Chapter Text
Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done, is done.
-Lady Macbeth
Draco Malfoy sat in front of his Kensington apartment in the early June chill, safely tucked in a shadow.
As he watched, Muggles went about their evenings—it was their neighbourhood, after all—unbothered by his gargoyle-like presence outside the stately apartment. If any had glanced in his direction, their eyes would have slid from one door to the next, skipping over his house entirely. Draco probably had the most heavily warded home in England. Almost unnecessarily warded. Almost.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs above him and he inwardly sighed. What good were wards if they couldn’t save him from this evening?
“Five galleons to me. I told Zabini I’d find you out here indulging in your favourite pastime,” said Theo Nott, loosening his tie as he trotted down the stairs to join Draco at the bottom.
Draco looked down at his glass tumbler and swirled the amber liquid. He’d barely touched it.
“Not that. The brooding.”
“I do not brood,” Draco muttered in a tone that disproved his point.
“What would you call it then? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. There’s a party happening in your honour just through that door; a birthday party at which the birthday boy is not present. Astoria is furious.”
“I didn’t ask Astoria to throw me a birthday party. Actually, I recall asking her explicitly not to,” replied Draco sourly.
Nott grinned. “Oh, she certainly doesn’t mind. She’s on a mission. Haven’t you noticed the number of eligible ladies here tonight? Although I suppose it depends on your definition of eligible. Pansy seemed wholly unimpressed with the lot.”
“No, I didn’t notice, and I’d appreciate it if she stopped inviting strangers into my home.” Still, he moved to stand. His best friend’s wife was frighteningly persistent, and he suspected Nott had volunteered to fetch him only to stop Astoria from doing it herself.
“It’s our job, mate. Someone has to pull you out of your m—your comfort zone.” He clapped his arm around Draco’s shoulders as they headed up the stairs to the entry.
Draco didn’t respond. He knew Nott had been about to say pull you out of your mind. It wasn’t something they discussed.
He wondered how much longer he’d have to wait until he could send everyone on their way without offending Astoria. Mostly he wanted to lie down in the dark of his bedroom and spend several hours trying not to think any of his thoughts until he finally fell asleep.
Nott pulled the door open with a flourish to announce their return. A dozen faces—half of them strangers—turned to them, smiling, and Draco felt something lurch in his stomach. No one here is going to attack you, he told himself firmly.
He gave a vague nod of greeting to the room, then quickly lifted his glass and drained it. Feeling immediately defenceless without a drink in hand, Draco forced himself to step out of the doorway to make his way toward the kitchen. From across his sitting room, he spotted three unfamiliar women—Astoria’s doing, no doubt—eyeing him from a tufted leather sofa. He made a hasty detour to avoid the group and collided at full speed with Pansy Parkinson. Shit.
Before he could back away, she grabbed the lapel of his jacket to steady herself and smiled sweetly up at him. “Draco, darling, happy birthday.”
“Hello, Pansy.” He took a step back, extricating himself.
“Must you look so unhappy to be at your own party?”
“I’m just tired. Work.” It came out as a reflex.
Her lip curled. “Ah yes, and how is the Ministry treating you these days?”
“Still going on about this, I see. I couldn’t just sit around—”
She waved a hand, cutting him off. “Yes, I’m so glad you found a worthy occupation for your talents—”
He sneered. “My talents? And which were those? Torture? Murder?”
She straightened her spine and looked up at him, unfazed. “Oh please, you never murdered anybody. It wouldn’t matter if you had. I just mean to say, think of how this all looks. You’re living in”—here, she dropped her voice to a whisper—“Muggle London, of all places. As if that’s not bad enough, as if getting a Ministry job—you remember what we used to say about people with jobs like yours!—and now you’ve all but renounced your family name, honestly Draco, what must your mother think?”
Draco, who had decided that the best way to keep his temper in check was to simply not listen, glanced around to see if she had been overheard. He met the eyes of Blaise Zabini, who was already making his way across the room toward his wife.
“Malfoy!” Zabini called, grasping Draco’s arm in greeting. “Pansy’s not giving you too hard a time about the news, I hope.” He smiled widely, but Draco thought he saw a tense look pass between the couple. “It was a shock to us all.”
“I can’t see why. I haven’t lived there in a decade.”
“Yes, but selling it off? What about your legacy? You’ve got to leave something for the future generations, you know.”
Draco wanted to ask what precisely about his family’s legacy was worth preserving, but it would have been the wrong thing to say in front of Pansy, who would probably respond with something horrible about ancient magical lineages. The party was grim enough as it was. Instead, he said, “You probably also heard I’ve divested part of the estate to charity. That will have to suffice for a legacy.”
“I did hear that. Very generous of you.” He glanced around Draco’s spacious apartment. “I suppose you still have this place. Not bad. Shame about the location though.”
Zabini’s smile had begun to look plastered on, and for the first time, Draco wondered why they were here at all. Every interaction they’d had in the last twelve years brought his usual mix of self-loathing, guilt, and regret to an overwhelming crescendo. In the first few years after the war, it would take days before he was able to suppress his emotions back into a manageable size and shape, at which point they resumed gnawing passively at the back of his mind. As a result, he learned to avoid his mother’s society events and any other gatherings likely to attract his old Slytherin classmates. Only Nott had refused to acknowledge his self-isolation and had simply shown up in Draco’s life until he accepted the friendship.
Deciding he’d better take his chances with Astoria’s friends, Draco managed to thank the pair for coming in a way that could almost be mistaken for politeness and excused himself to greet the rest of his guests.
An hour later, Draco sat stiffly in his Le Corbusier armchair, pretending to listen to the conversation around him while idly pushing a forkful of chocolate cake across the plate balanced on his knee.
Astoria had opened his empty refrigerator to a chorus of gasps—“brilliant Muggle invention, that one”—and revealed the tall frosted birthday cake hidden inside. She mercifully hadn’t suggested singing, instead nudging Nott into a toast while she forced a slice of cake into Draco’s hands.
Then she’d gripped him by the elbow and guided him through to his sitting room, clearly not trusting him to not disappear again.
“Regina, have you and Draco run into each other at the Ministry? I thought perhaps you might have met before,” asked Astoria, who had been unsuccessfully trying to draw him into the conversation for half an hour.
The blonde girl sitting to his left kept sneaking glances at him and he wondered sourly if she had only agreed to come tonight so she could get a closer look at infamous former Death Eater, Draco Malfoy.
Regina, a tall witch with long, lacquered fingernails, tossed her black hair over her shoulder before replying. “No, you know how the Department of Mysteries is. We’re not exactly encouraged to make friends. The other departments hardly look at me.” She smiled at Draco. “I’m pleased we finally have the chance to meet.”
Draco nodded once. Giving up, she turned back to Astoria. “Actually, I heard a bit of interesting gossip today. I don’t know all the details, but apparently, Hermione Granger has been working on something big. She’ll be in the office next week.”
Astoria’s eyes snapped to Draco. In his defence, he had only flinched a little at the sound of Granger’s name.
Nott, who had heard the last bit, left his conversation with two of Draco’s Quidditch team members to join his wife on the sofa, scooting her over to squeeze in beside her.
“What’s this about Granger?” he asked lightly, but he also looked at Draco closely.
“Oh, she’s probably gone and saved a bunch of lives again.” Regina shrugged. “I think it’s something to do with the study of time because it was Archibald Puck who told me, and he oversees that area.”
“I didn’t think there were any Time Turners left,” said Astoria. Draco had thought the same. From what he’d heard, Puck was a doddering octogenarian who was only kept on at the Ministry because there was simply nothing of importance to do in the Time Room and therefore nothing he could mess up. After the entire stock of Time Turners was destroyed during the battle at the Ministry, that wing of the Department of Mysteries had been all but shut down.
Draco, of course, didn’t think about the battle at the Ministry. In fact, it was somewhere in the middle of a long list of things he didn’t think about because he’d moved on. Granger was on there as well, rather higher.
“No, there aren’t any. Puck doesn’t have any real work so he spends most of his time napping, from what I’ve seen. Anyway, he said she’d be in to discuss some mysterious project with him. He wouldn’t tell me more,” Regina replied.
“Aren’t you literally called an Unspeakable? I thought this was all supposed to be kept hush-hush.” This from Nott, who laughed as he dodged his wife’s elbow aimed at his ribs.
The blonde witch spoke up, too interested to care about secrecy rules. “Maybe he’s gone round the bend. Has anyone actually seen her at the Ministry?”
“She comes in once in a while to have lunch with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, but she hasn’t been to my floor.” Regina looked at Draco. “You work with the two of them, don’t you? Any idea what she’s been up to?”
Draco had no idea. For the first two years following the war, he’d hardly left his wing of Malfoy Manor. He hadn’t looked at a single newspaper during that time, too afraid he might see his own name. His mother eventually gave him an ultimatum: pick something, anything, to do with his life, or she’d start dragging him to society functions. At Nott’s insistence, Draco had chosen to move to France to continue his schooling.
It was a choice between daily interactions with people who wanted him dead, but not until he’d sufficiently suffered first, and rubbing shoulders with the one percent of wizarding society who hadn’t believed he’d done anything wrong, except perhaps that he’d failed to follow simple instructions to murder someone. He knew which option was worse.
Four years later, with advanced degrees in both Dueling and Alchemy in hand, he’d appeared in Head Auror Nymphadora Tonks’ office and begged her to consider letting him into the programme. He suspected she’d only relented because they were blood relatives—cousins, though his mother and Tonks hadn’t spoken since the war. Regardless, she was careful to keep him separated from Potter and Weasley for the duration of his training and probationary period.
Although the other Aurors eventually got over their distrust of him, if not their dislike, he kept a wall around himself. He avoided his colleagues in the corridors, left break rooms whenever anyone else walked in, and took every solo mission Tonks would give him. As a result, he could count the number of conversations he’d had with Potter or Weasley in the last six years on two hands. All had been brief, unpleasant, and work-related.
As for Granger…No. He quickly Occluded, roughly shoving that train of thought behind a mental barrier.
Draco cleared his throat. He picked up his drink only to find that it was empty again. “I haven’t heard anything. If you’ll excuse me…” He rose, ignoring the twin looks of concern on Nott and Astoria’s faces.
Over their heads, he noticed something strange: Pansy and Zabini, standing together behind the sofa in silence. They had evidently been listening to the conversation. Zabini’s narrowed eyes were trained on Regina’s face, and Pansy’s hand gripped her husband’s wrist, white knuckles straining.
Draco puzzled over the sight as he headed to the kitchen. Was Regina a Muggle-born, or was it the mention of Granger that had elicited such a reaction? He didn’t think Pansy and Zabini still clung to their old prejudices, but it wasn’t exactly something they talked about. The thought of openly discussing his mistakes—he shoved that thought away again before it could go any further.
Draco resolved to increase his efforts to avoid the couple after tonight.
Hours later, he lay in the dark of his bedroom and began Occluding. Memories started to disappear into his mental box: thoughts of Voldemort’s wand trained on his mother, of blood purity and slurs hurled, of a curly-haired witch screaming on the floor of his manor. All vanished one by one until Draco hardly knew who he was anymore. Then, at last, he slept.
~
On Tuesday, Tonks popped her head into his cubicle. Her short, spiky hair was a bright shade of teal today. “Job for you, Malfoy.”
“I’ve already got one. This chimaera smuggling business.” He’d already made the arrest, but his Legilimency had revealed two co-conspirators hiding in Turkey. He had a mountain of paperwork to complete before the Turkish Ministry would consider locating and arresting the wizards for extradition.
“You’d rather be sat at a desk doing paperwork? Hurry up, she’s already waiting in my office.”
Draco opened his mouth to object but Tonks had stalked off. Sighing, he dropped his quill on his desk and waved his wand over the incomplete scrolls. Papers fluttered as they organised themselves into a neat stack before locking themselves into a filing cabinet.
He followed Tonk’s rapidly departing footsteps down the hall. As he turned the corner, her office came into view through its open door. The already small room was made further cramped by Tonk’s hobnob assortment of knickknacks collected during her travels, family photographs pinned to every vertical surface, precarious towers of case files lining the desk, and a small pile of the latest Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes merchandise stacked in the corner.
Two wooden chairs faced the desk, their backs to the entry. In the chair nearest to the door sat a witch dressed in what were clearly Muggle clothes—highly out of place at the Ministry—but any other features were obstructed by the absurd amount of curling brown hair tumbling from her head.
He had just enough time to feel a flicker of interest before the realisation hit him.
Draco’s muscles seized and he found he couldn’t take another step. Granger. Was this the job Tonks had mentioned? He couldn’t do it. The thought of sitting in a chair next to Hermione Granger, of having to open his mouth in her direction and force audible words to come out, was intolerable. He’d tell Tonks he was sick. He’d throw himself from his broom if he needed to. He’d spent a decade facing fear and loathing in the eyes of strangers.
This witch had an exceptionally good reason to hate him—better than most—and it struck him that he’d rather check himself into St. Mungo’s than look into her hazel eyes and be sent right back to the place he was in twelve years ago. He’d worked too hard to crawl out of that hole.
His fingers tightened on the wand in his pocket as he considered his escape. Should I blow up the corridor?
In the office, Tonks had reached her desk. She greeted Granger and sat facing the door, fingers steepled. Draco realised too late that he was perfectly visible, his mind blank of every spell he’d ever learned. There was a look on Tonks’ face that said get in here, you absolute moron. Granger, who was not a moron, picked up on the expression and turned in her chair to peer through the doorway.
As he stood there helplessly, her eyes met his and widened in recognition.
Her features hadn’t changed—smooth skin with freckles across the bridge of her nose, expressive eyebrows, and long lashes.
But the expression in her bright, intelligent eyes, which had always given her away as the cleverest person in the room, sent him straight back to Hogwarts. They narrowed, not in revulsion as he had feared, but with concentration, as though he was a particularly complex bit of arithmancy.
Then her lips pressed together and it suddenly occurred to him how she would interpret his reluctance. Her bigoted childhood bully, an ex-Death Eater, was unwilling to even enter a room that she was occupying. Well, fuck. He forced himself to walk forward until he reached the doorway.
Tonks rolled her eyes. “Right. No need for introductions, I imagine.” She gestured toward the open chair. “Stop hovering, Malfoy.”
Draco sat. Tonks had never reminded him so strongly of McGonagall.
“I’ll make this quick. You’re on loan to the Department of Mysteries for the next month or so. Granger needs help with a top-security project—”
“I don’t need help—” Granger objected hotly.
“Fine. The minister has requested that I take an Auror out of the field and make them available to Granger for various protection duties, et cetera.” Tonks’s eyes twitched as though she was fighting to keep from rolling them again. “You’re the lucky Auror.”
“But as I have already explained to Archibald Puck and to Minister Jorkins, this is completely unnecessary. I’m not in any danger! Having to move the project out of my lab is bad enough. I won’t have an Auror hanging about, disrupting my work. It’s out of the question!”
I won’t have Draco Malfoy fucking this up for me. She didn’t need to say it out loud for her meaning to be clear.
Tonks seized upon bureaucracy as a convenient scapegoat. She shrugged and said, “Out of my hands, Granger. You know how it is.”
Granger shot a guilty look at Malfoy and said weakly, “Then…perhaps Harry or Ron…or one of the other Aurors could…”
If she thought he’d be offended, she was wrong. Draco, whose heart had been hammering in his ears for the duration of the conversation, clung to this suggestion like a life raft.
“Yes. Potter and Weasley should do it. I’ll swap with whatever they’re working on.” He didn’t add have a bit of mercy, Tonks, but he suspected she heard it anyway.
She sighed. “No good, I’m afraid. They’re needed on a mission of some…diplomatic importance.” She looked at Granger. “Delegates from Spain are in town.”
Potter and Weasley were often trotted out whenever a visiting dignitary was in the country or during high-profile events. The minister seemed to like showing them off, and it made people feel safe to see them. Look, it said, we’ve got our best people on the case. Draco was never assigned to that type of work.
“Anyone else then.”
“Everyone else is tits deep in a case. This is what you get for being good at your job, Malfoy. More work.”
Draco sank further into his chair. Granger, by contrast, sat up even straighter.
“Very well.” She turned to face him primly, not really meeting his eye.
“The Ministry is forcing me to complete my project in the Department of Mysteries. It’s a bit, erm, unstable at this point and Minister Jorkins has decided to just move it over now instead of when it’s completed. Less chance of destroying time altogether, he says.”
He eyed her warily. Was that a possibility?
“Nothing is going to happen!” she snapped, correctly reading his expression. “This is a waste of Ministry resources and I’m sure it will be an incredibly dull assignment for you, but—fine. I have some things to put in order at my laboratory first. I’ll owl you when I’m ready to transport the project to the Time Room. I’ll want to pop in and check on it daily for the next month, and I suppose I’ll need the wards lifted while I work, but there really isn’t anything for you to do beyond that.”
Draco addressed his response to Tonks. “What’s this secret project?” Something to do with Time Turners, someone had said.
“I’ve invented a new type of time travel,” Granger replied matter-of-factly, also looking at Tonks.
~
“Oh, bloody hell.”
Draco stared down at the splattered parchment in front of him. Black ink dripped off his desk onto his shoes in a steady stream before he banished it wordlessly with a flick of his wand. He balled his hands into fists on his desk. Get it together.
Three excruciating days had passed since his meeting in Tonks’ office. He’d barely slept, despite increasingly long Occlumency sessions that left him dazed and glassy-eyed. He found himself replaying his conversation with Granger over and over as he slowly worked through a pile of paperwork.
He looked for meaning in the handful of glances and words she’d aimed in his direction but found only more questions. For example, why hadn’t he opened his mouth and said the words, “When should I expect your owl, Granger?”
The waiting was torture. He jumped at every noise and tensed whenever someone passed his cubicle. Moments ago, a missive heading for Bartleby’s cubicle whizzed over Draco’s head, causing him to jolt upright and knock into his inkwell, sending it flying across his desk.
The only slight glimmer of hope in the whole assignment was that he thought she hadn’t seemed to resent him so much as the situation. If by some miracle she didn’t utterly loathe him–fat chance of that, a voice in his head reminded him–perhaps he could just Occlude his way through the next month, keep all memories and thoughts of her thoroughly repressed, and carry on as though she were a stranger.
A figure appeared in Draco’s periphery and his heart leapt into his throat.
“Hello, Malfoy.” Harry Potter stood in the doorway.
Draco caught himself mid-sneer and schooled his features into a neutral expression. “Potter.”
Potter stuffed his hands in his pockets awkwardly. The two men looked at each other in silence for a moment. “Can I help you?” asked Draco impatiently. Of all the things he could be doing to distract himself while waiting to hear from a certain witch, engaging in conversation with Harry Potter ranked at the very bottom.
“Erm, yes. I heard the news. Sounds like you and Hermione will be working together for a while.” His face looked pained.
So much for the distraction. “I know you spend most of your time faffing about at state dinners, Potter, but surely even you don’t count guarding an empty room on Level Nine as actual work.”
“Right. Well, I’ve only come to pass this along”—he pulled a folded piece of parchment from his robes and handed it to Draco—“and to ask you to try not to be completely unpleasant to her. I know it will be extremely difficult for you to approach anything like decency, but I’d appreciate—”
“Hang on.” Draco was incredulous. He rose from his chair to give himself the height advantage and looked menacingly down at his former rival. “Did she ask you to tell me to be nice?”
Potter didn’t back up, but he ran a hand through his hair uneasily. “Of course not. It’s only that I know the two of you didn’t get along, and I think she’s anxious about being stuck with you since Ron and I are busy.”
“We don’t get along, Potter. Would you like me to be nicer to you as well?”
“Fuck off, Malfoy. You have the note. Don’t be late.” He turned and stalked away, cursing under his breath.
Draco felt almost regretful. Even though a dozen years had passed, half of them spent a mere seven cubicles away, he’d yet to navigate an interaction with Potter without reverting to the level of maturity of his thirteen-year-old self.
He looked down at the note in his hands. Late for what? Unfolding it, he saw a single line penned in precise handwriting, followed by an address.
Tonight at 7, location enclosed. Hope it’s not too much of an inconvenience. -H.G.
So she had sent Potter as her errand boy. Inside his chest, where a war of emotions had taken place since their meeting in Tonks’ office, irritation finally won out.
~
Draco occupied the hours until he was due at Granger’s lab with a trip to the Department of Mysteries. He’d been putting it off for as long as possible—creepy place that it was—but now he had work to do.
He took the lift to Level Nine and stepped out into near-darkness. The air was cold and still, and a short, empty corridor stretched before him. He had the uncomfortable feeling of being deep, deep, underground. His office back on Level Two was also below the streets of London, of course, but magical windows let in natural light and the occasional insect, so it was easy to forget. Here, nothing but rows of glossy black tiles and dimly glowing torches lined the walls.
Draco carefully didn’t look at the stairs to his left. The first time he was here, he’d followed his mother down that spiral staircase and into Courtroom Seven on the morning of his trial.
No. That memory disappeared into the box inside his mind as quickly as it had surfaced.
Stepping forward, he marched down the hallway, steps echoing off the walls and ceiling. Reaching the door at the end of the corridor, he pointed his wand at the handle and said firmly, “Auror Malfoy to see Archibald Puck.”
Then he pulled the door open and stepped into the Time Room.
In contrast to the rest of the Department of Mysteries, the room was brightly lit and appeared almost ordinary. Rows of glass cases lined the walls, most of them filled with an assortment of timepieces in various styles, from several ornately engraved gold pocket watches to a simple leather wristwatch. One case stood notably empty, and Draco wondered if it had once housed the Time Turners.
A noise at his elbow announced the presence of Archibald Puck, the Unspeakable who oversaw this wing of the department.
A tiny man, made diminutive by age, stood behind him. From his six-foot-three-inch height, Draco found himself looking directly at the top of Puck’s bald, wrinkled head. Two large ears, from which a profusion of wiry ear hair sprouted, jutted out to either side.
“You must be Auror Malfoy,” Puck wheezed, craning his neck back as far as it would go.
Draco nodded. “I’m here to update the wards. Hermione Granger will transfer her project to this location later this evening.”
“Ah, is that happening today, then? Very good, very good.” He flicked his wand and a long workbench appeared in the centre of the room. “Tell Miss Granger the space is all hers, of course. She’s welcome to rearrange it how she sees fit.”
Draco raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Where will you be?”
“Why, at home!” Puck gave a short cackle. “I’m not accustomed to sharing the office. I need my peace and quiet and she doesn’t need me getting in the way of her work.” He began to shuffle toward the exit. When he reached the door, he turned and said, “Just send me a note when the new Time Turner is ready and I’ll pop back in to put it away in the case.” With that, he left Draco alone in the Time Room.
Privately thinking Puck ought just to stay home and officially retire, Draco turned back to face the room.
He first cast a simple detection spell and was unsurprised to find that the wards surrounding the room were pathetically few. With nothing of real value to protect—and a senile caretaker, he thought uncharitably—the entire wing had been left mostly unguarded.
Working methodically, he removed the old wards and began laying new ones around the perimeter. He started with standard Auror protections to conceal the entrance, protect the walls against brute force attacks, and expel any unwanted visitors. He threw in a couple of booby traps just for fun, spelling the glass cases to suck in anyone who attempted to open them without a key and keep the thief trapped inside until someone came along to release them.
Recalling Minister Jorkins’ concerns, he added a few spells to protect the rest of the Department of Mysteries should the room explode or be sucked into a black hole. He didn’t know exactly what could go wrong during the creation of a Time Turner, but a few containment spells wouldn’t go amiss.
Finally, he pulled Granger’s note from his pocket, then looked around for something of Puck’s. Plucking an empty tea cup from a desk in the corner, he cast a complex bit of magic that would prevent anyone but himself, Granger, and the Unspeakable from entering. It was tied to their biological signatures and required an object handled by each of them—Draco donated half a pumpkin pasty left over from his lunch as his own contribution—but once in place, it couldn’t be fooled by illusions, transfiguration, or Polyjuice Potion.
Satisfied, Draco checked the time on his wristwatch. A quarter to seven.
Thinking of Potter’s admonishment to not be late, he Apparated to the address on the note precisely half an hour later.