Chapter Text
Until the moment the door of Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions swings open the pages turned as you know.
“Hogwards, dear?” Madam Malkin said when Harry started to speak. “Got the lot here, have a young lady being fitted up right now, in fact.”
In the back of the shop, a girl with a pale, sharp face was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up her long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Harry on a stool next to her, slipped a long robe over his head, and began to pin it to the right length.
“Hello,” the girl said, “Hogwarts, too?”
“Yes,” Harry said.
“My Father’s next door buying my books and Mother’s up the street looking at wands,” said the girl. She had a bored drawling voice. “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 plead Father into getting one and I’ll get it smuggled in somehow.”
Harry was strongly reminded of Dudley despite the vast physical difference.
“Have you got your own broom?” The girl went on.
“No,” Harry said.
“Play Quidditch at all?”
“No,” Harry said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch was.
“I do, Father says it’s a crime if I’m not picked to play for my House, and I must say, I agree. KNow what House you’ll be in yet?”
“No,” Harry said, feeling more stupid by the minute and rather not liking it.
“Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I’ll be in Slytherin, all our family have been - imagine being in Hufflepuff, think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”
“Mmm,” Harry said, wishing he could say something a bit more interesting suddenly.
“I say, look at that man?” The girl said suddenly, nodding toward the front window. Hagrid was standing there, grinning at Harry and pointing at two large ice creams to show he couldn’t come in.
“That’s Hagrid,” Harry said, pleased and preening to know something and inform the girl. “He works at Hogwarts.”
“Oh,” the girl said, “I’ve heard of him. He’s sort of a servant, isn’t he?”
“He’s the gamekeeper,” Harry said. He was starting to sour on the girl.
“Yes, exactly. I heard he's a sort of savage - lives in a hit 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,” Harry said with a growing coldness.
“Do you?” The girl said with sneer, like Harry stepped in something and didn’t bother scraping it off. “Why is he with you? Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead,” Harry clipped. He didn’t really feel like getting into it with her, if he’s truly so famous he didn’t want her to learn it just now.
“Oh, sorry,” the girl said, the sneer gone but her tone wasn’t particularly sorry at all. “But they were our kind, weren’t they?”
“They were a witch and wizard, if that’s what you mean.”
“I really don’t think they should let the other sort in, do you?” The girl said, a little hollow, like when Harry says something to keep the Dursleys from getting too angry with him. “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?”
But before Harry could answer, Madam Malkin said, “That’s you done, my dear,” and Harry, not sorry and completely grateful for the reason to stop talking, hopped down from the footstool.
“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,” the girl drawled out.
Harry was rather quiet as he ate the ice cream Hagrid had bought him, chocolate and raspberry with chopped nuts.
“What’s up?” Hagrid asked.
“Nothing,” Harry mumbled. They stopped to buy parchment and quills. Harry cheered up a little when he found a bottle of ink that changed color as you wrote. When they had left the shop, he asked, “Hagrid, what’s Quidditch?”
“Blimey, Harry, I keep forgettin’ how little yeh know - not knowin’ about Quidditch!”
“Don’t make me feel worse,” Harry groaned. He told Hagrid about the girl in Madam Malkin’s.
“- And she said people from Muggle families shouldn’t even be allowed in -”
“Yer not from a muggle family. If she’d know who yeh were - she’s grown up knowin’ yer name if her parents are wizardin’ folk. You saw everyone in the Leaky Cauldron was like when they saw yeh. Anyway, what does she know about it, some o’ the best I ever saw were the only ones with magic in ‘em in a long line o’ Muggles - look at yer mum! Look at what she had fer a sister!”
“So what is Quidditch?” Harry asked to change the subject.
“It’s our sport. Wizard sport. It’s like - like soccer in the Muggle world - everyone follows Quidditch - played up in the air on broomsticks and there's four balls - sorta hard ter explain the rules.”
“And what are Slytherin and Hifflepuff?”
“School Houses. There’s four. Everyone says Hufflepuff are a lot o’ duffers, but -”
“I bet I’m in Hufflepuff,” Harry mumbled gloomily.
“Beter Hufflepuff than Slytherin,” Hagrid grumbled darkly. “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one.”
“Vol-, sorry - You-Know-Who was at Hogwarts?”
“Years an’ years ago,” Hagrid said.
The pages turn once more as you know they have. Until the door to the train compartment opens.
A girl and two boys entered, and Harry immediately recognized the girl at once: she was the girl from Madam Malkin’s robe shop. She was looking at Harrys with a lot more interest than she’d shown back in Diagon Alley.
“Is it true?” She asked. “They’re saying all down the train that Harry Potter’s in this compartment. So it’s you, is it?”
“Yes,” Harry said. He was looking between the two boys. Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean. Standing on either side of her like a set of bodyguards.
“Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle,” she said and waved between them carelessly, answering the implied question and dismissing them like the help in the same breath. Then with a hand on her chest, puffed and proud, “and my name’s Malfoy, Dracaena Malfoy.”
Ron gave a small cough, which Harry also did to cover laughing or snickering at Dudley and the Dursleys when they did something he found funny.
“Think my name’s funny, do you?” That sneer from Madam Malkin’s Robe Shop returned as she looked sideways at Ron. “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.”
The sneer dropped as she looked back to Harry. “You’ll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Pottah. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there.”
She held out her hand to shake Harry’s. As slightly tempting as it was, Harry didn’t take it.
He met her eyes and said coolly, “I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks.”
Dracaena Malfoy kept her face set neutral, but the crimson creeping up her neck and growing on her ears betrayed her appearance.
“I’d be careful if I were you, Pottah,” she said slowly. “Unless you’re a bit politer you’ll go the same way as your patents. 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.”
Harry was up and square with her the moment the words left her lips. He’d never hit a girl, but she didn’t know that, maybe.
“Say that again,” Ron said from behind Harry.
“Oh, you’re going to fight us, are you?” She sneered, but she looked a little smaller as she did.
“Unless you get out now,” Harry said with more bravery than he felt. Crabbe and Goyle were bigger, much bigger, than him and Ron. Still not as big as Dudley so maybe he could actually do something before he was walloped too badly.
With a slight step back and between her two oafs she said, “but we don’t feel like leaving, do we, boys? We’ve eaten all our food and you still seem to have some.”
As if on cue Goyle reached toward the Chocolate Frogs next to Ron, Ron leapt forward, but before he’d so much as touched Goyle, Goyle let out a horrible yell.
Scabbers the Rat was hanging off his finger, sharp little teeth sunk deep into Goyle’s knuckle, Crabbe and Malfoy backed away as Goyle swung Scabbers round and round, howling, and when Scabbers finally flew off and kit the window, all three of them disappeared at once. Perhaps they thought there were more rats lurking among the sweets, or perhaps they’d heard footsteps, because a second later, Hermione Granger had come in.
“What has been going on?” She asked, looking at the sweets all over the floor and Ron picking up Scabbers by his tail.
“I think he’s been knocked out,” Ron said to Harry. He looked closer at Scabbers. “No, I don’t believe it, He’s gone back to sleep.”
And so he had, shockingly.
“You’ve met Malfoy before?”
Harry explained about their meeting in Diagon Alley.
“I’ve heard of her family,” Ron said darkly. “They 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 Malfoy’s father didn’t need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side.” He turned to Hermione, “Can we help you with something?”
“You’d better hurry up and put your robes on, I’ve just been up to the front to ask the conductor, and he says we’re nearly there. You haven’t been fighting, have you? You’ll be in trouble before we even get there!”
Once more the pages return to what you know.