Chapter Text
Harry remembered when they first met as they started in Hogwarts together in September 1991. Ivory blond hair. Haughty eyes. Fine aristocratic features. It was only the first night of Hogwarts and already she was acting like she owned the school. There she was with her cronies as she proclaimed: “It’s true then. I heard that the Boy Who Lived has come to Hogwarts this year.”
And of course, all eyes turned towards him. The center of attention. He hated her immediately. Draco Malfoy, strutting about the place putting on airs and saying how better she was than Muggles and Muggle-lovers and that she would be a better friend to him than the company he kept. Not to mention the way she cowed Ron, uttering his family name like it was some kind of slur.
So when she offered Harry her hand and smirked like she knew that he would take it because it was the right thing for him to do, he bristled and told her that he could figure out who he wanted as a friend on his own and didn’t need her telling him who that might be.
That’s when her face twisted and he knew he should have found another, more polite way to turn her down.
He’s barely been at the school for an hour and already he’s made an enemy for life.
She remembered when she first saw him. The rumors had been whispered about on the train, but no one knew what the Chosen One looked like.
“Hey, isn’t that him?” Goyle asked in a whisper as they filed up the school stairs.
Malfoy craned her head up. Further head in the first-years was a boy with a mop of messy hair and thin glasses that gave him a bookish look. He turned to say something to the ginger next to him and she saw it just under the fringe. That famous scar.
Well, well, well, she thought as McGonagall went into her spiel on what the new students were to expect up ahead in the Great Hall, and the Houses and the Sorting Hat that would decide which House each student belonged to. The Boy Who Lived. Not much to look at, but a celebrity still was a celebrity. She was surprised he hadn’t announced himself earlier. She would if she were in his loafers. He was after all the one person out there in the Wizarding World who could say that they survived an encounter with He Who Should Not Be Named. No one else on this green earth could say that, not even the likes of Dumbledore himself.
The boy scratched the back of his head. Malfoy smirked. So dopey looking. He must have no idea what he’s gotten himself into. He must have questions, so many questions: what the Sorting Ceremony involved, which House was the best one, what the first week like, how to navigate the one hundred and forty-two changing staircases in Hogwarts.
Who to curry favor with and who to avoid like the lepers they were.
Fortunately, Malfoy had all the answers.
McGonagall left to check ahead that the Great Hall was ready for them to enter and take their seats. Malfoy watched as the flock of first-years meandered about before picking her moment and raising her voice. “It’s true then. I heard that the Boy Who Lived has come to Hogwarts this year.”
It’s true what they say that there was no wrath than a woman scorned.
The first few weeks were horrible. Every time Harry met her eye, Malfoy would sneer at him. Amongst her fellow Slytherins, she was all pride and sweetness. For him, she had nothing but bile. “I don’t know, sir,” Malfoy echoed in a mock imitation of Harry's voice after their first Potions class with Snape, where the head of Slytherin had asked Harry question after question, none of which he had been able to answer. “I don’t know, sir. Really, Potter, you are so inept, you know that? Arguing with a teacher too.” She tutted and shook her head in exaggerated horror.
“Shut up Malfoy,” Ron snapped as Harry's face burned.
Malfoy ignored the ginger. “Not off to a good start,” she added to Potter. “You'd best hit the textbooks tonight if you want to catch up, though I doubt you’d even last the month at the rate you’re doing. Perhaps a Muggle school would be a better fit for you?”
Harry grimaced as the blonde left to join her friends in the hall. Hermione and Ron told him not to bother with her. “She’s just still mad that you didn’t join her in Slytherin,” Ron told him. “She’s as rotten as her family. Some say that they’re in cahoots with—well—you know—but of course the Ministry’s never been able to prove it. Otherwise they’d have been shipped off to Azkaban years ago.”
“It’s alright,” Hermione said soothingly. “We’ll try to stay on Snape’s good side from now on.”
“I doubt he even has a good side,” Ron joked, and Hermione rolled her eyes while Harry smiled.
“If I see a single broom in the air,” Madam Hooch warned. “The one riding it will find themselves out of Hogwarts before they can even say Quidditch.”
Malfoy sniggered as the broom instructor took a groaning Neville Longbottom away to sort out his broken wrist. It was their first flying lesson, and Malfoy was in high spirits after watching the bumbling Gryffindor bounce off the castle walls before taking a tumble all the way down. “Did you see that toad’s face?” she asked as she hefted his Remembrall – a magical glass ball that filled with a hazy red vapor if there was something their owner forgotten. “Maybe if he had given this a squeeze,” she jeered. “He would have remembered to grab onto something on the way down.”
A wave of laughter came from the other classmates, not just Slytherins but a few from the other houses as well.
Then came Harry’s voice from behind her, low and angry. “Give it here, Malfoy,” he snapped.
Malfory froze at the sharp tone. Then she turned and smiled at his glare. “No,” she declared airily. “I don’t think I will actually.” His eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth, and that’s when an idea came to her. “Matter of fact,” she continued loudly, cutting him off. “I think I’ll hold onto it for Longbottom. Maybe even put it somewhere safe for him.”
Then, without breaking eye contact with Potter, she went up on her broom and took to the air. “Malfoy,” Potter said warningly.
“How about the roof?” Malfoy asked. “That seems as good a place as any.” She rose even higher. She watched as the gaggle of students looked up at her. She wasn’t afraid. Even if Madam Hooch caught her, they’d never kick her out of Hogwarts. Not if her father had anything to say about it. She doubted anyone could say the same for Potter. “What’s the matter?” Malfoy called out to him below. “You started out so fearlessly. Afraid Madam will send you packing to that Muggle family of yours?”
The barb hit home. She watched as Potter lowered his broom to mount it. That Muggle classmate of his – Hermione – leaned over to tell him to reconsider, but Harry didn’t listen, and Malfoy’s glee doubled as she watched him take to the air.
“If you don’t hand that back to me,” Harry warned as he came to her level. “I’ll knock you off your broom.”
Malfoy smirked. “Are you threatening me, Potter?”
“I’m serious.”
“I don’t think you can,” she asked cheekily as she threw the Remebrall up in the air and caught it. “You wouldn’t do that to a girl, would you?”
Then her eyes widened as Potter lunged to grab the haft of her broomstick. With her knees, she immediately nudged hers to the right, and he passed by her. Turning around, Malfoy watched as the Gryffindor did a turnabout in mid-air.
Even before she enrolled in Hogwarts, Malfoy had learned to fly on a broom. She’d received private tuition, she’d practiced on the grounds of her home, and she had the natural talent of course. But for what should have been his first time, the Chosen One was doing better than expected.
Perhaps a little too well.
Malfoy flew off. She heard Potter give chase. Glancing behind her, she watched as he closed in. “You want it so bad?” she called out. “Fetch!”
Then she hurled the Remembrall far out into the field, and a moment later she felt a gush of air as Potter rushed past her.
If she’d known that what she’d done would end up with Potter catching it right outside McGonagall’s office and the Head of Gryffindor dragging him to their house’s Qudditich team captain to be appointed as their Seeker, Malfoy would have held onto that stupid thing until Hooch caught them both.
Malfoy curled her lip as she watched him return to the earth with the Remembrall in one hand and his broom in the other, grinning like an idiot. Her chest filled with a strange emotion as all the other students rush him as one to hug and applaud him for that insane catch he’d done, giddy like he’d done something heroic.
It should be me down there. I’m the one with the talent and the blood. I’m the one that can fly. I’m the one he should be focusing on, not that rabble down there.
It’s not fair.
She returned to the earth, and just in time as McGonagall came out onto the school grounds. She smirked as she called out his name, confident that he was in huge trouble now. And as the professor led Harry away, and when Madam Hooch returned and resumed the lesson which they completed without Harry returning, Malfoy remembered thinking fiercely to herself that today was the last time she’d have to see that stupid boy at Hogwarts ever again.
But of course, she was wrong.
It’s November and Harry’s in his first Quidditch game, Slytherin versus Gryffindor. Malfoy’s house was leading, Gryffindor’s team was down two members with Oliver Wood and Angelina Johnson knocked out, and things were not looking so good for them.
From her seat in the stands, Malfoy was fuming. After hearing that Harry had become Seeker, she had tried to get rid of him again by challenging him to a duel in the Trophy Room before tipping off the groundskeeper Argus Filch. After that didn’t work, she tried to report Harry to Professor Flitwick, only to find that McGonagall had already let the part-goblin wizard know.
Now she had to watch as Harry got to fly as the youngest Seeker in a century. To add insult to injury, he even got a brand-new Nimbus 2000 to ride on.
If there’s any silver lining to all this, at least Malfoy’s House was winning.
As for her fellow first years, they’d all heard Malfoy talk about Potter over the past couple months, going into tirades about how he did not deserve his fame, and how he’s still at Hogwarts because he got lucky, and always uttering his name with the utmost scorn. Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy Parkinson, Millicent Bulstrode, and more had all her heard talk about how when her time came, Malfoy was going to make sure that Harry Potter rued the day he turned down her hand of friendship.
It was also a well-known fact that in the Slytherin’s dormitories, Malfoy had a photo of Harry that she’d cut up from one of the issues of the Daily Prophet and pinned to a wall so she could throw darts at it when she was in one of her foul moods.
So when Harry’s broom started acting erratically, swerving and bucking till it’d almost thrown its rider off, the Chosen One hanging from it by both hands and over a very, very long drop that might end up killing him, a couple of Malfoy’s friends – Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass – glanced her way as they pointed at the Gryffindor prodigy and jeered about how he was going to break his neck, thinking their leader would join in.
Imagine their surprise when they realize that Draco Malfoy was not amused. Instead, she was watching Harry silently with her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide in terror.
When Harry managed to regain control of his broom and chase after the Golden Snitch, Malfoy slowly relaxed. And when the blasted idiot caught it with his mouth and won the match, the blonde girl lowered her head, closed her eyes and let out a long sigh as the crowds rose in applause.
Almost like she was relieved.