Draco shook the hand of the fashionable witch who entered his study. "I'm sorry I had to change our meeting venue." The fire was roaring in the fireplace behind him despite the mild weather, and he had a steaming cup of something that smelled more medicinal than pure tea on the corner of his desk. "Thank you for indulging me." He gestured for her to take a seat, and resumed his when she had.
"Not at all," she assured him, settling her bag in her lap and arranging a Muggle-style pad of paper from it neatly in front of her on the desk. A cup of tea seemingly poured itself and came to rest in front of her. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I know you have a full schedule."
"I always have time to talk about myself," he said playfully.
She obliged him with a laugh and set her quill to the paper. "Well, it's funny you say that — I was actually hoping to talk about Voldemort."
His affable demeanour evaporated. He raised his eyebrows coolly and his expression turned neutrally reserved. "That isn't what your owl said."
"No," she admitted, but was unabashed. "I've found that I get far fewer responses to my owls when I open with that. Please hear me out, though — I only need five minutes of your time."
He was watching her without expression, but he picked up his tea instead of throwing her out. "Five minutes."
"Thank you." She was apparently prepared, because she pulled several sheafs of papers from her bag and laid them on the desk in front of her in a messy line. "As I'm sure you're aware, I mean, obviously you would be aware, the twenty-fifth anniversary of his defeat is coming up in a few years. I'm working on a book I intend to have published that year, working title Life Under Voldemort, a ground-level history, showing what that time was really like. I've been sourcing memories and interviews with survivors…"
He reached across the desk and delicately moved the papers with two fingers. Some of the labels on the stacks that stood out were Neville Longbottom, Percy Weasley, and Andromeda Tonks, interspersed with others he didn't recognise or knew were offering a much more tangential view.
She watched him study them. "I have the stories from members of Dumbledore's Army, the Order of the Phoenix, normal civilians, people who went into hiding, Ministry workers…"
"Sounds admirably well-rounded."
"That's what I'm after. I'm missing someone with your qualifications…"
"A Death Eater," he said coolly.
She nodded her head to the side in a way that wasn't precisely yes or no. "Someone with your perspective, someone who was actually right there with him. A firsthand look at what he was doing. At him."
"I'm sure you could find plenty of willing interviewees in Azkaban."
She gave him a look like that was a strange thing to say — which was frankly the pot staring at the kettle. "I'm not looking to write about the people committing the atrocities. This is about what it was like to survive them."
"That's the second time you've used that word. Is that what we are? 'Survivors'?"
"You're here, aren't you? You survived him."
"That's an interesting way of putting it." It would be nice if it were true, but he declined to indulge that musing for the moment. He laced his fingers in front of his mouth, spinning his family ring around his finger, and watched her over them. "Why are you writing this?"
She looked like she understood this was the important question, and took a moment to gather her papers back together neatly as she gathered her thoughts, fanning them out to show the dozens of names, all people who were sharing how they had been impacted by those dark times. "As a society, we Wizards tend not to talk about these sorts of things. Once dark times are over, we put them behind us and carry on with business as usual. I think it's important that we don't rob future generations of the ability to know what life was actually like, just because we'd rather pretend it didn't happen."
"For the love of the historical record, then."
"Oh yes. I think it's important that history be preserved and learned from."
He spun his ring, watching her steadily. She was a little younger than him, maybe hadn't started school yet by the time of Voldemort's rule. Her fascination was academic, and genuine, he was sure, but lacked the personal fire that would make it truly impactful — that would really cut to the truth. "I'd offer you another motivation, if I may. Or the same one, taken further."
"Oh?"
"This can never be allowed to happen again." He settled his ring firmly into place. "When we silently put it behind us, we leave the door open for a new generation to make the same mistakes. Another fervour of self-righteousness, another Dark Lord, a new war against ourselves. It must stop."
She stared at him, then looked down at her files with a small, thoughtful nod.
He finally released her from his gaze. "Tibby."
The house elf appeared beside his chair. "Master Draco?"
"There's a box of old papers in the bottom drawer of my bedroom desk. Please bring those to me." The house elf disappeared and he looked back at her. "I don't want to talk about him," he said. "I'd like to say 'I'm sure you understand why', but I suspect you might not. But I support your goal and think I have something to offer that may actually be of more historical interest."
"Memories?" she said hopefully.
"Mm, no. You should know that asking so casually for something that intimate is very offputting. In case no one's ever told you." Tibby reappeared with his papers, and he thanked her as he took them. He took the lid from the box and flipped through a few of the pages to check they were what he expected, then he floated the witch's blank pages to him without asking permission. He held one hand above the box of papers and the other over her pad, and very swiftly the writing from the first began to appear on the second, racing down the page. Papers floated out of the box and neatly stacked themselves as they were copied, and the pages on her pad flipped unaided.
She was quiet to respect his concentration, though he made it look effortless. "Not quite as useful as a contemporary journal," he said as he finished, "but perhaps of interest. I wrote these in the year after Voldemort's death." It was less a journal and more a disorganised vomit of things he had witnessed, been made to do, and couldn't stop himself from feeling, often without context and not written for an audience, put down on paper when there was no one to talk to but he had to do something to get it out of his mind. "They haven't been edited; I haven't even looked at them in at least ten years, and I can't promise coherence or quality. They're yours to do with as you please."
She was reading some of the words upside down as the pages moved, and she seemed excited. "This is incredible."
He manually handed the pad of copied pages back to her, but when she took them in her hands, he didn't let go, and she had to look back up at him. "On the condition you also get Harry Potter involved in your project."
She bit her lips together as he let her take the papers. "That's been a sticking point."
"You mean ambushing him in a meeting arranged under false pretences didn't work? I am shocked." He conjured a handkerchief to cough into, subtly checked for blood, and Vanished it again. "He's dealt with people asking him about Voldemort his entire wizarding life; he's good at ignoring it. Tailor your pitch to Hermione. I would think she would be receptive to your intention."
"I have tried reaching out to the Deputy Minister—"
"If it doesn't work," he interrupted with a small shrug, "I'm afraid that's all there is to it. My condition stands. Is there anything else I can do for you?"
She took the cue to begin packing away her notes. "Well, I would love the opportunity to interview your mother…"
He laughed. "And I would quite enjoy seeing you try, but I'll spare you the discomfort. No. My parents are intensely private people who very much believe in 'putting it behind us', and you should stop annoying them, if you've started."
"That's unfortunate, but I understand. I had to try." She stood up, and he also stood to see her out. She hesitated, and he raised his eyebrows to invite her to go on. "May I see it?" Her eyes flicked toward his left arm.
His demeanour went cold again. "Do you ask werewolves to see their scars?"
"If I were studying werewolves and werewolf bite scars were going to become extinct within a few decades, I think I would."
"Then you can find plenty of them in Azkaban." He gestured toward the door for her to go. But he also thought he had better follow her to make sure she didn't decide to go wandering around the house to see the rooms where Death Eaters had really lived and plotted and killed.
She took the instruction to find the floo with some reluctance, but he escorted her to make sure she got there, floating sedately at her side and shivering a little bit once out of his overly-warm room. "I feel I should make it clear," he said amicably, "that if my contribution is used against my wishes, or is edited to present me or anyone else," his family, that meant, "in a falsely negative light, my estate will take swift and severe action. Not that I am requesting favourable editing," he assured her, "and in fact I'd prefer minimal editing at all, but villainization will not be tolerated."
"I have no intention of doing any such thing."
"Then I'm pleased to work with you, and I hope your book excels beyond your wildest expectations." He pleasantly offered her floo powder and watched her leave.
"That was unusually aggressive," he heard from the door. He hadn't realised his father was out of his own study; he must have been informed by his portrait spy and waited for the stranger to be gone.
"Well, you know, sometimes Ravenclaw types need things to be spelled out for them." He coughed into his hand again as he left the drawing room. His tea felt very far away. "Apparently Voldemort scholars are a thing now."
"It was inevitable. You handled her?" He nodded, but couldn't speak to answer. His father offered his arm, and Draco's coughing and the tapping of his father's cane carried them back to his study.
