Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling owns Harry Potter. I am not J. K. Rowling. Obviously, I don't own Harry Potter. Some lines are taken from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and so they also belong to J. K. Rowling.

Author's Note: This is an AU, obviously. It was inspired by the ubiquitous "Harry/Ron/insert character here is a girl" and "Slytherin!Harry" plots, but it's an attempt to take a clichéd idea (or two) and put an original spin on them. It hinges on two main differences: Draco is a girl, and Harry meets her in Flourish & Blotts instead of Madam Malkin's. I'm also disregarding or rearranging some dates. Everything else will (hopefully) become clearer later.

'Twixt Truth and Dark Deceit

Chapter 1: The Girl in the Bookshop

And now all hearts are heard to beat,
Fluttering 'twixt truth and dark deceit,
Awed by the sense of that dreadful might,
Which, veiled in everlasting night,
Bids destiny's stern wheels move round,
As the swift moments glide away,
Is felt in the heart's depths profound,
But flees before the light of day.

- Friedrich von Schiller, The Cranes of Ibycus (trans. C. T. Brooks)

"Congratulations, Miss Black!"

Bellatrix Black opened her eyes and stared blankly up at the St. Mungo's healer. If she still had her wand, she'd have Crucio'd him once for disturbing her sleep, then again for being so vague. Her husband and brother-in-law were dead at the hands of those blood traitors, the Longbottoms; her lord was missing, presumed dead by the majority of the Wizarding world; and the only reason she hadn't been Kissed or thrown in Azkaban was because she was "obviously mentally disturbed". Why was she being congratulated?

"What?" she rasped, sounding far less vicious than she meant to.

"You're an aunt! Your sister, Mrs. Malfoy, gave birth last night!"

Bellatrix snapped into wakefulness faster than Severus Snape had when she'd hit him with an Electric Shock Hex while she was in seventh year. Narcissa had had the baby? Now there was something to celebrate! A pureblood baby who would be raised properly, who would someday help rid the world of the mudbloods… Bella wished her lord could have heard this.

"Boy or girl?" she demanded, glancing at the open door behind the healer and wondering if she could run fast enough to get past him and down to the maternity ward before anyone raised the alarm.

"A girl. Mrs. Malfoy wants to name you her godmother."

Godmother? Cissy wanted Bella to be her daughter's godmother? Her sister immediately went up in Bella's estimation. She was clearly devoted to the cause, even though she hadn't physically fought for their lord, and wanted to make sure her daughter had the right influences.

"Can I see her?"

"I'm afraid not, Miss Black. Mrs. Malfoy was gravely ill, and she isn't ready to have visitors yet."

Bella stared. Cissy was ill? And this was the first she heard of it?

The healer excused himself to go about his other duties as she imagined all the horrors she'd inflict on the hospital staff the moment she was allowed access to a wand. Imperio-ing some of them and ordering them to Crucio their co-workers would be entertaining…

She shook her head, marshalling her thoughts back to her new-born niece. A girl… Lucius was probably disappointed she wasn't a boy to carry on his family name, but if she married into one of the right families... Mrs. Zabini had a son only a few months old; maybe she would let him marry young – Merlin, that idiot never told her the baby's name!

Bella decided on the spot that the luckless healer would be Imperio'd and made to Crucio himself, and promptly went back to matchmaking for her scarcely twelve-hours-old niece.

Eleven Years Later

Harry Potter had been in Diagon Alley for less than half an hour, and most of that time was spent in Gringott's, but he had already come to a very important conclusion.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would drop dead of heart attacks if they ever saw this place.

There were owls flying overhead, everyone around him looked like they were on their way to a Halloween party, and there were shops with fascinating names and even more fascinating displays in their windows. In short, everything about it would be anathema to the Dursleys.

A shop selling sweets he'd never heard of before caught his eye, and he spent a good five minutes wandering around and wondering if Cockroach Clusters had real cockroaches in them and if so, why were they even on sale? No one would buy anything with insects in it; the very thought was disgusting. Or were insects to wizard children what ice cream was to non-magical children? He added that to the list of things he needed to find out before going to Hogwarts.

Harry left the shop, dodging crowds of other children. Where had Hagrid told him to go? Oh, yes, he was supposed to get his uniform. He looked around for Madam Malkin's shop. There it was, and there was a pale girl just leaving.

After getting his robes and finishing the ice cream Hagrid bought him (to his relief, there were no insects or equally unappetising ingredients in it – just chocolate, raspberry and nuts), Harry searched his pockets for the letter.

"Where do I get all these books?" he asked Hagrid.

"In Flourish an' Blotts, over there," said Hagrid, pointing to a shop surrounded by stacks of books.

The inside of the shop was so filled with books Harry was afraid to move in case he brought them all crashing down on his head. Some of them looked very old, and they all had extraordinary titles. Some of the oddest ones were "Men, Monks and Gamekeepers: A Study in Popular Legend" by someone called Swanwhite and "Help! I Just Vanished My Father! Or, What to Do When Accidental Magic Gets Out of Control" by Izz E. Gone.

"Yeh 'ave a look 'round; I'll get yer books," Hagrid said.

Harry thought this was very kind, but he couldn't help wondering if it was quite safe for Hagrid to even be in the shop. If he knocked against a bookshelf…

He caught sight of a book called "Curse and Countercurses: Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges" and promptly forgot his worries. Less than a minute later, he was engrossed in a chapter that described how you could use a Vanishing Spell on someone's teeth and Transfigure a coin into a tooth, so that the person you played the trick on would think they'd suddenly lost their teeth. "Never fails to liven up a party!" the chapter declared.

I wonder what would happen if I used that on Uncle Vernon and Dudley, he thought, and grinned at the images his mind conjured.

"Entertaining reading?" a voice drawled.

Harry almost dropped the book.

"Oh… uh… Hello," he said awkwardly. "Yes, it is. Very. Entertaining, I mean."

The girl who'd spoken to him raised an eyebrow. She was about ten or eleven and the same height as him, with pale skin, light grey eyes and hair so blonde it was almost white. Harry wondered if she dyed it; Aunt Petunia had very nasty things to say about people who dyed their hair.

Belatedly, he remembered his manners. "I'm Harry Potter, who are you?"

Her mouth dropped open. "You're Harry Potter? But you-"

She broke off, looking at him as a cat might look at a mouse. Harry couldn't help noticing that her clothes looked very expensive, and he suddenly became painfully aware of his own ill-fitting, worn hand-me-down T-shirt and jeans, and his trainers with holes in them.

The girl narrowed her eyes, then smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "I'm Draco Malfoy. Are you going to Hogwarts this year?"

Harry blinked. "Er… yes, I am."

"I suppose you're going to be in Gryffindor?" Her smile widened and became the sort of smile you associated with a shark that smelt blood.

"Gryffindor?" Harry repeated. This conversation was rapidly becoming downright surreal, and he had the unpleasant feeling he was missing something.

"Well, of course someone with your accomplishments would be in Gryffindor."

Accomplishments? Was everyone in the Wizarding world crazy, or was it just this girl? Well, if he'd been saddled with a name like "Draco" it would probably have driven him crazy, too…

"What's a Gryffindor?"

It was Draco's turn to look confused. "Gryffindor House, of course. At Hogwarts."

"…There are houses at Hogwarts? But I thought it was a school!"

By now Harry had given up any hope of understanding either the conversation or the girl. She seemed to have reached the same conclusion about him.

"You don't know. You don't even know about the houses." She said this in the voice you'd used to say someone didn't even know what the sun was.

It finally hit him that this was one of those things everyone in the Wizarding world just knew.

Great job, Harry, he thought. First time you meet someone who grew up here and is probably going to school with you, and you make a fool of yourself.

"I'm new to all this," he offered by way of explanation. "I live with… Muggles-" he hoped he got the name right "-and there's a lot I don't know."

Draco stopped looking at him as if he needed his head examined and started looking at him as if he'd endured unspeakable tortures. "You live with Muggles? Why? How did you survive? I'd have killed myself if I had to live with them!"

Harry tried to answer, but she didn't give him a chance. "There are four houses in Hogwarts: Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor. All the students are Sorted into whichever one they're best suited to. Slytherin's the best house; every Malfoy for ten generations has been in Slytherin, and my godfather's the head of house."

So that's why it's the best house, Harry thought, smothering a grin.

"Ravenclaw's for bookworms and people who aren't completely sane."

Harry immediately hoped he wasn't Sorted into Ravenclaw.

"Hufflepuff's filled with people who are too stupid to go anywhere else," Draco continued.

That would probably be where he wound up.

"And Gryffindor's filled with the idiots even Hufflepuff won't take."

On second thought, Gryffindor might well be the place for him.

"That's fascinating," he said, reverting to what Aunt Petunia always said when she couldn't think of anything else to say. Then, because the silence was becoming awkward, "Are there real cockroaches in Cockroach Clusters?"

Draco stared. "Of course there are. Why else are they called Cockroach Clusters? And how do you know about them, anyway? Do they have them in the Muggle world?" She spat "Muggle" as if it was the foulest of swear words.

"Oh, no. I just saw them in a sweet shop. Why do we need a cauldron?"

Draco continued to stare. Harry got the feeling he'd just made a fool of himself yet again.

"For making potions, idiot! Did you think we'd sail around the lake in them?"

Turning cauldrons into boats sounded far more interesting than making potions, whatever they were, but Harry decided not to say so. Maybe when they got to Hogwarts he could do some research on how to make a cauldron float…

"I bet I could," he said without thinking.

"Could what?"

"Sail around the lake in one."

Draco's eyebrows vanished into her hairline. "I bet eighty galleons you can't."

"I bet a hundred I'll do it by Halloween," Harry replied, hoping his Gringotts account had a hundred galleons in it. His pride demanded he take the bet, but he didn't hold out much hope of winning it.

"Done."

They shook hands as gravely as Uncle Vernon did when he made a very important agreement. Then Harry caught sight of the book he'd been reading when Draco first spoke to him.

"Do you know how to cast a Jelly-Legs Jinx?" he asked.

Draco smiled smugly. "Of course; everyone knows that, but I excel at it. Even Father says so. You see, you wave your wand like this, and-"

"There yeh are, 'Arry!" Hagrid boomed cheerfully, his arms full of books. "Got all yer books, I 'ave, so let's go – Who's this?"

He eyed Draco with suspicion. She eyed him with disdain. Harry didn't notice.

"This is Draco Malfoy, she's told me all about the Hogwarts houses." He left out the part about the Jelly-Legs Jinx. Something told him Hagrid wouldn't approve. "Draco, this is Hagrid. He works at Hogwarts."

"Yes, I've heard of him," Draco said with a delicate sniff.

"A Malfoy? 'Arry, yeh shouldn't be-" Hagrid sighed. "Come on, 'Arry. We've still got stuff ter buy."

"Goodbye, Draco, see you at Hogwarts," Harry called over his shoulder as he followed Hagrid out of the shop.

"Goodbye, Harry, and don't forget – by Halloween, or you lose a hundred galleons!"

Hagrid stopped and stared at him. "What's that 'bout? What've yeh got ter do by 'Alloween?"

Harry winced. That was something else Hagrid wouldn't approve of, he was sure. "Oh, nothing, just something we were talking about."

Hagrid continued to give him a troubled frown. "'Arry… there's people 'round 'ere yeh shouldn't be associatin' with. Them Malfoys… they're an awful Dark family, the lot o' 'em. Followers o' You-Know-Who, they were."

Draco's family followed Voldemort? That was a shock to Harry. She'd been so… well, "nice" wasn't quite the right word, but she'd talked to him. Very few people took the time to talk to him.

"But I liked her," he protested. "And if she'd anything to do with Vol – with You-Know-Who, wouldn't she have been mean?"

Hagrid sighed.

September 1st arrived, and Harry found himself standing in the middle of King's Cross Station with an owl in a cage, his suitcases and meagre belongings, no way of knowing where Platform 9 ¾ was, and no one to ask for help. As the clock's hands marched steadily towards eleven o'clock he became increasingly desperate. Had the ticket printed the wrong platform number by mistake? Did you have to do something to prove you were a wizard to find it? But Hagrid said you weren't allowed to do magic in front of Muggles, and everyone around was a –

"- packed with Muggles, of course- "

Harry whirled around so fast he almost knocked Hedwig's cage flying.

A woman, four boys, and a girl, all with flaming red hair, passed by, all talking at once. The noise was deafening, but Harry could pick "Hogwarts" and "Platform 9 ¾" out of the babble.

He paused. There were two choices: he could follow them and see where they went, or he could stay here and miss the train.

He followed them.

A/N: Yes, Draco and Harry's conversation is stilted; it was meant to be. Harry's not had much contact with girls, especially girls who happen to be witches, and Draco's a Slytherin even before she's sorted, so obviously she'll want to be on good terms with the great Harry Potter in case he becomes useful later, but she's also been taught all her life that everyone who's not a pureblood is inferior to her. So neither knows how to act around the other.

I'm trying to focus on the things that happen differently than in canon, so if something isn't mentioned, it happened like it did in the books. So Harry still has Hedwig, and Hagrid still forgot to tell him how to get to Platform 9 ¾, but because Harry's conversation with Draco is more civil than in canon, his interactions with the Weasleys will be slightly different.

Hope you've enjoyed the story so far! Next chapter, Harry meets Ron, and gives everyone a shock at the Sorting.