We're What? [Ministry Trainee's with Malfoi]

[coreofaphoenix]

After the fall of Voldemort, Harry had spent the Summer helping out the rebuilding efforts at Hogwarts. Ensuring that the castle was in working order before the school year started that autumn. Although Ron was well ready (or so he insisted) to hop into the Auror's, Harry hadn't been nearly as sure. Was he ready to go back into fighting after everything they'd been through? It was after a particularly long conversation with Headmistress McGonagall who said that he would be bored stiff returning to classes that helped him in his decision. She only made him promise that he return and help teach a class (or two) on occasion for defense classes.

And maybe talk to someone about his "issues".

It was odd knowing he'd only see Ron daily during training and would only see Hermione on Hogsmeade weekends while she completed her seventh year. Ginny... was another subject all together. They'd talked after the War and although it hurt, they'd both agreed that now wasn't the proper time to resume a relationship.

So, after his meeting with McGonagall and returning to Grimmauld, he'd owled the Minister to accept the opportunity. Grimmauld was slowly but surely becoming less depressive (emphasis on slowly) but it was a place that he could call his own. He didn't have to return to the Dursley's or on the run.

Harry wasn't sure what to expect that first day walking into training. He briefly considered that he and Ron would likely be partnered up due to their history but otherwise, everything else was a toss-up. He'd been briefly surprised to see Draco Malfoy walk in and he could already hear Ron's impending rant about him being there. He nudged the other boy and gave Draco a little nod of acknowledgment. He wasn't exactly Draco's biggest fan by any stretch of the imagination however he appreciated Narcissa's assistance during the final battle with Voldemort.

"Well, now that we're all here," their trainer spoke up from the front of the room after a few other stragglers walked in. "We'll get started."

Comments

[malfoi]

That nod from Potter just led to a blank look from Malfoy in return, nonplussed at finding each other here.

People were staring. At all three of them. Veterans and survivors of the Battle of Hogwarts, participants in history.

Draco probably should have waited another year, gone in with a later crop of trainees. Not thrown himself into this task immediately. His mother and father had been telling him to stay home, to lick his metaphorical wounds at Malfoy manor; they didn't need the money, he didn't need something so plebeian as a job. He could stay at home literally forever, a man of leisure resting on his laurels and independently wealthy. But the prospect of rattling around in the manor by himself, like loose change in an empty vault, was even more intolerable. Their manor had held prisoners. People had been murdered inside his childhood home. Whenever Draco sat at the breakfast table with his parents, he kept looking at that grand dining table that had played host to Death Eater meetings, imagining he still saw a smudge of blood on the wood no matter how well it had been cleaned.

On the list of available careers that he could heave himself into, the Ministry had a variety and was respectable enough, so why not?

He looked at the available seats. The only open ones were in an arc around Potter; everybody else was apparently too intimidated to sit beside the Boy Who Lived (and then died, and lived again). He didn't particularly want to, either.

But Draco took the seat, curtly, hands folded in front of him as he stared rigidly forward as the trainer started speaking, going over the basics of the months-long training program. His shoulders were stiff, his gaze riveted forwards. Wondering if he had been imagining the muttering from other trainees that had rippled through the room upon his entrance, and knowing that he hadn't.

Please feel free to play the instructor too if you see fit! :D

[coreofaphoenix]

After years of some kind of attention being on him, Harry didn't pay the whispers much notice nor did he care (much) when no one sat around him other than Ron. He wanted to nip that behavior in the bud but this wasn't his show. He wouldn't make a big deal out of it until it created some kind of problem. He hoped, considering they were all starting from the bottom, that he could be like the rest of them.

Simply another trainee.

He was also well aware of how ridiculous that was considering who he was and what they'd done during/for the war.

Harry noticed the whispers get a little louder when Malfoy entered the room and ended up sitting near him. He noticed Ron's mouth starting to open to make some sort of snide remark and shook his head. Now was definitely not the time for that behavior. He wasn't Draco Malfoy's biggest fan by any stretch of the imagination but they weren't at Hogwarts anymore.

He moved his attention fully to the instructor and focused on what he was saying.

"During this program, everyone will be partnered up. For every Auror trainee, there will be an Obliviator trainee. In the field, the two often work closely together so it's best to get used to that right away. This partner will be your back up, someone you will train and run missions with. In order to succeed, you will have to learn to work together and trust each other. Understood?"

[malfoi]

The rest of the room was watching attentively, but they didn't give an audible response. After waiting a few moments, the instructor cleared his throat and repeated, "Understood?"

Having obtained the requisite murmuring yes from most of them, he continued. "We still prefer for Aurors to leave as little a trace of their activities as possible, but in the end, that's what your partner is for. Stopping your perpretators takes precedence. And for those Obliviator trainees without much experience with Muggles, you'll liaise with the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee to craft appropriate replacement memories for any witnesses."

That made Draco suddenly straighten in his seat, feeling a cold prickle at the nape of his neck. He did not have experience with Muggles. He could still feel others' gazes on him, too, his shoulderblades practically itching with people staring.

This was a terrible idea, he thought to himself. The Malfoys had fallen hard from grace, and were no longer in a position where Lucius' money could grease and buy his son's way through life. (Instead: testimonies and trials and handing over evidence in exchange for avoiding an Azkaban sentence. Something of a coward, in the end, saving his own tail.) So Draco would have to fight to earn everything himself, on his own merits. On some level, that felt unexpectedly freeing — an opportunity to prove himself, to know that he obtained something because he deserved it and not because of his name or his blood or his money.

On another level, that was fucking terrifying.

His fingers curled on the desk, distracted and lost in these thoughts, before he heard his name and suddenly snapped back to attention. "Pardon?" he asked.

The instructor sighed, rolled his eyes. "Malfoy, Potter. The two of you will be paired up. You know each other already from Hogwarts, no? And besides, that's just how the numbers worked out."

This had to be a joke. Draco's eyes narrowed, and then he shot an incredulous look at the young man beside him, and he mouthed: What?

[coreofaphoenix]

Harry could hear the mutterings starting again (specifically those who were purebloods) when their instructor mentioned the possibility of interacting with muggles and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Even Ron, though he had a little more experience the days, had his mouth opened then shut it again. At least there was a committee that assisted in those cases and honestly, Harry thought that was for the best.

He almost hadn't caught their names being paired together the first time and was glad that he wasn't the only one caught off guard by that. He had been sure he'd be paired up with Ron since they had worked together extensively over the years. But Malfoy?

Well then.

Harry looked at Draco with the same shocked look and shook his head, not having any better response than Draco's own.

"Wait, what?" Ron blurted out almost immediately, sounding horrified.

"And Weasley, your partner is Glasscock," the instructor said, not bothering to answer or comment on what he was sure was some deep-seated issue the boy had about his friend's assigned partner.

He wasn't naive and most certainly hadn't lived under a rock for the last few years to not know who was in his class. At the end of the day, it was his class and he had been through this before a time or ten. Truth be told, one of his favorite things to do was pairing recruits from different houses together (those who just came out of Hogwarts that is). After all, after a certain point in time, you couldn't keep identifying solely based on your house.

[malfoi]

It was a smart move on the instructor's part: dividing friends and forcing the trainees out of their comfort zones, making them grow and stretch and try something new. Work together with someone new. Not fall back on old crutches.

This, however, was a little extreme.

The rest of the briefing passed with a kind of distant roaring in Draco's ears. He hadn't even been in the same room with Potter since the end of the battle. He had slunk away to lick his wounds, both metaphorical and literal. Even the knowledge that his mother had saved this boy's life hadn't smoothed over the awkwardness; it had, in fact, made the shame sit even heavier beneath his sternum.

He swallowed that guilt at the end of the briefing, as they started gathering up their belongings and were told to go set up new desks in the office next to their partners. There was chatter in the room between all the new pairs, but there was dead silence between these two as they glanced at each other, even as Glasscock swept in and scooped up Weasley.

Which, again, left these two.

"So," Draco said.

[coreofaphoenix]

To be honest, after a brief moment of surprise and after he thought about it, Harry had become a bit less surprised than his best friend. After all, he recalled how he had done the same thing when leading Dumbledore's Army during that dreaded fifth year. In that case, it was that friends weren't always at the same level as you were and vice versa so it was smarter to work with someone who was on your skill level or higher.

In this case, he could understand the pros of it. Even so, it surprised him that he was paired with Malfoy.

"Ironic that we were paired up," Harry said after a long moment. Though he wasn't sure if it was really ironic or if it was simply just something for him to say considering their past history.

He watched as Glasscock drug Ron away and shook his head. Harry stood from his chair and looked at Draco. "Suppose we should go set up our desks."

He didn't dislike or outright hate Draco Malfoy. While he would never agree with the other man's choices, he also knew they all did what they had to to survive a war. They would have to work together for the time being and they'd have to find some way of communicating, right?

[malfoi]

"It seems our instructor has a certain sense of humour," he said in a withering tone, while he went for one of the two empty desks, dropped his satchel on one of them, and started unpacking.

It was entirely possible, actually, that the older man had absolutely no idea about the specific strained relationship between these two trainees — but Draco still innately struggled with accepting that the entire world didn't actually revolve around him, and that nobody was thinking about him half as much as he thought about himself. Old habits died hard.

He started meticulously laying out his belongings: paper and a fine-tipped peacock quill (ostentatious, and more expensive than it needed to be); his wand (new and unfamiliar, not the one Harry had once disarmed from him); a stack of Ministry intake paperwork, the new hire packet, rules and regulations for the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.

Becoming an Obliviator wasn't, plainly put, as sexy as Aurors — so many wizarding children dreamed of growing up and becoming Aurors — and he was more than talented enough to have been in Harry's programme, but something about it hadn't sat right when he'd looked over the Ministry applications. He rather suspected that that faded tattoo on his forearm might disqualify him, just a little.

A slight pause, then he blurted out, before he could really rethink how this might sound like a slap in the face: "Do you think we can request transfers? Due to... extenuating circumstances."