Draco carried all of his worldly possessions in a small bundle with both arms, following Granger as they walked out of Azkaban sometime in the middle of the night, edging on the early morning.
He was supposed to have been released shortly after dinner, but the guards had different plans and ultimately Hermione Granger waited in the atrium for seven and a half hours before Draco Malfoy stumbled out of the final check point in the prison with ratty prison clothes hanging off his sharp angles, a cut under his eye and everything he had been arrested carrying wrapped up in a small bundle.
The broken pieces of his wand were among them.
"Come along then, let's get you out of this hellhole," said Granger, too angry to say much more but too tired to do anything about it. A swish of her wand revealed a small otter, which circled Draco before swimming away a message with a message for Potter.
The two left the overbearing presence of the prison for the Apparation point, outside of the building proper and down the pier. As soon as they were away from the guards, Hermione turned and wrapped Draco in an uncomfortably tight hug.
"Merlin, could they have stalled any longer?" Hermione huffed when she let go of him seconds later, evidently pretending the hug never happened as she brushed a stray piece of hair out of her face.
Draco made no movement, holding in a sharp gasp from the pain her hug had caused thanks to the new batch of bruises on his back.
"I'm sorry that I'm the only one here to get you. It made more sense at the time to have Harry stay at home to cook and finish preparing a room for you. I bet those bastards would have sent you out on the proper time if he had been the one to fetch you," she added, her voice taking on a hard, bitter tone by the end.
"But then I would be the one home cooking and then you'd never want to eat, so this is how it was. Again, I'm sorry."
Draco took her hand, which startled her out of her borderline self-pity rant and reminded her what they were there to do. Turning on the spot without any warning, Hermione brought the pair to the alley across the street from the townhouse where she and Harry – and now Draco – lived in East London.
"Welcome to the pretentiously titled Argyll House," said Granger, leading the way across the empty road to the dimly lit building. "It's actually quite lovely, but you purebloods sure know how to put the pomp into pomp and circumstance."
A joke. Not a very good one, but the first one Draco heard in over three years not at his own expense.
He smiled a ghost of a smile and continued following her up the walk.
The door opened before Granger could set her hand to the knob, Potter standing there looking as tired as Draco felt, and immediately wrapped his arms around her.
"Get lost on your way home? Stop for a movie on the way?" Harry asked, more terrible jokes for Draco to enjoy.
"Har har, Harry." Granger said, moving past him and into the hallway to rid herself of her coat and begin to strip away the memories of Azkaban.
Draco, with so many more than her, would have a harder time.
"You doing okay?" Harry asked, eyeing up the Slytherin.
"I'm in one piece."
"If you say so."
Harry moved aside, letting Draco enter. The townhouse, which had been unremarkable from the outside, was actually quite lovely on the inside. Airy, with lots of natural light coming in – which for now was just the street light, but Draco would take it – and clean surfaces.
Potter waited until Draco was done taking in the space before pointing down the hallway.
"We figured you'd be better off getting food into you first, a chance to ask us some questions you want answers to right away, and then you can settle in – unpack, clean up, everything."
Draco nodded, grateful that the impossible choice between a shower and a meal had been made for him.
Granger sat in the kitchen waiting for the pair of them, hovering over a kettle as if willing it to ready faster. Waiting on the table for Draco was scrambled eggs, a pile of toast and a large bowl of assorted berries.
Draco sat down, slowly set his bundle on the seat beside him and began to eat. Intellectually he knew he had to go slowly or he would get sick and it would all be for nothing, but this was his first real meal in over three years and he could barely contain himself.
Eating afforded Draco an opportunity to take in the pair in front of him, different but entirely recognizable from the people they were before.
Potter had a beard now and had filled out from his former 17 year old, half-starved form, not that Draco in his current form could really judge. He stood, more confidence in him now than he ever had as a child, against the counter with a cup of tea Granger handed him, mulling silently as he drank.
Granger was just as changed, sitting across from Draco with a mug of her own. Her once riotous mane, probably three feet in length when wet, had been chopped off. Now her hair hesitated to touch her shoulders, and she looked considerably better for it. She had grown up as well, less soft and more deliberate in her shaping. She was perfectly lovely, and Draco swallowed heavily with the thought.
What are these two playing at? And where's the Weasel?
"So we figure you probably have a million and a half questions. Of course we can answer some tonight but we've both taken off the next two weeks to help you get back to normal, so don't feel rushed or anything," said Granger, offering him a cup of tea.
He declined, opting to instead ask the question that had haunted him since their first visit.
"Why did you stop my mother from seeing me?"
Harry let out a deep sigh, hinting to his involvement on the matter. "We didn't want to keep her away from you, not exactly. Keeping your mum out of prison and getting you a shorter-than-life sentence was pretty much the limit of my political capital at the end of the war. Everyone loved me, but they hated you more. That she walked free, having never been caught actually doing anything with the Death Eaters, pissed a lot of people off."
He paused, looking up and locking eyes with Draco, who barely acknowledged what he said. He took a deep breath and exhaled again, continuing.
"At first there was an attempt on her life once a week. It died down a bit after a few months, then picked back up around the first year anniversary. She was staying with me by that point for extra protection."
Granger saw the pain on Potter's face and took over, giving him a chance to reign in his emotions.
"It afforded me some time to work on the appeal to get you out. I put the first one in about fourteen months after your conviction. I put myself forward as your sponsor, using my war reparations and all the award money I received from the war to cover the cost," Granger explained, at which point Draco rolled his eyes.
He could just imagine how decimated his personal vaults has been by the war reparations and how much wealthier the Weasel would be than him, an ironic twist in fate his eleven year old self would have been devastated to learn.
"My application was denied two-fold," continued Granger, unfazed by his reaction in the face of a lengthy answer.
"You needed to be able to work with me but I don't have a regular Monday to Friday, nine to five job, so you couldn't be adequately punished that way," her tone dripping with derision.
"The second issue is that with my work I deal with the Dark Arts on an almost daily basis, despite not really technically using them myself. Either way, I was denied."
Draco watched her, turning her cup in circles as she explained. In the periphery, Potter was watching her with a soft smile but with sad eyes. Draco was only more confused by the reaction.
"It was at this point that I started on a new appeal, with Harry set as your sponsor. Figured he's their damn Chosen One, who could say no to him? Turns out the Wizengamot, on a technicality."
Harry snorted, looking at Hermione with a raised eyebrow that led Draco to take on the same expression. Granger glared at them both before continuing.
"Harry has never been associated with the Dark Arts and doesn't work with them directly in the way that I tend to, so he should have been fine on that count. Only they decided to hold against him that he had survived the Killing Curse twice as a result of Dark Magic, even though it was unknown to him and against his will," she explained, grumbling.
"We challenged their decision, considering that information about Harry isn't supposed to be public knowledge and would be if the decision was upheld and won, but they refused to change their decision as it specifically regarded you. So, Harry couldn't sponsor you either."
Draco understood Potter's reaction to Granger's definition of a technicality but was more confused now.
"But if you were both denied, then how—?"
"You can thank your mother. She's a brilliant witch," said Granger, who was – to Draco's surprise – entirely sincere in her praise of his mother.
"She rooted through a few of the old Black libraries and found an obscure bonding ritual that for legal purposes combined Harry and I into one citizen, one who had not been rejected in their appeal for your freedom."
Potter looked considerably less amused and quite uncomfortable at this point, as Granger explained to Draco in a no nonsense, laissez-faire way that she and Potter had pretty much gotten married just so they could spring him free.
"Were you two even dating before the bonding?" Draco asked, gobsmacked, although he could guess.
They both snorted, Granger letting out a small chuckle with hers.
"Ron and I had split during my appeal to sponsor you, so I was right and properly single at the time," Granger explained, her eyes twinkling.
"Harry, however, was dating Ron's sister Ginny. We had asked her to be your sponsor after we were both denied but she adamantly refused. The idea of the bonding, while by no means equivalent to marriage, pushed her over the edge."
The dark smile on Granger's face at Potters discomfort made Draco believe that somehow, he could make this work. The way Potter used wandless magic to make Granger's tea lightly scald her fingertips in retaliation only assured him further.