nakam, revenge [draco]

you might say it was insane
that it was misdirected pain
they didn't want the war to end
they wanted one thing
nakam, revenge

may 3rd, 2004

So, Tony knew that Draco Malfoy had started at the Ministry.

It wasn't like it was a secret. It hadn't been announced, either -- it was one of the more quiet new hires in the time Tony had been working for the magical government, frankly, nearly hush-hush. But not that quiet. It had been months, now, and Malfoy had not suddenly cleared his desk, so it seemed to be a permanent thing. It was a deeply insulting thing, in Tony's opinion, to have another known Death Eater in the DMLE after the fiasco with Rosier. But nu, who asked him? Nobody, that's who. It was one thing to pardon a fascist, another to put him in a position to do harm, in Tony's opinion, and if he ever got Shacklebolt's ear Tony would certainly make that opinion known.

It didn't really matter, anyway. Anthony Goldstein was in Wizengamot Services. Draco Malfoy was in Curses, Jinxes, and Hexes. They never crossed paths as long as they stayed on their respective sides of the floor. Anthony was fairly certain Draco wouldn't recall him, anyway.

(His wife, on the other hand -- Tony felt quite bad about missing the wedding, but surely Astoria knew better? Surely Astoria knew better than to ask a Jewish half-blood to celebrate that union? Tony had felt lousy declining the invitation, but going to the wedding would have been worse.)

The invitation to Astoria's fundraiser the next night was tucked in front of a file organizer, stuffed with parchment. In the air around Anthony, unfurled scrolls and open books hovered while he scribbled down notes on the parchment in front of him. His left hand was smeared with ink as he wrote, right hand curled lightly around his wand, occasionally twitching and sending the circling documents around until the correct one was in front of Tony's face.
He had been like this for at least an hour, eyes only glancing up from his writing to flip through for some statute or ruling, then his head would duck down to scribble again.

When Tony looked up and saw Draco Malfoy's face behind Lestrange and Lestrange v. The Ministry, he swore. The books and parchments fell to the ground, a few bouncing off his shoe and his desk. Tony switched his wand to his dominant and more useful hand, waving the legal documents back into neatish stacks. Christ, the hell was Draco Malfoy doing at his desk?

I don't like you, and I dislike having to breathe the same air as you, fascist didn't quite roll off the tongue, and wouldn't help solve that mystery in the slightest. "What do you want, then?" Tony's brows furrowed. He had sent off some exhibits to Curses -- maybe Draco would just drop off the reports and leave.

@Draco Malfoy

Draco had thought his name was Goldsmith until very recently — Astoria had invited Anthony Goldstein to their wedding (the ‘proper’ one), not that the other man had accepted. The first time they had distantly crossed paths at the Ministry, Draco had recognised him immediately; he knew him from school as one of the three Ravenclaw boys in his year that had never really registered on his radar except as a vaguely familiar face and an occasional competitor to Hermione Granger with regards to who could shove their hand in the air fastest and highest in the quest for house points — or validation, whatever it was.

His gaze lifted from the tidily written name on the file in his hand (Barrister A. Goldstein) to scan the cubicles as he entered the office. Either everyone was much busier than usual or his presence was slowly being accepted, because he wasn’t met with many pairs of eyes glaring in his direction. Draco spotted Anthony Goldstein and made his way over to the wizard’s desk, stopping just in front of it to wait until he had finished scribbling down his current thought.

The solicitor looked up and swore. Draco smirked — clearly his reputation still preceded him. Books and parchment fell to the desk or the floor, before being magicked back into orderly piles. There was a brief pause and then:

What do you want, then?

Draco raised a singular eyebrow at his former classmate before he took a seat. “I have the results from the tests you ordered,” he said, as if it were obvious. He flipped open the cover of the manila folder. “Thought you might need me to translate it into layman's terms,” he explained, not quite willing to care if he was insulting the other man’s intelligence (he was trying to).

Anthony's parchments clattered to the floor. Malfoy smiled. Anthony seethed, trying to not let the distaste hiss out through the spaces between his teeth. Two quick waves of his wand to put it all back in order, then Tony set his wand into a groove on the surface of his desk. His hands were free, now, but his right wrist twinged painfully. Tony's face didn't twitch. It wasn't that his wrist was sensitive to Death Eaters, he thought. Just sensitive to cowardly fascists, more generally.

He rotated his right hand, sticking his left out for the folder. Malfoy ignored the hand and sat down in the seat across the desk, opening the folder onto the now-clear surface. Arsehole. He remembered now ordering the traceback from CJH -- the trial had been delayed, though, and the file was not close at hand. He could pick up his wand, but Malfoy's bullyish presence made him want to show off. With a muttered Accio Tony summoned Mulroney v. Cabbagepot, the file thick and tied with enchanted twine, to his good hand.

"Ah," he said, trying to sound like he had looked at this case at all in the last week. "This is all you got from the curse traceback?" Tony asked, looking at the folder again. It seemed awfully thin for a kettle that supposedly had five or more competing curses stacked on it. "I thought there might be more." His tone was carefully neutral. He wasn't saying he thought Draco was bad at his job, mind -- just implying it.

He leafed the folder open. "It looks simple enough," he said, (and that time, the insult was closer to the tip of his tongue). "Unless there is something particularly esoteric. in your expert opinion." He leaned  in too hard on the sarcasm. Chill out, man, said his internal monologue, sounding for once like Noah Haas of all people.