Chapter Text
Azkaban was a dark and noisy place.
The dementors were gone by the time Draco was imprisoned there, after the War—the dementors were on the Dark Lord’s side, and hence couldn’t be trusted to keep the Dark Lord’s lackeys in perpetual nightmare. Draco suspected there was also lobbying by certain War heroes.
But the chill of the dementors remained, soaked into the stones. The cells were dark but for the weak rays of light through tiny holes in the wall and the occasional lumos from a guard. The air was dank, and the ground was mucky, and there was a constant whistling wind. The prisoners lost their minds, screeching at each other like dogs as they succumbed to their delusions. The guards encouraged the verbal abuse, throwing in their own for good measure.
Draco’s own father was in the cell next to him. Draco couldn’t see him, but he could hear him beneath the rabble: Lucius muttered plots and plans for when he would leave Azkaban. Draco hoped that the guards didn’t hear them. At rare times, Lucius told Draco how much he loved Draco and Narcissa and how he would do anything to protect them.
Those times became increasingly scarce.
At first, Draco listened. He listened to the shouting of the other prisoners, of their hatreds and their life stories. He listened to the plots and plans of his father, of how his father wanted to rebuild the family name. He treasured his father’s rare words of affection.
But as the days and months passed, he started to think for himself. As his occluding got better out of sheer necessity, the dementor-chill faded from his mind. He had the ability and time to think clearly. He broke down the hatred, the life stories, the plots and the plans.
That was when Draco realised that he didn’t want to be like them. He didn’t want to make the same mistakes. He didn’t want make the same old tired mark on the world.
And so, Draco made his own plans.
:::
Draco was released after three years. Without Harry Potter’s testimony, it would have been thirty.
When the guards came by, the shouts of the other prisoners increased, and the guards heckled them back. When the guards open Draco’s cell, the others were in uproar. Draco ignored them, complacently obeying his orders. Under his occluding, there wasn’t much emotion he could muster up. There was only the facts: and the fact was that he was getting out first. With his hands magically tied behind his back, he stepped out of his cell.
Draco glanced back to his father, the first time in years. Lucius was huddled against the wall, in his plots-and-plans mode, and his eyes gleamed at Draco as though expecting Draco to enact his plans for him. This would be Draco’s last memory of his father for the next decade. Draco blinked back, and identified that it was disappointment he was feeling.
The guards wasted no time in taking up the stairs and out into the overcast light of outside. The boat trip back to land, and the apparation back to the Ministry, were undertaken in near silence. They took Draco to an interrogation room, and once Draco was safely tied up in the chair, the two guards left and two Aurors entered.
Neither were Harry Potter.
The Aurors drilled him, with a touch of threats that Draco should keep in line if he knew what was good for him. Draco nodded back, storing the information.
They locked a tracking anklet on his ankle and took him the Ministry floos. Draco flooed to Malfoy Manor.
There was barely any light when Draco emerged from the floo, aside from the last remaining rays of the evening. As he moved deeper inward, the automatic lighting spells struggled to activate, leaving Draco with patches of illumination.
Every room was empty. There were no signs of the living. All the servants and house-elves were gone.
His mother was not there.
Draco hadn’t expected that, and he leaned against a wall, forcing himself to adjust to that fact. His plans...he couldn’t start them yet while the Manor looked like this. He had assumed that his mother would have stayed. He had assumed that she would have returned the Manor to its former glory. But she hadn’t and it wasn’t. Malfoy Manor still looked like it did during War, and perhaps even worse so.
The occupation during the War had made Malfoy Manor dark and disordered as the Dark Lord changed it to his liking, and fifthy as his other followers messed around and took what they wished. After the War, the Ministry would have had accessed to the Manor, ostensibly to catch any remaining followers, free any remaining prisoners, collect the dead ones, and confiscate any remaining dark objects.
From the cursory glance that Draco could manage, the Manor was missing much more than that.
Draco took a deep breath. He would have to deal with that once he stopped feeling so light-headed though, and instead he staggered towards the kitchens.
The kitchens were relatively neat; the house-elves must have cleaned before they left, be it either freed by the Ministry or on their own accord with no one of Malfoy name left. There were foods in the pantry—he recognised rice and dried beans and flour. But Draco had neither the strength nor the knowledge to cook. Instead, he grabbed a jar of honey and a spoon for a quick energy boost. Thankfully, the taps still worked and Draco got a long drink of fresh water.
Feeling relatively better, Draco tracked down an old wand from a long-dead Malfoy and the most basic, childish cookery spell-book he could find to make something more substantial.
Which turned out to be rice, because all he needed to do was to boil it in some water and eat it with some salt. Stomach full, he took a shower and went to sleep in his old childhood bed.
:::
Draco woke up to sunlight. Draco stared at the ceiling, which he could see. It was a very novel thing. He allowed himself to feel the softness of the bed, even as all his plans sharpened in his mind.
His mother wasn’t here. He needed to fix Malfoy Manor first.
Draco showered, leaving the bathroom clean for the first time in years. He enlarged one of his old robes to wear, made some food, and then got down to work.
With the Malfoy Manor inventory tome beside him, along with a smattering of spellbooks, Draco methodically went room-by-room, cataloguing the missing items and cleaning up and fixing what he could along the way. At first, his progress was slow, but as he became more accustomed to the wand, to the spells and the motions, he picked up speed. Some entire rooms were left untouched, unspoiled by the War; others required much more extensive work. Draco was no interior-designer, but he had some eye for arrangement.
Going through the majority of the Manor took the better part of a fortnight, forcing Draco to re-calibrate the internal timeline he had for his plans. However, he acknowledged that it wasn’t all wasted: the time and work strengthened him physically and magically. He learnt of rooms he hadn’t known existed, of all the manner of objects and of ancestral portraits of the less savoury of Malfoy ancestors. He found well-kept robes from the last century that better fit his frame. He also found dark artefacts that the Ministry missed in their search—he placed those under wards, for now.
The Dark Lord’s wing was above ground, with some windows and sunlight. The space was relatively clean, but there was a heavy press of the Dark Lord’s magic that lingered, even now, dimming what sunlight Draco could coax through the windows.
Draco skimmed through curse-breaking tomes and decided that the most straightforward thing he could do was to take down the entire wing and re-build it from the ground up. He didn’t have any attachment to the space, and neither of his parents were there to stop him. He took the care to catalogue any remaining items and to isolate them for further dark-curse testing, before nullifying all the magic in the wing. The walls crumbled, and now there was a big hole in the wards. Draco vanished the fallen stone and was left with a very large expanse of empty floor.
What was the opposite of darkness? Light, Draco thought. He acquired himself a stack of construction books and set about building the largest solarium he had ever seen, with glass walls that arched up to form the roof. He stained some of the glass, so that coloured light patterns the floor, and levitated some furniture from unused rooms to the space. The wards of the Manor were filled in, following the curve of the glass. He’d need a proper gardener in here, but for now, the space he had created was sufficient.
When he stepped back to see what he had done, he felt a lightness in his chest. He placed a hand over his chest, hoping that it wasn’t a curse. But when he cast some spells, it wasn’t anything physical. So he examined his mind instead, and found that the apparent lightness in his chest was an emotion. When he compared it to past emotions he had experienced, he determined that it was satisfaction.
“Oh,” he said.
There was no one there to react back to him, and this time Draco recognised the apparent pang in his heart. Loneliness. But it would do nothing to dwell on it. Draco pushed it back behind his occlumency and continued on.
With a dozen lumos spheres, Draco entered the dungeons. The stink was immediate, though there were no corpses lying about. After the customary cataloguing, Draco set about determinedly blasting the cells apart until there was just one, open free space. The floors and walls and ceilings got a through cleaning, with the old air siphoned out. Draco spelled everything a pale cream, and cast innumerably many automatic lighting charms to brighten the space up. He left it empty, for now.
Much like how the Manor was empty of everyone but Draco.
:::
When Draco woke up the next day, he immediately knew that something was different. There was a scent in the air
The curtains were open, spilling in dawn light. When he sat up, he noticed the tray of breakfast on his bedside.
He cast cursory spells, but the smell of properly cooked food, and the sight of a fresh green apple, did him in and he ate. There were no immediate side effects, aside from fullness.
After dressing, Draco made his way through Malfoy Manor, unsure whether he could sense someone else’s magic or not. But when he arrived at the kitchens, he was certain.
There was a house-elf, who turned upon Draco’s arrival. Draco struggled to remember her name—Glicky, he thought.
“Young Master!” Glicky exclaimed.
Draco twisted his lips. “Glicky, what are you doing here?”
“The Manor is alive, sir.”
That answer wasn’t quite enough for Draco, whose mind was racing. “Weren’t you freed by the Ministry? The Aurors?”
Glicky shuffled her feet. “We were all given socks.”
“Why would you come back?”
Glicky clasped her hands together. “The Manor is alive. There is work to be done, here.”
“Work elsewhere is scarce?”
Glicky shook her head. “Most old families are absent. Not many wizards trust old-family elves like Glicky.”
Draco exhaled. “Very well, if you wish to stay, then by all means, stay.” He clenched his teeth, thinking hard. “Did Granger enact employment laws for house elves?”
Glickly looked down. “Yes. Wizards don’t want to pay elves as much as other wizards.”
Draco cringed inwardly. He had never learnt about the minimum wage for wizards when his father was teaching him about the family businesses. Unsurprisingly. Draco had to delay, until he could obtain information. “I shall set up your wages once I visit Gringotts, if you’ll note down your hours—you can write, can’t you?”
Glicky brightened. “Oh, yes.”
Draco felt his mood lift in response in spite of himself. “Thank you for breakfast. However, where did you acquire the various ingredients from?” There certainly weren’t any of the fresh ingredients that made up his breakfast last he checked.
Glickly frowned quizzically. “Young Master does not know? We write an order and the grocery suppliers send them. The gold comes from a vault just for this.”
“Oh.” Draco wondered just how many vaults he and his family had.
“And Glicky picked apples from the orchard outside!”
“Very well,” Draco said. “I’ll leave you be.”
Glicky farewelled him, and Draco walked off in a slight daze. This was not part of his plans.
He had forgotten, whilst staying in a prison full of other humans, that there were more beings that the Malfoy family had messed over. And he had first assumed that his mother would had been here and dealt with all that. And then, when he found out that his mother and the house-elves weren’t here, that he had adjusted his plans to be self sufficient.
Draco forced down a thread of annoyance and sternly told himself to learn the lesson: do not assume, and make plans for all contingencies.
Glicky’s mention of the apple orchard led Draco to decide that he wanted to start fixing the Manor grounds. It was easy enough for him to clear the over-grown pathways but he would have to find gardening books before he touched anything else. Happily, he chanced upon the apples Glicky mentioned.
:::
Draco woke up the next day to yet another lovely breakfast. He remembered to write a little ‘thank you’ note to leave on the tray—something his father would never do—before heading out to the gardens.
They had changed overnight.
The pavement had been brightened, the overgrown weeds in the gardens were gone, and the hedge rows have been trimmed. The book in Draco’s hand had been rendered useless.
Draco ventured further out, and when he reached the old farmlands, he saw his answer: a handful of house-elves were efficiently turning the land, plotting and planting.
He didn’t recognise them. They were not Malfoy elves, and the Manor’s farmlands had never produced any produce in Draco’s lifetime. He knew that house-elves could get through all but the strongest of wards. But why would they?
“Who are you?” Draco called out.
The elves squeaked and gasped, and one of them popped away.
“I was merely asking!”
At that, the elves relaxed. One of them apparated over to Draco.
“I is Pally,” the elf said.
“And you’re here?”
Pally nodded solemnly. “There is work to be done.”
“I haven’t negotiated a wage with you,” Draco said. “Write down your hours, and I’ll set up your income. Do you have a vault?”
Pally’s eyes widened. “Young Master, house-elves do not have gold vaults.”
“Right, of course, coin-in-hand, then. Tell the others, will you? For any house-elf that does work on a Malfoy property, tell them to write down their hours, so that I can distribute wages.”
Pally nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And what is it that you’re planting?”
“Oh, many things, sir! There is beetroot and asparagus and strawberries first! And then—”
Draco listened as Pally reeled off a dozen more fruits and vegetables. “Very good,” Draco managed, once Pally was done. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
“Yes, sir!”
Pally apparated back out into the field.
Draco walked back to the Manor in a slight daze. He should have expected this, after seeing Glicky. The Manor and its grounds were huge. There was work to be done, and it was a good thing that there are house-elves who want to do that work, who knew how to do that work.
Glicky’s words came to forefront again—these house-elves out farming were likely to be from another old wizarding family whose members are ‘absent’. Draco strongly suspected that more house-elves will be coming to the Manor, such that Draco’s input to fixing and upkeeping the Manor was no longer required.
Draco had gave his word about acquiring wages for the elves. It was high time for him leave the safety of Malfoy Manor and venture back into Wizarding society.
:::
:::
:::
Harry sighed, eyes unseeing the paperwork he knew, at the back of his mind, was in front of him.
“Mate, what’s up?” Ron asked from the next desk over. “Paperwork doing you in? A greater foe than Voldemort, paperwork is,” Ron continued in a wise tone.
Harry rolled his eyes. “It’s been three years,” he finally admitted.
“Since what?”
“The War Trials,” Harry said simply.
“Ah.” Ron turned hesitant. “This is about Malfoy, isn’t it? I heard Cricke and Brown did all the post-release stuff with him.”
“I wonder what he’s doing now.” Harry thought guiltily of the hawthorne wand he still had stashed in his bedroom drawer. Now that Malfoy was out, he knew he should return it.
“Mate. He’s probably lazing around the house of his. It’s not like he’s going to get a job or something. Can you imagine?” Ron laughed, shaking his head.
Harry huffed a short laugh. “Yeah, you’re right. And if he does anything bad, we’ll hear about, I suppose.”
“Let him be,” Ron said, serious. “He’s not worth it getting all worked up over. In fact, you should be focused on your life, if you don’t want Eric from Records to hang you by your toes.”
Harry checked the time and cursed. Thoughts about Draco Malfoy temporarily fled his mind as he hurried to complete his paperwork.
Temporarily, as later that week, Harry found Auror Brown—some relation of Lavender Brown of which the specifics escaped Harry—having his tea in the break room alone. Brown was at the table, idly flicking through a newspaper, but he looked up when Harry entered.
“Hello,” Harry greeted, grabbing his own mug.
“Potter,” Brown nodded back.
Harry put the magic kettle on and leaned against the counter. “I heard you did Malfoy’s release.”
Brown had an expression of distaste. “Ugly mug, didn’t say much. Guess Azkaban took care of him.” Brown’s gaze sharpened on Harry. “Saw it in his file that you spoke for him.”
Harry gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Yeah. He wasn’t all bad.”
Brown shook his head. “You’re still new, wet behind the ears. Just give it a few years, Potter, and you’ll see that certain people always are and always will be bad.”
Harry tried not to bristle. “Maybe,” he said non-committally. He turned back to the counter and made his tea.
“Well, I’m off,” Brown said, standing up. “Robards’ gotten us on surveillance duty.”
“Sounds boring,” Harry said, a little tense.
Brown smirked, and Harry relaxed somewhat.
“Got to get through the pain for the thrill,” Brown said. “See you around, Potter.” He clapped Harry on the shoulder and headed off.
Harry was left standing, alone, in the break room for a few more minutes while he gripped the counter.
Ugly mug, didn’t say much. Guess Azkaban took care of him.
Brown’s words just bought more questions into Harry’s head. Harry had spoken for Malfoy, and Harry hadn’t wanted Malfoy to go to Azkaban in the first place.
His mind conjured up images of a peculiar Malfoy-Sirius mix; haggard, thin, Malfoy with shaggy blond hair and a too-bright look in eye.
Ugly mug.
Harry couldn’t imagine that part, though.
“Oh hey, Harry, there you are!” Ron said, interrupting Harry’s thoughts.
Harry blinked. “Ron, what’s up?”
Ron waved a file in his hand. “Robards’ gotten us an actual assignment out.” He glanced at Harry’s tea. “Better drink that quick, because I want to get out of here.”
“Right.” Harry cast a charm to cool his tea and gulped it down in a manner worthy of Ron.
They headed back to their office to grab their proper Auror robes, and Harry pushed the Malfoy issue to the back of his mind again.