Thursday, November 22, 2001

"Fuck this and fuck you all! Get your hands off of me, I'm out of here!"

Draco climbed out of the spiked pit he had almost fallen in to once the screeching started and over to the side of the obstacle course he was currently running through while dodging curses. Word had spread through the precinct that Draco was being examined today as part of the physical requirements needed to get his much overdue NEWT in Defence.

A man known simply by his surname as Morris, who Tonks would later note had done rather poorly his first time through training for whatever that was worth, had finally snapped and quit.

"Death Eaters being on the force is one thing but special treatment? He's a fucking baby killer and no one is willing to say it, well there's no way in hell I'll ever fight by his side. This place is fucking insane – Get off me man!"

Morris was the first auror to snap after months of poking and prodding by Tonks, using Draco as an irritant to test the remaining Aurors. She'd fired a dozen or so in her first few months as head of the department, earning something of a bad reputation in the process, but there were still quite a few recruits from immediately after the war who didn't quite meet her strict standards.

And finally one of them had lost it.

Draco walked off the high beam and over to Harry and the examiner, who was tsking and shaking his head at the uncouth behavior. Draco asked if they could take a five minute break while the room calmed down and received a terse nod. He and Harry walked over to Tonks, who stood by the doorway as two of her more loyal men dragged the protestor away.

"Who had week twelve for the first quitter?" Draco asked, digging two galleons out of his pocket. Harry raised one hand and accepted his winnings with the other to a grumbling but visibly pleased Tonks.

"One more week and that pot would have been mine."

Draco shrugged, having called dibs on the first five weeks and watching as each day in the office ended as quietly as it began, torn between pleased and disappointed. That this would happen was an inevitable but he would have rather profited from his role as pariah.

He spent two or three days a week in the auror department, largely balancing training with paperwork with a sprinkling of fieldwork experience. His NEWT in defence was more or less assured given the reviews he'd received from Tonks, who was one of his proctors, and in part from the tutoring he'd been receiving from Harry in between shifts.

Who would have thought word of extracurricular training and an overdue examination would be what would finally push one of the disgruntled aurors over the edge? Not that Draco really minded, all things considered.

He had yet to really be welcomed to the department by anyone other than Tonks and Kingsley, who was a frequent visitor at the department. The two had spoken in private shortly after the incident with the press and smoothed things over, and Draco tentatively chalked the Minister up as a fair-weather friend, which was a lot better than an all-the-time enemy.

He had enough of those in the auror department.

Draco got himself a drink of water and returned to the training room, resuming his midterm examination. A few aurors watched from their desks through the glass wall that peered into the training room with aloof expressions but Draco guessed more than one of them watched hoping he would come to an untimely demise.

Those looks became more pronounced throughout the day as Draco wrapped up the physical exam in the morning and took to his desk to work on his precis of a crime scene he visited from earlier in the week to factor into the reasoning for transferring the file to DLME. He had no problem writing those reports up, especially given that the DLME were considerably less antagonistic towards him.

That discovery had also hurt his reputation in the auror department.

He visited the coffee room alone sometime midday and everyone inside stopped and stared at him, some with looks of disgust and others with veiled looks of contempt. It seemed that whether or not they liked him or not before, the tide had turned for the worse.

He had sort of expected that to happen too.

He hadn't so much been expecting Morris to have wormed his way back into the department and to be waiting for Draco in the unlit locker room at the end of the day. He felt him first rather than saw him, a cheap shot thrown out of the dark and catching Draco in the jaw.

He spun but caught himself, the muscle memory of the boxing lessons of his adolescence kicking in. The anger management aspect of the exercise completely forgotten, Draco turned without a word to the coward and began grappling him, throwing jabs when the two split, and the room slowly filled with a cheering crowd of younger aurors and cops, none of them interfering, none of them noticed by Draco.

The fight snapped something in Draco, who had been so cautious and reserved following his incarceration. Now that rage came out and blinded him, but didn't slow him down: another minute or two of grappling and Draco found himself pinning Morris to the ground under his knees, his fists earning satisfying crunches from his nose, his jaw, his collarbone, and his ribs.

Draco didn't even notice the crowd surrounding them in a tight circle, cheering and exchanging bets, even as two sets of arms pulled him off. Morris struggled to his feet but once he was standing, he launched at the restrained Draco and got two shots to his face before Draco was released to return the favor.

By the time Tonks caught sound of the cheering in the change rooms and broke it up, Draco was kicking at a curled up and crying Morris, asking him if he was having any regrets.

"Break it up, break it up! Oi! Let off already!" Tonks shouted, smacking Draco across the back of his head, snapping him back to. He wiped at his bleeding nose and shook his head, trying to collect his thoughts but once he took that first hit he went into something of a frenzy and couldn't quite recall how he managed to break so many of his knuckles but he was suddenly very aware of the fact that he had.

"Alright you lot, head home," Tonks said, surveying the group of younger employees shift nervously and depart quickly. She nodded to two who nodded to her, one of them waving his wand at Morris to levitate his prone form and head toward the atrium to floo to the hospital.

"Well, I'd hoped that as our countries esteemed law enforcement we might have risen above such tactics but on the plus side it seems as though you've earned some respect among the lower ranks," Tonks admitted in a low voice, surveying the room to find little damage and cleaning up the blood that had managed to spray across several surfaces.

"I'm guessing you didn't seek him out," Tonks added, earning a disdainful scoff from her cousin as he explained what he remembered. She nodded and didn't question much as he glazed over the fight details.

"I'm happy pretending this didn't happen given the paperwork I'd have to fill out otherwise. Just get Harry or Hermione to take a look at your hands sometime in the next few hours, they look rather disgusting," recommended Tonks with a sickly satisfying look on her face as she clapped him on the back and left.

Draco let out a deep exhale and went to his locker, retrieving his wallet and watch from its' safety and Apparating directly home to avoid the inevitable hoard of press waiting in the Ministry atrium.

Tomorrow's headline, Malfoy heir attacks officer of the law: is he stable?

He arrived in their hallway and hung up his cloak, greeted by the wondrous smell of Indian take out. He could hear Hermione humming as she laid out the fruits of her labor and as he entered the kitchen doorway, he almost cried just watching her.

She looked up by chance and saw him, seemingly oblivious to the blood splattered across his face and robes, standing in the doorway and watching with heavy eyes. She sighed and waved him forward, wandlessly summoning her wand from the counter top to her hands as she began mending his torn knuckles and soothing the bruises as they started to form.

The cooling sensation undid Draco, who without thinking took Hermione in his arms and hugged her close, lowering his face into her curls. She took to her tippy toes and hugged him back, guessing that he really needed someone to, and stood like that for a solid two minutes.

"Thanks Hermione," Draco whispered, letting go. He hadn't shed any tears, controlling his emotions in the time he hid away in her hair, and looked much less defeated and instead calm. She leaned up and kissed his cheek, turning and missing the blush that broke out on his cheeks.

"We all have bad days at work, Draco. I'm happy I could be here for you. And I'm sure the other guy looks worse."

Draco smirked and nodded, taking his seat and digging in as Harry loudly entered the room and praised deities that someone remembered his lamb curry this time.

Authors note: Hello everyone! Apologies for the delay, my mother in law was in town for a week as a major distraction and seemingly took my inspiration away with her when she left. I have the next few months already mapped out, it's just a matter of writing the damn things at this point. Sorry in advance for any typos, I just wanted to get this out before I hemmed and hawed and convinced myself out of it.