𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄

Part 11

1.

“Hermione’s still working,” Ron tells Harry.

“She’s huge, though,” Harry says. He checks off another box on a report and skims the details before looking up across the desk to Ron. “What, eight months by now?”

“Yeah,” Ron says, twisting the end of his bright orange tie. “She insists on working, but she can hardly get around. I thought she’d be a bit more like,” Ron shifts his eyes, then leans in and says, “You Know Who- didn’t he just lie on the couch and moan all day about swollen feet?”

Harry snorts and smiles a little. “Sometimes, yeah.” He piles his papers together and tucks them into a folder. “I’m tired of all this bloody office work. I want a field assignment soon.”

Ron shrugs. “We’ll get one soon enough, I’d reckon. Especially with Newberry and Wilkinson retiring after Christmas.” Behind him, the office clock chimes twice and Ron stands up. “Better be back to paperwork, then,” he says as he sits down at his desk across from Harry with a long sigh.

He spends his afternoon in a monotonous blur of checking boxes and sending files to the filing cart to be shelved by the filingwizards, who grumble at their job so much that Harry sometimes wonders if they do some of it for show. When the clock chimes and the department files out, Harry is left alone after he nods to Ron and says his goodbyes to a few other Aurors.

Shifting his eyes, he picks up his own coat and grabs his wallet and wand. He walks away from his desk, but away from the corridor towards the elevator, instead slipping into the filing room.

It is vast and lined with shelves, all lined respectively with boxes. It is more than a room, it is bigger than a wharehouse. And it is empty at this hour.

Harry charms a box down four aisles to the left and perhaps twenty feet down a corner and peeks under the lid. It is filled with documents. This is the box. He looks at it every now and then, ploring over the documents that all say the name “Draco L. Malfoy” somewhere- the margin, the paragraphs, the scribbled-in blanks.

This isn’t the only box where Malfoy’s name is mentioned. Harry has located most of them, but this is the next on his list. He glances over his shoulder, then places the lid on top. He pulls his wand out, tapping the box and whispering, “Damnatio Memoriae!”

The box is engulfed in yellow light, then it fades. Harry pulls the box top off, and checks the documents inside.

All traces of Malfoy’s name are gone, leaving white blanks in their stead. Harry smiles and charms the box back onto the shelf.

He walks down five aisles right and fifteen rows down before he finds the next box. He charms it off the shelf, and as it hovers in the air above his head, he whispers the spell, placing it back on the shelf with barely more than the hollow sound of something sliding across metal shelving.

And then there is a noise behind him.

Harry whips his head around.

“What are you doing?” a woman asks. She steps out from a row of shelves. She is young, younger than Harry and smiling lop-sidedly. Her heels click on the floor and her robes swish.

“I work here,” Harry says.

“Aurors don’t do Damnatio Memoriae unless they have a good reason,” she says. “Especially boxes with documents pertaining to Draco Malfoy.”