Note: If I may, I recommend taking a look at the writing by JKR about the Malfoy family on Pottermore (www dot wizardingworld dot com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-malfoy-family) for context, before reading this chapter. It is not strictly canon, but it gives an interesting perspective on their family history. Both the characterisation of the Malfoys and a number of plot points in this fic are based on that background lore.

Chapter 5: Malcolm Drake

When Ron and Hermione thought the time had come for something really eerie and moved on to Albania, Harry decided not to join them. In his first days back at Grimmauld Place, he had to fight the temptation to floo to the Burrow and urge Ginny to talk to him, but her message was clear, 'see you at Hogwarts', and Harry could only grind his teeth in front of the cold fireplace.

But Hogwarts wasn't that far a future any more. Harry unpacked the box he got from Dudley and was satisfied to check a few items off his Hogwarts shopping list. He tried on his old school robes and made another pleasant discovery: He must have grown another inch.

When he entered Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions the next afternoon, it was full of excited eleven year olds. Madam Malkin was rushing from one kid to the other, fitting, changing, and cashing in, but stopped dead with a gasp frozen on her face when she noticed Harry.

"Good heavens, Harry Potter! What an honour! I didn't think I would see you again. Going back to Hogwarts, are you?"

"I am." Harry already felt a dozen eyes burning holes into him, but it was too late to flee inconspicuously. And fleeing shamelessly was not something he would do in front of children and after being greeted with such a genuinely joyous smile.

"I'm so sorry. We have a big first years' invasion here. If you're in a hurry..."

"No, no. I'll wait." Harry could have guessed that that would have consequences. It was not the first time, he consoled himself, and now, after a solid break of almost three weeks, it seemed like he could shoulder some publicity again. It was just that he had never been fallen over by so many kids per square yard. Madam Malkin's was really a small shop.

When he looked up after handing back the fifth pointed hat with his autograph, two big eyes of a little boy were staring at him.

"You are not going to Hogwarts yet, are you?" Harry asked.

The boy flushed crimson.

"Oh no," said the girl whose cauldron he had signed two kids ago. "This is my little brother, Hector. He's eight."

"Good to meet you, Hector."

The boy's eyes opened even wider but his mouth stayed shut.

"Oh, I think he'd like to ask you to sign his frog card, but he forgot how to speak."

The boy's eyes narrowed and shot sharp sideways at his sister.

Harry looked at the card Hector was holding out to him and thought he was losing his mind. His own, Harry's, face was staring back aHarry Potter, famous for his miraculous survival of a killing curse and his defeat of the Dark Wizard Tom Riddle, a.k.a. Lord Voldemort, in 1998. Passionate Quidditch player.t him from its front side. The text on the back of the card read:

Harry Potter, famous for his miraculous survival of a killing curse and his defeat of the Dark Wizard Tom Riddle, a.k.a. Lord Voldemort, in 1998. Passionate Quidditch player.

This must have been some mistake, or perhaps, a joke. He was not a famous wizard. Well, okay, he was famous, but not the chocolate frog kind of famous. Not like Dumbledore, or Flamel, or Godric Gryffindor. But the awe in Hector's eyes made it absolutely clear that this was all very very serious.

"Oh dear, be careful, will you!" A mannequin dressed for nothing less than a ball crashed against the counter, as Harry put his embarrassed signature under his own portrait.

The news that Harry Potter was giving out autographs at Madam Malkin's must have leaked beyond the shop's front door, and fans had started dropping in just for a signature and not to have their robes fitted.

"We're going to end up in a stampede here. I'm so sorry, Mr Potter," Madam Malkin pleaded, squeezing between two feral autograph hunters.

"I'd better come back later," Harry agreed loudly.

He had learnt to shake off individuals showing excessive interest in his person. He had had to, or he wouldn't have survived the summer. What worked best was to take course towards a point at a distance and stay focused on it like nothing else existed until his pursuers accepted that he had much more important things on his heroic agenda. When he walked out of the shop and looked for a convincing target, his glance slid involuntarily up Knockturn Alley and caught a rapid movement of figures. He soon saw a slender young man approaching hurriedly, nearly running. Draco did not seem to see Harry. He was preoccupied with the three hooded figures behind him. At the exit of Knockturn Alley, he took a sharp turn left and was narrowly missed by two pieces of melon peel and a water balloon, which fell and exploded in the middle of the street. It was not a 'water' balloon, strictly speaking. The nauseating smell of dragon urine spread in the air.

"Hey! Clean up your mess!" Harry shouted, pulling his wand, but the three hoods fled up the narrow street and scattered in the shadow of its gloomy structures.

Some conscientious citizens were already watering the pavement out of the tips of their wands. Malfoy had seeped through the swarm of shoppers down Diagon Alley and disappeared from view.

The stench drove away the remaining fans. That would be another effective method, Harry thought, as he was vanishing the fluids that gathered between the cobbles. To stay around someone as hated as Malfoy might, in fact, have some unexpected advantages. If one added their degrees of popularity and divided the result by two, the outcome would probably approach the level of glamour of Mrs Figg, his former baby-sitter. A healthy improvement for both him and Draco, if only public opinion worked like that. Harry dismissed the idle thought and, when the disaster was under control, took off to see to the other item on his shopping list: a broomstick.

This year's Hogwarts letter urged the students to bring their own brooms, and Potterwatch even called for broomstick donations, after Hogwarts lost its entire supply in the fire of the Quidditch pitch. What could be a better excuse, Harry thought, to treat himself to a new broom? But his Quidditch career was coming to a close, and he was resolved to be reasonable and not to spend a fortune on world-class. A respectable upper-mid-range racer, perhaps the new Nimbus 3XWTF, that's what he needed. But when he approached Quality Quidditch Supplies and saw a Firebolt on display in the window his heart sank. It was just like four years ago except there was no crowd staring at it. Everyone knew it was the best, everyone was used to its place of honour in the shop window, and everyone was discussing the newcomer Nimbus, which still had to earn its reputation. The Firebolt rested serenely on two thin brass brackets, its perfect body fully exposed to the covetous looks of the connoisseur.

Harry searched his mind for something to lessen his feeling of guilt over his desire to possess that broomstick. Perhaps he could leave it to the Gryffindor house after his last year in the team, let the next year's new seeker beat the Slytherins on it? Harry felt a little better and was already calculating how much he should take out of his Gringotts vault to match the price, when two hands emerged on the other side of the window, picked up the Firebolt carefully from the brackets, and made it disappear into the depths of the shop. Oh no. Someone was going to buy it.

Harry walked into the shop and saw the proprietor place the Firebolt respectfully on the counter in front of a short dark muscular girl with springy dreadlocks bound into a tight ponytail at her nape. Next to her stood a woman, her mother, presumably, who looked like she'd be giving her girl a little brother or sister very soon. She did not look like she'd be giving her a Firebolt though. While the girl bent over the broom and examined it scrupulously, the woman looked at her daughter with a happy but absent smile.

Maybe this inspection would end in the Firebolt returning to its place in the window, Harry hoped at first, but the girl heaved a weighty sack, and with a roll of metallic thunder, she poured a small hill of gold onto the counter. The shop owner went on to count the Galleons solemnly, and when he finished, the Firebolt took its place in the girl's firm hand. She turned around with an expression of commanding satisfaction.

Their eyes met and she seemed to recognize Harry. With a tinge of humiliation, he averted his gaze, only to face another two pairs of eyes staring at him. One pair belonged to a blond teen with a snub nose, the other to a girl in a T-shift saying 'space for a lightning scar' across the chest. The two girls had been giggling and throwing oblique looks at him ever since he'd entered the shop. Now that they made eye contact, the T-shirt girl jerked to her friend to come along. They approached him and asked to sign their new Comets.

"Going back to Hogwarts?" Harry took the broomstick from the T-shirt girl.

"Sure," replied the girls.

"Me too."

"Oh really? Cool!" The girls gave each other a wide-eyed look. Harry glanced quickly to the Firebolt girl, who was still standing there, whispering with her mother. For a moment he thought she was also going to ask him.

"Let me guess, you are starting the second year," he said to the girls.

"How did you guess?" their eyes went even wider.

"First year's are not allowed broomsticks, and from the third year up I would have seen you at Hogwarts before, but I didn't," Harry handed the first broom adorned with his signature back to its owner, and took the other one from her friend. "Going for the Quidditch try-outs?"

"No... I don't know..." said the snub nose with a shy smile.

"Come on! Trying won't kill you!" said the T-shirt girl. "And if they don't take us, we can at least show off our Harry Potter broomsticks."

"Which house are you in?"

"Ravenclaw," replied the girls.

"Cool!" Harry said, signing the second broomstick. At once, the dark girl with the Firebolt turned around and left pulling her pregnant mother behind her. When the Ravenclaw girls turned back to Harry, a disdainful expression was still lingering in their faces.

"Who was that?" Harry asked.

"Oh. That's Gibbon. She's in Slytherin," said the T-shirt girl.

"I can't believe it. A second year's on a Firebolt, please!" said the snub nose.

That was the worst piece of news Harry had heard since Kingsley told him that they could not read Snape's memory. A Slytherin on a Firebolt! Something had to be done about it. Urgently.

When the girls left with their brooms and signatures, and Harry looked around tentatively to see that no one else was going to dive on him for another autograph, he turned to the shop owner.

"Do you have another one of those?" he asked, with a curt gesture towards the empty space in the window.

"Firebolts? Oh no, sorry about that, Mr Potter," replied the owner, whose name, to his shame, Harry didn't know. "And not any time soon, I'm afraid. The Goblins have been on strike since June. What I can offer you though... Next week we are getting three Thunderbolt V's. When properly maintained and flown regularly, you can hardly tell the difference. Should I reserve one for you, Mr Potter?"

Harry promised to come again next week. His plan had been actually to purchase a Nimbus. Now he didn't feel like buying any broomstick at all. It was not his day.

He strolled aimlessly along Diagon Alley for a while. The clock struck half past five. It was time to check on Madam Malkin again.

When he walked into the shop, two customers were there before him. One boy was standing on a footstool, his overlong robes being pinned up to size, the other one was sitting on another footstool, leaning against the wall and waiting for his turn. The boys did not recognize him, and Madam Malkin knew better now than to attract too much attention to Harry Potter.

"What house do you reckon you'll be in?" the first boy asked.

"I dunno," replied the other, glancing awkwardly at his parents, who were standing in the opposite corner with their backs to him, choosing dress robes for his father.

"I'll probably be in Gryffindor. All our family has been."

The other boy didn't answer.

"Ravenclaw is okay, too," the first boy continued and looked down at the other from his elevated position. "But Slytherin, that's one house you don't want to be in. All Death Eaters' babies." His mouth twisted into a disgusted smirk.

"Mhm," the other boy murmured, looking at the ceiling. In a bizarre way, the scene reminded Harry of his first encounter with Draco, except the world had turned upside down.

"The best way not to land in Slytherin is to be Muggle-born. That's safest. Are you Muggle-born?"

"No."

"Well, neither am I." The boy on the footstool glanced over his shoulder into the mirror. "But then you'd better have some decent ancestry. Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs... Otherwise you never know. What's your surname, anyway?"

But at that moment Madam Malkin asked the boy to take off the robes and free the footstool for his interlocutor. They proceeded to the counter, and a couple of minutes later the boy left with his new robes without saying 'goodbye'.

The silent boy took his place on the footstool with a grim face.

"If you don't want to be in Slytherin, you can just ask the Sorting Hat to put you somewhere else," Harry said. "When I was sorted, the hat almost put me in Slytherin, but I was just thinking 'Not Slytherin! Not Slytherin!' and it put me in Gryffindor instead."

The boy eyed Harry with distrust. "Who said I wanted to be in Gryffindor?"

"Or Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff. It doesn't matter."

"I don't care," the boy said, glancing over to his parents again, who were now waiting for him to be finished fitting.

"See you soon, Mrs Rosier!" Madam Malkin waved goodbye to the boy's mother, when they left, and it was finally – finally – Harry's turn. Madam Malkin was exhausted.

"Never, never again will I allow my help to get married at the end of August. I'll put it in the contract for the next one. Fitting all those Hogwarts sprogs alone—I'm too old for that. Too old."

Madam Malkin was exaggerating the adverse effects of her age. Only a quarter of an hour later, Harry was standing outside with a thick package under his arm, wrapped in crunchy blue paper with a large Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions logo on it. Before turning back to the Leaky Cauldron he threw one last glance down the street, which was bathed in the evening sun, and look there! Draco Malfoy was walking straight his way, turning a longish box around in his hands. He didn't raise his eyes until he stepped on Harry's shadow which stretched over the cobbles.

"Malfoy?"

Draco glanced up and down Diagon Alley. "Potter."

They stared silently at each other.

"Have you been shopping?" Harry looked at the box.

"Oh, that?" Draco said with an absent tone. "Finally got myself a new wand."

The text on the box was set in some foreign alphabet. Greek or Russian maybe.

"Not from Olivander's, is it?"

"No, not quite." Draco unpacked his new wand and made the box disappear. "None of Olivander's wands would have me. Then he ordered a few specimens from overseas partners for me. This one clicked."

The wand had a simple straight form, was a tinge thicker than usual, hard. The wood had a light greyish colour.

"Elm?"

"Ash."

"What's the core?"

Draco ignored the question. He was now playing around with it, trying harmless spells. It worked. Draco looked satisfied and stuck the wand into his breast pocket.

He looked at Harry again, then at something up in the air, then back at Harry.

"Thank you for speaking up for my mother. It made a difference."

Harry was surprised to hear Malfoy express gratitude but happy to be surprised.

"I was just telling the truth," he said, and another awkward silence followed. He remembered the task Kingsley had given him. It was not going so bad for a start. "This is where we first met, remember?" Harry jerked his head towards Madam Malkin's shop, and all the humility in Draco's face was swept away at once by a wave of venom. He stared again at some invisible thing in the air, and then again at Harry.

"Let's not—" he said with a visible effort not to finish with something nasty.

"Okay. Let's not." This would have been the end of the conversation, as far as Harry was concerned. He'd failed Kingsley's mission barely having embarked on it. But slowly, Draco's face went blank again. He continued staring at Harry, as if he wanted to say something.

"Care for a butterbeer?" Harry heard himself say.

Draco's eyebrows shot up, but surprisingly, he hesitated. He glanced up and down the street. The shops were closing, the streets were getting emptier and the visitors were pulling into pubs, or taking their seats on sunlit terraces, to round up their shopping tour with a cup of tea, an ice-cream, or a firewhisky. Draco threw a suspicious look up Knockturn alley.

"Are you sure you want to be seen with me?"

"I don't care who I'm seen with," Harry said. At least, as long as no one was going to catch him snogging on camera, which, let's face it, was hardly a concern right now. "But if you don't want to be seen with me, we could also get out of here and go to a Muggle place outside for a plain beer." Harry gulped at the unnexpected turn in his own train of thought.

Draco's face cleared. "Sounds good."

And without saying another word they headed for the Leaky Cauldron, passed through it, ignoring looks and greetings, and were presently standing on Charing Cross Road.

The Muggle shops were not even thinking of closing yet and the street was full of people, cars, and noise. Harry was now at a loss. The moment he had first entered Diagon Alley at the age of eleven, he had left the Muggle world behind without regret. Yes, he had returned to live with the Dursleys every summer, but his real life was in that other world. He had never bothered to explore London the way normal teenagers would. He hadn't missed it at the time, and he had never expected to need that kind of experience in the future, but there he was, taking out Malfoy for a Muggle beer. In his weirdest dreams he could not have imagined he would ever face this problem.

"I don't know this part of London that well," Harry said and bit on his lip.

"Okay," Draco said. "Come."

Draco turned left and they walked past a bookstore, a grocery store and a Chinese restaurant. "Are you hungry?" Draco turned left again.

"No." In fact, Harry wouldn't have minded a little bite, but was afraid his Muggle money wouldn't be enough for a meal. He wasn't even sure he could afford two beers, in case Malfoy turned out to be low on pounds.

The side street they had taken turned into a narrow footpath and finally dived into a long gloomy archway wallpapered with posters of jazz concerts and modern art exhibitions, which led to a street parallel to Charing Cross.

The confidence with which Draco strode forward made Harry suspect that he knew his way around this part of London very well. This was astonishing by itself, but Harry stopped dead and earned a few expletives from a passing cyclist when Draco zoomed across the street towards an ATM, took a plastic card out of his wallet and withdrew a thin pile of cash, like he'd been doing it every day.

"What? Are you surprised?" Draco said with a condescending but not entirely unfriendly smirk.

"Frankly, yes," said Harry frankly.

"Our family has always invested in Muggle businesses. Traded gold," Draco explained, as they turned left again and continued walking. "Our assets here are worth triple that of our Gringotts vault. We've just never advertised it, for obvious reasons."

They passed another bar and an array of small restaurants. The dark brick wall without windows on their right hand side turned out to be Prince Edward Theatre when they turned into Old Compton street and the playhouse shone at them with its glowing facade.

"This is a nice place," Draco gestured to a club across the street, "but not at this time of the day."

Harry caught a glimpse of two narrow dark windows squeezed between a Korean restaurant and a vintage store, as they walked past. They crossed a couple of streets, shoved through another narrow passage between a windowless wall covered in graffiti and a crowded pub at the pinnacle of a happy hour, and plunged deeper into Soho. Street food tents, more pubs, massage spas, and enormous wheelie-bins surrounded them on all sides. Harry tried to convince himself that this was not that different from Diagon Alley, but could not shake off the feeling that this unknown city was looking down at him like a triumphant warlord at a returned deserter. Harry focused on the back of his unlikely guide, and followed him into a door at the corner of two equally rowdy streets.

"It's too early for bar hopping." Draco took a seat on a high stool at the bar. "It will get livelier."

Harry put down Madam Malkin's package at the foot of another stool and perched next to Draco. Indeed, the pub was far from crowded. A dozen brass taps stuck out proudly over the surface of the long wooden bar counter. Empty glasses hung over their heads and an assortment of cocktail ingredients gleamed in all shades of yellow, brown and red along the wall in front of them. A magazine rack loaded with Muggle periodicals stood at the far end of the counter.

"What can I get you guys?" the bartender asked.

"The usual for me," said Draco.

"The weekday usual or the weekend usual?" the bartender asked with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"The Beaujolais," Draco cut off flatly.

"And your companion?" the bartender looked at Harry.

Harry hesitated for a second. He wasn't into Muggle alcohol at all, but didn't want to appear too childish by ordering lemonade.

"A beer, please," he said, when he couldn't think of anything better.

"IPA? Stout? Porter?" the bartender stared at him expectantly, smirked, and pushed him a list. "And while you're choosing, can I see your IDs, please?" And he looked at Draco again with an amused smile.

"Come on, Joe! You've seen it so many times," Draco said and pulled a passport out of his pocket.

"Just checking in case you got younger."

"You just like to look at my picture, don't you?"

The bartender held Draco's passport up. The golden print on the burgundy cover showed a lion and a unicorn holding on to some obscure objects piled on top of each other. The line at the top read European Union. The one underneath it: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Harry felt defeated in a way he had never been before. He didn't have a passport, or any other Muggle document. Why would he? He would never need anything like that, right? Wrong. Everything was wrong, hopelessly wrong.

"Never mind. I'll have a coke."

"He is eighteen! We were in the same year at school," Draco said to the bartender, who was already filling Harry's glass with coke.

"You don't have an ID?" He turned to Harry again. "I thought you grew up with the Muggles. Oh, I see. They never bothered because they never took you along on a holiday. Were afraid you'd turn them into a bunch of striped parasols while outside the reach of the Ministry's underage magic surveillance." Draco sounded like himself of five years ago again. "What they didn't know, of course, is what a Muggle-loving sweetie you are."

"Shut up, Malfoy!" In fact, Harry didn't love, or even like, any of the Muggles he knew personally. But that was the last thing he would admit to in front of a former Death Eater. The bartender put the coke before Harry's nose. Malfoy gave it a derisive look.

"You can drink that stuff?" he said. "Smells like a sweaty house-elf, and tastes like—"

"Malfoy, let's not—"

"Okay, let's not." Draco raised his glass. "Cheers."

They sipped at their drinks for a while, staring at the rows of bottles behind the bar. Draco's features started to relax. He finally broke the silence.

"They do have reasonable drinks here though. I've checked out a few pubs in the neighbourhood. The wine is most acceptable here."

"So, you know your way around Muggle pubs. My respect!"

"When I was on bail, the Ministry made sure they put a hold on all our Galleons. Like, all of them. So we wouldn't get any... ideas. We had barely enough left to pay Knox and to run the Manor. But luckily, they forgot, or didn't care, or didn't manage, to stop our Muggle money. My mother and I were forced to rely on that for some time. So we had to learn"—Draco sighed—"some new ways."

"So your mother was," Harry wasn't sure how to phrase it, "hanging out here, too?"

"Oh yes. Not in the same pubs though," Draco said with a wink.

All Harry used to believe about the Malfoys was now falling apart with unparalleled speed.

"And how did she like it here?"

"I don't know. We didn't talk much about it." Draco ran his finger along the stem of his wine glass. "She did keep coming back though. And she took to Muggle fashion a little. And she was planning to take computer classes. You know, computers—?"

"Yes, I know what a computer is! But— " Harry was about to break out in hysterical laughter. "You're kidding me! Your mother wanted to learn computers?!"

"What's so amusing about it? If there is anything remotely interesting Muggles have invented, then it's computers."

"And did she—?"

"She was imprisoned." Draco's smile faded again.

"Sorry, I—" That was a pity. Narcissa typing emails was such a wonderful picture. Narcissa in Azkaban less so. "I did what I could."

"I know."

Harry searched frantically for something to push the conversation over the sensitive point.

"What about you? How do you like it here?"

"I love it." And Draco went on telling Harry stories about all the interesting people he had met at this pub, and at that pub... There was a cellist, a chef, a negotiation trainer for the European Commission, a doctoral student in neuroscience, and a guy from New York who drew comics. "Can you imagine that? You can actually earn a living by drawing comics?"

"I think it's not so easy to earn a living by drawing comics. The guy was probably very good."

"And then—" Draco pressed his mouth shut, struggling not to laugh.

"What?"

"You know what I did?"

"What?"

He took a magazine out of the rack. No, he didn't summon it. He stood up, walked up to the magazine rack, searched through the colourful heap, and pulled out a magazine. He came back to Harry and laid it on the bar counter between them.

"But promise me not to tell anyone," he said, his hand still firm on top of the glossy cover.

"My lips are sealed."

"So," Draco drawled in a low voice. "I took on a Muggle job."

He flipped through the magazine until he found a certain page.

"Here." And he placed it in front of Harry.

The page showed an advertisement of a hair product for men, Malfoy running his hand through his blond locks looking defiantly into the camera. Stun with care. The picture didn't move. It was plain non-magical photography.

"No way, Malfoy!" Now they were laughing together. "You work as a model?!"

"Well, I don't work as a model, I just took on a commission. Just did it for a dare," Draco threw a meaningful look at the bartender.

"Did your mother know about it?"

"Oh." Draco covered his face. "She found out."

"What did she say?"

"She had a fit." When he finally stopped laughing, he added, "Not because I took on a Muggle job though. But because modelling is not a good enough Muggle job. She would have liked me to do something more respectable. But for that, of course, I would have to forge A-levels and go to university first. And learn computers, too."

"Wait wait wait. Your mother wouldn't mind if you got a... respectable Muggle job?!"

"Of course, this is not what she had hoped my career would be. But in the present situation, why not?" Draco waited for his reaction, but Harry didn't know what to say.

"Look, the Malfoys are not particularly against Muggles, or Muggle-borns, or whatever. We won't marry them, but we'll deal with them. We try not to put all our eggs in the same basket. My father has always tried to balance between camps. He got too deep into the soup with the Death Eaters. That's unfortunate. But it was not his intention, and I'm sure, if after all this I could make my way among the Muggles, he wouldn't mind either."

This was too incredible to be true, and the most incredible thing about it was: Harry really liked this new, Muggle version of Draco Malfoy. Draco was relaxed, he laughed, he was open with him in a way he had never thought possible. Or was it just a crazy dream? Had he fallen asleep while waiting for his turn at Madam Malkin's? Harry pinched himself at the side of his neck, but the vision didn't quiver.

"Okay, but... You're not thinking seriously about going to live with the Muggles."

"Why not?" Draco looked at him with a challenge. "In there," he gestured in the direction of Diagon Alley, "I'm everyone's enemy. Your friends wish me in Azkaban together with the rest, and our... former friends wish me dead. And here, I'm no one." He took another sip of his wine, and looked into the depths of the pub, which had started to fill up with people and cheerful chitchat. "You know, one good thing about the Muggle world is, it is so big! Here, no one knows my father, no one knows me. If I mess up here, I can just go to another pub, say I'm Harry Potter, and no one will have a clue, and no one will care."

Harry was not sure he shared Draco's optimism.

"But if you become respectable, you'll have to live up to your reputation here, as well. It's really not that different."

"Maybe. But we're not there yet. I'll worry about it when the time comes. Right now, I can at least have a private life and don't have to think twice about who I'll be seen with in a pub."

Draco really meant it. Harry looked at him again, and had to admit that, on the surface at least, Draco made a very convincing Muggle. He was wearing a casual black suit over a black shirt. Aunt Petunia would be charmed if he showed up on her doorstep one day and tried to sell her insurance. Nothing betrayed the weirdo that he really was. This last thought made Harry halt.

"But you are a wizard, Malfoy! A good one at that! You're great at potions, you're great on a broom... If you leave all that behind—what a waste!"

"I could keep that as a hobby, perhaps. And then, who is to say all those skills won't prove useful in my Muggle life? Ever tried whisking up an Amortentia with an electric mixer? Try it. Opens up completely new possibilities in potion-making."

"You'll get yourself into deep trouble with such ideas."

"Yeah. I'll have to be careful not to show it too obviously. Perhaps, you could put in a word for me to Dad Weasley, so he turns a blind eye towards me?" Draco stared silently into space. "And later, perhaps, after a couple of generations, we could return as Muggle-born wizards under a different name."

Muggle-born wizards? Harry almost choked on his coke.

"Right. And, what name? So I can warn my grandchildren?" Harry meant it as a joke, but Draco gave him a long serious look.

"For your grandchildren only, Potter!" he went for his breast pocket and took out his passport again. He opened it and held it up. There was another motionless picture of Draco Malfoy, less impressive than the one in the magazine, but nevertheless perfectly recognizable. The name next to it was:

Malcolm Drake.

Harry had no more questions.

"You're a survivor, Malfoy."

"I am."

Draco emptied his glass. The watered down rest of Harry's coke lost its way between the ice cubes. They paid.

"Bye Mal," the bartender said, pocketing Draco's generous tip.

"See you, Joe," replied Mal.

Note: Quite a number of readers in AO3 were surprised by my take on Malfoys in this chapter. I haven't heard from you guys here on FFN yet, but I suppose some of you are surprised too. But please bear with me. Some things will start to make more sense in later chapters. Also, if you haven't checked it out yet, do have a look at the writing on the Malfoy family, referenced in the notes at the beginning of this chapter for context.