Miscalculations

Summary: The
war is over, Voldemort is defeated. The
Ministry of Magic satisfies the public’s call for revenge by
sentencing Voldemort’s
supporters into slavery. HPDM

A/N: English is
neither mine nor Lex’s first language (and not my forte,
either), so I apologize in advance for all spelling and grammar
mistakes. Please enjoy
(and
review).

Thanks to Beth,
this story is finally betaed! I will update the improved chapters as soon as possible!

Miscalculations



By JanusEris

Translation by
Lex

Betaed by Beth

Prologue


“But
what if
they are innocent?” the small scrawny witch asked.
“Do we really want to take
this chance?”

“There
are no
innocents.” The red haired man snapped. A moment later he got
himself back
under control and took a deep breath. He looked pale and haggard.
He’d been
through so much during the war, much more than most of the others.

The witch gave
him a sympathetic glance. Almost everyone had lost someone in this war,
but he
grieved for his whole family … She knew that the minister
hadn’t been on good
terms with his family for a long time. It was because of him demanding
neutrality until shortly before the end, while his relatives took the
side of
Dumbledore right from the beginning. That, certainly, had been their
downfall.
They’d been primary targets of the Dark Forces from the
start, too. In the end,
even the powerful Dumbledore hadn’t been able to save them.
It had to be
horrible to lose your loved ones that way, without having resolved
those
issues. She could understand him. Still … her innermost
feelings told her, what
they were attempting to do was wrong. There had to be another way.

The minister
smiled at her, with his charismatic boyish grin. 
That, as well as his tragic fate, had helped him become
Minister
of Magic.

“Don’t
worry,
Melinda. Our experts did thorough research. Everything’s been
exactly
calculated. The possibility that we are wrong is so small,
it’s negligible.”

She returned
his
smile hesitantly and let out an inaudible sigh. Maybe he was right.
Maybe she
just worried too much.

x

If someone had
asked him later how it had come to this, he couldn’t have
answered. He’d been
convinced that he had thought of everything. He’d developed
surviving to an art
form, his survival instinct was his strongest character trait and it
always
kept him going. His smartness was something he’d thought he
could be proud of.
Not even in his dreams would he have imagined something like this.

x

The Wizarding
World cheered. Voldemort was dead. The-man-who-lived-again had
fulfilled his
destiny. It took twenty years, but the monster was defeated -
permanently.

Only few felt
like parading the streets and rejoicing. Too many had died. The last
battle had
left the battlefield soaking with blood. The monster refused to leave
the world
without a last, poisonous bite. There wasn’t a wizard family
that hadn’t suffered
a loss. Many honored and respected personalities were gone. style="">  The great Albus Dumbledore
had been one of
the last and had been vastly mourned. He died for Hogwarts, feeding his
waning
life energy to the shields to keep the people seeking refuge within the
castle
safe from the attacking Death Eaters. He’d fallen a hero and
would make it into
history.  Apparently
none of the mere mortal
participants of the last battle were willing to step into his shoes.
Hermione
Granger, tactical genius of defense, buried herself in her grief for
her killed
partner and fiancé, Ron Weasley. Minerva McGonagall, newly
appointed
headmistress of Hogwarts, was too busy rebuilding the school to care
for
politics. She’d never been a very political person, anyway.

But what about
the hero of heroes, the conqueror of the Dark Lord, Harry Potter? No
one knew exactly
but he was always present; in the media, in pictures, and in statues on
every
corner. He was an idol, celebrated like some kind of god. But if you
were
looking for the real person, you were out of luck. He was like a shadow
that
disappeared whenever you tried to get a hold of him. His announcements
were
repeating themselves, always saying the same thing; nothing. The one
man who
could have had an influence in public did less than nothing.

The days after
the downfall of the Dark Lord went, his followers were captured one
after the
other. The cry of the public wasn’t a cry of joy …
it was a cry for vengeance.
Without a single voice to dampen it, the waves of rage were riding
higher and
higher. The Ministry, lead by a man who had lost more than most of the
citizens
in this war, was only too willing to let it go on.

x

He knelt on the
hardwood floor of the detestable tiny house; too weak to even curl his
fists.
Reality had caught up with him with the speed of a raging Hippogriff
and now
squashed him like a rock. Only seconds before he’d been the
sole heir of the
Malfoy family, rich, respected and powerful. Now he was nothing. The
law of the
Wizarding World had branded him as a supporter. It didn’t
count that he didn’t
wear the Dark Mark. It didn’t matter that he’d
distanced himself from his
father when he was in sixth grade, right after the man was arrested.
His last
name and some stupid remarks he’d made when he was young were
all that counted.
Justice, indeed.

Hearsay was
enough to rid him of all his rights and to sell him like cattle.
He’d
successfully avoided being marked by the Dark Lord, just to be branded
with the
emblem of his new master and to be sentenced to life as a slave.


Slowly
he lifted
his gaze and met the inexpressive green eyes of the man that had
acquired him,
his master. It seemed to him that he’d never in his life
before felt such pure
hate for one single person.