Author's Note: I'm sorry…I couldn't come up with an S title for this one. It's been a rough couple of weeks at work. I won't go into the details, but today feels like the first time in an age I've managed to sit down to write. I'm going to post this, and then keep on writing. Thank you for keeping my spirits up with your reviews. Seriously. You motivate me so much.

And I realized this week that I completely missed commemorating the first anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts in this story. By my reckoning, it should have been early in Chapter 39. For some reason, I always put it in late May or early June in my head instead of early May. Please forgive me? It was the nargles. I blame the nargles.

I'm not sure exactly how far this story will go, but by the end of this chapter, we've hit the start of June. Draco is 2 months from potentially getting his magic back.

Edit: Thanks to xXMizz Alec VolturiXx for the chapter title suggestion. Love it! And it looks like FFN is having a delay with reviews getting posted right now, but I swear I'm seeing them in my email, and they're making me smile.

Chapter 42: Sympathy

Hermione had been back to Azkaban three times in the last week. She wasn't sure she was making any progress with Arnold or Doug. True, by the time she came back, a Healer had clearly come in and done work. The guard made a point of telling her how difficult it had been to get a Healer anywhere near either "wolfie" as he called them. The lycanthropes didn't trust anyone with a wand, and the Healer had been afraid of bodily harm, which hadn't exactly been an unreasonable fear.

After her first two visits, she was beginning to feel like speaking to Lucius Malfoy was possibly one of the less futile things she was undertaking. As loath as she was to speak with the man again—he deserved his imprisonment if for no reason other than what he'd done to eleven year old Ginny, let alone anything else he was guilty and untried for—she had promised Draco, and she made the trip.

"Miss Granger, I hardly expected to have you grace me with your presence again," the man said, dryly. A weak smirk tugged as his lips, which were a little dry, as though he hadn't been hydrating well enough. He probably hadn't. "You did say last time was a singular event, not to be repeated. To what do I owe the honor this time?"

Hermione sat stiffly, not sure what to make of his faux politeness. The man spoke as if he was standing is his own grand hall rather than looking at her through the bars of his cell. "Draco asked me to check in and make sure you were all right. It's recently come to my attention that not everyone who is…the government's guest here, is receiving the necessary medical attention."

The barest hint of a sneer might have crossed the man's face before he returned his expression to a carefully neutral one. She could practically see him decide to change the course of his words to a more suitable set. "How unfortunate."

She did her best not to grind her teeth, and looked at him with as calm an expression as she could manage. "You are here because you have committed a crime and are being required to serve time here, for the safety of others, and so you have a chance to reflect on the decisions you've made and how you might make other decisions in the future. Your punishment is that you are denied freedom. Everyone here is still entitled to a basic standard of health and safety."

"Always noble, wanting to make sure my runny nose is attended to as I subsist on bread and water, with no amusements to shorten the endless hours," he said, his voice utterly dry.

"As I see that you do not appear to have any bruises, broken bones, a runny nose, or any other ailment—apart from perhaps a vitamin D deficiency—I will be on my way." She stood up to take her leave. She added the prison's meals as another area to investigate. She doubted anyone was being made to live on bread and water, but then again, who knew?

"Wait," he said, a slight quaver in his voice for the first time.

Hermione paused, but waited a moment before turning around to face him again. "Well?"

"How is my son? How is he bearing his sentence?"

Well, that's a loaded question, she thought. "He's thriving. He's working for a living, and doing it well. He's more than capable of taking care of himself—he doesn't need a house-elf or anyone else to look after him or do his day to day tasks. If he's not sure how to do something, he's not too proud to read the instructions or ask for help. He may not like doing things the Muggle way, but he's learning, and doesn't complain much. He even has some prospects lined up for when his sentence is over. I don't know if you're proud of him, but I am." Her voice took on an edge of fierceness, protective of Draco. She half-expected Lucius to scoff at the prospect of his son doing something as plebeian as working or making his own dinner, but he surprised her.

His voice was soft, almost as if he couldn't decide whether he really wanted her to hear him or not. "If he's learned not to make my mistakes, then maybe my being here is worth something."

Biting her lip, Hermione pushed her hair back from her face, formulating a response. Hate is so much easier when things are black and white, when you think right and wrong are simple. She had no doubt that Lucius Malfoy deserved to spend years making up for his crimes, but it was just possible that he wasn't totally beyond redemption. He loved his son. He had something that was worth more to him than his own life—more than his schemes for power and wealth. He just hadn't known it until he nearly lost it all. Maybe someday, he could be out in the world and make it better rather than worse. But that day wasn't today. Still, if there was hope… "I could come back."

He didn't answer. He only looked at her coolly.

"Perhaps we'll talk again another time," she said quietly. Draco had a little over two months left in his own sentence; a paltry time compared to what Lucius was facing. With all of Draco's mixed emotions regarding his parents, would Draco come and visit his father?

Still, it wasn't until her third visit to Azkaban that she'd come back and anything had been done about the state of the furnishings in either room. While the furniture that had replaced the rather destroyed pieces certainly didn't look new, it was functional, and that was something.

She attempted to speak with Arnold. "Things are looking a little better than the first time I came by, aren't they?" While neither Arnold nor Doug seemed very inclined to speak with her on her trips, Arnold was generally quiet, whereas Doug muttered about the wand-wavers and how they were all out to destroy all of the wolves, how they were all out to get them.

The man regarded her silently from the corner of his cell.

She continued to talk, pausing every so often, hoping for some sort of response. She spoke about the work she was doing, how she hoped for a cure. She asked questions about his history, not very hopeful of getting any answers. But the subtle shifts she saw on his face indicated that he was listening, so she spoke throughout the hour she'd been allotted to spend with him.

"Why?"

Startled, it took Hermione half a breath to respond to his question. "Why what? Why do I think you would benefit from magic lessons?" She'd been going on about an idea she had to offer magical training to anyone with lycanthropy who had been denied it in childhood.

"Why do you want to help us?" His eyes locked onto hers, unwavering. His arms were wrapped around his knees.

Hermione thought carefully about her response. She had his attention now. "To be entirely frank, I'm not sure you should be imprisoned here at all, even if you fought against us in the last battle. I'd know more of course if you were willing to tell me a little about yourself, but the long and short of it is, you have no control over the fact that you were bitten by someone with lycanthropy, probably when you were a child. I don't know, you, I don't know your history. But I imagine you weren't given the chance to go to Hogwarts, to learn to control the magic you have. To get an education. This education would have enabled you to get a job. To function in wizarding society. You may turn into a wolf once a month. You can't help avoid that. But you are a human being every day, and you deserve better than what you have. You all do. I want to help."

"Better?" he scoffed. "What could be better than having the freedom to go where I want to and do as I pleased? That was my life until wizards imprisoned me here." He made wizards sound like an insult.

"Maybe living amongst others with lycanthropy completely apart from wizards is the best solution, but shouldn't you have the option to live amongst wizards and use magic if you want to? To give everyone else that option? That's what I want to do. But I can't do it without your help. I don't know where any of them are. I want to offer them education, clothes, housing…a chance to have a place in wizarding society."

"And if they don't want it?"

"I wouldn't force them. I can't speak for the Ministry, but I'd like to be able to welcome anyone into wizarding society who wanted to take part. Anyone who didn't want to…they could stay where they are." She held her breath waiting for him to say something.

"You control no one but yourself. My brothers and sisters would be hunted down and imprisoned if your Ministry had their way."

Try as she might, after that point, Hermione couldn't get anything else out of Arnold that day. The problem was, he was right. She couldn't guarantee anyone's safety at this point. She couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't be coerced. But she couldn't get any backing from the Ministry without more of a plan. Without more information. Despite the victory of Arnold saying more that day than on any previous visit, Hermione went back to her flat feeling dejected.

Two more months, Draco thought, watching Caffrey and Burke leave his flat. He found himself starting to calculate how many more times he'd have to physically haul his clothes to the laundromat before he could just start cleaning them by magic. He shook his head. It was a useless thing to dwell on. Doing things the Muggle way required so much timing and planning. He never wanted to drag his clothes out in bad weather, so he had to plan for that, and make sure he didn't run out of clean underwear, and see to it that he had a couple of hours to spare to just sit there while machines washed his clothes. The worst had been one day last month where he'd gotten there and there had been no open machines, so he had had to wait an extra hour until something was free. Things were so much easier with magic.

Still, there was something nice about the fact that he wasn't famous or infamous amongst the Muggles. He was just Draco, on his own merits, no history attached. A small part of him was tempted to keep that. To use his magic in private when he had it back, but continue to shun the magical world. Would it be so bad? The Malfoys could just fall off the map. Except for his mother. He could hardly imagine she'd be willing to shirk what she deemed were societal obligations.

Did he care about seeing his so-called friends anymore? The ones that hadn't tried to reach out to him in the last ten months?

Was it worth dealing with the Rita Skeeters of the world again? He had no doubt that there were people who didn't think his punishment had been severe enough, that he ought to be ostracized in the press. For all he knew it could have been going on already. Hermione had no subscription to the Prophet.

Still…did he want to work in the library forever? Never be able to even casually speak to his coworkers about his life outside of work?

These questions plagued him still as they had for months. He felt like he was going in circles.

There was one question that he had an answer to though, and he was going to have to speak to Hermione about it very soon. As homey as this flat was starting to feel to him, he knew the Ministry would take it away if they gave him his magic back. He was going to have to find somewhere else to live. He would not go back to the Manor and his mother. He wanted to wake up beside Hermione every day in a place that was theirs.

He knew she'd be home from the joke shop soon. She'd been trying to put in a little extra time there to make up for the hours she'd been out in Azkaban. He went to the kitchen to find something to put together for dinner.

Hermione woke up with her head snugged against Draco's neck, and his fingers resting on her lower back where her pajama top had ridden up. He smelled good , and his body was warm, and she just lay there for a moment, luxuriating in the feel of his chest rising and falling steadily, and the texture of the sheets.

"Hermione?"

"Hmm? Morning, Draco."

"Morning, love," he said, raising his hand off her back and stroking her hair. "I've been thinking about something. And I was wondering what you thought of it."

She detected something careful about his tone. Too careful for so early in the morning. "What have you been thinking about?"

He exhaled and his breath tickled her face. "I was thinking that when my sentence is over, if they give me my magic back rather than finding an excuse to send me to Azkaban, I think we should move in together. I mean, I'd like to. And I know we already spend most nights together, and just…" He let out another breath. He felt like he was botching this as badly as when he'd asked her on their first date. That had turned out all right in the end. "I know we haven't really been dating that long but…"

"But it feels a lot longer than it's actually been?"

"Yes."

"For me too." She fiddled offhandedly with the button on his pajama top. "It's funny that you brought this up. Someone else was asking if I'd live with them recently."

"Oh?"

Without even needing to see his face, Hermione laughed at that one syllable, carefully, controlled in a way that she knew meant he was repressing something. "Ginny. She wanted to know if I wanted to get a flat together after she graduates. I told her I wasn't sure." She kissed his neck. "I could sublet my place to Ginny and you and I could get a place together. If you want to. We could start over somewhere that's just ours."

Draco reached out to tilt her chin up and kiss her on the lips. "I very much like the thought of that. You are brilliant." Living in her flat hadn't been his favorite idea, though he'd rather that than to be without her. Her flat felt as much like home to him now as his own. But the thought of starting over together somewhere…it was just right.

Absolutely the last thing either of them wanted to do was to go to work, but the world was waiting and they things to do. And so they went.

Hermione was hard at work most hours of the day. Belby was still driving her forward on both theoretical work as well as practical. She spent less and less time at the joke shop as she became more engrossed in the lycanthropy issue. She'd hardly even had a chance to start contemplating directions to pursue her cure in, though she'd started brewing Wolfsbane potion for the prisoners who needed it. She still hadn't managed to have a coherent conversation with Doug. It was possible his wounds ran too deep to even begin to listen to her. Arnold had clammed up almost entirely after the day he pointed out that she had very little actual ability to do anything for him or those like him.

"I told you they might not want help," Draco said, doing his best to sound conciliatory and not as if he were rubbing her nose in it. He wasn't sure he succeeded.

"They're welcome to accept or refuse whatever I can offer, but they should at least be given the choice," Hermione said. "The Ministry has done nothing for them. And never has, as far as I can tell. I had Percy check back through the histories. Rules and regulations against being near other people on the full moon. Admonishments to family members to keep lycanthropes locked up. No defense of their rights as citizens except for Dumbledore seeing to it that Remus got an education. Nothing. No legal protections against being fired because of their ailment. It's disgusting."

"Hermione, if everything works out in the best possible scenario…what are you hoping it looks like?"

She shut her book with a thud. "Draco, there's no reason for anyone else to get bitten. I know Greyback and some of his followers did bite wizarding children on purpose. That's what happened to Remus. But there is a whole community of people out there with lycanthropy living off-grid. Presumably they are having their own children. And as far as anyone can determine, lycanthropy isn't hereditary. A witch and wizard with lycanthropy would give birth to a perfectly ordinary magical child…until that child was bitten. And from that point on, he or she is condemned to a lifetime of painful transformations, with no chance really of reconciling with the wizarding world, and the prejudices go on. That child probably has no idea that their parents did that to them. That it doesn't have to be that way. We could eradicate this. Make things better for the people who are suffering now, and prevent it from having to happen to anyone else. But so much more is needed than I thought." She rubbed her temples. "Clothes and food, though essential, are the least of it. I need a place to bring people. Somewhere I can hold classes if they're willing to learn. I'd like to get everyone, but even just to take a handful of people who are willing at the start. To show them that wizards and witches aren't power mad dictators, and show wizards and witches that people with lycanthropy are people, and not monsters…" Draco stood up and crossed to her, rubbing her shoulders, as Hermione let her head fall back against him. "They're classified as animals, Draco. And not people. It's not right."

The closer she got to seeing just how large the scope of what she'd taken on was, the more she dug her heels in. Lycanthropes needed to be classified as wizards, witches, and Muggles with a disease, not as animals. And as people, they needed help and to be treated as equals.

Her next step was going to have to be to see where Percy and Arthur had gotten with the Ministry and start filing for reclassification. But for now, she sat in her chair, letting Draco's fingers knead the muscles of her aching back.