Chapter Text
Hermione hurried along the dimly lit corridor in the bowels of the ministry. The lifts had been uncooperative again; it was a wonder anyone ever got anything done with their tendancy to eject you on a random floor. A flurry of multicoloured ministry memos darted above her before half retreated into the lift for another attempt at their destination.
Glaring at the Tempus charm she'd cast into the air, a quick calculation confirmed she'd just have time. Another interminable meeting loomed where her appeals for suitable recompense for centaurs would no doubt be rejected once more.
Swinging open her office door, she flung her trusty beaded bag onto to the floor. Looking up she expected to see paperwork haphazardly piled on her desk and ready for her to peruse. Perhaps a few memos of debatable urgency swirling above her chair. What she didn't expect to see was a pristine white hippogriff stood on her rug.
In her role as co-minister in the Department of Magical Beasts and Beings she was used to encountering a myriad of creatures. However not in her office, usually she'd arrange to visit them in their environments. She stared at her unexpected visitor. A single pale grey eye stared back. Delicate white feathers edged its menacing blush bill. Feathers trailed down its neck and onto its wings which were tucked in at its sides. It stomped a front hoof against the stone floor.
She remembered herself as the hippogriff let out an unimpressed snort. Lowering herself into an awkward bow, she waited. After a few seconds, the hippogriff bent its front legs and returned her gesture.
"I'll be a couple of minutes," Hermione told it apologetically. She doubted it could understand English, but it wasn't worth taking any risks with politeness. The affront Buckbeak had taken in third year to Malfoy's childish bravado suggested that hippogriffs could understand tone if not language.
There was only one possible culprit to explain the presence of the hippogriff.
"Luna!" Hermione suppressed a sign as she pushed the door open to her co-ministers office. "Why is there a hippogriff in my office?"
Luna looked up from her desk. Feathers and small stones danced inches above a messy assortment of scraps of parchment, newspaper cuttings and scrunched ministry memos. She smiled serenely. "He was lonely."
Many possible questions flitted through Hermione's mind. How had Luna come to that conclusion? Where had she found the hippogriff? How had she brought it to their corner of the ministry without being stopped? But those questions were likely to result in a meandering tale of nargles and wrackspurts and other things Hermione simply didn't have time for. Instead she settled for, "Why my office and not yours?"
"You are lonely too."
"I'm not lonely. I've just been… busy." She was busy. There was so much injustice in the world and yet so little time to solve it. The scraps of parchment inviting her to come out for drinks from Harry and Ron cluttered her intray in her flat, but they understood. She knew they did.
"Nargles don't lie," Luna sang. "Having a friend will do you the world of good."
"I have plenty of friends," Hermione snapped. "Human friends that is. And even if I didn't, I can't be friends with a hippogriff."
Luna's wide eyed stare gave her pause.
"There's more to this than you originally told me."
Luna's light tinkle of laughter accompanied her as she stomped back to her office.
"Omina Otama!" Hermione directed her wand and cast swirling white and blue lights at the hippogriff. Its shape flickered, momentarily holding the form of a crouched man before reverting back to a hippogriff once more.
"You're human," Hermione said, more statement than question.
The hippogriff nodded.
"A forced transfiguration?" The hippogriff shrugged. "Animagus?" He nodded. "But you can't turn back?" He stared at her unblinkingly. "Sorry, not a simple yes or no. Can you turn back?" He shook his head.
Her wand tip exploded in a burst of shimmering sparks as she danced charms across the hippogriff's feathers. The hippogriff's pale grey eye followed her movements, but his body remained perfectly skill.
"Strange," she muttered. "According to this you are perfectly healthy." As if in agreement, the hippogriff unfurled his magnificent white wings and beat them twice against the glistening pale fur of his body. "It's not as if you look ill in any way," Hermione concluded. "Just stuck. I wonder…"
She closed her eyes as she pressed the wand tip to the hippogriff's temple. Flashes of mixed memories entwined before her: flight by wing and broom, food on a table and in a stable, a bed of straw merged into a plush emerald green duvet.
"It's been a while," she surmised. A brief incline of her subject's head confirmed her suspicion. "Maybe if we can isolate the incident that links with your final transformation to this form, we can reverse it."
She repeated her previous movements more slowly, focussing on the images that flickered between human and hippogriff. Screaming and shouting coalesced in a racous cacophony. The man cowered before - no, it couldn't be. The cold cruel gaze of Lucius Malfoy towered overhead. Hermione bit back a gasp.
"You could have been someone," Lucius sneered. "But instead you chose… this." With a dismissive wave of his hand he strode from the room with his sculpted cane tapping out a rhythm against the tiles of the stone floor.
Warmth threaded through her veins as with the vision she took flight through an open window. Wings beat languidly as the hippogriff rose in lazy circles above the grandiose manor of her nightmares. The manor shrank then disappeared beneath wisps of white clouds. Wind whistled through the feather tips as the hippogriff fell into a dive, before landing beside a small wooden stable with an open door.
She dropped her grasp on the vision.
"You are Draco Malfoy?" Hermione demanded, pressing her wand into his skull.
The hippogriff took a step back, but with the merest twitch of his head confirmed this almost unbelievable conclusion.