Draco Malfoy hated his job. Every day brought fresh humiliation, which - despite the years of practice- he never got used to. He had been pushed into 'accepting' a job in the Ministry so obviously meant as a punishment that he wondered why there had been any pretence to the contrary.

He was perfectly miserable. He sat hunched over a battered desk contemplating his misfortunes as he worked.

Prisoner #24 responds to the Crutiatus curse by frothing at the mouth' he read, as he ran his wand over the scrawled writing of an unnamed ministry official, "Begged to have his wife spared. Wife has been pencilled in to tomorrows interrogation'

"Refero."

Flicking his wand over the ledger he watched the same words appeared in his own writing.

He was responsible for the administration within his department. He had wanted to work in International Magical Cooperation, where he could have put the Malfoy name to good use, restoring it to it's former glory along the way. But as it was, he was copying the notes from an "interrogation" into the appropriate ledger.

Sighing for what felt the third tie in as many minutets he looked up from the unpleasant paperwork to ink his quill. He did so just in time for the charmed memo that had zoomed in not moments before to fly into his eye.

His already dubious self control shattered. He snatched it out of the air and began beating it into the desk, swearing profusely, until his fist hurt and the magic had been thumped out of the parchment. His frustration remained.

MESSAGE MR. D. MALFOY

RE: MB IDENTIFICATION AND SUBSEQUENT PROCESSING

'No...' thought the wizard, 'No, not again...'

SMALL BAND OF UNDESIRABLES ATTEMPTED A RAID UNDER A BEDAZZLING CURSE.

SUSPECTED MB WITCH IN CUSTODY. AGE est EARLY 20'S.

APPREHENDED: KNOCKTURN ALLEY: BORGIN AND BURKES, 1100 HOURS.

FOR FULL DETAIL SEE MACNAIR

CAPTIVE'S PHOTOGRAPH ATTACHED.

YOU ARE REQUIRED ON THE TENTH LEVEL TO IDENTIFY SUSPECT AT 1300 HOURS

AND, IN THE EVENT OF POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION, TO PROCESS.

MESSAGE END

He felt sick. They couldn't ask him to do it again, surely. Not after he was so deliberately ineffectual last time... and the time before that.

He stole a glance at the photograph. It was hard to get a good look at the woman's face, she was struggling so uch against the shining black ropes that had been conjured to hold her. Eventually she looked up at the camera. Malfoy paled, or would have done, had there been any colour in his face. The witch herself was not familiar... but he had seen that expression before. His mind drifted back to his third year and the memory of a slap so vivid it snapped his mind back to the present.

He saw a dozen tiny details; the teeth she bared, the shape of her hairline and of her nose... It was Granger! But this woman was not the bushy haired bookworm that hung around Potter any more... She looked terrible and terrifying in one.

Her cheeks were hollow and her eyes over bright and feverish. Her hair, Merlin it was positively lank. He regretted the changes, almost as if they were his own. It seemed nobody was getting out of the war unmarked.

In the medical room on level three; 'Magical accidents and catastrophes', Madame Pomfrey was patching up Macnair, who had been struck with a ConjunctivitisCurse.

"-One of them hit another with a spell by accident I think" he explained through the hospital curtain. "Ouch! Watch where you put that wand of yours Pomfrey!"

Madam Pomfrey bowed her head in submission- but the satisfied glint in her eye as she pulled back the curtain, suggested it may have not been accidental. She nodded Curtly to Malfoy, who stepped closer to the hospital bed.

"Anyway, the one that caught the curse cried out and a voice said 'sorry Hermione, I didn't see you!' then this other one said 'You're not to use real names!' and the first one said 'Sorry Nevel...I mean godric.' and someone else called him "kodak" and said to shut the fuck up.'

Pomfrey had bandaged his eyes while the soothing balm she had applied to them took affect, leaving the injured Wizard looking even more helpless than before.

"Which one hit you with the Conjunctivitis Curse?" asked Malfoy.

"I didn't bloody see, did I! Or I'd have blocked it."

"Have you actually got any useful information for me?"

Malfoy returned to at his desk with a list of names that Macnair had overheard in the scuffle.

Won Won: probably Weasley, that Lavender Brown had called him that before, Malfoy was sure of that at least.

Kodak: a scrawled note to the side of it informed Malfoy that Kodak was a sort of muggle film for taking pictures that didn't move. That was probably the annoying Gryfindor with a camera, the one that was petrified when the Chamber of Secrets was opened. Callumn Creepy or something...

Godric: was apprently Longbottom! What a joke that was... If it hadn't been for Macnair recalling someone called "Nevil...er i mean Godric" he would have guessed at that one being Potter... Longbottom, how funny!

Diana: Malfoy wondered if this might be another slip up when it came to the nicknames until he remembered Diana was the Goddess of the moon. That one must be Luna Lovegood, the poor girl that had spent so long chained up in the dark underneath his house. He suppressed a shudder and returned to his list.

Seeker: If THAT one wasn't Potter, Malfoy would stick his wand in his...oh wait, look at this one

Prongs: Wasn't it a stag that his infamous bloody Patronous took the form of...?

Well then who the hell was Seeker?

Ah the Weaslette! She'd played seeker for the Gryfindors when they were still at Hogwarts.

Which left Athena. That one was pretty obvious one, self-rightous book-worm probably loved it. Goddess of Knowledge and war. How predictable.

Smoothing his pale hair back, Draco set his face into a impassive mask, ready to walk down to the tenth level.

He had been forced to interrogate old classmates before. While he was hardened to reading the transcripts of such practises, witnessing them first hand still something he did not want to do. Although, lately, he found himself watching the effects dark hexes and even unforgivable curses without a second thought. A disconcerting little fact that he had never told his mother.

He thought about Granger. He didn't know her as well as some of the people he had interrogated. He remembered Lee Jordan. How many times had he listened to that bastards biased commentary at Quidditch? He'd been quite funny... sometimes. He remembered how that familiar voice sounded when it was screaming.

He had even been glad when Potter and his two sidekicks had got into the ministry and freed so many prisoners, Jordan among them. He he had stood aside when he saw them all catapulting down the corridor. But Granger had hit him with a Full Body Bind on her way past, regardless of the gesture. Perhaps It would be easier to "interrogate" her after all.