Chapter Eleven: Prelude to the Storm

"Dear Mr. Malfoy,

I am grateful to hear of your concern regarding my current situation. Please rest assured that my health is in an impeccable state, and that I have returned to my studies with great interest.

Please believe that I am eager to hear from you once again, and hope that we may be able to find each other at one of the dances this summer.

Yours,

Daphne Greengrass."

Cato finished reading the letter and lifted his wand to it, letting a small burst of flame turn it to ash. She had gone to the effort of making their correspondence seem innocuous, as he had done when he sent asking after her health. Yet, despite the veiled reassurances, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of fear at the thought of seeing her again. It had been months now, but the sight of her slashed and pale body still echoed in his mind when he closed his eyes.

They had had to be careful, never meeting, barely talking. He knew now that Dumbledore would be watching them, and though Voldemort wouldn't have flinched at someone dying for his cause, he wanted to attract no more attention to Daphne than was necessary. Especially with the ministry breathing down the family's neck. He sighed, and ran a cursory look around his surroundings.

Back alleys lost their intimidating nature when one walked through them in the shoes of a suspected criminal. Now they welcomed Cato with open arms, smothering him in shadows. He grimaced as he slipped past one of the many alleys that trickled down from Diagon Alley to Knockturn like rivulets of black tar. A year ago he could have walked those roads proudly, and people would have stepped out of his way and lowered their gaze. Shopkeepers would give discounts and girls would blush. But now he was the son of a known and hated Death Eater and a suspect in the murder of Marie Abbot.

He glared at the scum covered cobbles ahead of him. He had been so careful… yet somehow Abbot had named him, of all those who had been present. Music was filtering down from a crooked home, the reedy voice of Celestina Warbeck slipping through a cracked window, accompanied by a tremulous violin. Cato lifted his own fingers for inspection. Small shivers sent his fingers twitching around involuntarily every few seconds, as if some hidden current were pulsing on and off through his body. He couldn't have played a violin even if he had wanted to.

Ten minutes later, Cato stopped in front of an old, weather-beaten door attached to an equally decrepit building. Shattered windows gaped at him like eye sockets and all was dark within, the room blackened by an old fire, leaving naught but charred memories. It would have appeared completely abandoned if not for the ragged mean sitting on the doorstep. His cloak resembled strips of fabric shoddily sown together and a permanent stink of sour sweat and old beer surrounded him like a cloud.

"Hello," said Cato, holding out his hand.

The man rose unsteadily. He was fat in an uneven, unhealthy sort of way, with sallow red eyes and a beard squirming with a life of its own. "'Lo,'" he grunted. Then he stretched out his hand and Cato felt a familiar prick in his palm like a rodent's bite. He pulled away as the man brought his own hand to his lips and whispered something under his breath. And the world responded to his words as Cato felt something surge through his veins, tickling them with magic until he felt like squirming and scratching himself all over.

For an odd moment, the world seemed to still, as it always did when confronted with ancient magics, as if it needed a moment to remember spells buried deep in the past. But then, the illusion fell like mud off a carriage. The old man was gone, replaced by a tall, strong looked wizard dressed in dark robes inlaid with complex gold filigree and a plain black mask, its eye holes rimmed with gold. Muscles bulged and bunched as he pulled a great black key from his pocket and slid it into the old house's door. It turned with a click and a thud that reverberated through Cato's bones. "Welcome back," grunted the man as he pushed open the door.

Lucius had brought Cato there twice before and he still couldn't help but marvel at the sight before him. The hall ahead was of black wood, with dark paneling on the floor and a carpet as red as heart's blood. Candles flickered along the tall columns on either side of him, for though the hall was narrow, it seemed to stretch up and up until it was lost in shadow, and murmurs and music could be heard in the darkness, like whispers from behind a veil. At the end of the hall was a desk, surrounded by a gilded cage of gold, and within it stood a smartly dressed and dark-skinned man with skull-like features and the soulless eyes of a snake.

"Good evening, Mr. Malfoy," he said as Cato walked up. Inlaid into the rich wood of his desk was written, 'The Coven. Est. AD 237.'

"Good evening, Superintendent" said Cato, following his memory of his father's words.

"Will it be business or entertainment tonight?" Two doors stood behind the superintendent, one of red wood, the other of black.

"Business, I should think," he said. It was odd, Narcissa had brought him here once, for 'Entertainment,' but it seemed to Cato that more business went on there than anywhere else.

"Very good, sir." The man gave Cato a black coin, picked up from somewhere below the desk and Cato gave him a stiff nod before walking up to the corresponding door. He paused and hesitated for a moment. He couldn't remember his father doing anything in particular here… But as he approached, the door melted away into trails of dark vapor and he stepped through. The room beyond hailed back to a more ancient time. In many ways it reminded Cat of Hogwarts or the ruins of Black Hall, where the once glory of the House of Black still echoed through their shattered halls, whispers of greatness hanging in the shadows of the morning mist and the mournful call of northern winds.

Here, low stone ceilings, gently vaulted, sat upon walls of ancient wood supported by squat pillars of black rock. In the middle of the room was a great circular counter of massive marble, where a handful of sullen-looking goblins were speaking to a collection of wizards, or scribbling away furiously on long sheafs of parchment. And all around the central hub mulled perhaps fifty people, mostly dressed in subdued robes, and often knotted into little groups.

As Cato walked past them, he heard brief flakes of their many whispered conversations. "The west Africans won't buy until…" "Peruvian ministry found the relics under a muggle city… Yes… 5000 galleons…" "Sent a team to Warsaw… Haven't heard back." Here lay the nexus of British pureblood moneymaking. Carefully tended projects maintained by the elite, for the elite, and hidden from the public eye for centuries. Lucius had spent his last visit bartering for a specific Qing dynasty vase with a fish-eyed man from Vietnam who had 'acquired it' from the Chinese Ministry.

Cato was sliding through the crowd, heading for the private booths beyond when a hand fell on his shoulder. He turned around with painful reluctance and forced a smile, which flickered and almost fell when he looked into the bloodshot eyes of Jeremius Abbot. The man dragged him to the side, next to a pillar and pushed him against it. He was trembling, and his grip was as tight as a vice. "Careful now," said Cato, awkwardly brushing away a speck of dust from his free shoulder. "You wouldn't want to attract the attention of the Superintendent."

"I know," said Abbot. "It was- I knew it was you, he pointed a thick finger at Cato.

"Me?" Cato smiled. "Yes, I suppose I am distinctive enough looking." Would the man be grief-maddened enough to strike him here, in the heart of one of the most ancient institutions? Where people had plied their goods and services since the sesterce was still the common currency? But Abbot seemed paralyzed, in his own dream.

"Your voice. Heard it before. Million meetings- Wizengamot." He shook his head. "Thought it was Lucius- But no." He grip tightened, his eyes filled with resolve.

"Ah, Cato Malfoy!" A loud voice broke the tense silence that had now settled thickly around the room. "Just the man I was looking for!" A dark-skinned man walked up to them and smiled. He had a generous mustache and a monocle stuck in front of one eye, propped atop drooping jowls and a monstrous duet of mutton chops.

Cato inclined his head. "Lord Patil. I would bow but," he made a small gesture towards Abbot, who still had him jammed against the wall. They were acquaintances only by the most tenuous of links, the gossamer strands that tied all purebloods together. "Come," said Patil. "I have an offer for you. I know your father had a great love for all things oriental, and I was hoping you may have acquired such similar tastes…"

He felt Abbot's grasp relax a fraction, a dazed look on his face and Cato took the chance to swiftly extricate himself from his compromising position, as a buzz of conversation began to grow once more within the room. But as he walked past, Abbot grabbed his shoulder one last time, with such strength that Cato had to bite back a hiss of pain. "I won't forget," he snarled. And then he was gone, storming out of the room and attracting gazes all the way.

His shoulder was smarting as Cato turned back to Lord Patil. The man's smile was now gone, and he was looking at Cato with a calculating gaze. "Thank you," said Cato, lifting up a hand to rub his shoulder.

"I did it for him, not you. Jeremius is a good man, brought to unreasonable actions by great grief. Marie was a most excellent woman."

Cato looked him in the eye and smiled pleasantly. "So I have heard, though I never had the pleasure of talking with her. Now if you'll excuse me," he said, brushing past Patil. The man did not move away and instead reached out to grab Cato's left forearm. As his fingers closed around his sleeve, Cato snatched his arm away with a hiss, clutching at his forearm tightly. "What is it with you people and grabbing my limbs?" he snarled in a low voice, his eyes gleaming with fury. And for but a brief moment, fear flashed in Patil's eyes, as if he in turn thought Cato might lash out. But then he relaxed, a small gleam of triumph in his eyes as he let go of Cato's arm.

"You are still young, Mr. Malfoy. Do not let the foolish mistakes of your youth corrupt your chances at a reasonable future. The courts might still forgive you."

Cato sneered at him and shook his head. Patil's family was old in India, but new in Europe, and their history was unblemished by centuries of wars, alliances, betrayals and feuds. Their name was still free of associations, a blank slate upon which they could write their own story. It would be simple to see the Dark Mark as the sign of an extremist mind, of rash beliefs and murder. It made Cato want to curse the man's self-righteous look off his face. "Lord Patil," he said, each word carefully measured and spoken with the pin point precision of an angry man. "When the time comes for judgment, I am certain that only one of us will face a conviction. But I wonder, which would weigh more heavily within the scales of Justice, were it fair and all seeing. The guilt of one who sacrificed everything to save those he loved, or the guilt of one who sat and watched as the world fell apart, and found his courage only when came time for testimony?" He let the words hang, observing the way in which Patil opened his mouth, then closed it again with a frown. "Good day, sir," he snapped and with a swish of his cloak, Cato marched off.

A hallway led from the main room, with curtained doorways on each side, set at regular intervals. Brass numbers were burned into the stone beside them and men in white cloaks stood next to each door, guarding the privacy of those within. The hall echoed with the muted heaviness that came with intensely powerful silencing charms. A man stepped out of a curtained door and gave Cato a brief nod before walking by, and Cato caught a glimpse of a sallow man within, his face riddled with scars, his gaze distant, before the curtain closed.

The curtain felt heavy in his hands, thick with secrets as Cato entered his own booth. The seating was arranged around a low circular table of polished stone and a chandelier of red candles provided a dim light within which sat a goblin with a nasty scar slicing through one of his eye sockets. "You're late," he growled as Cato took a seat.

Cato took the time to remove his cloak, folding it carefully and pouring himself a goblet of wine from the crystal jug on the table. He gave the goblin a cool look from above the rim of his cup before finally setting it down. "I was busy."

"So am I," replied the goblin with a sneer. After a pause, he shrugged and gave Cato a slightly less hostile scowl. "No matter. My name is Wrongface, you claim to have business with the bank?"

And this was why Cato had come all this way. He leaned forward and clasped his hands on the table. The very air here seemed still, as if every word were swallowed as soon as it was spoken, every sound as muted as on a heavy day of snow. "I have three points of business. First, we will discuss the matter of my estate."

"Name?" grunted Wrongface.

"Cato Malfoy."

"Not yours! The estate!" snapped the creature with an impatient roll of its eyes.

"Falaise House." The goblin slammed open a thick folder and flitted through it before pulling out a thin sheaf of papers.

"Falaise House. Estimated value of 1.5 million galleons. Previous years assessment claims an income of… 50 Galleons." Wrongface's eyebrows rose and he cast Cato a suspicious look, but Cato merely shrugged. "You know as well as I do that those statements go through the Ministry as well." It was oddly easy to practice tax evasion in the Magical World. In fact, it seemed to be entirely expected for the wealthier pureblood families to partake in it. But the goblin's expression soured. The Goblin Nation did not particularly like 'falsified' numbers. "You can change that to 15.000 Galleons in your own books," said Cato. A grunt and a scratch of a quill later, the goblin looked up at him once more.

"And? What do you want?"

Cato pulled out a small piece of parchment and slid it over the table. "Any ventures connected to Falaise House should be connected to this name, and a new account. In the eventuality that the Ministry comes asking questions about Falaise House and its connected assets, these two should not be linked. In addition, all income generated by Falaise House and its property should henceforth be put into a numbered account, and I want ownership of the property to be transferred to this company" Cato tapped a finger against the parchment, where he had written, 'Blackwand LLC.' He slid over another piece of parchment. It was blank.

Herein lay the reason why he had met Wrongface here, and not in Gringotts. What they were doing was underhanded, dishonest and would have set off a dozen 'I'm about to have trouble with the ministry' alarm bells in the Ministry Department for Goblin Relations. But more than that, Cato was asking Wrongface to bypass the bureaucratic trail left by the Bank when such changes were made, and that was just as bad for Wrongface as it was for him. But the goblin took it in his stride and nodded.

"Ownership will be transferred to Blackwand LLC, based in New York. The consultation fee for this session of financial guidance will be 650 galleons." As he spoke, he wriggled his fingers above the blank piece of parchment, his ugly brow creasing as ink began to flow across the paper, and the sheet began to multiply into a neat stack of documents.

Cato pulled out his coin pouch and thanked his foresight. Using one of the direct-withdrawal pouches would have been unwise. He tapped the pouch and said, "Six hundred and fifty." The pouch wriggled once, then began to spew out coins like a chip machine in a casino, each one zipping out and piling itself neatly atop its predecessor, until Wrongface had a nice pile of gold in front of him.

"That concludes our business," said the goblin. He looked down at his papers and pointedly ignored Cato, who looked at him with a grimace before stepping back outside. Such unpleasant creatures, goblins.

Cato apparated away from the Coven as soon as he set foot outside the door, not particularly eager to see if Abbot was waiting for him beyond its age-old boundaries. His next appointment was not until nightfall, so he spent the day busying himself at Falaise House, sifting through paperwork and inspecting the various businesses that ran from his own little estate. Every time he sat down at his desk, which overlooked the slate gray sea far below, he did so with a growing sense of melancholy.

Things were changing. If he fulfilled his mission and murdered Dumbledore, he probably would not be able to safely come back to Falaise House for a long time, even if it would be protected from ministerial inquisition in his absence. He sighed, his quill pausing over a document, and tried to focus on it.

'… Therefore, I request a further five hundred galleons to replace the hives damaged in the winter storms. Otherwise, we will not be able to deliver on the summer orders by our buyers. I am sure that our esteemed Lord is aware of the high demand for doxy material come September…'

Cato scribbled his signature on the paper, approving the grant, and flipped to the next page. He had tried to make Falaise impregnable to any intrusion, and had given up the moment he saw the exorbitant fees for any real warding. It was no wonder that the Manor had been warded progressively over generations. If he wanted to achieve anything capable of hiding his comings and goings from the ministry, or preventing any intrusion, he would have had to consume half the family fortune.

By the time evening fell, Cato was well prepared for a change of pace and let his quill fall onto the pile, knowing one of the elves would be there to neaten it up for him by morning. He grabbed his cloak -dark blue- and disappeared with a soft pop.

Moments later, he was halfway across the country, facing a bitter and briny wind coming in from the Irish Sea. He stood on a concrete block jutting out into the water and as he turned around, the lights of Liverpool sprawled out in front of him in all its grimy glory. But next to him, the muggle port still churned onwards, bright lights glaring down on trundling trucks and towering cranes as they unloaded a long line of ships.

No one was looking, and so he turned back to the sea. Tonight, it looked like black ice, shattered and cut, with ground white class cresting jagged edges. Little buoys delimited a wide area in front of him. He raised his wand and made a vague motion in the air in front of him, then took a step forward, off the concrete, and into air. For a moment, he was tipping forward, falling, wind rushing- Then his boot landed on hard timbers and with a wave of dizziness, a modest pier stretched out in front of him.

It was lined on each side by a motley collection of sailboats of varying sizes, and was only about four meters wide, with a few small shacks littering it. Yet its limited size had not discouraged a throne of wizards from accumulating on it. They pushed by each other, floating loads of goods above their heads, or lugging them on their backs. The smell of brine and fire whiskey was heavy on the air and Cato had to struggle not to cover his nose as he shoved his way through the thick crowd.

Shouts and curses echoed all around, but he eventually fought his way through the thick of it until the crowd had petered out almost entirely. Here, the pier stretched out further, but no other ships had docked, and few apart from a drunken sailor or two wandered here. But at the end of the pier was one more ship, a hulking, Victorian man-o'-war, so brashly layered with gold that it seemed to glow with its own light.

A row of surly goblins glared at him as he approached, their halberds held in tight hands, tipping dangerously towards him. "Business?" grunted one of them.

"I want to have something shipped out," said Cato smoothly.

The lead goblin glared at him, before nodding. "Wait here."

It only took a few moments, and one guard hurrying up the gangplank for another goblin to come down to the pier. He was well dressed, immaculately so, and had a wispy beard clinging to his sharp, pale green chin.

"Well?" grunted the goblin as he walked up. "What'll it be? Elves? Drugs? Dark artifacts?"

"Two people," replied Cato.

"Slaves?" said the goblin with a little grin, his face lighting up. He leaned forward eagerly, but deflated when Cato shook his head.

"We haven't enslaved our own for centuries," he snapped. "I want to smuggle two people out. They'll be in a container labeled Blackwand LLC. You are not to open it, or inspect it."

"When?"

"June, probably. The date isn't certain yet." And it wasn't. It was going to take a last second warning from Daphne to know when Harry and Dumbledore went after the locket, when he would be weak.

"Uncertainty is expensive," said the goblin, rubbing his hands together.

"The price won't be a problem. Have them delivered -safe and well treated- to your first European port of call, it doesn't matter which it is. In fact, it's better if I don't know. You'll get half the money before, half after."

It took a little haggling, and the signing of a blood-bound contract before Cato walked away with an ever-increasing aversion to goblins, and bank account that would be significantly smaller in the coming months.

As he walked his way past the crowds and out into the muggle world once more, Cato couldn't help but feel the evening chill. He shivered and looked around him. He was alone, and the stars were hidden by the glare of muggle lights. Now everything was in place. There was nothing left to do but wait, wait for that one signal from Daphne. The signal that the day had come.

A/N: The next chapter should hopefully not take as long as this one to be produced. Thank you all.