Finances and dalliances.

25th January 1994. Ministry of Magic.

On a regular Tuesday morning, Lucius Malfoy would typically be in bed, alas, his master had given him instructions, and he could not fail him.

So instead, Lord Malfoy was waiting outside the Minister's office as Cornelius hurriedly tidied the room.

After a while, a young woman invited him inside, closing the door behind him as she made her way back to her desk.

Lucius sat on the sofa next to the closest window away from Fudge.

"Lucius, my friend! How can I help you? Perfect timing; I was going to invite you to the Quidditch world cup. Unfortunately, Lord Peverell declined my invitation, and I know you have a young son." The Minister blathered on nervously.

"Cornelius, please relax. I am merely here to deliver a message from our good friend Lord Peverell. He and I have decided to begin a business, and we would appreciate your support." Lucius told the man in the least irritated tone he could muster.

Cornelius nearly fell over himself in excitement at being able to help and possibly secure more funding for his re-election campaign.

"Of course, two Lords such as yourselves are in contact. I will do whatever I can to help the two of you in this endeavour." He said with a pompous air.

Lucius smiled; he had expected as much.

"We need a list of every muggleborn or half-blood in the country that is still alive. We would also appreciate it if you leant a little on the shops in Diagon Alley so that they bought all their potion ingredients from Peverell Industries. On a completely different topic, we both feel you have been a brilliant minister and have decided that we would like to donate an amount of money to be specified later to your Campaign funds."

Minister Fudge was a little conflicted. Giving away that kind of information was very illegal; however, he wanted to keep the two lords happy and knew the amount of money he received would depend on his cooperation.

So sucking up his fears and disposing of them, he nodded and called Dolores into the room.

Not long after he called, a small pink woman in a ghastly pink cardigan entered the office.

"You called Minister? Lord Malfoy, a pleasure as always." She bowed, showing her respect and looking at the Minister.

"Ah yes, Dolores, Lucius here needs a list of all living muggleborn and half-bloods in Britain, be a dear and fetch it," Cornelius ordered, relishing his power.

Umbridge failed to even bat an eye. The obviously illegal ends to which the list could be used made her smile sickeningly, and after popping her head out the door to shout at the poor girl at the desk came in and sat down.

It took no longer than ten minutes before the girl appeared again, red in the face from running to fetch the records from the Wizengamoat Administration services.

They came in a book with a record of residence, their age and their qualifications.

"Perfect, we plan to hire all the Mudbloods and half-bloods at a pittance to work for our new company. Cheap labour is all they are good for. Thank you, Cornelius. You have been a great help. Expect fifty thousand Galleons in the Campaign vault tomorrow morning." Lucius said as he stood up and vacated the premises as quickly as possible.

Dolores was delighted that the Mudbloods would finally be put in their rightful place and even considered sending some of the ones in the ministry to work for the two prestigious Lords.

Cornelius was delighted with the fifty thousand Galleons he now had and that he had managed to please two mighty men at no cost to himself.

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3rd February 1994

Ares was sitting at Breakfast when the owl post came in. There was no exciting daily prophet, but he did get two letters, one from Gringotts and one from Lucius.

With Felix looking over his shoulder in curiosity, Ares opened the letter from his servant first.

The mission has been completed.

Short and to the point, it was all Ares wanted to read.

Moving on to the following letter, he carefully opened the seal on the thick envelope before looking inside.

"Best not to read this in the Great Hall; I'll see you in charms," Ares told Felix as he made his way back to the dorm, missing how Ron came in later complaining about his rat being missing.

Finding a nearby empty classroom, he closed the door and raised some privacy wards before unfurling the pieces of parchment inside.

The letter was from Bloodclaw, his account manager,

Lord Ares Peverell-Slytherin,

Included in this letter are your latest statements regarding both accounts.

The box you wished for at the upcoming World Quidditch Tournament is being built as I write and will be reserved and ready for you on the day.

Regarding your company account, we have started syphoning off 80% of profits and adding it to your personal account. The remaining 15% will be kept in a separate tab in case of emergencies, such as bankruptcy.

In addition, your slave Narcissa Black has been given access to vault 765 as requested, and the vault will be refilled annually unless otherwise stated.

May your Gold flow and your enemies be crushed,

Accounts Manager Bloodclaw.

After reading the initial message, he returned to his bank statement.

Ares Peverell-Slytherin

Titles:

Lord of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Slytherin

Lord of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Peverell

The Dark Lord Peverell-Slytherin

Vaults:

Peverell Family Vault

Contents: 1,364,253 Galleons, 2,583 Sickles, 27 Knuts

Peverell Industries Vault

Contents: 4,654,675 Galleons, 3,752 Sickles, 12 Knuts

Vault 465

Contents: Books on Blood Rituals

Vault 765

Contents: 50,000 Galleons

Slytherin Family Vault

Contents: 381,812 Galleons, 67,913 Sickles, 32 Knuts and Slytherin Family books.

Vault 327

Contents: Magical heirlooms and Parseltongue books

Properties:

Slytherin Fort, Scotland (Reasonable living conditions)

Peverell Manor, Wales (Perfect living conditions)

Pontieux Cottage, Toulouse (Perfect living condition)

Chamber of Secrets (Even worse than terrible condition) (houses Basilisk)

Few kilometres from the Schwarzwald (Wild Condition)

Looking over his statement, he noticed all the money gained from basically taking over the Magical Bulgarian economy and his potion ingredient harvesting business. Once he found more muggleborns to hire, he would start expanding the company from just Bulgaria.

He had many plans for his new workforce, such as his idea for the Basilisk hit team. Each suitable group member, which he planned to expand, would be given a number. The lower the number, the more authority and perks; to gain a lower number, you had to beat the original owner of the number. That way, if Basilisk 13 was a better fighter than Basilisk 5, they could duel and swap places.

This would ensure his best supporters would be in charge, and he would know about them.

Talking about his private box gave Ares an idea. He would invite Harry to watch the game with him and his friends. Preferably without his friends, but it wouldn't matter. The Dark Lord wasn't sure, but for some reason, he loved to watch Quidditch, possibly because he had been banned since his fifth year at Hogwarts and had missed it so much.

He intended to enjoy the World Cup as a peaceful event, and if he got to sleep with the Veela Cheerleading team, all the better!

In preparation for that, he was already researching several endurance and stamina rituals so he wouldn't be caught off guard. If the veela didn't agree, he would still be able to have his way with Narcissa anyway.

Head once again filled with dreams about a harem of veela, he headed off to class, teenage hormones raging.