Distance
Draco spent three days dreading his next encounter with the Gryffindor who had played with his hair and let him cry into his shirt. Andrea had returned and seemed to be back to normal. He hadn’t asked why she’d disappeared, where she’d gone, or if she was back now because there was some new threat to his life. She didn’t mention what had happened or why she’d been mad at him. But Draco had more than enough anxiety just worrying about Harry for the moment, so he didn’t push the issue.
However, Andrea had also become dramatically more distant. The petnames had virtually disappeared, she no longer told him what to do (even jokingly) or bantered with him, and whenever she wasn’t helping him brew she sat quietly on her settee with a book. They didn’t talk about anything anymore. She didn’t ask about the brew, or about any of his other orders he was working on and she didn’t comment on anything unless she was asking what to do next. Brief, clipped instructions and yes or no responses were all that passed between them.
Draco couldn’t help feeling like he’d ruined it. Had allowing Harry to stay late that night, despite her obvious disapproval, destroyed whatever bond had been growing between them? Or had there just never been a bond at all? Had he just fooled himself into thinking there was? She’d seemed to like him as an associate if not as a friend, but maybe he’d just been projecting his own loneliness.
It was still nice to have company and an extra set of hands even without the conversation, of course. But simmering in that stagnant silence was almost worse than if they’d been fighting because that disconnect between them made Draco painfully aware of how alone he was. In this, in his work, in life… in everything. He’d thought Andrea would be harder to shake than that—she seemed like the kind of person who only left your life after repeatedly being told to—but apparently not.
Draco should have known better. No one needed an extra push or excuse to distance themselves from a Death Eater.
When Harry did come, it was agonizingly formal and the distance between them was enough to make him and Andrea seem like childhood friends. Harry hardly spoke to him, eyes darting to Andrea after every sentence. Had she said something? He seemed anxious and stiff in a way he never usually was—at least not around Draco. There was no anger in the Auror’s expression, but something sad and aching stared him in the face whenever Draco managed to meet those emerald eyes. Had he ruined this too?
Of course he had—who was he kidding? Crying in the lap of your new semi-coworker semi-employer was hardly professional or preferred. He’d probably made Harry incredibly uncomfortable. Idiot!
“Thanks, Malfoy.”
Draco felt like he’d been sucker punched. Harry hadn’t reverted to his last name since he’d been Mr. Doe. The words were coarse and unsteady at the edges though, so Draco didn’t respond or try to ask what had warranted the change. He didn’t want to hear it. It was obvious: he no longer deserved to be ‘Draco’.
His entire frame shook as Harry left, wolfsbane batch in hand. It felt like a conversation hadn’t even taken place, though he knew for a fact that he’d explained the new muscle relaxant base to this batch and guaranteed it’s lack of monkshood. He wanted to ask Andrea what he’d done wrong or if there was any chance he could fix it.
But he knew better. Andrea didn’t know a few very core things that made up he and Harry’s current predicament—the crying being thing number one. He would have to explain all of that, not to mention whatever different, separate thing he’d done to fuck up his relationship with her. So they continued to work in silence.
The next day, Draco received an owl sealed with wax and an intricate letter B. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but a letter from Andromeda Black—signed: your loving aunt, no less—stating that she would be taking over the contract he’d signed with Harry was not it. So Harry really wanted nothing to do with him now, then?
As much as he tried to ignore it, that hurt. It hurt a lot more than Draco thought it should have because Merlin knows he didn’t give a shit what Potter thought about him, except that he kind of did… He always had.
Andromeda had asked for the necessary paperwork in order to transfer the contract entirely into her name. She’d also suggested that they meet for tea whenever Draco was free. He didn’t feel up for an afternoon of social interaction and pureblood niceties at the moment though, so he merely wrote back a short reply and attached the necessary paperwork.
Draco couldn’t believe that Harry had severed the contract. Well, not severed exactly but at least cut off any kind of business relationship that the two of them had had by transferring it to Andromeda. Was he really that disgusted? Had seeing his apartment and being alone with Draco reminded the Auror of how they’d used to be? Or, even worse, had Harry realized how far Draco had fallen in the world and decided that he wasn’t worth the Savior’s time?
He never had been worth the Savior’s time, of course, so Draco wasn’t sure why he was even surprised. Part of his brain said he was still in shock—both from Potter’s complete 180, and from Ariana’s death—but he didn’t really care. Everything felt cloudy and insignificant in a way he knew it wasn’t. But, for now, he would take it. Anything that lessened the sting of the realization that Potter had once again deemed him ‘unworthy’.
Another owl came. At this point, Draco was half expecting it to be from Kingsley telling him he’d been removed from the case at Potter’s request or something, but it had another beautiful wax seal with a large B stamped on it. B for Black. For his family, for the last name that Draco would have had if his mother had ever left Lucius. He shrugged off that idea or the idea of ever being anything but a Malfoy ever again and opened the letter.
It was the forms: signed and reattached. Draco reached to the back of his filing cabinet where he kept the disillusioned folders and retrieved the contract he’d originally signed with Potter, replacing it with this new version. Nothing had changed except the name of the client. This wasn’t the first time a contract had been changed or ended completely even, but Draco still felt a stab of something deep in his gut as he held the old form into the fire. He watched it burn top down, all the way to the signature.
Harry Potter
Everything from the harsh, staccato lines of the H and the T’s to the swoop of the P was so Harry that it hurt. Even the flourish swirled under the Y—not that different from the flourish that Draco had learned to put at the end of his own signature—looked like something that had come straight from the Gryffindor’s soul. It was ridiculous, of course, but Draco couldn’t help it.
He stamped out the flame just before it could reach the signature. This was highly unethical and probably at least a little bit illegal, but Draco was reeling from his sudden isolation once again and he clung to anything that could make him feel. Even if it was pain.
Signatures weren’t the most dangerous thing a person could have. Aside from simple tracking spells or attempted forgery, there wasn’t much someone could do with it once they had it. It was nothing like blood magic or sympathy magic (what the Muggle’s called voodoo). He couldn’t be accused of anything if anyone ever found it aside from general creepy behavior, which was hardly a new accusation in this postwar world. Mind made up, Draco tucked the signature between the last few pages of his notebook.
As far as Draco knew, he was still a part of the case and he was still supposed to be working to identify whatever potion their previous victim had taken to induce death. He wasn’t ready to think about Ariana with that clinical gaze, so he turned his attention to the potion analysis. With this, at least, he could tell himself that it had nothing to do with his friend who was now dead (and likely murdered) because Ariana hadn’t died by potion. They didn’t know how she had died, but they knew it wasn’t by potion.
Draco had put a fair amount of time into breaking down the different ingredients and traces of magic he’d been able to pull from the dead woman’s body. Harry—no, Potter—had dutifully written down everything he’d said, which was helpful. Not that Potter was helpful, per se, but… still. If the list happened to be in the Gryffindor’s familiar, messy handwriting rather than in Draco’s neat, swirling shorthand, then that was just by coincidence.
By lunch, Draco had made something resembling progress. Andrea had left about an hour ago for some reason and not said a word to him before leaving, so Draco wasn’t sure if he was supposed to wait for her or not. He felt impatient and annoyed by her silence though, so he didn’t.
Before he could second guess himself, Draco grabbed his coat and made his way to Helen, who threw in the floo powder for him with a concerned furrow in her brow. She didn’t ask and he didn’t offer an explanation. Upon arriving in the Ministry, Draco became very aware of how unguarded and exposed he was in his current position.
With no Andrea or Potter on his arm, people were much less happy to accept his presence. They glared and sneered at him. As he made his way towards Kingsley’s office, one even deliberately shoulder-checked him into a wall and Draco barely avoided smashing his face into the brick. Asshole.
“Potioneer Malfoy!” a female voice called. “Just who I was hoping to run into!”
Draco whirled, reaching for his wand in spite of its uselessness, but forced his face impassive as Granger approached. She looked like she was in a good mood and she’d been impartial if nothing else during their last two encounters, but Draco still balked when he saw her wand in her hand. Immediately, her eyes zeroed in on his expression and she holstered her wand.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Have you got a second?”
He wasn’t sure if he had time because he wasn’t sure he wanted to be involved in whatever was about to happen, but she wasn’t actually asking. With another diplomatic smile, she ushered him down a side hallway and into an office. Her office, judging by the sheer amount of books in it. She motioned to the nearest chair and took a seat behind the desk, summoning two mugs and a pot of tea from the nearby drink station. Draco sat, but didn’t touch the tea.
“Sorry about that,” Granger apologized again. “I wasn’t planning to accost you in the middle of the day without warning but I didn’t expect you to be here and I didn’t want to waste the chance. You can be rather difficult to get ahold of, you know.”
Draco did not know because he was fairly sure that anyone trying to contact him could do so quite easily, given the sheer lack of communication he generally received. He didn’t say so, though. Instead, he just settled his eyes on the woman across from him and tried to appear unbothered.
She’d grown up significantly since the war—though if she and the Weasel were still together, Draco could guess that that family aged a person rather quickly—and, in his very heterosexual opinion, she had become quite beautiful. Her eyes hadn’t lost that quick, clever intelligence they’d always had in Hogwarts and Draco found himself glad of the fact despite himself.
“I’m sure you’re wondering what this is about,” Draco shrugged, but still didn’t speak. “But I’m also sure that you knew I would ask questions. So, would you like to start? Or shall I?”
Oh. This was about the wand. In the chaos of everything that had happened since, Draco had almost managed to forget that Hermione had seen him use Harry’s wand at a crime scene. Of course she had questions. If he’d been more focused, he would have seen this coming and prepared.
“Let’s hear your theory, Granger.”
She smiled and, though it wasn’t quite friendly, it didn’t have any bitterness or anger in it either. For the first time since Hogwarts, Draco felt like he was entering the grounds of truly intellectual conversation and he would have been lying if he said it wasn’t thrilling. The invigorating power of that buzz beneath his skin rivaled the energy that usually came from Harry. He loved it.
“Alright,” she acquiesced. “And you can call me Hermione, by the way, or Granger-Weasley if you want to be accurate. I’ve done a bit of research and couldn’t find anything other than a clause in your release paperwork about seeing a Mind Healer and the use of ‘superfluous magic’. The war and the trials don’t seem to have affected your magic itself, given that you could use Harry’s wand just fine, so… That leaves me with the theory of a defective wand. But, if that were the case, why not just get a new one? Cost?”
Draco bristled, valiantly trying not to spit back an insult or some kind of deflection just to get around that single word. Grang—Hermione had seen his apartment. She’d always been far more perceptive than Harry or the Weasel had so naturally she’d noticed the state of his finances. But she thought that was the reason? Ha.
Suddenly, Draco wanted to laugh. He took a sip of the tea reflexively but was relieved to see that it didn’t instantly kill him, so he took another. Hermione thought that not being able to afford a new wand was all it was? When the answer had been right there?
“Well, I must say I’m rather disappointed in your investigative skills, Hermione.”
The corner of her mouth twisted up into a half-smile, but she didn’t take the bait. Instead, she sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers. Immediately, the energy in the room shifted and Draco began unerringly aware of it as it settled over his shoulders. He got the sudden, glaring impression that Hermione was humoring him. She was allowing him to be snarky and spit fire at her because of reasons that were entirely her own—curiosity, probably—but Draco was not to be mistaken. This behavior was being allowed. Not encouraged, not tolerated, and not even ignored—allowed.
Hermione was the one in control of this situation. The thought twisted in Draco’s gut and he couldn’t decipher whether it was delight at the prospect of getting that energy back or fear because of who it was. He was a drowning man who would take what he could get, though. Even if it came from Hermione Granger-Weasley.
“Everything is always easy when you yourself already know the answer, Draco. I’ve ventured my guess, now I believe it’s your turn to explain.”
Draco crossed his legs—reflex, though the position made him smaller and he saw Hermione immediately take note of the change—and straightened his spine. He didn’t have to tell her. The answer had been right there in front of her and she’d glossed over it already so the chances that he would be found out were slim. Not that it was truly anything against him, of course. Just another rule that he had to live with whether he liked it or not, and he did not.
“Fair enough, I’ll sate your curiosity.” He paused and watched Hermione take a slow sip of her tea, eyes never leaving his face. “There’s nothing wrong with my wand and, if I were to give it to you, you would be able to perform any spell your heart desired. What’s wrong then? Well, you said it yourself. Nothing except a clause in my release paperwork about seeing a Mind Healer and ‘superfluous magic’. I’ll save you the breach of confidentiality and say that I do see a Mind Healer—I have since I was released, though it is no longer technically required. Which leaves us with ‘superfluous magic’.”
Hermione nodded, following along, but Draco waited for a few beats of silence. He had a feeling that she wouldn’t be able to resist asking, and it would help him feel more balanced in their current power dynamic if—
“You aren’t doing ‘superfluous magic’, though. I looked it up and it’s a legal term dating back centuries which just means doing magic at an excess of what is necessary for a given situation. Often, only if it poses a danger to others.”
A slow, sardonic smile split across Draco’s face and he almost laughed once again. It sounded so simple and logical from Hermione’s mouth—almost as logical as it had sounded from the prosecution during his trial. When someone had explained what it meant, Draco had assumed it would be fine. After all, excessive magic, by definition, wasn’t necessary. No one had said how that definition would be enforced, though, or by who.
“Precisely. You’ll note the vagueness of phrases like ‘necessary for a given situation’ or ‘poses a danger to others’. They’re legal terms, you’re right, but they’re not carved in stone. It was decided after my release that those definitions could shift.”
Hermione’s eyes had narrowed as he spoke, but her grip on the mug hadn’t tightened. Draco was watching very carefully—far more carefully than he needed to, honestly—for any hint of anger or warning sign that she might draw her wand on him. She was displeased, but still conversational for the moment.
“What do you mean ‘shift’?”
Ah. So they’d come to the fun part. Draco swallowed the lump in his throat and tried not to palm his wand because he knew it would just make him feel worse. It was shitty to feel the magic buzzing under his skin, aching for an outlet or an excuse to be used, but it was far worse to clutch his wand with no clear intention to cast anything and have to force his magic back into the bottle in his chest.
“Well, it just makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asked, his tone sickly sweet. “After all, what’s necessary for your average witch or wizard is hardly necessary for a Death Eater who barely managed to escape Azkaban. Somewhere in the Ministry, there is a list of spells, charms, incantations, and so on that I can cast. It is a very short list.”
Hermione stared at him uncomprehending for a moment, then her expression shifted. Everything turned down or crinkled in a way that Draco’s brain immediately recognized as negative, but there was nothing he could do to get away from it other than lie. She would know he was lying, more likely than not. It wasn’t worth the risk even if his entire body was full of adrenaline now that she was clearly upset.
“But your job…?”
“My occupation is the only exception, but even there I’m limited to what can be considered ‘harmless’. I can cast a stasis charm, for instance, but can’t charm any object to do my bidding—no cauldrons, no stir sticks, no ingredients, and definitely no knives or flame. You haven’t been to my office, I know, but that’s one of the reasons so many of my tools are enchanted on their own and why so many of my orders take so long to complete. It’s much harder to get things done quickly when you have to do it all by hand.”
Evidently, limiting someone’s career was a bit of a sore spot for Hermione. Her eyes were cold and hard now as they stared at him and her hands had frozen stiff against the heat of her mug. She looked like outrage barely contained within human skin.
“Draco, that’s… That’s unacceptable. Simple charms and spells should never be defined as ‘superfluous’ and after so many years of therapy, I doubt you’re much of a threat to anyone, no offense.”
“None taken.”
“But that’s… Wow. Alright then, I guess that explains a fair amount of things. Why did you use Harry’s wand then if those were spells you already knew you could cast?”
They’d reached the less fun part to explain. Draco bit his lip and tried to imagine he was talking to Elle or someone equally as non-threatening in an attempt to curb his inner urge to lie. He wanted to shrug it off and say it’d just been for show, but Hermione knew better. She’d been there for Merlin’s sake—of course she knew that he’d used Harry’s wand, she’d bloody watched! But she didn’t know why.
“They… weren’t spells on the list.” He paused, watching her face intently for any indication that her loyalties might be shifting or that she might report him for this. “Like I said, my wand doesn’t actually have any restrictions on it, though it is specifically enchanted to ‘encourage’ me not to break the rules. But the prosecution argued during my trial that I would just get my hands on another wand as soon as I was released. To compromise, they created a way to monitor my magical signature.”
“Monitor it for what?”
Draco sighed. He hadn’t been completely cognizant during that part of the trial because they’d kept him up for thirty seven hours and only fed him a few minutes before taking the stand, so he didn’t remember a lot of the details. They’d developed a system, somehow, that could pick out his magical signature anywhere on the continent.
“For spikes, such as Apparition or spells too powerful to be on my pre-approved list. For location too, I imagine, though they’re less concerned about that as long as I’m somewhere in Europe because that’s the range of their system. If the system senses anything like that from my magic, it shuts it down.”
“What do you mean ‘shut it down’?” Hermione asked, her voice low and dangerous.
She’d become enthralled by his story and Draco couldn’t tell if her anger was at his own treatment, or at the ballsy behavior of the Ministry. She likely didn’t give a shit what happened to him, he reasoned. But bureaucratic oversteps and power grabs were in her area of expertise and, from the little he’d read of her recent work, something she was vehemently against.
“An electric impulse, or at least that’s what they told me. It’s never happened so I can’t say for sure if it would work or if they would even do it, but the threat is there. After all, you can’t do illegal magic if you’re unconscious, can you?”
Hermione looked like she wanted to throw up and Draco honestly didn’t blame her. He’d wanted to die the first time he’d been coherent enough to have the rules explained to him and the idea of living without magic had almost stolen his will to live. No friends, no family, no money or career, and no magic. It was enough to make anyone lose their shit—Malfoy, or no Malfoy. Hermione was clearly trying not to get hung up on that fact, though, or on the potential repercussions her brain was likely suggesting.
“But you used Harry’s wand.”
He had. The first time, he hadn’t been entirely sure it would work. A child—his own bloody cousin no less—had been screaming and potentially dying so Draco had done it anyway, just hoping that it would be enough. It had been, thank Merlin, and he hadn’t really processed what he’d done until afterwards. After Potter had accused him of attempted murder.
“I did more than use his wand.”
Draco could still remember the rush of magic through his entire body and the way his insides had keened into the sensation, aching for it and reaching for it like hands begging for salvation. That was the first time he’d used full, unrestrained magic since the war. And it had felt good. The kind of good that someone could become addicted to if they were deprived of it for long enough—the kind of good that made him feel like a real, complete person again.
“Explain.”
Draco didn’t want to explain. He wanted to covet this secret and protect it like a precious gem that only he could touch. It was stupid, of course, because it wasn’t like it would ever happen again regardless of whether or not Hermione knew about it, but he still wanted to keep it. Even just casting basic diagnostic spells had been like a drug to his needy, pent-up magical core.
“I used his wand,” he repeated. “And his magic. It didn’t trigger the system because it wasn’t my magical signature. It was his. If any of my magic was there under the surface, his is overwhelming and powerful enough to drown it out anyways.”
“You used his magic.”
Hermione echoed it like a broken record, the disbelief clear in her tone. Draco couldn’t blame her because it sounded incredible even under the most generous assumptions, but that didn’t change what had happened. The first time might have been a fluke, sure, but the second?
“Does he know?”
Oh, that was an unfortunately very valid question that made Draco wince and shake his head. He knew what it looked like. If Harry didn’t even know that he’d used his magic, then it was hardly ethical. But Hermione didn’t look horrified or taken aback, though. She just nodded, her face caught in that mask of contemplation that Draco had seen far too many times during their Hogwarts days, and especially during finals.
“Okay,” she said finally, her voice flat and distracted. “Thank you for answering my questions, Draco. I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing and send my apologies to Kingsley if I made you late for something important.”