May 1998
"I didn't do it," Lucius Malfoy shouted once more, under the inert and contemptuous gaze of the members of the Winzegamot.
Judge Bones lifted a paper, scrutinizing it for a moment. "Your wand was found next to the lifeless body of Severus Snape, who has been secretly acting under Albus Dumbledore's orders for the duration of the war."
"It was him," the man shouted again. "It was Voldemort."
Not even the name of the man who couldn't be named until a few weeks before could shake the austerity of Susan Bones.
"Therefore, I find you guilty of the murder of Severus Snape, faithful servant of the Order of the Phoenix, and by virtue of the powers vested in me, I sentence you to life imprisonment at Azkaban".
Silence fell in the room, broken by the strangled scream that left Narcissa's throat. Paralyzed and in disbelief, unable to realize what had just happened, she remained motionless, ignoring the chaos that was unleashed all around her.
The Aurors surrounded Lucius, while a dementor waited for him outside the room, ready to escort him to Azkaban.
"You saw the wounds on his body," a desperate Draco Malfoy shouted, hoping someone would listen. "He couldn't have done it. He didn't do it."
But no one gave him a single glance.
Not any of the members of the Winzegamot, too high up, physically and figuratively, to care about him, to take pity on a failed former death eather.
Not his father, too coward to look his own son in the eye after all he had dragged him into.
Not his mother, broken emotionally and physically, whose lost and shining gaze pointed to the void.
And so, once again, the world he had deluded himself into knowing crumbled under his eyes.
When the time came for his trial, a few weeks after his father's, the atmosphere was different.
If he hadn't spent the nights following his conviction awake because of Narcissa's constant sobbing, his mind would have been clear enough to immediately recognize why everyone seemed to have changed their attitude.
There was someone on the stand.
No, not someone. Them.
He heard little or nothing of what they said.
"Three months in Azkaban Maximum Security Prison" were the only words from Judge Bones that reached his ears.
Someone protested. Someone else stood up. He paid no attention
He didn't care. What did he have to fear? The dementors?
Hearing his mother cry every night was worse.
January 1999
"They'll never listen to you," Lucius replied wearily, already totally drained of energy and vitality after only a few months in Azkaban.
"It doesn't matter," Draco insisted, tightening his lips into a thin line and staring at his own watch. The visit would be over in a few minutes.
"They'll think we tampered with it-"
"Just give it to me," the boy gasped in exasperation, hoping that his father would simply be able to trust him.
After all, what else did they have to lose?
He had spent his three months in Azkaban thinking and rethinking about what he could do to clear his father's name.
Lucius wasn't a murderer. He wasn't the one who killed Severus.
His trial had been far too hasty: it had been enough for them to find the man's wand next to Snape's lifeless body to convict him.
But Draco had no intention of locking himself away at the Manor to listen helplessly to his mother's cries.
He had at least to try.
After three months of thinking and analyzing the facts in every detail, he realized that it would be easy to get his father put on a trial, a fair one, if only he could get the help of someone with influence.
That was how things worked in the magical world.
And he'd never had to worry about it until now, because he'd always been the influential one.
But things had changed: there were other people now to which none could say no.
And for Draco Malfoy, even if confined in a cell and far from the new social equilibrium, it was easy to understand who they were.
***
February 1999
She should have sent him away. She had gotten up from her chair with the intention of sending him out.
But now, meeting his eyes and finding only silence and nothing else, she was intrigued.
She lowered her gaze to her shoes, breathing deeply.
"You've got five minutes, Malfoy," she said, inviting him towards the door of her office and following him inside to the amazement of Dean and Cameron.
She wasn't at all interested in what he had to tell her, whatever it was.
Her disdain for Malfoy had remained unchanged from what she had felt since her Hogwarts days, and the reason she had testified at his trial had nothing to do with him. She hadn't done it for him, she'd done it because it was the right thing to do.
Because she believed in what she had stated: if Malfoy hadn't covered them that fateful day, they would have never made it.
She shuddered for a moment, pushing back the memory of what had happened to her at the Manor.
She took a seat behind her desk, continuing to stare at him; she heard absolutely nothing.
Except for the light circles under his eyes that stood out against the pale skin of his face, he didn't look too different from how she had always known him.
He sat stiffly in his chair, his back straight, his smart clothes perfectly pressed.
She wondered, as she scrutinized him, how many house elves were still in bondage at the Manor, and it only increased her own nervousness.
The young man pulled a small bottle from his pocket with a white cloud of steam floating inside: a memory.
"I only ask that you see it," he said, his gaze cold and empty, as if he was looking at the world from beyond a glass window, without focusing on anything.
"What would that be?" asked Hermione, peering into the small container and straining, at the same time, to feel something.
But it was an useless effort.
Draco was rigid and composed, his every single movement slow and calculated. "My father's memories," he swallowed, and Hermione caught the slightest change in his eyes.
"From May 2th, 1998."
Hermione stiffened in her chair. "Lucius Malfoy was found guilty in a trial and convicted," she said harshly. "Any evidence should have been presented months ago-"
"They didn't give us time," he interrupted her, gritting his teeth.
Undaunted, and totally ignoring his comment, Hermione continued.
"And any decision on the case is up to Judge Bones."
Oh please.
Hermione gasped. She had heard him, plain and clear.
Draco brought his hands to the knot in his tie, loosening it imperceptibly.
The girl's gaze fell on one of the veins in his neck, which pulsed as his pale face slowly took on color.
"And who decided that Bones should be in charge of his case? " he said, his voice calm but firm. "Why has there only been one judge to handle all the trials for the last seven months?"
Hermione opened her mouth to retort, but the former Slytherin was quicker than she was, leaning forward on her desk.
"Where did the rest of the jury go?"
"The state of emergency immediately following the end of the war did not allow for the full judiciary to be restored," Hermione exclaimed, holding her breath to be able to finish her sentence before he interrupted her.
"In case you missed it, half of it is dead," she concluded, gasping for breath and only now realizing that, at some unspecified point in her speech, she had gotten up from her chair.
Draco followed her, getting up in turn from his own chair and pointing his hands at the opposite end of the desk. "There were no witnesses, he wasn't given a chance to defend himself."
"It's certainly not Judge Bones' fault that no one wanted to testify at his trial."
Draco's eyes came to life in a way that almost made her shudder. "It's her fault because my mother and I weren't allowed to testify," he stated, gritting his teeth.
Hermione's hesitation at the boy's furious stare dissolved before he finished his sentence.
In another circumstance she would have laughed at that statement.
How could Malfoy be so presumptuous to believe that he would be allowed to testify?
If she hadn't been so furious, she would have shaken her head and reminded him that the world he was used to, in which everyone bowed in front of the lacquered M on his ring and the glitter of his galleons, no longer existed.
But the way he was talking to her made the blood in her veins boil like it hadn't in months.
"If I were you, Malfoy," she said, feeling again as if she was among the corridors of Hogwarts responding to his taunts. "I'd avoid pushing too hard."
The young man lowered his gaze, and Hermione was momentarily filled with the feeling of having won: she had finally gotten her revenge on the bully who had always tormented her. She had the power now, she was the one with the upper hand.
She should have felt great.
Proud, happy.
Then why did she feel the exact opposite?
He sighed, and when his eyes met Hermione's fiery brown ones again, she realized that his gaze had returned to the blank, lifeless one he had the moment he had entered her office.
This, however, was not enough to quell the blood boiling in her veins.
"I'm just asking you to look at it" he insisted, straining to keep his voice calm and pushing the small bottle onto the table.
"Lucius has been convicted, you don't need to bring in this tampered evidence to prove that-"
"It's not tampered with," he interrupted her.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Since you're so sure, why don't you just take it straight to Bones, huh?" she asked.
Did he think he could take advantage of her? And why? Simply because she had testified at his trial?
Oh, he was dead wrong.
"And you think she'd listen to me?" blurted Draco, raising his tone of voice and snapping forward with such speed that Hermione had to pull out her wand, pointing it at his chest.
A bitter smile took shape on the blond man's lips.
War reflex.
It's not easy sleeping with one eye open all the time, is it Granger?
Hermione tried her best to remain still and not betray the agitation Draco's voice in her head was causing.
Silence fell over the room, broken only by the heavy breaths of both of them.
Do you think I'd really be here if I wasn't desperate?
"Where's your sense of justice, Granger?" He asked, seemingly unfazed by Hermione's wand pointed at his chest. "Doesn't everyone deserve a defense?"
No answer.
"Watch this memory," he said, raising his voice. "Or give him veritaserum. Or give it to me," he shouted, leaning forward to the point where his chest met the tip of the outstretched wand, "or read his mind. But do something."
At the last words, Hermione winced slightly.
"You should go," were the only words that left her mouth.
There was a moment of silence, during which he didn't speak and his mind didn't give anything away.
Then, slowly, he stepped back, heading for the exit, leaving the small vapor-filled bottle on the desk.
He stopped in front of the door, turning to Hermione as his hand reached for the handle.
"My father is many things," he said, his gaze blank, "but he is not a murderer."
He opened the door, taking a step over the threshold before seeking the girl's eyes again "as it wasn't Sirius Black".