"Well, that depends very much on the situation—"
Tom warmly invited Harry and Ron to sit down.
He brought them two bottles of properly chilled Butterbeer and stoat sandwiches on thick-cut bread, and seeing that no other customers at this particular moment needed attending to, he pulled up a chair at their table and picked up where Harry's question had left off.
"You know, most of the businesses along Diagon Alley are operating on rental agreements—they lease their premises from the actual landowners, who are an entirely separate group of people. The actual land itself beneath all those shops and banks and owl emporiums, actually belongs to a handful of witches and wizards with real standing and long-established influence. The Ministry has been negotiating with those landowners, offering them a choice—"
Harry was wolfing down his sandwich, he had been hungrier than he realized, and mumbled indistinctly through a mouthful.
"What kind of choice?"
"It's not strictly a secret anymore, mind you—too many people have been involved in the negotiations for anything to stay truly confidential at this point—"
Tom leaned in with relish.
"The Ministry has drawn up a plan for the entire area, supposedly spearheaded personally by Mr. Watson. They intend to build on the ruins of old Diagon Alley. Transform it into a proper magical city, the kind capable of housing far more witches and wizards than have ever lived in this area before."
Ron tore his gaze briefly from his new broomstick and looked at Tom with curiosity sparking in his expression.
"A magical city? You mean built along the lines of a Muggle city?"
"The specific plans would be strictly classified, Mr. Weasley—I doubt anyone outside the senior levels at the Ministry knows the full details. I certainly don't."
Tom clicked his tongue with slight, performative regret.
"But there's no question that land in this new magical city—once it's built will be worth far more than the same plots are worth now. So, the Ministry has been in negotiation with the wizards who lost their Diagon Alley plots, promising them a free shop of equivalent size once the new city is built.
Naturally, there's a second option as well: a direct payout in Galleons, based on the original land valuation."
Just hearing the words "magical city" was enough to set Harry's heart soaring. He thought it over, turning the two options against each other.
"I'd guess most landowners would still opt for the new shop?"
"Exactly."
Tom nodded with satisfaction.
"But here's the interesting part—the Ministry apparently prefers that the landowners take the Galleons. They're actively steering people toward the cash option rather than the property option. They don't want to emerge from this reconstruction with all the valuable new assets concentrated in the same few hands they were in before."
Tom went on to describe the Ministry's compensation scheme for the merchants who had merely rented their premises and that arrangement was considerably simpler.
Before the Battle of Diagon Alley, almost every shopkeeper had managed to move their stock out beforehand. For whatever stock remained and was damaged or destroyed in the battle itself, the Ministry would compensate with gold Galleons, calculated against pre-battle market values.
After all, they had seized the accumulated wealth of generations of rich pureblood families—fortunes built on centuries of extortion—and on top of that, the goblins had invested handsomely.
These days, the British Ministry of Magic was not short of gold galleons.
Beyond the direct monetary compensation for lost stock, the Ministry had also waived all taxes for affected merchants for the entire period from now until the day the Ministry formally handed over their new commercial premises in the magical city.
It was precisely the combination of these policies that had encouraged the shopkeepers to take the considerable risk of setting up tents and resuming business in the ruins with remarkable speed.
The tent city's energy, its improvised vitality, was the direct result of people believing the Ministry's promises.
Tom had returned to his other duties. Harry and Ron sat back in their chairs, stomachs satisfyingly full, nursing their Butterbeers slowly.
"If I were you, Harry—"
Ron said it with a wistfulness.
"Once that magnificent magical city is finally finished, I would pull every last Galleon out of my vault and buy a shop here."
He turned his Butterbeer slowly on the table.
"Dad once told me about Diagon Alley land values—he'd looked into it once, out of curiosity or maybe some hope. He told me that all the Galleons he'd earn working for the Ministry for his entire career wouldn't be enough to buy a single unit."
It was genuinely good advice and even Harry, who had never given much thought to the mechanics of making money or growing wealth, felt a flutter of temptation.
But after turning it over in his mind for a moment, Harry shook his head.
"If Mr. Weasley couldn't afford it even after a lifetime of wages, then the Galleons in my vault probably aren't sufficient either. And besides—"
Harry pressed his lips together. Amelia's face drifted across his mind.
"Sirius doesn't mind me staying at Grimmauld Place, but I can't live in there forever, can I?" Harry turned his Butterbeer in his hands. "I'll need a place of my own eventually."
Ron was opening his mouth, clearly gearing up with more suggestions—he became remarkably energetic on the subject of money and its potential applications.
But the two figures who pushed through the tent's canvas flap at that moment made Ron shut his mouth at once.
"Ah, Madam Malfoy! And young Master Malfoy!"
Tom came scurrying across from the other end of the bar, far more respectful now than he had been with Harry and Ron. He stopped before Draco and Narcissa with a slight bow.
"What can I do for you both today?"
"Bring us something to eat. We're in a hurry."
Narcissa didn't so much as glance at Tom. She was scanning the bar with cold, narrowed eyes, taking in every table in turn, her voice was totally indifferent.
'Madam Malfoy and young Master Malfoy.'
Needless to say, the two who had just walked in—impeccably dressed, carrying themselves with a haughty attitude were mother and son, both unmistakably of the Malfoy family.
Several customers, unwilling to invite trouble, averted their eyes from Narcissa's cold gaze and kept their heads down over their food.
Just as Harry had anticipated.
Draco appeared lost in thought. His dull gaze was fixed on the floor, and he hadn't noticed them yet—but his mother had. The moment her eyes landed on Harry's face; they stopped dead. He eyebrows drew together slightly.
Draco suddenly felt the hand resting on his shoulder tighten its grip. He surfaced from his thoughts and turned his head in puzzlement.
And then he saw them too: Potter, staring at him without expression, and beside Potter, his eternal little sidekick.
The two groups locked eyes across the interior of the Leaky Cauldron tent.
The air between them solidified slowly, degree by degree.
Harry's gaze was ice-cold. The fire inside him was climbing.
All things considered, he and Draco had managed something close to an uneasy truce throughout the previous school year. The kind of sniping and sabotage that had been routine in their second and third years had been almost completely absent.
Yet the look Harry threw on Draco and his mother now was every bit as full of hatred as it had been during the worst moments of their earlier years.
Not because of anything Draco had done to him personally.
Because during the war that had just ended, Kingsley had lost his leg. Emmeline Vance was gone. A witch who had always spoken with such particular, darling warmth was simply gone.
Dedalus Diggle, who could never quite contain his excitement whenever he encountered Harry, who had once gone so far as to bow to him in a shop and been embarrassed about it for weeks—gone too.
And then there were the bodies Harry had seen at St. Mungo's, draped in white sheets, one after another in a row that hadn't seemed like it would ever end.
The families of Hit-Wizards and Aurors sitting in waiting rooms in grief.
Every last one of those debts lay at the feet of Voldemort and the Death Eaters who had served him.
Whatever petty quarrels Harry and Draco had traded over the years amounted to nothing in the face of those sacrifices.
The hatred Harry felt now was not the hatred of a schoolboy for a rival.
Ron stared at Draco and his mother with the same equal loathing.
Harry had half-expected Draco and his mother to return his unconcealed hatred with something in kind. The Malfoy family had never been known for restraint or for backing down.
What he hadn't expected was what actually happened.
Meeting Harry's gaze, Draco instinctively flinched.
And his face had gone unnaturally pale. Harry had noticed the same paleness when he'd glimpsed Draco at Gringotts, just before the war began.
As for Draco's mother—
The look she turned on Harry's face held none of the haughty disdain she'd directed at everyone else in the bar. What replaced it was something Harry had not expected to see on Narcissa Malfoy's face.
Wariness.
That, at least, Harry could understand.
At the end of the Battle of Diagon Alley, Voldemort had attempted to kill him and Harry's wand had acted entirely of its own accord, producing that golden wave of light that had driven Voldemort from the battlefield.
The papers hadn't reported the specifics. The Ministry had also kept the details controlled. But the Malfoys, as Voldemort's own minions, would certainly know what had happened.
Narcissa Malfoy, Harry realized, probably believed that he truly possessed some extraordinary, incomprehensible power.
In fact, even now, Ron, Hermione, and the Order witches and wizards all believed that he—entirely on his own—had effortlessly repelled Voldemort, something that even Professor Watson hadn't managed to do that day.
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