Unflinching

Disclaimer: I do not own anything associated with Harry Potter; I do not earn money by writing this story.

A/N: I am sorry that I missed an update weekend, I had to re-write large parts of this and RL kicked in and a thousand other things. Bear hugs and thank yous to dynonugget and nastygrl, who are patient and gentle and wonderful betas.

Unflinching

Water was running down the rough walls, seeping into the back of his striped prisoner's uniform. In the back of his mind he knew he would regret reclining against the rough wall. It would make sleeping on the damp, lumpy straw mattress more uncomfortable than ever, the thin blanket not fit to keep warm in the droughty cell.

All of this came to his mind, but he refused to acknowledge the presence of the more reasonable and cautious part of his brain.

All of the strength and sanity he had left was focussed on the parchment in his hands. His solicitor had been sending him weekly updates on his case, usually short missives recounting owls he had sent and lists of items removed from Malfoy Manor by the Ministry.

Regis Bonmot was a good solicitor. The newly appointed Wizengamot had made sure that every single prisoner awaiting trial had been assigned a competent defence lawyer. Many had been hired from France, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries and Germany; many of Britain's lawyers had either vanished during Voldemort's reign or were waiting for their own trials.

Draco had expected another list of priceless family heirlooms that had been seized by the Ministry to be locked away indefinitely. Instead, the list consisted of names. Names of witnesses to be heard at his trial.

He ran his index finger down the parchment.

Gregory and Vincent. Blaise. Maybe character witnesses? What good would come from one Death Eater attesting for the other that he had done a good job?

And who in the blazes is Benita Fenwick?

Then his breath hitched.

Hermione Jean Granger.

She was alive? Voldemort had been searching for her relentlessly. Every single Death Eater had had a picture of her.

Why was she to be heard?

Would she take revenge for his foolish and immature behaviour in their school days?

His godfather would have spoken for him.

He remembered the day he watched the bodies of the fallen being lowered into the gigantic pit at the Hogwarts ruins. He had kept his mask in place, thankful for the cover that shielded his emotions from prying eyes.

Some of the bodies had still been pliant, limp in the hands of the Death Eaters. Others were stiff; rigor mortis had locked their limbs in grotesque distortions, witness to the pain and horror of their deaths.

He remembered the flash of hope when Potter finally faced the Dark Lord, the urge to run to his godfather who was shielding Potter's back...robes billowing violently around him and his mask discarded, announcing his true allegiance to friend and foe.

Severus had fallen first, taking the brunt of the killing curses fired at them.

None of his fellow Death Eaters had wanted to touch the traitor's body, so it had been left to Draco to lower Severus' worn body into the mass grave.

Severus' face had been peaceful, the deep lines between his brows and connecting the corners of his mouth to his nose were gone; in death, he looked his age of barely forty.

Too young to die, both by Muggle and wizarding standards; so many...too young to die.

The mask hid his tears. Body after body was laid down, quickly hiding his godfather from view. The enormity of the loss of life had threatened to strangle him. So many times, hands had been extended to him, and time and again, he had rejected the offer.

Hermione Jean Granger.

Jean ?

Impossible.

In the time after Jeanne had ended their agreement, he had tried searching for her, not physically but in the form of records about her, desperate to find any kind of information, anything that would bring her closer to him.

And even if he did not want to admit it, the longer she had been gone, the longer he searched without result, the more he had wanted to let his men loose in the Warren and drag her back.

There had been no 'Jeanne's in Hogwarts in recent years. Not a single one.

Not one in the Durmstrang records, not that he had expected to find her there.

Too many girls went by the name of Jeanne in Beauxbatons, but none were unaccounted for and none were in Britain.

Jeanne.

Jean?

She had been so familiar at times; her smile when he read to her, her dark, curly hair that he loved so much.

Jean, not Jeanne. The same name, the same root. Close enough to be valid for signing a magical contract.

Had she used him? Had she whored herself to him in order to spy? Had she traded her body for information and money?

Potter's friend.

Weasley's girl.

Draco started laughing, loud and painful in his ears. The laughing did not alleviate the absurdity and the betrayal. The laughing made it worse, rising inside of him and choking his throat until the laugh broke into a desperate scream.

Draco balled up the parchment and threw it against the wall opposite of the cot.

It bounced back and landed on the straw-filled sack that was his bed.

Had he financed the resistance with the money he had paid her? The very people who had arrested him and were currently ransacking his home?

Had it been all a lie?

His name on her lips when he was buried deep inside her? Her accepting welcome when he came home from a mission that made his insides freeze and his soul cry out?

The balls of his fists pressed into his eyes. The ache in his chest grew and threatened to overwhelm him, break his heart and crush him, there, in his little cell.

He would not be able to bear her mocking him.

***

The dirty uniform had been exchanged for a new one, and he had been allowed to shower and comb his now long hair.

Looking into a mirror for the first time in months, he backed away in shock – he had turned into his father.

They had washed away the moulding, rotting smell of Azkaban, making him look presentable and well-cared for; but the chains around his wrists and ankles were as heavy as ever, clanking and dragging behind him with every step, pulling him forward with their weight and making him look hunched-over.

The high-rising benches of the Wizengamot were fully occupied. The press and the public filled the halls.

Not a single sound was heard as he shuffled from the small door behind which he had been waiting to the heavy chair in the centre of the arena-like auditorium. The chains binding him in place tightened, and the back and forth of the trial began.

He had not been asked a single question so far, and although he sat in this place now clean and with a solicitor at his side, he had no illusions about the outcome of the trial.

Motions and counter-motions and the questions of the Wizengamot melded together to a constant rising and falling sea of voices in the background.

Draco waited only for one fateful sentence.

"Witness Hermione Jean Granger."

He lowered his gaze and concentrated on the elaborate emblem on the front side of the judges' dais.

"Honourable Judge Narrow, I am Marie-Françoise Dutitre, Miss Granger's legal representative."

Draco's head snapped up.

"Miss Granger requests to be excused from personally testifying due to medical reasons. With your permission, I would like to submit this medical report from her personal Healer."

"Permitted."

The short witch in pearls and monochromic robes made her way to the judges' table, her heels clicking against the stone floor.

Medical reasons? Was she ill?

Judge Narrow scanned the parchment and instructed the Apparitor to log the report in the official archive of the trials documents.

Madame Dutitre opened her shiny black leather briefcase and pulled out a small device holding six tiny nearly opaque bottles swirling with a silvery substance.

"Miss Granger requests to testify via Pensive. I herewith petition to submit these memories, retrieved in my own presence as well as the Honourable Notaries Laurin Hunningworth and Wieland Zwergenhort. I submit the undersigned and sealed accounts of their testimony".

The judges withdrew for several minutes to discuss whether or not to admit the memories.

The Wizengamot was growing restless; the noise level rose as speculations flew. Madame Dutitre exchanged a short but meaningful glance with her colleague Regis.

An Apparitor in purple robes levitated a special Pensieve projector through the side door and placed it on a table next to Draco with a muffled thump.

The memories were poured inside and stirred with his wand by Judge Narrow himself.

Draco forced his eyes to remain open. If he had to live his ultimate humiliation, he wanted to go through it with his head held high.

Fog rose from the pensive and slowly cleared from the middle to the outside of the cloud-like form.

A dark robed figure broke out of the ranks of Death Eaters standing in the grounds of Hogwarts. The masked man picked up a broken figure from the ground. The man struggled to lift the body, coming to his feet with difficulty and then cradled the head with the long dark hair against his shoulder. The rows of Death Eaters parted before him as he directed his steps through their midst.

Adjusting the weight in his arms, the figure's hood slipped and white blond hair glowed against the dark backdrop of black robes. The dead man was tenderly lowered into the pit. The blond folded dead hands around a wand and closed the empty eyes. Around him, the other Death Eaters picked up their work, hauling, levitating, dragging the dead into the grave.

A series of shorter memories followed... at the manor, newly returned after a horrific raid of several wizarding families who had refused to leave their houses in the contaminated areas. He saw himself sliding down the wall in the entry hall, vomiting violently as soon as the door closed behind him.

The memory ended, but he remembered that he had crawled under Jeanne's covers that night, believing her to be asleep. He had breathed in her scent of spicy oranges, fresh and warm at the same time. She had turned around to face him, wrapping her arms and a leg around him.

Next, his memory self and his friends at the dining table, Jeanne suspiciously not visible, discussing strategies for raising standards of living in the habitable settlements to lower the risk of epidemics.

Then, in quick succession, Blaise and he in his study, trying to figure out how to ensure education for the children, as most primary schools and Hogwarts had been destroyed.

And Draco in his study, fighting with Theodore Nott, voice loud, demanding that he amend the procedure for his sweeper teams.

Draco, pulling Jeanne out of the raging crowd, risking his life by Apparating from inside the Warren.

In the silence that followed, he sat frozen.

Where had she been during most of these memories?

"Draco Malfoy, is it true that you supplied the witness with shelter and nourishment in order to protect her from the fate she would have otherwise endured?"

His solicitor's voice was directed at him, but Draco was unable to free himself from the stream of questions and feelings that assaulted his shocked mind. He had to ask Bonmot to repeat his question.

Was it the truth? Essentially, yes.

"That is true."

Hope stirred.

The crowd murmured like a distant thunder until the judge pounded his hammer onto the surface of his desk to restore order.

"Is it true that you also supplied her with money and the means to direct it to certain members of the resistance?"

Draco blinked slowly. Yes. He should have paid her more!

"It is true."

This time the murmur escalated into disbelieving shouts, members of the Wizengamot had risen from their seats, shaking their wands in their fists.

Judge Narrow pounded his hammer relentlessly, but he had to amplify the loudness of the pounding with a quick spell to make the Wizengamot take notice.

He admitted a question of a portly looking balding wizard in green and purple robes.

"If you supported the resistance all along, why did you not fight on the side of the light in the final battle?"

Draco turned to the wizard without haste. He raised his chin and mentally slipped the Malfoy mask in place.

"Why, you ask? Why did I not rush forward to Potter's aide and announce myself a turncoat to all and sundry? Why?" He would have stood, would the chains binding him to the chair have permitted it. "Why did I not fight at his side while the entire Order of the Pheonix took a step back as soon as they saw their saviour confronting the Dark Lord?"

His words dripped with contempt.

"You, all of you just ... stood.

And gawped.

Asking me why I did not change allegiances in that very moment is a moot point. Would I have done so, I would have joined my godfather in the pit. I can only say that we all are lucky that the resistance had the mind to overwhelm the Dark Lord in numbers this time instead of sending a hungry, exhausted and worn out boy to fight a fight that could only be won in unity."

Draco let his eyes roam the raised benches of the Wizengamot that now had considerably fewer members than the last time he had seen them assembled. That must have been years ago.

"You put the world on his shoulders and left him to carry the weight. And now you ask why I did not forsake my family and friends to die beside him?"

The 'you disgust me' was never voiced but rang as loudly as if he had screamed it.

He still sat motionless and very straight when the judges retired for discussion and returned with their verdict.

He did not hear the verdict, for a woman sprang from her place on the witness' bench, a pretty girl with strawberry blonde hair. She was a member of the Resistance and had attested to his general cruelty, specifically to an attack to her personally in Diagon Alley. He did not remember her but had realised that she must have altered her appearance to hide, just like... Hermione.

Benita Fenwick screamed profanities at him while she attempted to climb over the wooden balustrade in front of the bench.

She was held back by several Apparitors, while others quickly released his chains and led him out of the courtroom.

Her screaming voice rang in his ears. 'The likes of him have murdered my father!' she screamed while she struggled against the men's hold on her.

Only when he was back in his cell, he realised that he had not been kissed.

In only two years he would be able to return to his home.

To whom?

For what?

***

Most of the time he sat on his cot, waiting, watching time pass in the form of an ever present shadow of bars in front of his window, slowly making its daily journey over the wall.

Sometimes the walls seemed to move in on him. He thought he could feel the ever recurring noises of Azkaban with his entire body. Clanking noises of opening and closing doors, metal bowls with gruel pushed into the cells, rattling on the ground. The sounds filling him until his skin felt tight and close to bursting, he would pull out the three pieces parchments from under his small pillow.

The parchments were worn at the edges, shiny where his fingers had traced the words on it again and again.

It was a letter he had received by personal delivery by Madame Dutitre several months after his trial.

There had been other letters, one long parchment he found two days after he had appeared before the Wizengamot. It had been from her but Azkaban's postal system included a strict department of censorship and little was left besides her name and his. Yet, he coveted the few disjointed words that were left in between the magical burn holes the censors had left after incinerating disallowed words.

The parchment in his hands was whole.

Julius William Granger

Father: Undisclosed

Behind it, he hid a photograph of a tiny newborn baby, eyes closed, a nearly invisible fuzz of translucent blond hair crowning his head.

At first it appeared to be a Muggle photograph, the baby was so still. Then suddenly, the tiny mouth twitched and started moving in a sucking motion.

Draco smiled and touched his fingertip to the perfect little nose.

"Dreaming of nursing," he whispered.

The third parchment was instilling both fear and hope in him.

Draco,

Hermione

There was a splatter of ink in the space above her name. As if she had wanted to add something, quill poised over the parchment until the ink had fallen.