AN: Thanks so much for reading! I don't own any characters or places that JKR came up with! Reviews are more welcome than pumpkin pie in my tummy. Love you guys! The seven chapter limit that I set on myself is not going to work... This may be the last time I update for a while because I'm doing NaNoWriMo in T-7 Days... Sorry, lovelies :(
Chapter Two: Harry Potter and the Hidden Past
"What will I hear about, Draco?" Mr. Malfoy steadied himself in the doorway with his snakehead cane and cocked an eyebrow at his son who was barely hanging onto the library ladder.
Draco slid down the ladder in a second and took a deep breath to compose himself. "Father, I would like you to meet my new acquaintance, Harry Potter. Harry, please turn around. This is my father Lucius Malfoy."
Harry ripped his eyes away from Draco and nodded his head in a polite fashion. "It's nice to meet you, sir."
Mr. Malfoy's lips, red as Draco's, parted in a gasp that lasted for a good ten seconds. "H-Harry Potter?" The older man finally closed his mouth and tapped his long fingernails against his cane. "Merlin, it is, uh, you. You look exactly like your father."
"But he has his mother's eyes," Draco chimed in. Harry spun around to face him for a second and caught a wink from the blond.
"Yes, yes..." Mr. Malfoy started pacing towards Harry and took the boy's chin in his pale hand. "Much like your mother." He turned Harry's head to the side. "Your right side is definitely better." The man seated himself on a nearby leather couch with his legs crossed and muttered, "So you look like your parents, but can you skate like them?"
"I've never skated before, sir." Harry cleared his throat and shoved his hands in his pocket, fingering a penny he had found on the ground a few days ago.
Draco giggled to himself as his Father's face changed from a look of appraisal to outright confusion as if he was Professor Quirrel seeing a troll.
He took a sharp breath in and uncrossed his legs. "Who do you live with Harry? Merlin's beard, the whole wizarding community has been waiting for Dumbledore to come out with it since the accident."
Taking his hands out of his pockets and twisting them together, Harry asked, "I don't mean to be rude, but could you tell me more about the accident." Behind Harry, Draco gulped as Mr. Malfoy stood up and marched towards Harry, taking a step forward with every word until he was looking down at the boy with his cold, grey eyes.
"All you need to know is that it was a loss to the Roller Derby community. I do not wish to speak of it anymore." He raised his eyebrows to elicit final confirmation from the boy.
Harry nodded just as Mrs. Malfoy skated into the doorway with wide eyes and windblown hair. "Lucius, my dear, a word?" Mr. Malfoy pushed his shoulders back and strutted over to her. Draco grabbed Harry's arm as his parents talked with tones as silent as a Threstral's hooves.
"I know you was driving the other car, Harry."
"Who was it?"
"I can see why my father wouldn't want to talk about it. You see he's a-"
"Harry, come with us, your aunt and uncle are looking for you. We have some, shall we say, explaining to do for them." Draco's father extended his hand, fluttering the arms of his jacket in the process. He took the boy under his wing and left Narcissa and Draco alone. They took a route different from before, a shortcut of sorts.
"I didn't come this way with Draco," Harry stammered.
Mr. Malfoy held tighter to his arm and snapped, "Good."
They passed by a sickly creature with huge eyes and ears that were disproportionate to the rest of his tiny body. "Dobby! See to it that Pansy is running the ticket counter. Can't keep the bloody muggles waiting." The creature nodded, whimpering, and scampered off.
"Sir, what's a muggle?" Harry inquired as they breezed past a room with a peculiar smell which he would later learn was Unicorn Blood.
"Non-magic folk, Harry. Keep your eyes down. There's bright lights up ahead."
The lighting did increase a smidge, but Harry snuck glances out of his peripheral and saw the real reason Mr. Malfoy wanted him to look at his feet: the walls were stained with blood and skin all mixed together with the tracks of roller blades running through it all. As they got farther away from the library, the light increased even more but the blood stains faded out, replaced with news articles, many with headings featuring the name "Flight of Death" along with "The Death Eaters."
"Sir, Draco was talking about a place called Hogwarts..."
The man spun on his heel and came to a stop, finally letting go of Harry's arm leaving him with a feeling that he needed Skelo-Gro without knowing what it was.
"You will get a letter soon, Harry, and I will talk to Dumbledore so arrangements can be made for you to get school supplies. Do not worry. Now let's find your aunt and uncle. I presume it's your mother's sister, yes? Looking for a dashing redhead with more freckles that there are merpeople in the Black Lake, are we?"
"No, that's them." Harry took a final step out of the darkness and nodded his head in direction of his adopted family. Vernon had Dudley's shoulders in a death grip and Petunia was scratching at her temple while flitting her eyes to the ceiling and the floor.
Mr. Malfoy muttered something about bloody muggles and guided Harry by the shoulder. "Hello, may we have a word? It's about young Harry here?"
Vernon squinted his eyes and pulled Dudley closer to him. "Who are you and what are you doing with my son? Let go of Harry!"
Mr. Malfoy just blinked his eyes with pigmy puff innocence and smiled. "Follow me, sirs and madam." He twirled away with Harry in tow and brought them into a back room where a girl with short, black hair was popping her gum and looking at a magazine with moving pictures on the front. Lucius gestured for Harry to sit in an old wicker chair and whispered something to the girl. She spun around with her mouth open, almost losing her gum and dropping her magazine.
"What magazine is that? And why are the pictures moving?"
Lucius turned the girl around so she was facing the ticket window again and growled, "Harry, this is Pansy Parkinson. She will be in your year at Hogwarts." Harry's pseudo-family walked into the room just as Lucius said Hogwarts.
"Oh no," Vernon grumbled, falling into the closest chair. "Petunia, they've found him. We have to leave. Just let me catch my-" wheeze "-breath. He can't go to that blasted school. He'll be a freak like your sister and Dudley will end up scared and traumatized like you with all your shaking and nervous eye movements."
Mr. Malfoy took a deep breath and closed his eyes, muttering something under his breath. "When Harry receives his letter, my family and I will escort him to Diagon Alley to purchase his supplies. Until then, he can come to the rink as often as he wants free of charge. Leave everything to us."
Vernon wrinkled his overly large nose and rolled his lips until he looked like pug who had been in an accident. "Thank you, sir. We shall be going now." Petunia and Dudley followed Vernon out with a glassy look in their eyes like they had been snake charmed.
Harry exhaled as if he had just been saved from the bottom of the Lake and stammered incoherently at Mr. Malfoy. "Do not worry, Harry. They will be fine. It's just a simple spell. Now, whenever you are ready, come out to the front and grab some skates. I have to talk to my wife." He patted the boy's shoulder and stormed out. Before Harry could take another breath, Pansy had him cornered. She breathed down at him with her pug nose inches away from his mouth.
"You know what he did, right?"
"No, I don't know much of what's gone in the past hour."
"It's a pretty powerful memory charm, he told me ." Pansy started to circle Harry like a bad record. "Only powerful wizards can perform it. You see, he erased part of their memory. They won't remember that your parents were wizards. If they did, they'd never let you go to Hogwarts. And we wouldn't want that, would we?" Pansy pinned Harry's shoulders against the chair until he nodded his head.
Draco skated into the room and stopped himself on Pansy's arm. She rested her head on his shoulder, and he smirked. "So, Harry, I hear you're going to be spending more time with us?"
"Yeah, except I don't know how to skate."
"It's fine. The place closes down in about an hour. We'll just wait around-" Draco dragged his finger across Pansy's chin, drawing out his words like an artist "-until then."
"But Draco I have to leave once we close," Pansy whimpered as the boy's arm wrapped around her waist.
He pecked her on the nose like he was a hail storm. "What a shame, sweetie. Now go help my mum with the skates. The muggle children are no doubt getting impatient." He gave her a swat and she ran off to the other room. Once she was gone, Draco muttered a few choice words and grabbed her magazine off the counter.
In between helping muggles with tickets, Draco read the magazine and answered Harry's questions.
"What magazine is that?"
"Witches Weekly. Look at this handsome fellow." Draco turned around the magazine to show a blond-haired fellow laughing to himself with exaggerated arm movements. "Gilderoy Lockhart. There's something off about him, but everyone adores him."
"Why are the pictures moving?"
"That's how all wizard stuff is."
"I didn't see in that book you showed me."
"Oh, well, you must have been too far away, but your parents never really move much in that picture."
He flipped the pages and waggled his eyes at an unrealistic representation of a semi-naked Godric Gryffindor.
"Who's that?"
"Only the founder of the worst Hogwarts house. This is who you want to know." Draco showed him a picture of Salazar Slytherin admiring himself in tuxedo-like dress robes. "Salazar Slytherin. Founder of Slytherin house-the best Hogwart's house."
Draco reclined and continue flipping through the magazine, all the while the covergirl waving and batting her eyes at Harry.
"How old are you, Draco?"
"Eleven, same as you."
"I'm not eleven yet. My birthday's in a week."
"Any special plans?"
"No, Dudley's birthday is always the one we have a party for." Harry picked at the wicker of his seat and clicked his heels together.
"So you both invite people? Two cakes, I presume?"
"No, well, we have one big cake with Dudley's name on it, but none of my friends come because they're, y'know, busy."Harry's glasses started to fall down his nose, but he pushed them back up with practiced robotics.
"Why aren't we in class together?"
"I live kind of far away..."
"Well, tell me some names of your friends. Maybe I know some of them."
"Um, well there's Pierce."
"What kind of bloody name is that?"
"He's kind of, um, off. He's better friends with Dudley. You probably wouldn't know the others. They live even farther from here."
Draco threw Witches weekly onto the counter and strode over to Harry, extending his hand. "Harry Potter, we are officially friends now." He smirked. "I'm glad to have the honor of being your first."
"You are not my first friend."
The boy sneered and turned on his heel to leave. "Don't lie to yourself, Potter."