The week before returning to Hogwarts and almost four months after Voldemort's destruction, Draco was permitted to visit his mother in Azkaban. She had her own room which she kept frightfully clean. His father was in the opposite wing. Two Aurors followed him into the cell and the door was locked shut with one of the Aurors still watching.

"Above all," she told him, "you must maintain your pride."

"My parents are incarcerated war criminals, our accounts have been seized and we all blubbered for our lives to both the Order and the Deatheaters," said Draco. "We have no pride left."

Narcissa waved the words away. "That is Malfoy pride. I've only begged once in my life and that was to save yours. There is plenty of Black pride left; that will be my legacy to you."

Thus bolstered, Draco suffered through seventh year, through Professor McGonagall's awkward olive branches, the undisguised pity from the few Slytherins that returned and the hissed disdain of the rest of the houses. He ate and studied by himself with a Ministry appointed Auror at his side at all times as per the edicts of his sentence. Unsurprisingly, he scored top marks in his N.E.W.T.s; all that time alone and the fierce pride prodded him to rub his aptitude in the faces of those Ministry Officials. He took the most delight in his O's for Defence Against the Dark Arts and Potions.

Draco didn't know who bribed who but the Ministry allowed him out of the country after the N.E.W.T.s with the requisite Auror, of course. The Zabinis invited him to their Italian property and, without any other recourse, Draco accepted. He had never considered Blaise a friend. He'd had his own group and often butted heads with Draco on the leadership of the entire House. Such were Slytherin politics.

He told himself as he boarded the flying chariot that he wasn't officially banished from Britain. It was more a self-imposed exile due to that damned Black pride. Hogwarts was undoubtedly a microcosm of the British wizarding word and if Draco couldn't be on top, he'd rather not be there at all.

Within five months, Draco was an expert cadger. He knew how to move in society, who to flatter, how to be witty, when to entertain. He was, in effect, a professional guest which was fortunate since he didn't have a knut to his name. Moving from party to party, he made friends and girlfriends who couldn't get enough of his daring escapades during the War. Men slapped his back, saying, "Well, the world will let anyone study magic these days" as the woman twittered, "How brave of you to work both sides!"

He may have stretched the truth a little.

When the Zabinis ran out of generosity, he moved on to the Adornos then the di Rossis then the Castiglionis. It was in Rome that he met Sofia.

The story went like this:

The Castiglionis were famous for their hilltop balls where the main entertainments were dancing, eating and duels. They challenged each other at the smallest slight especially when after the chianti flowed freely (around eleven in the morning). Everyone was invited to duel away like good sports. His sentence forbade duelling but that didn't mean that he couldn't levitate a table into the gut of a particularly pig-faced Castiglioni cousin. There were only so many insults to his character that Draco could take. The prat was lucky that Draco shut him up before he could finish the slur against Narcissa.

What Draco had forgotten was that attacking one Castiglioni meant attacking the whole damned clan.

With leeches hanging off his neck, a broken arm and a hundred screeching Italians at his tail, Draco apparated out of the hilltop and into Rome proper. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten about those clunky muggle vehicles. He nearly landed on top of one then, as he turned to get away, another cut off his route. There was ungodly honking and some hand gestures that would have created quite a painful hex had the stupid creatures actually known how to throw a curse.

A glutteral roar sounded from above. Someone had found him. Draco dodged into an alley, drawing up a memory of a map of the city. There was a hospital somewhere nearby. No matter where in the wizarding world, hospitals were sanctuaries. If he could hole up in one for the night, he could get his injuries healed before safely making his escape. Sweden was nice this time of the year.

Draco transfigured a shrub into his likeness, leaving it for bait as he apparated and ran through the labyrinthine Roman streets.

The Ospedale di Cambiamento was built into the Coliseum where it spiralled to twenty stories. Both patients and healers inside the hospital yelled. Draco had no idea why the ideal conversational volume in Italy was at the top of one's lungs. He sat on the hard, narrow bed grumbling to himself about the absolute bloody waste of his shirt now that it had leech slime tracking down the front. No house elf on earth could get leech slime out of silk.

No one drew the curtains until sixty-five minutes after Draco demanded a bed and a numbing charm for his arm in whatever order the receptionist could draw up. The healer who entered couldn't have been much older than he was, tall, almost gangly with dark brown hair pinned around her neck and a nose that was almost hooked. "You are Draco Malfoy?"

He glared. "Yes and it's about bloody time! This thrice damned Cristalosseo broke my arm twice more since I arrived. Does every service in Italy take ten times longer to deliver than everywhere else?"

She shook her head bemusedly. "Scusa, Italian please, not English."

"Of course." Draco rolled his eyes. Her first word had been vaguely German. He tried that. "I have curse. It needs fixing now."

The healer beamed. "You speak German! Excellent. This will go much faster. Where are you from? You sound too formal to actually be from Germany."

"You speak too quick. I need fixing. Do you speak English at all?"

The apprentice immediately switched to English. "My Italian some bad. My English many bad."

"Wonderful," Draco said in what he hoped was Italian. After drinking, duelling and language switching, he couldn't keep track any more.

She waved her wand over his arm. "This is very painful, no?"

"I cast a numbing charm."

"Smart." Five vials and a jar flew in with a twist of her wrist. "I will make you a potion. Drink it all exactly seventeen minutes after I cast the spell, understand?"

"Capische."

"Then when the tingling stops, drink all of the second potion." She mixed as she spoke, throwing liquids and solids willy-nilly into a small cauldron.

Draco's fingers twitched. She wasn't measuring a bloody thing. He knew for a fact that one gecko tongue could ruin the potion.

"Do you not have a scale?" he asked.

The healer-- she must be an apprentice!-- arched an eyebrow at him.

"Look, if you put too much gecko in that you'll calcify my joints as well as my bones."

"Sir, I have made this potion a thousand times. I know exactly how much gecko to put in."

"Of course. Because all geckoes are the same size and would therefore be of the same quantity at all times."

She fisted her hands at her hips. "Do you want this potion or not?"

"Not if it's a bad potion."

"I suppose you could mix one better?"

"In my sleep."

"I will leave you to it then. Good luck stirring and pouring with that broken arm."

And she left. She actually left him hexed and injured. The bloody leeches were still squirming on his jugular!

"I'll get your license for this, you... you squib!" Draco yelled.

Her vitriol-filled reply floated back, clear as crystal. "You and what army, you bleached rodent?"

"What army? What--" Draco sputtered for a few seconds. "The Castiglionis for one."

That damned excuse for a healer stuck her head back in. "You mean the family at the door, asking us to hand over -- and I quote-- a 'sallow-faced, pig-eating English eunuch' to draw and quarter, reanimate, then cut up again? They can't be talking about you; you're more green than sallow and there's hardly enough of you to feed a pigeon."

Draco felt steam coming out of his ears. "I hate you and Italy and gecko tongues."

The healer smiled maliciously. "If you ask nicely, I'll make those potions for you. Grovel and I'll even show you a way out."

Drawing himself up, and causing another break in the process, Draco said, "I won't grovel."

"Pity." She made to leave again but Draco grabbed her sleeve.

"I will not." He twisted the fabric tighter in his fist. "I can't. I have nothing left."

She stared at him, unflinchingly reading every nuance of his expression. The only person to ever look at him that way was Professor Snape.

"Do you always get your way?" she asked.

"Until recently, yes. I seem to be going through a bad year or three."

She snorted. "Make your calcification potion then and I will mix the blood replenisher. Wait here for thirty minutes so I can lead you out the work exit."

"Thank you," Draco said with honest relief.

She eyed his expression. "Where do you go after this?"

"I heard Austria is wonderful in the spring. I think I'll go there and take in the sights. I try not to stay in one place for too long; bores me to death."

"And you have money for this?"

"Of course!"

She smiled wryly. "You lie."

"I beg your--"

"Your ears. They turn pink when you tell an untruth." Turning to mix the contents of her small cauldron, she said, "My family has a farm in Bulgaria. They need a lot of help from spring to fall but many people have moved outside the country for work."

Draco's nose wrinkled. "What on Earth makes you think that I'd want to do farm work?"

"You are desperate enough for it." Sofia pursed her lips. "You are thin and likely useless as a hand but at the moment, we need all the help we can get. Go our farm. At the very least, it will buy you a few more months of life."

Damn her for being right.

When Sofia mentioned a farm, Draco had envisioned a manor house with tenants labouring for their rent. The Krum farm was an actual working farm in all its fragrant glory. He didn't know cow patties were that large. He really could have lived the rest of his life unenlightened to those particulars.

The foreman handed over a list of duties and their corresponding spells. Unfortunately, both were in German and Draco had never learned completely correct pronunciation. With German spells, the proper vowel sounds made the difference between mucking a stall and losing a toe. Draco made do with the spells he knew.

Over the next year, Draco's duties were as follows:
  - scourgify stalls
  - make ointments (he never should have showed off his potion skills; he had to make them for humans and animals alike)
  - board holes
  - conjure fences
  - unplug waterwheel (a sort of grindylow had made her nest in the axle on a bimonthly cycle)
  - harvest Atalanta apples (without giving into the urge to eat one as this promptly resulted in transfiguring into a bear)
  - harvest pears
  - prune orchard
  - harvest olives (he learned the hard way that olives fresh from the tree tasted viler than newt livers)
  - weed vegetable garden
  - replant herb garden
  - catch gnomes from all gardens
  - bale hay
  - thresh rye
  - herd wodangoats
  - herd sheep (they reminded him vividly of prefect duties)
  - milk wodangoats
  - shear sheep
  - trim and clean hooves
  - de-pixie wool
  - mix cleaning salves

He didn't see Sofia again until Christmas eight months later and even then the encounter was an accident. Literally. She'd gotten into the bad way of the nastiest billy wodangoat. The beast's hooves had sliced into her calf.

He heard Mr Krum order the other hands around and Sofia protesting the special treatment. Her lips turned up wryly as she entered the bunks where he was already assembling the needed ingredients.

"I didn't think you'd last this long," she said.

"I've developed taste for defying expectations."

"Good for you. After all, you can only afford cheap thrills."

He seriously contemplated mixing the salve incorrectly but she'd know the difference and probably tell her parents who'd promptly throw him out. He still needed the money.

"It's almost like having you around again," said Mr Krum in German. "Those commercial potions and recipes are no match for home-made." Veliko Krum was blond, pale and built like a dragon with his huge shoulders, immense height and prominent nose. His children inherited his nose but none of his colouring. Sofia watched him stir, a raptor eyeing potential prey.

"What did you do before you ran around with the Castiglionis?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"And before that?"

"School."

"Before that?"

"I was an extremely loved child."

"Ah." And she said no more.

It was, perhaps, no surprise that they fell in love. Of course, the sensation was of one gradually becoming accustomed to a chronic stomach ache than any of the pastel-coloured epistolamors one usually found tied to sparkling posies or square-cut emeralds. It also took the better part of a year for either of them to figure out that they were in love what with Sofia being in Italy most of the year and Draco disinclined to be as plebeian as to have interest in the daughter of an employer of all things.

Good God, that he should have an employer and a wool farmer at that!

But Sofia's apprenticeship in Italy ended the next fall and she moved back to the farm as she commuted by Floo to the hospital at the Bulgarian capitol. On her days off, she laughed with the older hands-- men she'd grown up with, women who'd cared for her-- as she expertly twisted flower buds from foxglove stalks and wove maidenhair fern with sage leaves to make incantation wands.

"My brother says that no one who lives and works at a farm could ever think too much of himself," she said as they sat side by side, enjoying a respite from sheep washing. No matter how modern spells were these days, the best way to wash wool before shearing was to plunge into the river with the damned stupid beasts and scrub.

Draco nodded, partially listening to the conversation and partially to the lilt in her German. He had to rethink some ingredients for the sheep shampoo. The current scent attracted nixies; he had bites all over his arms. "It's rather difficult to preen when you're covered in muck."

She nudged his knee with her own. "You would find a way."

"I'm a highly-trained preener. It's in my blood really; generations of Malfoys were born with a mirror in one hand and a comb on the other. Did you know that my ancestor invented talking mirrors? It was supposed to foresee rival beauties so that she could dress to outshine them but another ingenious ancestor took it one step further."

"Would you have a farm? When you return to England?"

He made a face. "I'd rather bathe the wodangoats."

"Than have a farm?"

"Than go back to England."

Having prepared himself to be raked over the coals for being a penniless suitor, he was rather surprised when Veliko and Viktor's line of questioning ran more towards family ties than galleon bags.

"How many siblings have you?"

"Where are your parents?"

"How many cousins have you?"

"How many aunts and uncles?"

"Who is the head of your family?"

"Where is your homestead?"

Viktor would know about the Dark Lord, having played hide the bratwurst with Granger back in school; he could check Draco's story. Draco replied honestly that his parents were in prison but added, not quite so honestly, that they were very sorry and would be out soon.

Veliko pulled on his beard, muttering in Bulgarian but didn't say anything to him. It was Viktor who took him aside when his father retired for the evening. Draco counted his breaths as he followed the older man. This was it. This was where the famed Quidditch player and army reservist duelled the holy hell out of him He figured if he shot out several Petrificus, hid Viktor's wand then apparated into the capital, he might have a chance. The Cruciatus would work better but if Sofia found out that he used that curse on her brother-- no, Azkaban would be a vacation compared to her wrath.

Viktor opened the door to the tack room in the barn and waved him inside. His hands were clenching. Oh, by Merlin's beard, the man was going to resort to fisticuffs.

"We are not many years pureblood," Viktor said.

Draco had been so focussed on planning his escape that he couldn't form a reply.

Viktor frowned and his resemblance to a great bloody hawk increased. "I should have known. You will leave at once and no longer contact my sister."

"But you got into Durmstrang!" Draco blurted out.

"So?"

"Well don't they... I thought only purebloods went there."

"No," Viktor said, nodding his head. "There is a rule; show documentation of your family tree and compare it against the official records. But wizarding families are few here in the east; Durmstrang is need of as many students as possible and documents are easily forged. My paternal grandfather was not a wizard. Neither were my maternal great-grandparents."

Draco could only blink.

The furrow between Viktor's brows deepened. "Sofia knows of your prejudices. I heard her complain of it to our mother."

"Why didn't she tell me?"

"Why didn't you tell her about your parents? Hermione and I write still. It is only because my parents praise your help that I did not curse you to oblivion for what you did to Hermione and her friends."

"My father did it to them," Draco corrected.

"You did not stop them."

"My mother saved Potter's life!"

"My sister is not in love with your mother," Viktor shot back. "If you go back to England with Sofia, would your parents even acknowledge her? Do you even want to stay here now that you know we aren't purebloods?"

"Of course!" Draco said, without hesitation.

"The truth."

"What do you mean--"

Viktor loomed. When Viktor Krum loomed, he could blot out the sun.

"I was fourteen fucking years old when you last met me," Draco said carefully. "And seventeen in the Second Dark War. Isn't it possible that I can change after two years of travelling, never mind the past two years I've spent slaving here for your family?" He held out his hands, permanently chapped and scarred-over from twenty months of working with animals and corrosives. "Would I look like this if I was the same boy you met years and years and bloody long years ago?"

The grim expression stayed on Viktor's face. "You will tell my sister about your past."

"Oh for--"

"Then I will truly know that you have changed."

In the last hour of the Second Dark War, Draco found himself trapped in a room with a rabid firefiend. Potter and his cronies were there, of course, and the prat did save him in the end but looking into that firefiend's face was a level of terror only two notches down from seeing the Dark Lord's wrath.

Confessing to Sofia officially trumped the firefiend.

She came home from the hospital smelling of soot and sage, muttering about the incompatibility of a sterile environment and charcoal. Draco leaned against the doorway with a small sack of cricket antennae as his guise. She smiled when she saw him. He gulped.

"What is it?" she asked, her healer's observational skills spotting his discomfort easily.

"We have to talk," said Draco.

With every admission, Sofia's lips became thinner and thinner. Draco thought of stopping short of revealing the worst of his misdeeds and misconceptions-- he did stop a few times. Then he thought of how Sofia would act when she did find out and he tripped on, his eyes all but spellotaped to the floor to avoid her gaze.

When he finally ran out of sins to confess, he peered up at her through his hair. Her expression was inscrutable.

"Say something!" he said.

"What do you think of me now?" she asked, "Now that you know that I am not pureblood?"

Draco threw his hands up in the air. "What does it matter?"

"What does your opinion matter or what does my bloodline matter?"

Draco was surprised to realise that, Black pride notwithstanding, he meant both. Sofia wove her fingers around his, rubbing the pad of her thumb over the blackened dent on his nail, the only evidence of a brick-disapparating accident in one of the pastures. Damn stupid sheep. They never did find all the pieces of his thumb but an experimental combination of mainly Skele-gro and myoflammatis liniment grew the rest.

"You are an excellent potion master, Draco Malfoy," she said.

He preened. It was his primary skill, after all.

"But you make a very poor farmer."

He took her other hand. "I can live with that if you can."

Thankfully, she could.