Chapter 1
The important thing to understand is that I hate myself.
So when Harry Potter tried to get me fired it’s not like I thought I didn’t deserve it. I mean, obviously I didn’t deserve it. He fucked up his paperwork and it would take all of two minutes for me to summon the forms and show the DMLE what an utter cock he was. But, like, I did deserve for no one to give a single shit about whether or not Potter was right.
They would have fired me, too, the absolute wankers. They asked me what I had to say for myself and I did something stupid like point out that, for law enforcement professionals, they were shit at investigation.
I probably wouldn’t have done, but, even more than knowing I’m not a good enough person to deserve a job at this wretched place, I also hate it here. They jam me into a closet to file paperwork and I swear every one of their aurors would rather die than master penmanship. It’s a travesty. I’d invent a translation charm for idiocy if only they’d grant me a wand. I’d even share my invented spell with them, and maybe the Savior Potter could use it to actually solve himself a case.
This is my penance. My sentence. My supposed path to salvation to atone for actual crime, if not actual murder. They asked me if I had anything to say for myself during the trial, and I did point out that they could probably get me for accessory to murder if they tried.
The Wizenmagot was more or less on my side, in terms of wanting me to suffer terrible punishment, up to and including death. I know it sounds bad, how I thought back then, but those were dark days. Darker days, I suppose, since nothing since has failed to be dreary. I mostly don’t want to die anymore. Which is for the best, because I’m so very bad at killing people.
I absolutely loathe Hermione Granger. It’s her damn fault I’m in this mess because she made the Wizenmagot agree that any underage wix who committed war crimes couldn’t be sent to Azkaban. Her reasons were tedious and ill informed but she had that golden hero energy and forced the issue. So now, instead of blissful death or straight forward misery, I get to slowly descend into madness while the system tries to redeem me.
Seriously. Me. Dark-marked Draco Malfoy. I opened my school to murderous death eaters. I tortured my fellow students with unforgivable curses. I sat at the dark lord’s side as he murdered muggles and watched that hideous snake devour their corpses.
My father begged forgiveness at his trial. Apologies fell from his lips. Cheap, worthless things treated as such.
When asked, I told them I couldn’t imagine doing a single thing different.
That’s what the aurors remember, I imagine. How I’ve never repented a thing.
Anyway, of course they don’t fire me. I’m not technically slave labor because I can in fact quit and send myself to prison. That’s a technicality that stands poorly against how they don’t pay in more than a cafeteria pass for food and they work me to the bone. Sometimes I want to rob them of my labor, but I have no illusions about Azkaban and I am, at heart, a coward. Yes, of course I deserve to be there, but it would be so very, very hard. I weigh the scales a dozen times a day and the balance always shifts back to staying. It’s fine. I know one day I’ll storm out from anger or collapse in on myself in self loathing until they have to drag me away.
I am patient. I can wait.
It’s actually Ron Weasley who gets me out of this scrape. Leadership still hero worships Potter, maybe because he got them all their jobs after his side cleared out all the corruption. Weasley isn’t caught in that trap. He’s in a different trap. Still battling jealousy over Potter’s riches and fame, and his own inability to be seen as the more impressive of the two even though he definitely is. He actually does know how to investigate and went down to my sad little hole in the DMLE, let himself in, and managed to properly check out Potter’s paperwork all on his own so that the wards didn’t sizzle him when he absconded with it. Potter could never. That man needs his hand held through signing his own bloody name.
We’re released together from the meeting. Three men who joined the DMLE at the same time but are now in vastly different places. We have to walk together down the long, silent hall to the lift. I get in first, stand in the back. Weasley and Potter turn their backs to me. That’s growth, I suppose, that they no longer feel the need to watch their backs when I’m present. Doesn’t stop the sting when they start up a conversation as if I’m not even there.
Oh Potter, you need to be more careful. You need to take your job seriously. You’ve got it in you to be a very good auror if only you applied yourself. Blah blah blah. If I was Potter I’d puke on the ginger’s shoes. Instead Potter stares at the metal doors encasing us, waiting for his escape.
The fuckers don’t so much as hold the door for me after they step out. They know I’m on their floor, even if I’m shoved off to a room I’m fairly certain started life as a cupboard. There was hardly room to squeeze around the bunk bed. At the start of every training year the DMLE assigned some poor sap to room with me. I couldn’t tell if it was general incompetence on their part or a deliberate desire to haze the recruit into quitting. Some left, some stayed. Not, like, in my room. The ones that made the cut transferred out of the shithole as soon as some other failed recruit left an open bunk literally anywhere. I had the absolute worst lot and they couldn’t wait to get away.
I took the bottom bunk. I’d lined old bedding around the edges to block out the world. At night, when I was forced to stay in this space that was surely tinier than even an Azkaban cell, I closed my makeshift curtains and did my best to pretend this wasn’t real, that I was back in my dorm room at Hogwarts, and I had never, ever been so stupid as to follow an evil madman into war.