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Atonement	By : absumoaevum Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 13723 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor to I make any money from this story. These characters are JKR's, I just play with them.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
Chapter 15

The Tension and the Terror

When Harry stepped out onto the hearth rug in the Headmistress’s office, dusting ash off of his robes and looking even more grown up than when Hermione had said goodbye to him a month and a half ago, Ginny couldn’t contain herself. She jumped into his arms at once, knocking him back against the fireplace and kissing every part of his face she could reach while standing on her tiptoes.

McGonagall looked disapproving, but said nothing. Perhaps she knew that the couple wouldn’t be able to hear her reprimands over the hum of their own excitement, or else thought that they would just ignore her. Either way, when Ron appeared in a swirl of green flames, McGonagall needn’t have bothered shooting Hermione a warning look. Her reunion with Ron was decidedly more subdued.

“Morning!” he said, hugging her gently around her waist. “Hermione, I missed you so much!” She knew he was suppressing the urge to scoop her up and kiss her, but found she was glad he had decided against it. She was still sore about his letters and too nervous about the morning ahead to think much about blissful hellos.

“Good morning,” she answered him, adding a peck on his cheek more out of the pressure to seem overjoyed at his arrival than anything else. And because she wanted, if only very briefly, to think about someone other than the blond-haired boy standing away from the fireplace with Luna. They were holding hands. Not because they’d realized some ridiculous passion for each other, but because Malfoy needed support and for a month Luna had been there at every turn to give it. Solidarity, that’s what it was. And it made Hermione uncomfortable. Especially since she hadn’t spoken to either of them since that night in the Headmistress’s corridor weeks ago.

“Are you ready?” Ron asked Hermione. He was cupping her face in his hands, looking into her eyes as if he could read in them some testament of her emotional state.

“No, you don’t have to go yet, do you?” came Ginny’s muffled whisper from Harry’s shoulder. Harry softly extracted himself from her embrace. He seemed to pull himself together, taking in the scene, taking in Malfoy and Luna standing hand-in-hand, and McGonagall sitting stiff-backed at her desk, and Hermione with Ron’s arm around her shoulder, and the office looking the same as it always had except for the conspicuously empty portraits of Dumbledore and Snape.

And he smiled. “I think we should go, yeah,” he replied after a moment. Ginny stepped back, apparently recovering her senses. Her face was flush with happiness then disappointment. Hermione knew Ginny had spent half the night awake thinking eagerly about seeing Harry again because Hermione had spent it lying awake dreading the dawn. And now it was here. And they were going to the Ministry to testify at Narcissa Malfoy’s trial.

“Alright you lot,” said Ron, who had yet to let go of Hermione, “let’s go. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

Harry smiled at McGonagall. “Nice to see you, Headmistress.”

“Potter,” she replied, her cool demeanor warming into a smile.

“Oh yeah! Hey, McGona—Headmistress!” said Ron, grinning at her.

McGonagall stood up. “Mr. Wealsey,” she said, and her height was imposing, even for Ron who was very tall, “I think, under the circumstances, you may call me Minerva.”

Ron gaped at her, then Harry laughed. “I think we’ll have to work up to that, Headmistress,” he said. Harry squeezed Ginny’s hand one last time and released it. “We’ll be back before dinner. I’ll see you then, ok?” he told Ginny, who nodded.

“Hermione!” Harry said, as if he’d just seen her.

“Hi Harry! How are you?” It was so strange to speak to him in person again. After all of their correspondence, about Ron, about the Auror office, about the Trial, about Malfoy, it was almost awkward.

“Harry, this is Draco Malfoy,” said Luna, moving forward and pulling Malfoy by his hand. Hermione snuck a glance at them. Malfoy’s face was like marble. Luna was smiling pleasantly, as if introducing one good friend to another for the first time.

“Yeah, hi Luna. I know who that is,” said Harry without looking at Malfoy. Hermione had warned Ron and Harry of this recent unnerving development, but that didn’t make it any less bizarre.

“You’re going to be late,” said McGonagall, her voice breaking through the icy silence.

Harry nodded curtly and turned toward the fireplace. “Malfoy, you’ll go after me. Ron, you next, then Luna, then Hermione.” He took a little container out of his robes, dug a handful of floo powder out of it, and tossed the shimmering dust into the fire. It burst into green flames at once and Harry stepped inside. “Ministry of Magic,” he said very clearly over the roar of the flames. In a swirl of greenish flame, he disappeared.

Malfoy was next. Hermione noted his haggard, slump-shouldered appearance. He looked like she felt. His neat black robes had the usual expensive air about them, but the way he wore them was different. As he shouted, “Ministry of Magic!” he looked at her. His grey eyes were dazzling in the bright green light, gripping her, pulling her into him. There was something about his gaze… A question. No, a plea… Then she realized he was screaming. Screaming at her with his blazing eyes. As if he was burning up in the fire as it ate him away into nothing. Then he was gone.

Hermione was so disoriented that she barely noticed Ron and Luna vanish into the fireplace. It took McGonagall voice softly calling her back to the present to wake her from her thoughts. “Hermione?”

“Right. Sorry, Headmistress,” Hermione said and stumbled over to the fireplace.

“You don’t have to do this—” McGonagall began but Hermione interrupted her.

“I have to go,” she took a fist of power from the pot on the mantle and threw it into the fire. “The Ministry of Magic!” She caught one last glimpse of the Headmistress’s office and McGonagall’s confused expression twisting away from her before she was zooming past myriad other wizarding living rooms and pubs on her way to the Ministry of Magic.

They were right to get to the Ministry an hour early, but it wasn’t processing that was taking so much time. From the moment they had arrived in the atrium, it seemed that hundreds of people had jostled her, taken her picture, pressed her to answer questions with quick quotes quills waggling in her face as they whizzed across parchment in midair, or just shouted their names.

“Harry! Harry Potter, the Daily Prophet would—”

“Hermione! Luna Lovegood! Ms. Granger! Over here!” Another camera flashed nearby, blinding Hermione.

They were all shunted forward, with Harry and Ron tried to stave off the crowd as Malfoy, Luna, and Hermione inched closer to the security guard stationed at the other end of the atrium to register their wands.

“Mr. Malfoy, do you—” began a man, shoving a microphone under Harry’s arm, trying to get closer to Malfoy, but Harry pushed him roughly out of the way. Hermione watched Malfoy out of the corner of her eye. His head was down, his expression stoic.

Here and there, witches and wizards trying to get to work were jolted diagonally through the throng in a long-suffering, harassed sort of way.

At the fountain, now a circle of dark stone statues holding hands around a single spout of water, Hermione caught a snippet of words in French from a witch running along beside them with a microphone held to her lips, shouting over the din. “—Hermione Granger, héroïne de la Seconde Guerre des Sorciers, se cache son visage en alarme, clairement submerge—”

Finally, they made it to the security guard’s stand. They each held out their wand for examination and answered the guard’s questions in turn. Everyone except Harry and Ron received visitor’s badges that read “Visitor – Witness” and pinned them to their robes as they forced their way to the lifts.

Ron shouted down a bald man with a camera when he tried to sneak into their elevator and then the golden grate slid shut and they slid downwards toward the courtrooms, leaving behind the insanity of the atrium. Harry straightened his robes and said, “That was ridiculous.” Ron laughed, but he was the only one. They were used to the attention. For Luna, Hermione, and Malfoy, this zoo was overwhelming, to say the least. Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t that.

Harry fiddled with the buttons next to the elevator door for a moment, before explaining, “this lift is going straight down now. We don’t want to risk anyone else getting in.”

When the grate slid open again, a granite-walled hallway yawned back at them. The walls were a blank expanse of harsh, shadowed gray with no windows or doors except the one to leading to the Department of Mysteries on the right. To the left, the corridor ended in a staircase. When they exited the lift together, it was toward the stairs.

Hermione blinked rapidly and tried to keep control of herself. She could feel her hands shaking. She stuffed them into her robes to hide them from the others. Surely no one else was as panicked as her.

They reached the bottom of the steps and started off down another hallway. This one had rough-hewn stone walls with torches set high in iron brackets and thick wooden doors with iron bolts set at intervals. There was a light under the door up ahead, and the murmur of voices muffled by stone and wood. This didn’t feel real.

A woman bustled up to them out of the shadows. “Good morning!” she said. Her voice echoed down the hallway, and down the corridor a little knot of people turned to face them. Hermione recognized Narcissa Malfoy, her white-blonde hair tied up in an elaborate hair-do. She wore robes of deep blue that gleamed in the torchlight.

“Mother!” Malfoy called down to her. He brushed past Hermione and broke into a run before Harry or Ron could stop him. Narcissa’s face contorted in a pitiful mixture of desperation and relief. She dissolved into tears, held up by a small, balding man in clover green robes. When Malfoy reached her, the man moved back into the shadows, placing a hand on the shoulder of another woman and coaxing her away. Hermione understood that this meeting between Malfoy and his mother was private, that she and her friends were intruding with their curious staring. Still, she watched them together, mother and son. Narcissa was clasping onto the front of Mafloy’s robes, sobbing, whimpering indiscernibly to him. He stroked her hair and wrapped a protective arm around her.

After a minute, the witch who had said good morning to them cleared her throat. They all looked at her dazedly. “Hello to you all. Harry Potter, of course, and Ronald Weasley. Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood. Welcome to the Ministry of Magic and thank you for answering your summons to testify during today’s trial. If I could just have you sign these—” she produced several pieces of parchment from a clipboard at her hip, riffled through them, and handed them out with quills “—then we can ask MacDougal his preference for the order you will give testimony. Ah, and here’s Mr. Ollivander!” They turned as one to look behind them at Ollivander taking careful steps toward them. “Mr. Ollivander, if you could sign this, please…” He took the parchment and quill from her, the hobbled to a torch to read.

Hermione felt overcome as she tried to comprehend the words on the paper in her hand. It shook, and she thought she was viewing it through a pane of very warped glass. The sight of Malfoy with his mother was shocking. All of this was too much. She gave up trying to read the parchment and signed it without question, handing it back to the witch, who thanked each of them in turn.

“Alright, I’ll just get Counsel MacDougal, then, shall I?” said the witch. They stared at her. “Counsel!” she called over her shoulder. The bald man said something to the woman he was standing with and she nodded, then he strode up to them, sighing heavily and looking grim.

“Yes, Jocasta?”

“These are the…” she gestured around at them. Apparently they needed no introduction, because he smiled rather more warmly and said, “Have they signed the releases? Very good, very good. Well, I can handle it from here. Thank you, dear.” The witch nodded, returning his smile, and headed over to the door of the courtroom. She opened it and the noise within stopped abruptly, then struck back up again, then was cut off as the door shut behind her.

The man clapped his hands together and looked at them. “Which of you would like to go first?” he asked. Then he laughed and said, “No, no. Only joking! I think we’ll start with Mr. Ronald Weasley, if that is agreeable.”

“Are you MacDougal,” asked Harry suddenly.

“Oh yes! Yes, I am he! The very same.” MacDougal and Harry shook hands. The counsel seemed to be babbling a little. This was not at all what Hermione had expected from the counsel of Narcissa Malfoy. He was wavering somewhere between jumpiness and distraction. Another strangled issued from where the Malfoys stood, and MacDougal twitched.

“Anyway, yes, I am Hackney MacDougal, counsel for Narcissa Malfoy,” he said as if trying to cover the silence with a flood of talk. “Mr. Weasley, you first then. And after, Ms. Granger, Ms. Lovegood, Mr. Ollivander, Mr. Malfoy, then Mr. Potter. Very good, very good.” He was definitely distracted. His client was in pieces at his back and the buzz of a great multitude of people behind the door to their right was unnerving even to Hermione.

MacDougal procured a pocket watch from his vest and peered at it. “Great Galloping Hippogriffs, is that the time? Oh, well you had all better scoot in. There’s a place for the witnesses along the side there,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the door. “You’ll see it. There’ll be someone to direct you. Thank you, and I’ll see you inside!”

+++

“No, no, no! Please, Draco, please no. I can’t do this. I can’t stand in front of all those people and—” his mother broke off, her voice rent by a sob. She pressed her forehead into his shoulder. Little tendrils of hair were hanging out of her elegant bun now, and her back shook. Draco had hardly ever seen her like this. It was awful, unbearable, to watch his mother tremble with fear and grief like this. Draco didn’t know what to do to comfort her. What could he say? That it would all be ok? That she would be safe? They would find her innocent?

She didn’t want that. She kept telling him over and over, “I’m guilty, guilty guilty, Draco. My son, my little boy, what have I done. Do you know—did they tell you? Child endangerment! I should be dead. I should be dead!” Her voice was a hoarse rasp, wracked with hiccupping cries. She wasn’t making any sense. Child endangerment? What did that mean? Were they holding her accountable for… for what? Draco supposed he would find out soon enough.

“Mr. Malfoy, I’m Hackney MacDougal, your mother’s counsel. It’s time,” said a man, approaching them from the direction of the courtroom door.

Draco nodded at him, trying to look stronger than he felt. He squared his shoulders and pulled his mother off of him tenderly, turning her to face him. “Mother, we have to go now.” She shook her head and tried to bury herself in his arms again, but he held her off. “Mother, it’s going to be alright. I’ll be right there. I’ll be…” His voice trailed away. He turned to face the little man, looking down at him. “Where is my father?”

MacDougal responded with something between a shrug and a grimace. “Counsel Bliswick advised him against attending—”

“He’s not here? What, he’s not even in the courtroom?” The look MacDougal gave him said it all.

Draco felt anger scorch through him, electrifying even his fingertips. His mother gasped and jumped back away from him as if he’d burned her. It occurred to him that he may have done. “I’m sorry, mother, I’m sorry.” He glared back at MacDougal. “I wish I had known. I could have…” He stopped again. He would have… what? Nothing. He would have nothing. If his father wasn’t here, then that was just the way it was.

A movement behind them made Draco start. He had his wand out before he even realized he’d done it, but MacDougal was hurrying between Draco and a terrified-looking woman Draco had not seen before. “Mr. Malfoy, please! This is my wife, Elodonda.” MacDougal sort of twitched his hand and Elodonda inched forward. Draco lowered his wand, feeling furious with himself. “This is Draco Malfoy,” MacDougal was saying, “Narcissa’s son. We’ve heard a lot about you, haven’t we, Elodonda?” MacDougal smiled awkwardly, clearly eager to smooth over the misunderstanding.

The woman was mousy, short and thin. She gave him a small smile, then Narcissa held out her hand to her and Elodonda grasped it in both of hers. Where they friends? This woman – MacDougal’s wife – was here to offer support? Was that done?

“We should…” muttered MacDougal with another glance toward the courtroom.

“Yes,” replied Draco simply. They walked together down the hall and through the door into the courtroom beyond.
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Atonement