Chapter Text
The Severing
Chapter 1 – Residents
“Ugh. Why does it always look like boiled Doxy brains?” Draco sighed as he poked unenthusiastically at the food sitting in front of him with his plastic fork. Fucking plastic. Merlin forbid he’d get an actual fork. He might use it to stab his fellow ‘residents’, as they liked to refer to the inmates. Fuck, he might stab himself with it if it meant not eating this shite again.
He popped his head over the division between his room and his neighbour ‘resident.’
“Oi,” he said as he peered over at Pansy’s food. “What’d you get today?”
“Same as you, I expect,” Pansy responded absently. She looked thin—thinner than she had been since the last time he recalled thinking she looked thin. He wagered he didn’t look great himself, either. His pale blonde hair had grown past his ears, and lack of opportunity to shave had left him with a permanent stubble covering his chin.
“You’ve got to keep eating, Pans. I don’t fancy seeing you fall over and accidentally getting a clear shot of your knickers.”
Draco smirked, then sat back down in his chair and looked around his room. Cubicle, more like. The department was divided into 50 colourful cubicles, each containing 1 bed, including 2 bedsheets, a thin pillow, and a soggy old mattress (no doubt found somewhere in a Muggle thrift store); 1 50 x 50 cm lousy wooden table accompanied by 1 lousy wooden chair; and lastly, a ‘Wanting Pillar’. The Wanting Pillar was quite amusing at the start, for about 10 seconds. You simply walked up to the Pillar, which reached up to Draco’s hips, presented your resident bracelet and told it what it was that you wanted. Food, for instance. The Pillar was the brainchild of Shacklebolt himself, most likely to limit the staff needed to keep this place running. Proper cheap bastard. Unfortunately, Draco soon found out that the Pillar only conjured up things it deemed appropriate. Food somehow always ended up being the boiled Doxy-brains-like dish.
Draco shoved his meal aside, ignoring his own brilliant advice he’d given Pansy, and lay back down on the bed. He stared at the clock, mounted on the wall next to his cubicle. 8.51 a.m. on a Monday—he’d be seeing the Psych Evaluation witch soon enough. Every bloody Monday without fail, the bloody bitch strode into his room with her bloody clipboard and asked him the same bloody questions she had the first time he met her in the department’s interrogation room.
“Mr Malfoy. Right, my name is of no matter. I am simply here to conduct your psychiatric evaluation. Once you pass it, you will be free to leave this… institution. The evaluation consists of a few questions that will determine your state of mind and the progress of your… rehabilitation. Let’s get on with it, then.
Number one—have you recently felt any inclinations to harm others?
No.
Number two—have you recently felt any inclinations to harm yourself?
No.
Number three—have you felt any remorse for the actions that have brought you here with us this day?
No—I mean, yes.
Number 4—do you still feel strongly against witches and wizards of a different blood status than pure-blood?
Never have.
That concludes my evaluation for today. It is Minister Shacklebolt’s personal wish that you be placed in Level 2, so that is where you will go. I will see you once a week on Mondays to further our evaluation and keep track of your progress.”
The psych witch glared at him with pursed lips, flicked her wand at his arm and a pink bracelet attached itself around his wrist, inscribed ‘Level 2 resident—Malfoy, D.’.
“You may leave—walk to the end of this corridor and ask for Percival. He will show you to your room, which is the green one right at the front of the department. Again, requested by Minister Shacklebolt.”
The witch looked down at her clipboard and seemed to remember something. She flicked her wand at Draco once more, muttering a spell he did not recognise. “Just a diagnostic spell. The Ministry would find it…unfortunate, if you were to fall ill. Goodbye.”
Malfoy, D., had since answered the same questions approximately one thousand times, and found it didn’t matter at all what he answered. The psych eval bitch would jot down the same thing every week: ‘not willing to answer truthfully, unfit for release’.
As he answered the questions today, still lying in bed, with ‘yes, the cook’, ‘yes, myself with a real fucking fork’, ‘every time you enter’ and ‘only if the chef is a Mudblood’, the witch took her notes, frowned at him and left shaking her head in what he assumed was disappointment. Not sure what she had hoped for; he was quite sure she was eager to keep him right here.
He heard the witch enter Pansy’s room and ask the same questions, which she answered monotonously. He begrudgingly got off his bed and started doing exercises. Push-ups, sit-ups, lunges… anything he could do without equipment or magic. One time, he had managed to get an exercise mat from the Pillar, but a guard had seen it and confiscated it, proclaiming it ‘unsafe’. The Pillar hadn’t produced a new one for him when he’d requested it.
He was nearing the end of his routine when he was interrupted by a knock on his cubicle wall.
The cubicle didn’t have a door, so he was rather amused someone even bothered knocking.
“Fuck off or come in, either way, I don’t care,” he grunted through his last set of squats. From his peripheral vision, he saw a tall dark-skinned man enter. Shacklebolt. Fuck, what was he doing here? Was it his mother? If he came to bring the news she was dead…
“I think I prefer coming in, then,” Shacklebolt deadpanned. He took a seat on the lousy wooden chair, his cloak dripping onto the floor, seemingly wet from the rain. Shacklebolt drew his wand and cast a drying spell. “My pardons, Mr Malfoy. Wouldn’t want your floors to get messy.”
“Why are you here?” Draco looked suspiciously at the man, decidedly wishing he’d opted to fuck off instead.
“I see you haven’t the wish for small talk and I shan’t pretend I do, so I shall get straight to the point. I’ve a proposition for you.”
∞
“Ron! Can you not,” Hermione shrieked, hanging over her cauldron, using her wand to stir a potion slowly and rhythmically. She was hovering close to the brew, her frizzled hair prone to get scorched. “Sorry, potions mistress Granger,” he called over, using his wand to recapture the Snitch he and Harry had let loose in Hermione’s apartment. “We were just… well it’s right boring now, isn’t it? When you are working? Why are you always working, anyway?”
“Why are you two never working? Aren’t you supposed to be Aurors? Serious, highly regarded Aurors, who don’t spend their time clawing at Snitches in their friend’s apartment?” Hermione spoke with her nose still practically in the concoction, not once looking up. “And I will have you know, this isn’t work. This is a hobby.”
“No one in their right mind would do potions for a hobby, ‘Mione.” Harry grinned and added, “but we shall leave you to it. And I will have you know, we’re off to work. Shacklebolt has requested our assistance at the Residential Reformation Centre. We’ve got to meet him for our preliminary instructions.”
Hermione jolted up from the cauldron.
The Reformation Centre.
She had managed to keep the Centre off her mind for a few months now. It had been after the war trials that they established the Residential Reformation Centre, commonly just referred to as ‘the Centre’. The trials had taken long. Witnesses, including Hermione herself, were called upon and heard. Some of the accused were given time to defend their actions. Most hadn’t stood a chance. Some gave up their chance entirely by using their time solely professing their unwavering support for their recently-deceased Dark Lord. Such as Fenrir Greyback, though it likely never mattered what he might’ve had to say. Since Azkaban was no longer able to house criminals, Greyback had bought himself a spot in Level 7 of the Centre. The highest level, heavily guarded around the clock and the only level one could be certain they’d never leave. Alive, anyway. Others had spoken out briefly, but nobody had seemed to care enough to keep fighting the new prison, disguised as a rehabilitation centre.
“What—what are you involving yourselves with the Centre for?” she demanded with a tight look on her face.
“We don’t get to pick and choose our assignments, ‘Mione, you know that,” Harry responded firmly. “We’ve been asked for by Kingsley himself. Look, I do remember your… objections to the Centre back when it was founded, but it can’t be as bad as you think it might be. Have you even ever been inside to see for yourself?”
“No. I haven’t,” Hermione said curtly. “But I do feel a certain way about mindlessly gathering all people of a certain blood status and putting them away in a facility in order to control them.”
“There’s people of other blood statuses. And it wasn’t done mindlessly. These people committed crimes during the war. Crimes against people like you, Hermione. Muggleborns.” Harry managed to simultaneously look convinced and uncomfortable. She knew he was aware of how the trials went. How most pure-blood witches and wizards were hardly heard when speaking to their defence or hadn’t received the opportunity to call for witnesses at all.
“I suppose so. But the trials were ill-done. You know this, Harry, and don’t you try to pretend they were not.” Hermione rolled up her sleeves and glanced at her potion, which hadn’t been stirred over the last four minutes and was now effectively ruined. “But I also suppose you haven’t got much of a choice. Just be careful over there. I assume it’s some sort of guarding duty?”
“Don’t know, but I, for one, am looking forward to commanding some pure-bloods about for a change. “Hear ye, hear ye, King Weasley, your blood-traitor overlord.” Ron stood on her sofa, arms wide into the air, grinning like he’d won the blasted lottery.
“Charming. Remind me again why we aren’t together anymore? King Weasley, a right prick. Ron, I am serious—and do not stoop. You ought to treat the residents with kindness and respect. Some have already been there for over 4 years now and it can’t have been pleasant. I heard they rarely let anyone out.” Hermione let out a resigned sigh, flicked her wand at the cauldron and Vanished the ruined potion. “Right, now get on your merry way out of my house then, so I can restart my potion and actually get the proper result without you two gits lurking about.”
Harry and Ron saluted her in tandem. “As you wish, potions mistress.” And left her apartment.
Alone, she summoned the ingredients needed to restart her potion. It was one she had been trying to brew for over a month now, without success. An invention of her own, that should work in theory, but hadn’t. If she ever managed to find out just why it didn’t work as she thought it would, this potion had the potential to cure Spattergroit. She reckoned she probably should be doing this in her sterile lab, but hadn’t wanted to draw attention just yet. She wasn’t sure if this would be successful and desired to involve absolutely no one to witness her probable, gargantuan failure.
“Accio.” Hermione pointed her wand vaguely toward the kitchen and a large vial of Bubotuber pus came flying through her living room, landing in her hand. Her lips curled up slightly as she held the vial and recalled the moment last summer when Ron had collected the pus for her, squeezing the Bubotuber and promptly soaking himself in the substance.
They hadn’t lasted long after the War had ended, as Ron had started his hellish Auror training, whereas Hermione had decided she’d had enough of Britain and had left to study abroad.
Neither had had enough time to date long-distance and they had agreed it was for the best to each go their own way. Ron’s casual excitement to oversee the residents in the Centre had reminded her again why that was for the best. It was at best concerning. Of course, he’d pass it off as a joke if she would confront him about it, so she would let it slide. There was a lot of ‘letting things slide’ with Ron.
Hermione snapped out of the stream of thought and reclaimed her focus. Right when she was about to relight the fire underneath the cauldron, her ward alerted her of a visitor at the front door.
“What have you two goons forgotten now that can’t—” she halted as she opened the door and was looking at the grim face of the Minister of Magic.
“Healer Granger. Always a pleasure. Might I come in? I have a rather interesting proposition for you.”