Despite his public contempt for Arthur Weasley, Lucius Malfoy had a healthy respect for the man's persistence.
On the morning of the twelfth, before taking Draco to Diagon Alley, he made a detour to Borgin and Burkes in Knockturn Alley to dispose of a few more items that might attract the wrong kind of attention — the kind Arthur Weasley would consider evidence rather than décor.
He had spent the previous evening attempting to argue the point with Narcissa.
"You know I never actually used most of them. They were purely decorative," he said, with an air of a man making a very reasonable case.
"Lucius." Narcissa set down her embroidery and looked at him. "I don't object to your collecting as a rule, and I never have. But my book club attendance is already down since the last visit, and if Ministry officials continue walking through the Manor as though they live here, people will draw conclusions. They don't need to find anything. The appearance of vulnerability is enough damage on its own."
"It's that wretched Weasley's fault entirely," Lucius said. "He's been twice in a single week. Does he intend to set up an office here?"
"If he were the type to accept a bribe, this would already be over," Narcissa said, with a dry calm. "He isn't."
"I know. Fudge won't move against him directly either — too many of the lower-ranking officials follow the Muggle Protection Act closely, and Cornelius doesn't want to be seen silencing its most visible enforcer. He'll sympathise and do nothing." Lucius said this with a bitterness born of experience. "That man is allergic to political risk."
"He's thinking about re-election," Narcissa said. "He always is." She looked at her husband for a moment, then said, more quietly, "Sell the items, Lucius. Come back early. I'll make it worth your while."
A pause.
"...Very well," Lucius said, with slightly more warmth than the situation strictly demanded.
Draco, eating his breakfast, kept his eyes on his plate.
Whatever his mother had said, it had cut through his father's objections considerably faster than the practical argument had. Given the Malfoy family's deep attachment to their Dark artefact collection, this was interesting.
He decided not to pursue the line of thought and went to find his travelling cloak.
---
Knockturn Alley was, as always, dim, narrow, and faintly unpleasant.
They passed a witch selling dried fingernails from a tray, a display of Foe-Glasses and cursed candles, and a shop whose window Draco avoided looking directly at, before arriving at Borgin and Burkes — large, dark, and crammed floor-to-ceiling with the kind of objects that Lucius Malfoy found aesthetically pleasing and Arthur Weasley found professionally interesting.
"Don't touch anything," Lucius said, upon entering, and went directly to the counter.
Draco had no particular interest in the wares. He had seen most of them before in the restricted collection room at the Manor. He drifted away from his father's conversation with Mr. Borgin — which was running the usual course of mutual complaint about Ministry interference, followed by protracted haggling — and made his way to the object in the shop that genuinely interested him.
The Vanishing Cabinet stood against the far wall, tall and ornate, its black lacquer case inlaid with gilded patterns. Draco looked at it with the particular attention of someone who knows exactly what something is going to be used for, eventually, in a version of events he intends not to allow.
He was considering whether there was any way to acquire it quietly — and who he might trust to repair the damage that had been done to it — when he noticed a glint of green through the slightly open door.
He looked closer.
Two eyes, half-hidden in the interior darkness, looked back at him. Familiar eyes.
"Harry?" he said, very quietly.
The eyes blinked. Then a low, slightly mortified voice came from inside the cabinet: "Yes. It's me."
"Why are you inside a Vanishing Cabinet in Knockturn Alley?"
"An accident," Harry said.
Draco looked at his father's back, then at the cabinet. He positioned himself between the cabinet and the counter, blocking the line of sight.
"Come out now," he said. "Carefully."
Harry eased out from between the cabinet doors, face grey with Floo soot, glasses crooked. He had barely made it two steps toward the door when Mr. Borgin looked up from the counter with narrowed eyes.
"Oi — who are you? What were you doing back there?"
Harry froze.
"He's a friend of mine," Draco said, without looking up from a rack of display items near the door. "He saw me come in and followed. We were just leaving." He looked at Harry. "Weren't we."
"Yes," Harry said, with considerable relief.
Lucius turned from the counter and surveyed Harry with a cool, measuring look. His grey eyes moved from the soot-covered hair to the sellotaped glasses to the slightly too-large clothing.
"A friend?" he said, the word carrying a full paragraph of scepticism.
Draco smiled pleasantly. "I'm meeting Blaise at Fortescue's. It's nearly time, Father — I said I'd be there by eleven."
Blaise, forgive me for borrowing your name.
Lucius studied his son for a moment, then waved a hand. "Don't wander. Meet me at Flourish and Blotts in an hour. And buy your friends something — you needn't stand there looking underfed."
"Thank you, Father." A slight pause. "Ah — and Mr. Borgin, you put one of those coins back in your own pocket just now. I expect my father counted them."
Mr. Borgin's expression went through several rapid changes. He replaced the coin.
Lucius looked at him with a prolonged and freezing calm that was more effective than anything he might have said, and turned away.
Draco steered Harry out of the shop.
The moment the door closed behind them, he tapped his wand against Harry's robes and glasses in turn. The soot vanished, the lenses cleared.
"Thank you," Harry said, blinking at the sudden brightness. He looked down at his clean robes with the expression of someone experiencing a small, welcome miracle. "Hermione keeps telling me I should learn that charm."
"She's right." Draco glanced at the street signs. "First time with Floo Powder?"
"That obvious?"
"You ended up in Borgin and Burkes inside a cursed cabinet. Yes." He kept his voice dry. "You need to speak clearly and keep your elbows in. We'll discuss the technique another time. Right now we need to move — this street is not good for your reputation, and reporters have shown a persistent interest in yours."
Harry looked around at the cramped, shadowed alley with its unusual window displays. "Is it really that bad?"
"'Boy-Who-Lived Spotted in Knockturn Alley' would sell a great many copies of the Daily Prophet," Draco said, already walking. "Come on."
They wound through the narrow back passages and came out onto the wide, sun-bright length of Diagon Alley.
Gringotts gleamed white at the far end of the street. And on its steps, shading her eyes against the light, stood Hermione.
Draco hadn't seen her since June. She had done something to her hair over the summer that made it slightly less catastrophic, or possibly the sunlight was doing it a favour. She spotted them at almost the same moment he spotted her, and came down the steps at something close to a run.
"Draco — and Harry—" She looked between them with the slightly suspicious expression of someone who finds this combination more interesting than it initially appears. "Are you just arriving? Are you going into Gringotts?"
"Already done," Draco said.
Harry craned his neck toward the bank's entrance. "I might — once I find the Weasleys—"
"Harry!" Hagrid's enormous voice preceded him by several yards. He came striding through the crowd, his beard braided with what appeared to be a small bluebell flower, looking both relieved and slightly accusatory. "Where've you been? Ron and his family are worried sick. I ran right into 'em—"
"I got a bit lost," Harry said. "I'm fine."
"Lost — you were in Knockturn Alley, weren't you," Hagrid said, with a face like a reproachful cliff. "That's no place for young—" He became aware of Draco. "Oh. Hello there."
"Hagrid," Draco said politely.
Hermione had opened her mouth to say something. Draco spoke first.
"I don't think your parents will want to wait too long on those steps," he said, to Hermione, nodding toward the two figures standing at the top of the Gringotts stairs. They had the look of people who found the goblin guards somewhat more intense than they'd anticipated. "Let's exchange the Galleons while it's quiet. It'll save time later."
Hermione turned. "How did you know those were my parents?"
"Educated guess," Draco said.
He was not going to explain that he had paid attention at King's Cross the previous year and had a reasonably good memory for faces.
The Grangers were, as he remembered them: composed, well-presented, and clearly the source of their daughter's eyes and the general impression she gave of being slightly more awake than the average person. Mr. Granger was tall and good-humoured; Mrs. Granger was sharp in a way that reminded Draco rather of Hermione mid-argument. They wore the slight wariness of intelligent people in an unfamiliar environment who have decided to handle it graciously.
Draco followed Hermione up the steps, bowed slightly to the Grangers when introduced, and accepted Mr. Granger's slightly startled "We've heard quite a bit about you" with a smile.
"She's the most talented student in our year," he told Mrs. Granger, before Hermione could redirect the conversation. "If she's spoken well of me, the compliment is entirely mutual."
Hermione made a noise.
"We'd be glad of some guidance," Mrs. Granger said warmly. "Gringotts is rather more than we expected."
"Leave the exchange to me," Draco said.
Inside, he approached a goblin at an empty counter — a familiar face, which was helpful — and conducted the exchange with the matter-of-fact briskness that Gringotts goblins responded to best. Pounds to Galleons, five to one, education purposes, no need to elaborate further. The goblin, recognising him as a regular account holder, waived the usual performance of difficulty and processed the transaction with reasonable speed.
Draco was quite certain that if the Grangers had attempted the same exchange independently, it would have taken considerably longer and involved considerably more condescension.
"— I really don't understand why she only mentioned his marks," Mrs. Granger was saying, just quietly enough to suggest she wasn't certain she was overheard. "He's perfectly charming as well—"
"Mum," Hermione said, in a tone Draco associated with her telling Ron to think before he opened his mouth.
He kept his expression entirely neutral and watched the goblin count the Galleons with the thoroughness Gringotts goblins always applied to the outgoing side of a transaction.
Outside, Harry and Ron were waiting on the steps.
"Where are your parents?" Hermione asked.
"In the bookshop, picking up our reading lists," Ron said. "We said we'd meet them there."
Draco checked the time. He had hoped to visit Ollivander's before meeting his father — there were questions about the Elder Wand that had been sitting unanswered all summer, and Ollivander was the only starting point he could think of — but that was no longer possible. He knew from Ron that Arthur Weasley was also making for Flourish and Blotts.
He needed to get to the bookshop before his father and Arthur Weasley found each other.
"I have to meet my father," he said, to Hermione. "I'm sorry — I've lost track of the time."
She looked mildly disappointed, which he noted and filed away. "Of course. Thank you, Draco — truly, you saved us so much trouble in there."
"Not at all." He nodded to Harry and Ron, and went.
He was almost fast enough.
When he turned the corner onto the north side of Diagon Alley, he could see through Flourish and Blotts' front window that a conversation was already in progress near the entrance steps. His father had a particular stillness he adopted when deeply annoyed, and he had adopted it now.
Draco pushed through the crowd.
"— since you're so certain the Malfoys have connections to the Muggle world, I suggest you direct your attention to those pure-blood families who actually maintain close ties with Muggles," Lucius was saying, his voice very controlled. "They would have far more opportunity to misuse Muggle artefacts than a family with no such associations."
"That's not what the informant letter says." Arthur's neck was flushed. "It says the Malfoys have active commercial ties to the Muggle world."
"Commercial ties that predate the Statute of Secrecy by centuries," Lucius said, with the precision of someone who has had this prepared. "Would you like to prosecute every pure-blood family for transactions that occurred before 1692? You'd have very few families left."
"The informant is talking about the present, not the past—"
"Then produce your evidence," Lucius said softly.
Arthur's jaw tightened. "Can you swear to Merlin that you've had no dealings with Muggles? Not one?"
Lucius looked at him with an expression that stopped just short of contempt.
Nearby, a young girl with red hair was clutching a secondhand cauldron and a stack of second-hand books, looking as though she wanted very much to be somewhere else. Ginny Weasley, Draco realised.
"Father." He stepped between them, addressing Lucius with an expression of polite urgency. "We said we'd look at the new broom stock before meeting for books. I think the shop closes early today."
It was not true, but Lucius was too proud to ask in front of Arthur Weasley whether Draco was certain about this.
A moment of silence. Then Lucius straightened, adjusted his grip on his cane, and turned away from Arthur without another word.
"Come, then," he said.
Draco fell into step beside him. They had walked perhaps twenty paces before Lucius spoke.
"You should have been here five minutes earlier."
"I know," Draco said. "I'm sorry."
Lucius said nothing for a moment. Then: "You didn't tell me where you were."
"I ran into Harry Potter. He'd gone slightly astray in Knockturn Alley. I helped him find his way to Diagon Alley."
Another silence.
"You've said he seems worth befriending," Draco added, carefully.
"I said he was worth observing," Lucius said. "There's a difference." He glanced sideways at Draco. "He was in Knockturn Alley?"
"By accident. Floo Powder."
Lucius made a quiet sound that might have been the beginning of a comment on Potter's competence, decided against it, and continued walking.
"And you introduced yourself."
"He already knew who I was," Draco said.
They arrived at the Quidditch supply shop. Lucius studied the window display for a moment, then said, "I want to say something and I want you to listen."
Draco waited.
"Weasley's friendship won't help Potter. Whatever influence that family has, it runs in the wrong direction, and it will limit him." He spoke with the flat certainty of someone who has decided this is fact rather than opinion. "If he has any ambition, he'll see it for himself eventually. In the meantime, don't let their association become yours."
"You've always taught me to take the long view," Draco said.
"Yes."
"Then give it time," Draco said. "First impressions at Hogwarts aren't necessarily permanent."
Lucius looked at him for a moment, then pushed open the door of the shop.
"Stand up straight," he said. "The Malfoy name is not something to be embarrassed by."
Draco followed him in.
At the counter, the clerk brightened immediately. "Mr. Malfoy! Your order came in this morning — every one of them, just as Mr. Whitehorn specified—" She turned toward the workshop. "Bring up Mr. Malfoy's brooms!"
Lucius clasped his hands behind his back and surveyed the waiting broomsticks with the expression of a man who has successfully concluded a satisfying transaction, which was at least an improvement on the expression he had been wearing outside Flourish and Blotts.
Draco stood beside him and said nothing, and thought about several things at once.