Prologue
It was a regular Wednesday, dull as any other when Draco Malfoy suddenly found himself a bona fide hero.
It happened by accident, really.
He was making his way to the ministry for his monthly parole check, a remnant of his death eater days, when he heard a scuffle in a back corner of the tube platform.
This part of the underground was usually quite empty this time of night – or morning, really, considering the sun would be up in another hour or so (apparently Draco wasn’t worth wasting precious DMLE resources on during regular office hours) – and the few other commuters happily kept to themselves most of the time.
So his curiosity was piqued at the unexpected noise, but when he turned towards it, he wished he hadn’t.
A gruff looking man holding a metal contraption was pointing it menacingly at a young woman who couldn’t have been much older than Draco.
In between the woman’s pleading — “Please, I’ve given you all I have,” — and the man’s threats, “You know what I’m here for, Loretta” — Draco heard another, softer voice.
“Mummy, I’m scared.”
“Shh, it’s ok love, we’re going to be ok,” Loretta whispered, slowly inching closer to the child being held in the man’s grip. “I’ve given you everything, if you would please just let her go-”
“Not another step forward!” the man yelled suddenly. And then, a bang like someone cast a bombarda at a brick wall.
Draco didn’t even think before casting the protego.
In the blink of an eye the bullet careened off the invisible shield and hit the assailant in the shoulder.
“Ow! What the bloody hell was that?” The man shouted as he fell to his knees, good arm gripping the wound in his left shoulder.
Draco blinked. Fuck, but that was reckless. And apparently, it wasn’t over yet.
The sleepy morning commuters had caught on to the commotion by now, and scrambled to leave the station.
“Jack, get her!” the injured man yelled, as the woman made to grab her child. Another, shorter man stumbled out from behind a pillar, clearly pissed out of his mind.
“Whazzaat? Whaz ‘appenin?” the man responded.
The click of heels echoed in the train platform as the woman brushed past Draco, daughter in tow, sparing him a quick glance with fear in her eyes.
Well, in for a knut, in for a galleon and all that.
“OI! Where d’ya think yer goin’?” the short man (Jack, presumably) slurred, clumsily making his way towards the stairwell where mother and daughter had made their escape.
Draco took this as his cue, stepping forward to block the other man’s path.
“Well aren’t you the big mean man, threatening a little girl,” he spat at the short muggle.
Beneath the bravado of course, his knuckles were white gripping his wand under his sleeve.
“Get outta the way, fairy, if ya know what’s good for ya,” Jack growled in return, sounding more sober than he did a moment ago.
Draco heard a faint clicking noise as the man approached him, but a well aimed stinging hex stopped him in his tracks, forcing him to drop the small grey object he pulled from his coat.
Jack grabbed his face looking around wildly for the source of the sudden pain, eyes finally landing back on Draco.
Draco took the opportunity to jab his wand into the muggle’s throat, allowing a wordless warming charm to heat the tip — a harmless scare tactic, but the man didn’t need to know that.
“What are you?” Jack whispered, eyes wide, backing away towards the train tracks.
Draco stalked after Jack slowly, grabbing a fistful of the man’s ratty sweatshirt as his foot slipped on the side of the platform, and pulled him up just as the train flashed by.
“Right now? I’m very angry,” Draco said in a measured tone.
“See, that was my train. And instead of being on it, I’m here teaching your sorry arse a lesson in etiquette.”
Draco enjoyed shaking the man by his shirt for another moment before turning to the right and petrifying his wounded companion, who had by now got it together enough to point his own metal thingy at Draco.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said as the man fell backwards with a thunk on the concrete.
“Now, Jack,” Draco said with a sneer, pointing his attention back at the man in hand.
“Am I correct in assuming that you and your fellow idiot over there are going to give up a life of crime and bullying little girls? Or shall we wait for the next train together?”
Jack just whimpered.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Draco said, finally dropping his grip on the man’s shirt and watching him crawl pathetically back onto the platform.
“Now, I don’t know what the fuck these are, but you are not getting them back,” Draco said grabbing the metal objects off the floor.
After fiddling with the metal gear for a bit, Draco decided the best course of action would be to just melt them into nothing and vanish the liquidy mess.
Once done, he turned to the man he petrified on the floor, sighed, dug around in his pocket until he found a mobile and called 999 — if he was going to get in shit with the ministry, it wouldn’t be for leaving muggles for dead.
Task complete, he dropped the mobile with a clack and stepped onto the train that just arrived at the platform.
Once seated, Draco took a measured breath trying to keep from panicking.
Okay. So he used magic against muggles… in the middle of a not quite empty train platform…while being under ministry watch.
Fuck.
Draco could have kicked himself. Of course he would fuck everything up on the last day of his probation.
Five years. Five years he’d played nice, kept his head down, put up with all of the ministry’s abuse.
Two years of house arrest before they seized the manor, the Malfoy vaults emptied in the name of reparations, forcing Draco to lay low in a muggle flat in central London, working a muggle job, limiting his use of spells so that even the thought of dark magic would cause him shocks thanks to the ministry cuff on his wrist.
And not to mention these blasted monthly check-ins as though Draco would suddenly decide to risk even this limited amount of freedom.
Which, to be fair, he had.
Everything he knew of his life before the war had been taken from him, and now he’d gone and ruined his last chance at finally being free all for some bloody stupid muggles.
Not only would they lock him up for breaking the statute, but threatening the muggles meant he’d probably never get to so much as look at a wand again.
Draco sighed and rubbed his eyes, getting up as he reached his stop.
Best to just get it over with.
As he stepped out of the telephone box and into the bowels of the ministry, making his way to the DMLE, Draco wondered for the 200th time whether they’d toss him in Azkaban or just take away his wand once and for all.
He hoped for the latter. After all, that little display in the tube had been the most magic he’d used in years.
Hell, he couldn’t even apparate without being tracked, which is why he preferred the tube in the first place.
If the last five years taught him anything, it was that a life without magic actually wasn’t worse than death — but Azkaban surely would be. His father's experience proved as much - he lasted six months before his disturbed mind hatched a plan to escape. He was lost to the North Sea.
Narcissa died a year later. Whether from a broken heart or out of sheer loyalty, Draco didn't know.
It was with these thoughts ruminating in his head that he finally got called for his check-in with his parole Auror.
Auror Dent was a petite witch, with graying hair and a laissez-faire demeanor.
“Wand?” She asked in a bored tone.
Draco passed it over silently, holding himself tense in anticipation for the interrogation surely to come.
What felt like a lifetime later, Dent returned the wand with a raised eyebrow and smirk on her lips.
“Duel some second years on your way here, Malfoy?”
“Sorry?”
“Those spells…?”
“Oh! Ha, yes. Right. See about that,”
“Pshh, whatever kid. As long as your cuff didn’t go off, you’re clean.”
“Speaking of which…” she held out her hand palm up and Draco placed his wrist in her grasp.
“Relashio. There, have a nice life.”
“Thank you,” Draco blinked dumbly, silently releasing his held breath.
As he turned to walk away, rubbing his wrist and feeling his magic flow untethered through his body for the first time in years, he heard a throat clear.
“Oi Malfoy! Wait a minute —"
Draco stopped dead in his tracks, carefully turning around, a mask of cool indifference on his face as he asked, “yes?”
“Forgetting something?”
Draco blushed furiously as he walked back to the desk and snatched his wand from a laughing Dent.
“Thank you,” he said again and this time he didn’t wait another second before legging it out of the ministry.
It wasn’t until he was back on the surface, feeling the first rays of sunlight shining down on him that Draco finally relaxed and allowed himself a small smile.
Feeling better than he had in days, he turned on the spot apparating straight home.