Chapter Text
Draco is not pouting. Pouting is not a dignified action and, regardless of age, Malfoys are supposed to be the poster children for ‘dignified’. Thus, Draco—a veritable Malfoy—is not pouting. He is simply staring out the window of the compartment with his lip jutting out, looking at the landscape whizzing by like it had stolen his brand new racing broom and, to add insult to injury, gave it to Dobby as a gift.
‘I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks’—who does that kid think he is, anyway?
“Harry Potter,” he remembers his father carefully enunciate back at the manor, wiping at the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief, “will be in the same year as you at Hogwarts, I’ve heard.”
“So?” Draco grumbles, chin propped up by his elbow in spite of his mother’s soft admonishments that it’s not proper table manners. It’s just the three of them in the room, so he’s not sure why he’s even supposed to care.
“It would reflect positively on the Malfoy name if, say, you were to befriend the boy,” he explains in what Draco instantly recognises as his Pureblood Socialite voice, which means two things: one, that he has to do as he’s told and two, that he needs to think fast of what to ask for in exchange for his cooperation.
“Considering the amount of media exposure that…” and Lucius drones on about parentage and bloodlines and prestige and the likes, which he knows it’s not really worth listening to. Over the years, he’s figured out that his father tends to start with the very essential and then follow with the long, boring explanations; he just has to wait for when he’s finished and agree to everything.
That’s exactly what he does. “Alright. I shall make friends with Potter,” he declares, offhandedly. It should be child’s play, considering he is Draco Malfoy—simply introducing himself should make Potter be the one outright begging to be Draco’s best friend, which he will generously accept after making it look like he’s thinking about it.
With the matter being settled, a smile breaks out on Draco’s face. “Father, I’ve been meaning to tell you…”
“Yes, Draco?” Lucius’ tone is a mixture of cautious, annoyed, and just a little bit resigned.
“You know that Nimbus have just released the latest model—Theodore told me, you see, that his father would buy it for him if he gets into Slytherin. I believe he’s lying, but that being said…”
That being said, the exact model—a shiny, brand new Nimbus 2000—is currently resting on a gold-plated stand back at home, until his father figures out a way to smuggle it into the castle. Draco hopes this will be sooner than later, so he can become the envy of house Slytherin, or even better, the entire year. Eat your heart out, Harry Potter! he imagines himself shouting as he flies past him and that scruffy Weasley kid so fast that it makes them fall over, leaving him to cackle at the dumbstruck looks on their faces.
He is forcibly pulled out of his reverie by a pathetic moan coming from his right. Though he manages to ignore it at first, the sounds of things being shuffled around and yet another moan interrupts him from glaring down the scenery.
“Ugh. Shut up, Goyle,” he turns his head to glare at the other boy, but ends up raising an eyebrow when he sees him hunched over his hand with Crabbe hovering uncertainly next to him. “What’s wrong with him?”
Crabbe bites his lip, face twisted up in something that might be anger just as easily as it might be simple concern for his friend’s well-being. “Uh, it’s his hand. Where that thing bit him earlier.”
“It’s swollen,” Goyle whines, managing the feat to sound a little panicky in spite of his usual, dragging monotone. Then he says a few choice words about Weasley’s joke of a pet, ones that Draco’s mother strongly frowns upon using as they are ‘a mark of ill-breeding’.
He lets out a quiet scoff. They’re blowing this way out of proportion.
His belief is only reinforced when Crabbe, still awkwardly fumbling about, starts stammering. “Hey, you—you don’t think he could get sick or something? From the bite, y’know.”
Part of Draco is actually surprised that Crabbe’s got enough insight to even consider this, but he doesn’t voice that thought. Instead, he rolls his eyes as far back in his head as they can go without getting stuck and shifts around so he’s sitting more comfortably, elbow on his knee and pointy chin resting on his open palm.
“Who knows? The creature does belong to the Weasleys, so who knows what unsanitary conditions it’s been living in and how many diseases it’s carrying.”
The careless remark is spoken with a smirk, just purposefully mean enough for him to vent out his frustration at his friends interrupting his train of thoughts. But the smirk falls back into a frown when he takes another look at the duo, at how Crabbe’s grimace is definitely one of concern now and Goyle is getting a little green in the face as he clutches at his hand hard enough that it might be doing more harm than good. An unpleasant feeling settles in the pit of his stomach. Out of sheer pride, Draco refuses to put a name to it, but it still makes him really uncomfortable and he wants it to stop.
With a sigh, he pushes himself up on his feet and leans over to where Goyle is sitting. “Here, let me see,” and then he launches into a convoluted explanation that boils down to the fact that Weasley’s parents, blood traitors or not, aren’t stupid enough to send their son to school with a diseased animal.
Though he bets they didn’t even catch half of it, it seems to put them at ease. Soon enough, Crabbe is doing a poor job at storytelling something that happened during one of his father’s hunting trips that summer and Goyle doing a great job at following the story nonetheless, occasionally making a quip or stuffing his mouth with one of the cauldron cakes that Draco surrendered to him in a display of his sheer good-will. Definitely not guilt, as Malfoys do not trouble themselves with things of that sort—what is he, a Hufflepuff?
He’s just finished getting changed into his school robes when Theodore Nott saunters into their compartment, complete with carefully styled hair and his signature slimy grin. “Hullo, mates. So, I was minding my own business, just walking around, and I couldn’t help but overhear something about Malfoy’s son and his friends already getting into fights?”
It takes every ounce of Draco’s mental strength to suppress the groan threatening to come out of his mouth. Instead, he schools his features into the perfect picture of indifference and picks at invisible dirt under his fingernail.
“You should know better than to listen to baseless rumours, Theodore. If there’s been any fighting, you should know I’ve got nothing to do with it.”
“Of course,” his smile widens, showing a row of straight white teeth, though the ones in the middle are a smidge larger. It’s almost unperceivable, but it’s an imperfection that Draco gladly latches onto. “Which is why Gregory over there is very subtly covering his hand, thinking I didn’t already notice it’s all red and swollen.”
Goyle, the idiot, had unceremoniously shoved his hand into a pile of candy wrappers that Theodore walks over to remove with an (exaggerated) sympathetic wince, shaking his head.
“I’m actually impressed, Draco. You managed to get in trouble before we even got to Hogwarts,” he lets out a low whistle. “What’s old man Malfoy going to say about this?”
“I don’t know,” he replies testily, with most of his composure gone and a strong urge to open the window and forcibly shove Nott through it. “And I don’t think we will ever know considering he is not going to find out.”
He’s already got a string of threats lined up in order to make sure that Nott keeps his mouth shut—while his father will definitely hear about how Potter snubbed him in order to ally with a blood traitor, it’s over Draco’s dead body that he will hear about them being chased away by aforementioned blood traitor’s pathetic rodent, or otherwise be led to believe that they’d been engaging in primitive, Muggle fist-fights. However, Nott silences him with a wave of his hand before he even has a chance to start.
“Mind your tone. I’m not a snitch—just a concerned friend,” then, to Goyle, “it doesn’t look that bad, but you should still put some Dittany on it when you get the chance.”
“Fantastic,” Draco drawls out, purposefully raising his voice so it covers whatever Goyle was trying to say in return. “Now, can you go be a concerned friend somewhere else?”
“Someone’s in a mood,” he mumbles, just loud enough for Draco to clearly understand him. Git. “Well, as sad as it makes me, I can tell when I’m not wanted. I’ll see you at the sorting.”
And he leaves the compartment, to Draco’s great relief—only to poke his head back in, seconds later, smiling impishly. “And probably in our dorm room, come to think of it. For the next seven years of our lives. Ponder on that for a bit, will you?”
This time, he throws the closest thing in his direction—which happens to be a slightly soggy, empty Chocolate Frog wrapper. To his further disappointment, Theodore’s instincts are sharp enough that he manages to shut the door just in time for the cardboard to hit the glass surface and pathetically fall down onto the floor; he also has the audacity to laugh before walking down the corridor until he’s out of view.
Significantly more annoyed than before, Draco sits down, folds his arms over his chest and goes back to Not Pouting. His biggest comfort lies in the fact that it’s steadily getting darker outside, which means they must be approaching the castle. By this point, he just wants this day to be over.
Next to him, Goyle lets out a whining noise. Draco’s patience is wearing thin.
“Oh come on, it can’t hurt that much—“
“Not that,” the other boy lifts the lid of a box, frowning. “My last cauldron cake is gone.”
You mean my last cauldron cake is gone, Draco thinks, but remarking on a moot point would be a waste of energy on his part, and he doesn’t have much of that left to spare.
“You probably just ate it and forgot,” he gives him a side-long glance. “Or Crabbe ate it when you weren’t paying attention.”
Cue Crabbe vehemently protesting that he did not eat the last cauldron cake, so he just goes back to ignoring his friends in favour of glaring out the window and waiting for the train to come to a halt.
“So, where’d you reckon she’ll end up, John? Ravenclaw?”
Realising they must be talking about her, Tracey takes her eyes off of the book open in her lap—A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration by Emeric Switch—which used to belong to her brother. Said brother is staring at her, eyebrows furrowed in concentration and mouth set in a straight line.
“Maybe,” he finally says, shrugging. “But it’s ultimately down to what the hat picks, anyway.”
One of his fellow Ravenclaws who’s sitting next to her, a pretty girl with dimples named Adrianna, leans closer to ask, “What house do you want to be in, Tracey?” which makes a grand total of three times that someone’s acknowledged her existence during the entire train ride, as opposed to talking about her as if she weren’t there or treating her like a sentient piece of furniture.
“I’m fine with any house,” she says, a little louder than she’s used to so that it comes out a little unnatural and her voice cracks at the end, but at least her brother isn’t going to berate her about speaking up. Then, hoping it would appease them, adds: “Ravenclaw sounds nice.”
Seemingly pleased with her response, the third-years go back to discussions on professors she has yet to meet and spell work that is beyond her, leaving Tracey to go back to studying her book, flipping through it with shaky hands. They should be arriving at Hogwarts anytime soon, and she doesn’t feel ready in the slightest—in fact, she feels a little nauseous. She doesn’t say so to her brother and his friends, but she does tell them she needs to go to the restroom.
“Alright,” says John, feeling around in his pocket. He takes out a couple sickles and presses them into her palm. “Here, Trace. Buy me some pasties if the trolley witch is still around, and get something for yourself, too. Okay?”
She nods and scurries away, clutching the coins in her small fist.
During her trip down the corridor, she avoids looking to her left or right, at the windowed compartments, lest somebody notices her. John and his friends had mentioned that people sometimes play pranks on unassuming first years on the train, calling it a ‘rite of passage’; the thought makes her even queasier than she was before. Instead, she keeps her eyes firmly planted on the floor, minding her feet.
Which is just as well, because otherwise she might have stepped on the tail of the cat sitting smack-dab in the middle of the corridor. She blinks down at it in confusion. The creature lifts its head, golden eyes boring into hers for the fraction of a second, then goes back to licking its paw without a single care in the world.
Smiling, Tracey crouches down next to it. “Hello there. Are you lost?” she asks, though she feels a little silly right away. Hopefully, nobody walks out of the nearby compartments and sees her.
That hope is thwarted when someone declares in a low, guttural voice, “She’s mine” and she sees a heavy-set, scowling girl approaching from one end of the corridor. “She was getting antsy all cooped up so I let her out for a bit.”
The girl is twice her size—she must be at least a third year—and probably not in a good mood, from the way she’s squinting her eyes at her, jaw set and shoulders squared. Everything John has told her about first years being hexed on the train is coming back to her full force, and she’s about to jump at least a feet away from the cat and profusely apologise when the other girl speaks.
“Do you want to pet her?”
There’s a moment of silence that passes between the two of them. “Can I?” Tracey finally asks, timidly. She gets a nod in reply.
Hesitantly, she stretches her hand out and strokes the soft fur of the cat, right between the ears and down her back, relishing in the purring noises she lets out. She finds out from the girl, now standing closer, that her name is Tornado, the girl’s parents bought her as a gift when her Hogwarts acceptance letter arrived and her younger brother named it after the Quidditch team.
“I’ve always wanted a cat,” Tracey finds herself telling Tornado’s owner without taking her eyes off the cat, “but dad’s not a big fan of animals. He barely even likes Pinch—that’s our owl’s name.”
The girl frowns. “That must suck,” then she looks at her like she’s properly seeing her for the first time. “Are you a first year, too?”
Tracey stop half-way through her absentminded nod—then hopes she did a good job of concealing her momentary shock at the implication that this girl, whose fists are big enough that they could give someone a black eye with little effort required, who is imposing enough that Tracey instantly assumed she was an upperclassman, is actually her age. But that looks about right, judging by the generic set of robes that she’s sporting, completely devoid of any house colours. Just like hers.
“Yeah.”
“I’m Millicent,” she holds out her hand for Tracey to shake.
Hastily, she rises to full height (that being roughly the height of Millicent’s shoulder) and dusts herself off before grasping the hand in her own, in a clumsy handshake. “Tracey.”
Neither says anything for a while after that. Millicent bends down and gently picks up Tornado, cradling her to her chest with a hint of a smile on her face softening her features. At this, Tracey feels a little bad for assuming Millicent was mean-spirited just from the way she looks, and like she should apologise. Except she didn’t actually say it out loud, so apologizing out of the blue would be weird.
“Um,” Millicent turns to look at her. “Do you maybe know if the trolley witch is still around? My brother sent me to buy some Pumpkin Pasties.”
“She’s probably at the front with the driver,” says Millicent, holding onto Tornado with one hand and using the remaining one to point in the right direction. “Come on, I’ll take you.”
Playing with the change in her pocket, Tracey thinks of the extra sickles her brother has given her and wonders if Millicent likes sweets.
Cheeks puffed out, tongue sticking out in concentration, Pansy lifts her quill to write down the answer and… stops in mid-air with a sigh.
“What is it this time?”
“Wooden magic conductor, five letters,” she grumbles, poking at the Daily Prophet with the tip of her quill. “I wanted to put down wand but that’s only four letters.”
“Try staff.”
Gnawing on her lip, she mentally replaces the letters, checks the neighbouring words… S, T, A, F, F gets etched out on the paper, a perfect fit in the crossword that’s nearly done and only about one third by means of her own intellectual effort.
She narrows her eyes at the wizard sitting across from her, dark-skinned, traditionally handsome and a little too put together for his age—but then again, she’s always had a theory that Blaise was secretly some kind of ancient being masquerading as a kid so he can make everyone else feel inadequate.
“Why are you even good at this?”
“Simple,” he smiles, somehow managing to sound good-natured and condescending at the same time. “I’m smart.”
“You’re conceited,” she retorts, tossing the newspaper away with a huff. “Solving a crossword from the Prophet isn’t that big of a deal.”
“You say that, yet you still need my help to do it.”
“I didn’t ask for your help—you voluntarily gave me the answers,” she looks out the window as she says this, blood rushing to her cheeks as it does whenever she feels like she’s lost an argument she had no chance of winning in the first place. With Blaise, that happens a little too often.
She doesn’t even have to look at him to know he’s rolling his eyes, like she’s some stupid little child he needs to be patient with, and that just sends another wave of annoyance surging through her. The annoyance is justified, she thinks, and she has every right to get angry at Blaise for being patronising towards her… but there’s a tiny chance that this might also be due to her still seething from a couple hours ago, when Draco said he doesn’t want to ride with her on the Hogwarts Express because she’s a girl and annoying and would ruin the reputation he was working hard to build for himself.
Calling him a jerk and stomping away seemed like a good idea at the time but, now that she’s had some room to think about it, Pansy found about ten more dignified ways in which she could have retaliated. Thinking of that missed opportunity is just as annoying as the self-assured look on Zabini’s face.
Speak of the devil. “It’s getting pretty late, so we should be at Hogwarts anytime now,” he muses, acting like he hadn’t made a dig at Pansy’s intelligence mere seconds before. She does the mature thing—sits up straighter, folds her arms and ignores him.
That’s the moment Daphne chooses to return, decked out in a brand new set of robes and a pair of earrings just as elaborate as the hairstyle her mother had charmed her dark brown locks into that morning. She smiles at them and, daintily, takes her seat next to Pansy (who is starting to feel like all her friends exist just to be unfairly gracious and make her feel inadequate).
“Did I miss anything?”
“Not really,” Blaise replies with a shrug, wisely choosing not to make another crack at Pansy’s lack of crossword-solving abilities.
Then it dawns on her. “Where’s Theo?” she leans forward to look beyond Daphne, like she’s expecting him to materialise in front of the door. “Wasn’t he with you?”
“Yes,” the other girl says, then makes a pause where Pansy thinks a sigh was supposed to follow. “But on our way back, we bumped into the Warrington siblings, who had apparently heard something about Draco Malfoy getting into a fight. So Theo just got that look on his face,” this time she does sigh, “you know, like Christmas had come early, and he ran off to investigate before I could stop him.”
Furrowing her eyebrows, she says, more to herself, “He’s getting progressively harder to catch.”
Pansy’s stopped listening about halfway through. “Draco got in a fight!?” she all but yells, her voice taking on that high-pitched quality that makes Blaise cringe (which he sees him do, out of the corner of her eye).
“With who?” then, suddenly remembering her surroundings, she asks “Is he alright?” a little more calmly, but with utmost seriousness and concern.
“They didn’t know to tell us anything beyond that so it might be just a rumour.”
Blaise follows with “I wouldn’t worry too much. The train does have security, so if it were anything serious they would have intervened and we would have heard about it,” and as much as his matter-of-factly tone still gets on her nerves, she has to admit he’s probably right.
“Either way, I’d like to think that Draco isn’t irresponsible enough to get in trouble before we’ve even reached the school,” says Daphne, ever so sensibly, while she picks up Pansy’s discarded newspaper and folds it back up.
She still feels a little restless as she starts to wonder if it isn’t about time that they’d be arriving, considering how dark it’s gotten outside; at the very least so she could see for herself that the idiot is unharmed.
Fate sends the next closest thing—that is, Theodore Nott stepping inside the compartment, holding a half-eaten cauldron cake. “I have returned,” he announces, equal parts dramatic and unnecessary.
Nobody cares, Pansy wants to snap before she remembers where Nott had actually gone. “Did Draco really get into a fight?”
“Surprisingly, yes,” he bites into the cake and takes his sweet time chewing thoughtfully before continuing. “He’s fine, though. From what I could tell, Gregory’s the only one who got hurt, but it didn’t look like anything serious.”
A grin breaks out on Blaise’s face. “What was that about Draco not being irresponsible enough to get in trouble before we even get to Hogwarts?”
Daphne pretends she didn’t hear him, smoothing out another crease in the newspaper.
“Who was he fighting with?” Pansy asks, half genuinely curious and half because the more specific details she knows, the easier it will be to yell at Draco later on.
“He didn’t say,” he shrugs, then seems to remember something deeply offensive, because his face scrunches up in indignation. “I didn’t get the chance to get it out of him either, because he kicked me out. Imagine this—I go out of my way to make sure the little git is alright because that’s how good of a friend I am, and this is how I’m rewarded.”
As it frequently happens when she’s listening to Theodore talk, Pansy gets the urge to say something mean; Daphne beats her to it by remarking, almost sweetly “You probably deserved it.”
“I don’t deserve this disrespect, and you lot are going to regret it in a couple years when you’re all be working for me,” he sniffs, mock hurt, then proceeds to stuff the remainder of the cauldron cake into his mouth just as the driver announces that they’ll be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes’ time.
“About time,” says Zabini, standing up and stretching his limbs as the others gather their various belongings that they’ve scattered around the compartment.
Before they leave, Pansy takes one final look out the window and, in spite of her initial annoyance, can’t help but feel that spark of excitement her parents had mentioned many times when they’d told her stories of their first day at Hogwarts.