Chapter 17: Unbolt the shackles

They dropped where they had started—at level minus three and one seventh of the Ministry of Magic. Harry thought they would apparate to Hogsmeade, or straight to the Hogwarts front gate from here, but Draco lunged towards the chimney.

"Er, wh—"

Draco dived into the chimney without a word. Something told Harry that he'd better follow.

"What are you going to do?" Harry panted, catching up at level six, the dead rat still in his hand.

"Save the world?" Draco barked, storming the lift and crushing his hand on the level one button, as Harry vanished the used Portkey. "Fight against darkness?" Draco's eyes were sparkling with vindictive determination. "For justice? And freedom?" He burst out of the lift at level one and strode over the purple carpet. "Unbolt the shackles?" He flung open the outer office door and made a beeline for the door on the other side.

"Mr Po—" Ruth, the Minister's secretary, shot up from behind her desk. "The Minister is in a press conference. He's not—"

"Good!" Draco said, and stepped over the threshold of the mahogany sanctuary.

"Stop that immediately!" shouted Ruth to his back, Harry gestured apologetically, and followed Draco into the Minister's office.

Kingsley was presiding over a meeting. On his right hand side sat the Head of the Goblin Liaison Office Chloe Zeller and on his left someone Harry did not know but guessed was the new Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, judging by the silver outline of a flying owl embroidered on the front left of his robes. They were facing a crowd of reporters, some sitting starchily at the long table in the middle, others scattered around the room with their cameras. The subject of the press conference was bound to be the total strike of Goblin Metalworks, and seeing that no Goblin representatives were present, the Ministry had no good news to break. Rita Skeeter's Quick-Quotes Quill buzzed faster when everyone's eyes turned to the intruders.

"Mr Potter?" Kingsley looked at Draco across the room with unflinching coolness.

Draco crossed over to Kingsley's desk and didn't quite manage to keep his voice down. "There is a problem. We need to talk."

"I'm talking to the press. Mind your turn, Harry," Kingsley replied quietly.

"Fine, then I'm talking to the press too! I either talk to you, or I talk to them. Your choice."

Kingsley looked at Draco, then at Harry, then at his guests.

"Will you excuse us for a minute, ladies and gentlemen? I'm sure Mr Coote and Ms Zeller can answer most of the remaining questions." And he took Draco behind a door at the back of his office.

But the reporters, it seemed, were not particularly interested in Goblin Metalworks any longer. All their faces were now turned to Harry, and some instinct, some gut feeling told him: Run!

Harry crossed the outer office in a hurried but—he thought—reasonably civilized walk, but hearing the tromp of feet and flashes behind his back, he changed to a sprint. At the calls "Mr Malfoy!", "What is the problem?", "What urgent business do you and Mr Potter—?", he ran for his life.

He dashed past the lifts and into the little frequented stairwell, but when he was only one flight down, the fastest of the pack appeared on the landing above him "Mr Malfoy! What is Mr Po—?" Harry exited at level two, whose layout he knew best.

He pulled his Invisibility Cloak out of his breast pocket as he ran. His bewildered colleagues jumped out of his way. He turned the corner, ducked behind a potted Flutterby bush, and swung the cloak over himself. The peloton of hungry reporters thundered past him.

Two Aurors, fascinated by the anomalous surge of traffic in the Headquarters, followed, wands out. The Flutterby bush quivered restlessly. Harry pressed himself deeper into the niche in the wall and barely dared to breathe.

The reporters must have realised that they had lost track of their prey, and started gravitating slowly towards the lifts. Only when the last echo of Malfoy's name died out did Harry venture a cautious look around the corner.

Everything seemed quiet again, no one was in sight, but just as Harry started pulling at the hem of his cloak, a sharp staccato of heels on the granite floor made him sink back into the niche and into the invisible fabric. A witch, whose name Harry could not remember but was sure was one of Kingsley's acquisitions from the Department of Mysteries, was approaching purposefully. She stopped when the door of an office not far from Harry's hiding place opened, and out came Ms Scarlett Kaye, the Death Eaters' Bane, carrying two wooden boxes, one stacked on top of the other. The content of the boxes gave a soft glassy clank.

They greeted each other. The first witch dropped a curious look into the top box.

"Done! Can you believe it, Georgia? Done!" said Kaye. "Archiving the last Death Eaters. Rowle and Malfoy—"

Harry pricked up his ears.

"—have been cluttering up my space for months now. I can't wait to forget Malfoy for good."

'You will never forget Malfoy,' Harry thought. 'There is no way to be done with Malfoy. Ever.'

"But weren't there some allegations that young Malfoy—" The witch called Georgia was clearly less naive.

"That's Aurors' department. Let them catch him first," said Kaye. She could be right on that account. Catching Malfoy would likely take a long time.

The two witches turned to the sound of heavy shuffling. The man's face was hidden behind a pile of wooden boxes that he was carrying.

"Ah! Mr Walters! How nice to see you here!" exclaimed Kaye, when the Ministry archivist came closer. "Could you take these down for me too?" She stacked her two boxes on top of his five. "Please, archive these," she pointed at the topmost box, "and send these back." She pointed at the one underneath it.

"Yes, Ma'am," replied Mr Walters weakly, and continued his slow walk to the lifts, balancing the column in his arms.

The soft glassy clank in the boxes pulled Harry along with an irresistible force. If this was what he thought... Taking the lift under the Invisibility Cloak was not an option, but if he took the stairs he would be down at level nine in no time. If Mr Walters continued at the same pace, he would just have made it to the lift.

Harry sneaked quietly, keeping close to the wall and out of everyone's way, slipped into the empty stairwell and flew downstairs skipping two steps at a time. Level three, four, six, Atrium. Finally. Level nine, Department of Mysteries. Harry was standing in the dark deserted corridor with the ominous black door at the end.

At the other end of the corridor there was another door. It was quite ordinary. It had a perfectly normal doorknob, a keyhole, and a brass placard engraved with the word 'Archive'.

Harry tried 'Alohomora', but of course, Mr Walters was cleverer than that, considering that the Ministry was full of people who mastered Hogwarts first year's curriculum in Charms. Harry pressed himself into the little space at the side of the door and waited. He soon heard the distant rattling of the lift, the clatter of the golden grilles sliding apart, and the slow heavy steps of the archivist under the weight of seven boxes. With a lot of huffing and puffing he managed to deposit the whole stack on the floor, pulled his wand, stuck it into the keyhole and the door opened. While he was messing with the boxes, Harry slipped inside.

It was an enormous room full of endless shelves with books, parchment rolls, and vials of silvery vapour—memories. By the sound of it, Mr Walters' boxes were also full of them.

The archivist brought the boxes in one by one, and set them in a row on a large desk at the front of the room. Next to it stood a cart with a wooden chest, which would pass as a coffin for a very short human or a very tall Goblin.

What now? Harry had no plan. He watched Mr Walters as he started sorting the first box. He took out the vials one by one, read the labels stuck on top, checked some lists and registers, and with a wave of his wand sent some of the vials flying along the shelves to join the rows of others like them at their assigned places. Every now and then he put one or other vial carefully inside the chest next to the desk.

A pink interdepartmental memo fluttered through the open door. Mr Walters caught it, pushed his glasses up his nose, and sighed defeatedly after a moment's stillness. He caught another memo on his way out, the door closed, and Harry heard the lock click.

The muffled clank and squeal of the lift sounded somewhere behind it, and Harry made for the desk. Easily a hundred little vials looked at him, each carrying a label—Lestrange, Rowle, Yaxley, Umbridge, you name it—and a number or code, set in runes, which made no sense whatsoever to Harry. Carrow, Carrow, more Carrow, Lestrange, Vaisey (bless him), Rowle again, Snape, Umbr—, what? Harry's fingers slid back to the vial he'd just been holding, he took it out of the box and peered through the glass. It was almost empty, only a few drops at the bottom honoured the memory of the late Potions Master. Harry put the vial to the side and continued.

Umbridge, Umbridge, Umbridge, Umbridge, Harry started searching through the next box. There were a few Rowles at the top, and then, Malfoy, Lucius, and another Malfoy, Lucius, and another, and then the first Draco. The box was full of Malfoy. This must have been one of Kay's boxes. Luckily, Mr Walters had not yet sorted it.

There were a couple more vials with Lucius and then a good dozen of Dracos, and then a... Hyperion Malfoy, who was that now? Harry pulled the vial out of the box and placed him next to Snape. The next box offered a similar picture: A bunch of Draco Malfoy vials, and then, the first Narcissa. Harry stopped fishing them out one by one, grabbed two handfuls and added them to the pile on the desk.

Good heavens! No way he could steal all of it! Mr Walters was bound to notice and his own pockets were only so big. The muffled rattle of the lift sounded again in the depth of the corridor. Panic rising to his ears, Harry dropped the whole load back into one of Kay's boxes, keeping a couple of random vials that his hands could hold, and retreated to a nearby bookshelf, stuffing the loot into his pockets as Mr Walters clicked the lock open.

He appeared with another box and a heap of parchment rolls, walked up to the desk, deposited his burden, and stared with a puzzled face at the box Harry had just pillaged. He lifted it and with a yawn that sounded like longing for retirement, emptied its contents into the chest.

Mr Walters continued his sorting routine, and Harry wondered what he was thinking coming here, because his feet were falling asleep and no other interdepartmental memo came to rescue him.

It felt like an eternity, but finally, Mr Walters made a stack of the empty boxes, gave a satisfied sigh, covered the chest with a lid, nailed it shut, and pushed the cart towards the door. Harry slipped out of the Archive while Mr Walters was manoeuvring the bulky impedimentum. Almost flattened against the wall, he saw his Narcissa Malfoy selection disappear to an unknown destination. Farewell Narcissa. Harry caressed the vials in his pocket. Four was more than nothing.

Drained, hungry, but back to visible, Harry stood at the front gate. At least, he hoped he was visible. The sun had set, his cloak was soaked, and he probably looked like a homeless Dementor. He had considered taking the secret passage through the Shrieking Shack, or through the Hogs Head, but did not fancy McGonagall wondering how the heck Draco Malfoy had managed to seep through the protective enchantments. So now he legitimately stood at the front gate, and hoped that Hagrid, or someone, had seen his shot of green sparks.

One thought that warmed Harry from inside, as his feet got wetter and colder, was that he soon might get a glimpse of what Kay really had on Narcissa. The other thought with the same warming effect was that Kingsley apparently had not fired him. On his way out of the Ministry, Harry had run into Ruth who told him in no uncertain terms that a lesser man would have. Would have! That is, he hadn't. Heavy panting interspersed with small whines brought Harry back to the reality of his cold feet.

"Don' get too excited, Fang. This can't be Harry. Bet it's the Malfoy boy. Yeh better stay away from him, yeh hear me, Fang? We don' wan' no trouble!" Hagrid's big face shone in the light of a lantern. "Ah, Mr Malfoy, good ter see yeh back safe. Harry bin wond'rin'."

Fang pranced up cheerfully and pushed his nose into Harry's hand. His gooey saliva pearled off his sleeves which were already fully saturated.

"No, Fang, yeh leave Mr Malfoy alone."

"That's okay," Harry said more to Fang than to Hagrid. He let him steal another lick and a sniff. But Fang must have sensed Hagrid's nervousness and retreated to his side.

They walked in silence. Their feet squelched in the mud with the unforgiving confidence of having nothing to say, and Harry hated it more and more with each step. This was the man who had given him his first birthday cake, and Dudley his first pigtail! He had started it—the row of grown men who gave Harry bits and pieces of what he missed and the innocent hope for safety. First Hagrid, then Mr Weasley, then Lupin... Sirius. Dumbledore. Harry felt nauseous at the thought of the man who he had called father a few hours ago. How could this happen?!

"Hagrid,"—it was sheer recklessness, but Harry couldn't bear the silence any longer—"I should tell you something. It's a bit crazy, but hear me out, erm." He met Hagrids weirded out look, and forgot what he wanted to say. "Sorry." That was not what he wanted to say. "I mean, please—"

"Sorry?" Hagrid looked down at him from under his bushy eyebrows and squelched louder. "Never thought I'd hear that word from yeh in me lifetime."

"That's not what I wanted to say." Oh no, this sounded very wrong! "I mean, I am sorry, but—" Now Harry was definitely stuck. He had wanted to say he was not Malfoy, but now he spoke as if he was.

"All's well that ends well, isn' it? I'll pass yer apologies ter Buckbeak if he shows up. Bin makin' himself scarce lately." The lantern swayed, and Hagrid's face disappeared in the darkness with every other step. "'Tis up ter him ter let bygones be bygones, not up ter me."

"Of course." That was it. Harry was a fucking Malfoy, and the best he could do was to shut up. A hundred big and small windows of the Hogwarts Castle shone in front of them in all colours. "Thanks, I'll be fine from here."

"Yeh sure?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where have you been?" Draco caught up with him on the way out of the Great Hall after dinner.

"To the archive."

"Whatever for?"

"How did it go with Kingsley?" Harry asked back. "I heard he didn't fire you, me, that is. Anything else I can congratulate you on?"

"If you mean saving the world, no."

"You tried?"

"To relocate the prison." Draco didn't puff smoke anymore, but his eyes still had that dark glow. "He said there will be no relocation. Full stop. Not in the near future."

"Why not?"

"They have intelligence of two jailbreak plans underway that count on it."

"Not bad. Who?"

"Lestrange, and"—Draco rolled his eyes—"Lestrange-Vaisey."

Draco's uncle was a tough cookie. They stopped at the bottom of the Grand Staircase.

"Shacklebolt promised to move my mother to St Mungo's."

Harry caught his breath.

"But— but that's brilliant! That's a start!"

"A start of what?"

"Saving the world!"

Draco smirked, but his eyes glowed even darker.

"Only temporarily. Until she gets better."

"Still! This is fantastic! Now you should just keep nagging the hospital about the treatment, so they keep her as long as possible. You're an expert at it! Or even better, let Knox loose on them!"

"Okay, I'll nag, you let Knox loose." Draco's smirk broadened a little, but did not turn into a smile. "Why did you go to the archive?"

"Er, well." Harry regained composure. "I was worried about your mother too."

"That's touching. How exactly did you worry about my mother in the archive?"

Draco would not like it. Harry straightened his back and stretched to his full height.

"I took some vialed memories that concern your mother's case."

"You took them."

"Yes."

"And does anyone know that you took them?"

"I don't think so."

"So you stole them!"

"If you want to put it that way, yes."

"What the—? If you get caught—"

"I didn't get caught."

"—you'll land me in Azkaban, you know that." Draco kept his voice down. "And you risk your skin, my skin, to achieve exactly what?"

"Exactly what you want to achieve! Get your mother out! Hopefully on a more permanent basis than until she gets better."

"Are we now partners in crime? Oh, Potter, Potter." Draco shook his head.

"No! I want to find the flaw in her case. What did you call it? Not putting all your eggs in the same basket? St Mungo's—great! Go ahead with your criminal plans—without me! But let's try this too. I want to get her out in a perfectly legal way!"

"You call this 'perfectly legal'?" Draco exploded in sarcastic laughter. "Oh my!"

Harry felt at his pockets full of stolen evidence.

"Okay, I take back 'perfectly'. But I wouldn't discard the option if I were you." Harry did not want to ruin the mood but he had to inform Draco sooner or later. "Dementors are not the only threat she's facing."

Draco stopped laughing. "What do you mean?"

Harry recounted his conversation with Lucius. Draco listened. His eyebrows rose to lofty arches, then pulled together into a bushy frown, and eventually went flat like a dead animal overrun by a Muggle car.

"Your father's not an idiot. He's a scumbag."

Draco stood rooted to the spot, his face turned to stone.

"Did you tell him that?" His lips moved finally.

"No, well, yes. I told him he was not my father."

"That's a good one." A faint flicker of interest flashed in Draco's eyes. "How did he take it?"

"Not seriously."

"Typical," Draco whispered, and his face turned back to stone. He turned on his heel and set off up the stairs.

"Hey!" Harry called to his back. "We should have a look at the memories. And why don't you finally tell me what you know about that witness?"

Draco ran.

Draco ran, and each stair landed an angrier blow against his soles than the one before. The staircase had disconnected from the next floor and was turning slowly. If he reached the last step in time, he could step over the edge in full swing and everything would be over. But the landing of the approaching next floor sucked in the upper end of the stairs, and Draco attacked the next flight.

Potter was lying!

No, he wasn't!

Draco knew exactly how it was. There were seconds, not more, where you would try to maintain some dignity, some sort of face, some resistance. But as the torture went on, and it always did, you'd stop giving a damn. Your mouth would squeal, your intestine would fall limp, your shit would leave your body like a sinking ship, and you'd betray your grandmother and her chickens.

Azkaban could not be much different from torture. When Father had been back from there last summer, he was just that—all hunger, and indifference, and whatever Voldemort wanted him to be. Just like today. He'd lost it. Draco couldn't blame him for it, but he was not his father any more.