Draco entered what was now his room, clutching his bundle tightly. Granger stood at the doorway while he looked around, torn between pleasure and discomfort by the sheer size of it.

Definitely not in Azkaban anymore.

"We opted for light greys and blues. You're more than welcome to replace anything in here that doesn't suit you, but green just seemed so cliché and after so long in that dreary place, I figured you would appreciate the change of palette."

Draco noticed the shift from plural to singular pronouns but said nothing. He was sitting on his bed, not a four poster like he'd had at the mansion but still quite sizable, and considerably softer than anything he'd touched in the past few years.

A bookcase, filled with familiar titles he assumed his mother had shipped over, stood beside a desk – his desk, where a stack of parchment was centered. A chaise by the window was waiting with a book already on it.

"Your private bath is through this door here," said Granger, gesturing to one side, "and your closet through here. There's parchment on the desk – make a list of clothes you would like with your sizes and one of us will pick them up. They're just to tide you over until you're ready to go out into the world and get whatever you want then."

Translation: no bespoke suits for you.

Not that Draco could really complain, knowing how much it had cost from the outset to release him let alone the future costs of upkeep.

"Why?"

Draco had asked repeatedly why the Wonder Duo were throwing away their lives to save his but he hadn't gotten any answers. Potter he could only imagine, what with the life debt he owed Mother. Granger, however, stumped him.

"You might not like to hear this but it was my muggle sense of morality," admitted Granger, sitting against the edge of Draco's new bed. "Prisons in the muggle world are vastly different from Azkaban. They're clean, orderly, and prisoners are safe from abuse. Azkaban is positively medieval in comparison."

Draco wasn't keen on hearing how much better muggles locked each other up but he wouldn't disagree that Azkaban was crudely organized. Most days were spent alone in his single occupancy cell, always cold and wet but never feeling clean. It was often dark, blurring the days together, and food was doled out so inconsistently that it wasn't a sure method for measuring time either.

Azkaban definitely set the bar low.

"Even so, if you were a muggle I don't think you would have served a day in prison. It's a war crime to enlist children, and at barely—if even—sixteen when you took the mark you would have been given all the protections of a child in that situation."

Hermione was watching Draco as he digested this information. He sat in such an aloof position but with a hardness that suggested it was entirely forced. He was a bit skinnier than Hermione would have liked to see but his overall muscle loss was minimal.

Good, that will be one less thing to worry about.

"So you did it out of some misguided muggle based sense of fairness. What about Potter?"

Hermione wasn't really sure how she should answer that. Truthfully Harry had been happy to leave Draco in prison for a decade after all he had done and been part of. It was Hermione who had refused to accept that sending a child to prison for a war he couldn't say no to be in anyway acceptable.

"He'll probably tell you that he did it because of your mother, but it's more than that. She convinced him to assume the proper title of Lord Potter, being the last of his house, and to take on the Black title as well thanks to Sirius. She's helped guide him a lot in the process. She's not what he would have expected but she's taken to mothering him and after the war it was exactly what they both needed."

Hermione felt terrible admitting the last part because the result was instant: the look of betrayal on Draco's face, as he learned that not only had Potter kept his mother from visiting him but that his mother had stepped in for Potter in loco parentis, was too much.

"Draco, she never once stopped worrying about you. She's lived her life very much in preparation for the day you were given back yours. She's in France now, safe and waiting, while you get better and we challenge the parole stipulations that prevent you from seeing her. She's never stopped missing you."

Even as Hermione said it though she could imagine how hard it would be for Draco to face his mother any time soon, knowing what he did and having been through what he had.

"Please don't hate Harry. He really did just want to protect her. He would never consciously steal someone's mother, having never had one of his own. But they helped each other get by, and she helped me convince Harry that you didn't deserve to be in Azkaban at all," said Hermione, suddenly letting out a deep exhale.

"I don't think he realized how abhorrent the conditions of the prison were until he saw you. It hurt him so much more to realize just how deprived you had been, despite everything we'd been told had been done to make Azkaban more humane."

Draco nodded softly, more to assuage Granger's guilt than to agree with anything she had said. It would take time for him to come to terms with what had changed and what had happened to him, but it seems Granger had been his champion on the outside from the offset so he wouldn't blame her.

"It's about half past four now. I'll come by in a few hours with some breakfast for you, okay? Then we'll start figuring out the next few days," and with that Granger squeezed his forearm arm lightly and took her leave.

Alone again.

Draco looked around the room once more, looking for the human touches that differentiated it from the stone cell he had inhabited just the day before. Books, some he knew and others he did not; a well-worn blanket at the foot of the bed, for just in case; a vase of flowers, with apple blossoms and yarrow, on the desk.

His bundle still in hand, Draco laid back on the bed and tried to quell his anxiety. Breathe in, breathe out. The softness of the bed though was alien and soon the anxiety redoubled with the sensation of sinking into the bed deeper becoming unbearable. Draco sat back up and pulled the spare blanket with him, taking it over to the chaise by the window.

He rolled his eyes when he saw someone—definitely Granger—had humorously set out Crime and Punishment for him to find. Putting the book on the desk, he wrapped up under the worn throw blanket, his bundle tucked in safely, and turned towards the window.

He fell asleep, dreaming of nothing but the feeling of being frozen, aching and alone, and woke back up suddenly a few short hours later, pale sunlight shining on his face.

A look around the room revealed a clock beside the bathroom, showing Draco had only slept three hours. He unwound from the ball he had subconsciously rolled into and quietly took apart his bundle.

Remnants of his broken wand, his passport which had been cut in half vertically, and untouched candies were wrapped up in the cloak he had worn in to Azkaban but carried out.

The galleons he'd been carrying and his gold watch were unsurprisingly absent.

He set it all on his desk, to be acknowledged properly later. Now, though, Draco had access to a shower and hot water and as much time as he wanted to enjoy it. The bath Granger had pointed out the night before was well laid out, with both a walk in shower and a deep soaking tub.

When Draco had stripped out of his Azkaban uniform and into the stream of hot water, something inside of him broke.

He cried for the first time in a long time for all the time he had lost. He cried for his Mother, who he loved and hated now more than ever before. She had brought about his rescue but she had left him so alone for so long.

He cried for Granger with her soft touches and Potter with his big house, opened for Draco, and then he cried because feeling bad for them just made him feel even worse.

When Draco left the shower, he felt clean for the first time in three years, three months and twelve days.