Harry James Potter (Malfoy)

Lucius and Narcissa had taken Draco to a muggle playground today and sat watching as he played a bit with a few muggle children. They made a point to let Draco interact with muggles on a regular basis, just as they let him interact with other wizarding children. It was good to give him a mixture of the two so he didn’t grow up to be prejudiced like many of their family had been. Especially Narcissa’s family.

They noticed that Draco seemed to have taken to a young little boy with black hair and glasses that almost shied away from all the other children. Lucius remembered seeing the boy show up with a thin, horse-like woman and a very round child who was currently wreaking havoc on the other side of the playground. The boys did not look alike enough to have been siblings, though they could’ve been since Lucius didn’t know what the father looked like.

After a little bit, Draco was pulling the small, scared looking boy over to where his parents sat. Apparently he wanted to introduce them.

“Mummy, daddy! This is Harry!” he said, excitement in his voice. “He’s my new friend!”

“Hello Harry,” Narcissa said in her silken voice. The little boy - Harry - looked up and both adults had to hold in a gasp. It was Harry Potter. What they hadn’t been able to see from far away or with his head down, was that this child was the spitting image of James Potter with Lily Evans’s eyes. They could see a bit of his famous scar from underneath his wild hair.

“H-Hello ma’am, sir,” Harry greeted in a small, timid voice. He was very thin, thinner than he should be and he seemed overall smaller than they’d expected considering what his parents looked like and his age.

“Harry, who are you here with?” Narcissa asked in a gentle, soft voice as she looked at the scared child. He looked nervous before answering.

“My Aunt Petunia and cousin Dudley, ma’am,” Harry politely replied. Narcissa gave him a small smile.

“You can just call me Cissa. Is that your aunt and cousin on the other side of the playground?”

Harry nodded in response to her question. She took a moment to look over at the two again. Now that she knew the relationship between them, it made more sense as to why she saw no resemblance. It was common knowledge that Lily and her sister were practically nothing alike in both appearance and personality. A frown marred her face for a moment as she took in the size of the cousin versus the size of Harry. There was something wrong about that.

The fact that he was also being ignored while the cousin was doted on was also a point of concern. Her cousin deserved better than this. Any child would. She looked over at her husband, and Lucius nodded in response. They needed to look into things further to see if his home life was as bad as this one little glimpse made it seem.

“Can Harry come over to the manor sometime?” Draco asked, his eyes sparkling. He definitely knew exactly who Harry was. He wouldn’t be asking for him to come to their manor otherwise since they wouldn’t allow muggles into a magical household.

“Hm, I don’t know Dragon. We’d have to check with his guardians,” Narcissa said, noticing the fear and panic that appeared on Harry’s face and in his eyes.

“Oh, n-no need to,” the boy said, very slightly trembling. “I’m not allowed to go to other people’s homes.”

Lucius and Narcissa shared another look and Draco looked confused at the statement.

“Harry, where do you live?”

“I’m not supposed to tell strangers that.”

“Well,” Lucius said in a gentle tone, “we’re not strangers much anymore. If you’re worried about your aunt finding out that you gave out your address, she won’t. We just want to know so that maybe we could make sure we bring Draco to whatever park you might go to the most.”

Harry looked at them hesitantly, thinking over what they said. Draco nodded in encouragement when Harry looked his way. He then told the Malfoys what his address was, and made them promise they wouldn’t tell his aunt and uncle that he told them. They acquiesced, more concerned than before.

When Draco and Harry went back over to the playground equipment to play, Narcissa turned to Lucius.

“Something is very wrong,” she said, looking back over to where the aunt sat, looking disdainfully over at Harry every now and then before looking at Dudley with adoration.

“Obviously. We have his address, and if we notice something more, we can get the Ministry to help us with this. Though it’d have to be under the radar as I’m not sure who placed him in the house, or why, and it would be disastrous if the Wizarding World found out Harry was in need of a new home,” Lucius said lowly, starting to plan for the possibility of Harry needing to be removed from his aunt and uncle’s care. Or lack thereof.

“Where should we start?” Narcissa asked, trusting her husband more with Ministry related matters as he had far more experience in the area.

“Hm, well, we could try and find out what the Ministry knows about where Harry was placed after the deaths of the Potters. We can use the grounds that he’s your and Draco’s cousin and as his family, we’d like to know where he is so that we may interact.”

“That should be able to work. His great-grandmother was a Black, and married into the Potter family before the Potters were seen as ‘disgraceful’ by my family.”

“I’ll look into things starting tomorrow. I have an appointment at the Ministry anyways.”

~~~~

The next day, Lucius went to the Ministry for his scheduled appointment, and after some digging around, prodding, and slight manipulation, he was able to glean everything the Ministry knew about what happened to Harry Potter after the death of his parents.

There was no record of where Harry had been placed, with the only information being that Albus Dumbledore was his magical guardian and had decided where to place the child before the Department of Child Protective Services could intervene in any way.

He went home and informed Narcissa of what he’d found out.

“Hm, interesting that he’d choose for Harry to live with muggles rather than a wizard family considering his magical ability and how many families would be willing to take him in. He’s my cousin for Merlin’s sake!”

“We’ll have to go about things carefully if Dumbledore purposely put him with a family that he knows isn’t treating him well. Next thing we need to do is see exactly how Lily’s sister treats him at home. The only question is how we’ll go about collecting that information. The boy is clearly too frightened to directly tell anybody about what’s going on.”