Dragons
Draco didn’t have time to be humiliated by the night before because he’d woken up twenty minutes after his alarm should have gone off. He’d all but run to the floo point, then to Whirlwind, and he’d only stopped about thirty feet short of the doorway in an attempt to get his breathing and hair under control again. Malfoys were never flustered.
Kaiser hadn’t said anything, but their eyes had glinted when Draco tried to slip past unnoticed. He would catch hell for this later. Even with his above-average performance review (which was heavily downgraded from the outstanding that it should have been) Draco was on thin ice. He’d speedwalked to his office, half hoping he could dodge any lingering ‘coworkers’ due to the late timing, but alas.
Bright and Bender blocked his path with their bodies. They looked as though they’d been waiting all morning for him, which was kind of sad in an obsessive, bullying way that Draco was very familiar with. Didn’t they have jobs? Hadn’t they been promoted to the largest two-brewer office on the entire floor for their supposed ‘excellent work’?
“What happened to your precious Gatherer? Were your ‘vibes’ no longer up to her standards?”
Draco ducked his head and pushed through them, shoulder checking both. He would probably get written up for that too but he didn’t give a shit in that moment because Andrea was still a very sore subject. So far, he’d barely been able to discuss his relationship with her with the Gatherer herself. Besides, his ‘coworkers’ were the last people he should be confiding in.
Bright and Bender called after him, something about the importance of punctuality or about fixing the coffee machine, but Draco steadfastly ignored them. He just needed to get inside his office. Behind his closed (albeit not locked) door, he would be able to breathe without feeling their eyes under his skin. No need for a panic attack. Just had to get inside and then he could start his usual routine again and get his day back on track.
There was no hot chocolate on his desk.
He fought back a pang of disappointment and sudden self loathing (because of course Harry wouldn’t send him hot chocolate after the events of last night), but picked up the note that had been left instead. It was an immediate summons to the Ministry, signed by the Minister himself—though Draco thought the ‘y’ at the end of Kingsley looked suspiciously similar to Harry’s signature—and that left no room for arguing. No details given.
After briefly showing the summons to Kaiser, Draco was running again. He earned a thousand strange or malicious looks as he rushed through the halls of the Ministry and got a room number from Kingsley’s assistant, but none were quite as sharp as the glare that Aidan shot him when he slipped quietly into the briefing room. Why was he being summoned for an urgent briefing? There were maybe thirty people crowded into the room, but Draco didn’t recognize most of the Aurors, though that wasn’t saying much given his habit of avoiding them whenever possible.
Aidan hadn’t stopped glaring yet. The clear displeasure in his face only deepened when Harry noticed Draco and motioned for him to join the Auror along the wall. Mechanically, Draco obeyed and tried to fight the urge to shrink into Harry’s side. Aidan’s brow pinched—contempt, Draco recognized—but Draco didn’t understand what he’d done wrong so he looked back to the front of the room. Beside him, Harry shifted. The Auror was holding two coffee cups, Draco realized, and it hit him like a bludger when the second one was offered to him.
His hot chocolate. Harry hadn’t forgotten—he wasn’t angry.
Kingsley was already talking—briefing a new batch of Aurors that were joining them on the case, it seemed—and Draco wasn’t sure how vital his presence was but he didn’t mind hiding at the back. He nodded in thanks to Harry for the drink, but then caught Aidan’s eye across the room and fought himself not to stiffen. Aidan looked… vicious. Like a hyena eying a carcass that just hadn’t been killed yet. Why, though? Because Harry had brought him hot chocolate? Because he was late?
Draco tried to ignore it and focused instead on looking at Kingsley, studying Harry out of the corner of his eye. This briefing appeared to be a general summary and a way to get the newer Aurors up to speed on the victims, investigation, and current leads. None of it was new information, so he felt fairly comfortable letting his attention drift.
Harry looked… suspiciously normal. He didn’t remember a lot of their conversation from the night before (at least not word for word) but he couldn’t find any indication of it left in the Auror’s face. No knowing looks, no ‘we need to talk’ whispered under his breath, and no poison in his hot chocolate—at least as far as he could tell. After a few minutes of silent companionship, Draco became fairly certain that Harry was either sparing him further embarrassment or had somehow forgotten. The latter seemed unlikely, so that left the former.
To his credit, Harry looked rather put together that morning compared to his usual haphazard wildness and nothing about his body language was tense or defensive. He looked tired, though. Draco had spent more than enough hours studying the Gryffindor’s expression and he knew that exhaustion anywhere. It was a softer version of the way Harry had looked during the trials.
Aidan had stopped glaring at him relatively soon after he’d settled into place beside Harry and the rest of the room seemed dead set on pretending nothing had even happened. Whether that was out of deference to Kingsley or fear of the psychoanalyst… Draco wasn’t sure. Harry seemed unconcerned and Draco reasoned that, as long as Harry wasn’t worried, then he probably didn’t need to be overly paranoid either. At least not yet.
They passed the rest of the meeting in silence but, before Draco could even open his mouth to ask why his presence had been so necessary, an intern had shoved an updated report into his hands and ushered him towards the door. Glancing over his shoulder, he caught Harry’s eye. The Auror gave him a small nod, just the slightest inclination of his head, but it felt like an important acknowledgement.
Draco didn’t have time to process that. Kingsley was waiting for him by the time the intern dropped him at James’ desk and the man was clearly in a hurry so Draco did his best to keep up. He sat in the correct chair, he nodded at the right times, and he pretended he understood. The man thanked him for coming, apologized for the late notice, and explained that having Draco attend the briefing was the best excuse he could find to get him there for a private meeting without drawing more attention. That seemed reasonable.
But nothing could have prepared him for the stack of paperwork that Kingsley set in front of him.
Kingsley wanted to hire him as an official consultant—that was good—but couldn’t yet because someone had told Kingsley that Draco had been friends with Ariana. That wasn’t a bad thing and Draco had never lied about their relationship, but his involvement meant that he now needed to be officially questioned and give a statement. The Minister reassured him that it was just a formality. No one actually thought he had anything to do with Ariana’s death, they just needed the information on file so it didn’t pop up unexpectedly in court once they got the guy.
Completely routine. Right.
It would be fine because Draco would make it fucking fine. Kingsley said that it couldn’t just be him and Harry for the questioning because of their history, but that Harry would be present. The Gryffindor would do the questioning (with another Auror present for objectivity) and Draco would do the answering. Simple, routine, and it would probably only take an hour or so. Easy, right?
Harry knew he was fixating. As much as he tried to focus on work—and make no mistake, he’d spent at least forty hours pouring over case files this week and it was only Tuesday—his brain kept shifting to Draco. After that drunk conversation last night, Harry had made a point of putting some distance between them even if it killed him. Well, other than the hot chocolate. That wouldn’t change. But, aside from that, he’d buried himself head first in the case.
People were dead.
It wasn’t a hard thing to remember and it, unfortunately, wasn’t even that uncommon in the Auror field but it was what Harry always came back to. People were dead, and they were going to keep dying if he didn’t do something about it.
He.
Not the Ministry, not the Aurors, not their team. Him.
Harry knew that he was withdrawing. It happened every time there was a particularly intense case or when he was overwhelmed in other aspects of his life, but it was especially easy when both those things were true. He’d withstood no less than three owls from Hermione already, informing him that she knew exactly what he was doing and that she wouldn’t tolerate it, but he’d ignored the first two and finally scribbled back a reply to the third that said he was busy. He was busy, but that also wasn’t why he was avoiding them and they both knew it.
Ron had hunted him down once, probably at Hermione’s urging—which Harry thought was a bit premature considering it’d been less than a week since he’d started letting it affect his behavior. He hadn’t meant to be rude, but Ron had shot him a look and muttered something about a hero complex and Harry had slammed the door in his face. He’d written a short apology note later, blaming work stress.
Andrea hadn’t called him on anything yet, but things between them were still incredibly tentative so Harry wasn’t really surprised. Even if she’d noticed, she wasn’t going to bring it up. And why would she? It wasn’t like she actually wanted to be bothered with all his shit and her position as Draco’s bodyguard (and friend) was ultimately much more important.
God, Draco. Harry could still see the panicked, defensive way he’d curled in on himself the second Harry’d raised his voice. He felt like the absolute epitome of human shit. And his explanations, of course, hadn’t even scratched the surface of that fear—and why would they? Harry was the same person who had nearly killed Draco in Sixth Year and Harry was the same person whose uncontrolled magic was feared by everyone. Of course Draco would be scared of him. He’d hardly given the blond much of a reason to trust or have faith in him…
After last night, Harry had decided that he needed to be very, very careful in the way that he approached and handled this situation. Looking back, he wasn’t sure that calling Draco touch-starved and lonely had been his best course of action because he could imagine that the blond heard them the same way Harry did whenever words like that were directed at him: weak. That wasn’t what he’d meant.
He wondered which one had been more offensive to the blond. Touch-starved, maybe, because Draco had always been aloof and aristocratic so even the other Slytherins hadn’t touched him much back at Hogwarts. But some deeper inkling told Harry it was ‘lonely’. Because ‘lonely’ was an expression of feelings, but it was also a confession. It was admitting that you needed other people—wanted them, even—and Harry could only imagine how well the blond’s brain had done with that idea.
Another full moon had already come and gone, somehow managing to surprise Draco despite the carefully labeled calendar on his desk. He’d delivered another experimental batch—this one with a valerian root base—and had owled it directly to Andromeda but he hadn’t been brave enough to show up in person. The idea of facing his aunt, knowing everything she must have heard by now from Harry, was… anxiety-inducing.
Draco was still a pureblood deep down, though. Andromeda Black might have let Harry get away with whatever antics he wanted, but she knew for a fact that Draco had been taught better. He’d been trained in pureblood niceties and the expectations of social engagement long before he’d ever touched a broom and nothing (not even trauma, it seemed) was enough to earn him a loophole out of that. Which was how he’d ended up agreeing to afternoon tea with the woman.
When she’d sent the request this time, it was no longer a friendly offer and it hadn’t included an option to refuse. If Andromeda was anything like Narcissa, Draco would have been foolish to even try getting out of it when she’d so clearly already made up her mind. That didn’t mean he had to like it, though.
He’d told Kaiser it was a business meeting—which wasn’t technically a lie, as Andromeda had transferred the contract into her name, making her his client—and he’d managed to get an extended afternoon lunch break. Kaiser had been informed of Draco’s temporary work with the Ministry and, though they’d sneered at it, hadn’t been able to pry. Thankfully, Ministry secrets were off limits, even for nosy supervisors.
Draco was not nervous. It was distinctly undignified to be nervous and he’d been told that his grandmother, Druella Black, had been a force of ruthless intensity. Hopefully, in this case, mother was not like daughter but, given that the other two Black sisters had been his mother (relatively kind) and Bellatrix (relatively psychotic), Draco had no idea what to expect from Andromeda. He was praying for a happy medium, but bracing for a second Aunt Bella.
The idea of anyone even remotely similar to Bellatrix Lestrange having custody of a child was disturbing to Draco on a physiological level. His mother had never talked about her sisters much except once, during the Christmas holiday of Draco’s fifth year, when ‘Aunt Bella’ had visited them for no apparent reason. Draco hadn’t understood then that she was making preparations for the Dark Lord. Narcissa had pulled him aside the night before he’d returned to Hogwarts and she hadn’t warned him or tried to explain, she’d merely asked: do you see it in her too?
Even now, Draco wasn’t sure what ‘it’ was. Evil, maybe, or a twisted kind of mentality that corrupted everything it touched regardless of how pure. Whatever ‘it’ was, though, he’d seen it in his dear ‘Aunt Bella’ the moment she’d arrived and he’d nodded to his mother, which had calmed her nerves for some reason. Had she thought that he might trust Bellatrix? Like her, even?
Ridiculous. He was valiantly keeping his fingers crossed inside the sleeve of his potioneer robes and hoping against all hope that Andromeda would be normal. Or if not normal, then at least not crazy. She’d married a Muggleborn back before the first war though, hadn’t she? She sure as hell hadn’t been an ally of the Dark Lord during the war and that counted for something, right? Even if it meant she’d likely hate him…
Nothing could have prepared him for the quaint, cute, little almost-Muggle house that he now stood in front of. There was no hint of extravagance, no calculated displays of wealth, and there was a child’s bicycle thrown haphazardly onto the grass of the front lawn. He couldn’t help wondering if Harry had grown up riding a bike like that. Had Harry taught this little five-year-old how to ride a bike?
Would he teach me?
“Draco! I’m so glad you could spare an afternoon for tea. Do come in.”
Draco followed, numb to the situation as he took in soft rugs and misplaced toys and the way they somehow didn’t clash with the old portraits and the beautiful wainscotting. Clearly, Andromeda had retained her tastes. He nodded in appreciation to a few of the portraits he recognized—old ancestors that he might have talked to once as a child when he’d been bored, but nothing more—and he couldn’t help scanning each room he was led through for the little boy. His cousin.
“Teddy’s still at school. I thought it might be easier for us to talk without him underfoot or eavesdropping, but I did promise him that I would try to get you to stay until he got home. It’ll only be in an hour or so. If you’re busy or don’t want you, that’s completely alright—”
“No, I want to.”
Draco surprised himself with how quickly and firmly he answered. For a brief second, he paused in the doorway of the sitting room and didn’t follow Andromeda to the couch because he was certain that she was going to slap him for his insolence. She didn’t raise a hand, though. Instead, she just sat in one of the armchairs and summoned a tea tray from the next room.
“Please, sit.”
Draco sat. It wasn’t a request and the atmosphere reminded him so suddenly and so sharply of his mother that he couldn’t help it. Would it be weird to ask about photo albums? He couldn’t see any evidence of familial ties aside from the portraits, but he held on to hope. Merlin, what he would do to see his mother’s face again…
“Now, as I’m sure you already know, Draco—is it alright if I call you Draco?” He nodded. “Wonderful. Well, as I’m sure you already know, I can’t talk about your parents or any of your old friends and associates with you. I can, however, talk about myself and about you. You are aware that we’re related?”
Draco nodded mechanically, still not entirely present in the situation. The chairs were comfortable and worn on a few of the corners in a way that his father never would have allowed, but they made speaking seem so much less intimidating. He could answer her outloud, couldn’t he?
“Yes, you were my mother’s sister.”
Andromeda smiled at him, sipping the tea that Draco hadn’t even noticed her pouring. She looked at ease here and that made sense, of course, because it was her bloody house but it still made Draco feel like an intruder. He didn’t belong in places like this. Places with warm color schemes and soft rugs, places with home cooked meals and blanket forts built in the next room.
“I still am your mother’s sister,” Andromeda corrected quietly. “And I still am your aunt.”
Draco wondered if she knew why he’d mistakenly used the past tense. Did she think that he still considered her to be excommunicated, blasted off the family tree? She hadn’t sneered or stiffened, but Draco didn’t think she would have even if she had been offended by something. And she’d called herself his aunt.
Did she understand that nearly five years of barred contact and no news meant that his mother was the one who warranted the past tense, not her? He didn’t think she had any restrictions on who she could contact, but he knew she’d lost a daughter and a son-in-law during the war. Teddy’s parents, he realized.
“Yes, you are, though I understand if you prefer a less familial term for the relationship.”
Andromeda cocked her head a bit to one side. She studied him, taking a slow sip of her tea, and Draco suddenly felt the urge to get his own tea just so he could blend in a bit more. It was ridiculous, especially given that they were the only two people in the room. And yet, if his body would have let him move and if he could have held the cup without spilling it everywhere due to the shaking of his hands, he would have reached for the teapot.
“I can’t decide,” Andromeda began, still watching him. “If that was intended as an insult towards myself, towards you, or if you’ve merely forgotten your manners.”
Draco balked. His manners? He’d thought he was doing the right thing—being polite, even—by offering to let her downplay the relationship. Surely she wouldn’t want to be the aunt of a Death Eater? Though, in hindsight, he supposed that she already was the sister or sister-in-law to three of them, so what was one more?
“I merely wished to offer you the chance to distance yourself from the sullied Malfoy name.”
He didn’t sound bitter. The words were bitter and he’d rolled them around a few times in his mouth before speaking just to be sure that it wasn’t too emotionally charged, but they came out flat and toneless. Andromeda sipped her tea.
“And why would I wish to distance myself from the only nephew I will ever have? Not that I wish for more, of course. Delivering you nearly killed your mother and I can only imagine the horrors that Bella might have inflicted if given access to a child.”
They both grimaced.
“But my point still stands. There was a war and many lives were lost. Most of my family was either killed or arrested and I am not going to spit in the face of one of my only living relatives.” She paused just long enough to pour him some tea, but didn’t add any milk or sugar for him. “Besides, you look like you might crumble if I so much as change my tone. I hardly think you could handle being spit.”
For a brief, ridiculous second Draco wanted to stomp his foot and insist that he could handle being spit on. It wouldn’t be the first time, or the last. But his own desire for self-preservation and the deep, lingering instinct not to anger the woman in front of him won out. He kept his mouth shut.
The sound of the front door was enough to break whatever fragile, tentative conversation they’d managed to build in the last hour. Draco was surprised to learn it had only been an hour. It felt like years had passed since he’d first entered that sitting room and the self-refilling teapot only had a bit to do with that.
A cacophony of noise drifted up the hall. He could imagine that little blue-haired kid kicking off his shoes, throwing his coat somewhere, and leaving his bag in the most inconvenient place. The thought made him smile.
“Teddy! Don’t you dare think that you can get out of cleaning up! Wash your hands, get some clean clothes on, and then you can come say hi.” Someone groaned, but Draco could see Andromeda smiling faintly even as she sounded so authoritarian. “And your shoes had better be where they belong too!”
Another groan, but then the sound of shoes distinctly being placed somewhere else made Andromeda’s smile widen. Small footsteps shuffled past in the hall, then up the stairs. As soon as they went quiet, the two adults seemed to realize that, once again, they were stuck trying to make awkward conversation with each other.
“Normally, I wouldn’t bother with him,” Andromeda amended, as if Draco might be judging her parenting techniques. “He’s just going to get all dirty again as soon as you leave, you know, but he’s joined a soccer team during recess so he always comes home absolutely filthy.”
Draco nodded as if he understood that, trying to remember the last time his parents or his au pairs had ever let him get dirty. He certainly hadn’t played Muggle games like soccer. If he had, would he have grown up to be less of a prat? Andromeda wouldn’t have put up with his attitude, that was for sure—no wonder he’d never met her as a child. She would have hated him.
They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, each listening for the pitter-patter of feet on the stairs once again. Draco wondered if Andromeda was also wishing the boy would hurry up. Then again, it was her house and her grandson so she was probably as relaxed as one could be in such an uncertain situation. Which was not very.
Once again, Draco caught himself mulling over what the child—Teddy, though that seemed like a nickname and Draco wasn’t sure he’d earned the right to use it yet—might have been told about him. He would hide his Dark Mark, of course, but would Teddy know to look for it? Would he know that they were related?
“Boo!”
Draco jumped halfway out of his chair and spilled his tea everywhere.
“Teddy! That was very rude!”
Andromeda was cross even as she spelled the mess away, but Draco couldn’t focus on that or look away from the little red scaly thing that had jumped out at him from the doorway. He reached for his wand but, remembering that he didn’t have one, he reached instead for the bracelet on his wrist. It gave an answering little pulse of magic and Draco tried to breathe.
The little boy was laughing. He’d pulled back his hood—it was a costume, Draco realized, and that made far more sense—and was grinning up at them even as Andromeda scolded him.
“You said clean clothes, grandma! These are clean!”
“Yes,” Andromeda admitted, finally managing to wrestle the boy into one of the large armchairs and hand him a plastic cup of tea that he merely made a face at. “Well, I assumed that you knew that your Halloween costume was meant to be worn on Halloween.”
A Halloween costume. Right. It would be Halloween soon and Teddy was five, the perfect age for Muggle trick-or-treating. His heart was still racing in his chest, but Draco managed to force a small smile onto his face when he saw that Teddy was looking at him. He realized he had yet to say anything.
“I like your costume. Are you a…” Draco stopped, pretending to think in the hopes that Teddy would fill in the blank for him because the last thing he wanted to do was offend the boy by not knowing what his costume was.
“A dragon!”
Draco smiled and said something complimentary, but his stomach plummeted. His lungs seized and refused to allow him any oxygen. A dragon. Teddy’s Halloween costume was a dragon.
“It’s all he’ll talk about lately,” Andromeda offered, spelling the tea back into Teddy’s hand even as he scowled at it. “Ever since he saw your picture in one of the photo albums. He’s gotten it into his head that, since you’re named after a dragon, you can turn into one. Because he’s named after his dad—his middle name, that is—and someday he might be able to turn into a werewolf.”
Draco felt absolutely gutted. Teddy thought he could turn into a dragon and he’d chosen to be a dragon for Halloween. Halloween costumes were supposed to be scary though, weren’t they?
“Do you think dragons are scary, Teddy?”
They were. They were fucking terrifying and Draco could still feel the heat of their flames from the Tri-Wizard Tournament like it was yesterday. Dragons were huge and horrifying. Even the people who worked with them for a living had scars from them, which was rather fitting because Draco had scarred a fair amount of people too.
He shook his head at himself, though, because this wasn’t about him. He needed to know what Teddy thought.
“No, of course they aren’t scary!” Teddy exclaimed, looking offended that Draco had even suggested such a thing. “That’s why I had to jump out at you!”
Of course. Teddy said it so easily, like it was an obvious fact and Draco should have known it all along. Dragons weren’t scary on their own, which was why he’d had to jump out and yell in order to scare them. That thought calmed something deep in his chest.
Teddy wasn’t afraid of him.
“I yelled ‘boo’ because my roar isn’t very scary yet… Angus can do a really good roar! He’s the PE teacher but he watches us during recess too and sometimes we make him be the dragon just because he’s so good at it.”
And, as he continued to sit there and listen as the five-year-old rocketed through as many stories and tangents as his little voice could handle, Draco realized it was more than that. They played ‘Castle’ on the playground, apparently, and Teddy always wanted to be the dragon he said. But not because the dragon killed people, and not because the dragon guarded the princess or the treasure. Draco had summoned the courage during one of the kid’s breaths to ask, and he’d been floored once again by the answer:
Because dragons can fly.
Teddy didn’t think dragons were scary, he thought that they were cool.
Suddenly, Draco couldn’t wait to give this kid a broom—he would scrounge and save and take extra potion orders for months if he had to. Teddy needed to experience flying. Was there such a thing as little league Quidditch? If there wasn’t, Draco was prepared to create one just to give him an excuse to watch his cousin soar. Teddy would absolutely love it.
And if he was living vicariously through the five-year-old because a broom required magic and was therefore off limits for him? No one had to know.
After another hour of conversation and a round of pleasant goodbyes, Draco felt raw and on edge. Not that he ever didn't feel raw and on edge, of course, but today it was getting to him more than usual. Anything could have made him cry right then. Maybe it was the combination of his adrenaline-fueled morning, his brewing anxiety, and the momentous occasion of meeting his family again for the first time properly.
It probably was. But having a reason for it didn’t make Draco feel any more justified in being upset, or any less fragile. He was barely holding it together and every slight misstep or inconvenience pushed him closer and closer to... to what?
Draco wasn't sure where this was headed, but he knew he didn't want to find out while he was still at work. He was a grown ass adult for fuck's sake! He could hold it together long enough to get through a shift at his grown up job because, if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to pay his grown up bills. Why did adult existence seem to rely solely on obligations and money?
For the fortieth time that day, Draco clenched his hands into weak, shaky fists and dug his nails into his palms as if that might ground him. The sad thing was that the pain kind of did. It paused the rising tension and anxiety in his chest, at least, even if it didn't ease any of the sensations. A pause was good. A pause meant he could breathe—and by ‘breathe’, he meant he could frantically gasp in a few gulps of air before reality resumed. But a bit of air was better than no air.
Draco tried to stop and count his breathing—in, one, two, three, out, one, two, three—but the numbers felt far away and meaningless. The air felt irrelevant. His hands were shaking and everything felt like it was too much—the ticking of his desktop clock, the weight of his own body sinking down into his feet, the ridge of every grain of wood on the top of his work table... It was all too much.
He couldn't do this. He could—and he fucking would because everyone around him was waiting for him to fail—but it felt downright impossible. How did people do this? Get up, go to work, interact with people, and not have a complete breakdown? Oh right, because other normal people weren't Draco's particular brand of fucked up.
The desktop clock dinged. It was time for him to report to the Ministry. Time for his ‘routine questioning’ that wasn’t going to be a big deal and was definitely just a formality.
He could do this.
Harry grit his teeth at the list of questions in front of him and scanned them again, looking for any wording he needed to change or anything that could be cut out to save time. He wanted to spend as little time as possible across the interrogation table from Draco. Kingsley hadn’t let him choose which Auror would accompany him for the questioning—doing so would have compromised the impartiality of it all—but Harry had still breathed a sigh of relief when Sonya approached him afterwards.
She was sweet, calm, and as non-threatening as Aurors could get. Harry might not have picked her himself, if given the choice, but that was only because Sonya tended to stay out of other people’s business and appreciated the same in return. He wouldn’t have wanted to bother her. But, since it had come from Kingsley, neither of them had any choice in the matter and Sonya was a far more agreeable choice than half the other Aurors out there. At least Sonya wouldn’t sneer and insult Draco the first chance she got.
He handed her her copy of the question list and chugged the last few sips of his coffee. This would be fine. It was routine and Sonya would be professional, if nothing else. Besides, Draco was less likely to be anxious if Harry was the one doing the questioning and Kingsley had thankfully agreed.
The only person who didn’t seem to be on board with that plan was Draco himself. As soon as they reached the interrogation room, Harry could tell Draco had been brought down and made to wait for a while before anyone bothered to tell them that he was there. Great.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Malfoy.”
Sonya repeated the greeting and Draco mumbled something back, but Harry couldn’t make out the words. It might have been a ‘good afternoon’, it might have been a ‘fuck you’.
“This shouldn’t take long. We only need you to answer a few routine questions to help establish whether or not there is a conflict of interest for you on this case. Are you ready to begin?”
Draco was staring at him. Those swirling grey eyes had glossed over a bit and he wasn’t blinking. He wasn’t breathing.
“Draco?”
His first name got his attention. The blond sat bolt upright and pushed his shoulders back, leveling them both with a disinterested gaze that Harry had seen too many times before. It was clear that Draco was already anxious, but Harry didn’t understand where any of these reactions were coming from. They hadn’t even started the questioning for god’s sake!
“Mr. Malfoy, are you ready to begin?”
Sonya’s voice cemented the last of the Malfoy mask on Draco’s sharp, pale features. He motioned for them to continue and folded his hands in his lap, fixing his gaze at a point on the wall behind them. Harry didn’t understand. They were being recorded, though, and watched by Aidan if not more so now was not the time to push it. He looked down and read the first question.
“Can you please state your full, legal name for the record?”
“Draco Lucius Malfoy.”
Harry hated hearing the blond’s middle name, and he hated the way it made him sound so closely tied to his father. They hadn’t talked much about Lucius, he realized. Did Draco still consider himself close to the man, even after death?
“Great, thank you. For the record, I am Auror Harry James Potter and we are joined by Auror Sonya Kaye Evangelista. As you know, we’re here to discuss your relationship with—and the death of—Ariana Windsor. Is this correct?”
“Yes.”
Harry was surprised. Usually, he had to prompt people to answer verbally rather than just nod or shake their head. He tried not to read much into the short, clipped tone that Draco had responded with and tried desperately not to let himself drop the Auror front or reach out for the blond. That wouldn’t work here, so Harry just read the next question.
“Please describe your relationship with Ms. Windsor.”
Draco couldn’t feel his fingers. He couldn’t feel his toes, or his feet, or his legs, or anything really other than the tightness in his chest. Beneath the table, he dug his nails into his palm again. That he felt, but it was fleeting and the sensation disappeared the moment he stopped applying pressure.
How long had they been here like this? It felt like hours had passed already and the Aurors didn’t appear to be even halfway done with their little packet of questions. They’d asked him everything under the sun about Ariana, about Halfway Lane, and about their relationship. Twice now, the other Auror had asked if they’d ever had a romantic relationship. Draco hadn’t wanted his sexuality to be broadcast on public record for all to see, so he’d merely said no, their relationship was only ever platonic.
Harry was different. The soft, subtle tone shifts and the tiny microexpressions that Draco had learned to read like a book were gone. For a brief moment, he’d found that incredibly validating because it meant that Harry was capable of suppressing them and chose not to when he was around Draco, but that sentiment quickly disappeared. This was not Harry, this was Auror Potter.
“Mr. Malfoy, can you tell us what Ms. Windsor did for work?”
He couldn’t. They already knew that he couldn’t and that Ariana had purposefully never told him what she did or how she got money. For all he knew, she was a petty thief. Their questions seemed to be hinting that she was a prostitute or a drug dealer and Draco denied it, but he didn’t have any concrete reason as to why. Those were both real and valid forms of income, but… How could he explain that they just didn’t fit Ariana’s personality?
“She never told me, though I asked her multiple times.”
“Do you have any guesses or theories? Did she ever seem to work similar hours, have business meetings, talk about coworkers… anything like that?”
Draco knew what they wanted him to say. Ariana had had an unpredictable schedule that even she didn’t seem to know sometimes and had never discussed coworkers or business appointments. Either she was home, or she wasn’t. That was it. They thought that her New York trip was a plan to flee the country as well as the law and they were just itching for evidence to back up that theory.
“No, nothing like that. She always said it wasn’t illegal and that that should be enough to satisfy my curiosity.”
The other Auror wrote something down and Draco’s eyes flitted to the movement, but just as quickly back up to Harry’s face. He looked tired and annoyed. Was he annoyed with Draco? Annoyed with his answers or that he wasn’t playing along the way he was supposed to?
“Did you believe her? When she told you that it wasn’t anything illegal?”
That felt like a trick question. This wasn’t supposed to be about him or his opinions, it was just supposed to be factual information about Ariana. If he said he didn’t believe her, then they would assume horrible things about her occupation or, even worse, would discount everything else he’d already said about her. But, if he said he did believe her, then what? Did that make him too emotionally involved in the case or too unreliable as a witness?
“I believed her, and I still do. Ariana was the kind of person who liked walking very thin lines but never stepping down on either side. She wouldn’t do anything to risk that.”
Draco could feel cold, hard metal against his wrists. The skin there was so thin that the metal could have cut through it with one wrong move. He looked down, reassuring himself visually that there were no cuffs and that he wasn’t restrained, but the feeling didn’t dissipate. Deep breaths. In, and out. This was a routine questioning and he wasn’t being investigated or accused of anything. No investigation meant no risk of being thrown back in a cell.
“Mr. Malfoy,” Just a routine questioning, no accusations here. “Did you have any reason for wanting Ariana Windsor dead?”