FIC: House of Heretics 2/4 (Draco/Astoria, R)
Title: House of Heretics (2/4)
Pairing: Draco/Astoria, mentions of Cormac/Astoria, Viktor/Pansy, also hints at various Slytherin ships
Word Count: <38,000, 9769 for this section
Rating/Warnings: R, mentions of infidelity and crime
Betas: acidpop25 kept an eye out for flow and phrasing, and grrarrg0908 battled my italics valiantly and came out triumphant. Any mistakes are due to my post-beta meddling.
Summary: Seven years have passed since Voldemort's defeat and Draco Malfoy is making do with the lot he's been given--distrusted by the most of the ministry, shunned by the House that he betrayed. When a ministry official goes missing, Draco is given the chance to help restore the Malfoys' place in society. But is Astoria standing in his way or is she just what he needs to be exonerated?
Author's notes: For Slytherins, the loves of my life. Narcissa probably wouldn't be here if not for Helen McCrory's performance in Deathly Hallows. The characters are JKR's, but Foxglove Bakery is Caroline's. Hope you enjoy reading! Written for het_bigbang. On the HBB site here and AO3 here.
ii. whose ancestry is purest
"You've gotta do better than that, Malfoy."
Draco folded his arms across his chest and glared. "Much better than what you've come up with, though."
Harry grunted his displeasure. "Trying to get anyone's memory of that night is impossible. Your lot will talk, yeah, but the minute you ask them for a memory it's suddenly one excuse after another."
"My lot?"
Harry waved his hand. "You know," he said with a shrug, "the posh ones."
Draco snorted. "My so-called lot like to keep their thoughts to themselves, Potter," he said. "I don't blame them. Did you get anybody's memories at all?"
"We're still going through the list and asking, but so far we've got only Astoria McLaggen's."
"That should be the most useful, then."
"You would think." Harry shook his head. "Looks like she spent the entire time in the kitchen supervising the elves. She didn't go into the ballroom until she tried to find McLaggen. We need eyes in that room. We need to know what happened before he disappeared."
"It's possible whoever took him wasn't a guest at all," Draco mused.
"Yes, but we still need to account for all the guests, don't we?"
Fair point, but Draco wasn't about to give Harry that satisfaction. "Have you gotten anything from the wands?"
"A few leads, but flimsy ones. We got the broken glass from the study, but yesterday Mysteries sent me word there's a backlog in their queue. Something about a redacted in redacted." Noticing the queer look Draco gave him, Harry laughed and shook his head. "I know, right? Seriously though, the memo flew in and they actually blotted out those two words. Who does that?"
"Mysteries, apparently." Unspeakables were well-regarded, but Draco, on principle, was wary of them. If mothers warned their children not to trust anything that can think for itself if they didn't know where it kept its brain, then why shouldn't they also warn against government departments whose job is kept purposely vague? Besides, they seem far more enamored of the cloak-and-dagger nature of their department than any actual cloaking and daggering. "So the wands don't give us any immediate suspects?"
"They all check out," Harry said, ticking the names off his fingers as he enumerated them. "Fawcett was Summoning a drink, and more than five people saw her at the ballroom the entire night; Cornfoot, Summerby, Davies, MacDougal--they were all seen throughout the party. Only Summerby and Davies even had brooms, and they'd come in by Floo like everyone else."
"Whoever it was could have hidden a broom anywhere around the estate grounds anytime before the party."
"We haven't found anything," Harry said. "It was the cleanest bloody getaway we've ever seen. I had the boys look for anything in the study and right outside the window, bristles or splintered wood or anything we might use, you know? But nothing."
"It was dark, though," Draco pointed out. "Did you return the next day?"
"We were there until morning broke, Malfoy," Harry said. "Even had some of the rookies help clean up after Astoria brought us all breakfast."
Draco smirked. "Tell them it builds character," he said. "Do you have a list of the last spells each wand cast that night?"
"Yeah, you need it for something?"
"I don't know," he admitted. He wasn't yet sure what to make of McLaggen's journal, which was, even after decryption, useless, filled with abbreviated words and meaningless numbers. All he could tell was that he'd been involved in some sort of business--illegally, since he held public office--but whether this had anything to do with his disappearance remained in question. At the beginning of every month he tracked the galleons spent on a list of indeterminable items: HB-H/E, HB-H/M, HB-H/G and so on, and four weeks later he tracked the profits made from their sales, prices that were sometimes triple the amount of acquisition. The only thing it told Draco was that Cormac McLaggen was fast becoming a very rich man.
Harry's brow knit in the usual manner it did whenever he was trying to think. He didn't say anything, however, choosing instead to Summon the list from one of the file cabinets. "You think it's got something to do with who he's been working with?" he asked, tapping the parchment so that it duplicated itself and handing the copy to Draco.
"Maybe," Draco said, studying it before he rolled it up and slipped it into his pocket. "I better get going. Astoria says she's going to try to get into Cormac's personal vault today."
"Think there's something in there?"
"A lot of galleons, no doubt," Draco snorted. "But who knows? The goblins probably won't even let her."
"She's his wife."
"And the goblins guard those vaults with tight fists," Draco pointed out. "In case he doesn't return, they've got all claim to whatever's in his vault. How do you think they get their gold?"
"That's insane!"
"It's goblin law, is what it is," Draco said. He wondered if they'd know anything about the gold coin he found in McLaggen's desk, another piece of the puzzle that had yet to find its place. He pushed his seat back and stood. "I'll let you know if I find anything."
"All right. Give me an update later, yeah?"
He doubted the goblins would tell him, at least not without a price. "I will," he told Harry.
Draco found Astoria sipping a glass of water when he arrived at Fortescue's later that day. She'd chosen a table out on the patio, wearing a flowered dress that was more befitting a Muggleborn and a wide-brimmed hat that covered half her face from the sun.
"Twenty-nine hundred flavors, and you ignore them all?" he asked, pulling back a seat and settling himself upon it.
"I was saving my appetite," Astoria said. She took her purse and stood, gesturing for Draco to follow.
"Where are we going?"
"The goblins refused my request," Astoria said, her pace brisk but not hurried. Diagon Alley wasn't as busy as it would be had it been the weekend, but she caught the attention of a few witches and wizards who turned to follow her as they passed. There had been an article that morning, a feature on the missing politician's wife and her grief. Her face had filled up the entire front page. She ignored them, slipping inside a small storefront without warning.
"What are we doing, then?" Draco asked, ducking in after her.
"You need a change of clothes."
"And I'm supposed to find a new wardrobe in an apothecary?"
Astoria rolled her eyes, tapping his robes with her wand and a flick of her wrist. "I'm not used to this spell yet," she explained, studying the fabric of his clothes as it molded itself to a Muggle-style cut. "Stay still. I know my Transfiguration; don't worry." Another charm turned his pants--he was not sure he trusted how close he wanted her wand to be in relation to his crotch--into the denim blue that seemed so popular even with wizards these days. "But this will have to do."
"The goblins aren't going to change their minds now that we look like Muggles," Draco pointed out.
"No, but the jeans should make it easier to mount their dragon when we carry out our daring escape." She laughed when she caught the look on Draco's face. "The goblins can keep their vaults," she said, taking his hand. "We're going to Muggle Brighton."
"Why?"
"There's this amazing bakery you've got to try."
Of all Draco's Housemates, it was, perhaps unsurprisingly, Tracey Davis who had recovered most admirably.
Yes, Blaise had his empire, Pansy her husband, and even Theodore Nott had found the financial backing necessary to open his own high-end club. But in the end it was sweet, quiet Tracey Davis who knew well enough that she was better off in the Muggle world.
She still kept her wand with her, and she hadn't been so inaccessible that her friends had no means of getting in touch, but for the better part of her days, she busied herself running a small but popular bakery in Brighton.
Draco had heard of this through snatches of gossip that his mother liked to tell him at their weekly teas, but in the minutes after he recovered from the after-effects of sudden Side-Along Apparition, he found himself walking up the street to Foxglove Bakery. It stood amid a row of storefronts a few blocks away from the pier, by the crossing of the main road and a residential neighborhood, its awning a cheerful mint and the shop name painted in fading, regal brown.
The mix of tourists and residents paid no attention to the pair of them, even as Draco squirmed in his charmed clothing and fumbled to hide his wand when he realized it might have been sticking out of his back pocket. Astoria hurried ahead, deftly avoiding dazed travelers as they stopped and looked with every step they took.
She picked out a lemon cake topped with frosting twice its height and asked for his choice, a chocolate stout--Chocolate Cheer, the glass case label said. Brushing aside his offer to pay ("They don't accept sickles here."), she set a few quid down on the counter before wandering over to a nearby table. Most patrons had chosen to sun themselves in the outdoor patio; they were two of the few who stayed inside.
"How do you like your Cheer?" Tracey asked, wiping her hands on her paisley-dotted mint green apron. Her hair was gathered in a loose ponytail, wisps of fine blonde strands fraying around flour-streaked cheeks. She offered Draco and Astoria a warm smile.
"It's rich," Draco said, taking a bite. It had the faint sweet taste of stout, and a burst of flavor that blossomed through him, warm and cheering, long after he swallowed the last mouthful. He wasn't often one to wax poetic about food, but it was clear that Tracey had found her calling. "You know I like chocolate."
"And how's Lemon Delight today, Astoria?"
"Lovely as always," she said, flashing Tracey a bright smile. "I saw a new flavor there, but I'd been craving Delight all day."
"Oh, Coffee Comfort? You should try it! One of the girls thought it up, and we've been selling out every day we've had it." Tracey Summoned two of the cupcakes from behind the counter.
"The Statute, Tracey!" Draco hissed.
"Oh, don't start with me too. No one ever notices," she assured him, nudging the cupcake towards Draco before she sat herself across him. "Muggles are incredibly skilled at coming up with explanations for anything they don't understand."
"Even so--"
"Go on; try it."
"It's coffee," Astoria noted. "You ought to like it."
Never one to refuse sweets when they were offered him, Draco bit into the cupcake. "Hm. Very mellow."
"That's the idea." Tracey beamed. She glanced at Astoria, and when she spoke again her voice was a touch more serious. "How are you?"
Astoria shrugged. "As well as can be, given everything," she said. "The MLE have been helpful, but it's alarming how difficult it can be to go anywhere without a tail."
"Potter sent his men to follow you?" Draco asked, confused.
"No. The Prophet. They've been trying to get me to grant them an interview. I refused, but they wrote an article anyway. He's missing, not--" she nibbled on her cupcake, as though to hold her tongue. "It's tasteless."
"It is The Prophet," Draco pointed out.
Tracey reached out to hold Astoria's hand. "You're always welcome here, if you need a place to be alone. And if I could be of any help at all--"
Astoria smiled. "I know. Thanks, Trace." She glanced at Draco for a moment. "That was actually--well, I didn't come here just for the cupcakes and privacy, I must admit."
"What a dagger to the heart! Aren't the cupcakes enough?" Tracey asked, though her tone was light. "How can I help, then?"
"We've been trying to find a reason anybody might have wanted to take Cormac. Auror Potter's convinced a ransom is on its way, but we should have gotten something by now." She gave a brittle laugh. "And anyway, I wouldn't even have access to the wealth my dear husband's been amassing."
"I don't understand," Tracey murmured. "What does that have to do with me?"
At this, Astoria licked her lips. "I was hoping--you knew him, once. Possibly better than I did."
Draco raised an eyebrow.
"That was a long time ago, Astoria," Tracey said. "Never anything serious, you know that."
"Maybe not for you, but certainly for him." Astoria seemed surprised to hear herself say as much, glancing at Draco for a moment before she added, "You were both interested in business."
"I was interested in cupcakes."
"He's been working with someone," Draco explained. He hadn't understood why Astoria brought them to Tracey at first, but he was beginning to catch on. "But with whom or for what purpose, we don't know."
"I was hoping you might have an idea," Astoria admitted.
Tracey broke off a piece of Astoria's cupcake. "He didn't want me to keep Foxglove open, you know. Said it would be unseemly for a witch to keep working once--" she hesitated.
"Once she had a husband to support her," Astoria supplied. "It's all right, Tracey. It's no big secret you didn't meet eye to eye on that."
"He had many friends who were in business," Tracey said. "He always talked about which ones would make good investments. He came into quite a bit of money when his father died."
"Do you remember who he mentioned?" Draco asked. "Anybody who might have been at the party?"
Tracey's brow crinkled in thought. "A better question might be who didn't he want to invest in? One week it was Caleb Warrington, the next it would be Julian Dorny, then Blaise Zabini."
"Zabini?"
"They met at the Slug Club."
Draco frowned. He'd assumed Blaise had been Astoria's guest. "Were Warrington and Dorny at the party?" he asked Astoria.
"I invited all his friends; Julian couldn't make it, but Caleb was there, yes."
"As was Zabini."
"And fifty other friends," Astoria reminded him.
Draco turned to Tracey. "Has Potter spoken with you yet?"
"Not since that night, no. Why?"
"You said you wanted to help."
"I do."
"How long were you at the party for?"
"Most of it."
"Then you wouldn't happen to mind sparing a memory, would you?"
"And she just said yes?"
"Potter, if you had half my charm, perhaps you'd be as successful," Draco drawled. He'd walked into the department with a touch more flare that morning, brandishing a strand of Tracey's memory in a slim tube. We've got our eyes, he'd declared, the moment ruined when Harry blinked with big blank eyes at him, uncomprehending.
Once Draco explained, however, Harry all but hauled him to the viewing room, a fancy name for one of the storage closets in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It was the last place Dumbledore might have thought his precious invention would end up in, but bureaucracy was a muddy swamp of indecision. When the Pensieve came into Harry's possession--Draco wasn't sure how--he'd immediately offered it for the Aurors' use. Yet no one in the Wizengamot felt confident that Pensieve memories could not be tampered with, and they have yet to allow those memories to stand as evidence in court.
The closet was cramped, as closets usually were. The Pensieve lay low and a few shelves above it stored rows upon rows of small vials from past MLE cases. Harry had been determined to make use of it one way or the other.
He touched the surface of the Pensieve with the tip of his wand, sending misty-silver ripples to the edges of the shallow pool. The images, hazy and clouded, parted to let a lone figure rise from the whorls of the night's memories. "On three?"
"On three," Draco agreed.
They both reached out at two.
Memories were funny things.
Captured in Pensieves, they were accurate and unbiased documentation of certain events, yet any one person's memories could still be different from another's, maybe not in the facts it presented, but at least in the texture in which it presented those facts.
Draco had only gotten a glimpse of what was left of the party when he was at the estate, but in Tracey Davis' memory he was assaulted with light and color that pervaded the entirety of the ballroom. Sensation was an aspect that rarely appeared in memories, but Tracey had an affinity for it. Draco's skin warmed from the glow of a hundred floating candles and his cheeks flushed from the whirlwind of dancing around him, as he and Harry had been thrust right into the center of the ballroom.
"Do you see McLaggen anywhere?" Harry asked, pushing past the crowd with all the grace of a lumbering giant slogging through mud.
"Careful, Potter."
"Why? It's not like they can feel it."
Draco winced anyway, something unsettling in the pit of his stomach as he watched Harry walk through people. He turned away, scanning the area for any sign of McLaggen. Memories moved in real time, a constant loop from beginning to end. They'd have to review everything all over again if they missed anything once.
It occurred to him that the dance floor was more or less a snapshot of everyone he'd ever known, seven years later. He knew these faces and if they weren't familiar, he would have recognized their names. Wizarding society was patently, pathetically tight-knit that way.
There was Pritchard, fumbling through a waltz with Dobbs. Warrington, charming a group of old friends while a bored Clearwater downed the rest of her drink in one go. Katherine Bundy, sipping from a flute of champagne before she burst into a peal of laughter at something someone had said.
Powder blue dress robes brushed past--through?--his leg, and Draco jerked away, still unfamiliar with the sensation of being a ghost in someone's memories. It was Tracey, her hands around the shoulders of Theodore Nott, who smiled tenderly but danced stiffly.
"Breathe, Teddy," she murmured, rubbing his arm. "You're doing fine."
"I'm embarrassing you."
"You aren't. Here, why don't you try--one, two, step, yes. And again, and--see?"
"People are looking," he whispered, the faintest flush of red on his cheeks.
"Let them!" Tracey declared. "You have nothing to worry about."
Theodore laughed. "Let me get you a drink. Please? I promise I'll let you teach me how to dance some more later."
"Alright," Tracey conceded, and Draco felt a pang in his chest. From Tracey, perhaps? The ballroom did seem to have dimmed a shade. He watched as she lost the smile she wore for Theodore and stepped out of the dance floor, running into a woman she knew and falling into easy chatter with her.
Draco's gaze followed Theodore, but the man disappeared into the sea of baubled, sparkling witches and wizards. Draco frowned, hesitant to move through the crowd but finding himself with no other choice.
"Malfoy!"
He looked up to find Harry in a far corner of the ballroom, signaling for him to come over.
"What is it?"
And there they were, hidden behind a thick, large curtain: Cormac McLaggen and Blaise Zabini deep in conversation.
Or deep in argument, as it were.
"This is not what we agreed upon!" Blaise hissed.
"My hands are tied," McLaggen told him, raising his hands with a careless shrug.
"Two weeks ago you said it was a sure thing."
"And now it no longer is. What would you have me do?"
"Fix it."
"I'm afraid I can't. I don't see why you're so upset. We planned for this."
"You swore you'd ensure expediency."
"I tried, but he'll have none of it. Unless--" McLaggen smirked. "I hear he's sweet on your mother, perhaps--"
"Don't bring my mother into this," Blaise snapped. "Don't you ever--"
"It's not as though whoring for favors is a foreign concept to her."
Blaise's fist connected with McLaggen's cheek with a loud crack of bone colliding with bone.
"You bastard!" McLaggen cried out, but Blaise's wand had been drawn.
"Don't you dare bring her into this," Blaise repeated, his voice low and ominous.
"I have more things to worry about than your whinging," McLaggen said instead. "We'll proceed as planned."
Draco shot Harry a look just as McLaggen stomped through the ballroom, ascending the stairs that led to his study. Heart thumping, Draco sprinted after him, eager to find out what transpired after.
But the stairs ended in a black wall, cutting off in the middle of a step where the hall should have begun. "Fuck!" Draco swore, holding on to the stair's rails as he almost pitched headfirst into the abyss.
"Shite!" Harry echoed behind him.
Tracey's memories didn't extend far enough for them, and Draco did not want to find out what would happen to him if he stepped off the edges of what Tracey remembered. In many cases magic remained unknowable.
"Let's go back," Draco suggested. "We'll have to follow Blaise."
Harry nodded, but Blaise Zabini was no longer behind the curtains when they returned, and he was nowhere in the ballroom either.
"He couldn't have gone up the stairs," Harry said, voicing the suspicion that had begun to form in Draco's mind. "We were just there. We would have seen him."
"Where did he go, then?"
Just as Harry started to say something, they were both pulled back into the viewing room.
They'd reached the memory's end.
"We'll have to go back again."
"Fuck."
Construction was on full tilt for Zabini's company headquarters, a full two and a half miles from the nearest Muggle establishment as per Ministry regulations. The radius had been warded, and it was only after some skilled wandwork that Draco slipped past, though perhaps not undetected.
He didn't need to be, anyway.
Warlocks--Architectural Charmers, all of them, given their uniform purple-and-gold robes and synchronized wand-waving--were scattered around the large building, already charmed to look like a crumbling old fort. Blaise Zabini stood a few meters away, overseeing the entire process.
Stood, Draco thought, might be an understatement. The man wore a thin white sleeveless top and loose khaki pants, in contrast with the magical attire of everyone else around him. He had settled on a small elevation of rocks, one foot forward and his body jutting at an angle that, combined with the wind blowing against his loose clothing and the solemn look on his face, reminded Draco of a Witch Weekly spread.
"You always did make a habit of posing for the masses," he said by way of greeting.
"I could have had you obliterated by the wards had I so chosen, you know. I'm busy, Malfoy. You'll have to make an appointment."
Draco resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I'm here to talk about Cormac McLaggen."
Blaise slanted his eyes at him. "Again: I'm busy. Terribly sorry I can't accommodate you right now," he said, in a tone that made it clear he wasn't sorry at all.
"You had an argument with McLaggen that night," Draco said, undeterred. They'd gone back to the beginning to see how the conversation began but it gave them no new information. "I had no idea you were even acquaintances."
"I was invited to his birthday party. Clearly we knew each other."
"And the argument?"
"I don't recall any such fight."
"You punched him hard enough to bruise."
"Drunken folly, no doubt. Sometimes I don't know my own strength."
"No, but I don't suppose your investors would like to hear about your arrest on the Prophet's front page tomorrow, do you?"
"You're pinning his disappearance on that?"
"The Ministry wants a suspect. I doubt they'll care who I bring in if it buys them time."
Blaise's lips curled into an ugly sneer. "Who doesn't care? The Ministry or you? We all know what you would do to remain in their good graces, don't we."
"Tell me what your business with McLaggen is," Draco said, his fist clenching but his voice as even as ever. He wouldn't take the bait; he refused.
Blaise held Draco's gaze for what seemed like eternity. Finally, he signaled one of the men to come over. "Marcus, take over on the ground. Stand here and make sure the charms are performed to the letter." To Draco, he gestured towards the water. "That's France on the other side of that sea. We plan to go global, and the idea is to create another building on the other side so we can begin hiring French wizards as we expand into the rest of the continent."
"Don't you already? Quality Quidditch, Apothicaire--"
"We still rely on distributors overseas," Blaise explained. "But my mother no longer trusts them. We need our own people situated in key markets to make sure everything runs as they do back here. We recently purchased the Quafflepunchers from the Bergerons and it's easier to have a base in France out of which to operate. International Floo travel just isn't what it used to be anymore."
"A good old-fashioned buyout, for once." His father had owned many profitable businesses, but that was nothing compared to the cunning way Blaise's mother took over companies by conveniently marrying into them.
Blaise glared. "I'll humor your requests, Malfoy, but only those for Ministry business."
Draco almost smirked. "Proximity won't help where international borders still exist," he pointed out instead.
"Yes, I was working with Cormac on that. We were hoping to grant employees on both sides some leniency in international Floo travel. A special permission, if you will, considering the number of jobs we're creating on both sides of the border."
"What kind of special permissions?"
"Did you know you're not allowed to enter a country twice within a twenty-four hour span?" Blaise asked. "It is, as it turns out, punishable by law. We wanted to come up with an exemption for employees of companies with offices in more than one country."
Draco raised an eyebrow.
"We're only setting precedents," Blaise replied with an easy, practiced smile. "There's no sense in restricting anyone who wishes to encourage commerce and trade, is there?"
"Of course not. And when did McLaggen promise this permission?"
Blaise shrugged. "He's run into a hiccup or two since."
"It can't be good for business," Draco murmured, eyeing Blaise.
"It's even worse now that our primary contact has gone missing," Blaise pointed out. "The man is a flake, but he's more useful to me in the Ministry than elsewhere."
He had a very good point, but Draco wasn't one to give Blaise the satisfaction of acknowledging as much. There was still the issue of the money McLaggen made every month, anyway, and he didn't know yet if Blaise had a hand in that or not. He looked at the half-erected structure before them. It looked like it was in the middle of demolition, but that was how wizarding buildings were made to look whenever they were in the vicinity of Muggle towns. It meant the Charmers were doing their job. "How's construction going?"
"On schedule."
"Mind if I take a look?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"You can either let me, or I can make you."
Blaise muttered something that sounded insulting under his breath, but he steered Draco towards the building, warning him to duck under a low-hanging beam as they entered a side door that was, for now, an actual hole in the wall.
"I see you've decided to go modern," Draco said.
There it was again, that smug grin. "There's no building like it," Blaise declared. "It's better even than the Ministry's. Each level serves as the corporate offices of each company under our group, although of course with growth on the horizon we've made sure we would be able to fill out a few more levels below ground. Our underground offices will be second only to Gringotts' in all of Britain."
The interior of the building was massive. Outside it was charmed to be unassuming, but inside the Zabinis spared no expense. Floor to ceiling windows reflected a bright and sunny outdoors. The entryways to the various offices were impossibly tall. In a corner, a group of warlocks consulted runic texts as they inscribed them around the arch of a door at least ten feet tall.
"Special wards," Blaise said, directing Draco's attention to the windows. "Do you know a fixture like that alone is worth fifty thousand galleons? The Founders did it themselves for the Great Hall, of course."
"Impressive." Draco said, though his mind was alight with other thoughts.
He knew the facts well enough, Draco truly did. But he couldn't shake that nagging notion at the back of his head: no matter what he knew, he could not bring himself to trust Blaise Zabini.
"Gut instinct," he muttered with a twist of his mouth. "Salazar help me, I'm turning into Potter."
There had been little more to see at Blaise's new building, and even less to learn from his lies. Draco had left empty-handed but resolved not to remain that way. Harry had no qualms jumping headfirst into his suspicions, but Draco was a much more cautious wizard. He'd been keeping an eye on Blaise's whereabouts since that visit, which was just as well, considering the snail's pace that every other aspect of the investigation had been on.
Every morning he hovered a hundred feet above the Zabini manor, listening through the chimney as Blaise moved around inside. Every morning he would wait until Blaise stepped into the Floo, announcing his intended destination before a puff of green swallowed him whole. Every morning Draco would Apparate a few stores down from the Diagon Alley building that housed Blaise's company, and every day he sat himself in a cafe just across the building, keeping an eye out for Blaise.
In general, Blaise Zabini was punctual and predictable. He never lunched outside unless it was for business. In the early afternoons he visited the construction site for an hour or two, returning before five and staying on past that. He dined alone in his manor and filled his evenings with more meetings or socials, usually at The Black Orchid, an exclusive club that Theodore Nott owned. Whatever business Blaise conducted there so far remained unknown to Draco.
It was beginning to be an exercise of extreme patience in the face of dullness, but Blaise broke routine just a few days later.
It was five past two, the hour of construction supervision, and Blaise had just left the building to go to the nearest Floo station. Draco was only half-watching, more engrossed in filling out The Prophet's crossword truth be told, that he nearly missed it when, instead of turning left toward the Floo station, Blaise turned right.
Draco glanced up as soon as he realized, then ducked his head quickly to avoid being seen. After a few seconds, he grabbed his paper and left a few sickles on the table.
Then he followed Blaise Zabini into Knockturn Alley.
Blaise slipped first into Borgin & Burke's, and Draco would have stayed outside to wait for him had he not been privy to the way Caractacus Burke treated his clients' privacy. Draco cast a cloaking charm on himself before heading to the back of the store.
Sure enough, there he caught Blaise emerging on the other side, with a furtive glance around him before he walked on. He must have spotted Draco earlier, or at least feared a tail for a different reason. Draco kept a little distance as he followed Blaise, who ducked behind an apothecary, entered the Hairless Pig, came out its side door, and wove through the back alleys and side streets of Knockturn Alley with such speed and ease that Draco doubted this was a route Blaise rarely took.
Blaise walked along a cramped row of what appeared to be abandoned buildings, a section of Knockturn Alley so undesirable that even its usual visitors left it alone. He disappeared inside one of them--Draco would have missed it if the door hadn't still been struggling to creak shut when he reached the two-story building.
The Golden Snitch, the sign outside said. Beside the door was a window, clouded with dust, but through it Draco could see a crouched figure handing something from across a table to what could only be Blaise Zabini. They exchanged a few words, and then Blaise disappeared from sight.
"Well, fuck." Pausing to cast more glamors on himself--a charm turned his hair black; another gave him mud brown eyes; a third, which bruised his ego a bit, put a few pockmarks on the unblemished skin of his face--Draco decided to go ahead and play it by ear. He opened the door and strode in.
"We're full," greeted a wrinkled hag who manned the desk. Draco had walked into an inn, and it stank of cat-piss and looked twice as unappealing.
"It's fine," he said, walking past the desk and heading for the stairs behind her. "I'm here to meet someone."
"You haven't got a key."
"I don't need one. I'll knock," he said, skipping the steps two at a time. He came upon a row of doors, none of them looking any more likely to contain Blaise than the others did. Below, the hag was cursing and hissing for him to return, even as she struggled to scale the stairs herself. He approached the nearest door, its wooden frame scarred with scratches and cuts and splintering in places. He knocked. There was no sound from inside, and the door would not budge when he tried to push it open.
"Y'can't be in here!" the hag was saying, closer now behind him.
He flicked his wrist, and in an instant the door exploded open. Inside was a sorry-looking double bed, a night table, a bathroom door. It looked fit for an Azkaban cell, but worse than that, it was empty.
"That's property damage, sir, that is!" shrieked the hag, but Draco ignored her, moving to the second door. He cast the same curse to open it, and it swung to reveal the same room. It was empty as well, as was the third room, and the fourth, and the fifth.
"Stop!"
Draco disarmed her before she could hex him. "You said you were full."
"You were trouble, I could sense it. We don't want the likes of you ruining our inn. Get out, or I'll call for law enforcement!"
"Where is he?"
"Where's who?"
"Zabini. I saw him come in. Where is he?"
"Nobody by that name came in. Get out of my inn!"
"I saw him enter. He was here."
"There's nobody in the inn. It's a slow day, and now I've got your rubbish to fix. Don't you think I won't be setting my goblins after you for damages," she threatened.
"Yeah, well, you can charge it to the MLE," Draco snapped, kicking the nearest door in frustration.
"I need two things, and don't ask me questions until later," Draco said when he strode into Harry's office.
Harry laughed. "And I'm supposed to just say yes?"
"Obviously. You know I hate speculation until I know things for certain," Draco replied. "Just trust me on this."
"Trust you."
"I got you to Zabini, didn't I?" The last spell Blaise's wand had cast had been a concealment charm, and though Blaise claimed he'd used it to hide a stain on his robes, most of Harry's men were now scouring the grounds of the McLaggen estate looking for whatever it was that may have been concealed.
Harry sighed. "What is it?"
"First, I need to use the Pensieve."
"Did you get a memory from Zabini?" Harry asked.
"No, it's for my own. There's something I need to look at," Draco said.
Harry seemed to consider this for a moment, but only perhaps to make Draco impatient. "All right," he conceded. "And the second?"
Draco smirked. "I was thinking it's high time the MLE paid for me to take a short holiday," he said. "To France, perhaps."
"Paris?"
"No, not Paris."
"Where, then?"
Draco glanced at Astoria. He'd come by to borrow the runic text he'd used to counter the wards protecting McLaggen's journal. That was an hour and a half ago--now, he was sitting in the parlor with an empty cup of coffee and a plate full of biscuit crumbs, listening to Astoria recount the praises Helene Greengrass had sung of his mother. Narcissa, he wasn't surprised to find out, had caught up with Helene and Miranda after all. There was supposed to be a small dinner that weekend, and Draco had to tell her he couldn't make it. He wasn't sure how long he'd be out of the country. "Not Paris," was all he said.
Astoria rolled her eyes. "Are you there for business, at least?"
"What personal reasons would I have in France?"
"Do you have a lead?" Astoria wanted to know.
"I might," Draco admitted. "But I can't say anything unless I'm certain."
"Of course," she said. Her lips were a small heart-shaped pout, hazel eyes clouded with thought. "Was it Tracey's memory? Did it help?"
Draco nodded. "We think we've found somebody," he said. "I'll let you know as soon as we do, of course."
She smiled. "Thank you." She set her cup on its porcelain saucer and nodded at his arm. "How's it feeling?"
"Sorry?"
"Your arm. Have you been playing with poisonous potions again?"
Draco touched his arm instinctively. It still stung, but the pain had dulled to a constant throbbing that he could ignore, given enough distraction. "How did you know?"
"You've been trying to do everything one-handed since you arrived," she told him. "I came to your left to hand you the book, and you reached over with your right hand to take it." She shook her head at the stunned look he gave her. "You're not the only one who can make an induction here or there."
"I'm fine," he said instead.
"Has it gone, then?"
"No, not as much as I'd hoped." The blasted snake burned red, and its skull was barely noticeable anymore, but it continued to hiss angry lines on his arm.
Astoria Summoned a small box from outside the room. "Poor Amos," she murmured, undoing the latch and rummaging inside. "Here, I have a salve that might help."
"I'm fine," Draco protested--the last time Amos and Astoria met, he'd worried they would make some kind of unholy alliance between the two of them to torment him. He closed his hand over the arm. "But thank you."
"Don't be a baby, this won't hurt much," she said, approaching him with the threat of salve and cotton ball. "Did you even disinfect it before coming here?"
"Did I even disinfect--I know how to work with potions!"
Astoria laughed. "That wasn't meant as an insult," she said, though Draco doubted her. He yanked the edge of his sleeve up over his arm.
"It's fine," he insisted. "And uninfected, thank you very much."
"Hello, Amos," Astoria said, ignoring Draco. She dabbed the cotton with a bit of creamy yellow salve and touched a side of it to his Mark. "There," she said, speaking to Draco now, "that isn't so bad, is it?"
"It's unnecessary," Draco mumbled, though the salve did soothe a cool patch of comfort onto his tender skin. Even the snake unfurled in its coil, curling into a position that looked more at ease. Draco frowned. "Is this good for it too?"
"You ask like I'm supposed to be an expert on Dark Mark magic," Astoria said. "I don't know, but he isn't fighting you now, is he?"
He's meant to be dying, Draco wanted to say, wrinkling his nose when a slip of Amos' tongue--Merlin's tits, he'd started calling it by name now, too--the snake's tongue rattled idly in the air as the salve was spread on the length of its body. "He should be fighting me," he said. "I'm not meant to be his host or friend. He's a parasite."
"Does he feed off you somehow?" Astoria asked. "Does he still burn, like when you were called?"
Draco shrugged. "That's not the point," he mumbled. Astoria dabbed a second layer of the salve around his Mark, her touch gentling whenever it neared the center. The tattoo looked brighter, slicked with the oils of the potion, but the lines were thinner now, less black and more gray.
"But does he?" Astoria's face was too close to his, but he didn't mind. She held his gaze, and though her hand had stilled, her fingers stayed on his arm, light as the drizzle of early morning rain.
"No," he admitted.
"He's a remnant, then, isn't he? Just like you are." She dropped the cotton ball into a small plastic bag and twisted the lid to cover the bottle of salve, returning it to its kit and Banishing it from the room. She smoothed her skirts and stood, calling for Pinky to take their plates and cups away in a flurry of motion as sudden and hurried as the treatment of his arm had been languid and idle. Intimate, even, he realized with a flush of guilt.
"Thank you," he said, feeling awkward and out of place as he stood in the middle of the room, clutching a book in one hand and sporting a sleeping snake in the other arm.
"Think nothing of it," she said, once Pinky had left. "You know--"
"Yeah?"
"He's not the Dark Lord," Astoria said, words uttered with care. She hesitated, but Draco said nothing, so she continued. "He won't bring him back, the same way that removing him won't rewrite the fact that he was there."
"I know."
The Quiberon Quafflepunchers were in the middle of a transition. Their owner, Andre Bergeron, had just sold the team to an English company and the French papers have finally gotten wind of it. It came out in Le Voyant early that morning, and the staff hadn't had a moment's peace since.
"No, no, monsieur, that is not true," Yvonne Blanc said to her fireplace, where a round, red-faced man with a white mustache was spewing a string of incomprehensible ranting. "The Zabinis do not plan on relocating the Quafflepunchers anywhere. They'll continue playing for the French League."
"I do not care! This is an embarrassment to Quafflepuncher fans! How do we know that they know what they're doing?"
"I can assure you--" Yvonne began, her voice strained to the point of exhaustion. Alec Aucoin was just one of many season ticket holders who had expressed their dismay--to put it lightly--over the new ownership, and she didn't have the energy to keep smiling through the call. Not when all she really wanted to do was to reach through the grate and shake him to his senses. Pierre came by with a stack of mail and an apologetic smile, and she groaned, catching the red envelopes and the beginnings of steam rising from beneath the sealed flaps. Those would not be the first batch of howlers to have arrived at the offices either. "If you'll hold for just a second, Monsieur Aucoin--"
She didn't let him sputter his protest. She gathered the bunch, holding them close to her chest as she ran for the last room at the end of the hall. The envelopes grew heated in her hands and she winced, tempted to just drop them then and there.
"Incoming!" she warned, flinging open the door and chucking the envelopes in. She slammed the door shut right away, but not before the chorus of a hundred angry customers momentarily deafened her.
"Thank you for your patience," she said, tone clipped and unnaturally perky when she returned to her desk. Aucoin had stayed, which surprised her, but the break also seemed to have knocked some sensibility into him. He was breathing more calmly now, though he still looked displeased. "As I was saying, I can assure you that the Zabini family intends to keep the same level of excellence that the Quafflepunchers have achieved under the Bergerons' care, and will continue to entrust its daily operations to our President, Monsieur Lemieux. The team has never been in a better position to compete for the French Cup and we look forward to showing you exactly how much in the coming season. If you'll excuse me, I believe I have another inquiry to handle. Good day."
She ended the call before he could say any more--if he had a problem with that, then he could take it up with Marc, but Yvonne suspected her supervisor would have little patience for irate clients at this point. "Quiberon Quafflepunchers, this is Yvonne speaking. How may I help direct your call?"
A madame this time, speaking so quickly she had trouble keeping up with her list of complaints. Yvonne interjected with the appropriate hums of understanding, peppered the one-sided conversation with "I see's" of concern. She would wait until Madame Laurent finished before she'd counter with the company spiel. She wasn't even in ticket sales, but they had been slammed as soon as they came in, so Marc had asked her to handle as much as she could and hand off what she couldn't.
"Excuse me."
She turned to look. No one had visited the actual office and she wondered if, at 2 PM--goodness, she'd meant to take her lunch break hours ago!--they would have their first in-person complaint. "Please hold, Madame. May I help you?"
"I'm here to see Marc Talbot," the man said. He had messy black hair, dark brown eyes, and a faint English accent that tinted his otherwise impeccable French. "Mr. Zabini sent me. I know it's short notice, but I wanted to talk to him and see if I could find time to get on Patrice Lemieux's calendar before the week ends."
"Oh! Of course, hold on--" Yvonne deactivated the wards that led to the executive offices.
"Thank you. Have a good one," the man said, flashing her a toothy smile as he passed.
It wasn't until he'd gone that Yvonne realized she'd never gotten his name.
And it wasn't until she was back home--deep in the pages of the latest Andrea Beaumont thriller, body soaking in a lavender-scented bath and a glass of red by her side--that Yvonne realized she'd never seen him leave.
A simple Undetectable Extension Charm can do wonders for any wizard. In Draco's case, it gave him room to stretch his legs and fit himself in one of Talbot's cabinets while he waited for the Quafflepunchers' offices to empty. (Thankfully they were French; that moment came at five o'clock exactly.)
Still, he waited another hour, just in case, before emerging from the cabinet and making his way out. He'd been unable to access the floor plan for the building--had in fact, been unable to do more than decide he'd pay it a visit--but he had a hunch and he thought he knew where he might be able to confirm it.
Security in a Quidditch team's office was scant, which was why Draco had decided to break into it in the first place. The main headquarters would have been reinforced with a dozen strong wards, none of which would leave him alive, but here he found it easy enough to slip out of the room and enter others with only a concealing charm to cover his bases and the glamors on his features to mask his identity, however crudely. He passed a row of executive offices, all of which were name-plated, but none of which he had any interest in. It wasn't until he was at the very end of the hall that it occurred to him he might have been going the wrong way.
"Shit," he muttered. He'd been so certain he needed to be in this wing that he hadn't bothered coming up with alternatives. He retraced his steps, taking note of the names on the offices as he passed them by until he returned to Talbot's. Not one of them looked right. He continued down the other side, coming across intersecting halls that led to the training rooms, ticket sales, Quidditch operations. What was he missing? Where would Blaise have placed it?
It wasn't until he bumped against the glass door that led back to the reception area that it dawned on him. The archway hadn't been hidden. He'd assumed it was because the warlocks had still been working on it, but it would have been impossible to move, and if it had been intended for a private office, then--
Draco entered the reception area. The main entrance was directly ahead of it, but there was another hall across from him that he hadn't noticed earlier.
It led to the pitch.
Of course. Draco crossed the reception area and made his way down the very end of the hall, where a set of double doors opened out to the field.
It was the only set of doors he saw. There was nothing to his left and nothing to his right. Just the hall, the door, and the pitch outside. Draco frowned and for a moment, he contemplated going back to the offices and searching each one for the archway.
But it didn't make sense. The archway should be here, somewhere that wouldn't seem out of place. The archway in the Zabini offices had been located in what would be a high-traffic area. He remembered that, remembered some of the runes that had been set in the still-drying cement, and even in The Golden Snitch there had been only a grouchy crone standing in the way; the doors, even with the numerous scratches marking their frames, still bore the runes--Draco's eyes widened--they had been hidden in plain sight. It had just taken him too long to realize what to look for.
"Finite Incantatem," he whispered, wand aimed at the doorframe. He watched the solid black metal fade into the same runed cement--another glamor charm uncovered. "Knew it."
He knew where this one led, but he pulled out a piece of paper and a self-inking quill to copy the markings anyway, careful never to write the full characters down. He could translate them at his leisure when he returned home, though he was certain that he would find them an exact match with the runes from Blaise's headquarters. That was the wonderful thing with these doors--they came in pairs, keyed in by runic spells to lead users to their other half. If Draco hadn't worked on the vanishing cabinets it might have taken him longer to understand what they were. He wrinkled his nose at the bitter memory, finishing up his notes and tucking them in the inside pocket of his robes.
"Got everything you need, then?" the voice--deep, baritone, Blaise's--came not five feet behind him. "Turn around. I want to see where you're keeping your hands."
Draco turned on his heels, empty hands raised, and came face to face with Blaise's wand.
"Did anybody ever tell you black wasn't your color?" Blaise asked with a derisive laugh, undoing the charms to Draco's disguise.
"I've been told I carry it well," Draco said. "Fancy running into you here."
"This is a Zabini-owned company now. It needed the same security standards my other companies enjoy." Blaise's tone was calm and nonchalant, like he was talking about the weather. His hand never wavered, and if Draco knew him well, then Blaise would not hesitate to hex his balls off if he so much as flinched.
"Do you personally enforce security in all your companies too?"
"You're lucky I didn't send my warlocks after you. They're the sort who get paid to ask questions later. As it stands, you're trespassing on private property and I could have just Stunned you on sight."
"Was this McLaggen's idea?" Draco asked. "You were never going to ask for more lenient travel restrictions, were you? You were going to bypass it altogether."
"I'm sorry--am I supposed to be entertaining your questions right now?" Blaise asked, and even in the dimness of the hall Draco could see the glint of a smarmy grin. "I have no idea what rubbish you're spouting. If you could kindly get off the premises, however, I'd be much obliged."
"I've got enough to implicate you both," Draco said.
"Oh, how nice. You wish to use the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to go after a dead man and an Italian citizen?"
"How do you know he's dead?"
"A week without a ransom or a body? If he'd been abducted then his captors would have found a way to make sure the ransom was delivered. They've done no such thing, which makes me think he's probably rotting in the bottom of a lake somewhere instead." Blaise cocked his head to the side. "I thought this was your area of expertise. Hands behind your head, please."
Draco grit his teeth and did as he was told. "This is still enough to halt business operations for your company. The Ministry doesn't look too kindly upon those who attack their own."
"This way, please. There's a good man. Their own, Malfoy?" Even though he couldn't see him, could only feel the tip of Blaise's wand grazing the hair on the nape of his neck, Draco could hear Blaise smiling. "I don't believe the Ministry cares one way or another what happens to you. Aren't you just a consultant?"
"Same difference," he mumbled. He took a sudden step, stumbled, and collapsed backward, right onto Blaise, who cried out in surprise and put both palms out to catch him. Seizing the opportunity, Draco twisted to grab the wand from Blaise's hands, intending to pin him to the ground.
Blaise recovered faster than Draco anticipated, scrabbling for purchase against his robes. A closed fist connected with Draco's jaw and he yelped when something metallic cutting through his skin. But Draco had Blaise's wand, and he held onto it, even as Blaise struggled to kick him away. The moonlight caught a glint of silver between Blaise's knuckles, and Draco dropped Blaise's wand. When he reached for it, Draco sank his teeth against closed palm, grabbing the key when Blaise let go with a cry of pain.
Draco scrambled to stand, leaping for the archway and turning the key in its lock. The door pushed open and Draco hurried inside.
"Malfoy!" Blaise snarled, launching himself onto Draco and knocking him down, both men caught off balance as they fell to the ground, which was much more even than a Quidditch pitch had any right to be. Blaise's wand was in his hands now, and he would have hexed Draco if not for the speed of Draco's own reflexes.
"Hold it," Draco warned, his own wand aimed at Blaise, who'd done the same. They stood--well, Draco half-knelt, at least--at an impasse of sorts.
"A duel, Malfoy?"
"Zabini."
"Hm?"
Though his eyes were on Blaise, Draco found it difficult to ignore the way the floor was tiled, or how the moon had disappeared behind a ceiling. "Where the fuck are we?"
"Don't tell me you don't recognize a potions laboratory when you see one."
Draco bristled. "Of course I do!" he snapped. "That's not the question I asked."
"You asked where we were, did you not?"
"Context, Zabini," Draco growled, not at all appeased when Blaise flashed him a benevolent smile in response.
"You talk like you're in charge, Malfoy."
"I have a wand and I'm not afraid to use it."
"Will you look at that--so do I."
"Shut up." The laboratory was empty--he'd expected the archway to lead to the headquarters on the other side of the Celtic Sea, but the Zabini offices hadn't yet opened, and this was a fully functioning potions lab. Shelves pulsed with the thick magic of protective wards, and along one wall, three cauldrons encased in glass bubbled and simmered with differently colored potions. There were four wooden desks that filled the rest of the room, each side plated with the name of a Potionsmaster. A single roll of sealed parchment lay on one of the desks close to where Draco stood, and from the melted wax he made out the logo of Apothicaire de Zabini. "We're back in England, aren't we."
Blaise pursed his lips. "Yes."
"So much for that special permission." Draco sneered. "A smuggling ring, Zabini, that is--" he tipped an imaginary hat at Blaise.
"It was his idea," Blaise spat. "He told me to set it up in case the permissions couldn't get approval, but he knew that was going to happen. I doubt he even tried."
Draco snorted.
"We'd already been using these to speed up imports while his proposal stalled week after week," Blaise continued. "And one day he showed up and told me his men have received reports. That he might have to pretend to investigate me."
"Zabini, do you mean to tell me--"
"Blackmail," Blaise confirmed. "The bastard had been planning it all along. It wasn't enough he earned a cut off the merchandise too, he--"
"Expelliarmus!" Draco smirked as Blaise flew backward, his wand rolling away until Draco Summoned it. "Personally, Zabini, if a Gryffindor has made a fool out of you, I think you deserve the comeuppance."
"At least you still duel like a snake," Blaise bit out with a sharp laugh, struggling to right himself from the floor. He smoothened his robes with shaking hands. "We were beginning to worry about you, Malfoy."
"Touched as I am by your concern, you've got a lot more explaining to do now."
"I have nothing to explain."
"Where's the body?"
"What body?"
"Don't play games with me! What did you with McLaggen's body?" Draco demanded.
"I didn't kill him."
"You had every reason to."
"Doesn't mean I did." Blaise's dark eyes glinted in the dim room, and it unsettled Draco for the lack of fear and overabundance of arrogance that it held. "You're barking up the wrong tree, Malfoy."
"Yeah? Why is that?"
There was a sudden cracking sound, an uttered "Accio wands!", and in the next moment Draco found himself unarmed, staring down the dangerous end of a slender cedar wand. "Back away, hands in the air, and don't move, if you know what's good for you," its owner commanded.
Draco looked up, meeting the cold hard gaze of an old friend. "Pansy?"
Previous | Next
Pairing: Draco/Astoria, mentions of Cormac/Astoria, Viktor/Pansy, also hints at various Slytherin ships
Word Count: <38,000, 9769 for this section
Rating/Warnings: R, mentions of infidelity and crime
Betas: acidpop25 kept an eye out for flow and phrasing, and grrarrg0908 battled my italics valiantly and came out triumphant. Any mistakes are due to my post-beta meddling.
Summary: Seven years have passed since Voldemort's defeat and Draco Malfoy is making do with the lot he's been given--distrusted by the most of the ministry, shunned by the House that he betrayed. When a ministry official goes missing, Draco is given the chance to help restore the Malfoys' place in society. But is Astoria standing in his way or is she just what he needs to be exonerated?
Author's notes: For Slytherins, the loves of my life. Narcissa probably wouldn't be here if not for Helen McCrory's performance in Deathly Hallows. The characters are JKR's, but Foxglove Bakery is Caroline's. Hope you enjoy reading! Written for het_bigbang. On the HBB site here and AO3 here.
ii. whose ancestry is purest
"You've gotta do better than that, Malfoy."
Draco folded his arms across his chest and glared. "Much better than what you've come up with, though."
Harry grunted his displeasure. "Trying to get anyone's memory of that night is impossible. Your lot will talk, yeah, but the minute you ask them for a memory it's suddenly one excuse after another."
"My lot?"
Harry waved his hand. "You know," he said with a shrug, "the posh ones."
Draco snorted. "My so-called lot like to keep their thoughts to themselves, Potter," he said. "I don't blame them. Did you get anybody's memories at all?"
"We're still going through the list and asking, but so far we've got only Astoria McLaggen's."
"That should be the most useful, then."
"You would think." Harry shook his head. "Looks like she spent the entire time in the kitchen supervising the elves. She didn't go into the ballroom until she tried to find McLaggen. We need eyes in that room. We need to know what happened before he disappeared."
"It's possible whoever took him wasn't a guest at all," Draco mused.
"Yes, but we still need to account for all the guests, don't we?"
Fair point, but Draco wasn't about to give Harry that satisfaction. "Have you gotten anything from the wands?"
"A few leads, but flimsy ones. We got the broken glass from the study, but yesterday Mysteries sent me word there's a backlog in their queue. Something about a redacted in redacted." Noticing the queer look Draco gave him, Harry laughed and shook his head. "I know, right? Seriously though, the memo flew in and they actually blotted out those two words. Who does that?"
"Mysteries, apparently." Unspeakables were well-regarded, but Draco, on principle, was wary of them. If mothers warned their children not to trust anything that can think for itself if they didn't know where it kept its brain, then why shouldn't they also warn against government departments whose job is kept purposely vague? Besides, they seem far more enamored of the cloak-and-dagger nature of their department than any actual cloaking and daggering. "So the wands don't give us any immediate suspects?"
"They all check out," Harry said, ticking the names off his fingers as he enumerated them. "Fawcett was Summoning a drink, and more than five people saw her at the ballroom the entire night; Cornfoot, Summerby, Davies, MacDougal--they were all seen throughout the party. Only Summerby and Davies even had brooms, and they'd come in by Floo like everyone else."
"Whoever it was could have hidden a broom anywhere around the estate grounds anytime before the party."
"We haven't found anything," Harry said. "It was the cleanest bloody getaway we've ever seen. I had the boys look for anything in the study and right outside the window, bristles or splintered wood or anything we might use, you know? But nothing."
"It was dark, though," Draco pointed out. "Did you return the next day?"
"We were there until morning broke, Malfoy," Harry said. "Even had some of the rookies help clean up after Astoria brought us all breakfast."
Draco smirked. "Tell them it builds character," he said. "Do you have a list of the last spells each wand cast that night?"
"Yeah, you need it for something?"
"I don't know," he admitted. He wasn't yet sure what to make of McLaggen's journal, which was, even after decryption, useless, filled with abbreviated words and meaningless numbers. All he could tell was that he'd been involved in some sort of business--illegally, since he held public office--but whether this had anything to do with his disappearance remained in question. At the beginning of every month he tracked the galleons spent on a list of indeterminable items: HB-H/E, HB-H/M, HB-H/G and so on, and four weeks later he tracked the profits made from their sales, prices that were sometimes triple the amount of acquisition. The only thing it told Draco was that Cormac McLaggen was fast becoming a very rich man.
Harry's brow knit in the usual manner it did whenever he was trying to think. He didn't say anything, however, choosing instead to Summon the list from one of the file cabinets. "You think it's got something to do with who he's been working with?" he asked, tapping the parchment so that it duplicated itself and handing the copy to Draco.
"Maybe," Draco said, studying it before he rolled it up and slipped it into his pocket. "I better get going. Astoria says she's going to try to get into Cormac's personal vault today."
"Think there's something in there?"
"A lot of galleons, no doubt," Draco snorted. "But who knows? The goblins probably won't even let her."
"She's his wife."
"And the goblins guard those vaults with tight fists," Draco pointed out. "In case he doesn't return, they've got all claim to whatever's in his vault. How do you think they get their gold?"
"That's insane!"
"It's goblin law, is what it is," Draco said. He wondered if they'd know anything about the gold coin he found in McLaggen's desk, another piece of the puzzle that had yet to find its place. He pushed his seat back and stood. "I'll let you know if I find anything."
"All right. Give me an update later, yeah?"
He doubted the goblins would tell him, at least not without a price. "I will," he told Harry.
Draco found Astoria sipping a glass of water when he arrived at Fortescue's later that day. She'd chosen a table out on the patio, wearing a flowered dress that was more befitting a Muggleborn and a wide-brimmed hat that covered half her face from the sun.
"Twenty-nine hundred flavors, and you ignore them all?" he asked, pulling back a seat and settling himself upon it.
"I was saving my appetite," Astoria said. She took her purse and stood, gesturing for Draco to follow.
"Where are we going?"
"The goblins refused my request," Astoria said, her pace brisk but not hurried. Diagon Alley wasn't as busy as it would be had it been the weekend, but she caught the attention of a few witches and wizards who turned to follow her as they passed. There had been an article that morning, a feature on the missing politician's wife and her grief. Her face had filled up the entire front page. She ignored them, slipping inside a small storefront without warning.
"What are we doing, then?" Draco asked, ducking in after her.
"You need a change of clothes."
"And I'm supposed to find a new wardrobe in an apothecary?"
Astoria rolled her eyes, tapping his robes with her wand and a flick of her wrist. "I'm not used to this spell yet," she explained, studying the fabric of his clothes as it molded itself to a Muggle-style cut. "Stay still. I know my Transfiguration; don't worry." Another charm turned his pants--he was not sure he trusted how close he wanted her wand to be in relation to his crotch--into the denim blue that seemed so popular even with wizards these days. "But this will have to do."
"The goblins aren't going to change their minds now that we look like Muggles," Draco pointed out.
"No, but the jeans should make it easier to mount their dragon when we carry out our daring escape." She laughed when she caught the look on Draco's face. "The goblins can keep their vaults," she said, taking his hand. "We're going to Muggle Brighton."
"Why?"
"There's this amazing bakery you've got to try."
Of all Draco's Housemates, it was, perhaps unsurprisingly, Tracey Davis who had recovered most admirably.
Yes, Blaise had his empire, Pansy her husband, and even Theodore Nott had found the financial backing necessary to open his own high-end club. But in the end it was sweet, quiet Tracey Davis who knew well enough that she was better off in the Muggle world.
She still kept her wand with her, and she hadn't been so inaccessible that her friends had no means of getting in touch, but for the better part of her days, she busied herself running a small but popular bakery in Brighton.
Draco had heard of this through snatches of gossip that his mother liked to tell him at their weekly teas, but in the minutes after he recovered from the after-effects of sudden Side-Along Apparition, he found himself walking up the street to Foxglove Bakery. It stood amid a row of storefronts a few blocks away from the pier, by the crossing of the main road and a residential neighborhood, its awning a cheerful mint and the shop name painted in fading, regal brown.
The mix of tourists and residents paid no attention to the pair of them, even as Draco squirmed in his charmed clothing and fumbled to hide his wand when he realized it might have been sticking out of his back pocket. Astoria hurried ahead, deftly avoiding dazed travelers as they stopped and looked with every step they took.
She picked out a lemon cake topped with frosting twice its height and asked for his choice, a chocolate stout--Chocolate Cheer, the glass case label said. Brushing aside his offer to pay ("They don't accept sickles here."), she set a few quid down on the counter before wandering over to a nearby table. Most patrons had chosen to sun themselves in the outdoor patio; they were two of the few who stayed inside.
"How do you like your Cheer?" Tracey asked, wiping her hands on her paisley-dotted mint green apron. Her hair was gathered in a loose ponytail, wisps of fine blonde strands fraying around flour-streaked cheeks. She offered Draco and Astoria a warm smile.
"It's rich," Draco said, taking a bite. It had the faint sweet taste of stout, and a burst of flavor that blossomed through him, warm and cheering, long after he swallowed the last mouthful. He wasn't often one to wax poetic about food, but it was clear that Tracey had found her calling. "You know I like chocolate."
"And how's Lemon Delight today, Astoria?"
"Lovely as always," she said, flashing Tracey a bright smile. "I saw a new flavor there, but I'd been craving Delight all day."
"Oh, Coffee Comfort? You should try it! One of the girls thought it up, and we've been selling out every day we've had it." Tracey Summoned two of the cupcakes from behind the counter.
"The Statute, Tracey!" Draco hissed.
"Oh, don't start with me too. No one ever notices," she assured him, nudging the cupcake towards Draco before she sat herself across him. "Muggles are incredibly skilled at coming up with explanations for anything they don't understand."
"Even so--"
"Go on; try it."
"It's coffee," Astoria noted. "You ought to like it."
Never one to refuse sweets when they were offered him, Draco bit into the cupcake. "Hm. Very mellow."
"That's the idea." Tracey beamed. She glanced at Astoria, and when she spoke again her voice was a touch more serious. "How are you?"
Astoria shrugged. "As well as can be, given everything," she said. "The MLE have been helpful, but it's alarming how difficult it can be to go anywhere without a tail."
"Potter sent his men to follow you?" Draco asked, confused.
"No. The Prophet. They've been trying to get me to grant them an interview. I refused, but they wrote an article anyway. He's missing, not--" she nibbled on her cupcake, as though to hold her tongue. "It's tasteless."
"It is The Prophet," Draco pointed out.
Tracey reached out to hold Astoria's hand. "You're always welcome here, if you need a place to be alone. And if I could be of any help at all--"
Astoria smiled. "I know. Thanks, Trace." She glanced at Draco for a moment. "That was actually--well, I didn't come here just for the cupcakes and privacy, I must admit."
"What a dagger to the heart! Aren't the cupcakes enough?" Tracey asked, though her tone was light. "How can I help, then?"
"We've been trying to find a reason anybody might have wanted to take Cormac. Auror Potter's convinced a ransom is on its way, but we should have gotten something by now." She gave a brittle laugh. "And anyway, I wouldn't even have access to the wealth my dear husband's been amassing."
"I don't understand," Tracey murmured. "What does that have to do with me?"
At this, Astoria licked her lips. "I was hoping--you knew him, once. Possibly better than I did."
Draco raised an eyebrow.
"That was a long time ago, Astoria," Tracey said. "Never anything serious, you know that."
"Maybe not for you, but certainly for him." Astoria seemed surprised to hear herself say as much, glancing at Draco for a moment before she added, "You were both interested in business."
"I was interested in cupcakes."
"He's been working with someone," Draco explained. He hadn't understood why Astoria brought them to Tracey at first, but he was beginning to catch on. "But with whom or for what purpose, we don't know."
"I was hoping you might have an idea," Astoria admitted.
Tracey broke off a piece of Astoria's cupcake. "He didn't want me to keep Foxglove open, you know. Said it would be unseemly for a witch to keep working once--" she hesitated.
"Once she had a husband to support her," Astoria supplied. "It's all right, Tracey. It's no big secret you didn't meet eye to eye on that."
"He had many friends who were in business," Tracey said. "He always talked about which ones would make good investments. He came into quite a bit of money when his father died."
"Do you remember who he mentioned?" Draco asked. "Anybody who might have been at the party?"
Tracey's brow crinkled in thought. "A better question might be who didn't he want to invest in? One week it was Caleb Warrington, the next it would be Julian Dorny, then Blaise Zabini."
"Zabini?"
"They met at the Slug Club."
Draco frowned. He'd assumed Blaise had been Astoria's guest. "Were Warrington and Dorny at the party?" he asked Astoria.
"I invited all his friends; Julian couldn't make it, but Caleb was there, yes."
"As was Zabini."
"And fifty other friends," Astoria reminded him.
Draco turned to Tracey. "Has Potter spoken with you yet?"
"Not since that night, no. Why?"
"You said you wanted to help."
"I do."
"How long were you at the party for?"
"Most of it."
"Then you wouldn't happen to mind sparing a memory, would you?"
"And she just said yes?"
"Potter, if you had half my charm, perhaps you'd be as successful," Draco drawled. He'd walked into the department with a touch more flare that morning, brandishing a strand of Tracey's memory in a slim tube. We've got our eyes, he'd declared, the moment ruined when Harry blinked with big blank eyes at him, uncomprehending.
Once Draco explained, however, Harry all but hauled him to the viewing room, a fancy name for one of the storage closets in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It was the last place Dumbledore might have thought his precious invention would end up in, but bureaucracy was a muddy swamp of indecision. When the Pensieve came into Harry's possession--Draco wasn't sure how--he'd immediately offered it for the Aurors' use. Yet no one in the Wizengamot felt confident that Pensieve memories could not be tampered with, and they have yet to allow those memories to stand as evidence in court.
The closet was cramped, as closets usually were. The Pensieve lay low and a few shelves above it stored rows upon rows of small vials from past MLE cases. Harry had been determined to make use of it one way or the other.
He touched the surface of the Pensieve with the tip of his wand, sending misty-silver ripples to the edges of the shallow pool. The images, hazy and clouded, parted to let a lone figure rise from the whorls of the night's memories. "On three?"
"On three," Draco agreed.
They both reached out at two.
Memories were funny things.
Captured in Pensieves, they were accurate and unbiased documentation of certain events, yet any one person's memories could still be different from another's, maybe not in the facts it presented, but at least in the texture in which it presented those facts.
Draco had only gotten a glimpse of what was left of the party when he was at the estate, but in Tracey Davis' memory he was assaulted with light and color that pervaded the entirety of the ballroom. Sensation was an aspect that rarely appeared in memories, but Tracey had an affinity for it. Draco's skin warmed from the glow of a hundred floating candles and his cheeks flushed from the whirlwind of dancing around him, as he and Harry had been thrust right into the center of the ballroom.
"Do you see McLaggen anywhere?" Harry asked, pushing past the crowd with all the grace of a lumbering giant slogging through mud.
"Careful, Potter."
"Why? It's not like they can feel it."
Draco winced anyway, something unsettling in the pit of his stomach as he watched Harry walk through people. He turned away, scanning the area for any sign of McLaggen. Memories moved in real time, a constant loop from beginning to end. They'd have to review everything all over again if they missed anything once.
It occurred to him that the dance floor was more or less a snapshot of everyone he'd ever known, seven years later. He knew these faces and if they weren't familiar, he would have recognized their names. Wizarding society was patently, pathetically tight-knit that way.
There was Pritchard, fumbling through a waltz with Dobbs. Warrington, charming a group of old friends while a bored Clearwater downed the rest of her drink in one go. Katherine Bundy, sipping from a flute of champagne before she burst into a peal of laughter at something someone had said.
Powder blue dress robes brushed past--through?--his leg, and Draco jerked away, still unfamiliar with the sensation of being a ghost in someone's memories. It was Tracey, her hands around the shoulders of Theodore Nott, who smiled tenderly but danced stiffly.
"Breathe, Teddy," she murmured, rubbing his arm. "You're doing fine."
"I'm embarrassing you."
"You aren't. Here, why don't you try--one, two, step, yes. And again, and--see?"
"People are looking," he whispered, the faintest flush of red on his cheeks.
"Let them!" Tracey declared. "You have nothing to worry about."
Theodore laughed. "Let me get you a drink. Please? I promise I'll let you teach me how to dance some more later."
"Alright," Tracey conceded, and Draco felt a pang in his chest. From Tracey, perhaps? The ballroom did seem to have dimmed a shade. He watched as she lost the smile she wore for Theodore and stepped out of the dance floor, running into a woman she knew and falling into easy chatter with her.
Draco's gaze followed Theodore, but the man disappeared into the sea of baubled, sparkling witches and wizards. Draco frowned, hesitant to move through the crowd but finding himself with no other choice.
"Malfoy!"
He looked up to find Harry in a far corner of the ballroom, signaling for him to come over.
"What is it?"
And there they were, hidden behind a thick, large curtain: Cormac McLaggen and Blaise Zabini deep in conversation.
Or deep in argument, as it were.
"This is not what we agreed upon!" Blaise hissed.
"My hands are tied," McLaggen told him, raising his hands with a careless shrug.
"Two weeks ago you said it was a sure thing."
"And now it no longer is. What would you have me do?"
"Fix it."
"I'm afraid I can't. I don't see why you're so upset. We planned for this."
"You swore you'd ensure expediency."
"I tried, but he'll have none of it. Unless--" McLaggen smirked. "I hear he's sweet on your mother, perhaps--"
"Don't bring my mother into this," Blaise snapped. "Don't you ever--"
"It's not as though whoring for favors is a foreign concept to her."
Blaise's fist connected with McLaggen's cheek with a loud crack of bone colliding with bone.
"You bastard!" McLaggen cried out, but Blaise's wand had been drawn.
"Don't you dare bring her into this," Blaise repeated, his voice low and ominous.
"I have more things to worry about than your whinging," McLaggen said instead. "We'll proceed as planned."
Draco shot Harry a look just as McLaggen stomped through the ballroom, ascending the stairs that led to his study. Heart thumping, Draco sprinted after him, eager to find out what transpired after.
But the stairs ended in a black wall, cutting off in the middle of a step where the hall should have begun. "Fuck!" Draco swore, holding on to the stair's rails as he almost pitched headfirst into the abyss.
"Shite!" Harry echoed behind him.
Tracey's memories didn't extend far enough for them, and Draco did not want to find out what would happen to him if he stepped off the edges of what Tracey remembered. In many cases magic remained unknowable.
"Let's go back," Draco suggested. "We'll have to follow Blaise."
Harry nodded, but Blaise Zabini was no longer behind the curtains when they returned, and he was nowhere in the ballroom either.
"He couldn't have gone up the stairs," Harry said, voicing the suspicion that had begun to form in Draco's mind. "We were just there. We would have seen him."
"Where did he go, then?"
Just as Harry started to say something, they were both pulled back into the viewing room.
They'd reached the memory's end.
"We'll have to go back again."
"Fuck."
Construction was on full tilt for Zabini's company headquarters, a full two and a half miles from the nearest Muggle establishment as per Ministry regulations. The radius had been warded, and it was only after some skilled wandwork that Draco slipped past, though perhaps not undetected.
He didn't need to be, anyway.
Warlocks--Architectural Charmers, all of them, given their uniform purple-and-gold robes and synchronized wand-waving--were scattered around the large building, already charmed to look like a crumbling old fort. Blaise Zabini stood a few meters away, overseeing the entire process.
Stood, Draco thought, might be an understatement. The man wore a thin white sleeveless top and loose khaki pants, in contrast with the magical attire of everyone else around him. He had settled on a small elevation of rocks, one foot forward and his body jutting at an angle that, combined with the wind blowing against his loose clothing and the solemn look on his face, reminded Draco of a Witch Weekly spread.
"You always did make a habit of posing for the masses," he said by way of greeting.
"I could have had you obliterated by the wards had I so chosen, you know. I'm busy, Malfoy. You'll have to make an appointment."
Draco resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I'm here to talk about Cormac McLaggen."
Blaise slanted his eyes at him. "Again: I'm busy. Terribly sorry I can't accommodate you right now," he said, in a tone that made it clear he wasn't sorry at all.
"You had an argument with McLaggen that night," Draco said, undeterred. They'd gone back to the beginning to see how the conversation began but it gave them no new information. "I had no idea you were even acquaintances."
"I was invited to his birthday party. Clearly we knew each other."
"And the argument?"
"I don't recall any such fight."
"You punched him hard enough to bruise."
"Drunken folly, no doubt. Sometimes I don't know my own strength."
"No, but I don't suppose your investors would like to hear about your arrest on the Prophet's front page tomorrow, do you?"
"You're pinning his disappearance on that?"
"The Ministry wants a suspect. I doubt they'll care who I bring in if it buys them time."
Blaise's lips curled into an ugly sneer. "Who doesn't care? The Ministry or you? We all know what you would do to remain in their good graces, don't we."
"Tell me what your business with McLaggen is," Draco said, his fist clenching but his voice as even as ever. He wouldn't take the bait; he refused.
Blaise held Draco's gaze for what seemed like eternity. Finally, he signaled one of the men to come over. "Marcus, take over on the ground. Stand here and make sure the charms are performed to the letter." To Draco, he gestured towards the water. "That's France on the other side of that sea. We plan to go global, and the idea is to create another building on the other side so we can begin hiring French wizards as we expand into the rest of the continent."
"Don't you already? Quality Quidditch, Apothicaire--"
"We still rely on distributors overseas," Blaise explained. "But my mother no longer trusts them. We need our own people situated in key markets to make sure everything runs as they do back here. We recently purchased the Quafflepunchers from the Bergerons and it's easier to have a base in France out of which to operate. International Floo travel just isn't what it used to be anymore."
"A good old-fashioned buyout, for once." His father had owned many profitable businesses, but that was nothing compared to the cunning way Blaise's mother took over companies by conveniently marrying into them.
Blaise glared. "I'll humor your requests, Malfoy, but only those for Ministry business."
Draco almost smirked. "Proximity won't help where international borders still exist," he pointed out instead.
"Yes, I was working with Cormac on that. We were hoping to grant employees on both sides some leniency in international Floo travel. A special permission, if you will, considering the number of jobs we're creating on both sides of the border."
"What kind of special permissions?"
"Did you know you're not allowed to enter a country twice within a twenty-four hour span?" Blaise asked. "It is, as it turns out, punishable by law. We wanted to come up with an exemption for employees of companies with offices in more than one country."
Draco raised an eyebrow.
"We're only setting precedents," Blaise replied with an easy, practiced smile. "There's no sense in restricting anyone who wishes to encourage commerce and trade, is there?"
"Of course not. And when did McLaggen promise this permission?"
Blaise shrugged. "He's run into a hiccup or two since."
"It can't be good for business," Draco murmured, eyeing Blaise.
"It's even worse now that our primary contact has gone missing," Blaise pointed out. "The man is a flake, but he's more useful to me in the Ministry than elsewhere."
He had a very good point, but Draco wasn't one to give Blaise the satisfaction of acknowledging as much. There was still the issue of the money McLaggen made every month, anyway, and he didn't know yet if Blaise had a hand in that or not. He looked at the half-erected structure before them. It looked like it was in the middle of demolition, but that was how wizarding buildings were made to look whenever they were in the vicinity of Muggle towns. It meant the Charmers were doing their job. "How's construction going?"
"On schedule."
"Mind if I take a look?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"You can either let me, or I can make you."
Blaise muttered something that sounded insulting under his breath, but he steered Draco towards the building, warning him to duck under a low-hanging beam as they entered a side door that was, for now, an actual hole in the wall.
"I see you've decided to go modern," Draco said.
There it was again, that smug grin. "There's no building like it," Blaise declared. "It's better even than the Ministry's. Each level serves as the corporate offices of each company under our group, although of course with growth on the horizon we've made sure we would be able to fill out a few more levels below ground. Our underground offices will be second only to Gringotts' in all of Britain."
The interior of the building was massive. Outside it was charmed to be unassuming, but inside the Zabinis spared no expense. Floor to ceiling windows reflected a bright and sunny outdoors. The entryways to the various offices were impossibly tall. In a corner, a group of warlocks consulted runic texts as they inscribed them around the arch of a door at least ten feet tall.
"Special wards," Blaise said, directing Draco's attention to the windows. "Do you know a fixture like that alone is worth fifty thousand galleons? The Founders did it themselves for the Great Hall, of course."
"Impressive." Draco said, though his mind was alight with other thoughts.
He knew the facts well enough, Draco truly did. But he couldn't shake that nagging notion at the back of his head: no matter what he knew, he could not bring himself to trust Blaise Zabini.
"Gut instinct," he muttered with a twist of his mouth. "Salazar help me, I'm turning into Potter."
There had been little more to see at Blaise's new building, and even less to learn from his lies. Draco had left empty-handed but resolved not to remain that way. Harry had no qualms jumping headfirst into his suspicions, but Draco was a much more cautious wizard. He'd been keeping an eye on Blaise's whereabouts since that visit, which was just as well, considering the snail's pace that every other aspect of the investigation had been on.
Every morning he hovered a hundred feet above the Zabini manor, listening through the chimney as Blaise moved around inside. Every morning he would wait until Blaise stepped into the Floo, announcing his intended destination before a puff of green swallowed him whole. Every morning Draco would Apparate a few stores down from the Diagon Alley building that housed Blaise's company, and every day he sat himself in a cafe just across the building, keeping an eye out for Blaise.
In general, Blaise Zabini was punctual and predictable. He never lunched outside unless it was for business. In the early afternoons he visited the construction site for an hour or two, returning before five and staying on past that. He dined alone in his manor and filled his evenings with more meetings or socials, usually at The Black Orchid, an exclusive club that Theodore Nott owned. Whatever business Blaise conducted there so far remained unknown to Draco.
It was beginning to be an exercise of extreme patience in the face of dullness, but Blaise broke routine just a few days later.
It was five past two, the hour of construction supervision, and Blaise had just left the building to go to the nearest Floo station. Draco was only half-watching, more engrossed in filling out The Prophet's crossword truth be told, that he nearly missed it when, instead of turning left toward the Floo station, Blaise turned right.
Draco glanced up as soon as he realized, then ducked his head quickly to avoid being seen. After a few seconds, he grabbed his paper and left a few sickles on the table.
Then he followed Blaise Zabini into Knockturn Alley.
Blaise slipped first into Borgin & Burke's, and Draco would have stayed outside to wait for him had he not been privy to the way Caractacus Burke treated his clients' privacy. Draco cast a cloaking charm on himself before heading to the back of the store.
Sure enough, there he caught Blaise emerging on the other side, with a furtive glance around him before he walked on. He must have spotted Draco earlier, or at least feared a tail for a different reason. Draco kept a little distance as he followed Blaise, who ducked behind an apothecary, entered the Hairless Pig, came out its side door, and wove through the back alleys and side streets of Knockturn Alley with such speed and ease that Draco doubted this was a route Blaise rarely took.
Blaise walked along a cramped row of what appeared to be abandoned buildings, a section of Knockturn Alley so undesirable that even its usual visitors left it alone. He disappeared inside one of them--Draco would have missed it if the door hadn't still been struggling to creak shut when he reached the two-story building.
The Golden Snitch, the sign outside said. Beside the door was a window, clouded with dust, but through it Draco could see a crouched figure handing something from across a table to what could only be Blaise Zabini. They exchanged a few words, and then Blaise disappeared from sight.
"Well, fuck." Pausing to cast more glamors on himself--a charm turned his hair black; another gave him mud brown eyes; a third, which bruised his ego a bit, put a few pockmarks on the unblemished skin of his face--Draco decided to go ahead and play it by ear. He opened the door and strode in.
"We're full," greeted a wrinkled hag who manned the desk. Draco had walked into an inn, and it stank of cat-piss and looked twice as unappealing.
"It's fine," he said, walking past the desk and heading for the stairs behind her. "I'm here to meet someone."
"You haven't got a key."
"I don't need one. I'll knock," he said, skipping the steps two at a time. He came upon a row of doors, none of them looking any more likely to contain Blaise than the others did. Below, the hag was cursing and hissing for him to return, even as she struggled to scale the stairs herself. He approached the nearest door, its wooden frame scarred with scratches and cuts and splintering in places. He knocked. There was no sound from inside, and the door would not budge when he tried to push it open.
"Y'can't be in here!" the hag was saying, closer now behind him.
He flicked his wrist, and in an instant the door exploded open. Inside was a sorry-looking double bed, a night table, a bathroom door. It looked fit for an Azkaban cell, but worse than that, it was empty.
"That's property damage, sir, that is!" shrieked the hag, but Draco ignored her, moving to the second door. He cast the same curse to open it, and it swung to reveal the same room. It was empty as well, as was the third room, and the fourth, and the fifth.
"Stop!"
Draco disarmed her before she could hex him. "You said you were full."
"You were trouble, I could sense it. We don't want the likes of you ruining our inn. Get out, or I'll call for law enforcement!"
"Where is he?"
"Where's who?"
"Zabini. I saw him come in. Where is he?"
"Nobody by that name came in. Get out of my inn!"
"I saw him enter. He was here."
"There's nobody in the inn. It's a slow day, and now I've got your rubbish to fix. Don't you think I won't be setting my goblins after you for damages," she threatened.
"Yeah, well, you can charge it to the MLE," Draco snapped, kicking the nearest door in frustration.
"I need two things, and don't ask me questions until later," Draco said when he strode into Harry's office.
Harry laughed. "And I'm supposed to just say yes?"
"Obviously. You know I hate speculation until I know things for certain," Draco replied. "Just trust me on this."
"Trust you."
"I got you to Zabini, didn't I?" The last spell Blaise's wand had cast had been a concealment charm, and though Blaise claimed he'd used it to hide a stain on his robes, most of Harry's men were now scouring the grounds of the McLaggen estate looking for whatever it was that may have been concealed.
Harry sighed. "What is it?"
"First, I need to use the Pensieve."
"Did you get a memory from Zabini?" Harry asked.
"No, it's for my own. There's something I need to look at," Draco said.
Harry seemed to consider this for a moment, but only perhaps to make Draco impatient. "All right," he conceded. "And the second?"
Draco smirked. "I was thinking it's high time the MLE paid for me to take a short holiday," he said. "To France, perhaps."
"Paris?"
"No, not Paris."
"Where, then?"
Draco glanced at Astoria. He'd come by to borrow the runic text he'd used to counter the wards protecting McLaggen's journal. That was an hour and a half ago--now, he was sitting in the parlor with an empty cup of coffee and a plate full of biscuit crumbs, listening to Astoria recount the praises Helene Greengrass had sung of his mother. Narcissa, he wasn't surprised to find out, had caught up with Helene and Miranda after all. There was supposed to be a small dinner that weekend, and Draco had to tell her he couldn't make it. He wasn't sure how long he'd be out of the country. "Not Paris," was all he said.
Astoria rolled her eyes. "Are you there for business, at least?"
"What personal reasons would I have in France?"
"Do you have a lead?" Astoria wanted to know.
"I might," Draco admitted. "But I can't say anything unless I'm certain."
"Of course," she said. Her lips were a small heart-shaped pout, hazel eyes clouded with thought. "Was it Tracey's memory? Did it help?"
Draco nodded. "We think we've found somebody," he said. "I'll let you know as soon as we do, of course."
She smiled. "Thank you." She set her cup on its porcelain saucer and nodded at his arm. "How's it feeling?"
"Sorry?"
"Your arm. Have you been playing with poisonous potions again?"
Draco touched his arm instinctively. It still stung, but the pain had dulled to a constant throbbing that he could ignore, given enough distraction. "How did you know?"
"You've been trying to do everything one-handed since you arrived," she told him. "I came to your left to hand you the book, and you reached over with your right hand to take it." She shook her head at the stunned look he gave her. "You're not the only one who can make an induction here or there."
"I'm fine," he said instead.
"Has it gone, then?"
"No, not as much as I'd hoped." The blasted snake burned red, and its skull was barely noticeable anymore, but it continued to hiss angry lines on his arm.
Astoria Summoned a small box from outside the room. "Poor Amos," she murmured, undoing the latch and rummaging inside. "Here, I have a salve that might help."
"I'm fine," Draco protested--the last time Amos and Astoria met, he'd worried they would make some kind of unholy alliance between the two of them to torment him. He closed his hand over the arm. "But thank you."
"Don't be a baby, this won't hurt much," she said, approaching him with the threat of salve and cotton ball. "Did you even disinfect it before coming here?"
"Did I even disinfect--I know how to work with potions!"
Astoria laughed. "That wasn't meant as an insult," she said, though Draco doubted her. He yanked the edge of his sleeve up over his arm.
"It's fine," he insisted. "And uninfected, thank you very much."
"Hello, Amos," Astoria said, ignoring Draco. She dabbed the cotton with a bit of creamy yellow salve and touched a side of it to his Mark. "There," she said, speaking to Draco now, "that isn't so bad, is it?"
"It's unnecessary," Draco mumbled, though the salve did soothe a cool patch of comfort onto his tender skin. Even the snake unfurled in its coil, curling into a position that looked more at ease. Draco frowned. "Is this good for it too?"
"You ask like I'm supposed to be an expert on Dark Mark magic," Astoria said. "I don't know, but he isn't fighting you now, is he?"
He's meant to be dying, Draco wanted to say, wrinkling his nose when a slip of Amos' tongue--Merlin's tits, he'd started calling it by name now, too--the snake's tongue rattled idly in the air as the salve was spread on the length of its body. "He should be fighting me," he said. "I'm not meant to be his host or friend. He's a parasite."
"Does he feed off you somehow?" Astoria asked. "Does he still burn, like when you were called?"
Draco shrugged. "That's not the point," he mumbled. Astoria dabbed a second layer of the salve around his Mark, her touch gentling whenever it neared the center. The tattoo looked brighter, slicked with the oils of the potion, but the lines were thinner now, less black and more gray.
"But does he?" Astoria's face was too close to his, but he didn't mind. She held his gaze, and though her hand had stilled, her fingers stayed on his arm, light as the drizzle of early morning rain.
"No," he admitted.
"He's a remnant, then, isn't he? Just like you are." She dropped the cotton ball into a small plastic bag and twisted the lid to cover the bottle of salve, returning it to its kit and Banishing it from the room. She smoothed her skirts and stood, calling for Pinky to take their plates and cups away in a flurry of motion as sudden and hurried as the treatment of his arm had been languid and idle. Intimate, even, he realized with a flush of guilt.
"Thank you," he said, feeling awkward and out of place as he stood in the middle of the room, clutching a book in one hand and sporting a sleeping snake in the other arm.
"Think nothing of it," she said, once Pinky had left. "You know--"
"Yeah?"
"He's not the Dark Lord," Astoria said, words uttered with care. She hesitated, but Draco said nothing, so she continued. "He won't bring him back, the same way that removing him won't rewrite the fact that he was there."
"I know."
The Quiberon Quafflepunchers were in the middle of a transition. Their owner, Andre Bergeron, had just sold the team to an English company and the French papers have finally gotten wind of it. It came out in Le Voyant early that morning, and the staff hadn't had a moment's peace since.
"No, no, monsieur, that is not true," Yvonne Blanc said to her fireplace, where a round, red-faced man with a white mustache was spewing a string of incomprehensible ranting. "The Zabinis do not plan on relocating the Quafflepunchers anywhere. They'll continue playing for the French League."
"I do not care! This is an embarrassment to Quafflepuncher fans! How do we know that they know what they're doing?"
"I can assure you--" Yvonne began, her voice strained to the point of exhaustion. Alec Aucoin was just one of many season ticket holders who had expressed their dismay--to put it lightly--over the new ownership, and she didn't have the energy to keep smiling through the call. Not when all she really wanted to do was to reach through the grate and shake him to his senses. Pierre came by with a stack of mail and an apologetic smile, and she groaned, catching the red envelopes and the beginnings of steam rising from beneath the sealed flaps. Those would not be the first batch of howlers to have arrived at the offices either. "If you'll hold for just a second, Monsieur Aucoin--"
She didn't let him sputter his protest. She gathered the bunch, holding them close to her chest as she ran for the last room at the end of the hall. The envelopes grew heated in her hands and she winced, tempted to just drop them then and there.
"Incoming!" she warned, flinging open the door and chucking the envelopes in. She slammed the door shut right away, but not before the chorus of a hundred angry customers momentarily deafened her.
"Thank you for your patience," she said, tone clipped and unnaturally perky when she returned to her desk. Aucoin had stayed, which surprised her, but the break also seemed to have knocked some sensibility into him. He was breathing more calmly now, though he still looked displeased. "As I was saying, I can assure you that the Zabini family intends to keep the same level of excellence that the Quafflepunchers have achieved under the Bergerons' care, and will continue to entrust its daily operations to our President, Monsieur Lemieux. The team has never been in a better position to compete for the French Cup and we look forward to showing you exactly how much in the coming season. If you'll excuse me, I believe I have another inquiry to handle. Good day."
She ended the call before he could say any more--if he had a problem with that, then he could take it up with Marc, but Yvonne suspected her supervisor would have little patience for irate clients at this point. "Quiberon Quafflepunchers, this is Yvonne speaking. How may I help direct your call?"
A madame this time, speaking so quickly she had trouble keeping up with her list of complaints. Yvonne interjected with the appropriate hums of understanding, peppered the one-sided conversation with "I see's" of concern. She would wait until Madame Laurent finished before she'd counter with the company spiel. She wasn't even in ticket sales, but they had been slammed as soon as they came in, so Marc had asked her to handle as much as she could and hand off what she couldn't.
"Excuse me."
She turned to look. No one had visited the actual office and she wondered if, at 2 PM--goodness, she'd meant to take her lunch break hours ago!--they would have their first in-person complaint. "Please hold, Madame. May I help you?"
"I'm here to see Marc Talbot," the man said. He had messy black hair, dark brown eyes, and a faint English accent that tinted his otherwise impeccable French. "Mr. Zabini sent me. I know it's short notice, but I wanted to talk to him and see if I could find time to get on Patrice Lemieux's calendar before the week ends."
"Oh! Of course, hold on--" Yvonne deactivated the wards that led to the executive offices.
"Thank you. Have a good one," the man said, flashing her a toothy smile as he passed.
It wasn't until he'd gone that Yvonne realized she'd never gotten his name.
And it wasn't until she was back home--deep in the pages of the latest Andrea Beaumont thriller, body soaking in a lavender-scented bath and a glass of red by her side--that Yvonne realized she'd never seen him leave.
A simple Undetectable Extension Charm can do wonders for any wizard. In Draco's case, it gave him room to stretch his legs and fit himself in one of Talbot's cabinets while he waited for the Quafflepunchers' offices to empty. (Thankfully they were French; that moment came at five o'clock exactly.)
Still, he waited another hour, just in case, before emerging from the cabinet and making his way out. He'd been unable to access the floor plan for the building--had in fact, been unable to do more than decide he'd pay it a visit--but he had a hunch and he thought he knew where he might be able to confirm it.
Security in a Quidditch team's office was scant, which was why Draco had decided to break into it in the first place. The main headquarters would have been reinforced with a dozen strong wards, none of which would leave him alive, but here he found it easy enough to slip out of the room and enter others with only a concealing charm to cover his bases and the glamors on his features to mask his identity, however crudely. He passed a row of executive offices, all of which were name-plated, but none of which he had any interest in. It wasn't until he was at the very end of the hall that it occurred to him he might have been going the wrong way.
"Shit," he muttered. He'd been so certain he needed to be in this wing that he hadn't bothered coming up with alternatives. He retraced his steps, taking note of the names on the offices as he passed them by until he returned to Talbot's. Not one of them looked right. He continued down the other side, coming across intersecting halls that led to the training rooms, ticket sales, Quidditch operations. What was he missing? Where would Blaise have placed it?
It wasn't until he bumped against the glass door that led back to the reception area that it dawned on him. The archway hadn't been hidden. He'd assumed it was because the warlocks had still been working on it, but it would have been impossible to move, and if it had been intended for a private office, then--
Draco entered the reception area. The main entrance was directly ahead of it, but there was another hall across from him that he hadn't noticed earlier.
It led to the pitch.
Of course. Draco crossed the reception area and made his way down the very end of the hall, where a set of double doors opened out to the field.
It was the only set of doors he saw. There was nothing to his left and nothing to his right. Just the hall, the door, and the pitch outside. Draco frowned and for a moment, he contemplated going back to the offices and searching each one for the archway.
But it didn't make sense. The archway should be here, somewhere that wouldn't seem out of place. The archway in the Zabini offices had been located in what would be a high-traffic area. He remembered that, remembered some of the runes that had been set in the still-drying cement, and even in The Golden Snitch there had been only a grouchy crone standing in the way; the doors, even with the numerous scratches marking their frames, still bore the runes--Draco's eyes widened--they had been hidden in plain sight. It had just taken him too long to realize what to look for.
"Finite Incantatem," he whispered, wand aimed at the doorframe. He watched the solid black metal fade into the same runed cement--another glamor charm uncovered. "Knew it."
He knew where this one led, but he pulled out a piece of paper and a self-inking quill to copy the markings anyway, careful never to write the full characters down. He could translate them at his leisure when he returned home, though he was certain that he would find them an exact match with the runes from Blaise's headquarters. That was the wonderful thing with these doors--they came in pairs, keyed in by runic spells to lead users to their other half. If Draco hadn't worked on the vanishing cabinets it might have taken him longer to understand what they were. He wrinkled his nose at the bitter memory, finishing up his notes and tucking them in the inside pocket of his robes.
"Got everything you need, then?" the voice--deep, baritone, Blaise's--came not five feet behind him. "Turn around. I want to see where you're keeping your hands."
Draco turned on his heels, empty hands raised, and came face to face with Blaise's wand.
"Did anybody ever tell you black wasn't your color?" Blaise asked with a derisive laugh, undoing the charms to Draco's disguise.
"I've been told I carry it well," Draco said. "Fancy running into you here."
"This is a Zabini-owned company now. It needed the same security standards my other companies enjoy." Blaise's tone was calm and nonchalant, like he was talking about the weather. His hand never wavered, and if Draco knew him well, then Blaise would not hesitate to hex his balls off if he so much as flinched.
"Do you personally enforce security in all your companies too?"
"You're lucky I didn't send my warlocks after you. They're the sort who get paid to ask questions later. As it stands, you're trespassing on private property and I could have just Stunned you on sight."
"Was this McLaggen's idea?" Draco asked. "You were never going to ask for more lenient travel restrictions, were you? You were going to bypass it altogether."
"I'm sorry--am I supposed to be entertaining your questions right now?" Blaise asked, and even in the dimness of the hall Draco could see the glint of a smarmy grin. "I have no idea what rubbish you're spouting. If you could kindly get off the premises, however, I'd be much obliged."
"I've got enough to implicate you both," Draco said.
"Oh, how nice. You wish to use the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to go after a dead man and an Italian citizen?"
"How do you know he's dead?"
"A week without a ransom or a body? If he'd been abducted then his captors would have found a way to make sure the ransom was delivered. They've done no such thing, which makes me think he's probably rotting in the bottom of a lake somewhere instead." Blaise cocked his head to the side. "I thought this was your area of expertise. Hands behind your head, please."
Draco grit his teeth and did as he was told. "This is still enough to halt business operations for your company. The Ministry doesn't look too kindly upon those who attack their own."
"This way, please. There's a good man. Their own, Malfoy?" Even though he couldn't see him, could only feel the tip of Blaise's wand grazing the hair on the nape of his neck, Draco could hear Blaise smiling. "I don't believe the Ministry cares one way or another what happens to you. Aren't you just a consultant?"
"Same difference," he mumbled. He took a sudden step, stumbled, and collapsed backward, right onto Blaise, who cried out in surprise and put both palms out to catch him. Seizing the opportunity, Draco twisted to grab the wand from Blaise's hands, intending to pin him to the ground.
Blaise recovered faster than Draco anticipated, scrabbling for purchase against his robes. A closed fist connected with Draco's jaw and he yelped when something metallic cutting through his skin. But Draco had Blaise's wand, and he held onto it, even as Blaise struggled to kick him away. The moonlight caught a glint of silver between Blaise's knuckles, and Draco dropped Blaise's wand. When he reached for it, Draco sank his teeth against closed palm, grabbing the key when Blaise let go with a cry of pain.
Draco scrambled to stand, leaping for the archway and turning the key in its lock. The door pushed open and Draco hurried inside.
"Malfoy!" Blaise snarled, launching himself onto Draco and knocking him down, both men caught off balance as they fell to the ground, which was much more even than a Quidditch pitch had any right to be. Blaise's wand was in his hands now, and he would have hexed Draco if not for the speed of Draco's own reflexes.
"Hold it," Draco warned, his own wand aimed at Blaise, who'd done the same. They stood--well, Draco half-knelt, at least--at an impasse of sorts.
"A duel, Malfoy?"
"Zabini."
"Hm?"
Though his eyes were on Blaise, Draco found it difficult to ignore the way the floor was tiled, or how the moon had disappeared behind a ceiling. "Where the fuck are we?"
"Don't tell me you don't recognize a potions laboratory when you see one."
Draco bristled. "Of course I do!" he snapped. "That's not the question I asked."
"You asked where we were, did you not?"
"Context, Zabini," Draco growled, not at all appeased when Blaise flashed him a benevolent smile in response.
"You talk like you're in charge, Malfoy."
"I have a wand and I'm not afraid to use it."
"Will you look at that--so do I."
"Shut up." The laboratory was empty--he'd expected the archway to lead to the headquarters on the other side of the Celtic Sea, but the Zabini offices hadn't yet opened, and this was a fully functioning potions lab. Shelves pulsed with the thick magic of protective wards, and along one wall, three cauldrons encased in glass bubbled and simmered with differently colored potions. There were four wooden desks that filled the rest of the room, each side plated with the name of a Potionsmaster. A single roll of sealed parchment lay on one of the desks close to where Draco stood, and from the melted wax he made out the logo of Apothicaire de Zabini. "We're back in England, aren't we."
Blaise pursed his lips. "Yes."
"So much for that special permission." Draco sneered. "A smuggling ring, Zabini, that is--" he tipped an imaginary hat at Blaise.
"It was his idea," Blaise spat. "He told me to set it up in case the permissions couldn't get approval, but he knew that was going to happen. I doubt he even tried."
Draco snorted.
"We'd already been using these to speed up imports while his proposal stalled week after week," Blaise continued. "And one day he showed up and told me his men have received reports. That he might have to pretend to investigate me."
"Zabini, do you mean to tell me--"
"Blackmail," Blaise confirmed. "The bastard had been planning it all along. It wasn't enough he earned a cut off the merchandise too, he--"
"Expelliarmus!" Draco smirked as Blaise flew backward, his wand rolling away until Draco Summoned it. "Personally, Zabini, if a Gryffindor has made a fool out of you, I think you deserve the comeuppance."
"At least you still duel like a snake," Blaise bit out with a sharp laugh, struggling to right himself from the floor. He smoothened his robes with shaking hands. "We were beginning to worry about you, Malfoy."
"Touched as I am by your concern, you've got a lot more explaining to do now."
"I have nothing to explain."
"Where's the body?"
"What body?"
"Don't play games with me! What did you with McLaggen's body?" Draco demanded.
"I didn't kill him."
"You had every reason to."
"Doesn't mean I did." Blaise's dark eyes glinted in the dim room, and it unsettled Draco for the lack of fear and overabundance of arrogance that it held. "You're barking up the wrong tree, Malfoy."
"Yeah? Why is that?"
There was a sudden cracking sound, an uttered "Accio wands!", and in the next moment Draco found himself unarmed, staring down the dangerous end of a slender cedar wand. "Back away, hands in the air, and don't move, if you know what's good for you," its owner commanded.
Draco looked up, meeting the cold hard gaze of an old friend. "Pansy?"
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