"My name is Crabbe," he said, sociably. He had spent so much of his boyhood with Malfoy, he had nearly forgotten his given name. "What's yours?"
"Greggers," Goyle grunted.
Crabbe's mother had told him that the best way to make friends is to ask about the other person's hobbies, or interests. "What do you like to do, Greggers?" Crabbe said.
"Hit people."
"Your friends or people you don't like?"
"People I don't like."
"Let's be friends," Crabbe decided. And so they were, and so ended Crabbe's attempts at friend-making, for Draco and Goyle were more than enough for him. Draco wasn't quite their friend, however; their commander might be a more accurate description.
"I hate Mudbloods," Malfoy said cheerfully one summer day. "Let's play Dark Lords and Muggles. I'm the Dark Lord, Goyle is a Muggle, and Crabbe is a prideless pureblood who has polluted his race by formicating with a near aminal."
"Uh–" Goyle began.
"Can't I be a Dark Lord?" Crabbe asked.
"No! I'm the Dark Lord! Now, Crabbe, you get Goyle pregnant."
A vaguely horrified expression appeared on Goyle's face like a man's drowned corpse bobbing to the surface.
"Only girls get pregnant," Crabbe said. Goyle stifled a gasp, and Malfoy glared. He drew himself up and stared Crabbe in the eye.
Crabbe gulped. "Mr. Malfoy," he added.
"He is a girl," Malfoy snapped. "In this game, you're a girl," he repeated to Goyle. "And you're pregnant with a Mudblood. Hold your tummy like you're pregnant."
Goyle hesitantly rubbed his belly with his baseball glove-like hands.
"Moan, too! Moan! You're having the baby!"
Goyle looked helplessly at Crabbe, who gave him an encouraging nod. Goyle slowly turned his head between Malfoy and Crabbe, then returned to rubbing his stomach, and let out a few faint, bovine noises.
"Mooo. Mooo. Moo."
"Now I'm the Dark Lord!" Draco jumped to his feet, pointing a twig at Goyle as if it were a wand. "You, stupid Muggle! Who is the prideless pureblood who you had the sex with?"
Goyle stared, his mouth open. "Uh–"
"Am I supposed to fight you, Mr. Malfoy?" Crabbe asked.
"Oh, you are the prideless formicator!" Draco cried, wheeling around to point his twig at Crabbe. "Behold, as I eliminate the unworthy from our race!" He pointed his twig back at Goyle. "Abada Kedabra! You're dead! Now fall over, that was the killing curse. Oh, and your uterus should be expelling the foetal Mudblood, so moan."
After Draco went home, Goyle sat under his special tree, and began arranging the leaves into piles of different sizes. Recognizing his behavior as a mark of a disturbed mind, Crabbe walked to the tree and squatted down with him.
"What's wrong, Greggers?"
Goyle didn't answer for a moment, moving the leaves around. Finally, he said, "Are Mudbloods that bad?"
Crabbe felt a surge of sympathy. "Aw, no, I don't think so. Your mom is okay and she's Muggle-born. We just won't remind Mr. Malfoy about that, all right?"
Goyle piked up a fallen branch, about an inch in diameter, and still with green leaves attached, and began snapping it into little, tiny bits. "Mr. Malfoy hates me," he said slowly, and his chin began to tremble.
"Mr. Malfoy doesn't hate you! Being a half-blood is almost as good as being a pureblood! Hey, even Mr. Snape is a half-blood, right?"
Goyle's pout was implacable.
"Even You-Know-Who's a half-blood."
Goyle lip trembled.
Crabbe sighed. "Harry Potter's a half-blood."
Goyle looked up. "Harry Potter?"
"Yeah!"
Goyle looked at the stick in his hand, blinking. A quivering smile fought with the frown on his face, and gradually won out. "Okay," he said. Crabbe considered that a victory.
Their first year found the threesome crowded in a Hogwarts Express cabin, Draco tripping over their larger legs as he lunged for the candy cart.
"You lot!" he commanded–everything Draco said sounded like a command. "Have you heard that Harry Potter's on this train? Imagine! Harry Potter!" he said, scooping up a handful of pasties and shortchanging the woman pushing the trolley by a few knuts.
"Uhm–Harry Potter?" Crabbe said, dropping a few of his own coins into the trolley-pusher's hands before she could protest.
"Yes, you dolt, the Boy Who Lived. Scars and all that, defeater of the Dark Lord. Even you two must not be daft enough to not know who he is."
"Uh–" Goyle began. Crabbe kicked him and nodded quickly.
"Well, they say defeater of the Dark Lord like he's something special, full of good magic or something, but that just shows their prejudice. It's obvious that if you defeat a Dark Lord you're probably full of dark magic yourself. Imagine! Killing Curses just bounce right off his forehead. He must be nearly all-powerful, not to mention psycho enough to kill somebody as a baby. I think I'm going to make friends with him."
Crabbe kept his reservations to himself, and Goyle merely chewed his pasty.
"Obviously he'll need my help to catch up in the wizarding world, having spent all that time with Muggles. I think it's a shame that they sent him to a Muggle family–typical of Dumblebutt."
Blaise lolloped by, leaning leisurely against the door frame of the compartment and knocking on the open door. "Say, Malfoy, did you hear? They're saying Harry Potter's on the train, and he's sitting with that Weasley kid."
"No!" Draco exclaimed, pushing past him to look down the train hallway. "The kid with the glasses?"
"Soon he'll find out that some wizarding families are better than others," Blaise continued, examining his fingernails.
"No way! I thought he was just some kid in a shop! Crabbe! Goyle! Remember that boy I told you about in Madame Malkin's, the lout who didn't know any Quidditch teams? That was Harry Potter! I had no idea. That's why he was with that oaf Hagrid."
"If he keeps hanging around filth like Hagrid and the Weasley's, it'll rub off. Riff-raff, the lot of them," Blaise said with perfect nonchalance.
"So handsome, too! You can just feel the power coming from him. One look at him and you can tell–he's got power. That's charisma, my father told me. Are you sure that's a Weasley he's with?"
"All the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford," Blaise shrugged.
"Heh–good one. Goyle!" Draco snapped at Crabbe. "We're going down to warn him not to make friends with the wrong sort, you know."
"I–" Crabbe began.
"Come, now! Imagine how upset he'll be to find out he's been eating candy with a blood-traitor! Naturally, since we're such good friends, he'll listen to me about it. Come along, you two. Harry Potter! Wearing glasses, who'd have thought it!"
Their first interview did not, perhaps, go as well as Draco had anticipated.
"The little–little–blood-traitor! The fool!" Draco fumed, when he had recovered his breath in their compartment. Goyle was sucking on his bitten finger and quietly crying.
"He thinks he can tell the 'wrong sort' for himself? What's that supposed to mean? Well, what do you expect from a half-blood raised by Muggles? No proper feeling at all, not a whiff. Just a bigheaded–a scar–a stupid scar-wearing stupidhead–"
"A scarhead?" Crabbe suggested.
"Scarhead! Stupid Muggle-lover. I bet the Dark Lord's curse bounced off his forehead because he was so thick then! Blaise won't believe this! Blaise!" Draco called, stomping out of the compartment. "Pansy! Theodore! You will not believe what the scarhead just said to me! Yes, I said scarhead! ..."
Crabbe, sitting quietly, noted that tears were running down Goyle's face, as he sucked forlornly at his finger.
"What's up, Greggers?" he asked.
Goyle shook his head.
"Don't suck on that, you're going to get sick. You don't know where that rat's been."
Goyle looked horrified, then his face crumpled as he began to wail.
"No, no, stop, it's okay, you aren't going to get sick," Crabbe sighed, patting Goyle on the head. Goyle stopped wailing and began to hiccup.
"Now, what's the matter, Greggers?" Crabbe asked, pulling a crushed pastry cake out of Draco's suitcase, and, shutting it, replacing it safely on the top rack.
"Rat bit me."
"I know a rat bit you. It didn't hurt."
"I don't like rats."
Crabbe sighed.
"Harry Potter should kill the rat."
"Now, Greggers, Mr. Malfoy doesn't like Harry Potter anymore."
"No?" Goyle said, confused.
Crabbe pulled a package of sticking plaster out of his own suitcase–"Always be prepared!" his mother had said–and began bandaging Goyle's finger. "No, Harry Potter isn't cool anymore. If we ever see him or his friends again, we have to be mean to them."
Goyle frowned. "Harry Potter's good."
"Not anymore. He's–he's friends with the rat, Greggers! Do you like the rat?"
Goyle shook his head.
"Okay, well, just pretend when you see Harry that he's got a rat."
Goyle began to cry again.
"No, no, er, pretend he's–pretend, when you hit him, that you're hitting a giant rat."
Goyle cried harder.
