Chapter Text
On a good day, Draco Malfoy was a vanilla oat latte kind of man. Emphasis on the vanilla. Today was not a good day.
Espresso in one hand and a new assignment in the other, Draco Malfoy sighed as he surveyed the pile of paperwork that seemed to magically appear overnight every single day despite the paperwork-free desk he left every evening (pun not intended). His head pounded from the triage meeting he had just attended, where too many people with too many incorrect opinions had argued over his head about too many inconsequential things. Wishing he had popped a potion that morning, he scooped up the paperwork pile and unceremoniously dropped the new case file on top.
Draco had very unenthusiastically accepted this case he was currently holding, mainly due to the fact that he was on indefinite probation and refusing may get him fired. Not that he really cared. He didn’t need the job. Some days when his wand blared an unholy noise, Draco wished he could just sack it in, send a Howler as his resignation and call it a day, but as always, the alternative was worse. This seemed to be a common theme in his life at the moment - make the one choice that was mildly to moderately inconvenient or the other that may lead to further incarceration or possibly death. Hence why he had accepted this shit case. And why he was stuck in a haunted office. And why he was drinking fucking espresso.
The first of his most pressing issues - the haunted office, or rather, now his office. His recent promotion to Auror Inspector (which, in his opinion, made him sound like the ticket inspector wizard at International Floo Ports) came with a minimal salary increase, infinitely more paperwork, a stupendous amount of babysitting Trainees, teaching hours at the Auror Training Academy, less field work and, of course, his new office. And because he was Draco Malfoy, he was assigned this one. The one that no one wanted, and he had seen Galleons change palms to avoid occupying this office. The one that had belonged to Hermione Granger.
Draco had corrected many people on the technicalities of this office as he had received his new office allocation at the morning meeting. Eventually, he walked away, admitting defeat in his quest to educate the ignorant and wanting to just get on with his distinctly vanilla oat latte-free morning. His new office was not ‘haunted’ because Hermione Granger’s body was never found. Hermione Granger wasn’t dead; she was presumed dead. And in his line of work, presumed dead was bad. Draco did not like ‘presumed dead’ for several reasons - mainly because it made his job like ten times harder, but also because it was just an unsatisfactory ending to the story. No one knew what happened to presumed dead people; their story had no conclusion and as someone who deals exclusively in the present and now and with complete absolutes. This did not sit well with Draco. Not that he cared whether Hermione Granger was dead or alive or presumed dead. In fact, he should probably be grateful that she was no longer occupying this office; if she had been, he certainly wouldn’t be here.
Maybe the correct word was cursed? He pondered this for a moment before moving on, and his frown deepened as he surveyed the top of his pile. Back to the second of his most pressing issues - this new case. This infuriatingly stupid case, he didn’t want. It was essentially a slap in the face wrapped in a stupendous amount of paperwork. Draco knew better than to argue and so held his tongue as Robards talked at him.
Malfoy, this case, as with all your cases, is You Know Who related. His remaining followers, it seems, are being hunted and dispatched rather ruthlessly. Now, as much as we do not want the likes of you wandering the streets, we certainly can’t be having the misguided general public thinking they can start taking potshots at people in broad daylight. Now, if you had done your job properly, we might never have had this discussion, but alas, here we are.
He didn’t mean to sound ungrateful or anything. Stopping crime was kind of the whole angle of his reform, and he was indeed an Auror. But please. After five years in the DMLE, exclusively working to round up the last of Voldemort’s followers, others with extreme and violent blood supremacy tendencies and all that, there was no denying he was a natural. But he wanted something more. He needed something more; he needed a challenge. Ingredients racketeering, magical creature smuggling rings, murders, muggle trafficking, literally anything else. No such luck.
Draco flicked the file open, his eyes skimming the words.
Recent sightings of a tall figure in a trench coat …
Traces of unforgivables in the vicinity, possible use of other weapons - awaiting autopsy report…
Cause of death inconclusive, non-magical cause of death
Nothing he hadn’t already been told. What a fucking waste.
He vanished the dust with a lazy flick of his wand and accioed his box of belongings from his old desk down the hall, stopping the box inches from his chest as it careened through the doorway. There were minimal belongings to set out; the box was pretty much empty. Custom embossed writing paper with his initials, peacock feather quill set, clock and engraved inkwell. His letter tray sat at the far corner of his desk, the pile of files neatly arranged on top. He looked around, potions case in hand and wondered where his stash of headache relief and other useful potions would sit. Possibly in a warded drawer as he had always done at his last desk, but for now, under his desk. He lit the candles, sent a lumos towards the lamp and sat down with a sigh. The chair was too high. There was no natural light. Draco wondered how she had ever worked in here.
He opened the top drawer, and the smell of musty parchment hit him in the face with such force that he slammed the thing shut again. Dramatic as he was, Draco cast a bubblehead charm before facing the heinous drawer again. He sifted through the pile of papers, and as the dust settled, he realised that clearly Hermione Granger had left in a hurry. And also, the Ministry of Magic's domestic staff were lazy buggers. His quest to get to grips with his new office only confirmed his hypothesis. Each new pile of paperwork and personal knick-knack he found was another piece of the puzzle of who this witch was, and Draco couldn’t help but feel as though he were snooping in his own office.
Aside from the blanket of dust that covered everything, the nest of pixies he banished and the very expired sweets that he found everywhere (clearly she had had a sweet tooth); the office was kept as though Hermione Granger had gone for a short stroll or something. Maybe a sabbatical. He had the unsettling feeling that she might walk in at any moment and whipped around at lightning speed when he heard the footsteps on the floorboards outside.
It was Dawlish. Draco scowled as the other man leaned against the door frame, his judgmental eyes roaming the office. “She might have been brilliant, but this place is a fucking dump.”
Draco could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand to attention. This felt like a personal attack. “Your cubicle is a pig sty. Pot, kettle, black.” Dawlish’s eyebrow rose so far up his stupid forehead that it became obscured by his equally stupid fringe. Someone needed to tell that man that he needed a haircut, desperately.
“Ohh Malfoy, champion of the dead,” Dawlish rolled his eyes as he frisbee-ed a memo at Draco’s head. He caught the parchment with his wand and muttered presumed dead under his breath.
“Oh, stop, what is this obsession you have with her? No one’s seen her in over five years, not that we didn’t try to find her. She’s as good as dead. What? Are you scared she’s gonna haunt you when you work late in the office? Can Muggleborns even become ghosts?”
Draco ignored him, though the question did spark a little something in his mind. “Are you done? If I’m not mistaken, you also have been graced with a new case that requires your undivided attention, too.”
“It’s pretty cut and dry, more gang business. As usual. We don’t get in their way, they don’t get in ours. It’s more placating the public than anything.”
Draco rolled his eyes again and went back to ignoring the man. It wasn't until he heard Dawlish’s footsteps echo faintly at the end of the hall that he looked up again.
—
He could have called a house elf. Draco knew this, and yet, he was banishing the dust from each object by himself. The motion was repetitive enough to let his mind wander. His newest case was the status quo, and there wasn’t much he could have done without the autopsy report anyway, so he had spent the majority of the day manually clearing out his new office. He had to keep reminding himself of that. His office. The words felt foreign in his mind and in his mouth.
He chalked the uneasy feeling writhing in his stomach to nerves from the promotion, the new case and the new office. Why had no one cleaned the office properly? Why were her old papers still there? And what exactly had happened to her?
Draco had to admit, he had no idea what post-war Hermione Granger had been like. The last time he had seen her in person had been the Battle of Hogwarts. He could remember her face, frozen in time, watching with horror and shock as Voldemort and Harry Potter duelled precariously on the bridge. The green jets of Avada Kedavera bounced around far too casually for it to be considered normal. He could only imagine he had a similar look of terror on his own face.
While he had been arrested and trialled, served time and been remediated, Draco had no idea what Hermione had been doing. He could maybe vaguely remember her being at the trials, but his mind wasn’t exactly thinking about whether Hermione Granger had been in the audience while his fate hung in the balance. By the time he had formally entered the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, she had only been a legacy. Her name was famous; everyone knew the golden girl. But her name was only ever brought up with hushed tones, as if terrible tragedy had befallen her. Her name was engraved on the door of his office, but no one ever really ventured past her door, as it happened to be just off the main corridor. And no one ever spoke of her, so Draco never asked.
Draco pondered the mystery of Hermione Granger as he swept what seemed to be a collection of notes on a particularly nasty case into a box. The case report had been written in someone else’s sloping script, and the parchment had been picked over mercilessly with red ink in her handwriting. He flipped through the scrolls until he found the auror stamps on the last. Ronald Weasley, Seamus Finnigan, Hermione Granger. Of course.
He dropped the scrolls into the box, stood up and pinched his fingers at the bridge of his nose. His temples throbbed again, and he reached for the stash of potions under the desk. He felt the relief hit his head almost immediately as he leaned against his desk (too short for him) and sighed deeply. For the first time that day, he stood in silence. No aurors, no shuffling of papers, no footsteps - nothing. He let his mind concentrate on the magical signature in the room. There was one strong presence and several fleeting ones, people who had come in once or twice. He recognised Dawlish’s signature, as brief as he had been that morning. The strongest signature was also the most dormant. As he reached out to examine it, the signature seemed to slip away, just out of reach, as if it did not want to be found. After several more attempts, Draco gave up and all but collapsed into his chair.
The next morning, he called an elf.