How Wizards Do Money: Draco Malfoy

Draco knows that people with as much money as the Malfoy family generally don’t think about it too much; instead, they hire people to think about their money for them.

But Draco does a lot of thinking.

The Malfoy family fortune is not properly his, in that if he truly wanted to take the majority of the funds and rebuild Hogwarts — which was on his mind, a decade ago — he would have to go through nests of executors and conclaves of relatives.

And Hogwarts got rebuilt anyway.

He was able to give Hogwarts a respectable but nominal amount, smaller than he wanted, and his name’s on a brick in the garden. In memory of all of those who were lost.

Scorpius says there’s owl dung on his brick now, although Draco knows that Hogwarts takes better care of itself than that. Scorpius isn’t doing well in school, not like Draco had hoped. He watches his son act out the emotions that Draco himself keeps tightly held inside.

Draco thinks sometimes about leaving; going to France, or Antarctica. He thinks about setting aside galleons from the portion of the endowment that comes to his family every month, but he can’t rightfully take money that should belong to Astoria and Scorpius as well. He watches his Hogwarts peers become professional Quidditch players and Ministry officials and professors, and he receives an allowance from a family executor every month, as if he were still a child.

Sometimes the emotions come out, harsh and sharp and smart and cruel. Draco tries always to stay as neutral as possible, to stand still and let things happen, to raise his son and care for his wife and keep the Malfoy family moving into the next generation and let the rest of the world sort itself out as it will, because Hogwarts will get rebuilt with or without his donation, the Leaky Cauldron will change management yet again, Ginny Potter will become a Quidditch star and then retire, all of these bits of life will happen without him.

And the Malfoy family — and its fortune — will persevere.

Previously: Ron Weasley

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