Chapter Text
London, 2005
I blink hard, once, twice, and force my eyes to refocus on the dense text of the quarterly report for the Werewolf Registry.
It's the third time I've read the same paragraph about vaccination compliance rates. I could recite it in my sleep, if I were sleeping, which I am not. I've read it so many times that the words have lost all meaning, reduced from language to mere ink stains on parchment.
Vaccination. Compliance. Non-compliance. Missing.
The last one is the worst. Missing always is. Missing doesn't mean "lost their paperwork" or "moved to a different district." Missing means what it says. Missing means no one knows where they are.
My tea is now cold and undrinkable, sitting in a chipped mug that reads Property of the Department of Mysteries (Just Kidding). It has been cold for two hours and seventeen minutes, which I know because I checked the clock when I last considered heating it and then decided that the effort required to locate my wand was, at that particular moment, insurmountable.
I slide the mug three inches to the left, so it's exactly centered on the hideous Grindylow-shaped coaster Anthony Goldstein got me for Secret Santa two years ago, and turn to glance outside.
The January light filtering through the polished windows of my DMLE office is the color of week-old porridge. It has been raining for eleven consecutive days. I know this because I've been here for eleven consecutive days, and the view from my window has not changed once. Not in color, not in texture, not in its fundamental commitment to making me feel like I'm living inside a particularly depressing watercolor. The novelty of grey, it turns out, wears off after about forty-eight hours. The remaining days are just... endurance.
Today, I've been here since six in the morning. It's now nearly four in the afternoon.
Ten hours. Six hundred minutes. Approximately thirty-six thousand seconds, if we're being precise.
And I usually am.
Because this is what success looks like, apparently.
This is the reward for being the youngest department head in a century, for revolutionizing the ethical framework of experimental charms, for surviving a war and a rebuilding and a thousand small red-tape battles that nobody sings songs about. This is a desk buried under so much paperwork I've half-forgotten what the wood underneath looks like. This is a calendar so full of meetings about meetings that I've started blocking out "strategic thinking time" just to have an hour alone.
I glance at the memo spike on my desk. It's full. Has been full since last Thursday. I keep meaning to file them and keep not filing them. At some point, the spike will achieve critical mass and the memos will begin sliding off one another onto the floor, and I will step over them, and they will join the ecosystem of forgotten papers currently colonizing the space beneath my desk.
I know there's a system for this. I designed it at some point when I first began working at the Ministry. But that system requires follow-through, and follow-through requires energy, and energy requires sleep, and sleep requires going home, and going home requires—
The thought stalls.
Going home requires facing Ron.
Or not facing Ron, as the case may be. Lately, "home" has felt less like a location and more like an arrangement of rooms where two people happen to sleep in the same bed at different times.
Ron, who hasn't owled back in six hours, even though he's been off-duty since noon. I know this because I checked the Auror duty roster. I know this because I've checked it three times. I know this because I am, apparently, the sort of person who checks her boyfriend's duty roster instead of just... asking him.
When did that happen? When did I become someone who gathers intel about schedules instead of having actual conversations? When did we become something that requires intel-gathering?
I confess, though, that the radio silence on his end is not unusual. It is, in fact, increasingly common.
The gaps between his owls have grown longer over the past several months, stretching from hours to half-days to the occasional full twenty-four hours of silence. He always apologizes. He always has a reason: meetings ran late, he fell asleep, his owl needed rest, an urgent case needed his physical presence in another city. If I can give him the benefit of the doubt, I know that the reasons are plausible. The accumulation of reasons is less so.
I have not mentioned this to him. I have not mentioned this to Ginny, who would tell me I'm being stupid and then hug me and then tell me I'm being stupid again. I have not mentioned this to Harry, who would look at me with those impossibly earnest eyes and say something supportive that somehow makes everything worse.
I have mentioned this to no one.
I stab my quill into the inkwell with more force than necessary and reach for the next folder. Every few minutes, a sodden memo, folded into a frantic paper airplane, zips past my door. Most are streaked with rain from the journey between departments, shivering as they land in my "In" tray like wet birds.
I don't know why we still use paper memos.
Well, I suppose that's not strictly true. I know exactly why: institutional inertia, budgetary apathy, and a subcommittee whose primary function appears to be ensuring that no good idea ever reaches implementation.
I drafted a proposal for an enchanted inter-departmental communication system two years ago. It was, if I may say so myself, rather elegant: instantaneous delivery, automatic read receipts, and a self-destruct feature that would have solved our document retention problem and our environmental problem in one tidy spell. The latter, the environmental impact reduction alone (63% less parchment, which is approximately 12,000 trees) should have been enough to fast-track approval. I included a cost-benefit analysis. I included a projected implementation timeline. I included a risk assessment matrix and a stakeholder feedback summary and a glossary of terms for the subcommittee members who might need certain concepts explained in simpler language.
Instead, the proposal was sent to the Magical Equipment Subcommittee for "review."
That was seven hundred and thirty days ago.
I have since concluded that "pending review" is Ministry shorthand for "we have placed your idea in a drawer and will not speak of it again." And this drawer, I'm fairly certain, is just a desk in Level Five—specifically, the bottom left drawer of a desk belonging to a wizard named Barnaby Tork, who has been with the Ministry since 1967 and whose primary qualification appears to be that he has never, in his entire career, had an original thought.
I release another tired yawn and flip a page of the compliance report.
Brighton NC: 18.8%
Brighton C: 68.1%
Brighton M: 13.1%
The numbers sit on the page like tiny little accusations glaring back at me. 18.8% of registered werewolves in Brighton failed to comply with their mandatory vaccination requirements. 13.1% are missing entirely.
Missing means something specific in Werewolf Registry terms. It doesn't mean "lost" or "administrative error." It means the registered individual failed to report for their scheduled check-in, failed to respond to follow-up correspondence, and could not be located by Ministry field agents. Missing means someone was expected somewhere, and that someone did not arrive, and no one knows why.
The number of registered werewolves who didn't show up for their vaccinations, while not alarmingly high, should raise some red flags. I make a note beside the column—Follow up: Brighton field office, request missing persons report—and move to the next district.
London non-compliance has somehow climbed to 22.3%, which is statistically significant and deeply concerning.
I underline the number. Twice. I circle the percentage in the margin and add a sharp question mark. Then I cross out the question mark and replace it with an exclamation point. Then I cross out the exclamation point and leave it blank, because what I really want to write is what the fuck is wrong with us and that's not appropriate for official documentation.
London C: 64.2%
London M: 13.5%
I fight a yawn.
Lose.
My jaw cracks with the effort, and I press the heel of my palm against my cheekbone as if I can physically push the fatigue back into whatever hole it crawled out of. The numbers blur again. I blink. They refocus. I make another note—Request cross-reference with missing persons database—and underline it twice, because I know myself, and I know that if I don't underline it twice, I will forget.
The rest of the report blurs together—Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff. The NC numbers are up across the board. The C numbers are down. The M numbers are growing.
Finally, after what seems like forever, somewhere behind me, my grandfather clock—which is just about the only thing in my office that isn't Ministry standard-issue; a gift from my parents before I made them forget me—chimes 4 P.M., which means I have no further excuse to avoid what comes next: a working tea with some senior DMLE representatives to discuss the latest convicted prisoner reform initiatives.
As if convicted prisoner reform is the sort of thing that benefits from a good scone.
But there will be sandwiches, I'm told. Which is great, because I am in dire need of any form of sustenance.
There will also be Martin Addleton, who has perfected the art of asking questions that sound supportive but are actually fishing expeditions for departmental weakness. Addleton doesn't care about compliance rates or prisoner reform or justice. Addleton cares about budgets and optics and whether my division can be blamed for something before his division gets blamed for it first.
There will also, according to the agenda I received this morning, be a representative from the Department of Mysteries. No name provided. Just Unspeakable (TBD) in the attendees column, which is either a placeholder or a joke, and I'm not sure which is worse.
I set my quill down, rise, smooth the front of my charcoal grey robes, and collect my portfolio, which is heavier than it should be. I've added three extra reports, two reference guides, and a copy of the original Custodial Program framework, just in case anyone asks questions I haven't prepared for.
My cold tea remains on my desk, which I decide to deal with it later.
The corridor outside my office is the usual aftermath of a Tuesday afternoon. Junior assistants power-walk with stacks of parchment that wobble precariously in their arms. A senior Auror I don't recognize strides past, his expression the particular shade of grim that suggests someone's appeal just got denied (or, rather, it was accepted, and he doesn't approve of the verdict). From somewhere down the hall, I hear the distinctive pop-pop-pop of inter-office Floo connections sparking to life. There's also a memo pinned to the wall by the lifts, written in increasingly frantic handwriting: TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: THE WARD ON THE THIRD FLOOR MEN'S LOO IS MALFUNCTIONING AGAIN. PLEASE FIX.
"Miss Granger!"
The voice belongs to Dennis Creevey, now a junior researcher in my department, who jogs to catch up with me. His ash-blonde hair is damp from the rain, plastered to his forehead, and there's a pale-blue memo folded behind his ear. He probably forgot he put it there, which is an issue that would've never continued to be an issue if the subcommittee had just approved of my enchanted correspondence proposal.
Dennis is twenty-four. He has his brother Colin's earnestness without its intensity, which makes him easier to be around. He asks questions because he wants to learn, and not just because he wants to impress me, though I suspect there's a bit of that too. He always shows up on time, he does his reading, he keeps his work organized and burnout-resistant. In short, he's the kind of junior researcher I would have killed to have two years ago, back when I still had the energy to mentor properly.
Now I mostly just point him in directions and hope he knows what that means.
"You got the notice about the Whitby case?" he asks as he falls into step beside me.
"I did," I say. "Third motion for appeal this year. Mr. Whitby seems to believe that persistence will eventually triumph over evidence."
"He's representing himself now." Dennis's voice carries a note of disbelief, a slight wince on his face. "Filed the paperwork in his own handwriting. The Scribes' Guild was not impressed."
I suppress a smile. The Scribes' Guild takes handwriting very seriously. Handwriting, parchment quality, ink viscosity, the precise angle of a quill. They're the sort of people who would have hated me on principle if I hadn't spent months learning to mimic their preferred script.
"That's... ambitious," I say.
"It's optimistic, rather," Dennis corrects. "There's a difference."
We round the corner toward the lifts, and I catch my reflection in the polished brass of the lift doors. My hair is escaping its confines in determined, post-rain frizz curls, and the set of my jaw looks perhaps a touch too rigid for someone en route to a tea (with sandwiches!). There are also increasingly permanent dark shadows under my eyes, which, these days, I like to think of more as an inverse smoky eye makeup look.
I've been told I look intense when I'm thinking. I've been told this by Ron, usually at moments when he'd prefer I stop. Thinking, that is. He never says you look intense as a compliment. He says it as a warning. You're doing it again, he says. The thing where you go somewhere I can't follow.
I press my lips together. The reflection presses back.
The lift arrives with a cheerful ding that seems entirely at odds with the Ministry's general atmosphere of civic overwhelm. We step inside, joining a small crowd of employees shifting folders from one arm to another, some dripping rainwater into little puddles around their boots (the drainage charms on the atrium ceiling must be malfunctioning again), and I press the button for Level Two.
The lift lurches into motion, and the crowd sways collectively.
"Big meeting?" Dennis asks, nodding at my portfolio.
"Working tea," I correct, because the distinction matters. A meeting is adversarial. A working tea is adversarial with sandwiches. "The DMLE and Auror Office is rolling out a new custodial program."
Dennis's eyebrows rise. "Custodial as in prison, or custodial as in...?"
"As in alternative to prison." The lift shudders to a stop at Level Four, and a witch with a stack of boxes that obstructs her entire face squeezes in beside us. I press myself against the wall to avoid being impaled by the corner of a box labeled PENDING DESTRUCTION — DO NOT DESTROY. "Early release of prisoners, monitored confinement, potential rehabilitation. Who knows? The theory is that Azkaban is overcrowded and underperforming."
"The theory is correct," Dennis says dryly. "My uncle covered the Azkaban beat for the Prophet last year. Before the dementors left, it was grim. After they left, it was just... grim and boring."
"That's one word for it."
I don't add the other words I have for it.
Ineffective. Brutal. A factory for producing worse criminals than the ones it receives.
The research is clear, and has been clear for decades, but the Wizengamot moves at the speed of continental drift when it comes to prison reform. Too many old families have too many old ideas about punishment, and not enough of them have spent time considering what happens to a wizard when you lock them in a concrete box for seven years with nothing but their own thoughts for company.
The thoughts, I suspect, are the point for some people. The ones who think that suffering is the same thing as justice.
Then again, we're talking about prisoners of Azkaban here.
The lift shudders again. Level Three. Level Two.
"Good luck," Dennis says as the doors open. "Don't let Addleton corner you about the budget. He's been asking around about our division's funding, and he's got—"
"Don't worry, Dennis." I step out into the corridor, adjusting the strap of my portfolio on my shoulder. "I'll be on my guard."
"I know you will." Dennis's smile is quick and genuine, one of the few truly happy smiles in this building. "That's why you're our division head."
The doors close between us, and then I'm alone in the polished, grey expanse of Level Two.
Well, that's at least one person who has unshakeable faith in me. According to my approximations, Dennis ranks third on the three-person list of people who gives any single shit about how I function at work, right below Harry and Ginny. Ron would have been on there, but I just demoted him after failing to receive word from him regarding whether he'll be home for dinner tonight.
Or just, you know, his general whereabouts.
I turn toward Conference Room B, adjust my grip on my portfolio, and prepare to discuss the future of prisoners.
°°°
"Ah, Hermione!" Bartholomew Greene, the MLE's most senior undersecretary, rises from his seat when I enter the conference room. He gestures vaguely at the sandwich platter in the center of the table—a sad arrangement of cucumber and what appears to be egg mayonnaise, both going slightly damp at the edges. "Sit down, sit down. Help yourself. We've got hours, probably."
Hours.
Just brilliant.
On a brighter note, I'm the first one to the meeting, which is great because I get to have my own pick of seating. I choose a seat at the middle of the long table—not the head (too presumptuous), not the foot (too submissive)—and set out my portfolio, my backup quill, and the small notebook I use for meeting notes that will never see official circulation.
And I'm just reaching for a cucumber sandwich when the door opens and Martin Addleton enters.
He's exactly as I remember him from the last working tea, and the one before that, and the one before that: neatly dressed, neatly bearded, neatly insufferable.
"Granger," he says as he takes a seat on the chair opposite mine, nodding once politely. "Always a pleasure."
"Addleton."
He never seems offended at my lack of civility, but that's probably because he's immune to social cues that would send a normal person retreating. He simply opens his portfolio, arranges his quills in a precise row, takes one look at the sad sandwiches, and waits for the meeting to begin.
Bartholomew, sensing the frosty pleasantries, pushes the sandwich platter slightly closer to me. "Egg mayonnaise? There's some with cress, I think."
I take a sandwich I have no intention of eating, mostly because it seems to ease something in his expression.
The meeting hasn't officially started. We're still waiting on other representatives, apparently, and so we sit silently in that particular purgatory of British magical governance: waiting, eating disappointing sandwiches, and pretending we're not all privately calculating how many more meetings we'll have to endure before retirement.
Martin's quill scratches against parchment, probably notes for whatever trap he's planning to spring once the others arrive. Bartholomew shuffles a couple of loose papers around, because we'd all learned very early on that looking busy is occasionally indistinguishable from being busy. Meanwhile I study the room's portrait—a severe-looking witch in late eighteenth-century dress who's pretending to nap but occasionally cracks an eyelid to monitor proceedings—and think about the werewolf compliance document, the cold tea on my desk, and the particular way the rain sounds against windows that aren't quite real.
The other attendees trickle in over the next few minutes. A representative from DM, whose name I've forgotten and whose face I don't recognize. Another MLE senior representative who I have probably only seen before in passing. A junior aide from the Minister's office, clutching a notebook and looking like someone who has been told to take minutes but not told what those minutes are for. And finally, at nearly quarter past, Kingsley Shacklebolt himself.
"Ladies, gentlemen. Apologies for the delay," the Minister says as he sweeps in, brushing rain from his shoulders. "Thank you all for being here today. Please, help yourselves to the refreshments."
I'm about to reach for a second sandwich but stop when I notice no one else moves.
"I'll try to be brief," Shacklebolt continues. "But we have a lot of ground to cover, so let's get to work. Jonathan, the yellow folders please."
Jonathan, the junior aide, circles the table, depositing thick manila folders in front of each of us.
"Without further ado," the Minister continues, "I'd like to ask Corvus Thorne to take the lead on briefing everyone on the basics of the Chimera Charm."
Corvus Thorne.
Not a name I recognize from any of the briefing materials, which is unusual. I make it a point to know the players before I enter any meeting. Who are the allies, who are the antagonists, and who occupies the vast middle ground of people who simply want to leave on time? He must be the mysterious TBD "Unspeakable" I'd skimmed over in the addendum, the one whose biography was redacted except for the words Department of Mysteries (Classified).
"The Chimera Charm?" Bartholomew asks, both his bushy brows raising toward his receding hairline. "I thought from the memos that we were calling it the Symbiotic Charm."
"The memos were premature." Kingsley responds. "The Department of Mysteries has refined the terminology, but the names are interchangeable. Anything goes so long as it's intentional."
Corvus Thorne rises from a seat at the far end of the table. He's tall, lanky, with dark hair that falls across his forehead in a shaggy mess, and his robes are a deep, midnight shade that the Department of Mysteries favors for reasons that are probably not nearly as symbolic as they are pretentious.
"Thank you, Minister." Thorne begins, and the room shifts its attention to him like plants turning toward a grey, slightly menacing sun, "The Chimera Charm is named for the creature of Greek mythology—a composite of different animals, functioning as a single, cohesive entity. The charm operates on similar principles. It binds two magical cores into a symbiotic relationship, creating a third entity that exists between them. This is what we will refer to as the bond, the tether that links the two beings."
After that, he drones on about "symbiotic resonance" and "emotional calibration thresholds," and I find myself studying the wall tiles instead. There are forty-seven of them on the wall just behind Kingsley and sixty-eight behind Thorne. The meeting has been going for approximately four minutes, and I've already exhausted my capacity for performative attention.
Not because he's wrong. Everything he's saying is technically accurate, ethically questionable, and—crucially—nothing I haven't already read in the briefing materials I finished last week. Twice.
Quite frankly, the entire operation is barbaric as fuck.
That's my professional opinion. And I'm not alone in it—this program is deeply controversial across the entire Department. The Post-War Custodial Program has been called many things in the internal memos I'm not supposed to have seen. Memos using words like "innovative," "legally distinct from magical enslavement," and, my personal favorite, "necessary."
As if slapping a euphemism on something like this makes it less of a moral catastrophe.
Prisoner reform has been something the DMLE has been working on tirelessly since the war ended. Seven years have passed since then and not one war prisoner has been successfully rehabilitated. Not one. The DMLE has thrown resources, personnel, and an embarrassing amount of public funding at the problem, and the only thing they've proven is that you can't force someone to change.
But they keep trying. Because the alternative (admitting failure, that is) is apparently worse than continuing a failed policy.
While my professional opinion is that the operation is downright beyond the bounds of ethical human agency, my personal one is that it's an entirely pointless crusade.
I've never quite understood why the DMLE has been so adamant on bringing highborn prisoners back into society. They've been harping on and on about the necessity of having powerful wizards back in the economy because, even magically constrained, they are apparently "useful" to us.
But here's my question: useful for what? Useful how? As cautionary tales? As a warning to other highborn families about what happens when you back the wrong Dark Lord? As cheap labor in departments that can't afford to hire actual talent?
I've read the parliamentary records. I've sat through the committees. I've listened to senior officials use words like "economic reintegration" and "magical resource optimization" and "strategic asset utilization." And all that this explains to me regarding the matter is that it's nothing more than a bunch of parliamentary nonsense that no one actually understands but pretends to agree with because it sounds intellectual and diplomatic, and in the adult world, there is such a thing as "stupid questions".
The Custodial Program is still in its experimental phase. It's simple in theory, but really quite ethically questionably in practice. The premise: release a highborn war prisoner—preferably one with minimal charges—into a pre-approved geographical location for a year-long trial. Their magical core will be repressed to a 25% functional output (which, if we're looking for specifics, is about the equivalent of being able to procure a moderate-to-strong Lumos at most).
Simple enough, right?
But at this point you might be asking what the point of it is.
That's where the Chimera Charm comes in.
A prisoner (Subjects, as we call them internally) is released from Azkaban early into a form of magical house arrest. Thereon after, for a whole year, their magic will be bound to a Ministry official (Handlers) who will monitor their compliance, their mental state, and will control the gradual (potential) reinstatement of their magical privileges through a complex, symbiotic charm.
Like I said: parliamentary jargon.
"Furthermore," Thorne continues with a sharper tone, which snaps me back to the present, "the Chimera Charm establishes a bi-directional, non-verbal psychological and physiological tether. The Handler will receive constant, unfiltered emotional input regarding the Subject's emotional baseline, distress levels, and, crucially, any surges indicative of hostile intent or premeditated legal infraction."
"Seems a little... intrusive, doesn't it?" the senior MLE representative, whose name I now recall as Buddy Collins, asks as he leans back in his chair. "You're saying that the bond links the Subject and Handler at a primitive, physiological level. So they both feel each other's... biologies, right?"
"Wrong," Thorne corrects, pointing a quill at him. "That was the one flaw in my predecessor's proposal when he first came up with the Charm five years ago. The revised Chimera Charm functions so that only that Handler can feel the Subject's emotions. The Subject, conversely, does not experience anything that the Handler feels."
"But if the bond is bi-directional—"
"Precisely what I'm getting to, Mr. Collins." Thorne gives Buddy a frosty little smile that makes a slight chill run through me. "While the Subject cannot experience the Handler's emotions, the other direction of the tether is not emotional. It's punitive."
The room is very quiet after that. Even the portrait of the severe-looking witch has stopped pretending to nap. She's now watching the proceeding with unmistakable interest, following Corvus Thorne with her beady little eyes as he continues to detail this preposterous program to us.
"Should the Subject attempt to exceed their magical restriction—twenty-five percent, as mentioned—or breach their prescribed geographical boundaries, the charm automatically triggers an escalating magical counter-flux. Pain, essentially. Pain that stops the moment the violation stops."
Buddy shifts in his seat. "And if the violation doesn't stop?"
"It will." Thorne's smile doesn't waver. "The human body is remarkably good at learning to avoid pain. It will stop."
Like I said: it's barbaric.
I'm a little unsettled by how humanitarianly detached he sounds as he explains this, because what he's essentially saying is that the Subject will be, very much like a pet, leashed to the Handler who controls how much magic he or she can use and where and how far they can travel to within the constraints. If the Subject tries to do anything funny like attempting a spell that breaches 25% of their magical strength, or experiencing a emotion that is classified as displaying "hostile intent", the Handler reserves the right to send a "counter-flux" down the bond.
This means that literal and physical pain is caused to the Subject.
It's like being trapped in a glorified prison, if not much worse, considering the helpful side of psychological-bordering-on-physical warfare.
I suppress the urge to say something cutting, something about how this isn't rehabilitation, but rather conditioning in the cruelest form, something about how Pavlov's dogs were also never asked for their consent during the experiments. But then they'll ask who Pavlov is—because why would they care about a Muggle physiologist?—and that's a territory I know not to wander into.
So instead, I flip open the manilla folder in front of me to at least pretend to look busy.
And immediately wish I hadn't.
Because the introductory page is brutally short and to the point. Here, jargon obscures nothing.
It must be my own eyes deceiving me.
POST-WAR CUSTODIAL PROGRAM - REHABILITATION INITIATIVE FOR AZKABAN PRISONERS OF THE SECOND WIZARDING WAR:
Subject: Malfoy, Draco Lucius.
Age: 25.
Status: Approved for early release. Pending documentation at Wizengamot.
Custodial Location: Malfoy Manor.
Magical Restriction: 25% baseline.
Trial Period: 17th January 2005 (00:00 GMT+1, London Local Time) - 16th January 2006 (23:59 GMT+1, London Local Time)
Handler: Granger, Hermione Jean.