1  Finding Elvis

"It's a good one, yeah." The oddly familiar voice drew Harry's attention, from the row of gardening books he'd been staring at, to the conversation in the aisle behind him. "The next one in the series is better, though."

"I haven't got that far," said a young woman. "Just read the one about the Barrows. This one's..."

"Brilliant stuff," a man's voice came back, pleasant, light baritone. Harry frowned. Where had he heard that voice before? "You'd swear you were at the Stones, honestly."

"You've been?"

"I grew up near Wiltshire - you can't not go to Stonehenge and learn all about it."

"Yeah, my dad's family's from around there," the young woman said absently, and turned a page. "Think she'll like it?"

"Yeah, I'd get it. Good light summer reading. The next one's even better, it takes place at the Tower of London."

"Thanks. I'll come back for the next one if she likes this one, then," she said, dismissing him.

"Let me know if you need anything else," the man said, to a polite mmhmmfrom the woman, and Harry turned around, hearing his footsteps receding. That voice... he watched the man walk to the cash register; he didn't look familiar from the back. The man turned and Harry was still mystified. Didn't recognize him at all. Tall, slender, light brown hair cut short, white shirt, dark slacks, glasses, maybe mid-to-late-thirties, working in a bookstore...

Had he seen that face before? Maybe. Maybe not. More like it reminded him of a face that he should know... a narrow face, yes, it was familiar, it was very, very familiar, but he hadn't seen it in a very, very long time... Harry quickly felt for magic - no, nothing, there was no hint of anything at all in this building or anybody in it. Other than himself, of course. That didn't mean anything - not all magic could be felt - but this looked and felt like a completely ordinary Muggle bookstore in Cardiff, filled with clients and a few employees, and one sales clerk busily sorting through sales slips and beginning to really annoy the hell out of Harry.

The phone rang, and the sales clerk picked it up, still sorting slips. "The Book Cellar, Dave speaking," he spoke into the phone, propping it against his shoulder to keep his hands free and continuing to sort slips.

Dave. Still didn't ring a bell.

Harry came closer to the counter, pausing to cast a quick cover spell on himself - nothing big, just a slight blurring of his face, a variation on Obliviate that made it difficult for anybody to remember his features long enough to identify him. He wondered at himself a little, because why would he need to hide from a sales clerk, but something was telling him danger - no. Not danger, just caution, beware, don't show your hand too quickly, and he chided himself and was about to end the spell when the sales clerk looked up.

"May I help you?" he asked, still on the phone but evidently on hold, his light brown eyes meeting Harry's in polite enquiry.

Draco Malfoy. Harry's eyes widened in shock and at that moment the clerk glanced away from him and raised one hand at him, a 'just a second' gesture, as whoever was on the other side of the phone evidently came back to their conversation. "Yeah, still here." Pause. "No, no, we got that shipment, but the new Adeles are missing." He glanced back at Harry, slight smile of apology and 'I'll be with you in a moment' expression on his face. "Frank, we've got four on back order." Pause. "That's the third time, mate. No, I know, it's just she'll go on a rant about - tomorrow? Good." Pause. "See you tomorrow then. Thanks." He hung up, looked up at Harry. "Sorry about that, may I help you?"

Harry shook his head, suddenly completely unsure and glad that the call had distracted the sales clerk long enough for him to get his bearings. No, obviously not Malfoy, just someone who looked remarkably like - and sounded like him, too. Feeling a little foolish, Harry grabbed at the first thing that came to mind. "Do you have a gardening section?"

The clerk smiled, pointed to the left side of the store. Where Harry had just come from. "Thanks," Harry mumbled, walking away, feeling even more foolish than before. Draco Malfoy, working in a bookstore. He almost chuckled.

Draco Malfoy. Dead... what, almost fifteen years? He would've been amused at Harry blurring himself for a Muggle bookstore sales clerk.

Harry shook his head, a little amused himself, noting once again how after so long the war dead and wounded didn't make him feel that sad any more. Fifteen years it had taken, to no longer feel that angry sense of loss whenever he thought of Cedric Diggory, Sirius Black, Albus Dumbledore, Ginny, George and Arthur Weasley, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Minerva McGonagall... and all the others, dead and living, who'd been lost so long ago.

And Malfoy. Never a friend, never somebody he'd been close to, but somebody he wished could have lived to see the post-war era.

Not to be. Malfoy had been on both sides of the war, then avoided it as much as possible for a while, apparently done some spying that was never fully explained to Harry, performed one final heroic deed, and disappeared. Not in a blaze of glory, but into oblivion.

8888888888

"Did anybody ever find out whatever happened to Draco Malfoy?" Harry asked Emma Sprout the next day, over lunch after their staff meeting.

"Draco Malfoy? Do you mean beyond the official 'missing, presumed dead' line?"

"Yeah."

"Don't think so. Plenty of rumours, but I never heard anything solid. Why?"

"Just wondered."

"He was in your year at Hogwarts, wasn't he?"

"Yeah."

"So he would've been coming in as I left." Harry nodded. "Yeah, well the National Quibbler had bits for a while." They shrugged together. "Who knows what was true back then. All anybody ever knew for sure was he gave up his magic and then disappeared."

"But the killing three Muggles thing, the double-agent working with Zabini..."

"No, that was never proven."

"And the sightings-"

"Our own personal wizarding Elvis Presley," said Emma, whose sister had married a Muggle and who loved obscure Muggle cultural references. Harry chuckled. "Why?"

"Saw somebody who looked like him the other day."

"Owl the Quibbler!"

Harry smiled. "No, I just wondered if he had family or something."

"The Malfoys? It was an old family, but not a very big one. Tended to have only one or two kids per generation, I don't think there were any close cousins. Where did you see him?"

"Cardiff."

"You mean Velleywold Village, or Cardiff proper?"

"Cardiff. At a bookstore."

"Didn't know we had a bookstore in Cardiff."

"Muggle store."

Emma smirked. "Draco Malfoy's long lost twin, shopping at a Muggle bookstore? Somewhere in hell Lucius Malfoy is screeching hexes at you."

Harry smiled. "Worse; working at the bookstore."

"Well now the entire family for seven generations is screeching hexes at you, Harry. Including Draco, if I recall anything about him."

"He did lose his magic. There were rumours he'd gone to the Muggle world."

"Rumours, Harry. Come on. A Malfoy, live among Muggles? He'd rather have lived under a permanent Cruciatus curse."

"I heard he'd changed by the end of the war."

"Hadn't we all. But not that far. He may no longer have advocated the killing of all Muggles just on principle, but he certainly wouldn't have wanted to live as one of them."

"You never know."

"As one of who?" asked Annette Smithers, another of their colleagues, sitting down. Harry moved over for her.

"Draco Malfoy. Live as a Muggle."

"What?"

"Harry thinks he saw Draco Malfoy's long lost twin living in Cardiff and working in a Muggle bookstore," Emma told her.

"Owl the Quibbler!" Annette said immediately, and Harry and Emma chuckled politely.

"I didn't say it was him. Just looked like him."

"Platinum hair, silvery eyes, pretty face, right obnoxious bastard?"

"Actually, no. Brown hair and eyes. Glasses. Very polite."

They both blinked at him.

"His face. Looked like Malfoy," Harry said, starting to feel foolish again. "And, and his voice. But not... really." He waved his hand, indicating the subject wasn't that important and giving them leave to change topics if they wanted to.

"All right," Emma nodded, and changed the subject. "Oh, did either of you talk to Hecuba about the new shipment of Veritaserum from Velleywold?"

"No. What's happened now?" asked Annette.

"It's gone missing."

"Third time. Damn. Harry, you're at the Conference in Velleywold off and on for the next month or so, aren't you? Why don't you track Hecuba down, see what's happening? Maybe she'll take you seriously, god knows she doesn't care what we say." Harry frowned, banishing thoughts about the bookstore sales clerk for the moment and focussing his irritation on yet another problem with Velleywold Village Supplies.

8888888888

Harry sighed as he checked back into his hotel room in Cardiff. It was grey and ugly and always raining and here he was, at yet another high-powered yet pointless conference about things he really didn't care about any more.

You could stay at home in London, he reminded himself. You could just floo back and forth every morning and night. Nobody's forcing you to stay here.

Although really, what difference did it make? Living in one empty set of rooms versus another. Here at least he would get a chance to socialize with the others who were attending the Conference. Well... except that he didn't much care for any of them and he'd ended up booked at an inn that wasn't even technically in Velleywold Village. The clientele here was almost exclusively Muggle.

Besides, he kept getting called back and forth for those pointless debriefs in London. How did the Conference go yesterday, Mr. Potter? Anything new, Mr. Potter? Anything different from what you told us when we asked you for a report three days ago? No? Thank you so much, Mr. Potter. We'll see you in two more days so that you can tell us that nothing new happened again.

He stared out the window, bored and wishing for something to read. He'd planned on buying a gardening book the other day, to see about growing some ferns that were useful in a number of potions, but he'd gotten distracted by the Malfoy-lookalike sales clerk and had left without buying anything.

He frowned absently at The Book Cellar across the street.

What the hell.

8888888888

"May I help you?" a young female sales clerk asked as he looked at the books again. "Our Hobbies clerk is sick today, but is there-"

"Um, no. No thanks," Harry said, slightly startled. "No. I can find what I'm looking for. Thanks." He busied himself looking for books with ferns and fronds. Hm... that one looked interesting...

"Yeah, hold it open, would you?" a breathless voice behind him said, and Harry turned around. There was Dave, a large box balanced precariously on one hip as he struggled to hold the front door open. The young woman swiftly caught the door and held it and he sidled past her, came in as far as the counter, and dropped the box onto the floor.

"Ugh. That was awkward. Thanks," he smiled at her, flipped open a pocket knife, knelt down and sliced the box open. Quickly he felt down to the books, nodding. "Good, all there."

"The Adeles?"

"All four - actually, eight."

"Oh, good. Did you give Frank hell?"

"No, honest mistake."

"Third time," she shook her head.

"New baby."

Harry shook his head at himself, amused. Definitely not Malfoy. He glanced back down at the gardening book.

"He can't hide behind that excuse forever, that baby's two months old." Dave shrugged, not bothering to argue. "Are you doing the inventory?"

"Yeah, may as well. Oh, can you get that?" he said as the phone rang, and the woman picked it up.

"The Book Cellar, Nor - oh, yeah, he's here," she held the phone out to Dave. Harry turned his attention firmly down to the book in his hands as Dave took the phone.

"Jilly?" Harry looked up with a jolt. Dave was still talking. "Yeah, listen, the new shipment came in ... Yeah, I know ... No, I can still pick up dinner. Curry? ... Sure. No, their gulabjamon's foul - why don't you make some?" Small pause, and he chuckled. "All right, I will. Bye, love." He hung up and passed the phone back to the other sales clerk, kneeling down to work on the shipment once more, checking a list against the contents of the box.

Jilly. Not Ginny. Jilly. Not Ginny Weasley, also dead these fifteen years.

Or was she? Harry suppressed a hysterical giggle as he pictured a Quibbler headline screaming "Long-Lost Heroes of the War Malfoy and Weasley Found in Muggle Love Nest!"

Harry bit his lip, looked down again. No, not possible. Malfoy, maybe. Malfoy may have mysteriously disappeared, but Ginny Weasley was certainly and certifiably very dead. He'd been to her funeral. Seen her body.

Malfoy, though... he looked back at the clerk, now busily typing something in to a computer, a slight frown of concentration behind his glasses.

No. The hair and the eyes, maybe that could have changed. Malfoy could've done a spell on himself - well, no, he couldn't have, but he could have asked somebody else to do it, after his own magic was gone - but he couldn't have changed himself. No matter what the war had done to any of them, it would not have changed Draco Malfoy into a man who could work for a living, at all. Let alone work efficiently and apparently contentedly, and at a bookstore, of all places. A Muggle bookstore. Talking on the phone, picking up Indian food, working a computer, helping clients find books, talking about inventories... that had absolutely nothing to do with Malfoy as anybody had ever known him.

Coincidence, that's all it was. An astonishing one, but a coincidence nonetheless.

Harry hefted the gardening book in his hands, paid for it, and left.

8888888888

"Heard you saw Draco Malfoy in Cardiff the other day," Paracelsus Green said two days later over lunch.

Harry looked up in slight surprise. "No, not really, just somebody who looked like him."

"And sounded like him, Emma said." Harry shrugged. "How do you know it wasn't him? People were saying they'd spotted him for years afterwards."

"Yeah, but... at a bookstore?"

"It's been fifteen years, why not a bookstore? I mean, face and voice both like Malfoy? That's a rather odd coincidence, don't you think?"

"You'd think he would have done something about it, then," Harry said. "His face and his voice, if he really wanted to hide."

"How?"

"Muggles have surgery for facial reconstruction."

"And how would he have paid for it? He didn't have anything, by the end."

"Still, don't you think he could have found a better place to hide than a Muggle bookstore, working with customers?" Harry asked.

"Better place to hide?" Celsus repeated. "It's been fifteen years and nobody's spotted him there yet, have they? I'd say that sounds like a fairly good hiding spot." Harry chuckled and nodded. "Besides, he didn't have to hide."

"What?"

"No reason to. Nobody was after him, not after the war," Celsus said.

"There were still Death Eater splinter groups for a few years. And plenty of our lot never really believed he came over." Celsus frowned. "I'm not even sure I do, still."

"He came over, Harry. I was there."

Harry shrugged. "That never seemed a very Malfoy-like thing to do. It still doesn't."

"No, but we were all acting oddly. You wouldn't have thought Fred and George Weasley would go to work in the Ministry, but they did. Nobody was more surprised than Neville Longbottom when he became Potions Master after... well. But it was war, Harry. People did odd things."

Harry shrugged again.

"I was there," Celsus repeated. "If it hadn't been for Malfoy, we'd've... I don't know what we would've done, but we sure as hell wouldn't have been able to stand against Blaise Zabini and his merry little Death Eating band."

"Now there's a man who stayed true to himself till the end."

"Yeh," Celsus gave a mock salute with his butterbeer mug. "Blaise Zabini, may he rot in pieces." Harry raised his own glass to Zabini and didn't say anything about Malfoy.

"Harry, Malfoy did it. What he did may not have been the final glorious act, but it definitely set up the final glorious act and made it possible, and he did it knowing exactly what it would cost him." Harry gazed at Celsus curiously. Celsus frowned. "What?"

"Why are you trying to convince me of this? What does it matter?"

Celsus shrugged. "I don't know. I suppose even fifteen years later it still bothers me that people don't give Malfoy the credit he was due."

"What, there's people who have little shrines to him-"

"I'm not talking about the idiots who carried on about him like he was an even more dashing and mysterious version of bloody Gilderoy Lockheart. I'm talking about the people who knew him and actually fought in the war. The people who said that he disappeared because he had actually betrayed our side and-" he stopped, pressing his lips together. "I was there. I know what I saw. Zabini had no idea that Malfoy was there before he stepped out into the open. And Malfoy stood against him, and Zabini pointed his wand at him and Malfoy just bloody well let him, to buy time for the rest of us. I didn't see everything that happened, but I know what Malfoy looked like before he stepped out, and we all knew they were using that bloody Enmagio curse, we all knew what he was going to lose." Celsus shivered. "And then afterwards... Harry, you can't fake that. He just... he looked so lost. And, I mean, no, that's not... he looked like he was telling himself he was fine, but he wasn't."

"He'd had a bit of blood loss, though, I heard he was-"

"That wasn't it. It was... he... he blinked at one point, shook his head, and I said something like 'Are you all right' and he said, 'Feel like I'm... deaf, or something.' He, he said it was a bit like feeling one of his senses gone, but he didn't know which." Celsus shuddered at the memory.

"Come on, that was in the articles about Enmagio-"

"Because it was true."

"So he could've just read it in an article-"

"You think he faked losing magic?"

"No, just-"

"Just what?"

Harry shrugged again. "I'm just saying that him describing something that had been described before is not proof that everything he said was true. Maybe, maybe he'd already worked out with Zabini that-"

"You can't fake that sort of thing, Harry!"

"I know he was examined by a-"

"He didn't fake it!"

"Well some people said that he and Zabini had arranged it so that it wouldn't be permanent-"

"You believe that conspiracy drivel?"

"No, but-" Celsus shook his head at Harry, and Harry stopped and chose his words more carefully. "Look, I'm not saying it's true. I believe you, mostly. I'm just saying it might have been true. That they faked it and then he double-crossed Zabini and let him get captured-"

"So why didn't Zabini say so-"

"I don't know, maybe he thought Malfoy would spring him or-"

"-until the end, with the Dementors coming at him, Zabini kept his mouth shut?"

"-and then he disappeared because Zabini's followers were looking for him, or he just went to them and they didn't manage to spring-"

"-and then what happened to him?"

Harry shrugged. "He went back to them and just got eliminated in the infighting. You know they tore themselves apart, there wasn't much for us to do except count the bodies that weren't blasted to bits-"

"He didn't. He-"

"How can you be sure?"

"I'm sure. I didn't see all the details firsthand, but I was there right before, and I was there for a few hours afterwards, and there is no way you can tell me he hadn't lost everything. I can't imagine doing that, myself. When Zabini pointed his wand at me, I - I knew they were using Enmagio and I honestly thought I'd rather die. It would be like mutilation, like being half-alive. And Malfoy... he just took a deep breath and stepped out, because he knew he could fight Zabini off longer than I could, and, and... he just did it. He made an unbelievable sacrifice. And people still thought he only did it because there was a percentage in it for him." Celsus shook his head in disgust.

Harry was silent.

Celsus gazed off at the wall. "And after that... after that, I think he disappeared because he couldn't handle living in the wizarding world as a Squib. I never believed he went back to the Death Eaters."

"Well a lot of people believed he went off and killed himself, but somehow I can't picture Malfoy getting that dramatic without a proper audience," Harry said cynically, and regretted his words as Celsus frowned at him. He backtracked. "Sorry. But if he didn't kill himself and he didn't go back to the Death Eaters, the alternative is - you really think he... went Muggle? That he couldn't handle being a Squib, but could handle being a Muggle instead?"

"Absolutely."

"Absolutely?"

"Yes. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than any bizarre conspiracy theory."

"Makes no sense to me."

"You didn't know him," Celsus said.

"I went to school with him! Six years, I'll have you know. I knew him."

"You didn't know him during the war."

"You didn't either. You got communiqués that you thought were from him, they could have been from anybody-"

"It was good intelligence. And I fought next to the man-"

"Ten days! Near the very end-"

"You get to know somebody in battle, you should know that, you-"

Harry put down his fork, tired of the argument. "Let's talk about something else, right?"

"I knew him," Celsus repeated stubbornly. "I know what I saw. And it's still upsetting that what he did before that, and the person he was before the war, coloured the way people saw his actions. Up to and including one of the bravest and most self-sacrificing things I've ever heard of anyone doing, even during the war."

"Right," Harry said, not wanting to argue.

"I know all the stories. He was a rude, mean, spoiled git who never worked a day in his life, and followed his father into the Death Eaters like a good little Malfoy and hated Muggles and Muggle-borns. I know all of that. But he changed and got past it. He risked a lot for our side. And he lost everything, for our side. And nobody who mattered gave a damn, just because of who he used to be."

8888888888

And here Harry was again, back at The Book Cellar. Not just blurring this time, but actually changing his features. He went to the young adults section; Dave seemed to know his way around it fairly well. What would he ask about, for young adults? He glanced around, getting his bearings and concocting a story.

It was rather hot in here, Harry noticed. No air conditioning despite the stifling summer heat. Rather unpleasant.

"May I help you?" Dave appeared next to him, startling him slightly.

"Oh- yes. I'm looking for a birthday present for my nephew - he likes this series, it's, um, it's about a horse, I think..." and the lies flowed easily. After fifteen years, they came back. Not that he'd done a lot of dissembling during the war, but there had been a few times when he'd had to think fast and talk faster.

"Yeah, I think I know the one you want, it's probably-" and Dave was taking the bait, and talking about something that Harry should probably listen to but that was the truly tricky part of dissembling, that you had to pretend to listen to this information you hadn't really wanted, or risk looking stupid. And somehow, keep your voice and facial expression interested yet casual while simultaneously recording the useless information and recording what you really wanted to know.

Which was?

Right. Comparing this man's speech patterns, voice, gestures, expressions, to Malfoy. This man was in his late thirties, which was about how old Malfoy would have been if he hadn't died at twenty-three. Ignore the hair and eye colour and the glasses and the frown lines and laugh lines that Malfoy's face never had a chance to get. Think back fifteen years - longer, actually, as he'd had little contact with Malfoy after Hogwarts. Think back to an ill-mannered boy of sixteen, think back more than twenty years, try to remember the face and the voice and the words he used - other than 'Potter' and 'Weaselby' and 'Mudblood' in various tones of derision.

See if that boy matches this man. Ignore the Muggle clothing and Muggle name and Muggle store and Muggle books that he was talking about. Ignore the fact that this man was being polite and informative about something as mundane as young adult books, when Malfoy had never been polite about anything, and Harry had had no direct experience with him being informative either.

Ignore the fact that Dave seemed perfectly comfortable serving him, where no Malfoy had ever served anyone, other than the Dark Lord, for generations.

No. There was no ignoring all of that. This had been a stupid waste of time.

"Right, then," Harry said, picking the last two books Dave had mentioned and hoping that made sense, as he hadn't really been able to pay terribly close attention.

"Will there be anything else, sir?" Dave asked, and Harry shook his head, heading for the cash register with him. Hopefully he'd find some use for the books - he could probably just drop them off at the nearest Muggle library as a donation or something. Did Muggles still have public libraries with books in them?

Dave put Harry's book on the counter next to another clerk currently serving a customer, and picked up the phone as it rang. Harry glanced at an envelope next to the cash register, addressed to David Bergsen. Probably a paycheck.

Harry suppressed a smile. Dave Bergsen. You couldn't find a more Muggle name than that.

Dave finished on the phone as the other clerk finished with her customer and moved away, murmuring, "I've got my break Dave, can you-"

"No problem," Dave said, pocketing the envelope. "You're closing for me tonight, though." She looked at him blankly, "Jilly's sister's coming, remember?"

"Right. And I'll call about the air conditioning too, this is ridiculous," she moved out of the way as Dave took Harry's books and opened the register, pushing his books through. He waited a moment, frowning slightly at the screen, lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes a little.

"Long day?" Harry asked.

"Yeah," he answered, settling the glasses back down, "long shift. Too warm in here." Harry nodded. It was actually quite stifling. "All right, fifteen euros even," he said as Harry took out his Muggle currency. "Book Cellar card?"

"No," Harry handed over the cash and Dave took it, absently pushing up his sleeves as he waited for the register to spit out Harry's receipt. Dave handed it to Harry along with his change. Harry glanced down as he took it, and felt his heart lurch.

The Dark Mark.

Dave was saying something. "...sir?" Harry shook his head, hoping - not hoping, no, what, this was too much coincidence, the Dark Mark was right there, Dave - Malfoy - Dave was saying something to him, and he had no idea what, and wait, slow down, he wanted to blurt out, go back a couple of seconds-

"I'm sorry, what?"

'Dave' repeated, a little amused, "Did you want them wrapped?"

"What?"

"The books? For your nephew."

"Right. Oh, right, yeah."

"Together or separately?"

"What?"

"The two books."

"Oh. Both - both together."

"Long day?" 'Dave' chuckled, and Harry made himself chuckle back.

"Too long."

"There you go, sir," he finished wrapping and handed him the package.

"Thanks." Harry left.

Draco Malfoy. Working in a Muggle store, with the Dark Mark still on his arm.

Well... not actually the Dark Mark. It was semi-hidden among various other tattoos. More snakes, a couple of knives, all quite skilful, rather artistic, but there was no mistake at all about what was at the center of it all.

So. He'd found Elvis.

Now what?

2  Missing, Presumed Dead

"Do you know how many people were struck with the Enmagio curse during the war?" Harry asked Celsus over lunch the next time he was in London.

"Enmagio? Er... don't know off the top of my head. Why?"

"Weren't you working at St. Mungo's at the time?"

"Yeah, but that was fifteen years ago. And it wasn't exactly the worst we had to deal with, we had Cruciatus and Imperius and Exuviae-"

Harry suppressed a grimace at that last one, having seen it up close once. Removal of the epidermis. One thing you could say about the Death Eaters: they were certainly creative. He interrupted Celsus' litany of horrifying curses. "Has it been used since?"

"Not much, I don't think. I think there was a case about five years ago. It wasn't a terribly easy hex to cast, though. The body fights off any attempt to remove magic pretty hard. One Death Eater said it felt like trying to smother an unrestrained person with your bare hands - it could be done, but not easily. It sometimes took two or three of them combined to do it right."

Harry frowned. "Why use it then, instead of an easier and deadlier curse?"

"Usually they did it to hostages or prisoners of war. That way they were rendered harmless, but could still be used to bargain with."

"Near the end of the war they were still thinking about bargaining?"

"Not much." Celsus eyed him shrewdly. "That's part of why some people thought Draco Malfoy was still with the Death Eaters. Because if he couldn't be a bargaining piece any more, why wouldn't they have just killed him?"

"It's a good point."

"They may have wanted to punish him, for turning on them."

Harry shrugged. "Good point again."

"Why are you asking?"

"Just curious." There was a pause as Celsus waited patiently for Harry to continue. Harry sighed. "I went back to the bookstore."

"And?"

"It's possible. That that man might be Malfoy."

"Really."

There was another, longer pause. "So what should I do?" Harry finally asked.

"Do you mean, confront him, tell the Ministry, keep it a secret?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know."

"You're the one who was pushing and saying that it might be him. What did you expect me to do if I decided you were right?"

"I didn't really expect you to do anything; I was mostly just reacting to your unattractive cynicism at such a young age."

Harry chuckled.

Celsus took a bite of his stew. "So how does he look?"

"Fine. Older, I guess."

"Aren't we all. I take it he didn't recognize you." Harry shook his head. "It might not be him, then."

On impulse, Harry decided not to tell Celsus about the Dark Mark. He shrugged. "Maybe."

"You know, even if you're sure it's him, there's no reason you should do anything about it."

Harry eyebrows went up. "Oh really? What if he did betray us? Should I just let him go free, if he got our people killed?"

"Why not?"

Harry gaped at Celsus.

"I'm just playing devil's advocate, but think about it," Celsus said, leaning across the table and gesturing at Harry with his fork. "Why should you identify him? Would it bring any of his victims back?"

"Celsus, if he pretended to be a spy for our side but was really still with the Death Eaters, he doesn't belong in a bookstore. He belongs in Azkaban."

"Why?"

"Justice? The Rule of Law? Punishment?" Harry paused. "Vengeance?"

"Do you not think that being a Muggle is enough punishment?"

"For killing people? No, I don't."

"I'd say for Draco it would have been."

"He didn't look like a man living out a life sentence. He looked like he enjoyed his job. Liked working with books."

"So what would you do? Bring him in? Demand he account for himself?"

"Maybe somebody should."

"Maybe somebody already did. You don't know what the Ministry did or didn't do back then. Besides, the Enmagio... if he survived that, he got as much punishment as anybody could possibly hope for."

Harry looked at him, puzzled.

"Didn't you ever read what happened to those people? A lot of them went insane. Quite a few killed themselves."

"Really? Why?"

"Well, use your imagination, Harry. What do you think it would be like? All of a sudden, you can't do half of what you could do before. And all around you, your world is set up for people who can. Remember Filch? Why do you think he was such a nasty piece of work? Half crazy with jealousy, being a Squib in the wizarding world."

Harry frowned, considering that.

"And he'd had his whole lifetime to get used to it," Celsus continued. "That kind of thing, dumped into your lap from one moment to the next... I'd go stark raving mad, I'm sure." Celsus chewed pensively. "There were other side-effects, too. Read Alisia D. Crede, she wrote some papers about it. Interesting work."

"But what if he didn't lose his magic?"

"Would he be working at a bookstore?"

"No, probably not. Unless he was hiding from the Aurors, still."

Celsus shrugged. "Why don't you try to figure out what happened to him, then?"

"How? Should I walk up to him and say Excuse me, you wouldn't happen to be Draco Malfoy, would you? There's some Aurors that would like to talk to you-"

"No, ask around. Maybe you can figure out what happened back then."

"Celsus, nobody figured it out fifteen years ago."

"Nobody looked all that hard, either."

"Excuse me? The Quibbler ran daily stories about sightings-"

"The Quibbler is for entertainment purposes only. You of all people should know that. The real Powers That Be were too busy rebuilding the Ministry and stamping out the last resistance and holding back rogue Dementors and frantically trying to hide from the Muggles. They were just barely keeping their heads above the water. Widows and orphans and blasted villages and castles and dragons and harpies running amuck... they didn't have the time or inclination to hunt down one lone possible Muggle, possible suicide/death. And half the people who knew him wouldn't have talked to the Ministry anyway. Years later... who knows?"

Harry shrugged. "All right, then, how about you? What do you know?"

"What?"

"You were there the night he lost his magic. What happened?"

"Harry, it was fifteen years ago - how do you expect me to remember-"

Harry started to laugh. "My point exactly."

Celsus blinked, then gave a short laugh followed by a sigh of resignation. "Oh, all right. Give me a minute. I'll try to remember."

8888888888

You need a story, thought Harry at The Book Cellar a few days later. Like during the war. Get a story, use it so you can gather information without looking like that's what you're doing.

He wandered, stopping at the computer section. This was one of the only things he occasionally missed about the Muggle world. These machines had a magic of their own, and when he'd left the Muggle world they hadn't been as common as they were today. He could use them - most witches and wizards his age could - but he didn't handle them with the ease that Muggles did. Or, for that matter, with the ease that Malfoy did.

He glanced surreptitiously at Malfoy, who was on shift today. Marvelling yet again at how comfortable Malfoy seemed here. He'd swept the store, whistling absently to himself, helped a few people locate books, and was currently on the phone chatting animatedly about a new order of children's books.

Young adult books. Harry could be collecting young adult books for a school, as a volunteer project, with money raised by the students. And... he would need to come back a few times, as the students requested new books.

That should work. Harry got himself a computer book, then wandered over to the young adult section and looked at the titles with a reasonable facsimile of interest.

Talking to Celsus and reading Alisia D. Crede's work had been interesting, but somewhat unsettling, he thought as he scanned titles. Mostly he'd been appalled at how little he'd known - or cared - about how anybody but himself and his close friends were doing in the aftermath of the war.

Granted, it had been a difficult time for everybody. Just dealing with Ron and his shattered family was surely as good an excuse as anybody could have for sealing themselves into a bubble and away from the rest of the world for a long, long time.

Except that Harry had stayed in that bubble for years. Long after what was left of the Weasleys had settled into whatever passed for peace and no longer required him and Hermione to spend the bulk of their lives dealing with them.

Don't think about Ron and his family right now, he told himself wearily. There was plenty else to think about.

Like, for example, Crede's first article on Enmagio, written during the war. The quotes from survivors and their families had haunted him through a couple of the more boring meetings today.

"Paranoia, is what it feels like. Rampant paranoia. Missing out, knowing that everybody around you knows a secret that you don't."

He looked over at Malfoy, still on the phone, writing something down and laughing at something the person on the phone was saying.

"It was unnerving. It was just... I couldn't do anything for myself. I felt so helpless, all the time - and knowing that people around me could see and sense things that I couldn't, that was the worst. And it was so hard to explain, because... because for example I could explain that it bothered me that I couldn't see the Knight Bus, and people would nod and say Yes, that must be frustrating, but the real frustration came when you knew for a fact that there was nothing magical to see - and yet you still felt like you were half-blind. And people would say, "Honestly, Tim, there's no secret doorways or pictures, it's all perfectly visible to any Squib - oh, I'm sorry," and they'd look embarrassed at the word Squib and you wouldn't care because you wanted to just smash the pity off their faces, not for calling you a Squib but for thinking that if they could reassure you that there was no invisible magic, you would stop imagining that you were missing anything."

Malfoy got off the phone, tapped something into the computer in front of him, frowning at the screen slightly.

"She slowly started going insane. She insisted that we were hiding things from her, performing spells behind her back, fooling her. We tried so hard to reach her, but she got more and more angry and withdrawn. She'd have these bursts of rage, then break into tears, for no reason at all."

Harry shook his head, banishing the article's words and images, and concentrated on the books on the shelf before him.

Why young adult books, he wondered. The salespeople here seemed to specialize in a few areas of the store. Why had Malfoy chosen literature written for teenagers? Why, for that matter, had he chosen music or mystery, the other two areas he seemed to know fairly well?

Well, if you were talking about spy mysteries, that would be rather obvious, what with Malfoy's direct experience in that field. But most mystery books weren't about spies, they were about private investigators, and as far as he knew, Malfoy hadn't been one of those.

"May I help you?" Malfoy asked, startling Harry even though Harry had been expecting him. Harry quickly launched into his story.

"They're how old?"

"Eleven to seventeen, boys and girls."

"Well the Adele books are fairly popular with that age group, but most of them have probably read them all, except for the last one, which we can't seem to keep in stock." He frowned thoughtfully at the shelves, picked out a couple. "This one's a big hit. It's a little hard to get into at first, but the kids who stick with it love it to death. Do any of them have learning disabilities?"

Oh dear. "Oh, er, yes - dyslexia," Harry said, grasping at the only term he knew.

"This one's highly recommended for dyslexic kids - my niece is dyslexic and she's hooked on them." His niece? Malfoy was an only child. No nieces. Harry realized Malfoy was still talking. "...getting the kids to read is the first step - they find something they enjoy and they'll put a lot of effort into it, a lot more so than their lessons."

"Oh." Harry paused. "How old is your niece?"

"Thirteen," Malfoy said absently, still scanning the titles and pulling out a few more. "Any horse enthusiasts in the group?"

"Er, I don't know."

"Well, if it's girls there'll be at least one or two. Boys tend to prefer the violent computer games - and there's this series, it's actually based on a game; boys tend to really like it, but it's rubbish as far as literature is concerned. Maybe have that as a hook, again - get them reading trash they'll like, they see reading's fun, and come back for the good stuff."

Harry nodded, observing Malfoy. He really seemed into the work, the books - not marking time or hiding in this bookstore, but actually fully involved and enthusiastic about it. A lot more enthusiastic than Harry was about his own job, come to think of it. He doubted he'd want to talk to anybody at great length about anything having to do with the Velleywold conference... or, for that matter, anything connected to his job.

Malfoy also didn't look, at all, like what Harry had expected after reading the Crede works. They were nothing but depressing.

Of the twenty-six people known to have been hit by the curse since it appeared eleven months ago, eight have committed suicide and another ten have made serious attempts on their lives. Six of those are currently confined to St. Mungo's. Of the twelve remaining known victims, five report emotional symptoms that most resemble a Muggle condition known as "Depression" syndrome, characterized by severe joylessness, anxiety, fatigue, sleeplessness, and lack of mental acuity. The remaining five claim to be coping well. It is significant to note, however, that three of these five are Muggle-born and one is half-Muggle. They have ties to the Muggle world and four of them have effectively moved into it.

Malfoy didn't have ties. Granted, that article had been written in the first few months of the existence of the curse, but the one written five years later, as a follow-up, was hardly a picture of cheer. Particularly the concluding statistics:

xx Total known number of cases: 56

xx Committed suicide within one year: 16

xxo Committed suicide since the war: 4

xx Still confined to St. Mungo's at this time: 8

xx Moved into Muggle world: 15

xx In wizarding world: 8

xx Fate unknown: 5

xx Confined to St. Mungo's for any length of time: 12

xx Reporting severe "Depression" syndrome at any length of time: 22

xx Still reporting severe "Depression" syndrome, in St. Mungo's, wizarding world, Muggle world: 6

So how had Malfoy ended up here? Functioning, rational, seemingly quite at ease? Harry had read some other things about Depression syndrome, and none of the characteristics fit.

The likeliest answer, Harry thought, assuming Malfoy wasn't a Death Eater still hiding from the Ministry - which seemed rather unlikely - was something that he'd encountered near the end of the last Crede article:

"No, she went Muggle. Said she couldn't bear to live as a blind cripple any more. So she, well, she, she went to Knockturn Alley and found somebody who - you know there's people who'll place a very good Obliviate on you, for a price. I begged her not to, but she couldn't - and so I helped her, we set her up with a Muggle-born friend's family. We exchanged our money for Muggle money, they took her in, and she was a new person. Didn't remember us. I've gone to visit her a few times, but it's too painful; she doesn't remember anything of her life, she's been told she's this Muggle who's lost her memory through some accident or something ridiculous like that and she believes it. She believes it, and doesn't know any of us any more."

"So they raised the money themselves?" Malfoy asked as he moved over to the non-fiction books.

"Yeah, they sold biscuits."

"What kind of group is it?"

"Book club, actually."

"That's nice, kids going out of their way to read. Oh, here's another one they may like - the parents might not want it though, it's got a bit of adult content. It's written for teenagers, but it talks about sex and drugs and things like that. Check with the parents before making it available."

"She's happy now, I think. Works at a 'coffee shop' - it's sort of like a restaurant, where they only serve this bitter drink, not like our coffee at all. She was an Auror, you know. Took nine NEWTs, she had a brilliant future ahead of her.

"It's so hard now, to think of her and see what she's become."

"That should be enough... twelve books, nine fiction, three non-fiction. You get a Book Cellar card free if you buy more than six books, so with the discount that's... about thirty euros. Did you want to look at any others?"

"No, that's fine. Thanks."

There were no real answers here, from the articles or from Malfoy himself, thought Harry as Malfoy took his books to the cash. And Harry still had no idea what to do about any of it. Not without knowing how Malfoy had gotten from there to here.

8888888888

Harry looked at the stacks of papers on his hotel room desk. In one pile was yet another report on Romanian dragons and the structures in place to maintain them under control - the dragon handlers, what training they had, where the funds came to maintain them and keep their training up to date; the supplies needed for care of injured dragons and the spells needed to keep strong the wards around dragon country.

Another pile of documents about werewolves, and examples of discrimination faced by werewolves, statistics about how many werewolves had actually attacked people in the last twenty-two years (two, one fatally, out of 135 registered werewolves).

The last was a small stack from his brief investigations into Malfoy. He should be slogging his way through the first two piles, but instead here he was, re-reading the third.

Dry, factual report of the battle with Blaise Zabini's group - diagrams, timeline, statements from Aurors and prisoners of war. Terse medical reports on both, as there wasn't time for much more detail in those days. Death certificates, same. Scrolls that had probably not been opened in at least ten years but still felt almost like new except for the dust.

Paracelsus Green (second team medic)

xx minor injuries (healed, Skele-grow, third-level Knit charm)

xx aftereffects, v. brief Cruciatus (healed, Serenitas) and Exsanguine (healed, Ferritas)

xx dehydration (healed, Aquafire)

Tamara Silvanine (first team member)

xx Deceased, Avada Kedavra

Rupert Grisenwold (first team leader)

xx Deceased, Avada Kedavra

Ginevra Grisenwold (second team member)

xx Deceased, Avada Kedavra

Seven more of those; three others of survivors treated for physical and psychic injuries caused by physical and magical means.

Draco Malfoy (second team informant and scout)

xx minor injuries (healed, Skele-grow, third-level Knit)

xx blood loss and internal bleeding (healed, Hematos and Venasurgio)

xx dehydration (healed, Aquafire)

xx aftereffects of Exsanguine (healed, Ferritas)

xx aftereffects of completed Enmagio (unhealed)

A later medical report

Draco Malfoy, Enmagio

xx no magical abilities present

xx being followed for emotional aftereffects

Another report, briefly stating that he'd requested release from St. Mungo's once three Healers had confirmed the diagnosis. He'd been released into his own care, although he did not give an address, as he did not have one. Homelessness was hardly unusual at the time - people were staying at the Ministry, Hogwarts, various safe houses dotted around the country and in Europe.

A one-paragraph report on a visit to him at the home of Pansy Parkinson. He reported no unusual ill effects, checked out medically, and agreed to report to St. Mungo's in a week to be 'followed.'

Clip of two-sentence report from St. Mungo's: "Visit to home of Pansy Parkinson following missed appointment of patient Draco Malfoy, Enmagio after effects. Patient not in premises, Parkinson unsure of his whereabouts, will contact St. Mungo's to reschedule appointment."

More reports from St. Mungo's: "Patient Draco Malfoy has not contacted St. Mungo's or Ministry for medical follow up or secondary debrief re raid of March 18."

"Whereabouts of Malfoy unknown."

"Whereabouts of Malfoy unknown."

"Whereabouts of Malfoy unknown."

"Whereabouts of Malfoy unknown, last seen at home of Pansy Parkinson, no other family or acquaintances report contact with him. Ms Parkinson believes him to have committed suicide, see Crede article "Enmagio and its effects."

And the last entry, from the Ministry: "Missing, presumed dead."

Not much to show for a life. Not much to show thanks or care towards Malfoy for his service or sacrifice.

Of course, Harry was familiar with the reports of the time - how many incredibly complex and time consuming events had been reduced to "raid completed successfully"? How many had no reports at all? That didn't mean nothing had happened. Only that nobody had time to write it down.

But even memories hadn't yielded much, as Harry, bored out of his mind by the administrivia he was currently involved in, had tracked down people whose names he recognized from the reports. He'd asked, and they couldn't add anything useful to the reports.

The Quibbler was even worse. Harry had spent about an hour, more for entertainment purposes than anything else, leafing through the batch of old clippings that had been put together for him by a very eager and giggly clerk at the paper.

Malfoy grave found in Glastonbury! and Malfoy's body finally unearthed, missing eyes and four fingers! were just two examples of headlines. Harry read about sightings at an Eerie Brothers concert, Hogwarts, the Pixie Woods just outside Limerick, a Montrose Magpies/Chudley Cannons Quidditch match (as mystery replacement Seeker), two Muggle supermarkets, one Muggle hospital in France, and a Muggle medium-security jail in Cornwall, before he gave up. None of them seemed remotely plausible or worth looking into - the 'sources' were unnamed, the facts hazy, the situations implausible.

He could start looking in the other direction, he supposed. He could try to figure out when "David Bergsen" had appeared in the Muggle world, and what he'd done there. But he had no idea how to even begin that. It would probably involve the use of computers, too. Which he wasn't terribly comfortable with. And nobody he knew was comfortable with them either.

Too bad he couldn't ask Malfoy for help with that, Harry thought, and chuckled to himself as he finally put aside the interesting stuff and started on his stack of tripe from the conference.

8888888888

"Pansy Parkinson?" Harry said tentatively. The thin, angular woman standing in the doorway before him, hair pulled back severely and mouth pursed tightly, did not look like the sly Slytherin girl he'd known at school. This woman bore an uncanny similarity to Madam Pince, the draconian Hogwarts librarian. Same air of severe competence and suspicion.

"Harry Potter," Pansy said neutrally. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"I um... I wanted to get some information from you."

"About?"

"Draco Malfoy." Harry watched her eyes widen in genuine surprise.

"Draco? Whatever for?"

"I, er... I'm trying to figure out what happened to him, because he, he was sighted a few weeks ago, and I'm trying to figure out if that was him."

Pansy's severe features relaxed into amused condescension. "Well, if that isn't just like the Ministry. Don't give a damn about a person while they should, and come back to the subject fifteen years later when it makes no difference whatsoever. Nice assignment you've pulled, Potter."

Harry didn't bother to correct her assumption. She sighed and pushed a strand of hair out of her face. "Potter, I don't know anything about Draco that I didn't tell the Ministry fifteen years ago. I told them what I knew - he was here for a little while, then buggered off and I never saw him again. I read the same bizarre little stories in the Quibbler that everyone else did, and I never believed any of it."

"This sighting looks to be genuine."

Pansy laughed bitterly. "Of course it does. Look, I don't have time to play Thirteen Questions for the Ministry. I hope you didn't inconvenience yourself too much coming all the way out here, but-"

"I only want to hear from you what happened - how long he stayed, how did he behave, where did he say he was going-"

"Three weeks, fine, and he didn't. Have a nice day-" Pansy started to close the door but Harry stopped her.

"You told the Ministry he'd only stayed a few days."

"Days, weeks, what does it matter? He stayed, he left. I think he died. Fifteen years ago."

"Pansy-"

"Look, I didn't like talking about him then and I don't want to talk about him now. I tried very hard to leave the war behind me, Potter. Many of us on the losing side did."

Harry frowned. "I thought you'd switched sides. You and Malfoy."

"We saw what a lunatic Voldemort was," she snapped, "but that doesn't mean we wanted to side with the rest of you. No matter who won, we lost." She stopped herself and pursed her lips again. "Look, Potter, I know you're probably under orders from the Ministry to leave no stone unturned but honestly, I have no information to give you, even if I wanted to-" she suddenly broke off and seemed to be thinking about something. "Wait. I do have something - my sister Juniper died last summer-"

"Oh, I'm sorry-" Harry murmured automatically. "I didn't-"

"-and I went to tidy her things and found a slew of letters from me to her, from the war. I doubt there's much there that you could use, but I've no earthly use for them. Why don't you take them?"

"Oh. Oh, yes, that would be-"

"Here, wait a minute - I was just going through the boxes last week - wait a moment." Pansy went into her house and left him standing at the door for a few moments, listening to her moving about. "Here," she came back, hidden behind a couple of large boxes. "Do a lighten spell. They're full of papers and such and they're bloody heavy."

8888888888

"Harry?" Emma Sprout popped into Harry's London office the next day.

"Yeah?"

"A few of us are going down to the Cauldron for a beer, are you coming?"

"No thanks, too busy."

"All work and no play, Harry," Emma chided.

"I know, I know."

"When are you going to get out and relax?" she said. "You've been going back and forth, Velleywold to here... you look like you need a good drunk."

"I need to get drunk, or I need to meet a drunk?"

"Either or both, darling. You look peaked."

"I'm fine."

"Yes, aren't you always," Emma sighed, giving up. "Fine."

Harry waved as she and the rest of the London staff headed out, and he looked over the piles of work before him.

On one side of the desk were the reports of the Committee on the Re-evaluation of Registration and Administration of Magical Creatures and Magical Beasts. On the other side were Pansy's letters, which he'd sorted by date before reading. He started with the one dated the closest to the end of the war.

xxxxxxxx

Dear Juniper:

Sorry I haven't written much lately, this stupid war. I suppose you've heard of Draco by now. Well he's staying with me. I think I'm not supposed to say anything about him being here, but I'm sure he didn't mean that with regards to you.

He's acting very odd. Draco, that is. He's been awfully quiet, and he hasn't spoken at all about It. That's how I think of it now - It. But then something will come up and it's so awkward. Yesterday it was asking him to floo down to the store, and I just wasn't thinking - but he didn't say anything, just stared at me until I remembered, even though I'd started yelling at him that he wasn't the spoiled Malfoy heir any more and I didn't have house-elves to help me out at home and a lot of other garbage. A simple "I can't, Pansy" would have sufficed. Honestly, men. And I mean, you remember what he was like as a child, he'd make a biggest fuss out of the slightest injury - when that Hippogriff scratched him at school you would've thought it took both arms off for all the bother he made - but then this 'It' happens and he's just silent about it. I ask him how he's feeling, and he just shrugs.

This stupid, stupid war. I hate it.

How's Francis doing? Is he back from Bulgaria? Don't tell me if it's a secret, obviously, but I'd like to know. I can't stand how this keeps ripping apart all the best families. I found myself wishing I were a bloody Weasley the other day, as they're all on the same side, at least. With us you can never tell who's where any given day of the week.

Made myself sick at that last thought, by the way. Me, a Weasley. Bad enough that I'm on their side; I certainly have no wish to emulate them...

xxxxxxxx

Harry chuckled and scanned ahead, skipping a long description of a party that followed the Weasley reference.

xxxxxxxx

Found out the oddest thing the other day - did you know we must have different taste buds than Muggles? Yesterday Draco nearly spat out a mouthful of perfectly good pumpkin juice. Made a face at it and asked if it had gone bad, which it hadn't, it tasted fine to me. He had it for breakfast at school every morning for six years, but he can't stand it now, says it tastes quite bland and foul. Honestly, he'll be bringing Orange juice or some such Mudblood concoction into my home next. Mother would've been scandalised.

She'd be scandalised if she could see what else he's drinking these days, and how much. You know him - barring a few rather wild nights after the OWLs, he hated that kind of thing, and not just because Lucius would've killed him if he'd done anything stupid while drunk; Draco just didn't like the feeling of lack of control. Well now it looks like he's decided there's no reason not to get disgracefully drunk on a regular basis. Not that he's doing anything disgraceful, although I almost wish he would. All he's doing is drinking till he falls asleep or passes out, whatever you want to call it.

He will get better, won't he? I keep thinking of those awful articles from that Crede woman. The worst of it is, Draco said he'd read them - before that night, as a matter of fact. He knew, damn him. Why didn't he just let somebody else take out Blaise?

I hate this bloody war...

xxxxxxxx

Harry skipped ahead as Pansy's letter turned into a long diatribe against the Order. He started to skim through another one.

xxxxxxxx

...so glad you said Francis is playing Quidditch again. He must be feeling better.

Oh, god, Quidditch, Juniper. Another awkward moment, the other day I thought we might take in a game - the Magpies were playing. He just said No very brusquely and then I realized. He'll never play Quidditch again. I can't bear the thought. That's just... it's so horrible.

And then I read in the Prophet yesterday that the Sainted and Beloved Harry Bloody Potter played a game for the Cannons and probably every simpering witch in the stands tossed her pants at him - it's disgusting. Draco is grounded for the rest of his life, and the bleeding Wanker Who Lived is flying higher than ever. He wouldn't even be alive right now if Draco hadn't taken out Blaise that night. Not that anybody gives a damn, especially Potter.

xxxxxxxx

Harry swallowed hard. He hadn't. Given a damn, that was. He still remembered that game, remembered what a relief it had been to fly again, because during the worst of the war, after too many players had been blasted out of the sky, Quidditch had been ruled too risky and all games had been cancelled.

He'd been relieved and happy. Never stopped to think of the people who would never fly again.

No, that wasn't true. He'd stopped to think. He'd cared. He just couldn't seem to care for the right people at the right time, and certainly not as much they had needed him to care. What was it Hermione had flung at him, near the end?

"Harry Bloody Potter, the Great Hero. The Wanker Who Lived," yes, she'd said that too, only it had hurt a lot more coming from Hermione Granger than from Pansy Parkinson. "I'm sick of it - it's all you, you, you, like the rest of us never did a damn thing. Like Ron and other people didn't lose anything."

"That's not fair-"

"Oh, you never give interviews, you never let the Ministry parade you around as their trophy, just when we're supposed to be taking Molly to Ginny's grave and deal with Ron and-"

"That's not my fault! I'm trying, with Ron and them, but-"

"But you just don't have anything left to give to the rest of us after your adoring public is done with you."

He picked up the next letter in the pile.

xxxxxxxx

Dear Juniper:

No news of Draco. He's all right, isn't he? He would've called or something, if he were in trouble? Though how, I don't know.

There's been another bloody sighting in the Quibbler. In a Muggle "super"-market, of all places. Not bloody likely. He'd be eating in a fancy restaurant if he was doing anything in the Muggle world, he'd be utterly lost in one of their markets.

He's probably just lit out for Australia or something. I hope so, anyway.

There's rumours, did you know, that he's gone back to the Death Eaters. Another stupid article about Harry Bloody Potter, and nothing but sightings in "super"-markets and rumours of betrayal for Draco. It's a good thing he's not around to see this.

I think he's probably dead. You know that article on Enmagio, a lot of people commit suicide. And he was drinking so much. Who knows, he probably got drunk and walked off a bridge. I've read and re-read his letter and can't decide what's probably happened. You read it, and tell me what you think.

I just don't understand what's happened to him, what's the matter with him or how to help him.

xxxxxxxx

"What's happened to you? What's the matter with you?" Hermione had asked too. And "How can I help?" they had asked each other. For all the good it had done them.

xxxxxxxx

I keep thinking, even if he's not dead, he is, really. The boy I knew is just gone, and I have no idea who's taken his place, but he doesn't have the same sense of humour, the same spirit, the same anything. You know what he was like at school, he'd drive the Gryffindors mental and have us all in stitches imitating the professors in the common room. There's nothing of that left now.

Oh, I've got to stop worrying about him. I can't take this any more.

Did you know Millicent is getting married?

xxxxxxxx

"I can't take this any more, Harry," Hermione had said, right around the same time that this letter was dated. Harry blocked that train of thought quickly, picking up another letter. This one, oddly, was apparently from Juniper to Pansy, and it looked half-written, like it hadn't been sent.

xxxxxxxx

Dear P:

This stupid war. I saw the Quibbler too. And you're still clinging to the pre-war Draco, darling. He learned to forage in the forest during the war; he can certainly handle a supermarket.

About his letter, I don't know. Somehow it doesn't sound like Draco, that he would go Muggle, but then again, what else could he do? Can you imagine living like that in our world? I certainly can't.

Francis says to tell you he's doing all right and not in the tub any more - he said you'd know what that meant...

xxxxxxxx

Harry picked up another letter, different writing. A shiver went down his back as he read it.

xxxxxxxx

Dear Pansy:

Well, you're probably figured out by now that I've gone out for sugar quills and pumpkin juice and I'm not coming back. Sorry to be a little abrupt about this, but I didn't want a big scene.

Don't know when or if I'll come back. We'll see, I suppose. This letter probably won't make much sense - I'm more than a little drunk, and using a bloody Muggle pen to write this. They're impossible.

Thanks for letting me stay at your house, bother that I was. I'm sorry about that tea set, I know it meant a lot to you. Thanks also for your tact regarding our engagement and I'll save you the social awkwardness by calling it off myself. Oh and if anybody asks, just tell them that I was there for a day or two, then moved off and you don't know where. And don't worry, I'll be all right. Hope you're all right too.

Thanks, Pansy. I love you,

Draco

xxxxxxxx

Pansy and Draco Malfoy - engaged? Harry was somewhat stunned. No wonder Pansy didn't want to talk about him, if he'd up and left her with nothing but a drunken note and a lot of unanswered questions.

There had been so much leaving at that time. So many friendships and romances that had survived the war, only to fall apart during the peace.

Harry tossed the letters aside, suddenly sick of the whole thing.

8888888888

The Book Cellar was busy the next day when Harry entered, but this time he really was just hoping to find some computer books. Anything to get away from the idiocy of this interminable Velleywold conference. He perused the shelves a bit, but looked up as the door opened and one of the female sales clerks groaned.

"Oh, it's our most favourite person in the whole entire world," she muttered, and Harry heard an answering tsk of annoyance from Malfoy. Both were staring at the front door, where a relatively attractive older woman with a murderous expression on her face was stalking in.

"Dave, your turn."

"What? No! I - I got her last time," Malfoy said.

"Monday?"

"Half a bloody hour she had me running back and forth-"

"She came back in Wednesday. I had the pleasure."

"Hell," Malfoy muttered.

"So," the other clerk said brightly, "have fun, mate, she's all yours."

"Thanks, Ann, that's very kind of you," Malfoy said, and Ann made a surprised sound as Malfoy deliberately stepped on her foot as he walked past her, smiling at her angelically.

"Hello, Ms Nicholson, how may I help you today?" he said pleasantly.

"This damned shipment," the woman snarled, and thrust a piece of paper at Malfoy. He took it and read it over, politely mhm'ing whenever the woman paused in her diatribes at the store and its employees. Harry's eyebrows climbed up to his hairline as the woman hissed viciously at the incompetence of everybody involved in her order.

"Ma'am, I am fairly sure you did request these three-"

"Don't be a complete imbecile, I did not such thing - what use could I possibly have for vegetarian cookbooks?"

"I've no idea," he replied pleasantly, "I just remember the publisher's name-"

"Well if you had paid any attention you would know that my boutique does not deal with that kind of cuisine. We deal strictly in cordon bleu tools and literature; this is... this is peasant fare!"

"Mhm, yes, pheasants," Malfoy nodded, polite smile firmly in place.

She glared at him. "But I suppose it's a little too much to ask for you people to thinkonce in a while."

"Probably," he agreed mildly. "We much prefer to work on autopilot. What would you like us to do about your order?"

"What am I supposed to do with these damned books that I never bloody well asked for!"

"You could use them as door prizes during your functions," he said seriously.

"Door prizes? What kind of functions do you think we run?"

"Not... functions with door prizes?" he guessed.

The woman glared at him. "You think this is funny? Should I have a word with your manager about this?"

"That's an excellent idea," he said cheerfully, and handed her a card, "There's her number - or would you like me to have her call you instead? I'm sure she'd love to discuss this with you." The woman glared at him again, but turned on her heel and flounced out of the store. "Have a nice day," he called after her, turning back to the other sales clerk, who was now laughing.

"Fifty-six seconds, new record. Although Marcy's going to kill you for that 'love to discuss this with you' bit."

"If Marcy wants us to do business with that woman, she can bloody well talk to her," Malfoy snapped.

"I'm sure she'd rather. You know it took her weeks to calm Nicholson down that time that you called her yacht a 'little boat.'"

"Yeah, that was fun, I'd never actually heard anybody 'splutter' before," he smiled nostalgically. "Marcy should just be relieved I didn't tell Nicholson to roll up her order very small and stuff it nice and tight into her nice and tight ars - oh hello, sir," Malfoy said smoothly, catching sight of Harry, who'd started to chuckle. "Did you need any help today?"

Harry laughed at Malfoy's bland expression, and looked after the woman who'd just slammed herself into her very expensive car. Malfoy caught the direction of Harry's gaze and grinned, utterly unembarrassed as he realized Harry had overheard him badmouthing a customer.

"Yeah," Harry said. "Computer books, though, not kids' today."

"Joan's not here, she usually does the computer section, but I've filled in for her a few times. What kind of books were you looking for?"

8888888888

"I can bring them back, if I still don't understand any of it?" Harry asked about fifteen minutes later.

"Yeah, we've got a deal with the computer company. Just bring your receipt." Three computer books. He was damn well going to figure the machines out, enough to put some music on them. Malfoy had been fairly patient with his complete cluelessness on the subject, commenting only that he'd also had a mortal fear of the things before his girlfriend persuaded him they didn't bite.

Malfoy started to enter his purchases. "Interesting tattoos," Harry commented casually and Malfoy nodded, typing. "Where did you get them done?"

"London."

"They look rather... fierce."

Malfoy smiled briefly. "They're from my previous life," he said dryly, still concentrating on the records in front of him.

"Really? You're not secretly part of a criminal gang?"

Small chuckle. "No."

"Why did you get them done?"

"Young and stupid," he said lightly.

"Really?" Harry waited, and Malfoy glanced at him, realizing he was expecting more.

"Tattoos like this are living proof that tattoo parlours ought never to serve anyone who's young and intoxicated. Because at sixteen, you never think about the fact that some day you may want a job at a bank, and a tattoo will not help you get it."

Harry chuckled. "A bank?"

Malfoy gave a small laugh as he stapled together the invoice and receipt. "Oh, who am I kidding. I'd've died of boredom working at a bank."

"How long have you worked here?"

"Six... no, seven years. Nice job, getting paid to read and talk about books, which I'd be doing as a hobby anyway."

"And they don't care about the tattoos," Harry remarked.

"Not a bit. As long as I don't highlight the merchandise or tear out random pages too often, the boss is happy." He handed over Harry's bag.

"You probably would've made a good librarian."

"Heh, yeah, maybe. You have to go to college for that, though, and I'm not terribly keen on academia."

Harry nodded, putting his books into his bag. Not terribly keen on academia, said the man who'd consistently come in first in their year in Potions, second, after Hermione, in Arithmancy and Runes, and near the top in many of his other classes.

"Well, thanks," Harry took it and started off.

"Have a good weekend, sir," Malfoy smiled and looked behind Harry at the next customer, a woman carrying a small pile of quilting books. "Hello Mrs. Andrews, will that be all today?"

"Yes, thanks Dave," she put her books down and took out her wallet, searching for her Book Cellar card as Harry left.

8888888888

And now here Harry was, back to Velleywold Village, and the interminable conference from Hell, which looked good to continue into another week. Not that Harry had anything better to do, but he was bored out of his mind with the speeches and useless frittering away of time. Did the Romanian dragon problem look like it needed Ministry intervention, or could the Romanians handle it on their own. Should part-Veela still need to be registered. Should the anti-discrimination laws about werewolves be updated or just enforced for once. Did it matter. What was enforcement, and why were they... he couldn't even remember what the topics were any more, and what his own position was on any of them.

"Do you even know any more, how you feel about any of it?" Hermione had asked him once.

"What kind of question is that?"

"A question I shouldn't have to ask."

"I don't have time for this-"

"No, neither do I."

"Hermione, come back here!"

Harry chewed on his quill thoughtfully, realizing he had no idea what the current speaker was talking about.

I'd have died of boredom working in a bank, Malfoy had said, dismissing the Mark on his arm as a simple reminder of foolish youth, never once looking at it directly.

It's so hard now, to think of her and see what she's become.

8888888888

"How should I know?" Pansy Parkinson asked, looking rather put out that Harry had returned.

"Did he talk about it? Setting himself up in the Muggle world, doing an Obliviate spell so that he could live in the Muggle world with no memory of what he'd lost?"

"No, he didn't. Besides, wiping out his memory of magic? How would he explain memories of his family, his job - anything about his life?"

"At least three people wiped their entire memories, started over. No memory of their former life at all."

"Good lord, why would anybody want to do that?" she shuddered. "Mental suicide."

"You thought he might have committed suicide for real, though, at the time. Do you still think so?"

"I don't know, for god's sake, I wasn't privy to his inner mind, I was just a friend trying to help out."

"Why did he switch sides in the war?"

Pansy pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes.

"Do you know?"

"Yes, I know."

Harry waited.

"And it's none of your business."

"It might help to decide for once and for all whether he went back to the Death Eaters."

Pansy sighed and looked away.

"It might-"

"No, it wouldn't. Look, those of you who never accepted that he switched, never will. And it doesn't matter. It was fifteen years ago. Let it go."

"Doesn't it bother you that a friend of yours - somebody you were going to marry - is still thought of as a traitor?"

Pansy's eyebrows rose. "How did you know-"

"His letter to you."

"Oh, right." Pansy chewed on her lip. "We were mostly just friends. We just hadn't realized yet that high school romances should be left in high school."

"Is that why - are you still angry at him for leaving you, is that why you don't want to clear his name-"

"Oh, for god's sake, Potter. No, of course I'm not angry at him. Fifteen years later, I've got nothing better to do with my time than nurse a grudge over the one who got away?" She shook her head. "Look, I know why he switched, and it's none of your business, but believe me, there was no way he could have gone back to the Death Eaters even if there had been any to go back to. And the reason I don't care about his good name is that he's gone, whether dead, or living as a Muggle - with or without any memory of what he was before. For all intents and purposes, as far as the wizarding world is concerned, as far as I'm concerned, he's dead."

"But-"

"Potter," she sighed, "just let it go. Let the dead bury the dead."

8888888888

Harry regarded the man in front of him as he ran the last set of books through the cash. There wasn't any point in this any more, there wasn't anything else to be learned from watching Malfoy's interactions with his coworkers or customers, there weren't any other leads to follow to figure out what the hell had happened to him - not unless Harry was willing to devote a hell of a lot more time to this, which he wasn't. The boredom and futility of his job and the rather empty slate of his personal life notwithstanding, he did have some semblance of a life, and this wasn't his problem.

He should just walk out of here. Yes, he'd seen Draco Malfoy. He was alive. He was a perfectly ordinary Muggle bookstore clerk. He'd either Obliviated his memory or done a damn good job blending in with the Muggles around him. And Harry had a life to return to.

Which was what he was going to do. He took the small stack of books as Malfoy finished with them, trying to remember the way to the library where he'd donated the last set. That was that. Malfoy handed him his receipt.

On impulse, he paused before putting the books into his bag. Now or never.

"Thanks... Malfoy," Harry said quietly, dropping his disguising spell.

The effect was electric. Malfoy froze, then blinked rapidly, then looked up at him, his face paler than usual. His eyes widened as he looked at Harry, and he swallowed hard. There was a very long pause.

"Potter," he said quietly.

3 Accounting

Harry took a deep breath as he and Malfoy stared at each other, the moment suspended in space.

"What are you doing here?" Malfoy finally asked very quietly, colour slowly beginning to return to his face.

"Wondering the same thing about you."

"What do you want?"

"To talk to you."

"About what?"

Harry had no idea where to go with that. Malfoy's brown eyes, behind the glasses that Harry had become accustomed to, were curiously blank and expressionless, reminding Harry with a wrench in his gut of Malfoy's cold, calculating grey gaze at Hogwarts. So very, very different from Dave, the Book Cellar sales clerk.

"You disappeared," Harry said. "Everybody thought you'd died."

"They were meant to."

"But you didn't."

"Obviously."

"Why?"

"Why didn't I die?"

"Why did you want everybody to believe you were dead?"

"That's none of your business."

"Really?"

Malfoy narrowed his eyes at Harry. "Are you an Auror now?"

"No."

"Do you work for the Ministry?"

"Yes."

"Ah." Malfoy looked down, thinking for a moment. He checked his watch. "Ann?" he called out, his voice remarkably casual. "Cover for me, will you? I'm taking my break early."

"No problem," she called over her shoulder, busy rearranging one of the shelves in the Hobbies section. "Don't forget you're closing tonight."

8888888888

Malfoy had led Harry to the coffee shop next door to the book store, and they now sat at a rickety corner table.

"Harry Bloody Potter," he said impassively. "How did you find me?"

"Coincidence. I happened to be at Velleywold Village for a conference."

"Velleywold? That's nowhere near here."

"It didn't used to be. It moved about ten years ago. How long have you been working here?"

"What does the Ministry want with me?" Malfoy asked bluntly, ignoring Harry's question.

He decided to not tell Malfoy that the Ministry had no interest in him. "You disappeared. Nobody knew where you went; most people assumed you were dead, but nobody knew for sure. You'd be spotted every so often, but nothing was ever confirmed." Malfoy nodded, his face still blank. "Has nobody ever found you since you disappeared?"

"Not for years, no. The last time I ran into anybody was about seven years ago. They weren't working for the Ministry, though."

"Who was it?"

"Old friend. Nobody important."

"What did they do?"

"Asked how I was, we caught up a bit, then she left."

"She?"

"Yes."

Harry paused. This was not anything he had planned on, so it wasn't as though the conversation wasn't going according to expectations, but he had no idea where to go next. "Did she ever come back?"

"No. I asked her not to."

"Malfoy... why?"

"Why what?"

"Why hide? Why be nervous that somebody's found you?"

"If I'd wanted to be found, I'd've stayed in touch, wouldn't I?" Malfoy's voice was as cool and unwelcoming as Dave's had been warm and animated.

"Why didn't you?"

"Why do you care?"

Harry frowned. "Personally, I'm not sure I do. When I spotted you a few weeks ago, I thought it was just a coincidence, thought you just looked like - well, like who you were. Are. But I talked to somebody who used to know you, and they thought it might really be you. Said a lot of stuff that... that got me thinking, and I came to figure it out. See if you were who I thought you were."

"Who did you talk to?"

"Paracelsus Green."

An unguarded smile suddenly lit Malfoy's expressionless face, startling Harry. "Celsus? He's still around?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know he'd survived. What's he doing these days?"

"Working for the Ministry; he's a Healer researcher."

"Oh, good for him. I always said he was wasted as a mediwizard; he had almost no bedside manner whatsoever," Malfoy's eyes were still bright with amusement at some private joke, and the thaw in the atmosphere was almost palpable.

"Malfoy, why did you leave? And why don't you want anybody to know where you are?"

"I'm a Muggle now," he shrugged. "I don't have anything to do with the wizarding world."

"But why?"

"Why do you care?" Malfoy asked again, his tone less challenging than curious this time.

"Look, it's just - it just seems like you left with a lot of unanswered questions. I'd like them answered."

"Why?"

"Because I don't like unanswered questions. Your fate is a complete mystery to most of the wizarding world."

"I'm a puzzle you want to solve?"

"Maybe." Harry hesitated for a moment. "Are you hiding from something?"

"No, not really, just-"

"Is there a reason why you don't want to talk about it?"

Malfoy shook his head slowly and stared blankly at the scratched, cheap table top, thinking. "So was that you all those times, asking about books for a school reading club? Or were you just disguised as the last customer I dealt with?"

Harry shrugged, a little uncomfortable over his duplicity. "That was me all along."

Malfoy looked up, a slight smile tugging at his mouth. "No offence, Potter, but just how long have you been stalking me?"

"A few weeks," Harry admitted, trying to sound nonchalant. "Although at first I honestly didn't know you were you. You look very different." Malfoy's eyebrows went up. "No, you do."

Malfoy frowned pensively. "Yeah, I suppose so. It's just been so long that I forget I ever looked any different."

Harry couldn't imagine how long it had taken Malfoy to get used to not standing out in a crowd, as he used to with his white-blond hair. "I'd also read that some people had used an Obliviate spell to wipe out all memory of their life in the wizarding world after being hit with the Enmagio curse. I wanted to know if you had."

Malfoy grimaced in disgust. "Obliviate everything? Yeah, I heard some people had done that. Why not just kill yourself and be done with it, I thought." He paused. "That still doesn't explain why you were curious enough to-"

"Wouldn't you have done the same thing? If you found somebody you'd known who disappeared?"

"But why should I care about your curiosity?"

"We weren't still enemies by the end, were we?" Harry asked quietly.

"No, I don't suppose we were."

"Then what would be the harm in answering my questions? Save me the bother of investigating this without your input."

Malfoy hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. "All right. But I don't have a lot of time right now, I'm on shift."

"How about tomorrow?"

"I'm working."

"Until?"

"Five."

"Works for me. Or if that's no good for you, I'm still at the conference for another two weeks at least."

Malfoy blew out his breath in frustration, realizing that Harry was not going to let this go.

"Tomorrow's fine, my girlfriend's working till late. I'll meet you back here?"

"All right."

They got up and Harry felt unsure and awkward. What do you say to somebody you haven't spoken to in fifteen years, someone you thought was dead?

Malfoy was looking at him with the same kind of expression, but then he gave a small smile. "Good to see you, Potter. I'll see you tomorrow."

8888888888

Where was that stupid report he was supposed to review before tomorrow, Harry asked himself for the tenth time, cursing himself for the tenth time that he hadn't thought to put a simple spell on all of his Velleywold conference scrolls so that they would come to him whenever he misplaced them.

He should have just decided to either stay in Velleywold for the duration, or commute every day from his home in London, instead of this back and forth. This wasn't the first time he'd misplaced documents and had to search through both his hotel room and his flat to find them.

Although actually, it was a good thing he was back in the flat. The few houseplants he kept were looking a little peaked despite the automatic watering spell he'd set on them. The gossip weed looking moribund was no surprise; it fed on conversation and social interaction, and had started to die the moment Harry had brought it home. But the rest of them should be all right. Unless all those green thumbed people were right when they said that all plants needed some kind of social input.

He really should give the gossip weed away, Harry thought as he went through the stacks of documents on his desk. He hadn't wanted the thing in the first place, but it had been a present from Emma Sprout and he hadn't felt he could refuse it at the time.

There! "Werewolf Rights: An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Or Lycanthropic Lunacy?"

Harry sat down to skim over the paper, his mind taking in the information without really engaging his interest, which immediately flitted back to the chat with Malfoy a few hours ago.

So. Malfoy recognized him. Remembered him. Whatever else had happened, Malfoy obviously hadn't completely wiped out his memory. And he'd agreed to meet tomorrow. Maybe some of Harry's questions would be answered then.

And then what would he do with the information? It seemed obvious that Malfoy didn't want anybody to know anything about him; should Harry respect his wishes, or go ahead and fill in the blanks in Malfoy's official files?

Unsettling thought: what if Malfoy disappeared between today and tomorrow? He acted like a man who had settled into his life, but what if that was only because he felt safely hidden from the wizarding world? Would he leave this life behind and start over, now that he knew his hiding place wasn't a secret? And why was hiding important to him in the first place?

And if he did disappear, would Harry report it? Report that for two weeks he'd known the whereabouts of a man who may have been on the run from the Ministry for fifteen years, not told anybody about him, then warned him that his cover was blown and given him time to disappear?

Why had he done that?

Damn. That had been rather remarkably stupid, Harry realized. That would not look good for him. If Malfoy took off, would he really go to the Ministry and admit his idiocy?

He should have set some sort of tracking spell on Malfoy before leaving. Maybe he should go do that now-

Except, no, Malfoy had said he was working till closing, and the store closed at nine, and it was eleven, and Harry had no idea where he lived. Besides, he'd left Malfoy at five. If he'd really wanted to run, he'd had six hours to do it, and Harry wouldn't find him.

Well. The only thing to do was to review the bloody werewolf paper and hope Malfoy met him tomorrow.

8888888888

"Espresso, Dave?" asked the man behind the counter at the coffee shop, and Malfoy nodded. "And for yourself, sir?" the man asked Harry.

"Same, thanks," Harry said.

"So, does anybody but you know I'm here?" Malfoy began brusquely as they sat down.

"No. I told a few people I'd seen someone who looked like you, but only Celsus took it seriously." Harry suddenly got a bit of a creepy feeling. If Malfoy was still on the run or dangerous, it really wasn't terribly bright of Harry to admit to him that nobody would have a clue where to look if Malfoy made him disappear.

But Malfoy was only looking somewhat relieved, though still cautious. And he'd had time to run, if that's what he wanted to do. Unless he wanted to drill Harry for information before running?

This was too complex for him, Harry realized. This wasn't war time; he wasn't used to thinking strategically any more. It had, after all, been fifteen years since he'd had to do so.

Fifteen years for Harry. Who knew how Malfoy had been operating during that time. He'd obviously learned a bit about stealth - here he was, right next to Velleywold, and nobody from their world had run into him in seven years.

He stirred his espresso. "So... how did you end up here? What are you doing with your life?"

Malfoy peered at him suspiciously, and Harry was disturbed by how much like himself he looked. His old self, that is. His colouring and age and environment might have changed, but with that mistrustful squint, nobody could have mistaken him for anybody other than Draco Malfoy.

"Look, I'm not trying to interrogate you or anything-"

"Right. I'm having coffee with a Ministry employee who wants me to account for the last fifteen years of my life, but I'm not being interrogated."

"Er..." Harry felt uncomfortably at a loss over how to set the tone for this conversation. Make it too official and Malfoy would be so defensive he'd clam up; make it too casual and Malfoy would probably just say Up yours and walk out.

Fifteen years ago, Harry would've known what to say or do. He'd had the training and experience back then.

No, actually, he hadn't. He was just as lousy at doing this back then, but back then he'd had to do it anyway, on a regular basis. Now, though, he was out of practice.

"Look, you can ask whatever you want right back. I'm not interrogating you," Harry said, opting for less formal.

"What do you want to know?"

"What happened? Why are you here?"

"Pretty easy to tell, isn't it?"

"No, it's not. The last anyone heard, you were hit by an Enmagio curse, you seemed fine, then you disappeared. End of story. Except for glimpses of you in the Prophet, which few people believed, and the Quibbler, which nobody did."

"What sort of glimpses?" Malfoy asked, then paused. "And do I want to know?"

Harry smiled. "Probably not. They covered just about everything - seeing you in a supermarket. Seeing you at a bar. As a Seeker-" Malfoy's look of disbelieving disdain had kept its eloquence, even fifteen years later. "At a prison in Cornwall," Malfoy's eyebrows went up, and on impulse, Harry decided not to tell Malfoy any of the uglier rumours; the Muggle murders, the suspected double-crossing. "At a pub in Wales... there were a lot of sightings. Not one confirmed. One of my co-workers called you the wizarding world's Elvis Presley."

Malfoy's eyebrows drew together, "Elvis Presley - wasn't he a Muggle singer who died, but then people kept spotting him for years afterwards?"

"Yeah."

"And a wizard knows about him, fifty years later?" he said, bemused.

"Yeah, bizarre Muggle leakage into the wizarding world, isn't it?" Harry said cautiously. Malfoy's face relaxed a little in amusement.

"I'd hardly care about that kind of thing any more, would I, Potter? Being a Muggle myself," he chuckled and shook his head. "I'd no idea. Sorry I asked." He sipped his coffee thoughtfully, then said, "All right, what happened to you, then? Why are you in Velleywold?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"You said I could ask questions too. Indulge me."

"Er... well, I work for the Ministry, mostly in the Magical Creatures department, but I do other things," damn it, he had no idea what else to say, how could he have come back here with no solid plan? Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. "I'm currently at Velleywold for a conference on legislation controlling magical creatures."

"How did you get started with that?"

"Remus Lupin. After the war, I wanted to do something about - you know there were werewolves and Veela and such, who were treated very badly during the war."

"Yeah, I remember that."

"I wanted to help them."

"Ever the noble saviour of the downtrodden."

Harry looked away, annoyed by the cynical tone with which Malfoy said that. Even more annoyed that he fully agreed with it.

"So are you married? Any children?" Malfoy asked.

"No to both. I live in London, mostly."

"Keep in touch with anybody I knew?"

"I still occasionally work with Neville Longbottom. He became Potions Master at Hogwarts, were you still around when - oh, yeah, that happened before the end. Oh and I saw Pansy Parkinson not long ago."

Malfoy's eyes widened a little before he shut down again, but Harry had caught the jolt. "How is Pansy these days?" he asked casually.

"She seems all right. I hadn't actually seen her in... well, a long time. Last I'd heard she was working for Delacroix, the French importer, remember them?"

"Oh good for her. That's good."

"Then a few weeks ago I went to see her to ask her about you."

"Did you."

"As far as anybody knew, she was the last person in our world to have seen you."

"Mm, yes."

"According to our records, anyway," Harry said, probing a little, but couldn't detect anything in Malfoy's manner to indicate he was wrong.

"Yeah, I was at her place for a while. What did she say?"

"Said she didn't know what happened to you. Said you just left, with no word as to where or why."

Malfoy looked away, tapping his coffee cup with his spoon, a shuttered expression on his face.

"She gave me a stack of letters from her to her sister. Juniper died last year-"

"Juniper? Good god, she couldn't have been more than forty. What did she die of?"

"I-I don't know, I didn't ask. Pansy didn't seem to want to talk about it."

Malfoy sat back. "Mm. That's too bad. She and Pansy were very close."

"Pansy was worried about you, for a long time."

"Damn. I left her a letter, told her - well, I didn't tell her where I was going, as I didn't know myself, but... damn, I'd hoped she wouldn't worry much."

"Malfoy... you were engaged. Why wouldn't she worry?"

If Harry had thought revealing that he knew that particular piece of information would unsettle Malfoy, he'd been wrong; Malfoy just nodded absently, still thinking. Harry supposed it hadn't been a secret, though. Just something Harry hadn't known because, well, he didn't know everything.

"Damn. What does she think now?"

"Thinks you're dead. That you either drank yourself to death or committed suicide."

"Good," Malfoy said softly, not reacting to Harry's bluntness.

"Why did you leave? Our world, that is?"

Malfoy looked hesitant.

"Would you rather I investigated all of this through other people?"

Malfoy crossed his arms, sat back and stared at Harry belligerently. Harry tried to reassure him. "Look, if you talk to me, I can set a spell on my report so that if anybody from the Ministry ever does want to know what happened to you, they can read it, but nobody will see it otherwise. Probably nobody will even think to look; you've been gone a long time." Harry reflected as he spoke that once upon a time, the idea that nobody was interested in him would have infuriated Malfoy.

The Malfoy of today merely looked relieved.

Good, thought Harry, trying to push down any guilt over leading Malfoy to believe he was here in an official capacity. This was hardly the biggest lie he'd ever told, after all. "This is just a spare bit of parchment, Professor Snape, not a magical map of Hogwarts at all," and "No, Minister, I don't know where the Order of the Phoenix headquarters are located" came to mind.

Except that those lies had been for good causes. This was lying to scratch an itch of curiosity about a man who probably deserved better from him. A man who was living as a bloody Muggle with a job that was beneath him, while Harry still had full use of his magic, a prestigious appointment at the Ministry, and more money than he could spend.

He squashed his misgivings down firmly. "So why did you leave?"

Malfoy toyed with his coffee spoon. "Do you have any idea what the Enmagio curse did to people?" he asked slowly.

Harry swallowed. "I read up on it. It was nasty."

"So why do you need to ask why I left?"

"I... I gather you didn't want to live as a Squib?"

"Bloody hell, no. Why would anybody?"

"I know people were cruel to Squibs born that way, but you hadn't been. If anything, it was a war injury-"

"Whether you were a Squib by birth or by accident or by design, it was no way to live," Malfoy said flatly.

"I would've thought you'd at least get set up as a Muggle comfortably." He paused. "Did you?"

"No. Left with nothing. Started with nothing."

"Why did you come here?"

"To Cardiff? I didn't."

"Where did you go?"

"London."

"What did you do there?"

Malfoy shrugged. "Got used to life as a Muggle."

Harry stirred his coffee. It was absolutely amazing how friendly and communicative Malfoy had been as Dave Bergsen, and how utterly... Malfoy-like he was being now. "All right, so what's it like? Your life as a Muggle, that is?"

"Er... nothing all that exciting, actually. I work here, live in a flat a couple of blocks away with my girlfriend Jilly. Play football on Wednesdays."

"Any children?"

He shook his head. "Just a niece and nephews, through Jilly."

"Why does it surprise you that people want to know what happened to you?" Harry suddenly realized that without making a conscious decision to do so, he was using an old interviewing technique: skipping from topic to topic, to make the subject less likely to be able to successfully fudge their answers.

"I don't know." Malfoy sipped his coffee pensively. "I suppose I thought everybody would just assume I died and go on with their lives. Actually, I didn't think of it much, really. Just got away."

"What was it like?"

"Losing magic?"

"Yeah."

"Bloody hell," he muttered.

"Sorry, I - I don't mean to pry-" Harry said, then mentally kicked himself. Malfoy was really only talking to him because he thought Harry was there as a Ministry investigator. Prying was supposed to be part of that, and apologizing was going to make Malfoy realize that he didn't have to sit here and answer anything.

But Malfoy was looking at him, still wary but somewhat more at ease. "Actually, what I meant was that 'bloody hell' was what it was like. Like I'd gone blind or deaf, except I could still see and hear, but... just cut off. Don't really know how to describe it. Like the world was sort of half-hidden or something. Incredibly disorienting..." he trailed off, brooding.

"I read about it. Is it - is it still difficult to talk about?"

"Not really, not after fifteen years. The first few were bad, but I don't miss it any more."

"Really?"

"Yeah, for the first few years not being able to spell things clean or Apparate was an unbelievable nuisance. Too much to deal with, actually."

"What did you do?"

Malfoy gave Harry a long, appraising look, then seemed to come to a decision and Harry could almost feel him dropping the last of his defensive attitude.

"What did I do," he half-smiled bitterly. "Oh, I would've done the Death Eaters proud. My father would've been horrified, but as he was no longer a going concern I didn't worry about him too much."

"Why, what did you do?"

"Whatdidn't I do is a better question," he said ruefully. "Not a lot. Bit of a mess, really." He took a deep breath. "For starters, I got myself arrested a few times. That Quibbler story about the prison in Cornwall was probably true, imagine that."

"You - you went to prison?"

"Five convictions in six years, served two years in total." He took a sip of his coffee. "Not a part of my life I'd ever want to go back to."

"I'm sorry." Harry hesitated, then asked, "What for?"

"Nothing glamorous. Brawling, public drunkenness, drug dealing, breaking and entering - really, if you ever lose your magic, don't go into any criminal activity that requires stealth, I'm telling you, because you have no idea how to actually be stealthy. Especially if you're very, very drunk most of the time."

"My god," Harry said quietly. During those years, Harry had been making a name for himself at the Ministry and occasionally playing professional Quidditch. And bemoaning the mess that the war had made of his personal life.

"Yeah. Very dark time."

"I'm sorry."

"Stop saying that. It was years ago; it doesn't matter any more."

"How did you end up here?"

"I decided prison food was not up to Malfoy Manor or even Hogwarts standards, and did what my parole officer said, kept my nose clean so's not to have to eat it again."

"That easy? Attitude adjustment?"

"Well not quite. I had a few... pharmaceutical issues to get through as well."

"What?"

"I was a drug addict, Potter."

Harry gaped at him.

"You'll want to close your mouth," Malfoy suggested, grimly amused. "Yeah, drugs. Mostly alcohol, heroin, cocaine. It's the closest Muggles get to magic. Unfortunately, their hangover and sober-up spells and potions are pure shite."

Harry chuckled despite the fact that his mind was reeling from the image of Draco Malfoy, heir to a fortune, spoiled brat with the world at his feet, in prison and addicted to drugs.

"Anyhow I decided rehabilitation clinic cuisine also left a great deal to be desired, and finally got my act together over that too. I've been clean and sober... nine years, now? Well, brief relapse seven years ago, but I'd met Jilly by then, so it didn't last."

Harry looked at him questioningly.

"Said she'd toss me out if I got near any of that again. I didn't really want to find out if she meant it."

Harry blinked. "How long have you been with her?"

"Ten years next month," Malfoy smiled, and Harry couldn't really believe that the boy this man had been had managed to date a Muggle at all, let alone stay with her for ten years.

"All right, I'm sorry, you'll have to back up. Are you sure you used to be Draco Malfoy?" Harry finally said. Malfoy grinned at him, amused, so very different from the mocking smirk he used to wear like a second skin.

Harry shook his head and sipped his coffee, wondering what other surprises Malfoy's past held, and wondering whether he really wanted to know.

8888888888

"Mr. Potter, did you get that werewolf position paper done?"

"What? And it's Harry, please, Rowena."

"The werewolf paper - it's due today, the Subcommittee on Lycanthropic Legal Issues needs it for their next meeting-"

"Right. Yes, it's here..." Harry burrowed into his papers, finally finding the scroll and handing it to Rowena, a new hire in the department.

"What's that?" Rowena pointed to a small stack of Muggle-looking papers on Harry's desk.

"Muggle police forms."

"Really? What for?"

"One of the subcommittees - administrative things with Muggle law enforcement."

"Oh." Rowena went back to her perusal of Harry's werewolf paper. "My goodness, Mr. Potter. It would take me forever to write anything like this."

"I've had a bit of practice," Harry said dryly, and Rowena, too fresh out of Hogwarts to sense his weary cynicism, nodded enthusiastically.

"It shows, it really does. It's like you can almost write this kind of thing in your sleep."

"Almost."

"Would - would you mind if I show you my leprechaun reports? I keep thinking they don't look professional enough."

"Would you like me to turn them into Ministry-ese for you?"

"Oh that would be wonderful - thanks!" and Rowena flitted down the hall.

Harry looked at the forms in front of him. He'd gone to the closest Muggle police station last night, used a combination of low-level Confundus and Obliviate spells, and asked the officer on duty how he could go about finding out the criminal record of a potential new employee.

Not that Malfoy had made a big deal out of that part of his past - in fact, he'd talked about it with little or no emotion, whether bitterness, regret or shame - but something in Harry just refused to take his word for it. Perhaps Malfoy had been up to other nefarious behaviour, with Death Eater splinter groups, and just made up the Muggle criminal past as a pity cover so that Harry wouldn't look too closely at those years. Perhaps he had been in the Muggle prison system, but only hiding there. Harry realized that if that were the case, there wasn't much that Malfoy's Muggle record could show that would help Harry determine that, but still wanted to at least make sure official records agreed with what Malfoy had said.

So he'd gone to the police station, picked up some forms, was going to fill them out, and would make sure he had a spell ready to convince the officer he talked to tomorrow that he had the "necessary credentials and authority" to get information about David Bergsen from their files.

And what would he do if he found that Malfoy hadn't been lying? That he'd really spent the first six years after the war battling drug addiction and the Muggle justice system?

What would that mean?

Harry looked at the pile of work on his large, elegant desk, in his large, elegant office, denoting prestige, authority and respect. All things that he had now and Malfoy didn't. How fair was it that Malfoy had to settle for the salary of a bookstore clerk and a small flat, while Harry had all of this, and a lovely, spacious home? Yes, Harry had risked and lost a lot in the war - friends and colleagues, peace of mind, and sleep not plagued by nightmares. But Malfoy had lost so much more - family, friends, money, social position, magic... his entire life.

Why was Harry here, and Malfoy there?

I'm assuming he's telling me the truth, Harry reminded himself. Which is not a safe assumption to make with any Malfoy, including Draco. They were very good at lying.

Of course, Harry was pretty good at it himself. Takes one to know one, he supposed idly, filling in the "Reason For Requesting Information" box on the police form with "Position applied for requires trustworthy employee, large amounts of money involved."

Their conversation last night had spanned various topics and had even become rather pleasant, Harry thought. Malfoy seemed interested in what was going on in the wizarding world - who was still alive, who was doing what, what Muggle things had leaked into their world, what Hogwarts was like these days, all sorts of things. Harry had tried to downplay some of the good parts; after all, there was no point in making Malfoy feel bad about what he couldn't have any more - but Malfoy didn't seem bothered by what he was missing. The only thing he hadn't seemed terribly eager to hear about was Quidditch, which Harry glossed over fairly quickly.

So they'd talked. They'd talked for a long time, not exactly like old friends, but like friendly acquaintances. Malfoy had finally looked at his watch and commented that he needed to get home and get dinner started, and hadn't seemed put out when Harry mentioned that he might drop by again.

"Sure, sounds good. Nice talking to you, Potter," he'd said, and then he'd headed out.

8888888888

"Malfoy, why did you leave the Death Eaters?" Harry asked three days later, sipping his coffee casually.

Malfoy pressed his lips together. "I wondered when that would come up."

"It's come up."

"Yeah."

Harry waited.

"Are you going to answer?"

"You know... it's not really - there wasn't really any one reason," Malfoy said evasively.

"There were people who never believed you really switched sides, you know."

"I know."

"You didn't give a reason, at the time, did you?"

"I did. Said Voldemort struck me as a crackpot who would be better suited to training cats to fly in diamond formation than leading wizarding society."

"True enough," Harry chuckled. "So, what brought you to that realization?"

"Potter, you know what the man was like. He was a complete lunatic."

"But surely you must have known that before-"

"Before I took the Mark myself?" Malfoy finished for him, and Harry observed once more how Malfoy's eyes never strayed down to his forearm, even once. "I was sixteen. My father had made every decision for me since the day I was born, and I looked up to him and believed everything he said," he shook his head, his eyes darkened. "He told me our world was in danger of dying because of people like Hermione Granger, polluting our blood and our culture, bringing their dangerous ideas, exposing us to Muggles. And Voldemort was the one leader who was willing to protect us from our own foolishness. That's powerful stuff for any child to grow up with."

"If it was so powerful, how did you end up rejecting it?"

"He was insane. The things he did and said - the, the way people acted under him, the way he brought people like my father to their knees... it was terrifying."

"You didn't turn, though, for a long time. You were an active Death Eater, by your own admission, for four years."

"Yeah."

"It took four years to realize that Voldemort was crazy?"

"No. It took four years to act on the realization."

"Pansy Parkinson seemed to think there was more to it. It sounded like something specific changed your mind."

Malfoy suddenly seemed very interested in the gouge patterns on the table before them. "Yeah."

"She also said that you both rejected Voldemort without necessarily embracing the other side."

"Yeah."

"Care to explain that?"

Malfoy idly followed a small scratch mark with his finger, up and down a couple of times. "No."

Harry stared at Malfoy, still disinterestedly tracing the small gouge, and had the distinct impression that Malfoy was trying to call his bluff. If Harry really was here representing the Ministry, would he allow Malfoy to just decline to answer something as vital as his reason for defecting?

He looked down and stirred his coffee. If he backed off, would Malfoy answer anything else, or just walk out? And if he pushed, would Malfoy answer anything else, or just walk out?

He finished stirring his coffee and cleared his throat. "All right, then, answer me this one, because nobody else seems to know: what made you step out that night, and face down Zabini?"

Malfoy frowned curiously. "Why's that important?"

"Celsus and Pansy both seemed to think you knew what would happen if you did. Why would you risk yourself like that?"

Malfoy scowled. "Do you know how old Celsus' children were, Potter? Five, three, and one. Ginevra Grisenwold was pregnant with her second. And Gimbol Smith had a wife in St. Mungo's, for god's sake. And not one of them could so much as cast a Patronus - I was practically the only semi-competent combat-trained wizard in that team. Most of them were only there because we needed the bodies so badly by that point in time and besides, we were only supposed to be medical back-up. We weren't even supposed to be in combat. Nobody expected Zabini's group to appear where we were." Malfoy shook his head. "If I hadn't stopped him, he would've swept right through and torn the first team to pieces. And a lot more people would've died."

Harry realized his own fingers were white on the edge of his cup. He knew all of this. He knew it. But it was different hearing it straight from Malfoy, and he felt ashamed of his doubts. Even more ashamed to realize that he still had doubts, despite everything. That he was still looking at Malfoy's indignation for signs that it was all bluff.

Bluff for what? Obviously the curse had been permanent. Obviously he hadn't been working with Zabini. Right?

"Besides, I knew Zabini," Malfoy said grimly. "Grew up with him. I knew what he could and couldn't do, better than anybody else there. There wasn't anybody else who could've delayed him long enough for the first team to show up."

"You don't know that," Harry pointed out. "You could've waited to see whether anybody else in your team could take him down."

"Yeah. And then explain my waiting to Celsus' children, or Gimbol's widow." He shook his head. "I had the abilities we needed, and I didn't have any real reason not to step forward. I didn't have a family or children or a home - or anything else left to lose. I'd already lost all of that in the bloody war."

"You still had Pansy."

Malfoy smiled humourlessly. "We were mostly just friends. I knew if Zabini killed me, I wouldn't be sorely missed by anybody. A big part of me even figured it might not be a bad thing."

Harry frowned.

Malfoy's gaze dropped to his coffee cup. "It was war, Potter, remember? It didn't just take lives. It took away the will to live. I didn't have much left by the end," he said curtly. "Surely you'd seen that kind of thing in others at the time. From what I heard, you were pretty close to that point yourself."

Harry swallowed hard. Yes, he had been. He hadn't known it was that obvious. But the pain and the losses and the dead and near-dead had brought him to the edge of despair near the end. His own behaviour during the final battle with Voldemort had had far less to do with heroism and more to do with hopeless recklessness than he liked to admit, even now.

"Did Zabini know you'd turned?" Harry asked, backing away from a topic that had no right to still feel so raw so many years later.

"I think so. He had no idea I'd be there, but I think he knew I'd gone over. That was another slight advantage I had over the others in my team: just my identity was enough to rattle Zabini." He took a sip of his coffee. "Although not as much as you'd think. The pureblood and Slytherin and Durmstrang lot used to joke amongst ourselves, 'If you don't like your cousin's political allegiance, just wait another five minutes.'" He shook his head ruefully. "Blaise's own brother had switched allegiance twice. And did it again, before the war ended. So I doubt I shocked Blaise too badly."

"Blaise's brother? I didn't know he had one."

"Andrew Zabini, two years younger than Blaise. Went to Durmstrang. Their parents wanted as many political connections as they could make." Malfoy smiled grimly. "There was a man who blew wherever the wind told him. Not a principled bone in his body. He would've changed his allegiance for thirty Galleons by the end."

"You knew him, I take it."

"Yeah. One of the stupidest and cruellest people I ever met. And I was a Death Eater; that's saying quite a bit."

"Didn't he end up in Azkaban?"

"No. Should've. He was acquitted of all charges in the end. And if the Wizengamot had any clue of what else he got up to that he was never charged for, they would've tracked down a Dementor just to hand Andrew over to him. You should've seen him after he won his case. Bloody arrogant git. You'd think he'd just been declared Supreme Mugwump instead of acquitted because the witnesses to his crimes had wound up mysteriously dead."

Harry nodded, vaguely remembering an Andrew Zabini being acquitted of something. He'd had no idea he and Blaise were that closely related; he'd figured him for a third cousin or something. There were so many trials at the end of the war, though, that nobody could've kept track of all of them.

"Did Pansy or her sister keep in touch with people on the other side?"

"Oh yeah, she and Juniper had a cousin, Francis, who was a Death Eater, though a very minor one in the power scheme."

"Francis Carstairs?" Harry dredged up the name from the depths of his memory.

"Yeah, that was him."

"I think he died in Azkaban, eventually."

"Doesn't surprise me. Bloody miserable place."

"Did you ever go there?"

"Yeah, visited my father a few times. I swear every time I was in a Muggle prison I'd listen to the other blokes complain about it and think they were lucky they didn't know how good we had it."

Harry had no idea what to say to that. He'd received the information from the police; 'David Bergsen' had indeed spent six years in and out of prison, following his father's footsteps with a little less flair, arrested for theft and drug dealing and a host of other minor offences. All while Harry himself had been steadily climbing at the Ministry.

"Well, now that we've bloody well depressed the hell out of this conversation," Malfoy said with forced cheer, "Go back to what you were telling me about computers. They're really using them?"

Harry grabbed the topic change gratefully. "Yeah, not as much as Muggles, but they're getting fairly popular among the younger set."

"And the older ones are convinced it's the end of wizarding as they know it."

"Of course."

"And the young ones keep pointing out how they're changing the things so they're unrecognizable to Muggles."

"Of course," Harry smiled.

"How?"

"You'd have to grab one of the youngsters and ask them. One of my assistants, Rowena, practically has hers trained to sit up and beg. I'm still scared of the bloody things."

"The books I gave you not helping?"

"Yeah, they do, but it's still really foreign. Learning to transform rats into water goblets wasn't this hard."

Malfoy laughed. "I know, I was always convinced they were evil. Literally. Jilly nearly had fits trying to get me to learn how to use them."

Harry laughed too, but his laughter sounded hollow to him, as did the rest of the conversation as he and Malfoy traded tales of computing incompetence. Like it was all happening to a person sitting in a room far away. Because unbidden, Harry's memory had provided him with another part of the Andrew Zabini story: Hermione had told him about Zabini's acquittal at Harry's twenty-third birthday party. July 31. Which was about three months after Malfoy claimed to have left Pansy Parkinson's house and gone Muggle for good.

4 Andrew Zabini

"It is Andrew Zabini you wanted, right? Not Blaise or Teresa?" asked the elderly clerk at the Ministry Second Voldemort War Records Room, emerging from the dimness of her shelves with a pile of folders and scrolls.

"Yeah, Andrew." Harry straightened up from where he'd been leaning on the counter.

"Charming family, the Zabinis," she muttered.

"Weren't they, though."

"I think that's everything you requested," she said, putting the documents on the counter. "Surveillance on Andrew Zabini while he was with the Death Eaters, his Veritaserum interrogations after he turned to our side - both times," she snorted cynically. "Files on his crime, and the Wizengamot transcript of his case."

"That's everything, yeah."

She patted her files absently with one hand as she recorded what Harry was about to borrow, possessive as all records clerks seemed to be with their dusty, musty scrolls. Harry reflected it was sometimes a good thing to be who he was; he doubted she would've handed over her precious parchments to just any Ministry employee without a great deal more than a vague 'need them for a committee' excuse.

"Andrew Zabini..." she murmured as she wrote. "Blaise was the one who got all the headlines, but you know a lot of people said it was Andrew who should've been Kissed. Hard to do it, though, what with all the deals he made, and what with him being acquitted of what little he was charged with. Of course that was before the backlash against the dealmakers and the inquiry into corruption with all of that..."

Harry smiled politely, hoping to discourage her and just leave with the scrolls. He gestured to her sign-out sheet, and she slowly brought it closer to him, still talking.

"I never thought it was a good idea, all that forgiveness and reconciliation. I know, I know, they had to do it, we certainly couldn't just kill everyone who ever sympathised with You-Know-Who, but it was a bad business. Making deals with devils, it was," she nodded, and finally placed the sign-out sheet before Harry. He smiled politely at her and signed it quickly, gathering up the scrolls and files and preparing to leave, then paused, thinking.

He'd get answers to some of the questions he had in the scrolls he'd just requested, but there might be blank spots. Blank spots that people like this might be able to fill for him. No sense wasting a good resource.

"Yeah, it was. Bad business." He leaned back against the counter, nodding sympathetically. "I always wondered why they made deals with some of them and not others," he confided, and the old woman beamed a surprised smile at him. Undoubtedly thrilled that anybody would express an interest in this stuff, or in her opinion of it. "Why the deals? Why was he acquitted?"

"I would've thought you'd know, Mr. Potter," she said, slightly shy of his fame, as a lot of people still seemed to be.

"Oh, no, I wasn't really involved in the decision making at the time; too young. They must've had their reasons..."

"Well with Andrew Zabini it all had to do with the information he gave us - when he was on our side, that is. Switched sides more often than my husband switched quills, and he was a scribe, my husband was." She blinked at Harry, her pointed hat bobbing in indignation. "I never understood how they could tell whether he was really on our side or not. And then to just forgive him for everything he did while he was on the other side - that wasn't right. What's the point, then, if people know that they can do whatever they please and as long as they go on the right side in the end, all is forgiven?"

Harry shrugged. "They had to have some incentive for switching sides."

"Hrmph." She seemed to have quickly forgotten what little awe she'd had for his fame, and only saw his relative youth. "How about just doing the right thing?"

"Don't think that would've worked, with most Death Eaters," Harry said. "With Zabini, though, did most people agree with the official decisions? Like the deals, the acquittal?"

"I wouldn't know about most people, dearie, but I know I didn't. You know all that happened was the witnesses in his case died. There was an awful lot of that going around at the time."

"Did they ever find out who killed them?"

"Didn't even find out for sure they'd been killed for sure. Just that they were dead."

"Any suspects?"

"Oh, many. Many, many. They're all in the files. Nobody they could pin it to. Andrew himself had a good alibi. They all did, when their witnesses died. Bad blood, that boy. Couldn't trust him as far as you could throw him. Couldn't trust any of that set."

"No, and he wasn't the only one accused of going back to the Death Eaters after coming over, either."

"No indeed. And he'd actually done it once before, too, so you could see he was capable of it. Him and his friends. There was the Northam boy, Clarence. And Ivan Venificus. And Lance and Gawain Moffa, and Sygmund McHarris. And Vincent Crabbe."

"Do you know if Pansy Parkinson was ever suspected of anything?"

"Didn't know her."

"I went to school with her and Vincent Crabbe. And Draco Malfoy."

"Oh, my, yes, young Malfoy. I always wondered about him, especially after he disappeared. You know there were those three Muggles who were supposed to be witnesses for that young Death Eater woman, what was her name... Bruna, Brunella? German? Something like that." She blinked. "Brunhilda."

"Brunhilda St. Germain, yeah, I'd forgotten all about her," Harry said, making a mental note to himself to get files on her as well.

"And then they were dead, and somebody said young Malfoy did it. You know how distinctive he was, both him and his father, hair almost white. Looked like angels, those two. Just goes to show appearances can be deceiving," she chuckled. "They were all a set, those children. Nasty business, the lot of them. Nasty business going on in Slytherin house, and Durmstrang. I hear Slytherin's one of the best houses, now. Still ambitious, still ruthless, but no more Dark Magicians coming from there." She shook her head. "Broke old Dumbledore's heart, I shouldn't wonder, that so many of those children took the wrong road. But it was all because of their families. What can you do, really, against breeding like that? You get started wrong in life, and it's very hard to get right again."

"I suppose so," Harry said.

"I've always wondered what became of them, those Death Eater's children who survived. Don't you? Everything they were raised to believe, it all came to nothing. You have to wonder how they lived with that. And what they're doing today. And if they still believe what their parents believed and are raising their children to take up the fight, or whether they ever saw the error of their ways. Don't you wonder?"

Harry tapped a scroll thoughtfully. "Yeah. I do."

8888888888

Not a bad start, thought Harry a few days later as he looked at the small stack of documents he'd gathered from various Ministry offices and Muggle police stations. Files on Andrew Zabini: his background, crimes, Ministry records. The three Muggle murders that Malfoy had been suspected of committing: when they'd happened, how, who was a suspect, as well as the sole witness statement. Files on Brunhilda St. Germain: her background, information on her during her time with the Death Eaters, and her crimes.

And files on Malfoy himself. Information on his activities as a Death Eater. Scrolls detailing his voluntary surrender to the Aurors and request to come under their protection. His own Veritaserum interrogation, post-defection. Files on the information he'd provided the Ministry. All the files that Harry had told himself he didn't have time to gather, back when he was only curious about him and didn't have any proof that Malfoy had come into contact with the Death Eaters after leaving Parkinson's home. It hadn't taken nearly as long as Harry had thought it would, to gather information on him.

And one last parchment, with his notes on all the information he'd obtained from all the various clerks he'd dealt with. Remarkable people, clerks. Most of the time you just got information from them and went on your way. But when you thought about it, their memory, their perceptiveness, their ability to link things together, and their enthusiasm when somebody showed an interest in their chosen field, were all really rather astonishing.

Harry looked at the parchment in front of him, which he'd used to clear his thoughts, writing down what he knew and what he didn't know of Malfoy's past so far.

Facts

xx Enmagio: March 18

xx released from St. Mungo's: March 22

xx Parkinson's home: March 22-April 12 (approx)

xx AZ acquitted: July 31

xx 'proof' of DE activity post-enmagio 1 witness to murders of 3 Muggle witnesses for Brunhilda St. Germain

Theory

xx if at AZ's home after Parkinson's, maybe didn't really leave the DE

xx maybe didn't lose magic (doubtful), or only lost it temporarily

xx killed 3 Muggles as part of deal with DE? to get back into the DE?

Questions

xx when at AZ's home?

xx when did Muggle murders occur?

xx how were Muggles killed (magical/non-magical)?

xx what does the witness statement say?

xx any contact with R.St-G, any time before/during/after war?

xx why kill 3 Muggles if not part of DE?

xx why suspected, if didn't do it?

xx why is this even any of my business?

xx why don't I turn this over to Aurors?

xx why am I doing this and avoiding reading the report from the Veela committee?

Harry put his quill down and sighed. Why? Because the report was dry as powdered newt's eyes, that's why.

Because it's dry as powdered- he started to write onto the parchment, then snorted at himself and scratched it out.

Enough was enough. This might be intriguing and, in its own bizarre way, rather entertaining, but he was not being paid to research Draco Malfoy's mysterious past. He firmly put away his extra-curricular paperwork and reached for the Veela scrolls with a sigh of resignation.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow after the day's conference events were over, he'd start in on the scrolls and try to fill in the blanks.

8888888888

"The famous Harry Potter," Andrew Zabini said heartily, standing as Harry was ushered into his study. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Harry tried not show surprise at the sight before him. Andrew Zabini had not aged well at all since his last official Ministry photograph had been taken. Granted, it had been fifteen years, but while those years had given Harry a few silver hairs and lines on his face that no longer faded, Andrew Zabini most closely resembled a dishevelled and squashed beanbag chair: pudgy and lumpy in face and body, with an air of dissolution about him. In short, a sharp contrast from the portly but powerful-looking young man in the old photographs.

"I'm tracking down information about Draco Malfoy," Harry began after the minimum of social niceties, seating himself without waiting for an invitation and waving off Zabini's offer of a drink.

"Draco? Whyever for?"

"We're closing up some files at the Ministry, came across some contradictory evidence about him. His file says he was last seen at the home of Pansy Parkinson, but a witness statement from another former Death Eater's file claims he was seen in your presence after you were acquitted, which was a few months after he left Parkinson's home." There. That was sufficiently vague. And he'd kept his tone matter-of-fact and slightly bored. "We're trying to clear it up so we can put all the files that are still technically open into storage."

"And why is the great Harry Potter investigating this?" Zabini asked, refilling a small goblet on his desk from a crystal decanter.

Harry smiled briefly. "Perk of the office; I can skive off and do menial work when it suits me. Last month I handled all the Potions administration for the Department of Muggle Relations. Good distraction during the off-season for Quidditch."

Zabini laughed. "Slumming, are you? Tracking down the final days of your old school nemesis? Getting a little posthumous glee of revenge?"

"I suppose so," Harry said. "So, do you know why the discrepancy?"

"Who was the witness?"

Harry shrugged. "Still classified, god only knows why. So, was he?"

"Staying with me?"

"I don't believe I asked about staying with you, only about whether he was seen in your presence, but all right, I'll bite. Was he staying with you?"

Zabini's face got a rather curious expression on it, as though he couldn't decide whether to take Harry's casual attitude at face value or be on his guard. Seeming to decide the former, he smiled and leaned back in his seat. "Yes, actually, Draco did stay with me after he left Pansy's home."

"Funny. Nobody else seemed to know that, other than the one witness."

"I didn't put announcements in the Prophet."

"Why was he here?"

"I picked him up about two months after he'd left Pansy's home. A very difficult time in his life. I brought him home to take care of him."

"Why?"

"Why did I pick him up?"

"Seems odd, don't you think? He'd just about killed your brother not long before-"

"And I'd just about killed my brother a few months before that, Harry. And Blaise had nearly killed me twice. Once was even before the war. We weren't close."

"So you didn't feel the need to avenge your brother. It still doesn't explain why you felt the need to take care of the man responsible for his capture."

Zabini shrugged. "You find the last Malfoy in need of rescuing, and it's like discovering an ancient Quidditch 'blooder'. You don't know if it'll be an archaeological treasure that you can sell off to the highest bidding museum or just an old piece of skin with straw inside it. Guess which one Draco was," Zabini said contemptuously.

"I'm not following you," Harry said flatly, and Zabini rolled his eyes.

"I thought he might prove useful, Harry. His family and money were gone, but there were a lot of people who would've been happy to follow him, if he'd chosen to lead them. It's always good to have the gratitude of people in power."

"Who would've followed his lead? He had nothing by that point; not even magic."

"That's only because he didn't have anybody pushing for image enhancement for him. He still had his name. You know very well that if he'd cared to, he could've had the world at his feet as a bloody Hero of the War."

"I don't know about that. Plenty of people were still suspicious of him."

Zabini smiled, an oily, unpleasant smile. "That added to his naughty-boy appeal. It also added to his potential value. We didn't know yet, at the time, that Voldemort's forces were completely vanquished. If Draco had wanted to, he could've emerged as a leader for the other side."

Harry realized his disgust was showing on his face and decided to leave it there. He'd met enough people like Zabini in the course of the war; friendliness was treated with suspicion and contempt, hostility with a certain grudging respect. "Leader for 'the other side'? And you would've been happy to follow him there too, right?"

"War time, Harry." Harry decided he really didn't like hearing Andrew Zabini say his first name. "You had to be prepared to go with the flow, as the youngsters say."

"I don't think youngsters have been using that particular expression for a few decades, but I get your point." Harry glanced around Zabini's study disinterestedly. "So. How did you find him?"

"Would you believe, almost totally by accident. There was a small beach house near Dover, where the younger set from the pureblood families used to go. No magic wards or locators, so our parents couldn't track us down, and we'd do all the things they didn't want us doing. Drinking absinthe," he cocked his goblet at Harry, "listening to Muggle music, dallying with Veelas, that kind of thing. Nobody had used it for a while, as far as I knew. I went there - well, let's just say I had inappropriate company, I came in, and there he was." Zabini snorted, amused. "Bloody mess. He'd just injected himself with something - injected, can you imagine that? Pushing a bloody needle into your arm without even a pain-block spell? Barbaric. He was holding his arm up, leaning back against the wall, feeling it kick in. High as a Snitch, and drunk to boot. Looked like he hadn't shaved in a while, either. Although he'd had a shower that day, apparently, thank god."

"He'd been out of Pansy's home for-"

"About two months, he said, although he couldn't even tell that accurately. Told me he'd ended up at a Muggle homeless shelter - a homeless shelter, can you believe that, a Malfoy? Poor Lucius and Narcissa would've had the vapours. He'd stumbled across it because he was hungry. Hadn't et in days, apparently. They took him in and gave him food and a shower. And somehow he'd got into this drug thing, though I've no clue what he did to pay for them. Probably exchanged all sorts of 'favours' for them, the Malfoys were never terribly squeamish about-"

"What did he think of your generosity?"

"Not much. Malfoys were never the most grateful sort either. Besides, he passed out not long after I got him home."

"What did he say when he woke up?"

"Not much. Just demanded I let him out again, because he needed more of that Muggle rubbish." Zabini wrinkled his nose. "I told him I couldn't allow him to hurt himself - acted very concerned for his welfare, which I don't think he believed for a second, unfortunately. Happily, there wasn't much he could do once I decided to keep him. It wasn't as though he could just walk past the wards I'd put around my place."

"Wouldn't he have gone into withdrawal?"

"Oh, my, yes. Fascinating to watch, if you had a strong stomach. He'd gotten himself quite - what's the word, 'hanged'?"

"Hooked."

"Hooked! Yes, that was it. He was rather uncomfortable. Shaking and throwing up and cursing me in language that would've made his dear mother weep, demanding I let him go."

"And you didn't?"

"Good heavens, no. Just let him sweat it out. Told him I was trying to track down an antidote - he told me he didn't want one, imagine that - and that they were very hard to find."

"Really? I would've thought they'd be common enough."

"They were. A friend of mine kept them on hand, as a matter of fact. I just wanted to see what happened, how far down he'd go, how grateful he'd be to me once he came back up."

"And was he?"

"Bloody hell, no. Finally stopped throwing up, but didn't let up on the cursing, not one whit. Demanded to be let out." Zabini took a slow sip of his absinthe. "I eventually convinced him to accept my hospitality. But it took a while. I think he was angriest over being so helpless."

"I can imagine."

"I've heard of the rivalry between the two of you, you know," Zabini smirked. "I'm sure it would've made up for everything he ever did to you, to see just how far down he went while he was here." Zabini laughed, a sound that grated like a quill scratching on glass. Harry nodded politely and Zabini shook his head. "You've no idea how hard it was to maintain an air of... kindness, I suppose you'd call it, when all I really wanted was to make him see just how dependent he was on my goodwill. After all, I didn't want to annoy him so much he'd feel resentful. Luckily, he was too blind drunk most of the time to be able to figure things out. I kept him nicely supplied with alcohol. Figured it was the least I could do for an old friend."

"How long did he stay?" Harry asked.

"Not that long. A few weeks at most."

"He was here when your trial ended, wasn't he?"

"He left soon after that. I realized I wasn't going to get anything out of him. Besides, you know, I was starting a new life, free of the shadow of suspicion. Having a former Death Eater in my home... well. He was an utter mess, and he didn't want to be here. I let him go, and good riddance."

"I see." Harry cocked his head to the side. "So he didn't come to you. And he didn't really choose to stay."

"No, but he would hardly have been at the Dover house if he was in hiding from people in our circles, would he? That was part of why I took him in; I didn't know which side he was on, and I thought he might be useful to either side. He hadn't exactly made a clean break from the Death Eaters."

"Despite the fact that he'd got your brother captured and lost his magic in the process?"

"You read the papers, didn't you, Harry? Plenty of people thought it was all an act."

"Did you?"

"I wasn't sure. The Malfoys were rather good at subterfuge."

"His drug addiction and the fact that he couldn't walk out of here didn't convince you that he'd lost his magical powers?"

"Well, yes, I suppose it did, mostly. But as for being permanently disabled... well, I imagined that perhaps he'd agreed to be un-magicked for a short while, and was having difficulty waiting it out. Or perhaps Blaise wasn't supposed to have been captured. Or who knows what?"

"Did you ask Blaise?"

"He wasn't speaking to me. I never fully believed it was for real until Blaise was Kissed, months later. Until then, I thought there was still the possibility it could've all been faked. There could've been a counter-curse."

"There wasn't."

"No, there wasn't," Zabini said, an odd expression of smug amusement on his face. "I once met the witch who invented that curse, did you know? Most creative woman. I always wished I could've gotten to know her."

"What happened to her?"

"Death by Dementor's Kiss."

"A lot of people thought you deserved to be Kissed as well. A lot of people weren't terribly keen about all the deals you made."

"Ah yes," Zabini smiled, unconcerned. "I had a legion of ardent fans."

"A lot of people also found it rather convenient that the only crime you were charged with had witnesses who died."

"I didn't. I wanted them exposed for the liars they were."

"Really."

"Yes, really."

"A lot of that was going around at the time, wasn't it? Witnesses mysteriously dying or disappearing. That's what Malfoy was accused of doing. Killing three Muggles who were going to testify against Brunhilda St. Germain. Right around the time that he was staying with you. Would you know anything about that?"

"No, of course not. I believe at the time he was also spotted playing Seeker for some Quidditch team and romancing Princess Madeleine of Sweden. He was a busy lad."

"The Muggles were killed somewhere around July 25th. Do you remember what you were doing then?"

"Fifteen years ago, around July 25th. Why, yes, I believe that on the 24th I had a breakfast of sausage and eggs, ate a lovely sole steak for lunch, accompanied my mother to get her nails done at 3:14 in the afternoon-"

"I take that as a no," Harry said calmly.

"Sorry, no."

"Do you know if Malfoy knew Brunhilda St. Germain?"

"No idea."

"Did you?"

"Beyond having been introduced at a few social functions? No."

"Well." Harry stood up, having had enough of Zabini's grating manner and confident smirk for now. It reminded him just a little too much of - of Malfoy, actually, back when they were at Hogwarts together. "Thanks for your help. It's been... illuminating. No, I'll show myself out, thanks."

"Do come again, Harry."

"Yes, I probably will," Harry said pleasantly.

8888888888

Harry wearily smoothed out the records he'd pored over for four hours. Not a thorough job by any means; rather rushed and unmethodical. But he hadn't moved in hours, it was past two in the morning, he had a full day ahead, and it was probably time to pack it in for now.

He stretched his back, muscles protesting and joints popping, trying to remember the last time he'd stayed up far into the night, unaware of the passage of time as he buried himself in a problem. Brain completely tuned into the work, absorbing every detail, tying together random facts from different sources. The mixture of interest, adrenaline, and purpose honing his mental processes into hyper-efficiency.

Not since the war, or soon after, probably. This never happened any more.

It would have been nice to have somebody else here as well, as he'd had during the war. Emma, perhaps, or Celsus, passing bits of information like choice morsels of food, looking up whatever he couldn't remember on his own. Another brain in tandem with his own. But Emma and Celsus had never worked with him far into the night. By the time he'd met them, they were all in positions high enough and dignified enough that working into the night wasn't customary. And there was no real urgency to their work either. Veelas and werewolves would not die depending on whether they were or were not registered as Magical Beasts.

As for the people with whom he had experienced this kind of late-night all-out mental effort - well. Never mind. They were almost all dead or gone or a little of both.

Harry leaned back in his chair, a picture in his mind of Neville Longbottom and Terry Boot crowing over their dawn-hour discovery of an antidote to the latest Death Eater poison, so vivid he could almost touch them.

"Brilliant!"

Or Hermione, eyes glowing tiredly as she slammed her hand onto a Pepper-up potion-stained table.

"It's Bellatrix! She's the one behind this one. I know she is. Look, it all fits-"

"Hermione, every time you say 'it all fits' I get very nervous," Ron had said, so many times it had become a running joke/catchphrase among them.

Ron's blue eyes alight as he jabbed at a map, Hermione leaning over his shoulder, frowning in sleep-deprived concentration.

"Yes! Surrey, it's got to be!"

"Ron, come on, we looked there-"

"Yeah, but I'm sure! Let's go-"

"Not without back-up-"

"We've got no time for back-up - all right, fine, you wait, I'm going. No, I'll be fine, don't worry-"

Harry stood up, banishing that last memory with only a slight shudder, and his eyes fell upon his moribund gossip weed.

Well, make do with what you have on hand, he thought.

"Look, Weed," Harry began, and stopped in alarm both at the sound of his own voice and at the sight of the weed whipping around to face him. "Er... as far as I can tell, the Muggle murders happened around July 25. Can't really tell for sure-"

The weed was trembling, Harry couldn't tell whether in delight or puzzlement. But he suddenly felt extraordinarily silly. Was he actually confiding in a house plant?

That was not on. He opened up a scroll, set a recording spell onto it, and started speaking out loud, sparing an amused glance at the weed as it rocked happily to the sound of his voice.

"Investigation into the events surrounding Draco Malfoy's disappearance at the end of the war," he began. "As far as I can tell, the Muggle murders happened on or about July 25. The date is impossible to pin down, because the bodies were not found until mid-August. The date is a guess based on Muggle Missing Persons and police autopsy records, Ministry documents, and a witness statement. Malfoy was with Pansy Parkinson until approximately April 12, then at Andrew Zabini's house from approximately mid-June until the end of July or beginning of August. Which means that he was most probably with Zabini when the murders occurred. The murders secured the acquittal of Brunhilda St. Germain, who'd been accused of using the Cruciatus and Avada Kedavra curses on a fellow Death Eater who was suspected of having defected."

Harry smoothed out a scroll with one of the St. Germain case Muggle witness statements, glancing over a portion of it.

------------------

Witness: I saw her, she was there. She was wearing something weird on her head, she was holding a stick and she pointed it at this fellow and he started to shake and scream.

Auror: What happened next?

Witness: He was sort of having a seizure and his voice was going hoarse, I don't know what she was doing to him but it was horrible. And, and she said abracadabra and then he stiffened up and then he was dead.

Auror: How do you know?

Witness: He just stopped moving. She kicked his body. It was horrible.

Auror: What did you do?

Witness: We ran away.

------------------

"The Muggle teenagers had been in the supposedly deserted alley where St. Germain committed the murder, and had seen her. They'd run, and the Ministry, detecting the Dark Magic used by St. Germain, had chased them and caught them. They were eyewitnesses."

Harry gazed at the three young faces on the police records. Clare Johnson, June 14, 1989 - July 2005. Diane Johnson, May 20, 1987 - July 2005. Luke Suresh, May 2, 1987 - July 2005.

"The three were found dead in a car accident before St. Germain's Wizengamot appearance. The death was ruled accidental by the Muggle police. There was no reason for the collision; it looked like Suresh, the driver, had gone off the edge of a small ditch. The only odd fact was that the bodies had various bruises that had been caused before their death. The police assumed that the three had been up to something that had resulted in those bruises, even though their friends had claimed they'd been driving home from the library."

They were teenagers. They had probably been up to no good, and their friends had lied to protect them. Next case.

"The Ministry had been informed otherwise. They had heard from Mrs. Hera Triumvra, whose home was close to a quarry used by wizard youth, that the three had been tortured by Death Eaters before being killed and put into their car. The Ministry tended to believe Mrs. Triumvra's statement, but there was no other evidence linking the murders to anybody who could be charged."

------------------

Triumvra: They made it look like an accident for the Muggle Aurors, but I knew better. The Muggles were at the edge of the quarry, and then they were hanging upside down, and they were terrified, I saw them. And somebody was laughing.

Auror: Who was laughing?

Triumvra: I couldn't tell how many Death Eaters were there, I was too far away, I think there were at least two but there may have been only one. But I saw him, white-haired boy. I'd know him anywhere. I knew his family. Draco Malfoy.

Auror: But he had disappeared-

Triumvra: I know what I saw. He was there. Laughing. Torturing those people, and laughing about it.

Auror: Torturing them magically?

Triumvra: Yes.

Auror: But he'd been found to have no magic whatsoever by that point.

Triumvra: I know what I saw. I never really believed that anyway. Besides like I said there could've been somebody else there, somebody helping him. Maybe his helper did the magic part and he did the actual killing.

------------------

"I've been unable to find any connection between Brunhilda St. Germain and Draco Malfoy. No record of them being in the same Death Eater cells, which usually worked separately so that their secrecy wouldn't be compromised. St. Germain was three years younger than Malfoy. She did not attend Hogwarts or Durmstrang, but for unspecified reasons received private tutoring, possibly training in the Dark Arts

"The closest documented link I've been able to find between them is that St. Germain once received musical tutoring from Clara Mason, who attended Hogwarts two years after Narcissa Malfoy, also in Slytherin House. This means very little."

Harry stood up, noting the salmon-pink tinge of dawn outside his window wondering if he should try to get a couple of hours of sleep or just use Pepper-up in the morning.

"I've also been unable to find any documented link between Andrew Zabini and Brunhilda St. Germain," he continued. "Beyond the fact that their families co-owned a piece of land in France, along with about sixteen other families, which there is no evidence that either one ever visited, the only other link is that they were both acquitted because their witnesses died."

He took out another file as the recording charm continued to scratch out his thoughts.

"Andrew Zabini's crime, that of having used a Cruciatus curse while supposedly working for the Order of the Phoenix, had only two witnesses, who both died on June 1. The list of suspects was fairly extensive." He scanned past the names, decided to read them out loud. "Andrew Zabini. Kurt Newtower. Ethelbert Finke. Ivan Venificus. Julietta Burner. Gregory Goyle. Gawain Moffa. Amie Tomey. Zelma Muncie. Sygmund McHarris.

"The alibis are extensive and detailed, and they all appear to check out on first glance." Or second or third or fifteenth, especially at two in the morning. "I've found no links between any of the suspects and Brunhilda St. Germain, beyond very tenuous ones. Again, this means absolutely nothing. Beyond the fact that I've been doing this for far too long and should probably get some sleep."

He gathered up the scrolls and gave the gossip weed an affectionate glance. The little thing was bobbing happily and actually glowing, a very pleasant butter-yellow colour. Maybe he should start dictating his papers more often.

His gaze fell upon the alibi statements for all the people he hadn't known on the Zabini list, as well as the background checks on them. He gathered up the pile of scrolls Newtower, Tomey and Venificus, noting that Venificus' file showed he'd also committed a crime where the witness had died. Rather unfortunate time to be a witness to anything, it seemed.

Venificus, he thought idly, as he stared at his scroll without much interest. Attended Durmstrang with Andrew Zabini, from 1996 - 1999.

He frowned. 1996 - 1999. Wasn't Durmstrang a six-year school?

Yes. Venificus had received home instruction before that, for reasons unspecified.

Hm. Interesting. And among his known tutors was one who had also taught St. Germain.

Which meant nothing, really. Any more than St. Germain receiving instruction from a music teacher who knew Narcissa Malfoy. It wasn't that big a world; as Sirius had once said, the old pureblood families were all interconnected.

But maybe if he ran with this... what if Venificus and St. Germain had known each other? Well enough to commit crimes for one another? Venificus and Zabini certainly knew one another, so that might make a link between Zabini and St. Germain. So... maybe St. Germain killed Venificus' witness, Venificus killed Zabini's, and Zabini killed St. Germain's. And maybe Malfoy had nothing to do with the whole mess, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Well, that was certainly grasping at some very, very flimsy straws. Upon further examination of Venificus' alibi, it was possible that it could've been less than airtight, but...

But what else did he have?

Of the four of them, Brunhilda St. Germain and Ivan Venificus were both dead. St. Germain had died a few years ago and Venificus had died in battle during the war. But Malfoy and Zabini were still alive.

"Finite incantatum," Harry muttered absently, and put away his files. It was almost three in the morning. He had to work to do tomorrow. Or rather, later today. And his mind was in no state to decide right now whether to throw in the towel or keep worrying away at mysteries that had lain unsolved for fifteen years.

8888888888

"Yes, well, I'm always glad to come by," a large man was saying heartily as Harry walked into The Book Cellar, and over his shoulder Harry could see Malfoy and three other sales clerks gathered before him, identical expressions of polite patience on all four faces. Malfoy glanced at the door and smiled briefly at Harry before dutifully turning his attention back.

"Always glad," the large man repeated. "You're doing a superb job here. And once you incorporate the new filing system, it'll be a breeze."

"I'm sure," a female clerk said.

"That's the spirit. Well, I'd best be off."

"Company dinner, yes."

"You know how it is. At least they've picked a healthy eatery. I'm watching my weight."

"Yes, I was going to mention that, you're looking very healthy," she said, and Harry wondered if the man heard what he heard clearly in her voice: that she was buttering up a man she considered almost too stupid to live.

"I've dropped thirty five pounds so far."

"You don't say, that's marvellous."

He put his hand on the door. "Well, you know, I heard that a man's penis grows an inch for every ten pounds he loses. So I'm just going to keep dieting until I turn into a giant dick." He grinned at their polite chuckles and went out the door. There was a brief silence.

"I'd say he's done it," Malfoy said dryly, and the other sales clerks burst out into genuine laughter, griping to each other as they dispersed back to their areas.

"Isn't he awful?"

"How does his wife put up with him? It's unbelievable."

"And she's such a nice person, too."

"I'm going on break, Ted," Malfoy said. "I need some air after that little visitation."

"Yeah, go ahead, I'll cover."

Malfoy was still scowling slightly as he and Harry sat down at the café next door. "Another favourite customer?" Harry asked, stalling, with no better idea of how to bring up the topic of the Muggle murders than he'd had at three last night.

"No, he's from administration. The store was bought by a corporation about a year ago. It's been nothing but one long string of 'innovations' since then. Happily, they don't affect us much -Marcy smiles and nods in all the right places, then tells us to just keep doing what's always worked before."

"Yeah, it's hard to deal with superiors who don't know what the rank and file really do."

"Speaking from experience?"

"I told you I work for the Ministry," Harry said off-handedly, wondering when the last time he'd really talked to any of his underlings. And how many of them held him in the same high esteem as Malfoy and his colleagues held the man who'd just left.

"Ah. Yes. Enough said." Malfoy leaned back in his seat. "Every time we get a visit from that idiot I think I picked the wrong life to quit smoking."

"You smoked?"

"Filthy habit, that. Also one of the hardest to kick. Then again, it helps to have a new non-smoker in the house; Jilly nagged until I finally gave it up last year."

"Did she used to smoke too?"

"She used to do a lot of things. It's how we met, actually."

"What do you mean?"

"At a rehabilitation clinic. Jilly has... her own sordid past."

"And you started dating at the clinic?"

"Not openly, no. We weren't supposed to date anybody, so of course we took that very seriously for three whole... er, minutes." Harry laughed. "No, it was dead serious," Malfoy grinned, "We really, really weren't supposed to. Had to sneak around or risk being tossed out."

"Why?"

"Well, you know, we were at a clinic, so we were emotionally fragile, and er, settling into a new social matrix, and er, nurturing our inner children and striving to build new personal constructs for- oh sod it, I forget the rest. You'd think I'd remember all that tripe, I went through it enough times."

"More than once?"

"Christ, yes, seven times, each time I was convicted and then a couple of times on my own, outside. I was the Neville Longbottom of drug rehabilitation, it was so depressing."

Harry started laughing at Malfoy's rueful expression. He tried, and utterly failed, to imagine Draco Malfoy at a rehabilitation clinic, doing anything other than making fun of it.

And yet he'd gone back on his own. "Why did you keep going back?"

"Had to, didn't I?"

"I mean, when you weren't in - er-"

"Prison?" Malfoy smirked at Harry's awkward avoidance of the word. "Clinic was still a damn sight better than the alternative," he said grimly. "I saw what people looked like after a lifetime on this stuff. It was quite sobering, pun intended. Looked like living death."

"I can imagine. How did you get started?"

"Well I'd been drinking like a fish at Pansy's house, numbing myself, I suppose. Ended up at a Muggle homeless shelter, lots of addicts all around. Got involved in a lot of stuff I shouldn't've. I don't really remember most of what happened between leaving Pansy's and being arrested the first time, frankly. It's all a little blurred. Which is good, I suppose; it all seems to have been rather dismal. At the time, though, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered other than getting the next fix. Addicts are so single minded."

"And Jilly?"

"Like I said, she has her own sordid history. Not for me to tell it, though."

"Does she know all of yours?"

"Yeah, it all came up at the clinic."

"No, I don't mean prison. I meant your life before. Before joining the Muggle world."

"Yeah, she knows about my family and - oh, you mean does she know I used to be a wizard? No, of course not."

"You've been with her ten years, and she doesn't know that?" Harry asked sceptically.

"She knows everything important."

"That seems fairly important. How could you hide it?"

"Potter, I really can't do magic any more," he said, amused. "It's not like I'll suddenly accidentally change a yapping dog into a chair and have to explain it to her."

"No, but why would you hide it from her?"

"It wouldn't make any sense to her. Think like a Muggle for half a second. 'Dear, I used to fly on a broomstick and transfigure birds into crystal vases and make snakes leap out of a wand. No, I can't show you any of it; you'll just have to trust me.' She's a sensible girl; she'd have me committed in a heartbeat."

"You don't think she'd believe-"

"No, I don't. Besides, I told you, it has nothing to do with me any more."

"But-"

"But nothing." Malfoy's voice put an effective end to the topic, and he checked his watch. "Jason?" he raised his voice, and the man behind the counter looked over at them. "Another cappucino?" He glanced back at Harry. "Did you want anything else?"

"Yeah, I'll get another one too," Harry said, and Jason nodded. "I could've used one of these this morning," Harry noted. "The conference coffee's not up to the required strength."

"Dull day?"

"I've mentioned I work for the Ministry," Harry repeated wryly.

"Say no more."

"Actually, speaking of the Ministry, I wanted to ask you-" he broke off as his coffee arrived.

"Sport helps a lot, for me," Malfoy said. "That stupid oaf is coming by tomorrow to do some training and thank god it's Wednesday and I've got football after work. I'll pretend he's the football, kick it to within an inch of its life."

"I should do that," Harry joked. "Except I doubt anybody would appreciate me mauling a Snitch." He suddenly felt incredibly awkward - Malfoy hadn't seemed to want to discuss Quidditch - but Malfoy hadn't heard what Harry had said, he was standing up with a mildly alarmed expression.

"Jilly?" he said, and Harry turned around. A tall, relatively attractive woman was walking in wearily: long curly brown hair, a round, tired-looking, freckled face, and a loose-fitting waitressing uniform. She waved at Malfoy, motioning him to sit back down.

"Sorry, love, yes, yes, I'm fine." She leaned over to kiss his cheek, "Mind if I join you?" she asked Harry, and he waved his hand in a By all means gesture.

"Oh - Jilly, this is Potter - Harry Potter; Potter, my girlfriend Jilly," Malfoy said quickly. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, the boss just let me out early, and I'm fine, for heaven's sake," she said, a little annoyed. "Also, we've got a guest again."

"Oh, no, she hasn't," Malfoy said, an irate look on his face. "You're joking."

"No, she wants us to take the little dear tonight, she's got a deadline tomorrow, she's coming over right now as a matter of fact-"

"Your sister is going to have to figure out what to do in a few months, she can't always-"

"Uncle DAVE!" A small boy of about four ran into the café and launched himself at Malfoy. Malfoy picked him up automatically, smiling at him and looking up as another woman with a remarkable resemblance to Jilly hurried in.

"Oh Jilly, Dave, so glad you're here, I'm ever so sorry, you know I wouldn't do this to you but this deadline-"and she rattled off about a dozen pieces of information and excuses and a phone number and was gone in a flash with a quick hug for the little boy, who was happily digging into Malfoy's shirt pocket and finding a stash of sweets.

Malfoy heaved a deep sigh. "Potter. Meet my nephew Alexander." The small boy spared a quick glance at Harry before diving back into Malfoy's pockets. "You've got to talk to her," he said to Jilly, absently ruffling his nephew's hair. "You need to rest. She can't keep doing this to you."

"I'm all right. I swear I don't know who's more annoying here. Her, for treating me just the same as before, or you, for thinking I'm going to fall apart any moment. I swear you are a walking compendium of every single nervous expectant father cliché in the world." She smiled at him slightly, taking the sting out of her words, then rubbed her face, scrubbing off her frown and giving Alexander a smile as she pulled him off of Malfoy. "We'll be on our way, then. Nice meeting you, Harry," she smiled at him, and got up to go, with another whispered "I'll be fine," and a kiss for Malfoy.

"I'll be home soon as I can, right?" he called out as she left.

"She's... you two are having a baby?" Harry said slowly, unprepared for the wide grin that spread over Malfoy's face, erasing his annoyance at Jilly's sister.

"Yeah. In four months. Our first."

"Wow." Harry sat, stupidly unable to think of what to say. "Er... congratulations."

"Thanks," Malfoy said, standing up and gesturing to Jason that he was leaving his payment on the table.

"What's it like?" Harry asked curiously, standing and paying for his own coffee.

"It's amazing. It's bloody terrifying, actually, but in a good way. We're looking forward to it. Now if we can just get rid of Jilly's sister's need to saddle us with her kids every other day, we'll be all right. Although our niece has already promised endless free babysitting for us, so it won't be totally one-sided." He patted his pockets, tucking in a stray sweet that Alexander had missed. "Well. Must go. I'll have to see if Marcy'll let me out early tonight. Oh-" he paused with his hand on the door, "You said you needed to ask me something?"

Harry waved him off. "Some other time. It wasn't that important."

"Right, then." He headed out, leaving Harry brooding as the door closed behind him.

8888888888

Harry tucked his invisibility cloak around himself more firmly, wishing the cloak wasn't quite so efficient at holding in warmth. He gazed unseeingly at the players on the field as they battled in the muggy heat, the Taff Valley Tornadoes against Malfoy's team, the Caerphilly Cannons. The score was 2 to 1 for Taff.

He'd gone to The Book Cellar and had been told that Malfoy was playing football two blocks away and would be done in about half an hour. Not sure what the hell he'd do once Malfoy was done, he'd decided to observe the football game unseen. That way, if the game finished and he still had no idea what to say to Malfoy, he could just go home without confronting him at all.

And he didn't. Have any idea what to say, that is. About Andrew Zabini, Malfoy himself... or anything, really.

He'd known what to say to Zabini this morning, oddly enough. Zabini had been easy.

"If I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to think that perhaps there was more going on than simple coincidences," he'd said to Zabini, after he'd briefly described what he'd uncovered during his investigation.

"It's a good thing you know better," Zabini had smirked.

"Because of course, you wanted your name cleared, and were very upset that your two witnesses died."

"I was."

"Rubbish," Harry had said pleasantly.

"Beg pardon?"

"Rubbish. You all worked together to get rid of one another's witnesses. Venificus got yours, St. Germain got his, and you got hers. And the only reason the Ministry didn't put it together at the time was that they had too much else going on, and the three of you weren't considered important enough to pursue with due diligence. Especially when there was another suspect for St. Germain's witnesses, and he was very conveniently missing and unable to clear his name."

And Zabini hadn't so much as blinked, but calmly pointed out that he'd been accused of many things in his lifetime and that Harry's 'proof' was flimsy at best and ridiculous at worst. And that unfortunately, Brunhilda St. Germain, Ivan Venificus, and Draco Malfoy were all dead, so Harry's speculations would have to remain exactly that - speculations.

Harry idly observed the players on the field, trying to remember the rules of football and evaluate how each team was doing, apart from the scores. It seemed that most of the players on Malfoy's team were hopelessly outclassed when it came to individual technique, but the Taffs didn't have as good a grasp on teamwork. The frequency with which they passed the ball amongst themselves was far lower than the frequency of passing among the Caerphilly players. They should probably work on that, because Caerphilly was holding its own and had a chance of winning the game.

Zabini hadn't even bothered to really refute any of what Harry had speculated on. He'd merely said "I paid for my mistakes, Harry. We all got on with our lives, moved on and left the unpleasantness behind us."

"Not everybody was so lucky."

"Casualties of war, Harry."

"Stop calling me by my first name, Andrew," Harry had said mildly, and Zabini's smile had remained easy, but his eyes tightened a little.

"No, indeed, Mr. Potter. Excuse my presumption." He'd clasped his hands before him in an attitude of respectful deference with just enough irony in it to radiate contempt. "As I was saying, I paid for my mistakes."

"You had some property confiscated and were detained for two months. Somehow that doesn't seem quite adequate, for all that you did."

"That property was my ancestral home," Zabini's voice had taken on a bitter edge. "Which the Ministry appropriated out of greed."

"Because they didn't have much property of their own left after your people finished blasting them to bits."

"Casualties of war. I was declared innocent of all charges and given immunity on everything else."

Which was absolutely true, Harry reflected glumly as the Taffs battled to defend their goal.

Funny thing, he mused; although the ball was spending most of its time in the Taff half, Caerphilly couldn't seem to break through Taff's defence. But when the ball came to the Caerphilly side, their own defence was practically useless.

The middle Taff defence player gave a mighty kick and the ball soared all the way to the Caerphilly side, and Malfoy and his fellow midfields practically flew back to their own goal to shore up their weak defence.

Malfoy seemed pretty good at this, Harry observed. Very fast, very capable. And the other Caerphilly players listened to him. If Harry closed his eyes and imagined the game taking place in the air, and ignored the foreign terminology, Malfoy's shouted instructions to his team-mates sounded a lot like instructions during a Quidditch game.

"Follow in - watch your player!"

"You're clear!"

"Behind you!"

Zabini was right. There was very little Harry could do to him, regardless of what had happened to three Muggle youths that night fifteen years ago.

"This started as a simple investigation into a discrepancy in Draco Malfoy's file," Harry had told him. "It could very easily turn into a much more thorough and unpleasant investigation into discrepancies in your own file. You were only given immunity provided you helped the Ministry in all of its investigations. Tell me what happened that night."

Zabini had pursed his lips, obviously weighing his options.

"Right, then." Harry had let out his breath in annoyance and got up. "We'll come back and do all of this under Veritaserum-" he started towards the door.

"You have to understand..." Zabini had begun, and Harry had paused. "The war was effectively almost over, but things were still fairly uncertain and those of us who had made... unwise agreements were forced to carry them out. I... I didn't really have a choice."

Harry had sat back down. "Why was Malfoy there? Had he made an agreement with St. Germain too?"

"He was bored. Forced idleness and disability didn't agree with him, I'm afraid."

"You brought him along to amuse him? Or to have somebody to take the blame if things went sour?"

Zabini had leaned back and smiled. "A little of both."

Harry watched Malfoy as the game neared Caerphilly's goal again. Wishing he hadn't assured Zabini that he'd verify everything Zabini said with Veritaserum if he needed to. Because that meant that, in all likelihood, everything Zabini had told him about that night was true. Maybe not the whole truth; Zabini had undoubtedly left out some important facts and highlighted others. But it still didn't look good for Malfoy. It looked bloody horrible, in fact.

Ah, finally. A whistle blew and the players stopped moving, the Taffs grinning in triumph and the Caerphilly players merely trying to catch their breath. As far as Harry could remember, they'd ended 2 to 3 for Taff. Not bad at all, for a team whose members weren't terribly fast or skilled, against a vastly superior team.

Harry ducked behind the stands and took off his invisibility cloak, then walked onto the small football field as the two teams went through a hand-shaking ritual, then started taking nets down, passing around water bottles, gathering up their things to go. Most of them, Malfoy included, had taken their team shirts off, and Harry noted with surprise that Malfoy had more tattoos than just the Dark Mark and its surrounding designs. Interesting.

As Harry approached, Malfoy was apparently trying to teach a red-haired Caerphilly forward how take the ball away from another player. Harry stopped and watched the two battle for control, Malfoy effortlessly passing the ball from one foot to the other and behind and past the redhead, using his body to block the redhead as he tried fruitlessly to take the ball.

How many times had he and Malfoy fought over the Snitch at Hogwarts? Three times in six years, they'd fought for supremacy in the sky, wheeling around each other, chasing, dodging, very similar to this.

And Malfoy had been damned good at it. Although, good as he was, Malfoy had often cheated by grabbing Harry's broom or deliberately trying to knock him off of it. Having only a vague recollection of the rules of football, Harry guessed that not everything Malfoy was doing right now was strictly according to the rules either. And, judging from the amused snickers from a few of the other players and the somewhat exasperated exclamations from the redhead, he was right.

"Come on, mate, that's not on," he protested, "you can't just - look, no ref will let that one go by-"

"Ah, but if the ref doesn't see it, you've still not got the ball, right?" Malfoy returned, laughing and a little out of breath. "Come on, you can do this. You've seen all my moves; take advantage of that. Anticipate one of them."

Finally the redhead gave up, backing off and putting up his hands in surrender, and the other players called out jeers and cheers. Harry resumed walking across the field as Malfoy sank to the ground, taking off his shin pads and flexing one knee with a grimace of pain, but seemingly otherwise in good spirits.

"Nice goal in the second half, old man," another player smirked, clapping Malfoy on the back. "Sure you didn't break a hip getting it in?"

Malfoy tossed a shin pad at his head and the younger man ducked and laughed. "Sod off, brat," he said good-naturedly. "You try playing midfield at age thirty-eight, we'll see who's the old man then."

Harry squinted as he approached, finally seeing the details of Malfoy's other tattoos: a black dragon and a white narcissus on his right bicep, and a green and silver serpent coiling from his back up to his left shoulder blade, its small face looking towards Malfoy's face from his left shoulder. He noted also a rather ugly scar running down the length of one rib. Most probably not from the war; Malfoy would've used magical means to rid himself of any scars as they happened.

He cleared his throat as the players started to leave the field.

"Potter," Malfoy said, a little surprised.

"Hi," Harry said. "I, er, I need to ask you about something. Do you have a while?" He was struck by how simultaneously Malfoy-like he looked without his glasses, and un-Malfoy-like in Muggle clothing and football cleats.

"All right, yeah," Malfoy glanced at him quizzically as he pulled on a t-shirt. "Jilly's working late tonight, all I've got on my agenda's looking for a crib on the IKEA catalogue."

"There's a pub across the street-"

"I don't drink, but the café's just two blocks away. We can probably make it there before it starts to rain." Malfoy glanced up at the darkening sky, putting on his glasses and stuffing his football equipment into a backpack.

"So did the game help?" Harry asked.

"What?"

"With the, er, administrator from hell."

Malfoy chuckled, shaking his head. "Didn't need it. I got all the satisfaction I wanted from making his day about as miserable as he made mine. I think I projected an IQ of about 50 during training," he smirked, and Harry laughed. "Good thing Marcy knows I've half a brain, because otherwise instead of offering me a pay raise as soon as he left, she would've fired me on the spot. Which would really not be the most opportune thing to have happen right now."

"No, I suppose not." Harry chewed on his lip, his mind instinctively shoving away any further thought of the curly-haired young woman he'd met the night before, five months pregnant with Malfoy's child.

Oh, Celsus, Harry thought. Why did I ever listen to you and get involved in this.

5  Seeds Of Time

"So, what is it?" Malfoy asked, as their waiter brought them coffees and a small scone for Malfoy.

"How long have you been playing football? You seem rather good at it," Harry found himself saying, still stalling.

"Thanks. Nine, ten years. What's going on?" Malfoy asked, a hint of suspicion creeping into his tone.

All right. No more stalling. "I talked to Andrew Zabini."

Malfoy's eyes widened slightly, then his face wiped itself clean of all expression and a dead silence settled between them.

"He's still alive," Malfoy finally said.

"Still. And he puts you at the scene of three murders you were suspected of fifteen years ago."

"What?"

"Three Muggle teenagers, witnesses to Brunhilda St. Germain's crimes. You were a suspect in their murders. Zabini says you were there, and you participated."

Malfoy's eyes closed and he took a deep breath, his face draining of all colour.

"You knew you'd been suspected, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't," Malfoy said evenly, meeting Harry's eyes. "I left Zabini's place about a week after that and lost all contact with the wizarding world. How would I have known?"

"A witness saw you there. It was one of the rumours going around about you at the time, part of why some people thought you'd gone back to the Death Eaters after you disappeared."

"Lovely. And Zabini says I did it? Even though I hadn't the magical ability to boil a cup of tea by that point?"

"He claims that you helped him to kill them. That you were an active participant in torturing them before they died. That a lot of what he did, he did at your request."

"Did he explain why he did anything at my request by that point? Especially since he refused to do the one thing I kept asking him to do, which was to let me go?"

"Because he thought you might be useful to him, when or if you got your magic back. That you might emerge as a leader. For either side."

Malfoy's face was still expressionless. "Do you believe what he told you?"

"I don't know."

"Those Muggles were killed by Avada Kedavra."

"You don't deny you were there, then?"

"No, of course not. I even knew somebody'd seen me there, Zabini told me as much. I just didn't know they'd ever told anybody."

"What were you doing there?"

"Zabini had brought me along; I'd no idea why."

"What did you do?"

"What did Zabini say?"

"I'd rather hear your version first."

Malfoy's eyes narrowed, and Harry was suddenly reminded, viscerally, of the fact that they had once been sworn enemies. That Malfoy had never told the truth unless there was a percentage in it for him. That Malfoy had taken the Dark Mark, knowing full well what it meant, and stayed among people who committed murder for sport, for four years. Asking him his version of events - what possible use would that be?

Malfoy's gaze dropped to the tabletop and his eyes unfocussed as he put his elbows on the table and absently rubbed at his left forearm. Harry waited patiently, noting how completely the healthy flush of exertion from the football game had been replaced by deep pallor. How Malfoy's breathing was a little too steady, as though he were going to extraordinary lengths to keep himself calm. Observations and clues about an enemy's state of mind that Harry hadn't had to use since the war.

"I did help Zabini," Malfoy said abruptly. Harry felt his mouth drop open. Malfoy's eyes didn't flicker from the tabletop. "I don't remember much of what happened that night, fortunately. Or rather, unfortunately, I suppose. But I do remember being there. Watching while he tortured them. He used Cruciatus on at least one of them. Dangled them over the quarry just to hear them scream."

"The witness said you were laughing."

"I probably was."

"Those Muggles were sixteen and eighteen years old," Harry said, wondering how his own voice could sound so dispassionate when he was screaming inside.

"By the time I was as old as that boy, I'd killed two people myself, and seen plenty of others tortured and killed. Death Eater, remember?"

"Did you tell Zabini what to do?"

Malfoy's jaw was set, the fingers of his right hand white as they gripped his left forearm, but his voice was calm and cool. "I remember commenting that if we'd both still been Death Eaters, we would've had some fun with them before killing them. I may have suggested some of what Zabini did, but I honestly don't remember."

"What else did you do? Other than be amused at their pain?"

"The boy tried to crawl out of the quarry. I pushed him back in. The fall may have killed him. I don't know. He was definitely dead by the time Zabini got him out of the quarry."

"Malfoy... why?"

"He was dead anyway. Zabini wasn't going to let him go. And... and I wanted to." Malfoy's eyes closed briefly, then he continued, his voice almost as steady as before. "I wanted to. I didn't know much by that point, but I knew I wanted someone to hurt for what had happened to me. And that boy was as good as dead; if I didn't kill him, Zabini would, and probably be a lot more brutal about it." He cleared his throat. "And he was just a Muggle," he said softly. "Nobody important anyway."

"Did you do anything else?"

"After they were dead, I helped Zabini put them into their car before he sent it off to crash."

"So you are guilty, then," Harry said calmly after a moment.

Malfoy shrugged, almost casually. "Accessory after the fact, if nothing else."

The rain was dripping outside. It was almost soothing, a monotonous pitter-pat that was the same in the Muggle world and the wizarding world.

"So what happens now?" Malfoy finally asked.

"I don't know."

"How clever of you," Malfoy remarked dryly. "One would think you might've had a plan of action before confronting a known felon about something like this."

"Why? Planning on running away again?"

Malfoy didn't hesitate. "No. I don't think anything'll happen. The Muggle police won't care, this many years later. And even if they do, it'll mean at most two or three more years. Don't forget, I know the system here inside and out."

"What about on our side? You never faced that justice system. You made a deal and got away with everything you did as a Death Eater. I have a confession from you now. How do you know I didn't just record all of this? I could-"

"You could. I don't think you will. Besides, are there Dementors in Azkaban any more?"

"No. Not for years."

"I didn't think they'd stay in the end," Malfoy remarked. "Without them, Azkaban's not that much worse than here. And I doubt I'd get more than four or five years anyway."

"You would just let yourself get arrested?" Malfoy shrugged, unconcerned. "Malfoy, your child-"

"Is precisely why I won't run," he snapped. "I don't want my child to grow up hiding from anything. If I have to serve time again, I'll bloody well do it, and get out in time to actually be a father."

The rain was picking up force, and Harry watched a small rivulet travel down the window beside him. "You know..." he said slowly, "I never would've thought to talk to Andrew Zabini, if you hadn't mentioned him."

"Me and my big mouth."

"Why did you?"

"Careless, I suppose. It's been a long time since I thought about any of what happened back then. I also don't have good time sense of that era of my life; I'd honestly forgotten that I was with Zabini after I left Pansy's." He stirred his coffee idly. "I suppose if Jilly knew about this, she'd say it was my subconscious wanting absolution. Which, personally, I rather doubt."

"Because that would imply a conscience?" Harry asked cuttingly, and Malfoy's eyes snapped back to his face.

"What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry for what I did?" he sneered. "That I was violently ill afterwards, or, or that I cried every night for years, thinking about those poor, poor children dying in pain and scared senseless? That I'm still haunted by their ghosts?" He laughed bitterly at Harry's disgusted disbelief. "Do you have any idea how many situations just like that one I found myself in as a Death Eater? If I stayed awake through the night for every person I harmed, I'd've died of lack of sleep long ago."

"You never did change, did you?"

"What?"

"You came over to our side without changing who you were."

"Don't presume to tell me who I was," he snapped. "Or who I am or whether or not I changed. You didn't know me back then, and you don't know me now."

"I knew you fairly well in school. You were a selfish, cruel, spoiled brat, with almost no humanity or compassion in you at all. And I think the only reason you came over to our side was that you sensed Voldemort would lose in the end. Forget any worry over his effect on our world."

"You don't know a damn thing about me," Malfoy said coldly.

"So why don't you tell me. Explain why I shouldn't hand you over to the Aurors. Explain that night to me. Explain why you switched sides in the first place."

"You want me to give you a story that's sad enough to trigger that famous Potter need to rescue the downtrodden? So you'll forgive my sins and graciously let me go? Not interested."

"Zabini thought you'd never really left the Death Eaters. Parkinson said you'd never really believed in our side. How am I supposed to believe you deserve any kind of mercy for those crimes, if you were still sympathetic to Voldemort?"

"Oh, so if I was really a reformed Death Eater when I helped Zabini that night, what I did might be acceptable? Listen to yourself." He gave a short laugh. "I'm not going to justify myself to you, fifteen years after the fact."

"You'd rather justify yourself to the Ministry?" Harry paused to let that sink in. "Nobody knows what I've found. I don't have to tell anybody."

"You hold my life in your hands, is that it? Go to hell."

"Fine. I thought you were concerned about Jilly and your child." Harry started to get up, not knowing whether the sick feeling in his stomach was disgust at himself, or at Malfoy, or both.

Malfoy grabbed his arm. They locked eyes for a long, tense moment, and Harry could almost sense Malfoy's pride, and his anger and resentment at Harry, battling with his need to defend himself for the sake of his family.

Malfoy finally dropped his eyes, released Harry and sat back, crossing his arms. Harry slowly sat back down and waited, and was about to speak again when Malfoy took a deep breath, then let it out and looked at him.

"I did it because of my daughter," he said quietly.

"What?" Harry blinked. "I asked why you switched sides during the war, not why-"

"And I'm telling you. It was because of my daughter."

"You said you didn't have any children."

"I'm fairly sure I don't, not any more."

"She's... she's dead?"

"Most probably. I think so, anyway." Malfoy lifted his glasses and rubbed at his eyes wearily and Harry waited patiently for him to continue.

"She was a mistake," he said, settling the glasses back down and picking up his coffee spoon, idly toying with it, avoiding Harry's gaze. "Her mother was a Muggle. Waitressed at one of the places the Death Eaters used to meet. And no, it wasn't love at first sight or anything like that, though she was fairly attractive, I suppose. Then again, at eighteen just about any female is attractive."

"And she got pregnant?"

"My father was furious," he spoke softly, slowly stirring his coffee. "It wasn't easy to explain that I honestly forgot to use contraception spells because it just hadn't occurred to me that I'd need to, with a Muggle. Definitely a low point in my father's regard for me."

"I can imagine."

"No, actually, you can't," he said dryly. "In any case, the child wasn't that big a problem, once the initial shock was over. My father made me convert some of my personal account into Muggle money and leave it for her mother to use in bringing her up, and then he commanded me to make myself scarce in her life, and I was quite happy to do so."

"Why did he make you support her at all?"

"There was no question of bringing her up as a Malfoy - can you imagine, a half-blood Malfoy? But the fact was that she was the product of my own carelessness, and I owed her a certain minimal paternal duty. Although I doubt Father was all that concerned about her; I think mostly he wanted to make sure I paid dearly for my mistake. Believe me, it wasn't a mistake I was ever going to make again."

"I take it Jilly's child is-"

"Not a mistake, no," Malfoy said firmly. "Anyhow, I didn't think about her much after that. I was too busy staying out of the Aurors' hands and helping my father. And getting more and more concerned about Voldemort's iron grip on power and people. Especially combined with his... rather shaky hold on sanity."

"And yet you stayed with the Death Eaters for four years."

"What was the alternative? Voldemort was deranged, but the other side - as far as I was concerned, they were going to destroy our world. They risked our world every time they let another Muggle-born into Hogwarts. They risked our secrecy, risked our blood and magical abilities - it was an Us versus Them world to me, and Us didn't seem so wonderful, but Them was no better, as far as I was concerned."

"How can you still-"

"Then at one point Voldemort got the brilliant notion of blood sacrifices, do you remember?"

"Yes," Harry said, suppressing a shudder. It had been a particularly horrifying part of the war, finding bodies of the loved ones of Death Eaters, thinking at first that they were killing each other off in political infighting and then realizing that Voldemort was forcing his followers to provide fuel for his magic with sacrifices of their own kin. "We didn't realize at first that-" Harry stopped. "Your daughter."

"My daughter," Malfoy repeated expressionlessly. "She was barely two years old. My father informed me that he would be presenting her to Voldemort, and he was - he was happy. Happy that the Malfoys could provide a victim that would satisfy the ritual's need to have a blood connection, without damaging us in any way. Get rid of my embarrassing little half-blood accident, provide fuel for the Dark Lord's magic, at no cost to us at all." Malfoy gaze turned inwards. "It was a win-win scenario as far as he was concerned. He was quite smug about it."

"And that's what changed your mind?"

"I don't know why, but it felt like the last straw. I didn't know the girl, I'd seen her all of once, but the fact was that she was my daughter. And, and Father's grand-daughter. And it was insane, that we would follow somebody who would demand something like that of us. I didn't care about most Dark Magic, it was just magic to me, it could be good or bad, but that... it was just wrong."

"What did you do?"

"I contacted her mother. Told her they were in danger, gave her as much money as I could without tipping off my father - which wasn't nearly as much as you'd think, by that point in the war. Told her to hide, take a new name. Then I disappeared. Stayed with Pansy for a while, then at Muggle inns in small towns. I avoided confronting the Death Eaters as long as I could, until I finally realized I had to choose a side and fight for it."

"What happened to the girl?"

"I've no idea. I didn't dare contact them; I didn't know if I was being watched or not. I don't have high hopes that they survived. Her mother wasn't particularly clever or resourceful, from what I remember of her."

"Would you want to know?"

"Not really, no. She'd be almost twenty years old, now. Can you imagine? Me, with a full grown child," Malfoy smiled slightly. "She didn't even look anything like me, except for her eyes." He took a sip of his cooling coffee. "I did wonder, though, nine years ago... I wondered if she went to Hogwarts."

"Did you tell anybody about her?"

"Just Pansy and my parents."

"Not the Ministry?"

"I told the Ministry I switched sides because I didn't think Voldemort was a good leader, which was true. That was all they needed to know."

"It wasn't the whole story though, was it? Your defection looked a lot like opportunism, wanting to be on the winning side. They didn't trust you as much as they could have. They only really used you when they were desperate. Maybe if you'd told them the reason you came over, you would've been entrusted with bigger assignments; you might have been able to help more than you did."

"Or maybe they wouldn't have believed a word of it without actually seeing the girl. Maybe they would've led the Death Eaters straight to where she and her mother were hiding - neither side was particularly good at keeping secrets."

"You don't know that."

"I know that I gave the Ministry information they needed. I helped them in their damned dirty little war, even though I didn't give a toss about Muggles or Muggle-borns and wanted them out of our world. And I lost everything that ever meant anything to me in the process." He put his spoon down and stood, fixing Harry with a cold glare. "And frankly, I don't give a damn any more what the Ministry thinks or what they'll do. Or what you'll do. Let me know when you make up your mind about this. What's that stupid saying, don't do the crime if you can't do the time? I did the crime. I'll do the time, if I have to. Right now, I'm going home."

8888888888

"So what the hell do I do now?"

Celsus was motionless in deep thought, as he had been during Harry's entire recitation of the events of the past few weeks.

"Celsus, what should I do?"

"I don't know."

"I - it, it doesn't matter that Zabini admitted Malfoy was drunk that night. He may have killed that boy. And he helped to torture all of them. And he doesn't even feel any remorse for what he did."

"You don't know that," Celsus said quietly.

"He said-"

"He said that he wasn't going to tell you the kind of sad story you wanted to hear in order to get your pity."

"You're defending him?"

Celsus shook his head. "I'm not. He's guilty, and you're right, the fact that he was drunk doesn't change that. I just don't think that a show of remorse or lack thereof should be counted for or against him."

"Should I tell the Ministry? Or the Muggle police?"

"What would that gain?"

"It's not a question of what it would gain. It's a question of doing what's right."

"For whom? He's right, you know, that the Muggle police won't care. And their families won't gain anything from it. Their families buried them thinking they died in a car accident."

"Don't you think they deserve to know what really happened?" Harry asked.

"That their children died in a war nobody knew about, as a result of curses they won't even believe in? Listen to yourself, Harry."

Harry frowned at Celsus. Listen to yourself, Malfoy had said yesterday, in the same dry, mocking tone. "You think he ought to get away with it, don't you? He saved your life, he did one good and noble thing in his life and paid for it, so he should be given a free pass for everything else. Is there anything he could do that would make you drop this hero-worship of yours?"

"Allow me to point out that I didn't say he ought to get away with anything, and I'm not sure he should," Celsus said evenly.

"Do you think he should he go to Azkaban?"

"I don't know." Celsus steepled his fingers together. "What purpose would be served if he did?"

"Justice."

"Maybe."

"And if he doesn't, he'll have got away with torturing children just because he was drunk and feeling sorry for himself, and because I feel bad about taking him away from the life he's got now."

"Maybe." Celsus started to pick at his steak and kidney pie.

"Where's the justice in that? So what if he's starting a family - that's something those children never got to do, because thanks to him and Zabini, they didn't get to grow up." Harry's mouth twisted in disgust. "Zabini said he'd moved on and left the 'unpleasantness' behind him. And so has Malfoy, apparently. What about the people who never got the chance to do it themselves?"

"This isn't really about Malfoy getting on with his life," Celsus said brusquely. "Or Zabini doing the same, for that matter. It's about you."

"What?"

"They moved on. A lot of people did. Not you."

"What are you-"

"For god's sake, Harry. Grow up. It's been fifteen years. Don't you think that's long enough to hang on to the past? No matter what happened to any of us, no matter what friendships were lost or destroyed by death or the war or whatever, it all happened fifteen years ago. It's time to let it go."

"I have let it go-"

"Look around you. For once, look at yourself and the choices you've made. Look at this bloody cafeteria and look at your office and your lovely flat and ask yourself why in hell you're still doing what you're doing. Why you're still the great and exalted Harry Potter, doing what everybody expects you to do. Why you're still punishing yourself. Why you can't seem to get a life and grow up." He tossed down his fork impatiently. "Look around you. Malfoy's having a child. Longbottom's married, with three children. Hannah-"

"I've never wanted children-"

"That's not all I mean by growing up, and you know it. Emma Sprout's never married or had children either, but she's got friends and a purpose to her life and, and hope, and a place where she belongs - and you don't. Except within other people's expectations."

Celsus leaned forward intently. "And maybe you should think about all of that, before presuming to decide anything about Draco Malfoy's life. If you're going to condemn him, bloody well do it for the right reasons, and not because you're angry at him for doing what you've never been able to do." He glared at Harry. "You've spied on him, investigated his past without his knowledge or consent, told him you just wanted to 'fill in the blanks on his files' and never let him know that you were actually trying to determine whether or not he should be allowed to keep the life he's got. You've used every advantage you have to manipulate a disabled man, just because you wanted to and just because you could."

"That's not fair-"

"And you probably got quite a thrill, whether you admit it to yourself or not, at him being so helpless, with his fate in your hands, after all he did to you when you were children. So tell me, who's the Slytherin now, Harry?"

Harry stared at Celsus, his mouth slightly open in shock.

"Finish your lunch," Celsus said curtly. He picked up his fork and started eating his pie, ignoring Harry for a few minutes. Then he glanced at him impatiently. "You've got to review for a meeting in Velleywold with the leprechaun committee tonight, don't you? Mustn't show up unprepared for that."

Harry glanced down at his rather unappetizing curry, his mind spinning. No, he literally couldn't quite stomach it right now.

He took a deep breath. "Celsus?"

"What?"

"I didn't tell you everything Andrew Zabini said to me."

8888888888

"I'm dropping the investigation into what happened with the three Muggles," Harry said without preamble three days later. They'd barely sat down at the café. Malfoy looked startled.

"What?"

"I won't follow it any further. You... you've paid enough for what you did. More than enough. And those children... nothing will bring them back, or give them justice. All that'll happen is that you'll lose even more, and so will your family."

Malfoy stared at him blankly. "Just like that? You're dropping it?"

"Yeah."

"You believed me?"

"Not entirely. I went back and looked through your financial records." Malfoy half-smiled at him with a bemused expression, as though approving of the fact that Harry had mistrusted him enough to verify his story. "I found the money you sent to a Muggle woman named Jennifer Kalle. There's no record of her death, by the way. I couldn't find any other records of her-"

"She was supposed to run and hide herself and - and her child."

"Your daughter Sharon," Harry said gently. He answered Malfoy's unspoken question. "I talked to Pansy. She confirmed everything. Even knew their names."

"So that's it?"

"Yeah, that's it. Your file is closed."

Malfoy let out his breath, leaned his elbows on the table and rested his head on his hands. Harry noted the slight tremor in his hands, the way his whole body seemed to relax from the taut tension Harry had noted in him at The Book Cellar today, even before Malfoy had seen him.

Malfoy finally raised his head. "Thank you," he said, his voice only slightly unsteady.

"You're welcome."

"What - I mean, why-"

"Celsus Green. He... he pointed out a few things I needed to think about. So I thought about them."

Malfoy was slowly regaining his equilibrium, and Harry wondered briefly what the last few days had been like for him, not knowing what Harry would do. Not knowing whether everything he cared about would be snatched away from him again.

Harry fiddled with his coffee cup for a moment, then blurted out, "I, I brought you pictures."

"What?"

"You said you left with nothing. Did you have any pictures? Of your family, your friends?"

"Er - no."

"Do you want them?"

Malfoy was staring at him, utterly off-balance, as Harry placed an envelope on the table. "I'm, I'm sorry, it honestly didn't occur to me to bring any before. And I'd been looking through files on your activities with the Death Eaters, so I'd seen plenty of pictures of the people you knew. It never occurred to me that you might not have any of your own."

Malfoy slowly reached for the envelope, taking out the dozen or so pictures Harry had had copied. His eyes fell upon the first picture and he looked upon his mother's face for the first time in fifteen years, and his breath caught. He gazed at the picture for a few moments, an unreadable expression on his face, then he smiled slightly and slid the rest back into the envelope and tucked the envelope into his pocket.

"Thank you. Again."

"Malfoy... there's something else." Harry quickly put out his hand as Malfoy tensed up automatically. "No, it's nothing bad, trust me. It's - it's good, actually."

"What?"

"You know I talked to Zabini. He told me everything that happened, laughed at me because he thought you and everybody else who had anything to do with the Muggle murders was dead, and there was nothing I could do about any of it." Harry took a deep breath. "And then he said it was too bad you had left our world or killed yourself or whatever, instead of staying a few years longer."

Malfoy frowned. "Why?"

"You weren't the only one to lose your magic, you know the Death Eaters were using Enmagio on a lot of people." Malfoy nodded. "Well, not all of the survivors were content to live as Squibs. Some of the wealthier ones and their families set a group of people to find a counter-spell."

"There is no counter-spell."

"There wasn't. It's been fifteen years. They made one."

Malfoy stared at him.

"You could come back, Malfoy. You could have magic agai-"

"No."

Harry stopped, unprepared for the vehement tone in Malfoy's voice. "...no?"

"No."

"But-"

"Look, I don't think we have anything to discuss. Thanks for - for what you did, and for the pictures, but I, I have to get back to the store." He stood up quickly.

"What? Wait-"

"No, I-"

"Look, I know this is a lot to-"

"Do you mind?" Malfoy said between gritted teeth. "Some of us have to work for a living here. I haven't been much use at the store the last few days, I've got to get caught up." He started towards the door.

Harry gaped at him, utterly thrown by the lightning-fast change in Malfoy's demeanor. "Er... fine. But think about it. I'm, I'm done at Velleywold, but I can come back same time, next week-"

"No, don't bother," Malfoy tossed over his shoulder, and the café door swung shut behind him.

8888888888

Harry's gossip weed was swaying softly to the sounds of the WWN drama program, which featured excerpts from Macbeth, The Crucible, and Three Sovereigns For Sarah. All Muggle plays, with witchcraft or witches as the subjects or as major players.

I danced for the Devil; I saw him, I wrote in his book 1

The weed's butter-yellow had deepened to a rich tawny gold, and it was giving off a faint smell of cinnamon, radiating happiness while WWN droned on about witches who weren't really witches. Muggle imagination couldn't hold a candle to the reality of witchcraft, good or bad: gossip weeds, the enchanted sunset sky that cast its bright colours over Harry's flat, Quidditch...

Who would willingly pass all of that up? For a bookstore and football and computers? Not to mention putting up with disdainful wealthy customers and brainless superiors?

Three sovereigns, one for each golden life lost 2

Well... somebody who was punishing himself might.

Harry's mind had replayed for him, over and over, Malfoy's mocking "What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry for what I did? That I was violently ill afterwards, or, or that I cried every night for years?" But there had to be a reason Malfoy had fallen so far down after the war. A reason beyond just feeling sorry for himself for losing his magic or family or friends or social position.

Although, now that Harry thought about it, all of that would be enough to make a lot of people fall a lot farther than Malfoy had.

But maybe Malfoy had also been dealing with deep guilt. For the death of a daughter he'd never known, a family he'd betrayed, ideals that had failed him, as well as those "poor, poor children dying in pain and scared senseless" and the rest of his victims. And maybe after the worst of his guilt was expiated by prison and addiction, he'd decided that the Muggle world was a fitting life-long punishment.

What had he said? "I did the crime, I'll do the time," and he really seemed to mean it. Maybe having that potential short-term sentence lifted, and almost immediately being given the chance to lift the life sentence he'd become resigned to, had been too much to take in all at once.

In which case, he probably just needed time to think it over. The time that Harry had taken, after talking to Celsus. Time to think, not just about the undeniable horror of what Malfoy had done, but about the mitigating factors in play at the time. Pain, loss, grief, drug addiction, alcohol, and essentially being held captive by Andrew Zabini. Not excuses, certainly, but definitely food for thought. Because in the same situation, what would anybody do?

You are God's instrument put in our hands to discover the devil's agents among us 3

"If you're going to condemn him, bloody well do it for the right reasons, and not because you're angry at him for doing what you've never been able to do," Celsus had said, and he'd been right about the first part of that, at least. He had to condemn or forgive Malfoy for the right reasons. And the fact that so many others were dead or still suffering, and Malfoy was not, was just not good enough.

As for condemning him because he was angry at Malfoy for moving on, when Harry himself hadn't... well. Celsus was a wise man, but he didn't know everything. Harry looked around his comfortable, spacious living room, with its warm fireplace and enchanted ceiling. Not a bad place. He doubted Malfoy's flat could compare in any way. Not likely, on the salary of a bookstore clerk and a waitress. How this qualified as "not moving on" and "punishing" himself, Harry had no idea.

Harry idly waved his wand to change the display on his ceiling to a starry sky, grimly dismissing Celsus' words. He wasn't punishing himself. Living up to expectations was not punishing himself. Besides, Malfoy had reasons to punish himself. Harry didn't.

There be no blush about my name 4, said the WWN, and the gossip weed swayed in time with the words.

Harry had attended, of course, those lectures on mental health that the Ministry had sponsored right after the war. Talking about psychological maladies and urging that people "look into themselves to heal their wounds of war" - tripe, as Malfoy had labelled that kind of thing. He'd dutifully listened to the lectures on Survivor Guilt. Accepted that the way he felt was normal and natural, and that many other survivors felt that way too. Of course they did; there was no shortage of people to mourn. An endless array of Ginny Weasleys and Ron Weasleys and Seamus Finnigans and Vincent Crabbes and Draco Malfoys. People who were dead, imprisoned, missing, insane, maimed. Reaching out to those who'd escaped more or less unscathed and weighing them down with guilt and a sense of undeserved good fortune.

If you can look into the seeds of time/And say which grain will grow and which will not/Speak then to me 5

So Harry had done what he could to deal with it. Dutifully taken cheering potions and listened to a few motivational speeches that would've made his gossip weed quite happy if he'd had it at the time. And he'd made sure he lived his life in a way that would minimize his survivor guilt. Because the best way to make other's sacrifices not be in vain was to not squander the life they'd bought for him.

He hadn't squandered it. He had done good and important things with his life. He might not enjoy his job all that much, but he did it because it needed to be done and he needed to feel useful, to know that he was doing the right thing. What was it Celsus had said about Emma? That she had a purpose to her life and a place where she belonged? Well, so did Harry.

It was just too bad that Celsus couldn't see that. Celsus probably thought Harry should surround himself with friends, or quit his job, or get married and start a family, or spend some time "healing old wounds". Contacting Molly Weasley, for instance. Or Remus Lupin, or Hermione Granger. All things he had no time or need to do.

I have bought/Golden opinions from all sorts of people 6

Celsus could bloody well keep his opinions to himself, Harry thought impatiently, and turned the WWN off.

8888888888

Malfoy was deep in conversation with a customer in the Mystery section when Harry walked into The Book Cellar, but he acknowledged Harry's entrance with a quick smile and an 'I'll be with you in five minutes' gesture. Harry perused the shelves, his interest caught by the bizarre book covers in the Music section.

"Ted, I'm going on break, right? Cover?" Malfoy said, and was answered by a grunt from a clerk Harry couldn't see. He turned as Malfoy walked towards him, gesturing for them to go to the café.

"Dave, where's the invoice for the Penguin shipment?" asked a harried-looking woman. "They forgot to-"

"I cleared it already; it's all in the log."

"Oh god thank you. Hello," the woman said to Harry, "Are you Dave's brother-in-law-to-be, then?"

"No," Malfoy chuckled, "Alan came by already today, you missed him again. This is Potter, we went to school together."

"You went to school?" she teased Malfoy, and he nodded.

"Very exclusive private boarding school," he said seriously, and she laughed. Harry smiled, amused, as they left the store.

"Jason, cappuccino please?" Malfoy called out, and Harry nodded for the same.

"So, did you think about it?" he finally asked as they sat down.

"Yeah."

"And?"

"My answer's the same, Potter. It's not going to change."

"What?" Harry was honestly floored.

"I've worked for fifteen years to make a life for myself here," Malfoy said simply. "This is where I belong."

"This? You belong here? You're happy to sweep the store and bring in boxes and talk about young adult novels?"

Malfoy smiled, amused and not offended in the slightest. "You really don't understand, do you?"

"Understand what? You could-"

"The wizarding world was an escape for you, from your miserable Muggle childhood. That's what the Muggle world is to me."

"Thisis an escape?"

"Yeah."

Harry stared at him.

"I didn't need a week to think about it." Harry opened his mouth and Malfoy cut him off. "Don't worry, I did think about it, but I really didn't need to."

"But you, you... how can you say you prefer this? You were... you were a Malfoy, you had house elves and the world at your feet-"

"Oh, has Malfoy Manor been rebuilt in my absence? Because last I saw, it was an impressive pile of rubble with rather a lot of Ministry types wondering how they were going to hide it from the Muggles in the morning."

"No, but-"

"And even if it had been rebuilt, I wouldn't want to go back to it."

"But you could be - you don't have to - look, you know I'm at the Ministry? I'm actually Deputy Minister, Malfoy. And Hermione Granger ended up Professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts. Padma Patil is an Auror. Millicent Bulstrode-"

"What's Ron Weasley doing these days, Potter?" Malfoy asked quietly.

Harry fell silent.

"And Vincent Crabbe? And-"

"Yes, I get the point, thank you."

"And what would I go back to? A world where most of my friends and family died or ended up in disgrace? Why would I want to do that?"

Harry opened his mouth to speak, only to find he had nothing to say.

"And where would that leave Jilly? You can't give her magic, can you?"

"No. But she-"

"She'd have to live as a Squib. She deserves better than that."

"You would give up the chance of getting your magic back, for her?"

"Not just for her. For me too." Harry opened his mouth and Malfoy continued. "Even if it was just for her, she's worth it." Harry frowned. "Maybe you can't understand that because you've never been married-"

"I was. I'm not any more."

Malfoy frowned, thrown off-balance. "You were?"

"Yeah."

"Anyone I know?"

Harry took a deep breath, wishing that for once that he could think about her without bitterness and regret. "Hermione Granger."

Malfoy's eyes widened. "Granger? Good god."

"Yeah."

"I always thought she and Weasley-"

"Well, no."

"No, I suppose not," Malfoy said. "When - how long were-"

"Three years, off and on, around the end of the war."

"What... what happened?"

Harry was abruptly reminded of Pansy Parkinson's "We hadn't realized high school romances should be left in high school," and wished it had been that simple for himself and Hermione. He shrugged. "Who knows," he said shortly. "War. Peace. Ghosts. It doesn't matter."

"Do you still see her?"

"No. Divorce doesn't lend itself to friendship after the fact."

"But she was one of your closest friends."

"I take it you've never been divorced."

"No."

"Pray to keep it that way," Harry said grimly, then cleared his throat and looked away, unwilling to see the naked pity on Malfoy's face. "What... what will you do if your child is magical?"

"Not likely," Malfoy said. "That curse was supposed to get to your blood; that was part of the horror of it for the precious purebloods, wasn't it?"

"But what if they are? Wizards are born to Muggles sometimes; what would you do?"

"Send them to Hogwarts, I suppose."

"And you would still stay here?"

"Yeah, I would."

"Malfoy-"

"That's not my name any more."

"Look-"

"My name is David Bergsen. That's who I am, it's who I've been for fifteen years. I work at a book store, and I live in a small flat with my girlfriend Jilly, and in my spare time I play football and read and babysit my niece and nephews. And Jilly and I are getting married and starting a family. And that's allgood, Potter. It's a hell of a lot better than anything I ever had as Draco Malfoy."

"So you're just going to forget the first twenty-three years of your life?"

"I haven't forgotten my past. I can't forget - if nothing else, I see my tattoos every day of my life. But it's who I was, not who I am."

Harry was struck by the fact that he and Malfoy were probably the only two people who knew what those tattoos meant. To the world, they could be seen as mementos of a wild youth. Or perhaps the efforts of a young inmate trying to project toughness for self-preservation behind bars. Only Harry could see them as mute memorials to a man who had died, etched onto the skin of the man who'd taken his place.

A man who seemed quite content to have taken his place. Who actually seemed to like it here.

He sat back and sighed, giving in. "I can't believe you're-"

"Can't believe I'm rejecting your efforts to rescue me from this dismal life of mine?" Malfoy shook his head. "I think of the two of us, I'm not the one who needs rescuing the most."

Harry dropped his eyes and was silent for a long time. "Maybe."

"Did Celsus have anything to say about that?" Malfoy asked after a small pause.

"Yeah, actually, he did," Harry replied, a little startled by Malfoy's unexpected insight.

"Celsus never gave much advice," Malfoy said, almost gently, "but when he did, it was almost always a very good idea to at least think about it."

Harry nodded, and silence settled between them again.

"I guess there's not much else to say, then," Harry said finally.

"Not really."

Harry stood up and paid for both their coffees, murmuring, "No, it's on me," and they headed out of the café.

"Malf - er, Bergsen, I suppose," he said, stopping at the door.

Malfoy grinned in appreciation of his attempt at the name. "What?"

"Your hair and your eyes."

"Yeah?"

"How do you keep them that colour? Did somebody spell them for you before you left?"

Malfoy chuckled wryly. "I wish."

"So how-"

"It's not brain surgery, Potter, just contacts and colour."

"For fifteen years?"

"More like twelve, but yeah."

"Jilly knows?" Harry asked.

"Jilly knows I've got a sordid past. Probably figures there's a reason for it."

"I could spell them to stay that colour."

Malfoy smiled at him, amused. "Tell me how I'd explain that to Jilly."

"I suppose you couldn't, not with the eyes. But a lot of people's hair gets darker as they age."

Malfoy started to shake his head, then cocked his head to the side and looked at him. "All right, yeah."

"Really?"

"I've got nothing against magic. And it would save a few euros and a bit of time in the morning, hiding the roots, so why not?"

Harry glanced around the café. Nobody around. He slipped out his wand. He felt an odd pang of regret over what he was about to do, thinking of Malfoy's distinctive near-white hair. On both him and his father, it made them stand out in any crowd. It seemed so wrong to get rid of that forever, in favour of this nondescript mousy brown. But Malfoy was looking at him expectantly, not seeming to have any second thoughts about it. "Capilluscoloro," he said quickly, and tucked his wand away again.

Malfoy looked at him quizzically. "That's it?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"You just happen to know that spell off the top of your head?"

"I looked it up," Harry admitted. "I thought... I honestly thought you'd want to come back. But I figured, just in case..."

"Thanks." Malfoy touched his hair briefly, smiled slightly. "Doesn't feel any different."

"That's the point."

"Yeah." He opened the Book Cellar door. "I have to get back to-"

"Yeah, back to work, I know," Harry nodded, and then Malfoy hesitated for a moment, gazing at him thoughtfully.

"Potter?"

"Yeah?"

"Think about whatever it was Celsus said to you."

"Yeah. I will."

"And... thanks."

"You're welcome. I'll see you around."

"Yeah. I'll be here," Malfoy grinned and went into the bookstore. Harry stood thinking for a while, then turned back to Velleywold.

David Bergsen had found where he belonged. Maybe it was high time for Harry to do the same.

He stepped into the floo and headed for home.

- end