bookishwench (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bookishwench) wrote2007-06-22 07:23 pm
bookishwench) wrote2007-06-22 07:23 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Shadowed Life, Part 4 (Harry Potter, rated FRT at this point)
Took a while and got fairly big, but here tis. :)
Author: Meltha
Rating: FRT at this point, but likely to rise
Feedback: Yes, thank you. Melpomenethalia@aol.com
Spoilers: Currently, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Again, this will rise.
Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and Fanfiction.net. If you’re interested, please let me know.
Summary: Draco’s visit to Diagon Alley introduces him to a boy without a name.
Disclaimer: All characters are created by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful writer whose works I greatly enjoy. I have borrowed them for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Author Note: My love for the Harry Potter Lexicon knows no bounds. Some dialogue taken from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, American edition, chapter five.
Previous parts found here
Part 4: Meetings
Draco departed from the dining room fireplace, which was crackling away in spite of the heat of the last day of July. He took a handful of floo powder from the gold urn offered to him by Stipple and cast it into the flames. Immediately, they became as green as almost everything else in the house.
“Diagon Alley,” Draco said as clearly as he could before stepping into the fire. He always rather detested this part of the experience. No matter how often he told himself that no wizard should fear a thing like floo-infused fire, there was a part of himself that couldn’t help recoiling from the flames a bit, and he loathed anything that made him feel less than master of himself. What his father would think if he saw his son’s foot quivering, even if it was barely preceptible, as he took a perfectly normal step, he didn’t like to think.
The spinning sensation that always followed was no less unpleasant. Draco had been travelling by floo powder for years, of course, but he had never yet managed to get rid of the nausea that accompanied each trip with all the spinning and flashing lights. A Malfoy might not openly admit defeat or fear, but regardless of what had been ingrained into him from the cradle about his proud place in society, he couldn’t help going green. At least, he thought sarcastically, his skin tone would match the family crest when he exited.
With a loud pop and a small explosion of ash, Draco came to a stop and climbed out of the fireplace of one of the stores on Diagon Alley. He had never been there before, though he had read often enough about it in the Daily Prophet, so he had no idea where he was specifically. He supposed it would be best to wait for his mother to Apparate, but as there were several witches and wizards openly staring at him from around the room, he felt rather self-conscious.
Glancing around, he realized he was in a brightly lit little shop. Black and white marble squares covered the floor like a giant chessboard, and little gilt tables and chairs were dotted over it almost haphazardly, as though a great many people had already come and gone there today. But it was the scent that finally clued him in to where he was: chocolate, strawberry, toffee, caramel, the sugary scent of cones and vanilla whipped cream. Well, he thought with a grin, if mother is delayed, perhaps I’d best buy myself an ice cream cone.
Dusting himself off, he strolled to the large mahogony and white marble bar and carefully sat himself on one of the stools, checking it first to be sure nothing on it would soil his robes. He squinted up at the list of flavors listed on the board on the wall in front of him before rapping his knuckles firmly on the countertop.
“Orange sherbet with chocolate sauce,” he ordered imperiously to the man behind the counter.
“Fine, boy,” he said, “only you’ve got a half dozen others ahead of you. You’ll need to wait your turn.”
“Oh,” said Draco, suddenly grateful that the ash and nausea were covering what he felt sure was probably a blush. “Right.”
He very nearly added the word “sorry” after it, but quickly remembered that his father had taught him never to use that word with anyone who wasn’t his social equal and then only the most extreme of circumstances for fear of tarnishing his authority over his betters. Draco carefully peered at the older man, his white robes dotted with sundae sauce and sprinkles, and knew at once that he was no one higher than himself. And yet… he had a strangely pleasant face. He seemed almost likable. Draco almost wished that he could apologize to him, but instead he twisted the stool around to view the rest of the room, ending the conversation and the embarrassing experience by turning his back to the man. After all, judging by his parents’ behavior, this was the most appropriate and acceptable response.
Draco had rarely seen so many witches and wizards packed into one place before, particularly ones his own age. He began to create stories about each one in turn to amuse himself. At one table in the corner sat twin girls with long black hair and dressed in matching black satin robes, both of them very pretty, with their mother. He could hear their giggling from across the room, and he had to admit they sounded pleasant. Those, he decided, most be pure bloods; briefly he wonder if one of them might be Pansy.
His eyes drifted onwards to another table where an older with spectacles woman sat by herself, a large shopping bag beside her with the words “Flourish and Blotts” emblazoned across it in scarlet. She was eating a chocolate sundae while reading a book titled Contemporary Methods in Magical Education. She was so engrossed in her reading that her spoon kept missing her dish entirely, occasionally clicking against the tabletop.
“Spinster,” Draco thought to himself, “maybe a Hogwarts teacher. Definitely not a Slytherin for all she’s dressed in green, though.”
Each group reached his attention in turn: a woman and several children all with red hair crowding around a single table and sharing one enormous sundae between them (obviously poor, though strangely happy, he thought), a young man sitting with a charmingly pretty witch at another table and gesticulating wildly with his spoon, inadvertantly spattering the tiny little old man behind him with butterbeer and strawberry sauce (not married, and she doesn’t look terribly impressed by him), and there, at a tiny corner table in the back… someone he recognized.
Dumbledore himself was sitting by himself, obviously enjoying his hot fudge sundae and taking no notice of Draco. There was a package next to him from some place called Herrod’s, and he could see the handle of an umbrella sticking out of the top of the bag. As though he were suddenly aware of someone watching him, Dumbledore looked up from his ice cream and directly at Draco. Draco wasn’t quite sure what to do, but Dumbledore smiled in a way that seemed to suggest he needn’t do anything at all then went back to eating his sundae. It was odd, Draco thought, to seen the Headmaster of Hogwarts doing anything so mundane as eating ice cream. Then he nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a tap on his arm.
“Orange sherbet and chocolate sauce, wasn’t it?” said the man behind the counter, handing him a silver dish piled high with what he’d asked for.
“Yes,” said Draco, and in spite of himself, he felt his mouth water. The man was still standing there though, looking expectant. “Ehm, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied kindly enough, but he didn’t move. “That’ll be two sickles,” he prompted eventually.
“Oh, of course,” Draco said, patting his robes frantically. There wasn’t… he hadn’t… oh for pity’s sake… “Two… umm… two sickles…”
He pulled out the entire contents of his pockets: three stray twigs from his broom, a butterbeer bottlecap, two paperclips, and a piece of lint. Draco Malfoy, heir to one of the largest fortunes in England, and left home without a knut in his pockets. His eyes widened in shock. If anyone ever found out about this and mentioned it to his father…
“Forget your pocket money, dear?” said a woman behind him, and he turned quickly to see the plump mother of the red-headed children standing there in her patched robes.
“I…,” he began, trying to muster an appropriate response.
“Here,” she said, handing the man behind the counter two sickles. “It’s exactly the change from my shopping anyway. Don’t feel bad. It could happen to anyone.”
The woman waved to him pleasantly and hearded her large group of children out the door before he could say anything, none of them any the wiser apparently, his expression patently gob-smacked. He didn’t know what to make of what had happened; had he been in her place, he would have been laughing hysterically at the foolish little boy with no money, and she obviously didn’t have two sickles to throw away, not with that brood and those shabby robes. It was confusing, that’s what it was.
“Enjoy,” said the man as he moved on to the next customer, sparing a smile for the woman’s retreating form.
Draco shrugged, deciding that deep thoughts and sherbet didn’t mix well, and dug into his sundae enthusiastically. He was scraping the bottom of the dish in less time than he thought, and at last he pushed away from the counter and began wondering what could have happened to his mother. Unsure what exactly to do, he opened the door to the shop and carefully stepped into the main street.
The bustle of Diagon Alley was a little overwhelming. Draco felt like he was standing in the middle of river that was sweeping along at a rapid pace, and he was attempting to keep his footing in the middle of it. His gaze whipped from one side to the other, searching for a glimpse of his mother’s blonde hair above the crowd of people, and eventually, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the back of her head turning down a side street.
He followed her quickly, darting between the witches and wizards without much effort now that he had his bearings, and he caught up to her just as she opened the door of a large shop labeled “Borgin and Burkes.” A bell above the door jingled in an off-key and surprisingly low note, and for some reason it gave Draco an immediate impression not only that this place was important but also that he did not like it.
“Mother,” he called politely, and she whirled around.
“There you are,” she said. “I’d wondered where you had gotten to. I’ve been having a chat with Mrs. Carrow about this and that and the time quite got away from me.”
Draco nodded, trying to be indifferent to the fact his mother seemed to have forgotten him entirely for nearly half an hour, but he chose to pretend it had not happened. Besides, Borgin and Burkes was fascinating, if not a bit repellent. There were any number of strange and even macabre things lying around, some of them probably quite deadly by the look of the warning signs liberally sprinkled through the store. His mother seemed to notice this as well, and she frowned.
“Draco, I have some business to attend to here for your father. Do you feel capable of purchasing your own robes at Madam Malkin’s? She’s just up the street, across from an ice cream parlor owned by that strange little man. What on earth is his name, Borgin?” she asked the shopkeeper imperiously.
Draco hadn’t noticed him standing in the shadows before, and he couldn’t help wishing he’d stayed hidden. There was something off about him, as though he weren’t meant to move about and talk like a normal person but was more of an automaton charmed into movement. He was disturbing.
“Florian Fortescue, madam,” he said in a voice that oozed rather than spoke. “Pure blood but, alas, not of our kind.”
“Our?” she responded, the single word carrying with it the meaning that she did not like Borgin presuming to put himself in the same class as her.
“Your, I should say, madam,” he corrected quickly. “I meant no disrespect. We are simply of the same mind in important matters, I should say, while Fortescue and his ilk are little better than traitors.”
Narcissa nodded, apparently satisfied with the answer. Draco, for his part, was already growing a little bored. Obviously Fortescue was a pure blood; he hadn’t been whooping or speaking unintelligibly or swinging from chandeliers or attempting robbery or engaging in any of the other bizarre and half-crazed behavior that earmarked Muggle-borns. Frankly, he was rather curious how Hogwarts would manage in their presense. It might prove to be an interesting spot.
“You think that you can find it, Draco?” his mother asked, already opening her handbag and counting out galleons to put in Draco’s hand.
“I believe so,” he said lazily.
“Good. Be sure to get first quality robes, though nothing too flamboyant as it shows the worst of breeding to parade oneself like a peacock,” she instructed as she handed him a small pile of gold. “Do with the remainder of the money what you wish. I shall meet you in front of Gringotts at half past one. Be prompt.”
“Thank you, Mother,” he said, backing out of the store. The more protective side of him didn’t like to leave her in the company of Borgin, but as her posture and expression showed not the least whit of fear, he trusted she would be fine.
“Oh, and Draco,” she said, turning towards him again, “don’t speak to anyone except Madam Malkin.”
“Yes, Mother,” he said, though his fingers were crossed behind his back.
He went back up the street, which a signpost helpfully labeled as Knockturn Alley, at a leisurely pace, taking time to glance from side to side at all the different store fronts and vendors selling odds and ends from pushcarts. He noted a strange similarity to Borgin and Burkes among all these places, a sort of indirect feeling of general malice that set the hairs on the back of his neck on end. This was a place to watch one’s back, he thought firmly, as well as one’s moneybag. He tightly clutched the galleons his mother had given him, and perhaps it was his imagination, but he could have sworn he felt fingers ghosting over his grip, trying to gently pry them away, but relenting when they met resistance. Each time he spun around quickly to see if someone was there, but there never was. He was quite pleased to leave the street and go back to Diagon Alley proper, which felt less menacing. It reminded him pleasantly of breaking the surface of the water after holding his breath too long when swimming.
Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions was a respectable looking shop. The front windows displayed a variety of fashionable robes on bewitched mannequins that struck a series of poses that Draco couldn’t help thinking looked rather overly dramatic. One mannequin, dressed in a flaming pink concoction with so many ruffles it looked as though any girl wearing it would be all but paralyzed by them, seemed particularly melodramatic, showing off so violently it had knocked a more staid lavender robe and a rather dowdy green tartan off their non-existent feet more than once in the few moments he stood there.
Draco took a breath, then opened the door. This time a simple chime rang, and a few seconds later a short, plump witch dressed all in mauve greeted him.
“Good morning,” she said with a smile.
“Good morning,” Draco responded. “I need hogs for Robewarts… I mean,” he said horrified at the blunder.
“They’re all a bit nervous, dearie,” she said, laughing. “I know what you mean.”
“Yes, well, robes. Hogwarts,” Draco said, not liking her laughing at him even if it didn’t sound particularly mocking. “I need them. Good ones.”
“In the back, then,” she said, leading a still flustered Draco towards a footstool as another witch, very tall and rather bony, pulled a black robe over his head. No sooner had his head emerged from the neckhole than the chime sounded once again. “I have another customer to see to. Araminta here will start pinning you up.”
He felt awkward, standing there in a robe that was much too long for him, some witch he’d never seen before sticking pins into it and occasionally pricking his legs with them. Was he supposed to speak to her or ignore her or what? Why wasn’t there an instruction book for such things?
Thankfully, less than a minute later, another boy was standing beside him and being fitted for robes as well. Draco took in his appearance quickly: short stature, dark (and rather messy) hair, glasses, and bright green eyes. He looked to be about Draco’s age, and the style of the robes that yet another witch was pinning for him were identical to his own, so there was a good chance he might be a first year at Hogwarts as well.
Draco schooled his features into an impassive expression at the same time his stomach began doing backflips. This was the first person he had met who would be one of his schoolmates, an equal, someone he would spend the next seven years. First impressions, he told himself, were everything. He needed to be sauve. He needed to be urbane. He needed… to open his mouth and actually say something.
“Hello. Hogwarts, too?” he finally managed, having already mentally tried and discarded every greeting he could think of from “Pleased to have the pleaure of your acquaintance” to “Horrid weather we’re having.”
“Yes,” said the other boy.
And then… and then nothing else.
Draco tried to fish around in his brain for something to say, anything, something impressive.
“My father’s next door buying my books and mother’s up the street looking at wands,” he lied smoothly. The other boy’s parents would undoubtedly be doing something similar. He didn’t want to admit that his mother had pretty much left him to fend for himself while his father was off doing… whatever it was his father did. With a shudder, Draco suddenly realized he had absolutely no idea what exactly his father did all day. The thought had never occurred to him before, and it was rather like realizing suddenly that he had always worn his shoes on the wrong feet or something similarly daft.
Instinctively, he improved the lie to keep from showing how off track he had gotten. The best thing, he supposed, would be to impress upon the other boy that he was both wealthy and suitably rebellious against authority.
“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 buying me one and smuggle it in somehow,” he said smoothly, congratulating himself on the wonderful impression he must be making even while he had come to the odd conclusion he had absolutely no idea where precisely the family’s money came from. On the other hand, he told himself, he should be asking the other boy about his interests as well. That would be the polite thing.
“Have you got your own broom?” he asked, thinking the answer would either be yes, meaning they could now discuss the virtues of different brooms, or no, meaning he had siblings he shared a broom with and that they could discuss those instead. Yes, he thought, things were going extremely well.
“No,” the other boy said.
Oh. Well, that wasn’t helpful.
“Play Quidditch at all?” he asked, vainly seeking for something to discuss with the strangely tactiturn boy. After all, even if he didn’t play Quidditch, he had to have a team he supported. Everyone knew Quidditch, after all.
“No,” he responded.
Draco waited a moment for the boy to say something, anything, even that he didn’t like Quidditch, as hard as that would be to believe, but instead he stubbornly kept silent. Draco was frankly beginning to think this fellow was rather rude.
“I do,” he supplied, filling the void with a discussion of his own brilliant and fascinating accomplishments for the boy’s edification. “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?”
Before he responded, Draco mentally supplied the answer, so he wasn’t at all surprised to hear the word “no” come from the boy’s mouth again.
“Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they,” Draco said in what he hoped was a sympathetic tone, “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?”
There, Draco thought with satisfaction. The boy might not have a broom, play Quidditch, or know what house he’d be in, but at the very least he must know, as everyone did, that Slytherin was the best of them all and that being a Hufflepuff was tantamount to being publically labelled a moron. Convesation should flow smoothly now.
“Mmm,” he replied.
One yes, three noes, and a single letter. He wondered if everyone in his year was going to be this much fun.
At that moment, he noticed movement outside the window, and his eyes widened in shock. The biggest man he had ever seen was standing in the street, waving his arms frantically and carrying a pair of dripping ice cream cones. Droplets were spattering onto passersby in his enthusiasm, and he saw one dip actually go flying off the top of a double dip cone and land squarely on the head of a middle-aged man, who turned around to tell off the offender only to back away wordlessly at his size.
“I say, look at that man!” Draco said. At long last, something the other boy had to respond to!
“That’s Hagrid,” the boy told him. “He works at Hogwarts.”
A complete sentence! In fact, two of them! Draco was thrilled at his own success.
“Oh, I’ve heard of him. He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he?” Draco said, deciding that it probably wouldn’t be prudent to say he was a former student who had been expelled and set to work cleaning up after the animals out of pity for being rather dim.
“He’s the gamekeeper,” the boy replied, starting to sound rather insulted.
Draco couldn’t understand exactly what he’d said that was so outrageous. So, Hagrid was a servant. What of it? There were wizards who ruled and wizards who served and Muggles who ran around like semi-coherent squirrels, and as long as everyone kept to their places, what was wrong with that? It was the way of things.
“Yes, exactly,” Draco said, then decided that perhaps the boy was misinformed about the man in question. “I’ve heard he’s some 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.”
It was all perfectly true. His father had informed him of the lax state of Hogwarts and used the gamekeeper as the perfect example of why Dumbledore was a ridiculously poor headmaster.
“I think he’s brilliant,” the boy shot back.
Draco blinked a moment. The boy couldn’t possibly be saying he preferred a drunken idiot’s companionship to his own, could he?
“Do you?” Draco said, and a bit of venom crept into his voice. “Why is he here with you? Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead,” Harry said bluntly.
Draco was momentarily taken aback by this. After all, he’d been the one to bring up his own very much absent parents in an effort to sound normal, and it turned out to be probably the worst thing he could have said. He took a moment to judge the other boy’s social status, trying to see whether offering an apology would be permitted, but it was simply impossible to tell whether he was dealing with an inferior or not. His father would have his hide for this if he ever found out, but he couldn’t very well ignore the fact he’d made an enormous blunder.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”
There, he thought. A Malfoy, as everyone knew, never apologizes except under the most stringently horrible circumstances, and he had just apologized. It must be perfectly obvious that he was mortified by his earlier question.
The boy said nothing but continued to look insulted. It wasn’t possible… he couldn’t possibly outrank him socially, could he? Was there anyone who outranked a Malfoy? Did the Minister of Magic have a son?
“But they were our kind, weren’t they?” he asked, hoping to convey that by “our” he meant on the same level.
“They were a witch and wizard, if that’s what you mean,” he said.
Obviously they were a witch and wizard, Draco thought. He couldn’t possibly be a Muggle-born. Monosyllabic as he might be, he wasn’t behaving at all like an animal, so he must be a wizard.
“I really don’t think they should let the other sort in, do you? 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,” he said, repeating the polite formalities his parents used regularly as smalltalk. It suddenly occurred to him, though, that they weren’t even properly introduced. “What’s your surname, anyway?”
“That’s you done, my dear,” Madam Malkin suddenly chimed in, and the boy leapt off the stool with what seemed to be relief.
“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,” Malfoy said to him.
The other boy said absolutely nothing to him but paid Madam Malkin and left the store without uttering another word.
Draco looked after him, a puzzled expression marring his face. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t said anything wrong, yet the boy had been all but actually hostile to him.
“Odd fellow,” Draco said with a shrug as the witch whipped the robe off over his head.
At one o’clock, he stood by Gringotts, and his mother appeared, thankfully, on time. He wanted to avoid running into the strange boy again, and on top of that, the conversation he’d had made him reluctant to speak to anyone else for fear he’d receive the same reaction, confirming that it was in fact him with the problem rather than the dark-haired (and annoyingly nameless) boy.
“Everything completed?” Narcissa asked, glancing at his parcels.
“Yes, Mother,” he said as he fell into step alongside her and entered the building.
“Did you have an enjoyable day?” she asked him as she reached into her handbag and took out a small vial of floo powder.
“It was… enlightening,” Draco said as she selected a fireplace and tossed the powder into the flames.
“I shall see you at dinner,” she said as though she had not heard a word he had said.
Draco stepped once more into the emerald flames, saying, “Malfoy Estate,” as he did so. As the familiar nausea set in once more, he couldn’t help wondering if the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach had less to do with the wild journey and more to do with apprehension over what Hogwarts would be like.
On to part 5
Author: Meltha
Rating: FRT at this point, but likely to rise
Feedback: Yes, thank you. Melpomenethalia@aol.com
Spoilers: Currently, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Again, this will rise.
Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and Fanfiction.net. If you’re interested, please let me know.
Summary: Draco’s visit to Diagon Alley introduces him to a boy without a name.
Disclaimer: All characters are created by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful writer whose works I greatly enjoy. I have borrowed them for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Author Note: My love for the Harry Potter Lexicon knows no bounds. Some dialogue taken from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, American edition, chapter five.
Previous parts found here
Part 4: Meetings
Draco departed from the dining room fireplace, which was crackling away in spite of the heat of the last day of July. He took a handful of floo powder from the gold urn offered to him by Stipple and cast it into the flames. Immediately, they became as green as almost everything else in the house.
“Diagon Alley,” Draco said as clearly as he could before stepping into the fire. He always rather detested this part of the experience. No matter how often he told himself that no wizard should fear a thing like floo-infused fire, there was a part of himself that couldn’t help recoiling from the flames a bit, and he loathed anything that made him feel less than master of himself. What his father would think if he saw his son’s foot quivering, even if it was barely preceptible, as he took a perfectly normal step, he didn’t like to think.
The spinning sensation that always followed was no less unpleasant. Draco had been travelling by floo powder for years, of course, but he had never yet managed to get rid of the nausea that accompanied each trip with all the spinning and flashing lights. A Malfoy might not openly admit defeat or fear, but regardless of what had been ingrained into him from the cradle about his proud place in society, he couldn’t help going green. At least, he thought sarcastically, his skin tone would match the family crest when he exited.
With a loud pop and a small explosion of ash, Draco came to a stop and climbed out of the fireplace of one of the stores on Diagon Alley. He had never been there before, though he had read often enough about it in the Daily Prophet, so he had no idea where he was specifically. He supposed it would be best to wait for his mother to Apparate, but as there were several witches and wizards openly staring at him from around the room, he felt rather self-conscious.
Glancing around, he realized he was in a brightly lit little shop. Black and white marble squares covered the floor like a giant chessboard, and little gilt tables and chairs were dotted over it almost haphazardly, as though a great many people had already come and gone there today. But it was the scent that finally clued him in to where he was: chocolate, strawberry, toffee, caramel, the sugary scent of cones and vanilla whipped cream. Well, he thought with a grin, if mother is delayed, perhaps I’d best buy myself an ice cream cone.
Dusting himself off, he strolled to the large mahogony and white marble bar and carefully sat himself on one of the stools, checking it first to be sure nothing on it would soil his robes. He squinted up at the list of flavors listed on the board on the wall in front of him before rapping his knuckles firmly on the countertop.
“Orange sherbet with chocolate sauce,” he ordered imperiously to the man behind the counter.
“Fine, boy,” he said, “only you’ve got a half dozen others ahead of you. You’ll need to wait your turn.”
“Oh,” said Draco, suddenly grateful that the ash and nausea were covering what he felt sure was probably a blush. “Right.”
He very nearly added the word “sorry” after it, but quickly remembered that his father had taught him never to use that word with anyone who wasn’t his social equal and then only the most extreme of circumstances for fear of tarnishing his authority over his betters. Draco carefully peered at the older man, his white robes dotted with sundae sauce and sprinkles, and knew at once that he was no one higher than himself. And yet… he had a strangely pleasant face. He seemed almost likable. Draco almost wished that he could apologize to him, but instead he twisted the stool around to view the rest of the room, ending the conversation and the embarrassing experience by turning his back to the man. After all, judging by his parents’ behavior, this was the most appropriate and acceptable response.
Draco had rarely seen so many witches and wizards packed into one place before, particularly ones his own age. He began to create stories about each one in turn to amuse himself. At one table in the corner sat twin girls with long black hair and dressed in matching black satin robes, both of them very pretty, with their mother. He could hear their giggling from across the room, and he had to admit they sounded pleasant. Those, he decided, most be pure bloods; briefly he wonder if one of them might be Pansy.
His eyes drifted onwards to another table where an older with spectacles woman sat by herself, a large shopping bag beside her with the words “Flourish and Blotts” emblazoned across it in scarlet. She was eating a chocolate sundae while reading a book titled Contemporary Methods in Magical Education. She was so engrossed in her reading that her spoon kept missing her dish entirely, occasionally clicking against the tabletop.
“Spinster,” Draco thought to himself, “maybe a Hogwarts teacher. Definitely not a Slytherin for all she’s dressed in green, though.”
Each group reached his attention in turn: a woman and several children all with red hair crowding around a single table and sharing one enormous sundae between them (obviously poor, though strangely happy, he thought), a young man sitting with a charmingly pretty witch at another table and gesticulating wildly with his spoon, inadvertantly spattering the tiny little old man behind him with butterbeer and strawberry sauce (not married, and she doesn’t look terribly impressed by him), and there, at a tiny corner table in the back… someone he recognized.
Dumbledore himself was sitting by himself, obviously enjoying his hot fudge sundae and taking no notice of Draco. There was a package next to him from some place called Herrod’s, and he could see the handle of an umbrella sticking out of the top of the bag. As though he were suddenly aware of someone watching him, Dumbledore looked up from his ice cream and directly at Draco. Draco wasn’t quite sure what to do, but Dumbledore smiled in a way that seemed to suggest he needn’t do anything at all then went back to eating his sundae. It was odd, Draco thought, to seen the Headmaster of Hogwarts doing anything so mundane as eating ice cream. Then he nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a tap on his arm.
“Orange sherbet and chocolate sauce, wasn’t it?” said the man behind the counter, handing him a silver dish piled high with what he’d asked for.
“Yes,” said Draco, and in spite of himself, he felt his mouth water. The man was still standing there though, looking expectant. “Ehm, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied kindly enough, but he didn’t move. “That’ll be two sickles,” he prompted eventually.
“Oh, of course,” Draco said, patting his robes frantically. There wasn’t… he hadn’t… oh for pity’s sake… “Two… umm… two sickles…”
He pulled out the entire contents of his pockets: three stray twigs from his broom, a butterbeer bottlecap, two paperclips, and a piece of lint. Draco Malfoy, heir to one of the largest fortunes in England, and left home without a knut in his pockets. His eyes widened in shock. If anyone ever found out about this and mentioned it to his father…
“Forget your pocket money, dear?” said a woman behind him, and he turned quickly to see the plump mother of the red-headed children standing there in her patched robes.
“I…,” he began, trying to muster an appropriate response.
“Here,” she said, handing the man behind the counter two sickles. “It’s exactly the change from my shopping anyway. Don’t feel bad. It could happen to anyone.”
The woman waved to him pleasantly and hearded her large group of children out the door before he could say anything, none of them any the wiser apparently, his expression patently gob-smacked. He didn’t know what to make of what had happened; had he been in her place, he would have been laughing hysterically at the foolish little boy with no money, and she obviously didn’t have two sickles to throw away, not with that brood and those shabby robes. It was confusing, that’s what it was.
“Enjoy,” said the man as he moved on to the next customer, sparing a smile for the woman’s retreating form.
Draco shrugged, deciding that deep thoughts and sherbet didn’t mix well, and dug into his sundae enthusiastically. He was scraping the bottom of the dish in less time than he thought, and at last he pushed away from the counter and began wondering what could have happened to his mother. Unsure what exactly to do, he opened the door to the shop and carefully stepped into the main street.
The bustle of Diagon Alley was a little overwhelming. Draco felt like he was standing in the middle of river that was sweeping along at a rapid pace, and he was attempting to keep his footing in the middle of it. His gaze whipped from one side to the other, searching for a glimpse of his mother’s blonde hair above the crowd of people, and eventually, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the back of her head turning down a side street.
He followed her quickly, darting between the witches and wizards without much effort now that he had his bearings, and he caught up to her just as she opened the door of a large shop labeled “Borgin and Burkes.” A bell above the door jingled in an off-key and surprisingly low note, and for some reason it gave Draco an immediate impression not only that this place was important but also that he did not like it.
“Mother,” he called politely, and she whirled around.
“There you are,” she said. “I’d wondered where you had gotten to. I’ve been having a chat with Mrs. Carrow about this and that and the time quite got away from me.”
Draco nodded, trying to be indifferent to the fact his mother seemed to have forgotten him entirely for nearly half an hour, but he chose to pretend it had not happened. Besides, Borgin and Burkes was fascinating, if not a bit repellent. There were any number of strange and even macabre things lying around, some of them probably quite deadly by the look of the warning signs liberally sprinkled through the store. His mother seemed to notice this as well, and she frowned.
“Draco, I have some business to attend to here for your father. Do you feel capable of purchasing your own robes at Madam Malkin’s? She’s just up the street, across from an ice cream parlor owned by that strange little man. What on earth is his name, Borgin?” she asked the shopkeeper imperiously.
Draco hadn’t noticed him standing in the shadows before, and he couldn’t help wishing he’d stayed hidden. There was something off about him, as though he weren’t meant to move about and talk like a normal person but was more of an automaton charmed into movement. He was disturbing.
“Florian Fortescue, madam,” he said in a voice that oozed rather than spoke. “Pure blood but, alas, not of our kind.”
“Our?” she responded, the single word carrying with it the meaning that she did not like Borgin presuming to put himself in the same class as her.
“Your, I should say, madam,” he corrected quickly. “I meant no disrespect. We are simply of the same mind in important matters, I should say, while Fortescue and his ilk are little better than traitors.”
Narcissa nodded, apparently satisfied with the answer. Draco, for his part, was already growing a little bored. Obviously Fortescue was a pure blood; he hadn’t been whooping or speaking unintelligibly or swinging from chandeliers or attempting robbery or engaging in any of the other bizarre and half-crazed behavior that earmarked Muggle-borns. Frankly, he was rather curious how Hogwarts would manage in their presense. It might prove to be an interesting spot.
“You think that you can find it, Draco?” his mother asked, already opening her handbag and counting out galleons to put in Draco’s hand.
“I believe so,” he said lazily.
“Good. Be sure to get first quality robes, though nothing too flamboyant as it shows the worst of breeding to parade oneself like a peacock,” she instructed as she handed him a small pile of gold. “Do with the remainder of the money what you wish. I shall meet you in front of Gringotts at half past one. Be prompt.”
“Thank you, Mother,” he said, backing out of the store. The more protective side of him didn’t like to leave her in the company of Borgin, but as her posture and expression showed not the least whit of fear, he trusted she would be fine.
“Oh, and Draco,” she said, turning towards him again, “don’t speak to anyone except Madam Malkin.”
“Yes, Mother,” he said, though his fingers were crossed behind his back.
He went back up the street, which a signpost helpfully labeled as Knockturn Alley, at a leisurely pace, taking time to glance from side to side at all the different store fronts and vendors selling odds and ends from pushcarts. He noted a strange similarity to Borgin and Burkes among all these places, a sort of indirect feeling of general malice that set the hairs on the back of his neck on end. This was a place to watch one’s back, he thought firmly, as well as one’s moneybag. He tightly clutched the galleons his mother had given him, and perhaps it was his imagination, but he could have sworn he felt fingers ghosting over his grip, trying to gently pry them away, but relenting when they met resistance. Each time he spun around quickly to see if someone was there, but there never was. He was quite pleased to leave the street and go back to Diagon Alley proper, which felt less menacing. It reminded him pleasantly of breaking the surface of the water after holding his breath too long when swimming.
Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions was a respectable looking shop. The front windows displayed a variety of fashionable robes on bewitched mannequins that struck a series of poses that Draco couldn’t help thinking looked rather overly dramatic. One mannequin, dressed in a flaming pink concoction with so many ruffles it looked as though any girl wearing it would be all but paralyzed by them, seemed particularly melodramatic, showing off so violently it had knocked a more staid lavender robe and a rather dowdy green tartan off their non-existent feet more than once in the few moments he stood there.
Draco took a breath, then opened the door. This time a simple chime rang, and a few seconds later a short, plump witch dressed all in mauve greeted him.
“Good morning,” she said with a smile.
“Good morning,” Draco responded. “I need hogs for Robewarts… I mean,” he said horrified at the blunder.
“They’re all a bit nervous, dearie,” she said, laughing. “I know what you mean.”
“Yes, well, robes. Hogwarts,” Draco said, not liking her laughing at him even if it didn’t sound particularly mocking. “I need them. Good ones.”
“In the back, then,” she said, leading a still flustered Draco towards a footstool as another witch, very tall and rather bony, pulled a black robe over his head. No sooner had his head emerged from the neckhole than the chime sounded once again. “I have another customer to see to. Araminta here will start pinning you up.”
He felt awkward, standing there in a robe that was much too long for him, some witch he’d never seen before sticking pins into it and occasionally pricking his legs with them. Was he supposed to speak to her or ignore her or what? Why wasn’t there an instruction book for such things?
Thankfully, less than a minute later, another boy was standing beside him and being fitted for robes as well. Draco took in his appearance quickly: short stature, dark (and rather messy) hair, glasses, and bright green eyes. He looked to be about Draco’s age, and the style of the robes that yet another witch was pinning for him were identical to his own, so there was a good chance he might be a first year at Hogwarts as well.
Draco schooled his features into an impassive expression at the same time his stomach began doing backflips. This was the first person he had met who would be one of his schoolmates, an equal, someone he would spend the next seven years. First impressions, he told himself, were everything. He needed to be sauve. He needed to be urbane. He needed… to open his mouth and actually say something.
“Hello. Hogwarts, too?” he finally managed, having already mentally tried and discarded every greeting he could think of from “Pleased to have the pleaure of your acquaintance” to “Horrid weather we’re having.”
“Yes,” said the other boy.
And then… and then nothing else.
Draco tried to fish around in his brain for something to say, anything, something impressive.
“My father’s next door buying my books and mother’s up the street looking at wands,” he lied smoothly. The other boy’s parents would undoubtedly be doing something similar. He didn’t want to admit that his mother had pretty much left him to fend for himself while his father was off doing… whatever it was his father did. With a shudder, Draco suddenly realized he had absolutely no idea what exactly his father did all day. The thought had never occurred to him before, and it was rather like realizing suddenly that he had always worn his shoes on the wrong feet or something similarly daft.
Instinctively, he improved the lie to keep from showing how off track he had gotten. The best thing, he supposed, would be to impress upon the other boy that he was both wealthy and suitably rebellious against authority.
“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 buying me one and smuggle it in somehow,” he said smoothly, congratulating himself on the wonderful impression he must be making even while he had come to the odd conclusion he had absolutely no idea where precisely the family’s money came from. On the other hand, he told himself, he should be asking the other boy about his interests as well. That would be the polite thing.
“Have you got your own broom?” he asked, thinking the answer would either be yes, meaning they could now discuss the virtues of different brooms, or no, meaning he had siblings he shared a broom with and that they could discuss those instead. Yes, he thought, things were going extremely well.
“No,” the other boy said.
Oh. Well, that wasn’t helpful.
“Play Quidditch at all?” he asked, vainly seeking for something to discuss with the strangely tactiturn boy. After all, even if he didn’t play Quidditch, he had to have a team he supported. Everyone knew Quidditch, after all.
“No,” he responded.
Draco waited a moment for the boy to say something, anything, even that he didn’t like Quidditch, as hard as that would be to believe, but instead he stubbornly kept silent. Draco was frankly beginning to think this fellow was rather rude.
“I do,” he supplied, filling the void with a discussion of his own brilliant and fascinating accomplishments for the boy’s edification. “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?”
Before he responded, Draco mentally supplied the answer, so he wasn’t at all surprised to hear the word “no” come from the boy’s mouth again.
“Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they,” Draco said in what he hoped was a sympathetic tone, “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?”
There, Draco thought with satisfaction. The boy might not have a broom, play Quidditch, or know what house he’d be in, but at the very least he must know, as everyone did, that Slytherin was the best of them all and that being a Hufflepuff was tantamount to being publically labelled a moron. Convesation should flow smoothly now.
“Mmm,” he replied.
One yes, three noes, and a single letter. He wondered if everyone in his year was going to be this much fun.
At that moment, he noticed movement outside the window, and his eyes widened in shock. The biggest man he had ever seen was standing in the street, waving his arms frantically and carrying a pair of dripping ice cream cones. Droplets were spattering onto passersby in his enthusiasm, and he saw one dip actually go flying off the top of a double dip cone and land squarely on the head of a middle-aged man, who turned around to tell off the offender only to back away wordlessly at his size.
“I say, look at that man!” Draco said. At long last, something the other boy had to respond to!
“That’s Hagrid,” the boy told him. “He works at Hogwarts.”
A complete sentence! In fact, two of them! Draco was thrilled at his own success.
“Oh, I’ve heard of him. He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he?” Draco said, deciding that it probably wouldn’t be prudent to say he was a former student who had been expelled and set to work cleaning up after the animals out of pity for being rather dim.
“He’s the gamekeeper,” the boy replied, starting to sound rather insulted.
Draco couldn’t understand exactly what he’d said that was so outrageous. So, Hagrid was a servant. What of it? There were wizards who ruled and wizards who served and Muggles who ran around like semi-coherent squirrels, and as long as everyone kept to their places, what was wrong with that? It was the way of things.
“Yes, exactly,” Draco said, then decided that perhaps the boy was misinformed about the man in question. “I’ve heard he’s some 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.”
It was all perfectly true. His father had informed him of the lax state of Hogwarts and used the gamekeeper as the perfect example of why Dumbledore was a ridiculously poor headmaster.
“I think he’s brilliant,” the boy shot back.
Draco blinked a moment. The boy couldn’t possibly be saying he preferred a drunken idiot’s companionship to his own, could he?
“Do you?” Draco said, and a bit of venom crept into his voice. “Why is he here with you? Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead,” Harry said bluntly.
Draco was momentarily taken aback by this. After all, he’d been the one to bring up his own very much absent parents in an effort to sound normal, and it turned out to be probably the worst thing he could have said. He took a moment to judge the other boy’s social status, trying to see whether offering an apology would be permitted, but it was simply impossible to tell whether he was dealing with an inferior or not. His father would have his hide for this if he ever found out, but he couldn’t very well ignore the fact he’d made an enormous blunder.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”
There, he thought. A Malfoy, as everyone knew, never apologizes except under the most stringently horrible circumstances, and he had just apologized. It must be perfectly obvious that he was mortified by his earlier question.
The boy said nothing but continued to look insulted. It wasn’t possible… he couldn’t possibly outrank him socially, could he? Was there anyone who outranked a Malfoy? Did the Minister of Magic have a son?
“But they were our kind, weren’t they?” he asked, hoping to convey that by “our” he meant on the same level.
“They were a witch and wizard, if that’s what you mean,” he said.
Obviously they were a witch and wizard, Draco thought. He couldn’t possibly be a Muggle-born. Monosyllabic as he might be, he wasn’t behaving at all like an animal, so he must be a wizard.
“I really don’t think they should let the other sort in, do you? 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,” he said, repeating the polite formalities his parents used regularly as smalltalk. It suddenly occurred to him, though, that they weren’t even properly introduced. “What’s your surname, anyway?”
“That’s you done, my dear,” Madam Malkin suddenly chimed in, and the boy leapt off the stool with what seemed to be relief.
“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,” Malfoy said to him.
The other boy said absolutely nothing to him but paid Madam Malkin and left the store without uttering another word.
Draco looked after him, a puzzled expression marring his face. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t said anything wrong, yet the boy had been all but actually hostile to him.
“Odd fellow,” Draco said with a shrug as the witch whipped the robe off over his head.
At one o’clock, he stood by Gringotts, and his mother appeared, thankfully, on time. He wanted to avoid running into the strange boy again, and on top of that, the conversation he’d had made him reluctant to speak to anyone else for fear he’d receive the same reaction, confirming that it was in fact him with the problem rather than the dark-haired (and annoyingly nameless) boy.
“Everything completed?” Narcissa asked, glancing at his parcels.
“Yes, Mother,” he said as he fell into step alongside her and entered the building.
“Did you have an enjoyable day?” she asked him as she reached into her handbag and took out a small vial of floo powder.
“It was… enlightening,” Draco said as she selected a fireplace and tossed the powder into the flames.
“I shall see you at dinner,” she said as though she had not heard a word he had said.
Draco stepped once more into the emerald flames, saying, “Malfoy Estate,” as he did so. As the familiar nausea set in once more, he couldn’t help wondering if the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach had less to do with the wild journey and more to do with apprehension over what Hogwarts would be like.
On to part 5