Moved my Minecraft directory to C:/Minecraft/.minecraft and edited all launcher profiles to use this directory. Deleted everything inside the old directory except the launcher files. After starting the launcher, it instantly starts downloading assets and libraries to the old, now unused directory, creates an empty versions folder and claims to download a new 13w23b.jar to the old directory. After hitting "Play", however, the launcher starts 13w23b from the new directory.
You can easily test it when using different texturepacks in old and new directory, the launcher always starts the game from the new directory (as setted in the profiles), but requires to download unused files to the old directory.
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Hey, that works 🙂
Thanks for your help. Btw, is there a list of supported arguments available anywhere? There's still some stuff I want to do and don't even know if it's supported yet or how to do it (e.g. launch the game in maximized window or full screen, maybe even quicklaunch the game, etc. ...). Or is this still planned to be added to the profile system?

Use java -jar path/to/launcher.jar --help to list all of the command-line options
There is no control over where you download the assets from within the launcher. You can however control it from the outside by using the extra arguments: --workdir path/to/folder