The moment Malfoy pulled away his Invisibility Cloak, Harry knew with cold certainty: this wasn't going to end cleanly.
Whatever clean ending looked like—none of those outcomes were available anymore. They were past that.
He kept his eyes fixed on Malfoy while tracking simultaneously with peripheral attention, the slight tremor in Malfoy's wand hand.
His peripheral vision also swept the narrow lane around them. What he found made his heart sink.
Borgin's shop, in its tent incarnation, hadn't been situated along the main thoroughfare that the Ministry had cleared and organized for foot traffic. It sat tucked behind a cluster of other tents.
Tent walls blocked sightlines in every direction—ahead, behind, left, right. The geometry of the tent city, which had seemed merely inconvenient when navigating it, now felt deliberately concealing.
No one could see the two of them facing off in this narrow lane. And even if someone did happen past, Harry couldn't afford to be optimistic about the variety of people who frequented this particular corner of what had been Knockturn Alley's near neighbor.
'I am on my own, then.' Harry thought, and his mood remained very heavy.
Malfoy would have already guessed that he was looking for an exit for escape—which meant the moment Harry made any unnecessary movement, Malfoy would act without hesitation.
The threat about the Ministry had been more than idle bluffing—underage magic outside school was a real and serious matter but Harry knew Malfoy well enough after five years of proximity: such a trifle law wouldn't be enough to hold him.
Malfoy didn't have the nerve to genuinely hurt Harry—or worse. But he certainly wouldn't mind making Harry look a fool in front of whatever small audience the tent city's less reputable corner might provide.
'So what do I do? Hope Malfoy suddenly develops conscience?'
The absurdity of the thought had barely finished forming— Malfoy did something that made Harry's eyes go wide.
Draco took a long, measuring look at Harry—at those green eyes that remained as forceful and unyielding as ever and then, slowly lowered his wand and slid it back into his sleeve.
He dropped the Invisibility Cloak at Harry's feet. Then he began to back away, putting careful distance between them, and spoke as he moved:
"In case you didn't hear me clearly the first time, Potter—you'd do well to cure yourself of that insufferable habit of pushing your nose into things that have nothing to do with you."
Harry didn't let himself breathe fully until Malfoy was a good ten feet back and the wand was genuinely out of sight.
"Difficult habit to break, I'm afraid," Harry said, keeping his own voice steady. "I won't be able to sleep until I find out what you're planning."
"Then by all means, don't sleep." A strange light flickered briefly through Draco's grey eyes.
"But I'll warn you—if I catch you following me at Hogwarts, your luck is going to run out very quickly, Potter. The tent city is one thing. Hogwarts is different."
'Was Malfoy actually going to let this go?'
Harry caught himself before he could relax into that interpretation.
This wasn't a sudden attack of conscience. This wasn't Draco Malfoy becoming a reasonable person on a Tuesday afternoon in the ruins of Diagon Alley.
Malfoy was afraid that if he moved against Harry now, he would report everything he'd seen and heard to school. Which made it all the more clear that whatever Malfoy was plotting, it mattered enormously to him.
"Wait—Malfoy!"
Harry called out before he could stop himself.
"You're trying to get your hands on an alchemical instrument that can break through magical defences, aren't you?"
Malfoy, already at the mouth of the alley, stopped dead. He turned a dark look on Harry and said nothing.
"Funny thing, that." Harry dragged out his words slowly, watching Malfoy's expression shift. "I may happen to have something that fits exactly what you're after. Perhaps you'd consider asking me whether I'm open to selling—at the very least, I won't swindle you the way Borgin would."
BOOM!
A deep, rolling concussion shook the air like thunder without the flash and both Draco and Harry reacted the same way: they looked up instinctively at the sky.
But the sky above them was clear and bright. Whatever had made that sound was no storm.
"There—"
Harry spun and locked onto it immediately: a column of dark smoke was rising up in the distance, swelling against the blue. And then the screaming reached them—raw, ragged, terrified—and Harry felt the colour drain from his face.
"It seems your father's associates have decided they have nothing left to lose!"
Harry had his wand out in an instant, pointing it at Malfoy, his eyes were bright with fury.
"That's not them—they didn't plan another attack on—"
Draco caught himself. He'd already said too much. His mouth snapped shut.
But curiosity had already overtaken caution. Without sparing another glance at Potter, Draco wrenched around and sprinted back toward the main road.
"Don't you run from me, Malfoy—start talking!" Harry shouted after him, scooping the Invisibility Cloak from the ground with his foot and breaking into a run.
The deep boom had been a single sound and then silence. What followed was only screaming.
They ran together—Malfoy ahead, Harry behind—back toward the heart of the market, and it wasn't long before the panicking crowds stopped them cold.
They ran together—Malfoy ahead, Harry behind—back toward the heart of the market, and it wasn't long before the panicking crowds stopped them cold.
Along the main road, sharp cracks of Disapparation rang out one after another as witches and wizards blinked away from danger.
Those who couldn't—they scattered like sheep that had scented a predator on the open plain, shrieking and shoving, rushing toward Harry and Malfoy and away from the source of the explosion, desperate to put distance between themselves and whatever was happening.
Trampling footsteps and the thunderclap of Disapparation stirred the dirt road into a rolling wall of dust—like a sandstorm sweeping in to devour everything in its path.
The amber tide of haze and the crush of bodies hit Draco and Harry like a wave. They moved without thinking, both stepping instinctively to the edge of the road, pressing together against the margin.
Among the surging faces, Harry spotted the elderly couple he'd noticed earlier. The old woman who had stood at the drop-off point and remarked cheerfully that Diagon Alley was actually rather fresh this year. She was no longer cheerful. She was being half-dragged by her swaying husband's arm.
"Excuse me—sorry—could I ask what's happening over there, ma'am?"
Harry stepped in front of them and said urgently.
"We don't know!" The old woman's voice came out shrill.
"There was that dreadful noise and then people started shouting that the Death Eaters were back, we just ran with everyone else. Oh, child, I strongly urge you to do the same while you still have the chance—"
With that, the wiry old woman shook off Harry's hand with surprising, startling force, grabbed her swaying husband's arm and plunged back into the fleeing crowd. They were absorbed in seconds.
Harry's eye twitched. He seized Draco by the front of his robes and stared into that blank, startled face from close range. Fury was surging through him in hot waves, but before he could demand answers—
"Let go of him, Potter!"
A woman's voice, sharp and raw with panic cut through the noise A figure burst through the crush of bodies and struck the back of Harry's hand in one hard, flat slap.
Hss—
Harry hadn't expected that kind of force from Narcissa Malfoy's thin body. He was fairly certain he felt something in the bones of his hand protest the impact.
Narcissa Malfoy stood between them, breathing fast and hard, her composed face cracked in a way Harry hadn't seen before. The trembling in her body made plain just how frightened she'd been when her son had vanished.
"Where have you been, Draco!"
"We'll talk about it later, Mother—"
But Draco didn't flinch from her fury. His voice was fast and clipped.
"What happened over there? I heard someone in the crowd say Death Eaters—"
"Whatever happened is no concern of yours." Narcissa's voice came back with firm certainty. She was still breathing hard, her chest was moving with each breath, but the trembling was already being brought back under control.
She pressed her hand down firmly onto Draco's shoulder. "We are leaving this place. And then you are going to explain to me and your father exactly where you disappeared to."
Harry stood rubbing the back of his stinging hand and watched, powerless to do anything, as Malfoy and his mother were absorbed by the crowd.
The flood of people continued pouring from the direction of the blast toward open ground. Through the gaps between tents on both sides of the road, Harry could see figures in formal Ministry robes mounting broomsticks.
They rose sharply into the air in formation flying in tight disciplined groups toward whatever had caused that sound.
Whatever had happened, it was serious. Those brooms vanishing overhead made him more certain of it with every passing second.
He glanced at the faces streaming past—each one of terror in a different typeface and knew that he would get nothing useful from any of them.
The memory of Hagrid's voice, and Sirius's, came back to him unconsciously: the last time he'd charged headlong into the middle of things.
Harry bit the inside of his lip. Then, in one quick motion, he threw the Invisibility Cloak over himself, ducked behind the nearest tent, and picking his way across the broken, uneven ground of the ruins at the fastest pace the terrain allowed, ran toward the source of the chaos.
There were many, many people fleeing. But there were also many people who had stayed. Bystanders frozen with paralysis who can't quite bring themselves to leave. People craning to see. People helping those who had fallen in the crush. And somewhere in there would be people he knew.
It didn't take Harry long to find Ron in the press of bodies—though what surprised him was that Ron wasn't with Hermione. Somehow in all the commotion, Ron had collided with Lavender and was holding her arm now, craning up on his toes to see past the people ahead of him.
The Invisibility Cloak meant Harry no longer had to care about the curses muttered by people he pushed aside. He pushed through to the front in moments.
He yanked the cloak away and reappeared without warning—which made Hermione nearly jump out of her skin.
Harry didn't bother apologizing. What lay in front of him stopped him cold.
His expression darkened even as the shock settled in.
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