A/N: This will hopefully be the first chapter in a story about Draco's first year at Hogwarts.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, or the situations, or the dialogue. I am not J.K Rowling :(

The first time Draco Malfoy met Harry Potter was in Diagon Alley, in Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions where they were both getting robes fitted for their first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Of course, had Draco known he was talking to the famous Boy Who Lived, he may well have acted differently, but as it was, he just didn't realise he was he was speaking with a living legend and acted rather condescendingly.

Draco arrived first. His father was in the book shop next door with his list of schoolbooks so it was his mother, Narcissa Malfoy who came with him into the robe shop, holding Draco's hand rather tightly. Poor Draco, he was eleven years old, and still his mother felt she had to hold his hand to keep him safe. As they came through the narrow doorway, Draco managed to wriggle his fingers out from those of his mother. She turned towards him with a rather hurt look on her face but Draco, ignoring this, simply hissed "Not now mother!" and walked up to the counter.

"I need robes fitted for Hogwarts," he coolly informed the witch there, "How long is it likely to take?"

She looked him up and down "Oh, not long, we've got some robes about your size out the back."

Draco turned to his mother. "I'll meet you outside Ollivanders in half an hour." She, looking rather subdued, nodded and left the shop in silence.

The witch led Draco to a footstool at the back of the shop, stood him up on it then slipped a long black robe over his head and started pinning it up to the appropriate length.

The bell over the shop door tinkled, and a squat, smiling witch dressed entirely in mauve bustled out from behind a curtained doorway to greet the new customer. Draco turned slightly to see who it was, but it wasn't anyone he knew. The new customer was a thin boy, with a thin face, messy black hair, wearing old clothes far too big for him. He looked somewhat overwhelmed by all the attention being given to him by the mauve witch. The boy opened his mouth to speak but she got in first.

"Hogwarts, dear?" she said, then, indicating Draco, she continued "Got the lot here – another young man being fitted up just now, in fact."

The boy was given a stool next to Draco's, and, slipping a robe over his head, the mauve witch began to pin it up.

Draco looked at the other boy with a tinge of interest. They would be in the same year at Hogwarts. "Hullo," he said "Hogwarts too?"

The thin boy looked startled. "Yes."

"My father's next door buying my books and my mother's up the street looking at wands." continued Draco, "Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow."

There was an awkward pause in the conversation.

"Have you got your own broom?"

"No."

"Play Quidditch at all?

Now the thin boy looked confused. "No..."

"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."

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, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"

"Mmm..."

Draco looked around desperately, this conversation was going nowhere. The thin boy wasn't even trying to be sociable. His eye fell on something out the window.

"I say, look at that man!" Draco exclaimed, staring out at the large, hairy, giant of a man holding two ice-creams who was standing just outside the window.

The thin boy showed some interest. "That's Hagrid, he works at Hogwarts."

"Oh, I've heard of him. He's a sort of servant, isn't he?"

The thin boy looked a little annoyed. "He's the gamekeeper."

"Yes, exactly. I heard he's a sort of savage – lives in a hut in the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic and ends up setting fire to his bed."

The thin boy now looked a little angry. "I think he's brilliant."

"Do you?" Draco asked mockingly, getting ready to return with a scathing rebuke, but then he thought of something horrific. This boy, old clothes, doesn't know what Quidditch is, doesn't seem to know much about Hogwarts, has to be taken to do his shopping by the Hogwarts gamekeeper, could be possibly be – "Why is he with you? Where are your parents?"

"They're dead."

"Oh, sorry," said Draco, still pushing for the answer to his unasked question, this boy couldn't be a, a – and he, Draco had been talking to him, he couldn't possibly be a – "But they were our kind, weren't they?"

"They were a witch and wizard, if that's what you mean."

Draco let out a breath. "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. What's your surname, by the way?"

But before the thin boy could answer the mauve witch trilled out "That's you done, my dear," and, looking grateful, the thin boy hopped down off his stool.

Watching him pay for his robes, Draco thought that there was something a little off about this boy, but he didn't quite know what. Of course, had he known it was Harry Potter he was conversing with he would have known exactly what was off about the boy, but he didn't.

Draco's robes were finished soon, and, as he stood there watching the witch who had fitted him fold his robes and place them in a bag, his mind drifted away from his strange conversation with the thin boy, and back towards wands and racing brooms.