Chapter Text
Brains, wit, and charm.
That’s all Draco Malfoy needed to get through a day of work at the Ministry of Magic.
He had been out of school for a few years, and the war had been over for five. He certainly had the training and experience to be an Auror. His skills in legilimency and potion-making, partnered with his quick wit and serpentine presence made him an ideal candidate for the job. Many wizards and witches who found themselves applying to be an Auror were brute, loud, and ostentatious, driven by the desire for power. Power certainly wasn’t out of the realm of desire for Draco, but his foremost desire was to be respected.
The Malfoy name was sullied by their choices, and when spoken in conversation was generally accompanied by one of three things: Voldemort’s clan of followers (unfondly known as ‘Death Eaters’), Dumbledore’s tragic death, or the fact that only evil or madness seemed to strike the family.
Alas, it is hard to earn respect when one is not trusted.
So, for now, Draco was stuck as a Junior Auror, supervised on all missions and fieldwork, usually by underqualified sods who were a few years his junior. The ministry was rebuilding after the war and in desperate need of leadership, but not desperate enough for Draco Malfoy.
He knew better to complain. It was pathetic, he recognized, to be sanctioned to a junior position, one that could be easily filled by an eager intern. In most’s eyes, it was more than he deserved.
In an effort to show the Ministry’s truest desire for blood equality after the war, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic, made a show of hiring Draco as a Junior Auror when he had applied.
Cameras poised, reporters murmuring, Kingsley had brought Draco on stage, announced his new position, and shook his hand. “You better not mess this up, boy,” Kingsley muttered through clenched teeth as they were being photographed.
It was a show, a ploy, a signal of virtue that would never amount to Draco being a real Auror, but hey, it was better than the alternatives: rotting in Azkaban like his father, rotting at home like his mother, or rotting in hell like his aunt.
As the cameras flashed and Draco’s cheeks grew tired of putting on a “I’m so happy to be here and so excited for the future of the Ministry of Magic!” smile, his eyes caught hold of another in the crowd.
The green-eyed golden boy, Harry Potter, stared back at him. He wasn’t smiling, wasn’t clapping, but he wasn’t cursing or running away either.
Draco expected anger, of course, when hired onto the same team as Saint Potter. What he didn’t expect was ambivalence.
His childhood enemy, the boy who had taken the brunt of Draco’s bullying, stared back at him with an unreadable expression. This was surprising for the boy who ‘had his mother’s eyes’; eyes that gave away every emotion before the rest of him did. After exiting the stage, Draco found himself walking towards Potter. He wasn’t sure why (a shot at redemption, curiosity, his inability to let go of the past?), but he followed his instinct nonetheless.
When he finally caught up to his soon-to-be coworker, pushing his way through the crowd of nosy reporters, he found himself at the end of a first floor hallway, next to a statue of Dumbledore that was erected after the war. Figures.
“Hey, Potter,” Draco said to grab his attention. The other man stopped midstep, took a breath, and turned around.
“What do you want, Malfoy?” he responded. His tone was one of frustration, but his eyes were still indecipherable.
Confronted by the question, Draco realized he didn’t know what he wanted. What was he even doing there? He tried to maintain a cool facade.
“Well, I…” he said after a moment of silence. “I wanted to inform you that our childhood feud will not get in the way of our work.” That was most assuredly not what Draco wanted to say, but it would have to do.
Potter smirked back with a scoff. “You won’t have to worry about me making a fool of you here for all the pain you caused me and my friends, if that’s what you mean,” he said sharply.
“I, no, that’s not what I -“ Draco’s temporary break of composure was interrupted by Harry moving closer to him.
“You’re a bastard, Malfoy, but I’m not going to jeopardize my role here, doing something that matters, for you,” he spat. “I’m an adult now. I can handle your pathetic attempt at ‘rebranding’ the Malfoy name. You and I both know your daddy’s money and reputation can’t help you now. It’s only a matter of time until you end up just like him.”
A beat passed, and Potter took a step back. Hand outstretched, he grasped Draco’s hand roughly to shake it.
“Welcome aboard, Malfoy.”
Draco stared back at him, at a loss for words.
After a few more seconds, Potter released his hand and walked away without another word.
As the crowd began to dissipate and staff began to head back to work, a group of Aurors walked by Draco, some bumping his shoulder as they went. “Out of the way, Death Eater,” one of them said, resulting in a laugh from the others.
Draco flinched ever so slightly at the name. His eyes closed for the briefest of moments as he took a silent breath.
Brains. Wit. Charm. He could do this.
….
“Crucio!” Bellatrix screeched. A writhing, vulnerable Hermione Granger lay screaming on the floor of Draco’s childhood home. He felt sick. He knew it was wrong, he knew it was evil, and he knew he was worse than Aunt Bella - his cowardice making him unable to stand for his beliefs meant, unfortunately, that he was a villain too. And a pathetic one at that.
Granger’s eyes caught his. Was she begging for help? Was she remembering him calling her a ‘Mudblood’? Was she disgusted by his cowardice, too scared to be good, too scared to be evil? Some combination of the three?
Suddenly, Lord Voldemort’s ice-cold hand gripped his shoulder. His hand was strong, and his fingers would leave an impression. “Do it, Draco. Prove your loyalty.” Voldemort’s slippery voice sent chills down Draco’s spine. He looked up, eyes meeting his father’s that were burning with rage.
“Do not ruin this, Draco,” he could almost hear his father say.
He gulped, not daring to say anything. Turning his gaze back to the girl on the ground, he was suddenly shaken. Wailing and face tear-streaked, Granger’s face had become his own. And then he was on the ground.
“You’re a disappointment, Draco, to your blood, your family, and me,” a muffled voice said to him. “Crucio!” He writhed in pain, desperately trying and failing to not show it. In a respite between Cruciatus curses, he chanced a glance at his torturer.
His own cold eyes, full of fury, stared back at him, wand pointed down at him.
Draco woke with a start. While trying to regain control of his breathing, he felt his cheeks and discovered they were wet. Thank Merlin he lived alone.
The clock on his bedside table read 6:30. At least he wouldn’t be late.
He had skipped a few doses of Dreamless Sleep, which explained the nightmare. Draco was not trying to obtain a potion addiction in addition to the long list of problems that he already had.
….
Once Draco entered the conference room where the weekly Auror meeting was being held, he took a seat near the back of the room. Never the head, never right next to the head. He knew his place. The meeting began, and he noticed that Potter was nowhere to be found. How curious.
Five minutes later, as Gawain Robards, Head Auror, was still stuck on item number one on the meeting agenda, Potter rushed in. His hair was messy, like he had just gotten out of bed, and he had bags under his eyes.
“I apologize, everyone, for my tardiness.”
“It’s quite alright Mr. Potter. We’re glad you’re here,” Robards said sincerely.
The others stared at him incredulously. The man next to Draco, the scruffy little one named Brooks, scoffed. “Wish we all got treated as well as the Chosen One over there,” he muttered.
Auror Atkinson looked over at Brooks with a smirk. “Being as spoiled as Potter gets you a leg up everywhere. Too bad we have to actually earn it.”
Draco rolled his eyes before he could stop himself. Luckily his coworkers didn’t pay him mind anyway, so no one noticed. He knew his coworkers left much to be desired- inexperienced and proud that they were - but he didn’t know they were actually idiots. Either that, or the jealousy had overtaken them. Sure, when he was a child he too had believed that Potter had been spoiled. Once he took his head out of his own arse however, he realized the countless articles about Potter’s sordid upbringing with his aunt and uncle were true. He had gotten many opportunities seemingly handed to him, but he had lost countless more. Draco had thought everyone knew that by now.
As Potter took a seat a few seats away from them, Draco knew he had heard the others but was pretending he hadn’t. His normally easy smile was much too tight on his face. It was curious, as well, how much Potter had changed since they were in school together. The old (young?) Harry Potter would have never let people talk about him, or anyone else close to him, like that. Something- the war, growing up - had changed that brash, stubborn aspect of him. Draco wasn’t sure he liked that. Sure, it was annoying, and it cost Gryffindor an enormous amount of house points over the years (which certainly didn’t bother him)- but at least that old Potter had a backbone.
Draco cursed himself for thinking like this. Who was he kidding? He knew he himself was the same, if not worse. He had never had a backbone, at least not for the right things, and now he was basically a doormat for these Ministry workers who were doing ‘charity work’ by letting him join them. Only until I can regain respect and climb the ladder to be where I should be , he thought to himself. That begged the question: was the Golden Boy doing the same thing?
“Well, since we are all here, let’s start on our agenda.” Robards’s voice brought him out of his thoughts. “First thing’s first,” Robards said with some grit to his voice. “Upon consideration of recent previous missions, we’ve decided to assign partners rather than randomized groups. The Ministry believes this will create more accountability and trust, thus sidestepping an event like Mr. Potter and Mr. Brooks’s most recent mission.”
Potter’s cheeks turned a slight shade of pink, while Brooks seemed very interested in a particular spot on the table, avoiding looking at anything else. Potter and Brooks’s last mission had happened the week prior. Sent to retrieve a rogue Death Eater (something the Aurors had been doing quite a lot of since the war had ended), the two had miscommunicated when they came upon him. Potter had used an out of regulation spell to capture the Death Eater, and Brooks had gotten in the way of Potter’s spell. This resulted in both the Death Eater escaping and Brooks losing his ability to move or speak for a few hours (which Draco imagined was the most blissful couple of hours that could be spent with William Brooks). Merlin, Draco hoped his partner wouldn’t be that imbecile. But who on this team would he even want to be partners with?
“Brooks and Atkinson, Wood and Bouchée, Matthews and Rose, Malfoy and Potter, Walker and Burton. And before anyone says anything, no, these are not subject to change.” Robards looked up, glaring at Draco.
Harry bloody Potter. Of course he was his partner. That just seemed to be the way things worked out for him: poorly. He resisted the urge to grit his teeth the whole rest of the meeting, and never chanced a look at Potter. It was always sodding Potter. Why did it always have to be him?
When the meeting finally ended, after many long, boring updates on the Ministry, Draco exited the room as quickly as he could. He brushed past Potter as he did so. The other man did not say anything when Draco passed him.
Draco spent the afternoon filling out paperwork. It happened to be the violation report for Potter and Brooks’s fiasco of a mission that he was stuck on. Why Draco had to fill it out instead of them, he had no idea. Oh wait - of course, it was because he was a bottom-feeding Death Eater who was given the Ministry scraps, like a pig at his trough.
While he was right in the middle of answering ‘Please list the effects of this violation and how to resolve these in the future’ (which was a great question considering the dimwits who would be sent to clean it up), Draco heard footsteps outside of his office door. He lifted his head and saw Potter walking in with resolve in his step.
“Appreciate you knocking,” Draco said. Potter seemed unfazed by that.
“Robards wanted me to let you know that the team is getting drinks together tonight to ‘foster unity’, or some bollocks like that. You left so quickly, you missed him announcing it.” Draco began to open his mouth to say he would absolutely not be attending when Potter said, “And it’s mandatory. So as much as I don’t want to be there either, we have to go.”
Draco sighed. An awkward silence followed Potter’s invitation, and Draco kept expecting (and hoping) he would leave his office. He cleared his throat. “So… why do you look like a Dementor just snogged you?” Potter cringed back at him. Maybe ‘Dementor’ wasn’t the best choice of words.
Harry took a second to reply. “I’ve been watching Teddy. He’s kept me up all night for the past week.”
“That’s a lie, but alright,” Draco responded quickly, before he had much chance to think about it. Potter’s eyes grew big. Thought he had an airtight bluff, didn’t he. He forgot one crucial detail about Draco. “Andromeda is my aunt after all. But you don’t need to tell me the truth,” Draco muttered. He hoped Potter would feel guilty, maybe in the spirit of the partner shtick and creating trust between the two. It worked.
“Well, I… I haven’t been sleeping well,” Potter said bashfully.
Draco listened but gave no reply. He wondered if it was because of nightmares. Draco’s were probably different from Potter’s, although the leading actors were probably the same. Lord Voldemort, Aunt Bella, his father. A chilling thought struck him - did they share another? Was Draco also a part of Potter’s nightmares?
Draco shook himself out of the thoughts, trying not to spiral any further. “You know you’re a wizard, right?” he said as casually as he could. “You don’t need to look this messy.” Harry ran his hand through his hair, embarrassed.
“Listen, Malfoy,” Potter said suddenly, seriously. “We’re going to have to find a way to work together, otherwise I, hell, we might find ourselves out of the Ministry. I’m in hot water, and you’ve been boiling since you stepped foot in this place.” Draco glared in response, but didn’t fight what he said. It was true. The stack of paperwork on his desk and significant lack of fieldwork proved this.
“Well in case you haven’t realized, Potter, I am an adult now. I don’t care for this petty rapport we have built bleeding into our workplace,” Draco spat out.
“Don’t say ‘we’ like I had anything to do with ‘building’ our feud.”
“I seem to recall you being the one who refused to shake my hand.” Draco recalled a few other things Potter had done to him, but they weren’t things he liked to dwell on, let alone talk about.
“Only because you were a git right from the start.”
A moment passed while Draco tried his hardest not to glare at the man in front of him.
Regardless of Potter’s disposition, Draco had to be the mature one here. Merlin knows, he certainly did terrorize Potter and his friends, and he did some unforgivable things to them as well. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
“I was a git right from the start. I hope you know that I’m sorry for everything - truly. I might have been forced into some of it -“ Potter winced at that, “but I certainly hit a point where I made those terrible decisions on my own.”
Draco knew he could’ve gone on. He thought about it, about telling Potter about the guilt he carried, about the nightmares - but he knew that was pointless and selfish. So, he stopped.
“Truthfully,” Potter started, “I don’t forgive you. But thanks for trying.” He tapped on his desk. “Nine o’clock, Maury’s.” Potter raised his eyebrows challengingly and turned around swiftly, leaving his office.
What an arsehole.