This is a short chapter, but it needed to be said. As this goes more in depth about the post-war wizarding world, I'd especially love to hear thoughts about that.

Draco used his connections to locate his estranged aunt. Years of Ministry prostrations added to his father's years of philanthropy have given him enduring influence among the higher-ups, even now, long after his family's disgrace. He put an intern at the annual census office on the job, shuffling paperwork to be sure that when the intern went door to door, he ended up at Andromeda Tonks' cottage.

"Batty old lady," was the first thing the intern said, once they were shut up in Draco's complimentary study in the far chambers of the Ministry of Magic. "Surrounded by pictures, she was. Invited me in and showed them off to me, her daughter and husband and grandkid and great grandchildren, they were."

"Ah." Draco nodded, templing his hands together as he pressed the intern for more information. "What do you mean, exactly, by batty?" He hoped Andromeda's madness hadn't followed her elder sisters'.

"She just …" The intern cast his eyes around the room. Draco was struck by how young this person was, cheeks barely touched by stubble, probably not more than three years out of Hogwarts. He should have gone for the less discreet route and put one of the magical investigators on it. "She didn't seem to have the foggiest idea of the present. She would one minute be talking about her little daughter, how she was down for a nap and would have to be fed soon, and then after she pointed out a picture of her little daughter she'd turn around and say Sorry; I meant … Teddy, I think it was. Yes, that's the names she said. Anyway, she said he'll be waking up soon, so you'd better be going." The intern frowns. "But she meant Teddy Lupin, and I knew him at Hogwarts, five years ahead of me, he was, and her grandkid, but now he's up and married with kids of his own."

"Yes," said Draco, digesting. "Did she ever mention … her family before them?"

"What do you mean?" asked the intern. "You mean, her husband? Sure, a few times she'd talk about him, sometimes like he was alive and sometimes like he was dead … but he's dead, ain't he? Killed in that war a couple decades back?"

Draco stiffened. That war a couple decades back. As if it was just a little blip in wizarding history, as if it changed a few lives, when in reality, it scarred and mangled so many lives, so many ways of life beyond recognizing. "He was, I believe," Draco finally managed. "But what of her sisters? Bellatrix and … Narcissa. Her parents. Her cousins."

He was taking a bit of a risk in mentioning these people who were also tied to him, when he'd already given the intern a first name (last names, too personal, not discreet enough, had no business in this dealing). But anyone who could pass the Great War off as that war a couple decades back couldn't possibly have the intelligence to connect Draco to Narcissa, to Andromeda.

"I don't reckon …" The intern smacked his lips against themselves, a vulgar expression of deep thought. As own Draco's lip curled, his mother flashed through his mind, prim as she echoed his vague disgust. "Maybe. Sirius?"

"Sirius. Yes." The other fallen Black star. "What about him?"

"That he'd gone and got himself locked up, that he was just like the rest of them, that he wasn't … That she needed him, that he was the only one she could still love … That …" The intern blew out a frustrated breath. "That's all I can remember. You gonna pay up?"

Draco snorted. "You barely deserve it." He pulled a small sack of Galleons from his robes and laid it on the desk, keeping one hand warningly across it. "I'd like her address, please."

"Keep the whole bloody paper," the intern said, pulling a creased list from his pocket. "Alphabetical order by last name." He made to reach for the gold, but Draco pulled it out of reach, hoarding it until he read his aunt's name near the bottom of the intern's census list: Andromeda Tonks—Alcester, Britain—Garden Cottage.

"Here." Draco tossed the gold at the intern. "Now forget this ever happened."

The intern barely nodded as he scooted from the room, leaving Draco to lean back in his chair and close his eyes, thoroughly repulsed by this whole dealing. The Ministry's corruption in the time of his father and the war, though overhauled, was not extinguished. Still, people lurked through its halls looking for easy money, blood money, intrigue, conspiracy theories, and, though he made himself scarce at the Ministry these days, as his father's son who bore no particular loyalty to the Minister of Magic, Draco found himself privy in one way or another to most black dealings.

Though for the most part he managed to keep his hands clean of any actual involvement, in these days of uptight reform, Draco could be convicted of any minor misdemeanor, charges no less serious than the ones that got his father sent to Azkaban after the war—Lucius, after all, was no fool. He evaded each accusation of involvement with Voldemort. But, though he couldn't be convicted guilty of serving the Dark Lord, years later, after other evidence accumulated against him, they got him for that. Desperate, broken families don't forget.

But Draco, out of the public eye for years, knew that he had little to worry about as long as he limited illicit activities to gleaning information of estranged aunts. And here, he held a promising address. He was nearly half done reading his mother's letters now. Each Dearest Meda, each childish plea of forgiveness, especially each heartfelt expression of continued love, settled him firmer in the conviction that Andromeda needed these at last. Maybe it was years of slippery, selfish dealings finally catching up to him, but for once, Draco was willing to give up something of his own for someone he barely knew, didn't really want to know, because it was the right thing and especially because it was what someone else—his mother, the bravest woman he knew—would want from him.

He got up from his desk and tucked the census sheet deep into his robes, then strode through the Ministry, a figure of imposing power whom the oldest officials watched with trepidation and murmured, "That's Lucius Malfoy all over again."

But the address buried in his robes, the new approaching selflessness, proved that, half a century belated, Draco Malfoy was finally his own man.