Chapter Two: Greetings

Two years later


Draco stood on a footstool, a young witch pinning his new set of Hogwarts robes to the proper height. Only the finest for a Malfoy, his father had said, so his robes were made of high-quality spun wool. He didn't like the material much—it was a bit itchy—but he wasn't going to complain; his father wouldn't appreciate it. Draco sighed impatiently. He wanted to get out of the stupid clothing store and go visit Quality Quidditch Supplies. The new Nimbus Two Thousand had just come out, and he wanted to see it. Just then, Madam Malkin returned to the back room with a black-haired boy in tow. The boy looked to be about Draco's age, so Draco decided to talk to him.

"Hello. Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," the boy responded as he stepped up onto the next stool over.

Draco smiled. "My father's next door buying my books and Mother's up the street looking at wands. Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms." He paused. "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." He smirked, hoping the boy would laugh at his joke.

He didn't.

"Have you got your own broom?" Draco tried.

"No," he said, pushing his round glasses further up his nose.

Hmm. "Play Quidditch at all?"

"No," the boy said again.

That was weird. Draco didn't know many boys his age that didn't play Quidditch. "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."

The boy really was rather taciturn, wasn't he? Draco tried again. "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…"

Why was this boy so unwilling to converse with him? Draco was irritated. Quidditch and Sorting were the only things most eleven-year-olds were interested in at the moment! He looked out the window boredly, wishing for something to talk about, when he spotted what was surely to be a hilarious topic of discussion that this boy would join him in.

"I say, look at that man!" Draco said, nodding in the direction he was looking.

There was a huge man standing outside, grinning beneath a tangle of black hair and a gigantic bushy beard. He was holding two ice cream cones.

"That's Hagrid," the boy said. "He works at Hogwarts."

"Oh, I've heard of him!" Draco exclaimed, remembering what his father had told him about the man. "He's a sort of servant, isn't he?"

"He's the gamekeeper." The boy frowned unhappily at him.

"Yes, exactly." That's what a gamekeeper was—a servant. Maybe the boy would be interested in this piece of information his father had given him: "I heard he's a 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."

"I think he's brilliant," the boy snarled, glaring at Draco furiously.

Draco's eyes widened. "Do you? Why is he with you? Where are your parents?" Now that he thought about it, the boy hadn't had any other adults accompany him. That was odd.

"They're dead."

Great Salazar, this was awkward. "Oh, sorry…" Perhaps it was time to pull out the stuff his father had been drilling into his head since he could walk. Maybe this boy would agree. "…But they were our kind, weren't they?"

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

"I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you?" His father would expect him to carry the conversation in this direction, now that he'd brought the topic up. "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."

Draco suddenly realized that he hadn't asked the boy's name…or even given his own. "What's your surname, anyway?" He opened his mouth to introduce himself when Madam Malkin interrupted.

"That's you done, my dear," she said to the bespectacled boy.

He hurriedly hopped from his perch and dashed from the room.

"Well, I'll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose," Draco muttered in frustration. Stupid grumpy boy and his stupid refusal to have a perfectly normal conversation.

Draco pouted about his own misfortune and boredom. Why was it taking so bloody long for this witch to hem his robes?!

Several minutes later, Madam Malkin returned to the back room, this time with a brown-haired girl. Her hair that was extremely curly and quite bushy; getting hair like that to behave was probably impossible. When the girl saw Draco, she smiled kindly at him, revealing two front teeth that she hadn't quite grown into yet. He thought she was still rather pretty; her warm brown eyes were her best feature.

"Let me just go fetch your robes, sweet, and we'll get those straightened out."

The girl nodded and hopped onto the stool that had been vacated by the black-haired boy. She turned toward Draco and flashed her smile at him again.

"Hello," he said. "I'm Draco." He wouldn't make the same mistake this time around.

"Nice to meet you," the girl replied. "I'm Hermione."

"Are you going to Hogwarts, too?"

She nodded happily. "I'm so excited!"

This was more like it! "Me too. D'you know what house you'll be in yet?"

"Not really; you can't know for sure until you get there, after all."

Draco nodded.

"But I read all about them in Hogwarts, a History, and I think I like Ravenclaw the best. I love to read and learn new things, you see, so it already seems like a place I'd want to be," Hermione continued. "What about you?"

"Father says I'll probably wind up in Slytherin. All my family have been for centuries." He paused for a long time before uttering the words he never thought he'd say. "Sometimes I don't know if it's where I belong, though."

Hermione tilted her head to one side. "Why not? Slytherin seems like a decent house as well."

"Oh, it is," Draco reassured her, "but my father wants me to follow in his footsteps. He followed the Dark Lord before he was destroyed—"

"By Harry Potter!" Hermione chipped in excitedly.

"—Right, by Harry Potter. Anyway, my father wants me to do the same thing, because he thinks the Dark Lord isn't really gone for some reason."

"I read about You-Know-Who, and he was in Slytherin. Is that why you don't like the house?"

Draco shrugged. "I never said I don't like Slytherin."

Hermione nodded. "It's perfectly understandable if you don't, especially since your dad had a tendency to head in the same direction as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

"Right…anyway, can we talk about something else now?"

"Of course," she said quickly. "I'm sorry if I offended you."

He shrugged again. "It's okay; you didn't mean to."

"Have you practiced any spells yet? I've already read every single one of our textbooks—I picked them up last week—and I've tried a few simple ones. They've all worked for me."

"Yeah, I've practiced some spells, but I had to sneak my mother's wand to do it since I don't have my own yet." Draco straightened his shoulders proudly. "My best spell is Accio."

Hermione frowned a little. "That one has been giving me some trouble, actually. But my best spell is Wingardium Leviosa. Everything I've practiced on has absolutely defied gravity. It's hard to believe it sometimes."

Draco had no idea what she meant by that. "Do you like Quidditch?" he ventured, unsure if girls were as into the sport as boys.

"It seems interesting enough, but I'm afraid of heights. I'd never get on a broom like that; it's too scary."

"Yeah, I guess it's not for everyone. I really want my own broom, though."

Hermione smiled. "I'll bet. Have you done a lot of flying?"

He nodded. "My mother says I've been flying since before I could walk. I don't know if that's true, but it does feel like I've been doing it forever. I love the feeling of freedom."

After a short pause, Hermione thoughtfully said, "Muggle is a funny word."

Draco chuckled. "Yeah, it kind of is."

"Where on earth did it come from?" she asked.

"You don't know?" he asked in surprise. He kind of thought she knew everything.

Hermione just shook her head.

"Well, in the fifteenth century, the wizard Boris Karamatzov began calling people without magic medwìsa. But in the eighteenth century, a wizard named Archibald Golightly thought that it was too harsh a term, so he combined it with gehlyta and created Muggle."

Hermione frowned. "Medwisa means 'foolish' and gehlyta is 'companion.' So Muggles are stupid friends?"

Draco laughed. "Maybe back then. I think most magical people use it to mean someone without magic now. I don't think it's meant to be an insult."

"There, all done," the witch at Draco's feet finally announced.

He opened his mouth to say something rude to the woman, but changed his mind when he realized that he never would have met Hermione if the seamstress hadn't worked so slowly. Draco slipped the robe off, and the witch hurried off to duplicate several more of the right length. Madam Malkin also straightened up and patted Hermione on the shoulder.

"You're finished as well."

Hermione thanked her and removed her robe, too.

"So," she said to Draco, "I hope I'll see you at school."

Draco nodded. "Me too."

The two new friends walked with each other to the front of the store—where they paid for their robes—and out into the busy street. They stood there in a silence that grew more awkward by the second.

"I've got to be going," Hermione finally said. "My parents are waiting in the Leaky Cauldron."

"Why?" Draco asked.

She waved a hand. "Oh, they're Muggles, and they had enough of Diagon Alley when we were here before. I told them I could pick up my robes by myself."

Draco quickly put on the mask of indifference that every Malfoy was forced to master before school age. "Oh, okay."

"I'll see you on the train, then," Hermione said before walking down the street.

Draco stared after her for a long time. "Maybe," he eventually muttered.