It was an unmitigated disaster.
"Soft on crime" was the kindest epithet the Daily Prophet threw at him. The newspaper, which until recently had done nothing but sing his praises (no easy feat, and one for which Blaise took full credit), now deemed him a coward, a disgrace to his office, and a traitor to his blood, his name and his people. It stopped short of overtly calling him a Muggle lover, but one particularly colourful opinion piece by an Aaron Porter ("A concerned citizen") did describe him as the "obedient lapdog of Muggle Prime Minister Gallagher".
Blaise found it remarkable that citizen Aaron Porter even knew who the Muggle Prime Minister was, but Draco found no humour in it. Ginny suggested he cast a Dark Mark over the Ministry, as a way to remind people that he used to follow a Dark Lord bent on purging wizarding society from all Squibs, Muggle-borns and blood traitors ("No one will suspect you of Muggle sympathies then."), but he didn't see the funny in that either.
The Wizengamot was in open rebellion. Draco had never in his life seen a more contrary, uncooperative and obstructionist pack of mummies. They vetoed anything that came across the court, dragged every possible proceeding as long as humanly possible, and were slowly but surely burying the support staff in paperwork. Even Blaise's practised diplomacy had so far failed to produce any tangible results.
The whole thing made Draco long for the good old days of a month ago, when all he got flak for was getting a petty criminal teenage werewolf acquitted and sent to Hogwarts.
Things had gotten so bad that he had taken to avoiding Diagon Alley. Back when he had had the good sense to stay on the good side of public opinion, he had always enjoyed taking a stroll through the shopping quarter at the end of the work day — stop at Flourish and Blotts to check out any new books, drop by the Leaky Cauldron for a pint, dutifully avoid Knockturn Alley (Borgin and Burkes delivered), and generally bask in the carefully cultivated adoration of the general public.
There was no adoration now. There was barely a hint of approval.
There were no doubt people who agreed with his stance, who saw no profit in picking a quarrel with the Muggle executive and who thought one prison was much like another, so who cared that the two Muggles didn't end up in Azkaban as long as they ended up somewhere? Those people existed and some of them might even stop him on the street to chat or shake his hand. Mostly, however, he was confronted with the frowns and disapproving looks of armchair politicians who thought they were better, knew better and could do better, people who whispered loudly about Death Eaters and war criminals in the same breath in which they called him a Muggle-whipped coward and saw no conflict in that.
Draco had many fine qualities, but a thick skin had never been one of them. He had grown up as a boy-king — cherished, adored, indulged and spoilt. He had flown high right until he crashed and burned — boy-king turned errand boy, turned Death Eater, turned war criminal. The whole world had gone to hell in a handbasket, and he with it, and he had tried to claw his way back up ever since, to get back that feeling, that high, that surety that he could do no wrong.
He kept falling short.
He finished work late that Tuesday evening. It had been a tiring day, full of meetings and paperwork and headaches, and he wanted nothing more than to get home and forget there was even a world outside the walls of Malfoy Manor. It would take him no more than a few seconds to Floo back, but Draco was feeling restless. He had been cooped up inside for weeks, his life split unevenly between the Manor and the Ministry, and much as he wanted his bed, he wanted a break more — a break from that hellish sameness of house, work, house, work, work, work, work.
He changed into Muggle clothes and walked out of his office. All the desks outside were vacant save one.
"Creevey, go home. I have no intentions of paying you overtime."
"Almost done." Colin waved without looking up.
The night was chilly and it was starting to rain, but Draco didn't mind. He walked aimlessly, neither knowing nor caring where he was going. He had no destination, nor any need for one, happy simply to feel the cold air on his face. London was loud and bright even that late in the evening, and he relished the anonymity, the simple act of walking on the street among people who didn't know him, nor anything about him.
He hadn't strayed very far from the Ministry when something caught his eye. On the other side of a brightly lit pub window was Hermione. The witch didn't look up, too busy scribbling notes on the margins of documents laid out on the table in front of her, but she would have been unlikely to see him out on the darker street even if she had.
A smarter man would keep walking. They were in a good place, the two of them, a better place than he would ever have thought possible. They had gone from strangers to foes, to friends, to lovers, back to strangers, back to friends, and he wanted them to stay there, in that good place where they could work together, and be together in the same room without him wanting to set it on fire.
And if he looked too hard at her — too hard at the familiar way she bit her bottom lip when concentrating, too hard at the way she turned her head just so, too hard at how she always looked just a little more herself whenever her hair was having a particularly unruly day — he would remember just how much he hated her. How much he hated her for sleeping with Weasley, how much he hated her for leaving, how much he hated her for coming back.
How much he hated himself on top of it.
Ever the fool, Draco walked into the pub. The interior was warm and comfortable, and mostly deserted. Besides Hermione, there were only a few more patrons scattered around the room. He dropped his coat on the back of the chair across from her and sat down. Hermione looked up, surprised.
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm a big fan of all things Muggle, or haven't you heard? You transfigurated these?" He picked up a sheet of paper, recognising a memo from the Department of Mysteries.
"Obviously. Couldn't bring scrolls to a place like this."
"Why are you bringing anything at all? You're a worse workaholic than Blaise. You have a problem, Granger."
"I have many problems, Malfoy, but you stealing my rhubarb pie is not going to be one of them. Get your own."
She tried to pull the plate away from him, but he held on to it.
"I don't have any Muggle money on me. Would you deny a starving man pie?"
"Yes," she said, but let go of the plate all the same.
He smirked, impaling another chunk of stolen pie with his newly stolen fork.
The single waiter managed to drag himself away from the giggly red-head monopolising his attention long enough to come by their table and ask Draco if he could get him anything.
"Whiskey, neat."
"I thought you didn't have any Muggle money," Hermione said as the waiter walked away.
"I don't. You're buying."
"Am I?"
"I'll trade you a bite of rhubarb pie."
She rolled her eyes, but ate the offered pie off the fork he was holding. "You have no shame."
"None. Is that the quarterly report from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes?" Draco stole it from her pile. "I've been waiting for that for a week."
"Help yourself," Hermione said, resigned to the inevitable.
"Quill," he asked, reaching in her general direction without looking away from the report.
"Are you at all familiar with the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy?" She handed him a pen instead.
They worked in amicable silence, unencumbered by disagreeable things — such as the whims of an unelected quasi-parliament, the fickleness of public opinion, or the annoying December drizzle that was never quite rain.
Draco liked it. He liked the secluded atmosphere of the almost-empty pub. He liked the waiter and his casual neglect. He liked the drinks that kept on coming in spite of it (whiskey for himself and wine for Hermione. White, because she had always been unconscionably prejudiced against red).
It was a small island of quiet and contentment amid the chaos of the last few months — pleasant and perfect, and never meant to last.
"Do you have the draft of the speech for the broom-maker unions?" he asked.
"It's here somewhere." Hermione hunted it down in the chaos she called 'a system' and he called 'the place order went to die'. "I haven't had time to go through it yet, though."
"I'll do it." Something caught his eye, however, and he grabbed it before Hermione could slip it out of sight. The witch made to grab it back, but he moved it out of her reach.
Blaise had been keeping the latest polls from him, saying only that if there was anything of note, he'd let him know. Draco knew the numbers couldn't be good, but he didn't expect them to be this bad. His approval rating was down in the single digits. The last time a Minister's numbers had been this bad, Voldemort had returned and Fudge had been forced to resign.
He only faintly heard Hermione calling his name, and it took him a few seconds to feel the sharp pain in his hand, which was covered in whiskey and glass shards from the shattered glass he had been holding.
The waiter ran over with a kitchen towel that Hermione immediately commandeered, sending him off to fetch a first-aid kit.
"Draco, let me see your hand." She took it in hers, carefully turning it over and using the cloth to brush off as much of the glass as she could.
He pulled the hand away. "I'm fine." He couldn't remember the last time his magic had misfired like that. "I need to get some air."
Ignoring her calls to wait for her, he grabbed his coat and stalked out.
It was fiendishly cold outside, and the crowds had dwindled to a trickle of passers-by. Draco picked a direction at random, trying to walk off the sudden sense of drowning. He was sixteen years old again, standing in a circle of sneering Death Eaters who wanted nothing better than to see Lucius Malfoy's young pup run himself ragged trying to do the bidding of a homicidal maniac.
He was seventeen, kneeling at Voldemort's feet, the weight of his House on his shoulders. He hadn't killed Dumbledore, but Dumbledore was dead, and surely that was — that had to be — enough?
He was nineteen, weighed down by chains that clanked if he so much as took a breath, waiting to hear what the punishment for losing a war was.
He was twenty-six and his voiced filled his father's study as he and Lucius hurled angry words at one another. It was the last time he would see his father alive.
He was twenty-eight, telling Hermione to get out. He didn't yell, he didn't raise his voice. He told her to get out and she did, leaving him alone with all the reasons why he wasn't good enough, had never been good enough, and the whole thing had been doomed from the start.
Draco took a deep breath, trying to stop thinking and keep walking, keep moving, keep going.
"Draco, wait." Hermione touched his back and he spun around, gripping her arm.
"You and Blaise need to stop trying to fucking manage me."
A knight in shiny armour masquerading as an overly-adorned hoodlum took issue with his tone, shouting as he ran across the street, "Oi, mate! Get your bloody hands off her!"
Draco's hand flew to the pocket where he kept his wand, but Hermione grabbed his sleeve. "Don't be an idiot," she whispered.
"You okay, love?" the young man asked.
"Yes, I'm fine," Hermione smiled, without letting go of his sleeve. "My friend just received some bad news. We're fine. I'm sorry for taking up your time."
The man eyed Draco with suspicion. "Well, if he's not giving you any trouble," he said, looking not the least convinced.
"It's really fine."
"All right, then. Evening."
"Good evening."
As soon as the man was out of earshot, Hermione dragged Draco to an alley, where they were less likely to be interrupted by well-meaning simpletons.
"Zabini did not think you'd take it well," Hermione said. "I'm so glad to see he was wrong."
"Spare me the sarcasm." He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes for a second, the world dwarfing to his pulsating hand and aching head.
"The numbers will bounce back."
Maybe. Maybe not. Right then, they were what they were.
"We'll talk about it tomorrow," he said. "I'm going home."
He straightened up, but Hermione kept him in place, a hand against his chest.
"How?" she asked.
"How what?"
"How are you going home?"
He sighed, removing his wand from his pocket. "I have one of these."
"You're not Apparating."
"Hermione—"
"Not a chance in hell, Malfoy." She always called him that when she wanted to sound bossy. He used to find it charming. Once upon a time. "Not in that state. You're upset and you've been drinking, and you'd think you're in enough trouble with the Prophet without giving them the chance to write a story about how the Minister for Magic splinched himself."
"Move."
"Don't be an idiot." He was getting tired of being told that. "I live nearby. You can take the Floo from there."
He didn't want to. He didn't want to spend another minute with her. Not just then. The whole world was spinning too fast, and he didn't need — did not want — an audience. He wanted to be able to lash out and rail against fate and the world, and people in general and her in particular, and Blaise for being a prat, and Pansy for being a disloyal git, and whoever it was that ran the Prophet for doing it with the gleeful abandon of the morally bankrupt. He had met more principled Death Eaters.
"Just let me be, Hermione," he pleaded, with no real hope that she would.
Hermione grabbed his good hand. "Come on."
Draco sighed. "Fine." Contrary to popular belief, he was not entirely impervious to good advice.
The witch lived in a flat on the top floor of an old building that had seen better days. There was no lift, and they had to climb all the way to the fifth floor on narrow stairs that creaked under their weight.
"Do I pay you this badly?"
"Not all of us inherit the ancestral home of our forefathers. You try finding an affordable place in London."
When they finally reached her floor, Draco had learnt more than he cared to know or would have thought possible about her neighbours, whose lives seeped steadily through paper-thin walls and poorly-isolated doors.
Hermione's flat was bigger than he would have guessed, and no doubt bigger than any Muggle architect would have thought likely. There were weighed-down bookcases along the living room walls, and a small fireplace opposite the entrance. The witch lacked any of his prejudices against electricity, and her home made ample use of it. There were electric lights, a television, and even something he recognised as a laptop. (He attended meetings at the Muggle Liaison Office. He knew things.) He would even bet that somewhere in that flat of hers, there was to be found a kettle twin to that fiendish contraption she kept at the office.
"Where do you keep your Floo powder?" he asked.
"Sit." She waved her wand in the sofa's general directions, and a number of sheets of parchment flew up, rolled themselves into scrolls and jumped into a basket in the corner of the room.
"I'm just going to go."
"Draco Lucius Malfoy, sit down."
Reconciling himself to the fact that he lacked any control over his life whatsoever, Draco sighed and made his way to the sofa, leaving his winter coat on a coat-rack by the entrance. Hermione had disappeared into a different division, but she returned presently, carrying a box of vials that she set down on the coffee table.
"Give me your hand," she said, sitting down next to him.
"My hand is fine."
"Your hand is bleeding all over the upholstery."
"I remember your nursing skills. I'll take my chances with the glass."
"Grown men who blow up things don't get to be picky in their choice of nurses."
He glowered, she glared, and in the end he put his injured hand in hers, because such was the state of the world.
"'Atta boy."
She held her wand over his palm and muttered an incantation that made all the glass shoot up, disappearing in a glittery cloud. He hissed as the splinters were ripped out of his flesh and tried to pull his hand away, but Hermione held on to it.
"Almost there," she said. Satisfying herself that there was no more glass left to torture out of him, she soaked a piece of cloth in Essence of Dittany and ran it over his palm, instantly healing the cuts. "Was that so very difficult?"
"You enjoyed that far too much."
Hermione dropped the cloth on the coffee table without letting go of his hand, and Draco did not think to pull it away. He turned it instead, his palm against hers. He could chastise himself about it tomorrow.
"I have to resign," he said.
"You really don't."
"You saw those numbers. I cannot—"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "The numbers go up and down all the time. That's why we don't tell you about it. You freak out every time the public hiccoughs."
"Not like that." He would love to be over-reacting this time, but he knew he wasn't. "The numbers don't go down like that."
She squeezed his hand. "The numbers will bounce back."
"Not if the Prophet has anything to say about it."
"Oh, hang the Prophet. The Daily Prophet doesn't dictate policy, and I'll be damned if I let them bring down the Ministry."
Draco smiled ruefully at her outburst. Hermione had always loathed the Daily Prophet, even back in the days when they showered praise on the golden trio. Something to do with them being a bunch of lying, spineless, back-stabbing charlatans, who lacked smarts, morals or any appreciation for the truth, and who gave journalism a bad name.
He didn't disagree with her on the fundamentals, but the fact remained that the Daily Prophet was influential — too influential to disregard — and that an elected public official could not be indifferent to the moods of the people he had been elected to serve.
"It's time to let someone else have a turn at the helm." He had given it an honest try. Maybe he could become a Quidditch commentator. Watching Quidditch for a living, now that was the life.
"Do you believe in what we're doing?"
"It's not a matter of—"
"Do you?"
Draco sighed. "You know I do."
He liked her vision — he shared her vision. He was proud of the things they had accomplished in the last few months, prouder of them than of anything he had done up to then. He was proud of the little things, such as the development of the Veteran Fund and the implementation of the Squib Support Programme, both long overdue; he was proud of the more sweeping reforms, such as the reinforcement of worker rights across the public and private sectors, and the overhauling of the taxation system; he was even proud of how they had handled the things that had given him nothing but headaches, such as the Sam Daniels affair and the Neal Patel issue.
There were so many things he still wanted to do, so many things left for him to accomplish. He just didn't know if he had it in him to try.
Draco leaned his head back against the sofa, looking up at the ceiling. "I don't have the trust of the public anymore."
"Then get it back."