This story was written for the HP Dark Arts Halloween Potions Challenge on LiveJournal. Thanks, as always, to the lovely k_lynne317 for being my beta.

Translated to Russian by the amazing forceasmary here: fic book readfic/6516165 (remove the spaces)

Truth is the first casualty of war

Philip Snowden, 1916

-oOo-

"Azkaban, the 7th of September 2014, 10.14 AM. Present are Hermione Granger, interrogator on behalf of the Wizengamot, and Draco Malfoy, suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity, to be questioned under Veritaserum."

Malfoy still had a drop of liquid on his lip after swallowing the contents of the vial. When he had finished, he'd thrown it on the table in front of them like it was it was one of his fallen enemies. Surplus to requirements. He licked his lips clean. Hermione turned her eyes away from the tip of his pink tongue.

"Save your breath, Granger. We all know I'm guilty." Malfoy couldn't lie, but they both knew he was powerful enough to prevent himself from babbling. If she wanted answers, she had to ask the right questions.

Hermione didn't bother hiding her contempt: "Unlike you, I believe everyone should be accorded some basic rights. Including the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty."

Malfoy was sprawled in a chair opposite her like he owned the place, foot resting on the table lazily rocking him backwards and forwards on the back legs of the chair. Hermione's palm itched to slap him out of it, but she squeezed her hand into a fist instead.

"Pretty speech. We both know you've witnessed many of my misdeeds, so forgive me if your precious principles ring a little hollow to me," he said, and she hated him just a little bit more for insinuating that she wouldn't give him a fair hearing.

"Unfortunately, the pool of people unaffected by your illustrious career is rather small. You should be grateful you got me, given what the others threatened to do once they got you alone."

"Oh, I am, believe me," he drawled with a lazy smile, as if the joke was on her. Hermione was about to retort when she remembered that she was supposed to interview him instead of trading insults.

"Warwick, the 17th of June 1996. Your initiation as a Death Eater, I believe. Any comments?" She spread a bunch of photos across the table between them, looking for his reaction.

There wasn't any. He just picked up one of the photos and examined it, turning it over – even shaking it. Just as she was about to start questioning him, he finally spoke.

"Curious. Muggle photos don't move at all then, do they? Look, there's a man in the background here, but he's just standing there."

Hermione's index finger landed on the main focus of the picture, a torso so smeared with blood that it took the eye a second to realise it was the victim's naked skin and not a garment.

"That's the body of Maria Teresa Giovanelli, and all you can do is to complain that the picture isn't moving?" Her voice quivered with anger.

"1996," Malfoy mused, ignoring her outburst. "I was, let's see- sixteen. Sixteen years of age, Granger." He turned his gaze on her then, and the anger in his eyes almost made her flinch. Whether it was directed at her or the adults who'd let him fend for himself back then, she didn't know. "Remind me, what's the age of maturity again?"

They had both done things they'd regret before they'd turned seventeen. Decades later, Hermione still couldn't decide whose fault it had been.

"Then we realised the Order was on our trail-"

"That's why you hid in the barn! I could never make sense of it." Hermione remembered that afternoon well. They'd been near Warkworth, in the arse end of Northumberland, and the thick mist rolling in from the sea had turned the skirmish into a game of hide and seek across fields and sand dunes.

"After that, all we had to do was to Apparate back to the Manor."

"We spent five hours waiting for you to come out. Lying on the cold, wet ground, I might add." It had been two days before Hermione had been able to get a hot bath, to get properly warm again. The smell of wet wool had hung around her like a cloud wherever she'd gone.

"Never rely on Potter to cast your Anti-Apparition wards, that's my advice." His wry eyes met hers, and she involuntarily quirked her lips in a smile. She must have told Harry hundreds of times-

It was much too easy to forget that it wasn't Harry, or Neville, or any of her friends sitting on the other side of that table.

"Was it before or after that you decided to stage the Halloween massacre in Hogsmeade?" she spat out to make up for her lapse, but it didn't seem to phase Malfoy.

"We were getting on so well, Granger. Did you have to go and spoil it?"

"Your mother, then. Who killed her?"

"It wasn't me, so I assume it's outside the scope of this inquiry." Malfoy toyed with the only thing at his disposal, a tin mug of water, in a show of unconcern, but she'd noticed the way he'd clenched his hands as soon as she brought up his mother.

"I'll be the judge of that."

"Hermione Granger: judge, jury and executioner. Is there any limits to your talents?"

"Answer the question, Malfoy."

He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, placing his pointy chin in his cupped hands.

"I'm really glad we can talk about those things, Granger. Hermione," he corrected himself and Hermione gritted her teeth, bristling with anger. "It's not healthy to hold it in."

He looked at her with a face so innocent it could have won prizes.

"I don't know, is the honest answer," he said.

"Try again. Do you really expect me to believe that?"

"You can believe whatever you want. It's the truth. You know I can't lie."

There was that, of course.

"You were Voldemort's right hand for years. Are you telling me you weren't able to find out who'd killed your own mother?" Hermione asked again.

"It wasn't for want of trying, Granger. Believe me." Something flashed in his eyes and Hermione shuddered. She'd lived through a war of more fronts than you could shake your fist at, and seen more blood than she'd thought was possible in one human lifetime. She had no desire to find out what Draco Malfoy had done to find out the truth about his mother's demise.

Hermione woke up with a start. She still wasn't quite used to her lodgings in Azkaban, and the drab, grey daylight from the narrow window always took her by surprise.

Azkaban was next to nigh impenetrable these days. During the war, the fortress had passed from side to side, and each time new security measures had been added. Apparition was impossible within a ten-mile radius, and Floo connections had been closed since the Order had retaken the Ministry in 1999.

Regardless, she wished she could have gone home to London. Just for a day. The isolation, with just Malfoy for company, was getting to her. She'd see the prison guards ever so often, but they were nameless shadows to her: apparently prison policy forbade them from even speaking to her, since the Mutiny of 2002. Those reduced to guarding Azkaban when the wizarding world was desperately crying out for people couldn't have many options left outside of the cells.

Hermione's only connection to the outside world were letters, and the interview recordings she dutifully dispatched every evening. Food and drink appeared in her room, seemingly without human intervention.

It was almost as if the world had washed its hands of her, Hermione thought as she stared up into the cracked ceiling. Jumping out of bed in a burst of activity to disperse the gloom, she shook off the notion. She'd do what she'd come here for, and then she would go home.

To peace.

They'd been at war for so long, she couldn't even remember what it felt like to be safe. There had been celebrations – giddy, almost wild outbursts of relief that it finally was over – but she'd left for Azkaban almost before the ink had dried on the peace treaty.

Draco Malfoy had sold out his master and brought the war to an end. Harry had finished Voldemort off, but without Malfoy they would still have been waging a war of attrition with no end in sight.

It was still a mystery to her why he'd done it. In their sessions, he was nothing like he'd been at school; it was like he'd dropped his prickliness the moment he'd been able to assume real power. It was almost impossible to offend him now.

He confounded her expectations by readily admitting what he'd done – there had been no attempts at justification, or harping on about blood purity. Despite that, his words had shown her how a childhood mired in prejudice had set him on his path, as inexorably as Hermione's friendship with Harry had ensured her own allegiance.

They'd been so very young back then.

She found herself wondering what it would have been like if the war never had happened. Would they have been content to compete in lessons, Slytherin versus Gryffindor, with house points in the balance instead of their lives?

It was useless to speculate, and she'd done her mourning for what could have been, what should have been, years ago.

"Why did you do it, Malfoy?" She interrupted him in the middle of his account of the Gringotts raid of 2004. That was the day Ginny had lost her eye, so Hermione should have been listening, but suddenly she had to know why. Why everything, not just a snap decision in a tight corner.

"I just told you, Bogrod was going for my wand." His feet seemed permanently lodged on the table, ensuring he dominated the small room.

"I mean, why did you sell out? Why did you betray your precious Dark Lord?"

"He's gone, Granger. You can say his name now."

"Why?" She wasn't going to be fobbed off this time.

"Why does anyone ever do anything? It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Hermione didn't know what she looked like, but apparently it was enough to make Malfoy elaborate without wasting more words on verbal sparring. Or maybe it was the serum, but he seemed to be able to twist the conversation – interrogation – whichever way he wanted to.

"I woke up one day and realised most people I went to school with were dead," he said. "I don't know about you, being one of the death-and-glory brigade, but I'd like to live as long as humanly possible. At least until I'm two-hundred."

It didn't come as a surprise that Malfoy, egotist extraordinaire, would be concerned with his own survival most of all.

"So the war had to end. Since no one else seemed to be able to put a stop to it, I decided I'd better do it myself."

Fortunately, Hermione was almost inured to his self-aggrandisement by now. Almost.

"You had of course not really been trying before. Despite having participated in, I think, four pitched battles in which I personally took part," she pointed out.

"Five. I was at Salisbury, too."

Hermione's lips twitched in annoyance, but she stayed quiet.

It worked.

"Once I considered all potential courses of actions, the matter was rather straightforward. The only tricky part was to ensure my personal safety and comfort once I'd handed myself over to Potter."

"Unlike you, we don't kill our prisoners." Hermione remembered what had happened to Arthur Weasley, and it was only by squeezing her wand so hard her nails dug into her palm that she kept her temper in check.

"Really? I didn't know." Something flashed in Malfoy's eyes, and Hermione belatedly remembered Upper Flatley. Ron had been very sorry afterwards, but it had been too late for Pansy Parkinson then.

"I am sorry," she offered stiffly.

"So am I."

Their eyes met, and for once there was no smugness in his gaze. Hermione was the first to look away.

"I still don't understand," she said. "You'll live, fine. I still don't have you pegged as someone who'd be happy to spend the rest of his life alone in a cell."

The whole wizarding world knew that Malfoy had been spared from the Kiss; it was the only part of his deal with the Order that had been made public.

"But I won't be alone," he said, with a lazy smile that made a shiver of fear run down Hermione's spine. "You'll be in here with me."

Hermione didn't waste any time on arguing.

She threw herself out of her seat and spun around to Apparate, only to almost fall over. All her determination was in vain. Malfoy watched her in silence as she tried three more times, before attempting to turn her quill into a Portkey.

Finally, she picked up her chair from the floor. Hermione had overcome her tendency to flap around in an emergency years ago, but sitting back down as if nothing had happened was one of the hardest things she had ever done.

"So I will be here with you?" She picked up their conversation where it had fallen off, not even a tremor in her voice.

"It was one of my conditions." He didn't look like he'd taken leave of his senses.

"Why?" Maybe she was in shock, after all; one-syllable words seemed to be everything she could manage.

"I hate being bored." Malfoy inspected his immaculate nails. It was funny how she'd never noticed them before. They wouldn't last long in Azkaban – no more manicures for him. Hysterical laughter was lurking just beneath the surface, but she pushed it down.

"As an added bonus, my father would be turning in his shallow grave if he knew. Assuming there's enough left of him to turn, of course. You would know." He bowed to her ironically, but Hermione was past noticing his jibe.

Harry had been in charge during the negotiations with Malfoy. Harry would never have sacrificed her like this –

Her Harry wouldn't have, not the scrawny boy she'd once known. When she looked at Harry, she still saw the boy he'd been at school. Most of the time it didn't matter that he'd died long ago. In his place had come Harry the fighter, worn down by the long war and all his losses. For too long, Hermione had clung to the comfort of believing he was still the same as he'd always been.

The real Harry of here and now would do anything to bring the war to an end. She could see that now. While Ron had been alive it had been different, but Ron had been dead these last six years and the old Harry had been irretrievably lost.

And here Hermione was with Draco Malfoy, the ghost of a smirk in his eyes.

She couldn't quite remember what he'd been saying, but it didn't matter. At least he didn't have it all his way.

"You can say whatever you like, Malfoy. You lost. You're stuck here in Azkaban for the rest of your miserable life."

"Wrong again, I'm afraid." The room slowly morphed into a more spacious, familiar place. Even the stink of Azkaban, of unwashed prisoners and mouldy walls, changed into something dusty and seducing. They were in the library at Malfoy Manor.

Hermione had only been there once, during a raid, and fleetingly at that, but she'd never forget it. Her mouth was suddenly dry. The quill in her hand, which she'd picked up without even noticing, was shaking. Angrily, she speared her parchment with it to stop it. She didn't have time for fear.

"You're right about one thing, though. I will spend the rest of my days here."

"Where are we?" she whispered.

"At Hogwarts, of course." There was a roguish smile on his lips. "I've reason to believe you're familiar with the Room of Requirement."

It all made sense, now – how Hermione had been chosen to be in sole charge of the investigation, the new security arrangements in Azkaban, fleeting impressions of prison guards that had been enough to fool her.

She must have been stuck here ever since she'd grabbed that Portkey at the Ministry.

"Were you- Why didn't they tell me?" Harry had looked like someone had died when she'd said goodbye to him; only that was the way he usually looked these days, so how was she to have known something had been awry?

Hermione suddenly became aware of the recorder still running, and turned it off with a flick or her wand. As if it mattered now. "And why- why this?" With a sweep of her arm, she indicated all the interview paraphernalia.

"That was my idea. I figured we should spend some time getting to know each other, before you found out we were going to spend a lot of time together."

In a twisted sense, she had to give him his dues: it had worked. If she hadn't got used to treating Malfoy like a human being over the last few days, she wouldn't have been able to sit down and discuss things with him like this.

There was still one question he hadn't answered.

"Why me?"

"Why not? Out of all the people still alive, you're the least likely to get boring. I'll give you that, Granger." He looked around. "Do you like spring? I do. I think we'd prefer some spring weather. More fresh."

The breeze coming in through the open window obligingly changed character, and Hermione noticed a faint hint of lilac in the air.

"Also," Malfoy continued, "I figured that if we ever get tired of being confined here, you're the most likely person to come up with a way of getting us out."

He smiled at her as she sat dumbfounded.

"Well, what do you think? Fancy exploring the library with me?" He gently pulled her up from her seat and steered her around the long room, pausing to point out shelves of particular interest.

"I put in a clause about provisions in the agreement, if that's what you're worried about. The Hogwarts house-elves will cater to our every whim," he told her as they lingered at the Potions section.

"Naturally," Hermione said, finally regaining the capacity to talk. "After all your plotting, it would be a shame if we'd starve to death."

It wasn't until much later that she realised that she'd said 'we'. By then, it was far too late to do anything about it.