Chapter 23
I hated this room. I’d always hated it. With its severe, black chairs looming from the dais, and deep crimson walls mimicking drowning in blood. I’d first seen it the day I lost my trial. The day I lost everything.
My father’s last words to me were on the way to his own trial. He told me we would overcome.
My mother’s last words to me were as they dragged her away. She told me don't lose hope.
It took them months to notify me when my father died. This hideous place, these horrendous, entitled, superior so-called people, couldn’t be bothered to let a son know his father was dead. I don’t recall grieving for him. I just knew he died wrong. I would never escape.
I grieved for my mother. Not her death, who knows if she was dead. But I grieved over not being the son she wanted. I couldn’t keep her safe when she needed me. I couldn’t find hope when it was the only thing she asked for. The only perverse way I could find hope was standing here now, watching the seats fill around me as my captors wandered in to make sense of why I was here.
They were so confused to see me without having summoned me. Befuddled when I stated plainly that I quit.
Quit? Was I allowed to quit? They’d been threatening to fire me for a decade and now but they didn’t think I’d actually leave.
Still. They supposed it was allowed. And as they looked around at each other there was an unspoken consensus that no one would try to stop me.
Quit. Well.
They supposed I would need to be sent for processing.
I had to change clothes. They couldn’t put me behind bars wearing the DMLE emblem. The new clothes felt odd against my skin. Not bad. Soft, even. Disconcerting because they were different and every day had been the same for near on ten years.
The clerk who met me in the lock up did try to talk me out of it. Not very hard, but more than once she asked if I was sure. Certainly I didn’t mean to cast myself into Azkaban forever. I didn’t answer. Things had been better when I never answered their questions.
I lay back on the hard bench in the cell afterwards. There was a general shuffling in the auror office beyond, but I didn’t watch who came and went. I didn’t care if they noticed me. The records clerk they’d hated all those years ago, before I disappeared to brainwash the youth who didn’t know they shouldn’t talk to me. I didn’t want to look at them and remember their harsh words and hexes. I wanted to fade away like I’d never been here at all. I closed my eyes and imagined I would see my mother again, when they dragged me off to Azkaban.
It didn’t take long for someone to come for me. Honestly, I hadn’t known they were so efficient. Perhaps they had a shipment of prisoners heading out to Azkaban today and there was just enough time to put me on board.
I was not taken to a transportation shuttle. I was taken to an Interrogation room. A room in which sat one Hermione Granger.
Hello Draco, she said.
Granger.
She smiled then, like it was a joke. Maybe Weasley had told her our exchanges, which had grown humorous in their familiarity. Had, past tense. I didn’t feel anything for them now. She tilted her head and scrutinized me as silently as I stared back.
Did you and Harry break up, then?
It was unexpected enough that I flinched even though I promised myself I’d do nothing. That was enough of an answer that she only nodded and folded her hands in front of her. Ron had been worried that would happen. Harry could be rather pig headed and insecure in his relationships.
My jaw tightened against the urge to ask questions. How had Weasley known? What did she mean about Potter? What was she doing here? I looked down at the table between us instead of facing her. As if looking away could block out her words.
Granger was not the sort to offer platitudes. She looked me up and down instead and stated matter of fact that she assumed I’d thought this through, as much as I cared to. I didn’t meet her eyes, didn’t confirm or deny the truth of it. Her assumptions carried her forward without any help needed from me.
What Granger had to offer was options. The DMLE wasn’t working out. Had I considered transferring to a different department?
I had no plan to answer questions, but that one did make me look back up. Many departments were here at the Ministry proper, but they also had satellite and field offices. With my computer skills, I’d be more than welcome in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office. It might not be to my tastes, but if I chose the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures I could even spend most days outdoors. With my language skills, I could go so far as leaving for the continent with the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Just say the word, Draco.
Azkaban. One word. Nice and simple. Perhaps croaked out, because my throat was dry and tight and strangled.
Granger tilted her head again but she didn’t look surprised. She knew she couldn’t stop me. After all, I wasn’t technically a slave. I could always, always quit.
Things will get better, Draco. One platitude as a last resort.
I shook my head, very much not justifying my decision. Not expanding upon how I did not care for it to get better. I did not care to let my ice cold feelings defrost and risk growing attached to something else that would come to hurt me. Not caring to open my heart up here or elsewhere, as if elsewhere made a difference. Here we had the senior aurors, everywhere else would have their political scum holding me under their thumb. I didn’t want a nicer prison to rot in.
Very well. If my mind was made up there was only one thing left to do. Granger handed me back the forms I’d filled out not two hours before. Bright red block letters stamped out the word “denied,” right over my signature. My fingers brushed over the ink, still wet.
I was free to appeal. In fact, she’d already scheduled me an appeal hearing ten days from now. All I had to do was show up to it and I could quit on the spot. Nothing to it.
I looked from my rejected form up to the woman I realized was second only to the minister himself. Her grim smile was far from the doting wife she presented as at DMLE functions. I didn’t question either her authority to set my plans back, or her expertise in the bureaucratic process.
I won’t change my mind, I insisted, because I needed to make this promise to myself.
She stood from her chair, softening. She had ten days. Give her a chance to make this right. Please, Draco. Don’t lose hope.