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Draco wanted to get his wand first, but Father declared it would be their last stop and Mother agreed because Draco would be too tempted to try it out once he had it in his hand. It was better to be done with everything else so they could return straight to the Manor where he wouldn’t cause any trouble with it. Draco argued some, but he knew well enough that his chances of changing his parents’ minds when they were united against him were low. If he’d had more time, he might have tried to divide and conquer, but as it was, he gave it up before they even Flooed to Diagon Alley.
When they reached Diagon Alley, it was already crowded with a sea of students and parents on the same mission as they were. If they went store to store as a group, it would take all day. Draco wouldn’t have minded a whole day devoted to shopping for him, but Father had meetings with very important people that afternoon. They agreed that Draco would be fitted for his uniform while Father shopped for his schoolbooks next door and Mother went down to Ollivander’s to see that a number of suitable candidates were brought out for Draco to try because she didn’t trust Ollivander “to be sensible about it.”
That was how Draco ended up alone at Madam Malkin’s getting fitted for his Hogwarts uniform and feeling really very grown up about it because his parents never let him go anywhere by himself when the boy entered. He looked small and scruffy, with ill-fitting clothes and unruly black hair.
Draco knew immediately that this boy was not the sort Mother and Father would want him to befriend. Regardless of his blood, he was clearly poor. And yet. And yet, Draco would presumably be going to Hogwarts with this boy. They could be friends. This could be the very first friend Draco made on his own. He suddenly found he wanted that very much.
Madam Malkin helped the boy onto the stool next to Draco and began pinning the Hogwarts robe she’d put on him.
“Hello,” Draco said, “Hogwarts, too?” As far as greetings went, it was a bit obvious, and he was briefly worried the boy would judge him for it.
But all the boy said was, “Yes.”
“My father’s next door buying my books and Mother’s up the street looking at wands,” Draco continued, trying to open a line of conversation. “Then I’m going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don’t see why First Years can’t have their own. I think I’ll bully Father into getting me one, and I’ll smuggle it in somehow.”
He paused for the boy to say something about where his parents were or his opinions on the unjust prohibition of brooms for First Years, or even just make a comment on his favourite brand of broom. But the boy just looked at him. Maybe he was a bit dim. But Draco could work with that. He’d had years of practice training Vince and Greg into halfway decent companions.
“Have you got your own broom?” Draco asked when it became clear the boy wouldn’t say anything.
“No,” the boy said.
“Play Quidditch at all?” Draco tried. Maybe he could impress the boy by inviting him to the Manor and lending him a broom so they could play together.
“No,” the boy said again.
“I do—Father says it’s a crime if I’m not picked to play for my House, and I must say, I agree,” Draco said. “Know what House you’ll be in yet?”
“No,” the boy said. It was beginning to feel like the only word he knew.
“Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they,” Draco allowed, trying to be considerate of his new friend, “but I know I’ll be in Slytherin, all our family have been—imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”
“Mmm,” the boy said. It could have been agreement or a brush-off. But who would brush off someone with as obviously good breeding as Draco? Only, it didn’t leave much room for continuing the conversation.
Just then, salvation came in the form of a giant man holding ice creams and grinning like an idiot. Draco’s new friend might not be a sparkling conversationalist, but they could still laugh at oddballs on the street together. That always worked on Vince and Greg when they were unable to string more than two words together.
“I say, look at that man!” Draco said and nodded at the giant in the window.
“That’s Hagrid,” the boy said, sounding pleased. “He works at Hogwarts.”
“Oh,” Draco said. It unbalanced him a little that this was what had prompted more than one word out of his new friend. Still, it was best to give him a chance to talk about something he was knowledgeable about. He could be guided to better things later. “I’ve heard of him. He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he?”
“He’s the gamekeeper,” the boy said.
“Yes, exactly,” Draco agreed. “I heard he’s a sort of savage—lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now, and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed.”
“I think he’s brilliant,” the boy said coldly.
Oh, dear. The boy wasn’t just odd and a little dim. There was something wrong with him. Why else would he defend a freakish half-breed who couldn’t even do magic properly?
“Do you?” Draco asked, trying to indicate with his tone why the boy shouldn’t think that. Then a horrible thought occurred to him. What if the boy was actually a mudblood? And Draco had been talking to him! He could be trying to steal Draco’s magic or give him some kind of horrible Muggle disease. “Why is he with you? Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead,” the boy said.
“Oh, sorry,” Draco said. An orphan. Well, that showed an appalling lack of breeding on its own. What self-respecting parents would die and leave their child to be raised by strangers and half-breeds? Draco’s parents certainly wouldn’t. Still, he had to be sure it wasn’t worse than just that. “But they were our kind, weren’t they?”
“They were a witch and wizard, if that’s what you mean.”
Draco relaxed. Just an uncultured orphan, then. That could be fixed. Well, the culture, at least. Not so much the parents. “I really don’t think they should let the other sort in, do you?” he said. “They’re just not the same, they’ve never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families. What’s your surname, anyway?”
Before the boy could answer, Madam Malkin said, “That’s you done, my dear.”
The boy hopped off his stool and headed for the door.
“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,” Draco said.
The boy left without so much as a goodbye. Rude.
And so Draco’s first attempt at making a friend on his own had been a dismal failure. It stung, but less so once Draco had convinced himself he didn’t want a stupid orphan who was probably a half-blood anyway for a friend. Half-bloods could really go either way with being worthy friends, after all, and it was culture that decided it. That boy was a lost cause.
Besides, Draco had set his sights on a much more impressive first Hogwarts friend. He was going to befriend the Harry Potter. He’d overheard the adults’ various debates over whether Harry Potter’s defeat of the Dark Lord meant he was a powerful Light wizard or a powerful Dark one. As far as Draco was concerned, the key word was powerful, and that wasn’t up for debate. Whichever way Harry Potter ultimately went, if Draco was at his right hand, it would benefit the Malfoy family.
Grubby little orphans in Madam Malkin’s didn’t matter when Harry Potter was on offer.
It took some convincing to get Vince and Greg to go along with it, though. Frustratingly.
“I dunno,” Vince said. “My dad says Harry Potter’s the enemy.”
“Yes, well, your father hasn’t got two brain cells to rub together,” Draco snapped impatiently. “It’s a wonder he got anywhere with anything.”
This was meant to be an oblique reference to Crabbe Sr’s unlikely admittance into such an elite group as the Death Eaters, as well as his avoidance of Azkaban—Father said he was too stupid to be suspected—but it seemed to go over Vince’s head.
“What I mean is,” Draco tried again, reaching for patience he simply did not have, “you have a chance to do better than him.”
Vince waffled, looked to Greg. Greg shrugged because he never had much of an opinion on anything. And just like that, the discussion ended with Vince and Greg doing what Draco wanted. Which is what would have happened, only much faster, if they’d just agreed with him in the first place.
Rumour was already flying before the Hogwarts Express even left the station on the first of September. Harry Potter was indeed aboard—people had seen him. Draco wanted to take off immediately in search of him, but Vince and Greg had already started on their travel snacks and there would be no moving them. Draco simply didn’t have the upper body strength. He did make sure they knew how put out he was over this, but it made no difference.
When the word came that Harry Potter was only one carriage back, Vince and Greg finally recognised that Draco was about thirty seconds from a strop that would make their entire first week at Hogwarts utterly miserable. They got off their lazy arses to follow him in search of the Boy Who Lived.
Draco led Vince and Greg into the compartment containing the Harry Potter. There was a lanky, shabby boy with red hair, whose appearance just screamed Weasley, and…the odd orphan boy from Madam Malkin’s. He… He couldn’t be Harry Potter. Could he?
“Is it true?” Draco asked. “They’re saying all down the train that Harry Potter’s in this compartment. So it’s you, is it?”
“Yes,” the boy—Harry Potter—said. But he wasn’t looking at Draco. He was looking behind Draco. At Vince and Greg.
“Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle,” Draco said carelessly, trying to emphasise how little Harry Potter should care about them. He was the one who would make the useful friend; they were just muscle. “And my name’s Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.”
The ginger coughed to badly cover a laugh. Draco looked him over with disdain. The idea that he was in any kind of position to pass judgement, let alone to find Draco wanting, might have approached being funny if Draco wasn’t in the process of wooing the most important wizard of their generation. Either way, the insult would not, could not stand.
“Think my name’s funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford.”
He turned back to Harry Potter. “You’ll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there.”
He hoped he’d got it right. Affable, discerning, useful. The right kind of friend to have, especially to someone who had spent far too long away from proper society—as evidenced by the fact that he deigned to share a compartment with a Weasley when he could have had a seat with the cream of the Wizarding community.
Draco’s heart thudded in his chest as he held out his hand to shake, but Potter didn’t take it.
“I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks,” he said coolly.
The delicate hope Draco had been nurturing curdled into something cold and ugly. Potter didn’t want to be his friend? Fine. Draco could take the hint; he wasn’t some unwashed bumpkin. Potter preferred the company of half-breeds and blood traitors? That was his choice, and Draco would treat him accordingly. Draco had reached out in friendship and been cruelly rebuffed. Potter would regret that—Draco would make sure of it.
“I’d be careful if I were you, Potter,” he said slowly, choosing each barb so that it would be sure to land. “Unless you’re a bit politer, you’ll go the same way as your parents. They didn’t know what was good for them, either. You hang around with riffraff like the Weasleys and that Hagrid, and it’ll rub off on you.”
Both Potter and Weasley stood up.
“Say that again,” Weasley said, his face as red as his hair.
“Oh, you’re going to fight us, are you?” Draco sneered, even as his blood sang at the prospect of a fight. He wanted to draw blood to assuage his wounded pride.
“Unless you get out now,” Potter said.
“But we don’t feel like leaving, do we, boys? We’ve eaten all our food, and you still seem to have some.” Just a little more, just a little more.
Greg took Draco’s cue and reached for the Chocolate Frogs next to Weasley. Weasley lunged, the brawl begun—then everything went wrong.
Greg yelled out in agony as a rat—of course Weasley would have a rat—bit his finger down to the bone. Greg flailed, trying to dislodge the creature. Draco ducked behind Vince, who was retreating himself, to get out of the way.
That was when Draco heard the footsteps outside the compartment. A prefect? Maybe. Best not to risk it. Getting in trouble before the term—his first term—even started was not a good look. Draco would get lectures on proper comportment for a Malfoy from Father. Uncle Sev—Professor Snape might even lecture Draco about making him look bad. Not worth it.
As soon as Greg managed to fling the rodent at the window, Draco tugged on his and Vince’s sleeves to get their attention so they could all slip out together before whoever was coming showed up.
Draco tried not to think of how long-standing the dream that had just been shattered was as they made their way back to their compartment.