Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).
Author's notes: Well, this was going to be complete at Chapter One, given that it's an alternate universe to Amends and the latter is turning into the very War and Peace of fan-fictions. However, enthusiastic reviewers have encouraged me to continue it, and likely there will be a few more chapters.
Special thanks to Silverbirch, whose brilliant and moving fiction Forgiveness is the Final Form of Love inspired the thoughts on border-crossing.
***
Like too much in his life lately, this is not working out as planned.
Draco sips the last of the tea and looks over the rim of the cup at Granger, who has pushed her breakfast dishes to the center of the table and is looking at him with the characteristic expression—eyes narrowed in curiosity rather than hostility—that had followed him through six years at Hogwarts.
She's plainly waiting for a reaction to her assertion that no one at St. Mungo's could help him. He is not going to give her the satisfaction. It does relieve him, somewhat, to find out that Granger the war hero had gotten the same response: "No spell damage, no signature for any known curse; you're in good health."
Except in his case, he could hear the Healer, a very junior one who'd just finished her training, think: more's the pity, you Death Eater scum. If it wasn't the tattoo, then it was his face—no mistaking who his father was—and now Granger is telling him that the Muggles might have something he wants. Not a possibility he'd ever considered.
"So," he says. "How does one cross the border?"
She puts both wands in her pocket and carefully backs away from the table, keeping her eyes on him the whole time, fishes in the pocket of the coat that's hanging on a peg by the door, and brings out a dainty, sparkling blue evening bag—rather a surprising item for this girl even to own, who's dressed in a Weird Sisters T-shirt and black drawstring trousers. She reaches into it, rummages about, pulls out a wallet.
She opens the wallet, and spreads out an assortment of cards on the table.
"Does any of this look familiar?"
He looks at her, suspecting a trick, and she looks back at him steadily. He picks up the cards, one at a time, turns them over; they all have her name on them, in raised letters or flat, on hard smooth surfaces. Several have pictures, frozen Muggle photographs that don't flatter her at all. They make her look pale and dangerous.
Well, that's not far from the truth.
He shakes his head. She repeats the question, "Do you have anything like this? Might your parents have a box squirreled away? Because if you don't have any of these, you don't exist."
He shakes his head.
"No, I don't suppose they would," she says. "Toujours pur and all that. Unfortunately, the National Health Service doesn't take Pureblood attitude as identification." She sighs, and shakes her head. "Well, you're not the only one with this problem."
He stands up and she watches him. There's a picture on the sideboard that he's been looking at all this time, another of those static photos, and it's plainly Granger, with someone else, standing on a high place overlooking grey moors, under a lowering sky; she and her companion are both bundled in Muggle walking clothes, and they're laughing, arms around each other and hair blowing about their faces. He picks it up to look more closely. She glares at him, and he puts it down again.
"So you've gotten over Weasley," he says. He saw the article in the Prophet six months back, and the coverage since about the reclusive war hero who refuses interviews.
"None of your business, Malfoy, unless you want me to ask if the Prophet was right about your mother."
Direct hit, of course; he flinches. That's a sore point—all those photographs of his very pregnant mother, and the speculation as to who the father is, given that Lucius Malfoy is in Azkaban. He knows more than he'd like about his parents' brief second honeymoon on the eve of the trials, but it burns that they'd speculate—that Rita Skeeter would speculate—
"Don't talk about my mother."
"Then stick to business, Malfoy. Do you want to cross the border or not? I'm getting together a petition for Shacklebolt, and I need to know who's on it." She folds her arms and looks at him. "There are plenty of Pureblood citizens of wizarding Britain with the same problem you have. You're an annoying little bigot, but the Wizengamot certified you harmless."
He doesn't like to remember that, either, being chained in the stone chair and then finding out he was only a witness. They'd menaced him with life in Azkaban. After all, he had cast the Unforgivables, well two of them for certain, and they'd only let him off charges of the Killing Curse because of Potter's testimony and the posthumous Pensieve depositions from Snape. At the very last, when he thought that the Dementors were coming for him, he was questioned at length about the Dark Lord's stay at the Manor--questioned, though, with his left arm chained in place so that all in the court could see the Mark on it.
And he's immortalized in a thousand photographs of a pale skinny boy in Azkaban grey, terrified and dirty and on the verge of tears.
"Personally, I thought they played you rather a nasty trick," she says.
He looks at her, expecting that it's sarcasm, but the expression on her face is perfectly serious. He's really at the end of his rope, and if the offer is a serious one, if Shacklebolt really means to extend help to the likes of him …
"Put me on the list, then," he says.
***