Welcome to my story.

Let me tell you some facts about it first!

This is going to be a Dramione fanfiction. It is set 5 years after the Battle of Hogwarts. Everything from DH happened, excluding the epilogue. Draco and his parents were on Voldemort's side but they didn't "actively" fight in the battle. Their views started to change after Hermione, Harry and Ron were captured and brought to Malfoy Manor.

I love Ron, so there won't be any bashing against him. He won't turn out to be the bad guy and he never broke Hermione's heart. This will be a general rule to all of my stories because I just want him to be funny and a little confused :D

This also won't be a Ginny/Harry story, I just randomly decided that Luna would fit better for this story. Now it's done and I won't change it. They will play some role in here but only as characters, their relationship will not be of importance.

There are some OCs as well.

I changed the rating for the story from T to M. (on 9/29/16) There won't be any explicit smut scenes but because of future themes, I decided to change it to be on the safe side.

Warnings: dark magic use, mental abuse, non-consensual "body" abuse (NO rape or other sexual activities), magic abuse, Hermione is cursed and controlled against her will. She will be forced to use dark magic against others.

Oh, and Draco bakes ;-)

This first part is just to give you a certain overview how Draco started baking and what happened since the Battle of Hogwarts to him and his parents. The actual story will start in Part 2.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

Thank you Dramione84 for beta-ing. I'm so happy, that you decided to help me out with this story.
And also thanks to Gaeleria for helping me as well :D

I hope you guys enjoy it.

Kia

Part 1: Mint

Basically, baking and potion making were the same.

You had an introduction to follow and ingredients to prepare. You had to handle them in a certain way and mix them in a certain order. And if you did everything right, you would get the perfect result.

So, there wasn't a difference.

Which is why it really shouldn't have surprised him the first time he managed to bake perfect cookies.

After all, he was brilliant at potions.

And discovering that he was brilliant at baking was therefore not a surprise.

After the war, Draco and his family were on trial for their crimes, but their alliance changed in the final battle, and that was what spared them from Azkaban. Instead, they would need to serve a house arrest for five years. Their magic was monitored, and they had weekly meetings at the Ministry with an Auror who made sure they actually deserved not going to Azkaban.

That fate made Draco's days long and boring. There was only so much he could do at this ancestral home that he hadn't done a million times before.

So it was Harry Potter's fault that he got desperate and turned to baking. Three years into the house arrest, Draco was just agitated, and one horrible meeting with Potter had riled him up so much that he just was irate.

That day, he had paced through his wing in the manor, and nothing helped Draco to take his mind off things. He knew that he was too upset to handle dangerous potion ingredients, but he needed to do something. Normally, potion making took his mind off things, made him calm down and relax, as he had to concentrate on cutting, mixing and stirring. He needed to occupy his hands, but because potions was out of the question, he decided to settle for the next best thing.

And that's how Draco found himself on his way down to the kitchen, and once he entered, he barked at the house elves to bring him a cooking recipe. Any at all.

They were frightened, probably more of the fact that a Malfoy had actually walked into their kitchen than of Draco's behavior. They complied, though, presenting him with a chocolate cookie recipe that he greedily snatched out of the hand of some tiny elf cowering in front of him.

It took him a moment to realize that he had no idea how to read it. Or where the ingredients could be found. He blamed it on the fact that he had never been to the kitchens before.

Obviously.

The tiny elf - she had introduced herself as Juniper (Jun for short) - actually made him a cup of tea, which calmed Draco enough that he sunk down on one of the chairs scattered around a table in the middle of the kitchen and listened to the elf, who eagerly explained the recipe to him.

He then stared at the recipe, at the list of ingredients, the measurements, the baking instructions, and he couldn't help but notice how similar it was to potion recipes. Follow the directions and get a result at the end.

Sipping his lemon tea, he visibly calmed down. Slowly the other elves came out of their hiding spots, curious about what the Malfoy heir was planning to do now.

Draco had read through the recipe again and again, memorizing the steps until he actually asked the little elf next to him if she could explain the abbreviations to him. She happily obliged, explaining this and that to him.

After he had finished his tea, he had come to a decision and almost gave the little elf a heart attack when he announced that he wanted to bake the chocolate cookies.

By. Himself.

Speaking of heart attacks, his father nearly had one when Draco presented a tray of cupcakes with pale pink frosting to his parents a few weeks later. He had taken to baking as he had never done to anything else in life.

Draco spent his days down in the kitchens now, letting the elves teach him how to bake.

After a while, he decided to let his parents in on his new hobby. Putting the perfect coconut cupcake with strawberry frosting in front of them was probably the most nerve-racking day of his life. Including the time when the Dark Lord had taken over his family home.

Draco had brought them up for tea, at first irritating them because he was the one carrying the tray. Then he gave each of them one of the small treats, and while his father eyed the pink frosting with suspicion, his mother cooed at how good they looked. Once they took a bite, he proudly announced that he was the one who made them, giving his father the shock of his life.

His mother just stared at him, apparently trying to imagine him in the kitchen, but after he mentioned how similar baking was to potion making, she shrugged it off.

"What brought this on?" Lucius had asked, still staring at the cupcake as if it had personally insulted everything he stood for, and Draco just shrugged himself, claiming that after three years of house arrest, he started to get anxious.

His parents understood. All three of them started to pick up weird hobbies over the years to keep them occupied.

So they complimented him on his cupcakes, Lucius even muttered something about how next time he could make them green or something, and that was that.

And then weeks of learning turned into months, and soon Draco was able to combine flavors to create new delicious creations, all while the house elves kept an eye on him.

He knew that he was supposed to take over the family business, a successful potion firm that his grandfather had founded. It's not like they needed the money or anything, but it was the prestigious thing to do. The firm itself didn't need that much of work; it basically ran itself. Some CEOs took care of everything, and Lucius - and soon Draco - just functioned as representative accessories.

At first, Draco had planned on actually working in the firm, maybe expanding it, changing or developing things, but after almost a half year of working towards perfecting his baking skills, he suddenly wasn't so sure if that was really what he wanted. He liked his new skills and working in the kitchen, creating treats and pastries and perfecting them in every possible way.

And after putting down a chocolate cupcake with mint frosting – a green one, thank you very much - in front of his parents, he announced that very thought.

The probation wouldn't end for another year and a half, and he technically wasn't allowed to leave the manor, but that didn't stop him from planning everything for when he could.

And then he wanted to open a bakery.

Lucius had choked on his chocolate-mint cupcake, but Narcissa had told her husband that he had done enough. Therefore, her son would be allowed to do whatever he wanted.

Draco was smug about that and wasn't surprised at all when his father had come to him a day later and told him that there was a shop for sale in Diagon Alley that would be perfect for a bakery.

The problem was that even though he had full access to the Malfoy fortune, big investments still needed to be authorized by the Ministry while they were on probation. So it wasn't until a few months later, that Draco swallowed his pride and presented his business plan to Potter, the Auror in charge of supervising the Malfoy family, asking if he was allowed to buy the empty building in Diagon Alley in advance so that he could later turn it into a bakery.

It took another month for Potter to realize that Draco was actually serious about it.

And then something happened that, until this day, was hard for Draco to grasp. Potter had not only authorized the request that allowed him to buy the shop, but he had also applied to get his house arrest extended to the shop, which meant that Draco was allowed to renovate it right away and would be able to work there as well.

The Ministry had granted Potter's request after he told them how the shop was Draco's way of integrating himself into the community on a lower level because he would work hard in the bakery and therefore make the people realize that he wasn't such a bad person.

Draco had no idea where that generous streak came from, he had rather expected something like that from Granger and not from Potter, but as it turned out, the boy-who-didn't-die had ulterior motives behind his actions.

Because after Draco had bought the whole building (the shop as well as the small flat above it) and started to renovate it the way he wanted, Potter dropped the bomb in the physical form of his wife. Potter decided to dump his hormonal, pregnant wife on Draco with the intention to include her in the shop and therefore keep her busy and away from Potter.

That Draco was angry was an understatement, but what could he do? The girl was delighted to help Draco, and she was the first person besides Potter, Weasley, and his parents that he had actual contact with, and she was nice to him, so whatever.

The first thing they did was put a glamour on the building. No one walking by the shop would notice that it was currently being rebuilt.

Draco and Luna (Potter's wife) spent nearly a month redecorating the place, inside and out. Because the inside was fairly big, Draco decided to add some tables and chairs to make a small café out of it. During the summer time, he could even put some tables outside. They added counters and displays and filled the large kitchen in the back with the newest equipment available.

After nearly finishing the shop, Luna offered her help to Draco for the future. He hadn't really thought about hiring employees to help him out in the shop until Luna had brought it up.

Because the girl actually had helped him, he decided to take her up on the offer.

He started to prepare to open the shop, creating new recipes and perfecting old ones that had made his mother swoon. Because he only had contact with Luna and Potter, they were forced to try his creations. This also caused Weasley to suddenly show up, and Draco found out that as long as the redhead had something to eat and was unable to talk, Draco could tolerate him.

Soon, more Weasleys showed up, but Draco was too busy baking and creating to care. Plus, the surviving twin's joke shop was his direct neighbor, and he was actually helping him create his store's name and logo, so Draco couldn't care less who appeared in his shop way before it even was officially open.

Another month of preparing and creating had passed, and it wasn't until then that Draco realized he hadn't seen Granger around at all. He didn't dare ask, but it was still a curious observation he made and one that never actually left him alone.

All those thoughts were pushed back as the opening day of his bakery came closer, and he couldn't wait any longer. He wasn't allowed to leave the building, a fireplace in the kitchen brought him to and from the Manor and couldn't be used to floo anywhere else, so he was only allowed to watch Diagon Alley through the two big shop windows. His probation was still active for a little less than a year, and Draco promised himself to put everything he had into this shop.

So, on a random Wednesday he lifted the glamour, and every person in Diagon Alley stopped abruptly as they walked by the shop, trying to remember if they had seen it there before. Within just a few hours, everyone was talking about the new bakery that had opened that day.

And while Draco was busy baking in the back, he kept an eye on the front. A giant one-way window let him watch the customers that came into the shop. They only saw a chalkboard menu on the wall while he could watch them from the other side, satisfied when the first customers came back to buy more.

Luna was busy the whole time. After the first day was over, Draco knew that they needed more hands, otherwise it would end in chaos. There wasn't enough time to find another employee overnight, so Draco went back to the manor and asked the house elves for help.

Juniper, the small elf who taught Draco to bake, was delighted, and Tinky, Draco's personal elf, wanted to help as well. The next day Draco brought them to the shop, and Luna was head over heels with her new co-workers.

While Tinky helped out front, Jun stayed with Draco in the kitchen, and the shop grew even more popular. In the first few months since the bakery's opening, Draco tried to keep himself in the back. People still reacted badly when it came to the Malfoys, and he didn't want to jeopardize his business by revealing himself as the owner and baker.

After all, it wasn't his fault that no one could figure out who exactly the owner of Dragon Delights was.

But then Luna had the baby, and Draco employed another elf. Jun had brought the elf to Draco after she found him in Diagon Alley, alone and injured. And because Draco was already softening – hell, he had started hanging out with Weasley – he took the elf in and made him another employee in his shop.

And before Draco knew it, the year had passed, his probation was lifted, and he was a free man with one of the most successful businesses in Diagon Alley.