Lost And Found

ENEMIES AND FRIENDS

The Daily Prophet didn't stop at just publishing the first news of Draco Malfoy's arrest. As was its policy, it carried on to defame the said person with zealous consistency without giving a shit about the reliability of its source or credibility of its contents.

Although the Auror office took a firm step so that the content of the object seized from the Malfoy Manor wouldn't become a public, considering the family history it didn't take much imaginations from the reporters to speculate that the dark object was somehow linked with the deceased Dark Lord.

Fifteen years was not long enough to erase the horrors of that dark era from the minds of wizarding population. A small spark from their trusted newspaper and the history of the Malfoy family was enough to start a widespread fire among the common people.

There were strong opinions among people that Draco Malfoy should definitely be given the strictest punishment for his attempt to reorganize the remaining Death Eaters to start another dark era - yes, that was what the Daily Prophet accused him of.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of which Malfoy was head, didn't affirm the validity of any of those news. On the other hand, it didn't comment anything in his favour, either. They kept total silence. As if they were keeping quiet to assess the situation. Once the situation would take some definite direction, the would take the winning side.

Among all these chaos, Hermione Granger Malfoy, to keep her mind to lose its last sheards of credibility, locked herself into the library, away from the whole world. Only Harry and Dobby were allowed in, even that would be only when strictly necessary. A large group of reporters, so called friends and acquaintances kept on visiting, but with little to no response from the Malfoy household.

It was a blessing that her parents were out of country at that moment and weren't in possession of latest Daily Prophets. And to the Weaslies, she had already written assuring them that she was fine and needs some times alone. She didn't have the mental stamina to face the whole Weasley family (to which more members were added obviously) at that time and the absence of a certain Weasley to whom she was married in the other lifetime, wouldn't make that an easy task.

But it was impossible to avoid all the visitors. There were people to whom she couldn't just be too rude to send them away from the main gate. Two of them were once her dearest friends, another she agreed to see only out of sheer curiosity.

So she found herself in the morning with Luna and Neville, who were a couple now, which was not much surprising to her. What was really surprising to her was when she found herself in evening with Pansy Perkinson and her Muggle husband.

"Hermione, how are you coping?", asked Neville gently.

She just shrugged, not knowing what to say.

Luna asked, "Where are the children?"

"They are with Harry and Ginny. I thought that it would be best for them to stay away from this chaos. And there they would also have the company of the Potter children."

They nodded in agreement.

Although she fought hard not to show it, but Hermione was really nervous. She didn't want to let anyone else know about her predicament with an altered memory. She talked as less as possible, mainly keeping with nodding or sighing or some generic phrases like, 'I have no idea', 'yeah, that's true' or 'thanks for being there'.....

She was a bit surprised when Neville said, "Whoever is doing this and whoever is believing that Malfoy will plot something along with the Death Eaters, they are fully insane. How can they forget what he did in the war? The way he risked his life every day to tip the Order about upcoming attacks, they way he fought against his own family at the final battle...."