"Sorted Too Young"
Dumbledore tells Snape, "Sometimes, Snape, I think we sort them too young."
CHAPTER 19 – LEARNING TO COPE
Draco swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. He had to clear it several times before risking the floo to Grimauld Place. The Weasleys crowded hominess vanished in green flames that flared and vanished again to reveal the cold antique dark fireplace of the sitting room on the main floor of Grimauld Place. Kreacher had done as he was told and the room was clean, dust free, the sheets gone. It looked almost normal. It still felt cold and empty and unused.
Draco stepped out of the fireplace. His bags soon followed and he felt silly for having left them behind as opposed to sending them first. Guess Molly was used to her children forgetting things, likely mostly Ron. He brushed the dust off himself and his bags. He made sure he didn't forget to pack anything before standing and straightening his clothing. He didn't want to look rumpled, even from hugs. He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. As he turned Harry and Hermione were in the doorway. He almost spat at her about knocking, but he was the intruder this time.
She gave her one-sided smile. "Lunch will be ready soon." She turned and left the main room.
Harry apparently managed to be more firm with Kreacher who obeyed, somewhat, though with great complaints. Harry ordered the elf to take Draco's bags to Draco's room. Draco watched the conduct of the elf and wondered why the elf obeyed Harry at all. Maybe there was Black blood in Harry after all? Maybe from a distant relative? Draco would need to see the Black Family Tree to know for sure.
Draco tried to tell himself that moving in here with Harry was like a stepping stone to moving back to his own proper place as Lord Malfoy. He needed to shake some of the cozy family feel of the Weasleys before facing the dangers of the dungeons of Slytherin House at Hogwarts.
Owls came just after lunch with the paper, mail, and messages. Hermione cheered to have a letter from Ron and followed it immediately with ranting how he could have just taken the floo to visit. Draco concluded that she was always mad at Ron. Harry took the rest of the mail and left the paper for everyone on the dining table. Draco snatched the paper from the table. This was a dining table, but a dumping ground. Honestly, did these people not know how to live in a house? The quiet but firm echoes of instructions on what to do and not do at the dinner table ran through his mind. This soon flashed to darker memories of Voldemort at his dining table. Draco physically shook himself and retreated from the dining room.
Harry paced and read through a letter. A deep frown of frustrated confusion kept causing his glasses to slide a little, forcing him to adjust them. "Can't they just speak English?"
"Who?" asked Draco.
"The damned goblins at Gringots." Harry thrust the letter at Draco.
Draco read through it carefully. It was not unlike letters he had dealt with over the weeks. "It's in Black Family code. You would know it if you were raised in the family or if Sirius had time to teach it to you. It just means you'll have to go there directly to know what they want."
Harry threw his arms in the air in defeat.
Draco continued explaining, "It is a security measure. Be grateful. This is probably about your inheritances or sensitive matters with documents or funds or items in the vaults. Sirius' and Regulus' names are here, so I'd say it deals with a sensitive inheritance issue. They use the code in case someone steals your mail to blackmail you, or engage in dark arts to acquire whatever is in your vaults."
Harry's mouth formed an o and he seemed much less frustrated. "We can go tomorrow. I'm thinking of getting a new owl. I really miss Hedwig, she has no real replacement, but I need another. There is just too much to sort out here."
Draco sympathized. Harry had two family houses to sort out; the Potter and the Black families that he was now head of. At least the Potter one likely was one house in Godric's Hollow and a substantial vault of funds. The Black family's inheritance was complicated. Draco knew. He possessed those documents. It was what he wanted to sit and talk with Harry about after all, among many other things.
Harry and Hermione left Draco to settle himself in while they went about their own routine of things. Draco preferred it that way. His head was too full of questions and worries. He wandered the Black London estate known as #12 Grimauld Place. Well, he explored the first three floors. It was built up and was thus maybe five or six floors like the Weasleys' Burrow. Draco just could not manage the stairs.
Close to dinner, Draco wondered what Harry and Hermione were laughing about as they prepared to go out. "We'll be back soon… with dinner," they informed him. He didn't see how that was funny, but whatever. He took over a desk in the main sitting room with all his formal paperwork to read through and understand. The duo returned with some large flat boxes. Hermione also pulled some other items from her small extended purse. Draco never understood why women did that. Those extended purses held practically a whole house!
The flat boxes were set on the dining table with plates, napkins, bottles of cream soda and butter beer, and a strange circular knife that Harry called a pizza cutter. The word pizza was printed in large on each box as if people were too stupid to figure out what was inside. The amusement for harry and Hermione increased when they opened the boxes and helped themselves to their pizzas while watching the various odd expressions of confusion dance on Draco's normally stoic face. He had never seen pizza before, as they has suspected. He didn't understand why there was no cutlery. He looked aghast that they ate this food with their fingers. Yet, it smelled so good that his stomach growled loudly for it several times and his mouth watered.
Draco wondered if the pizzas had craving charms cast on them.
He watched the other two eat for many minutes before hunger and curiosity urged him to try what lay before him. It reminded him a little of lasagna with the gooey cheese, but that was the only similarity. He managed despite his shock at the barbaric method of eating with his fingers.
"Congratulations and welcome to the rest of society, Draco Malfoy!" cheered Harry. "You have now eaten the most common of common foods in both the wizarding and muggle worlds."
"Thursday, you are eating the way I do," Draco stated in a threatening yet amused tone. Two could play this game. "You better find some proper formal clothing."
They all laughed.
Ron dropped in via the floo to join them a few minutes late for the pizza. Having heard the past comment about formal clothing groaned with anxiety that his mother might make him wear that antique robe. Harry and Hermione reassured him that they would find something much more suitable IF he came shopping with them tomorrow.
Draco ate in silence listening and watching the Golden Trio. He felt like the outsider or the observer. Welcome but not really welcome. He didn't get their inside jokes. And he could not manage to get past his upbringing to engage in conversation at the dinner table. He was never permitted that privilege growing up. Conversation was reserved for drinks and tea in the main sitting room after dinner in Draco's house.
The Golden Trio talking about going back to school. Ron seemed to be waffling till Harry convinced him to at least get through his NEWTs as Fred & George had before dropping out. Besides, he would have to before any quiddich team would consider him. That settled the matter entirely. There were awkward moments in the conversation too, especially when it came to money for things. Hermione was totally at everyone's mercy there.
Draco saw the discomfort. He also saw an opportunity. "Granger? How ready do you think you are for the entrance tests and for your NEWTs?" At her expected affirmation that she felt she was ready for both as soon as she arrived at Hogwarts, Draco made his offer. "The going rate for amateur tutoring of pure blood students is a galleon an hour per student." Everyone gaped. "I owe the Weasleys… more than I can ever repay. So, will you tutor myself and Ron? I need someone to challenge my knowledge and he needs catching up. We could do this for three hours a day till school starts, excluding the weekends when Teddy is…. Here." He forgot to ask if it was alright for Teddy to be here.
"That is brilliant!" exclaimed Harry. "Count me in on that! Hermione? Can you? Please?"
She stammered a bit shocked at the request, honoured by it too, though more shocked that people would actually pay her for it. "But you are my friends!" she protested.
"The going rate for a professional tutor is three galleons an hour per child under the age of eleven, five galleons per subject per hour per student for first year students, and an additional galleon per hour for every year after. If you were a professional tutor, Granger, I would be obliged to pay you eleven galleons per hour to tutor me. If you were very good at this or a specialist in a particular subject, that might double or triple for private education. I am being cheap, because it is you." Draco smirked his cocky arrogant smirk to diffuse some of the anxiety and to annoy her on purpose to make her bargain with him.
She rose to that challenge and he felt he was starting to understand her a little, "You arrogant GIT! Fine. But you pay me two galleons per hour just because you were a git." She sat back down with her know-it-all nose in the air and sipped the last of her butter beer most snobbishly. The fuzz from her beer left a fuzz-stache on her upper lip that made her look comical as opposed to proud and Harry and Ron smothered snickers while trying to let her know. She blushed furiously. Draco could not help laughing a little too.
They would cope. Harry felt that they would all manage to cope together. Draco was not so bad, a stereotypical manipulative Slytherin, but that was ok sometimes. Harry kept thinking how much wonderful fun and trouble they could have gotten into if Draco were on their side all through the year. He hoped they could continue to cope this well together over the next four or so weeks.
A/N: Happy New Year! R&R please.