DRACO MALFOY

AND THE SORCERER'S STONE

Chapter Three:

Diagon Alley

Draco rose early as usual on the day he was to go to Diagon Alley for his wizarding supplies. Draco had dressed before breakfast, something he rarely did, but today was different. They needed to be out of the house early to avoid the scum that ran rampant in Diagon Alley. His parents were sitting in the kitchen as they had been a few weeks before, the day he received his letters. However, they ate in silence, not having the excitement of the week before to fill the emptiness. When they had finished, Lucius rose and left the room, Narcissa following soon after with a quick kiss on the top of Draco's head. Draco stood and began to leave the room as well, when Dobby appeared before him.

"Bloody hell, elf! Don't do that!" The elf looked ashamed. "Sorry, Young Master. Dobby will punish himself for your fright." The elf began to bang his head against the wall in punishment. After about twenty dull thunks, he looked up. "Your father wanted me to give you this, Young Master. He said that we wouldn't be going to Gringotts so you should have your money with you now." He handed Draco a small bag filled with galleons, sickles, and knuts, all of which jingled gleefully in Draco's hand. "Thank you, elf, you are dismissed." Dobby bowed low to the ground, then left without another word.

Draco turned toward the staircase and slowly walked back to his room, taking the cloak that hung on the wall by his door. As he was about to return to the hall, his father appeared by his side. "Dallying, Draco? You know we have much to do and very little time. Come, we'll be leaving in a few minutes." He pressed his walking cane into Draco's shoulder, the snake's head that concealed his wand digging into the flesh. Draco winced, then stepped slowly down the stairs. He met his mother at the door, where she put her hand to his shoulder. "Are you ready, darling?" Draco nodded. His father walked up behind him and moved to open the door. Once they were clear of the property, Lucius turned to face his wife and son. "I'll be at Borgin and Burke's, meet me there as soon as you arrive." And with that, he disapperated, soon followed by Narcissa with Draco clutching her arm.

Draco hated side-along apparition. He couldn't wait until he was of age and could do it himself. The sensation of being pressed through a small constricted space overcame him once, then again, as he and his mother finally appeared outside of Borgin and Burke's, where they saw Lucius waiting for them. He looked around the street, which was already crowed with witches and wizards. Lucius sighed. "Draco, where is your booklist?" Draco pulled the list from his pocket and handed it to his father. "Good. I'll go get these books. Your mother will go to the wand shop for you, and you will go to Madam Malkin's and get your robes."

Narcissa looked like she had swallowed something bitter. "Malkin's? What happened to Twilfitt and Tatting's?" Lucius shook his head slowly. "Twilfitt is at the Ministry for questioning. They took him in because they think he had something to do with the Death Eaters. He should be out in a few weeks, but still.."

Draco sighed. With a quick kiss from his mother, he strode off toward the robe shop. The shop witch approached him as soon as he stepped in the door. "Hogwarts robes, I presume? Give me just a few seconds, I'll go get them.." She returned a few seconds later with robes for him. She had just began to pin up the ends of the sleeves when the door opened again.



"Hogwarts, dear?" she asked. "Got the lot here- another young man being fitted up just now, in fact." She gestured toward Draco, and he turned to see a boy his age with messy black hair step onto the stool beside him. He smirked. "Hello, Hogwarts too?"

The boy looked nervous. "Yes," he said. Draco still smiled. "My father's next door buying my books and mothers' up the street looking at wands," he said. "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 my father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow."

The boy didn't say anything. Draco continued. "Have you got your own broom?" he asked. "No," said the boy.

"Play Quidditch at all?"

"No," said the boy, looking slightly confused.

"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," said the boy.

Draco went on, thinking all the while how stupid this boy was not to know anything. "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," said the boy. Draco laughed to himself. What a dull boy, he thought. He glanced out the window and saw a giant man walking by the shop. "I say, look at that man!" he said.

Finally, the boy said something other than 'no', and Draco was almost shocked that his vocabulary extended that far. "That's Hagrid," he said. "He works at Hogwarts." Draco nodded in agreement. "Oh, I've heard of him. He's sort of a servant, isn't he?"

The boy looked to be annoyed by the last statement. "He's the gamekeeper," he said. Draco nodded. "Yes, exactly. 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."

The boy looked angry now. "I think he's brilliant," he said.

Draco sneered. "Do you? Why is he with you? Where are your parents?"

"They're dead," said the boy, defensively.

"Oh, sorry," said Draco, not meaning it in the slightest. "But they were our kind, weren't they?"

The boy seemed defensive again. "They were a witch and wizard, if that's what you mean."

Draco grinned. An opportunity to bring up his favourite subject of argument. "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 et the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families. What's your surname, anyway?"

Just then, Madam Malkin walked over to them. "That's you done, my dear," she said to the boy with the black hair. Draco was not sorry to see him go. "Well, I'll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose," he said. He could honestly care less, but he figured he would show some courtesy to his classmates.

Within a few minutes he was done as well, and he stepped back into the street to find his father waiting for him. "All set, Draco?" he asked. Draco held out his robes, wrapped in brown paper. "I tried to get them with the Slytherin crest on already, but the witch wouldn't let me. She said I shouldn't count my hippogriffs before they can fly, crazy old bat." Lucius smiled 

faintly. "Ah, there's your mother, shall we continue?"

They continued their shopping without much incident, stopping first at the apothecary, then the parchment shop, with a detour back to Knockturn Alley so Lucius could get the latest gossip from the Death Eaters that still kept shop there. As they were walking back along main street, Narcissa pointed out Eeylops Owl Emporium. Draco selected an eagle owl, and they returned to the main street a few minutes later with the cage tucked safely away among their other packages.

As they walked past Quality Quidditch Supplies, Draco wandered over to the window. They had the new Nimbus on display, 2000 series. "Father, can I have a racing broom?" he asked. His father sighed, then looked into the window. "Draco, you know what I've told you. You can get a new broom when you're eligible for the house team. Start of term next year, we'll get you the best broom money can buy, but for now, I don't see the point." Draco grimaced, but turned away from the window. Only one more year, then whatever broom he wanted could be his.

Narcissa looked at her wristwatch. "Lucius, don't you think we should be getting back? It's getting awful late, Draco will need his rest-"

"I'm fine, mother, I don't need--"

Lucius cut in. "Nonsense, Draco! You're starting Hogwarts now, its going to be more trying than the mathematics and things we've been teaching you the past eleven years. You're a growing boy and need more rest. We'll get home at once, and then we'll get you something to eat." Draco made a face. He hated being coddled like this, having his parents take care of his every need. He couldn't wait until he started school, then he could finally do what he wanted.

However, for now he would have to obey his parents. With a last look of distaste, he nodded. "Yes, Father." He looked out at the busy street, filled with smiling witches and wizards. What he wouldn't give for that kind of freedom. He gripped his father's arm, and the street disappeared, being replaced instead with the garden fence of the manor. "Home sweet home," Draco muttered under his breath, and began hauling his packages up the walk. Where was that pesky elf when his services were required?

He trudged up the two sprawling flights of stairs to his room and dumped his packages on the bed without a second thought. He rummaged through parcels of brown paper until he reached the only one he was ever interested in: a long thin parcel tied with twine. He hastily pulled off the paper to reveal a black box. Draco ran his fingers along the edge, seeing without even opening the package what he knew lay inside. Nestled within a red velvet lining was a long, thin, beautifully carved piece of wood, one that held more secrets than its nondescript box seemed to suggest. He remembered that moment, no more than three hours before, in the small, cluttered shop, the first moment when he could finally feel the wizard blood in his veins.

He had left the robe shop feeling cocky. That idiot boy, he could have told him anything and he would have eaten it right out of the palm of his hand. Perhaps he would bully his father into buying him a racing broom, that would give the other first years quite a shock. However, the second he laid eyes on his father's distinctive white blonde hair, all semblance of arrogance was lost. His father's normally clear gray eyes now shone as hard as the steel they resembled in colour, and Draco knew that when his father was like this, there would be no bullying him into anything. After a few moments of strained conversation they had started down the street towards his mother, standing in the open doorway of the wand shop waiting for them.

When they stepped inside, the frail wandmaker shook his head. "It is really inadvisable, you know, to have a young boy's first wand selected by a parent rather than himself. True 

enough, the blood is still there and the connections from that, but it's really best that the one who will use the wand is the one the wand chooses, you know-"

Lucius raised a finger to shush him. "Ollivander, we really appreciate your- expertise, but we are in a bit of a rush, so if you wouldn't mind?" Ollivander looked offended by this ignorance of the subtleties of wand magic. But, who was he to refute the wishes of a paying customer? He sighed, then pushed a small pile of boxes across the table to Draco, who stared almost blankly at them. Ollivander gave him an encouraging look. "Go on then, boy! Try one out."

Draco remembered sorting through the pile, opening box after box and trying one wand after the other, none of them in any way suited for him. His father looked more than once at his pocketwatch, clearly anxious to be done with all of this shopping. Finally, Draco reached the final box, completely black with crisp, clean edges. He opened its cover to see the blood red velvet lining and the simply carved wand that lay inside. Ollivander sighed, looking tired from his dreary experience with the Malfoys. After a quick glance at the wand, he spoke again. "Hawthorn and unicorn hair, ten inches exact. Reasonably springy, very good wand." Draco took it gingerly from the box and gripped it firmly in his right hand. With a gentle wave, he could tell that this was his wand. It wasn't really a feeling of power, per se, but life awakened in his blood. The wizard's blood in his veins. Even now, remembering that moment not three hours before, feeling the cool wood in his hand, he felt the blood again. And in that moment, Draco realized that this year marked the start of something bigger than any of them could ever expect, and swore that he would be a part of it. He would be a part of it, and he would finally make his father proud of him.