Chapter Text
Drakaina Malfoy–or just Draka to her friends–stumbled out of the girl's fitting room, a crowd of her peers forcing her out of the main thoroughfare. Immediately, the smell, sound, and heat of the crowd assaulted her, forcing her even more to the periphery as she could hear her thoughts being drowned out. She scanned the room for her parents, finding herself disappointed, and settled on magnetizing herself to the nearest wall and picking a bench to sit on. She couldn't exactly step outside into the teeming crowds of witches and wizards, especially with the pre-Hogwarts rush; it'd only be worse than the store, and Madame Malkin would be out in a moment.
The only person her own age of note was an oddly dressed, scruffy-looking boy who was busy fiddling with his glasses as he looked out through the front windows and then back into the store. She immediately dismissed him as some variation of Muggle, mudblood, or half-blood, not knowing which was worse or more accurate, but Drakaina's gaze followed his own, hoping her father or mother would appear in the window to save her from the awkwardness. Maybe a well-placed sneer would get him to step away?
Unfortunately, she and the short, scruffy boy glanced back at the crowd at the next moment, and their eyes met.
A moment passed, and she gestured to him with a hand. "Hogwarts, too?" Not asking a question would be even more awkward; where were Crabbe, Goyle, or Pansy when you needed them? No doubt stuffing their faces with fawning over some boy, respectively.
"Yes," he said, seemingly oblivious as he extended a hand, "My name's Harry."
Despite his ancestry, Draka immediately pitied him. It was a Muggle name, of course, but anyone named like that in this year when thee Harry Potter was going to be attending was terribly unlucky. Even worse was the fact that now she had to introduce herself. "Drakaina." She didn't take his hand, doing her best to hold her head high despite the circumstance.
Harry continued to hold his hand out, making himself feel more stupid, and her more awkward by the minute.
Darkania searched for something to say. He looked like the sort who would enjoy Quidditch, but she didn't care much for the sport; being some sort of mudblood, he wouldn't know what that is. The only reason she was thinking of talking to him was to escape the crowd and the growing awkwardness.
Then, saving her, a giant figure appeared in the window, blocking out the sun and casting a long shadow into the store.
"I say, look at that man!" Her eyes went wide. Even with his arms at his side, the figure in question was as nearly wide as she was tall and at least twice that for the height. It was a giant, a giant, here? She was aghast! What was the world coming to if her father heard of this then–
"That's Hagrid. He works at Hogwarts."
She nodded absentmindedly; that was Dumbledore's pet savage, the half-giant, wasn't he? Still, he was big, seeming as big as a real giant to her as he loomed tall, like some sort of bear or a granite obelisk. Her father said that he was an oaf, only slightly smarter than a troll, who was expelled from Hogwarts for assaulting another student. A monster who would drink himself into a stupor, try to do magic, and then end up setting everything on fire. That Hagrid? In that moment, her fear superseded her bias against Harry's shabby appearance.
Harry didn't seem to notice her horror, continuing on: "He's brilliant."
"I'm sorry," Draka said, more surprised, confused, and worried, "He's with you? Where are your parents?" Even Muggle parents would have come with their child.
The boy seemed to wilt, although it was so faint Draka thought she might have been imagining it. "They're dead," he said in a low tone, telling her that he didn't care to talk more about it.
That explained everything, she thought: the shabby manner of dress; this boy wasn't some sort of mudblood, surely! He was one of them, and merely had the misfortune of having that old oaf Dumbledore set his pet savage to fetch him. "Oh, sorry again. " She extended her hand. "They were our kind, weren't they?"
He shook her hand lightly, his brows knitting together. "They were a witch and wizard, if that's what you mean."
Before she could respond, another, gruff, louder voice interrupted them:
"Harry!"
She snapped too, freezing as she saw the savage tapping on the window with one finger. His voice was so loud that nearly everyone else had stopped moving too, looking at the monster in the window. Before she could do or say anything else to the boy, he was gone, leaving her alone on the bench as he trotted out of the store.
Seeing the poor boy shuffled off by the half-giant savage, an ice cream cone briskly thrust into his hand, Drakaina couldn't help but pity the poor boy. A pure-blooded orphan being chased around by a monster like that. Her father would hear of this; surely he would figure this out. There were twenty-eight true pure-blood families, and so finding an orphan from among their number would be easy. Just what was Dumbledore doing?
The first thing she had done when entering the train was don her robes, donning them like a shield. It was hardly a dress, or a proper cape as her father wore, but it improved her mood substantially. She never liked dealing with crowds and avoided them when she could; now she'd have to deal with crowds every day until summer, crowds full of shabby people, mudbloods, and whatever monsters Dumbledore hired.
Then she passed the time, ignoring Pansy across from her as she inspected the landscape outside as if it would reveal a new truth about the universe. Invariably her mind wandered back to that poor boy she had met earlier, and that was when the familiar and unwelcome visages of Crabbe and Goyle crashed through her cabin door, practically talking over themselves as they explained that Harry Potter himself was on the train.
Immediately the two pieces of information pieced themself together in her head, and she was off with the two trolls in tow, hoping that the Harry she had met earlier had not been thee Harry Potter. Crabbe and Goyle fell behind her, relaying the details of what they had heard.
She arrived at their destination in a searching halt, and slammed open the door, to her horror revealing the boy whom she had talked to earlier, and to her horror, a too-tall Weasley sitting right beside him with a rat in his arms. About the only things worse she could think of than the sight before her were the Dark Lord himself, and the same scene but with the infamously shabby Crabbe and Goyle in the Weasley's place. Either way, her eyes magnetized to Harry. "Is it true?"
"Is what–?"
"That you're Harry Potter! Thee Harry Potter. They're saying it all up and down the train that this is Harry Potter's compartment." She had to stop herself from shouting, angry at him and herself. They had introduced themselves to each other, and she had somehow missed it the first time.
"Yes." His voice trailed off, confused, almost making it sound like a question as his eyes went to the two heavy-set, human-sized ogres behind her.
The Weasley coughed, holding in a laugh or maybe sniggering. She looked at him, feeling the blood rush to her face. The Weasleys may be one of the twenty-eight pure-blooded families, but among them none were shabbier. But she refused to rise to his snub; her father had told them all about the Weasleys, but in this moment she remembered her mother's advice. A pure-blood woman did not throw fits; she did not lose her temper; she was proper always and served as a shining example of decorum and decency in a world gone mad. Here he was, the Boy Who Lived, himself. The same boy who lived that was being menaced by Dumbledore's pet.
Drakaina decided here and now that she would be the one to save the boy who lived from his own shabbiness.
She felt the two goons behind her take a breath, stinking up the cabin already, and raised her hand. "Crabbe, Goyle. I'm staying here now, tell Pansy." She already knew that the staff would get her bags, having absorbed every bit of information she could get about Hogwarts.
"But–"
"Hey!"
Before any one of the three shabby pure-bloods could finish their sentence, Draka had entered the cabin and shut the door behind her, almost slamming it.
"Now, proper introductions." She extended her hand towards Harry. "I am Drakania Malfoy, but you can call me Draka. Pleased to meet you."
"Listen here, Potter, some wizarding families are much better than others. You don't want to go around making friends with the wrong sort and making yourself look shabby." He blinked owlishly, and Draka huffed, "I'm doing you a service here." She thrust her hand forward again, expecting him to take it.
Harry, who was just about tired of everyone telling him how famous he was and of odd girls shoving their way into his cabin and ordering him about, replied coolly. "I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks." In his mind, the boy sitting next to him seemed alright but the curly-haired girl from earlier, and especially the rich-looking one, were being awfully rude.
Blood rushed to her face, blood and white-hot rage. How dare he! She seethed, pressing air between her teeth before she remembered how unladylike that was and flushing in embarrassment as well. "I'd be careful if I were you, Potter; there are a lot less forgiving people than me, and unless you're a bit politer you'll end up making everyone your enemy." Really, how could he be so blind, she thought.
"The right sort, like your family?" The sarcasm was thick like syrup.
"Yes." Draka refused to rise to the jab, crossing her arms. She knew her worth and knew the worth of her family; she didn't need to prove it to an idiot like him.
Harry's brow creased, confusion evident. "You know each other."
"Her family were some of the first to come back to our side after You-know-who disappeared. Said they'd been bewitched. My dad doesn't believe it. He says her father didn't need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side."
Across from them, Draka paled and flushed. The Dark Lord; she had never heard her parents speak of him openly, but the quaking reverence her mother showed whenever the topic came up, and the tightness in her father's face were evident. Worship and fear, apprehension. She didn't know the truth of it, but she did hold some vague sense of foreboding towards the indomitable figure. The very same figure the boy in front of her had supposedly felled.
A moment later, a shabby-looking girl whose appearance screamed mudblood as a mandrake cried, opened the door. Her face was a pale white, framed by curly orange locks that spilled out over the sides of her face. Draka disliked her on principle.
Simultaneously, Draka and the Weasley turned to their new guest, asking her briskly, "Can we help you with anything?"
The girl blinked, confused for a moment as Draka and the Weasley went to scowl at each other before speaking. "You'd better hurry up and put on your robes; I've just been upfront to ask the conductor, and he says we're nearly there." The girl didn't linger a moment longer, closing the door behind her,
"I'll be waiting outside," Draka said, feeling more than a little foolish for having to leave so soon after barging in.
Outside, she waited, doing her best to stand tall and unbothered as the five-minute mark was announced, hearing the rustling of robes inside as the two boys stuffed their pockets full of sweets. She cursed herself; she had forgotten to get any chocolate. The train began to slow, gradually at first, before it jolted forward and stopped completely, almost sending her to the floor.
Immediately, another throng, a crowd of people, melted out of the walls and through the doors, forcing Draka to her feet and doing their level best to separate her from Harry and his Weasley companion. She was able to keep up with them as they all filled out onto a tiny, dingy platform, the cold air only beaten back by the heat of so many tightly packed bodies. Draka despised it almost as much as the terrifying figure who was at the platform's head.
There, Dumbledore's pet monster Hagrid screamed at them in an accent so thick she swore it was either another language, or he was casting a spell. Either way, she was just behind Harry at the head of the group as they worked their way, following the half-giant's lantern light as they crept down slippery stairs on a too-narrow path flanked by an army of trees on either side in the pitch black.
It continued down until they reached a set of docks at the shore of the great lake, a seemingly endless parade of dingy boats lined up in the darkness, set out like a feast before the lumbering mountain, upon which the towering Hogwarts sat like a king.
The half-giant yelled some more, pointing to the row of boats, and shouted again. Reluctantly, Draka rushed ahead, cutting off the heavy-set boy whose appearance screamed Hufflepuff and claiming a boat alongside the mudblood girl, Harry, and the Weasley. There weren't any words said between them in the darkness, only the paddling of oars as they pushed themselves across the lake. A sheer cliff face greeted them on the other side, and Draka narrowly averted a crash with a tangle of ivy that doubtless would have ruined the long blonde hair she inherited from her father. But finally, they passed into the mouth of a cave, and into the subterranean harbor that led up into Hogwarts above.
There, the mudblood girl and the others seemed surprised as Hagrid pulled a toad out of nowhere, handing the rowdy pet to a heavy-set boy she didn't doubt was a, or rather, thee Longbottom. She had heard what happened to his parents and had to steel her heart as she rolled her eyes and scoffed. Toads, how out of fashion. She thought, carefully avoiding the subject of the Dark Lord in the confines of her mind.
She was snapped back to reality as the great lumbering beast of a 'Hagrid' presented them to Professor Mcgonngal, the emerald green witch, observing them coolly before opening the great set of stone doors that welcomed them to Hogwarts. Stone on stone, the hallway was lit by torches on either side, looking more like a dungeon than a school as they were ushered up into the belly of the beast and into an empty chamber off to the side, before being ushered into and down the main hall.
On either side, they were flanked by the student body, watching quietly as they approached the large hall where the faculty sat from left to right, inspecting the throng of first years. The professor turned on her heel, facing them with utmost seriousness. "Welcome to Hogwarts–" she began regaling them with the four houses, information Draka already knew and which doubtless most everyone here also already knew.
Perhaps if she had taken Harry from the giant in Diagon Alley, she and her father would have been able to enlighten him to the true nature of the wizarding world as well, before the ingrates got to him; although that was just a convenient fantasy borne of her pride.
When she was done, Darka and the three others had found themselves waiting by a wall.
"So," Harry started, "How exactly do they sort us into houses?"
The orange-haired Weasel spoke first. "Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking."
Draka rolled her eyes. "Obviously not. My father said you can just tell the hat where to put you, so I better see you in–"
Both Harry and the mudblood girl looked confused. "A hat–?"
Before the two could finish their question, a chorus of gasps cut them off as about twenty ghosts emerged from the back wall. A storm of pearly-white and slightly transparent specters argued among each other, led by a nearly headless man and a fat friar that Draka eyeballed to be around the size of four of herself. He called out to the students, but not a moment passed before Professor McGonagall appeared, a flash of black shooting out from above before emerald green sprouted from nowhere, and the witch dismissed the ghosts with a swish of her wand.
Draka vaguely remembered the woman was an Animagus and dismissed the show. But beside her, the other three, most notably Harry, seemed star-struck. Not only at the witch, but at everything, the food, the ceiling, the walls, as if all of it was made of precious metals. Draka couldn't imagine what nonsense Dumbledore had thrust him into.
It was then the mudblood girl pointed to the ceiling. "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts: A History."
"Obviously." Draka was already tired of the little mudblood girl and her ability to point out the obvious.
The mudblood girl eyes her, half-surprised, half-offended.
"We didn't invite her," The Weasely explained.
Before Draka could rise to the snub. McGonagall demanded their attention, firmly placing a four-legged stool in front of the first years with a thump, before depositing a ratty, ugly, ragged thing of a hat. Draka sneered reflexively at it, the sporting hat looked just like it had been described to it. In any other situation, she wouldn't be caught dead wearing something so shabby.
Then, that hat began to sing. Draka resisted the urge to cover the thing to protect herself from its infernal racket, but the presence of McGonagall stopped her as the hat explained itself in verse, listing out the houses as if it was splendid new information. Draka followed along with everyone else as they clapped; she already knew where she was going, and as she leaned forward to whisper in Harry's ear, hoped she knew where he would be: "Tell the hat you want to be in Slytherin. That's the secret."
Slytherin, the house of Merlin, the most prestigious house. He'd have to be truly ungrateful to not accept her help. Of course she hadn't yet to realize she never made an argument for Slytherin, instead assuming he would follow along.
The calling of names started at once, giving none of them the chance to speak further. One by one, students were sorted into Unimpressive Hufflepuff, Bookish Ravenclaw, idiot Gryffindor, all greeted by cheers and polite clapping while the Proud Slytherins stood firm against the jeers the other houses sent their way. Finally then, the mudblood girl–apparently a Granger, Hermione–followed by herself.
Draka strutted forward, where she glanced back at Potter and mouthed: 'See you in Slytherin.' There she hadn't even sat down for a moment when the hat lightly brushed against her head and yelled:
"SLYTHERIN!"
Then she was able to rejoin her usual trio of Crabbe, Goyle, and Privaiti. She told them of everything that had transpired in their absence as another unimpressive array of students went up to the front, with only an occasional Slytherin gem snaking through. Finally, 'Potter, Harry' was called out.
A flurry of speculation rang out, silenced by the boy as he stepped forward. Their eyes met, and she mouthed the words again: she'd see him in Slytherin. The boy looked back to the hat, and a moment later the too-big hat had engulfed his head. The entire room fell into silence, each waiting to see which house he would join; then, after another eternity, the hat jumped up and yelled:
"GRYFFINDOR!"