Chapter 5: The Morning After
The first pale threads of dawn found her in the kitchen, already dressed in a sharp, charcoal-gray trouser suit, her hair in its impeccable bun. The espresso machine hissed a steady rhythm. The flat smelled of ground beans and the faint, lingering antiseptic from the night before.
She hadn’t slept. She had catalogued, instead. The evidence bag on her desk. The sequence of events, rehearsed and refined. The precise wording for her initial report. Control was a liturgy, and she performed it with devotion.
A soft shuffle of fabric made her turn.
Draco stood in the doorway of the living room, already dressed in the clothes she’d transfigured for him last night—simple black trousers and a navy jumper that almost fit. He’d made the sofa bed, the blankets folded into a neat, military square. He looked hollowed out, the shadows under his eyes pronounced, but clean. Awake. He’d been awake a while.
“I heard you moving,” he said, his voice gravelly with disuse. “Thought you might have changed your mind and called the Aurors in the night.”
“The thought occurred,” she replied evenly, turning back to pour the espresso into two small cups. “But a deal’s a deal. Black, no sugar.”
She slid his cup across the island counter towards him. He approached, not with his usual languid grace, but with the careful movements of someone assessing damage. He took the cup, his fingers brushing hers. A static charge, sharp and fleeting.
They stood in the silence, drinking. The city outside was a distant, growing murmur.
“We need a strategy for today,” she began, her tone all business. “Harry will be direct. Robards, the Head of the Auror Office, will be worse. He’s old-guard. Suspicious of everything that smells of internal Ministry politics. He’ll see your cooperation as a gambit, not a confession.”
“Let him.” Draco stared into his cup. “I’m not asking for a pardon. I’m providing proof.”
“It’s not that simple. Your credibility is the foundation of the proof. If they decide you’re orchestrating a coup to seize control of the estate by having your father incarcerated, it all falls apart. They’ll tie it up in the Wizengamot for years.”
He looked up, a flicker of the old impatience in his eyes. “What do you suggest? A public apology? A tearful interview with the Prophet? ‘Former Death Eater Sees the Error of His Ways, Hopes for Hugs’?”
“I suggest you stop talking like a teenager who’s been slighted and start thinking like the man who walked into that repository.” Her voice was a whip-crack. It echoed in the tidy kitchen. “You wanted this. You wanted the burn. So now you stand in the fire and you don’t flinch. You answer their questions without sarcasm. You acknowledge your past without using it as a shield. You make them believe the evidence, not you.”
He held her gaze, his jaw tight. The air between them thickened, charged with the memory of his blood on her hands, her voice in the dark telling him to choose. The shared, terrible intimacy of collapse.
His eyes dropped, just for a second, to her mouth. Then to the loose curl that had escaped her bun and coiled against her neck. He set his cup down with a quiet click.
His hand came up, not fast, but with a deliberate slowness that gave her every opportunity to move away. His fingers, long and pale, brushed the stray curl. The intent was clear, almost tender—to tuck it back behind her ear, to neaten the one flaw in her ordered presentation.
Her whole body recoiled. It was instinctual, visceral. She jerked back as if scalded, her spine hitting the edge of the counter behind her.
“Don’t.” The word came out harder, colder than she’d intended. A fortress gate slamming down.
His hand froze in the air between them. All expression drained from his face, leaving it a blank, polite mask. He lowered his hand slowly, deliberately, to his side.
“Of course,” he said. The two words were flat, perfectly calibrated. They were the voice he’d use with a Ministry clerk who’d overstepped. “My apologies. I misunderstood the… collateral.”
“You didn’t misunderstand anything.” She straightened her jacket, a useless, smoothing gesture. “This isn’t finished. None of it is. My professional judgment is currently the only thing standing between you and a holding cell in Azkaban pending trial. If we walk into the Ministry with anything… ambiguous… between us, that judgment becomes compromised. They will use it to discredit us both. Do you understand?”
“I understand transactional integrity, Granger. It was the basis of my childhood.” He picked up his cup again, but didn’t drink. He looked out the window at the paling sky. “No personal attachments until the business is concluded. Consider the lesson learned.”
The distance that yawned between them then was physical, a chasm carved in the polished oak floor. The fragile, silent understanding from the night—the shared looks in the greenhouse, the raw confession in her entryway—withered under the fluorescent kitchen light. What remained was a clinical partnership, brittle and sharp-edged.
They finished their tea in a silence that was no longer quiet, but loud with everything unsaid.
A sudden, brilliant silver light flared in the center of the living room. It resolved into a majestic, spectral stag that paused, turning its great head toward the kitchen. Harry’s voice, tense and official, echoed from its mouth.
“Hermione. Malfoy. Report to my office at the Ministry. Immediately. Use the private entrance in Atrium Level Two. Do not stop. Do not speak to anyone. Robards is here.”
The Patronus dissolved into fading mist.
“Showtime,” Draco murmured. He vanished his cup with a flick of his wrist, a casual display of wandless magic she hadn’t known he possessed.
Hermione took a steadying breath. She grabbed her beaded bag, already packed with the shrunken evidence, and her winter cloak. “We’ll Apparate separately. I’ll go first. Wait two minutes, then follow the coordinates I gave you last night. They’ll bring you to the private foyer. Someone will meet you.”
“A guard.”
“An escort,” she corrected, though it was the same thing.
He just nodded.
She didn’t look at him again. She turned on the spot, the familiar squeeze of Apparition gripping her, and vanished from the calm, lavender-scented order of her flat.
The private foyer on Level Two was a small, windowless room of dark stone, lit by glowing orbs. A young, serious-looking Auror she recognized vaguely was waiting. He startled when she appeared.
“Minister Granger. Head Auror Potter is expecting you. He said there would be—”
“One more. He’s arriving imminently. Please ensure he is brought directly up.” Her heels clicked decisively on the flagstones as she swept past him toward the dedicated lift. The golden grilles slid shut, enclosing her in silent, rapid ascent.
Her reflection in the polished brass was a stranger: pale, severe, utterly in command. The curl was still loose. She pinned it back with a vicious twist, her fingers trembling only slightly.
Harry’s office was a controlled tumult. Robards, a grizzled wizard with a rust-colored mustache, was planted in front of Harry’s desk, his voice a low growl. Two other senior Aurors stood by the windows. The ledgers were laid out on a long table, already being examined by a witch from Magical Law Enforcement.
“—highly irregular, Potter! Sheltering a material witness in a personal residence? This isn’t a weekend at the Burrow!”
“The witness was actively bleeding and his primary residence was an active conflict zone, sir,” Harry said, his voice calm but with an underlying steel. He saw Hermione in the doorway. “Here’s Minister Granger now. She can elaborate.”
All eyes turned to her. Robards’s were like flint.
“Elaborate,” he demanded.
Hermione walked in, placing her beaded bag on Harry’s desk with a purposeful thud. “The situation last night was volatile. Lucius Malfoy’s whereabouts were unknown, the manor’s wards were hostile and unpredictable. Mr. Malfoy required immediate medical attention and was in a state of magical and physical shock following his direct role in triggering the repository’s containment failure. Moving him to a secure Ministry location at that hour risked interception and exacerbated his vulnerability as a witness. My flat has been under standard Ministry-grade protective enchantments for years. It was the most secure, expedient location.”
“He’s a Malfoy, not a wounded Kneazle,” Robards snapped. “His vulnerability is a matter for Auror custody.”
“His safety is a matter for this investigation,” Hermione countered, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. “If Lucius had agents watching the Ministry, his son would be dead before sunrise. My primary concern was preserving the witness and the evidence. Both are here, intact. The method of preservation is irrelevant.”
Robards’s mustache twitched. He hated her logic. She could see it. Before he could retort, a knock sounded at the door.
The young Auror entered, with Draco behind him.
The room’s atmosphere shifted, hardened. Draco stood just inside the threshold, his hands loose at his sides. He’d conjured a proper overcoat, dark and elegant, over the transfigured clothes. He looked every inch the aristocratic scion, only the pallor and the careful rigidity of his injured shoulder betraying the night’s toll. His eyes swept the room, lingering on no one, landing finally on Hermione. There was nothing in his gaze. No warmth, no shared secret. It was the look he’d give a piece of furniture.
“Mr. Malfoy,” Harry said, his tone carefully neutral. “Thank you for coming. Please, sit.”
Draco took the indicated chair, a stiff-backed thing in the center of the room. He didn’t lean back.
“We’ll begin with your account of last night’s events,” Robards said, stepping forward, taking control. “From the beginning. Leave nothing out.”
Draco began to speak. His voice was a monotone, devoid of inflection. He described discovering the ledgers in a hidden compartment of the library, his growing suspicion of their contents, his decision to contact the Ministry official whose department had the broadest regulatory reach. He detailed the meeting in the gatehouse, the descent into the repository, the moment Lucius appeared. He recounted the duel with chilling, technical precision—the curses cast, the deflection that tore into his shoulder, Hermione’s retrieval of the books.
Then he reached the plinth. The blood lock.
“The repository’s core was keyed to the Malfoy bloodline. A failsafe. My father activated it in his attempt to seal the chamber. I intervened. My blood on the mechanism caused a… conflict in the magical matrix. It became unstable. The resulting backflow of energy targeted the room’s physical structure. We escaped through a secondary passage moments before the collapse.”
It was a masterful performance. He offered the truth, but shaped it. He made himself an agent within the chaos, not just its victim. He presented his blood as a tool of disruption, not an accident. He never mentioned his hesitation, his fear. He never looked at Hermione.
Robards interrogated him for an hour. The questions were sharp, repetitive, designed to catch him in a lie. Draco parried each one with flat, consistent answers. He admitted to knowing of the repository’s existence for years. He admitted to suspecting its misuse. He did not claim noble motives; he cited a desire to avoid the “administrative inconvenience” of the Ministry seizing the entire estate, which he stood to inherit.
It was brilliantly, cynically believable.
Hermione watched, her stomach a knot of cold admiration. This was the man Slytherin House had forged. This was the survivor. He was giving them exactly what they needed, and burying everything else so deep even a Legilimens might miss it.
Finally, Robards leaned back, scowling. He wasn’t satisfied, but he couldn’t find a crack. “You’ll remain in Ministry custody until the initial hearing. Given the… unusual circumstances, and Minister Granger’s assessment, you’ll be held in a secure private suite, not the general cells. You will be under guard at all times. You will have no visitors outside approved Ministry personnel. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly,” Draco said.
“Potter, you’ll arrange it. Granger,” Robards turned his scowl on her. “I want your full written report, with cross-references to every artifact log, on my desk by end of day. And for Merlin’s sake, prepare a press statement. The Prophet’s already sniffing. They know something happened at the manor.”
He stalked out, the other Aurors following.
The room exhaled. The witch from Magical Law Enforcement gathered the ledgers and left with a nod. Soon, it was just Harry, Hermione, and Draco, still sitting rigidly in the chair.
Harry ran a hand through his already-messy hair. “That went about as well as it could have.” He looked at Draco, his expression unreadable. “Your story held. It’s not pretty, but it’s solid. It gives us what we need to move on Lucius.”
Draco stood. “The suite?”
“I’ll take you there.” Harry gestured to the door. “Hermione, I’ll be back in twenty. We need to talk about the statement.”
She nodded, unable to speak past the tightness in her throat.
Draco moved toward the door. As he passed her, he paused. Not looking at her, he spoke, his voice so low only she could hear.
“Collateral remains secure, Minister.”
Then he was gone, following Harry out into the corridor, leaving her alone in the sudden, hollow quiet of the office.
The taste in her mouth was bitter. Not of coffee, but of ashes. She had gotten exactly what she wanted. A clean, professional line. A viable witness. A path to justice.
She walked to the window, looking out over the misty London skyline. Somewhere below, in the heart of the building, he was being locked away in a gilded cage of the Ministry’s making. A transaction, completed.
Her hand rose, almost of its own accord, and touched the spot behind her ear where his fingers had brushed. The ghost of the touch lingered, a warm imprint against her cold skin.
The fortress was intact. The business was proceeding. And she had never felt more violently, desperately compromised.
The rain began a quiet tap-tap against the windowpane, smearing the distant lights of London into watery streaks. She stood there until the sound of Harry’s footsteps returning broke the silence. He closed the door softly, leaning back against it with a long, weary sigh.
“Well, that’s done. He’s in the suite on level six. Two guards, but it’s decent. Has a window, at least.” Harry pushed off the door and walked to his sideboard, pouring two glasses of water. He handed one to her. “You look like hell.”
“Thank you, Harry. Always the flatterer.” She took the glass but didn’t drink. The water was too cold in her hand.
“I mean it. You’re pale. And you’ve got that look.” He sipped his water, watching her over the rim. “The ‘I’ve cross-referenced thirteen obscure legal precedents and am about to set someone’s world on fire’ look. But tighter. Angrier.”
“It’s been a long twenty-four hours.” She finally took a drink. The water did nothing to wash the ashen taste away.
“It’s not the hours.” He set his glass down with a definitive click. “It’s him. It’s Malfoy. What happened in that greenhouse, Hermione? Really happened.”
She turned from the window. “You read his statement. You saw the wound.”
“I saw a lot of things. I saw a man who walked into a trap to bring down his own father. I also saw a man who can’t stop looking at you when you’re not looking back.” Harry’s voice was gentle, devoid of judgment, which somehow made it worse. “And I saw you flinch when Robards mentioned his name.”
A jolt of pure, undiluted fear shot through her. She schooled her features immediately, but Harry had always seen too much. “My professional standing is tied to his credibility. Any reaction is rooted in that. You know how this works.”
“I know how you work. You compartmentalize. You build walls. It’s what makes you brilliant.” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “But these walls have cracks. I can see them. He can probably see them, too.”
“This is not a conversation we need to have.” Her voice was final, ministerial.
“Isn’t it?” He challenged softly. “He’s not a case file, Hermione. He’s a person. A deeply messed-up, complicated person who just handed us everything we need on a silver platter while bleeding out on your kitchen floor. You brought him into your flat. Your sanctuary. Why?”
The memory assaulted her: Draco, white-faced against her cushions, the stark red bloom on his shirt, the way his eyes held hers in the dim hallway light, desperate and defiant. The weight of him as she helped him sit. The smell of blood and rain and old magic.
“He was dying, Harry,” she said, the words leaving her in a rush. “The wound was cursed. Slow, but thorough. He’d tried to patch it himself in the greenhouse, but it was futile. He knew it. When we apparated, he just… leaned into me. Like he was too tired to hold himself up anymore.”
She hadn’t meant to say that last part. Harry’s eyes softened.
“So you fixed him.”
“I stabilized him. There’s a difference.” She swallowed. “And then we sat in the quiet. And he didn’t say ‘thank you.’ He didn’t make some snide remark. He just said, ‘It’s in the second ledger. The transactions with the Bulgarian syndicate.’ As if that was the only important thing left in the world.”
Harry was quiet for a moment. “He’s fixated on the evidence. On making it count.”
“He’s fixated on the burn,” she corrected, echoing her own words from the kitchen. “On atoning through immolation. It’s not redemption. It’s a slower form of suicide.”
“And you’re helping him.”
“I’m using him,” she insisted, but the statement rang hollow even to her. “The evidence is real. It’s devastating. Lucius will fall for this. That’s the objective.”
“Right.” Harry didn’t sound convinced. He picked up a stress ball from his desk, tossing it from hand to hand. “Robards wants the press statement by four. We need to frame it carefully. ‘Ministry investigation, aided by a cooperating individual with intimate knowledge of the estate.’ Vague. No names.”
“He’ll leak. Lucius will leak Draco’s name within hours to paint him as a treacherous son orchestrating a coup.”
“Probably.” Harry caught the ball. “Then we counter with the truth. We show a page of the ledger—redacted, but clearly damning. We let the evidence speak. It turns the narrative from a family spat into a major financial crime. It protects Malfoy by making him irrelevant next to the scale of the crime.”
It was a good plan. Clean. Strategic. It should have felt like a victory.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay.” Harry studied her. “Go home, Hermione. Actually home. Sleep for a few hours. I’ll draft the initial statement and send it to you for edits.”
“I have the report for Robards—”
“It can wait until tonight. You’re no good to anyone if you collapse.” He gave her a small, strained smile. “That’s an order from your anchor, not your colleague.”
She managed a nod. Gathering her bag, she felt the weight of the shrunken evidence within it, a physical anchor to the chaos. She moved toward the door.
“Hermione.”
She paused.
“Whatever this is,” Harry said, his voice low. “However it’s tangled up. Just be sure you’re the one holding the knife. Not the other way around.”
She didn’t have an answer for that. She left, the click of her heels in the empty corridor too loud, too solitary.
Her flat was exactly as she had left it: silent, polished, reeking of lavender and control. The two espresso cups were still on the island. She vanished them with a violent flick of her wand.
Sleep was impossible. Her mind replayed everything on a loop—the splintering glass of the greenhouse, the feel of his blood, hot and slick between her fingers, the hollow sound of his voice saying “collateral.” She changed out of her suit, the fabric feeling like a costume, and pulled on soft, worn joggers and an old Hogwarts sweater.
She stood in the middle of her pristine living room, utterly adrift.
The unmarked kitchen drawer seemed to pulse with a faint, magnetic energy. She walked over, pulled it open. The half-empty bottle of Ogden’s Fire Whisky sat beside a stack of burned ledger ashes. She took out the bottle, poured a finger into a clean glass, and knocked it back. The heat was a blunt, welcome shock.
She poured another.
The rain fell harder. The grey afternoon light deepened into early evening. She was on her third drink, sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa, when the charmed memo board by her front door shimmered.
A formal Ministry memo, appearing line by line in urgent gold script. L. Malfoy has granted an emergency interview to the Daily Prophet. Statement claims son Draco orchestrated repository breach to discredit him and seize assets following a dispute over inheritance. Full interview to run in morning edition.
Then, a second later, a personal memo, in Harry’s messy scrawl: He moved faster than we thought. Statement’s going out now. Stay off the floo. I’m coming over.
The glass of whisky trembled in her hand. Lucius had taken the first shot, shaping the narrative exactly as predicted. The game was accelerating.
She looked at the empty space on the sofa where Draco had lain. The quiet flat was no longer a sanctuary. It was the eye of the storm, and the walls were beginning to strain. She set the glass down, her fingers curling into her palm where the ghost of his touch still burned, and waited for the next wave to break.