed, there will surely be some fame for you–"

"However, there seem to be a few misconceptions about my motivations as well as my person," Draco continued as if he wasn't in the slightest disturbed by the second Aurors interjection. "I'm not in it for fame—I'm still one of the most infamous persons in wizarding society for my past, my family, as well as my company. I do, however, have personal reasons to join the search, and Mister Potter here knows them better than anybody else." With that, Draco demonstratively leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"Personal reasons?" An Auror at the far end of the table stood up. Draco thought he remembered the man from eight years ago; however, the stress from the job had left its mark on his face—he seemed to look older than he probably was. "I can imagine the personal reasons you have; you dated Hermione at one point."

"Eight years ago, to be exact," Draco replied coolly. "And I'm not here to explain my reasons for joining you. All I'm going to say in this matter is the following: I'm doing this as a favour for Hermione, not for you guys. And considering my usual price tag, this help comes relatively cheap."

"Favour, my arse. You want something in return."

Draco simply shrugged at this remark; he wasn't going to give that Auror the satisfaction of an answer. "Potter?"

Harry nodded once more. "This joint venture between the Auror Department and Mister Malfoy is only temporary, until we find Hermione—hopefully alive and relatively unharmed. However, there are a few conditions—and I think in light of the situation, his help is relatively cheap."

"Who is he going to be teamed up with?" Riverside asked, having sat back down, eyeing Draco suspiciously; it was evident that he didn't like the situation at all.

"Mister Malfoy will be teamed up with Nott, as he worked the closest with Hermione on her cases," Harry started to explain, and then raised his eyebrow when several Aurors wanted to say something, shutting them up. "He will still report directly to me–"

"But Nott is still on desk duty. How come he is on that mission abroad, as well being partnered with him?" the sinewy, elderly Auror asked, still standing in his spot.

"Because he was specifically requested in both cases. Now, I don't want any further discussions about Nott. We need every single Auror in this, is that understood?" Harry responded, seemingly calm, but the glint in his eyes showed that he was everything but calm. "Let's continue..." A small sigh of relief escaped him when the other Aurors were all sitting down again. "In addition, the Minister himself grants Mr Malfoy full access to the file archive of the Auror Department, and you will provide him with everything you have gathered so far about Hermione's disappearance."

"Harry, you know he's going to fuck it up," Ron piped in, mimicking Draco's stance. "Hermione left him for a very good reason, I don't think we–"

"Ron, my office afterwards," Harry stopped him with a surprisingly loud growl. "Everyone else, you know your tasks... And I do not want to hear any more objections to his presence, we simply do not have the luxury of losing any more time if we want to find Hermione alive. Meeting dismissed."

"We will look like utter incompetent idiots if he manages to find her while we couldn't," Riverside muttered when he got up, just loud enough for Harry and Draco to hear it.

Draco chuckled at the words. "Ah, I remember, your wife has the brain, Riverside. Tell her she can have her old job back when the children are at Hogwarts; she is still sorely missed in my Financial Department."

"Malfoy, please," Harry let out in exasperation, then motioned to Ron to follow him.

"Hey, that was an honest offer. His wife really is brilliant with numbers. Ask Daphne if you don't believe me." Draco followed the others out to Harry's office. "You really talked to the Minister about this?"

Harry turned his head. "Yes. Shacklebolt expects daily reports on our progress in Hermione's disappearance. He agreed to this arrangement with the condition that I keep a close eye on you. Something tells me that it's not going to be so easy."

"Easy?" Ron remarked from behind, his arms still crossed.

"Maybe. Depends on what I find." Draco shrugged, then turned around to face Ron. "Drop it, Weasley, or you might fall from your high horse faster than you think. I'm here to help because I genuinely think I can do so."

Harry quickly looked between Ron and Draco, who seemed to have entered a staring contest. "Hermione's office is just next to mine, Malfoy. Ron and I still have something to discuss," he finally said, adding a sigh.

Draco nodded, eyeing Ron one last time. "I'll make copies of the files I might need to read through. I'll call you tomorrow."

Entering Hermione's office was like travelling back in time, to better days when he would visit her occasionally to pick her up for a surprise lunch or dinner, or the occasional making out when he picked her up late in the evening with everyone else gone already... She was known for her meticulous file keeping, and it was also present in how the rest of her small office was organised. Everything had its place—the files she handled neatly piled up according to a specific system, the few private items carefully arranged on her desk and the shelf behind it. Draco took a deep breath; he could sense the residues of her magic—it was everywhere in this room, and his own magic still responded to it. This was the closest he got to her in years, and it didn't make it any easier. Maybe when all this was over, and he had his chance to at least get the answers he so desperately needed, he could finally let go and move on with his life. Though, deep in his heart, he still hoped that he could convince her to come back to him. With a sigh, he let his eyes wander over the shelf and discovered—to his surprise—a framed picture of them during a party at one of their friends' places. Carefully, he took it up to have a closer look. She was kissing him on the cheek, and he was smiling rather smugly in response. They had both been rather drunk when the picture was taken, but they both looked very much in love in it; if he remembered right, he had turned his head seconds later and her lips had landed on his...

.xx.

"You're so cute when you're both drunk!" Ginny exclaimed, holding the wizarding camera up to take a picture of him and Hermione at the party to celebrate her promotion to chief editor of the Prophet's sports section.

Draco looked at Hermione with a cocked eyebrow, and sipped from his beer; she was leaning against him with her arm around his waist, and her fingers sneaking underneath his waistband ever so teasingly. She was most definitely cute when she was drunk, especially when she tried to be all alluring and teasing like right now. Oh, she was sexy as hell, but in her own headstrong, gorgeous way.

Smirking and with a side-glance to Ginny, Hermione leaned in further. "You're cute, did you hear that?" she said, giggling, and pressed a kiss on his cheek; that was when Ginny pushed the trigger on the camera, catching that moment.

"Oh, you two, get a room!" Ginny said, laughing, when Draco turned his head and caught Hermione's lips for a full, deepening kiss.

"You're the only one ever allowed to call me 'cute', love," Draco breathed between kisses, completely ignoring the squeaking red-head, preferring to get lost in that addictive taste of Hermione's lips and tongue on his.

.xx.

He wondered why exactly she kept this picture out of all possible here. She had broken up with him—and rather suddenly on top of that—why would she keep a memory of their relationship? With another melancholic sigh, he put it back on the shelf to return to his task of identifying the files he wanted to copy for further reading at home.

Next door, he could hear Potter still discuss the situation with Weasley. He didn't exactly understand why the redhead was so adamantly against his involvement in the search for Hermione, but then he had always been a bit miffed at Hermione's choice of partner, and probably never really got over it. When he had been with Hermione, he got along with the whole Weasley family after the expected initial scepticism towards his person—everyone except Ron. Not that he had ever cared much about Weasley's opinion anyway. But he might need to have another word with Pansy about her plans to introduce Weasley to her family, especially if he continued to be such a git. Or maybe he shouldn't and let that annoying redhead just walk into the knife on his own. He would love to witness that!

Thanks to Hermione's meticulousness, Draco had the files easily identified; it was the complete pile on the right side of her desk. He went through the other piles as well to make sure, as her system could always hold a few surprises. That he didn't find anything, didn't mean that the got everything related to her own disappearance, but he could always come back to check them out again.

Back in his flat that evening—with the wizarding wireless providing some low background noise—he cleared out one of the spare rooms he never used before to turn it into his private investigation room. Going through them, he quickly realised that Hermione's last cases were all investigating disappearances or kidnappings of both wizarding people and Creatures. So, he separated them into two piles—one for wizards and witches, a second for Creatures, and colour coded each of them to keep track.

"Tracie Wiggins. Disappeared six months ago," he read aloud to himself, and then tried to decipher a handwritten note from Hermione. Her handwriting had definitely not changed, even back then he had sometimes some difficulties deciphering whether she had written something down in a hurry or whether she had used her own version of shorthand notes; but it seemed that she was just in a hurry when putting down that note on the edge of the page with the victim's personal data. "Unregistered?" He put that file on the floor with that page on top and checked the next one. "Vernon Lewis. Also disappeared six months ago." And again, a bit further down, he discovered the same note on the edge. "Unregistered." He checked the next file. "Selmer Vabsley. Disappeared even seven months ago," he again read the name out loud, and as expected found the same note on the edge again. "Unregistered." He then went through the rest of the pile with wizarding folk—there were some that had disappeared almost a year ago, while the latest had disappeared only two months ago; and all of them had the same note at the edge of the page with their personal information. Unregistered. Every single one of them. It seemed as if Hermione had discovered a connection, and unregistered could only mean one thing in the wizarding world—they were either unregistered animagi or unregistered part-Creatures, which was not as unlikely as one could think, as their status was more like a legal grey zone. It was probably a detail Potter and his Aurors had discovered as well, but since they were unregistered, it was very hard to verify Hermione's claim. Yet, it was still a first clue.

However, besides that note on the edge of the pages, none of the victims had anything else in common as far as he could see. They all had different social backgrounds, some were even Muggle-borns, others from older wizarding families; nor did their families have any connections to each other, be it through marriage, friendship, or business. Nothing. And yet, they all had disappeared at some point; Draco suspected that they had been kidnapped for some reason. Reading through them again in a chronological order, Draco got the impression that Hermione must have had one of her sometimes brilliant epiphanies and wanted to follow up on it. Maybe that was why she disappeared as well—she had come across something she shouldn't have. Draco sighed. Just what?

.xx.

"Draco? Mate, are you here?" Blaise entered Draco's flat through the Floo Network; he and his wife Astoria were the only two people who were allowed to enter the place unannounced, as a consequence of the aftermath of the break-up when they didn't want to leave Draco alone at all. So, Blaise checked the flat for signs of his friend's presence until he heard the faint sound of the wireless coming from one of the spare rooms. "I see, you're plunging yourself head-on into this," Blaise commented, with a sigh, when he discovered Draco attaching case sheets to the wall of the otherwise still empty room. It was exactly what he had expected to find after Draco had told him that he was going to a meeting at the Auror Department; that lunch, he realised that his attempts of persuading Draco to stop it were fruitless, that his friend just couldn't stop. "Astoria wasn't very happy when I told her that you wouldn't come back after lunch."

Draco finally turned around to face Blaise, a case sheet still in his hand, his wand in the other. "Thanks."

"Oh, don't thank me, you will hear an earful from her. She hates having to constantly reschedule everything to accommodate to your whims, you know? And you went too far today..." Blaise entered the room, looking around and taking in all the case sheets that were already sticking to the wall. "Is that what she was working on before she disappeared?"

"Yes, they all disappeared over the last year. She was on to something, but probably hasn't told anyone about it."

"I vaguely remember that this has pissed you off more often than not about her." Blaise took a closer look at the case sheet already sticking to the wall in front of him. "Gods, her handwriting is still undecipherable!"

Draco checked what Blaise was looking at. "No, she just used her own shorthand here. I remember a few of them, but not that one," he replied, amused about Blaise's remark. "Anything happened at the company I need to know?"

"Just a small hiccup in the Research Department, a small accident in one of the laboratories. Everything's running smoothly again."

"What kind of accident?" Draco asked, skipping through the sheet in his hand in order to figure out where the stick it to the wall.

"I think they were working on a way to make connections between wizarding and Muggle mobile devices more stable when something exploded. I don't know the details, but it definitely was just an accident that could happen in any other laboratory."

"Good. You haven't yet heard from the Hungarians, have you?"

Blaise shook his head. "No. But we only discussed everything two days ago. They might only contact us again on the offer on the very last day of your deadline. You're okay?"

"Yes. It was just weird to enter her office to copy those files. I've visited her so many times there, and it still looks basically the same after all that time."

"I know I might have overreacted a bit," Blaise began, leaning against the wall, and watching his friend intently. "It's not like Astoria and I don't understand why you want to do this, the break-up was horrible enough."

"She ripped my heart out, Blaise. And I want answers."

"Yes, I remember. You were a complete mess for months. It was tough time–"

"Still is for me," Draco admitted quietly, closing his eyes briefly, before continuing to check the wall to find out where to put the sheet in his hand. "You keep telling me to move on. Maybe if I get some answers, I might be able to..."

"You've rambled so much about wanting answers when you were drunk, I could have that conversation with her myself," Blaise replied, trying to lighten the mood a bit. However, he knew that Draco didn't believe his own words—his friend still felt too much for the witch to ever be able to really let go. Blaise just wasn't sure that joining the Aurors to find Hermione was such a good idea in the end, not with everything going on in the company that required his attention.

Draco stuck the sheet in his hand to the wall, next to another that was already hanging there. "And you tend to tell me every detail of your last session with your wife when you're drunk..."

"You never complained till now," Blaise retorted, chuckling briefly.

"I didn't complain, I just stated a fact," Draco added, now leaning with his shoulder against the wall as well, fiddling with his wand.

Blaise nodded. "Look, Astoria and I might not agree with you doing this, but we know how important it is, so we will keep your back as good as we can," he said affirmingly. "However, I will stick to my words that I will dismiss you temporarily as president of this business should I—or Astoria—consider you unfit to lead it. We haven't come this far only to see it crumble down, just because you neglected it over your... Sorry, mate, but it is an obsession. We both hope this whole thing will indeed help you move on, enjoy life again... Maybe even find someone else to spend time with, you know?"

Draco nodded, smiling faintly. "Thanks, mate. I know I'm not the easiest person to work with, but I do appreciate both your efforts very much—I'd probably be in St. Mungo's mental ward by now without you."

"Oh yes, you would be!" Blaise exclaimed, mocking an exasperated tone. "But that's what friends are for."

"Drink? I feel like one... I don't think I'll find anything else in the case files tonight," Draco replied, nodding towards the door with a bigger smile on his lips. "And we haven't talked in a while."

"One drink, then I have to get back. Astoria's parents are supposed to come over tonight. It will be the same conversation as always, anyway." With a shrug, Blaise followed him out to the living room area where the alcohol cabinet was located.

"Are they still bugging you about finally starting a family?" Draco teased and went for the cabinet while Blaise summoned the glasses to go with their usual bottle of finest Ogden's Firewhisky.

"Yes. Even more so now that Daphne is divorced and has no children either. But honestly, we have enough on our plate with running the company as well as keeping an eye on you. Astoria sometimes complains that it's almost like we already have a baby..."

"To the Greengrass girls." Seemingly ignoring Blaise's last remark, Draco handed him a glass of firewhisky, and then lifted his to a toast.

"To women. They might drive us crazy, break our hearts, but life's not complete without the love of a woman," Blaise returned the toast, and took a sip from his glass, as always surprised how smooth it was.

"To the women in our lives." Draco emptied his glass in one go. "Life truly is empty without them."

Blaise emptied his drink as well in one go; he had noticed the melancholic undertone in his friend's voice. Sometimes, he was just glad that he could marry the witch of his dreams and didn't have to go through what Draco was dealing with—going through his life alone and slowly growing bitter about it. With an affirmative smile, he handed his empty glass back to Draco. "See you tomorrow at the office. And please, get some sleep if you can. You don't want to meet Astoria while suffering from lack of sleep. I'll try to appease her a bit, but I think you might actually need to properly apologise to her this time."

Draco nodded. "I will. Now go, before she rips my head off for keeping you longer than allowed."

Author's Note:

As always, thank you all for the comments! :-)

And special thanks to Laura for beta reading whatever I come up with for this story... :-*