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Chapter 30

The aftermath of the warlock Malfoy's suicide was both hectic and incredibly simple. They carted off Narcissa to Harry's private prison. She would stay there until she signed her magically binding surrender.

Not that Harry was particularly worried about her surrender. Sure it would be one more check on the long list when he could order her to admit to all her crimes. But the real prize from the Malfoys was their assets. The Malfoys were one of the richest families in magical Britain and soon all that gold would be Harry's to do with as he liked. There was a lot of paperwork for Harry to sign as he took possession of what he won in the duel.

Harry took a look at the numbers in the ledgers for the amount of gold they had and couldn't help but smile. The Potters were pretty wealthy. He hadn't checked recently, but he had more than thirty, closer to but less than forty, thousand galleons, which would have been a good start to his life if he had nothing else. Enough to buy a house and fund a couple of masteries. But he already had a house, more than one in fact, so that money would stretch a lot further unless he was crazy with his spending.

The Malfoys had over ten million galleons. It was too much money, in Harry's opinion, but he knew just what to do with it. Since the duel was declared, Harry had spent more than a few hours considering what he would do with the Malfoy gold if he won, and he didn't hesitate to be decisive. The first thing he did was sign a transfer for gold topping up the Potter vault to a hundred thousand galleons. He opened another vault in his name and transferred fifty thousand there. He then did the same for Hermione, Fleur, Daphne, and Tracy. Though he only needed to open a vault for Hermione, the rest already had vaults in their names to hold the gold.

Next, he transferred a hundred thousand to the Longbottom's. If Madam Longbottom wanted to use the feud to crusade against the death eaters, then he was going to give her some real teeth. The Longbottom matriarch had already left after Malfoy's suicide by vow because as far as she was concerned, the business was over with bar the signing of forms. She was going to have a shock when she got her mail in the morning.

Harry did hesitate before signing the next one, not because he didn't think it was the right thing to do, but because he wondered if the person who would receive it would use it the right way. In the end, he decided it wasn't his place to say what should be done with it afterwards and signed fifty thousand galleons over to Mrs Weasley. With it came a note that the gold had come from the Malfoy's accounts in compensation for slipping the cursed diary to her before her first year. Harry didn't trust that Mrs Weasley wouldn't just give it all to Dumbledore, but that wasn't his choice. He had done the right thing.

Hermione and Fleur were both over the moon when he showed them the transfer orders, giving them each so much gold. They were so happy they were bouncing around hugging him, hugging each other and sandwiching him in a hug between them. Harry couldn't help but feel lost for a bit in the vision the two displayed. He would have tried to pass it off as being hit with Fleur's allure, but he knew he was immune.

"So, Harry, what are you doing with the rest?" Tonks asked pure curiosity in her voice. She and Sirius were both standing to the side, smiling as Hermione and Fleur started excitedly talking about ideas to redecorate the Hogsmeade home.

"Actually Tonks, I was hoping you could help me put a massive dent in what's left." Harry teased. He had talked this plan through with Hermione and Fleur, and they both wholeheartedly agreed.

"Me? What? But I'm just… what?" Tonks stuttered out, flustered.

Harry could have pressed it more but decided to take pity on the Auror. "Yeah, I need your help to get me a meeting with your boss."

Tonks' eyes widened in the realisation of how he was teasing her and Harry was sure next time they ran into each other he was going to pay for that one. "Oh right, my boss. Yeah, that makes more sense than what you had me thinking there. If you like, I can take you there now. You may have to wait around an hour for her to be free, but I'm sure she will agree to see you."

Harry agreed and the next stop for all of them was the Ministry of Magic.

-ϟϟϟ-

Tonks's estimate of an hour wait was not as bad as reality turned out to be but it was still close enough that things started to get boring sitting around in an unused meeting room in the Ministry. They had been politely told to just sit and wait since they got there. Harry had Stepped Dan into the back room of the Granger's dental surgery as soon as they left the bank and told Emma that he was fine and he had won the duel. Just because she hadn't been at the bank didn't mean she hadn't been worrying about it all day.

Hermione and Fleur were distracting themselves from the reality of the day by still talking about how they wanted to redecorate his house, but considering both Fleur and Hermione were calling it their home, Harry had a small bubble of happiness building in his chest. The only downside was that he really didn't know anything about decorating a home and when the ladies tried to probe him for his opinion, the only thing he could think of was that he wanted to incorporate brown, blue, and green into the design. Their eye colours.

The door opened and four Aurors, who were obviously there to act as her bodyguards, preceded Amelia Bones into the room. One stood next to the minister and the other three spread themselves out around the outside of the room, making sure they had them surrounded.

Harry gave them a wary look and the Auror next to Minister Bones smiled at him. "Considering it a compliment, Warlock Potter. Your reputation precedes you and you were in the company of known death eaters earlier today. While we believe you hold no ill will to the minister, there are magics that can change that. Combine that with your deadly abilities with a wand, and we are being cautious."

Harry had to admit they had a point. The right spellwork could have him believing anything, at least for a time. He nodded to the man and while he didn't completely relax, he no longer felt that violence was imminent. "Minister." Harry greeted Bones with a nod.

"Warlock Potter." She nodded back and a round of greetings from everyone followed.

"So Auror Tonks said you wanted a meeting. Here I am, but I don't have long. Unfortunately, I have a meeting in half an hour to discuss budget constraints. And my previous meeting ran over because the head of my Aurors called out sick today." Minister Bones sounded tired as she spoke.

"Well then, I think you may be interested in what I have to say. As you can probably guess because I'm sitting here, I won the duel you sent Auror Tonks to observe. Warlock Malfoy is dead, and I now hold the authority of that title. So tell me, I know the Ministry has been selling war bonds, how much success have the war bonds sold by the Ministry achieved?"

"Well, the initial hundred thousand galleons' worth were snapped up in a few weeks, we authorised three million more, but barely any of them have sold. Why are you interested in buying a few?" Minister Bones had obviously guessed where this was going.

Harry gave the minister a mischievous smile. "Something like that. How does half the Malfoy fortune sound? Anything up to five million galleons."

Harry watched the surprise flicker over the minister's face. Five million was a lot of money in a community the size of magical Britain. It was enough to give every single witch and wizard in the country fifty galleons each. And while Harry wasn't exactly giving it away, it would take the Ministry decades to pay off that amount if they wanted to avoid massively increasing taxes.

Still, Bones as minister was nothing if not decisive, and she knew full well just how much that gold could do. "I will need to speak to some people. Authorising another two million in bonds isn't something I can do unilaterally, but dependent on a favourable decision by the Wizengamot committee, I gladly accept. And even if they say no, I will still gladly sell you the almost three million in bonds that were already authorised."

That led to more sitting around doing nothing while the minister went and presented Harry's offer to the Wizengamot committee. Luckily, this wait was shorter than the first and not even half an hour later Minister Bones was back and Harry was signing a transfer of five million galleons from the Malfoys vaults to the Ministry.

-ϟϟϟ-

They floo'ed back to Harry's house from the Ministry. As much as Harry and Hermione needed to get back to school they had collectively decided it could wait. Harry sent a couple of Patronus messages, one to the headmistress and one to his head of house telling them that due to some unforeseen circumstances, they wouldn't be back in the school until the next day.

The evening was mostly spent with the trio cuddled up together on the sofa as they worked through the trauma of the day. Harry had to fight Voldemort again, with this being their closest fight ever. Hermione had been attacked by a mob of angry goblins. Apparently, there wasn't enough to officially be called a horde. Fleur had just found out that a man she had spent days' worth of time, possibly even weeks with, was being possessed by the maniac who wanted to kill her fiancé. Add to that, two more people were added to the ever-growing list of bodies he was leaving behind him. To say the three of them needed to be together that night was quite an understatement.

Sirius was amazing. Despite probably having issues of his own to work through, especially after his cousin had just been thrown into his godson's private prison, he put his focus on the teens. He coordinated with Dobby, Sassy, Dan, and Emma and organised a family dinner. Not a formal affair, but a comforting one. Dobby made a slightly fancier version of a shepherd's pie based on a French Hachis Parmentier where you stewed the meat instead of using ground-up meat.

It was a pleasant surprise when Dan and Emma walked in. Hermione immediately jumped up and found herself sandwiched between her parents as they supported their daughter. "So tell us everything." Emma prompted once they broke the hug and passed Hermione back to Harry and Fleur.

The three of them began explaining everything from start to finish. Dan and Emma had, of course, heard everything that happened between the duel being declared and this morning, but it helped to set everything out from start to finish. At some point, someone had produced a bottle of wine that never seemed to run out. By the time they covered that one of Fleur's direct supervisors was being possessed none of them could be considered sober, and by the time Harry was explaining that he had practically given the Ministry half of the Malfoy's fortune, they were all at least a little drunk.

The teens never even realised that the alcohol was there to make it easier for them to talk about everything that happened before any of them, mostly Harry, could bottle up and put up a wall and let the events eat any of them up from the inside.

-ϟϟϟ-

Harry Stepped himself and Hermione into the school first thing in the morning. The alcohol had put the teens into a pretty deep sleep rather earlier than normal. In fact, Dobby and Sassy had been the ones to put the three teens to bed after they had fallen asleep on the sofa together.

Harry and Hermione would have stayed in the house longer, but Fleur insisted on going into the bank and Dan had an emergency patient booked first thing in the morning who had lost three fillings to one toffee. So with nobody at home, Hermione had reminded Harry they had friends who were probably rather anxious over the fact that they hadn't gone back to the castle last night.

At that point, Harry couldn't argue for a lazy morning at home and after they made sure that they had everything, Harry stepped them directly to the school gates. There were two Aurors on duty who took some time to check their identities, cast a few detection spells on them, and wave a couple of Probity Probes over them before letting them in.

Hermione needed to cast duro spells on the path as the early December snow was melting as soon as it hit the still-too-warm ground and turning the path into mud. They arrived at the castle just in time for the start of breakfast. They looked around the hall for any of their friends, but none of them had arrived in the hall yet. Headmistress McGonagall was also still not there, but Professor Babbling was amongst the few professors who were there already.

"Come on, we should probably officially tell Professor Babbling we are back in the school even though she can see us." Hermione said, tugging lightly on the sleeve of Harry's robes. Dobby or Sassy had popped to the school in the middle of the night and gotten them each a clean set of school robes from their trunks.

Harry followed Hermione, and they walked over to where their head of house was picking at her breakfast as she watched over everyone in the hall. Before they could say anything, Professor Babbling, who was watching them walk up, spoke first. "Ah, Miss Granger, Mr Potter, I'm glad to see you back. Is there anything you need, or are you just informing me you're back in the castle?"

"Just informing you we are back. But I don't see Malfoy around anywhere. Will we have to worry about his reaction when he comes in for breakfast?" Hermione asked.

"Mr Malfoy is currently in the hospital wing. I will explain what I can to you after breakfast when you join me in my office." Professor Babbling told them.

Harry and Hermione let out a sigh of relief that they could push back the inevitable confrontation with Malfoy. However little sympathy they had for the bigot, he had just lost his father, his mother was in Harry's private prison, his tuition for his next year of education was now lining Harry's pockets and any other home the Malfoys had was now also Harry's. All Draco had left was the contents of his school trunk. Malfoy was now in almost the same position Harry was in when he joined the magical world.

Given the fact that Malfoy had lost everything, Harry and Hermione were going to have to be very careful. The problem with people who have hit rock bottom and have nothing left to lose is that they do stupid and desperate things. As much as Harry was confident that he could deal with Malfoy, he was still worried about the initial attack. What if Malfoy started with something like a killing curse or Fiendfyre? People in desperate situations didn't tend to hold back.

The two sat down to breakfast and picked at a few things while they waited for everyone to come down to breakfast. About ten minutes later, they all walked in together cautiously, looking around. Harry stood up and waved them over. Immediately Ron, Neville, Luna, Susan, Hannah, Daphne, and Tracey all looked relieved. It was that more than anything, that told both Harry and Hermione how much they had fucked up. They hadn't returned when they were supposed to and didn't send a message. As far as they knew, Harry might have died and Hermione was too deep in her grief to do anything. By forgetting to inform their friends that they were safe, it had caused those same friends a night of worry.

Their friends all took seats around them. Ron was the first to speak. "So what happened? Who won?"

Harry let out a groan of exasperation at the whole thing that for a half second had a few of them thinking Harry lost before he said. "I won, against Malfoy's second, who was possessed by Voldemort." That drew gasps of shock from all of them and Harry and Hermione started to explain everything that had happened to them since they left the day before.

Their friends were a good audience. Gasping, cheering, offering sympathy and support in all the right places. Tracey even pulled Harry into a hug when he spoke of his feelings regarding killing McNair and bringing about the death of Lucius Malfoy. He had no sympathy with the fact they died, but he was tired of being the person who had to do it. He was sixteen, yet he had killed so many people at this point he actually needed to stop and count to remember how many.

"Still, you have the Malfoy fortune now that's got to be pretty amazing." Ron sounded excited, but it was also an obvious attempt at getting Harry to think about something other than the dark aspects of the last twenty-four hours.

"Maybe it would be, but Harry has already given more than half of it away." Hermione said with a smile stretching her lips a little.

"What!" Came cries from Ron, Tracy, and Hannah.

"Yeah." Said Harry. He was kinda looking forward to seeing the look on some of their faces when he told them. And it wasn't a secret. Hell, sales of war bonds were public record. "Let's see. I went to see the Minister for Magic yesterday and bought five million in war bonds from the Ministry. Gave the Ministry the money they needed to really bring the fight to the death eaters.

"Yeah, but you'll get that back, eventually." Said Susan. "And how was Auntie?"

"True, I will get it back eventually, plus ten percent adjusted for inflation. But that won't be until the Ministry starts buying them back and that could take decades. Madam Bones looked fine. Tired and a little stressed, but she didn't look bad at all. Considering she is the Minister during a civil war, she looked better than I expected. And with the bonds I just purchased, I'm sure that at least one source of stress has been dealt with."

"Did you do anything else with the Malfoy's gold?" Asked Neville, who now looked interested after Harry told them about the bonds.

Harry smiled his boyish grin that didn't get to see the light of day very often anymore. "Well, I sent your grandmother a hundred thousand." Harry paused for a few seconds to let that sink in. "If she is going to raise an army in my name, then the least I can do is help fund it. Your gran should be finding out about it any minute now when she gets her morning mail."

Neville looked stunned for a second before he started saying thank you way more than Harry felt was necessary.

"Next Ron, I sent your mother the same. Not so much from me, but because after what happened our second year, I believe the Malfoys owed your family compensation." Ron just sat there, a mix of melancholy and shock on his face. "I topped off mine, Hermione's and Fleur's vaults each as well and Tracey, yours too, compensation for what happened to your parents. I know money is a poor substitute for what happened to your families, nothing can bring back those who are gone. But hopefully, a pile of Malfoy's gold will at least make things easier for you." Harry said to Ron and Tracey.

Tracey, who was already hugging him, squeezed a lot tighter and hid her face in his side. It was obvious to Harry that she was crying a little, a mix of memories of her parents and relief that she wouldn't need to worry about her family business going under while she learned to manage the place.

Ron was a lot more complicated to read, but Harry knew his friend well enough to know why Ron's expression was blank. Ron had always wanted to come from a more well-off family, and now he did. But without his sister there with him, it felt hollow. He would give it all away for even one more day of Ginny teasing him and calling him names.

"So what's going on with Malfoy?" Hermione asked, hoping to provide enough of a distraction so that Ron and Tracey wouldn't feel watched.

The question soured what was left of the good mood they had from finding out that Harry had won his duel. "Malfoy drank too much dreamless sleep potion yesterday. That's why he is still in the hospital wing. He will be unconscious until lunchtime." Susan said. "The problem is that Pansy is claiming she saw Daphne slip it into his drink."

Harry let out a groan. The damned Malfoys couldn't play anything straight. Interference with a duel like that was a way to get the result overturned. It was a last-ditch backup plan in case Harry won. Unfortunately for the Malfoy's they hadn't counted on Lucius Malfoy being forced to take an unbreakable vow of truth. The arbiters already knew the plan was always to substitute a Voldemort-possessed McNair for Draco. Still, it would be considered an attack under the rules of the feud and that could be really dangerous. If it went wrong, Daphne could get sent to Azkaban for violating neutral ground.

"Please tell me you have an alibi." Hermione begged.

"Only Tracy," Daphne admitted. "So it's the word of two members of House Potter versus two people who they are feuding with. It's pretty much even and while I would rather not put on record what we were doing, we can always take a vow of truth if we need to. The plan is probably to threaten Harry to surrender his claim on the Malfoy's assets or he will go to the Ministry with the story of me potioning him and force me to reveal mine and Tracy's relationship and destroy our reputations. Unfortunately for them, it's always been our plan to be open about it after Hogwarts, anyway. We didn't want to face any of the bigots in Slytherin when we were surrounded and vulnerable. But it's different now. Now most of them are terrified that Harry is just looking for a legal way around the neutral ground law. As for the rest, well, we are sixth years and most people know you have been training us to defend ourselves. We are too dangerous for most to want to get into a confrontation with. So long story short."

"Too late." Quipped Tracey

Daphne continued, "Long story short. It's nothing you need to worry about."

Harry felt the tension that was building in his shoulders relax. It sounded like Daphne and Tracey had this well in hand. He would definitely be there for them if they needed help, but he trusted them to take care of it if they said they were on it. "Well, if you need my help, just say." Harry told the two of them.

-ϟϟϟ-

The meeting with Professor Babbling was pretty much a rehash of what Harry and Hermione had gone through with their friends. The professors wanted to know what happened officially and as Harry was now both the Malfoy and Potter Warlock, then he was officially allowed to hear both sides of the complaint against Daphne because both the supposed victim and perpetrator were members of his houses.

A state of affairs that Harry was pretty confident wouldn't last the day once Malfoy woke up. Either Harry was going to use his authority to pull Malfoy from the school and send him directly to his private prison, or Malfoy was going to renounce his place in the house of Malfoy.

The only question in Harry's mind was if Malfoy would even consider abandoning his house. Especially because technically he was still the next in line to be its warlock. After all, the Heir needed to be a member of the House and with his mother in prison and his father dead, he was the only one who qualified for the job. At least until Harry had a kid. This wasn't like when the Carrows had surrendered to him as part of the feud. This was one house bet against the other in a duel. Harry wasn't the steward of the House so he could fix it. The house and everything that belonged to it were now legally his.

The other thing Professor Babbling did was confine Harry, Hermione and all their friends to her classroom for the day, with her there to watch over them. It wasn't a punishment. The professor was very insistent on that. Still, the professors all felt that if Malfoy saw any of them when he woke up then he would likely cast first and think later.

They had arranged a meeting later between Harry and Malfoy in the headmistress's office, with neither of them being allowed a wand and plenty of staff there to prevent it from becoming a bloodbath. They hoped that everything could be sorted out well enough to prevent war in the corridors in that meeting. Considering what Harry had planned, He was sure they were right.

A/N

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The goodest Boy
1/10/2011 - 5/11/2024