The Sorting flew by that night, and before they knew it, Blaise, Draco and Harry were trudging back to their room with Crabbe and Goyle once again following at a short distance.

"This is going to get annoying very quickly," Blaise said, glancing back at them.

"I agree," Harry said significantly. They both looked at Draco.

"What do you expect me to do?" he asked defensively. "If I tell them to go away, I'll get in trouble!"

"At least tell them they don't need to follow you around in Slytherin," Blaise suggested. "Your father couldn't possibly find fault with that."

Draco grumbled a bit, then called them over and told them exactly that. Crabbe frowned a bit, looking confused, but Goyle nodded and they both set off in the direction of the dormitory.

"Thank Merlin," Blaise said, sinking down onto a couch by the fire. " Now, let's meet this Dobby so you can tell him to do our bidding."

Harry laughed and Draco rolled his eyes.

"Dobby!"

With a crack, a floppy eared, long nosed house elf appeared and bowed. "Master Draco is wanting something?"

"Hey, Master Draco," Blaise teased. "Can I get a bit of that treacle tart we had at dinner?"

Draco waved him off and spoke to Dobby. "Dobby, these are my friends, Harry and Blaise. Do what they tell you, alright?"

"Yes Master Draco," said Dobby, who had already been staring at Harry. "You is friends with the Great Harry Potter!"

"You knew that already, Dobby, remember?" Draco said, shaking his head.

"Yes, Dobby is knowing that sir," Dobby squeaked excitedly. "And Dobby is proud to serve the Great Harry Potter for Master Draco! If Master Draco is friends with the Great Harry Potter, Master Draco must be a much better wizard than Dobby ever knew!"

Blaise was rolling on the couch in laughter, and Harry blushed furiously.

"Could you maybe convince him to not call me that, Draco?" he asked hopefully.

"Call you what, Harry?" Draco asked innocently. "It's just your name, after all."

Blaise snorted. "Does the Great Harry Potter not like his own name?"

"Sod off, Blaise," Harry said, feeling a bit mortified. "Draco, please ask him to not call me that."

"We've always had a problem convincing him to change what he calls us," Draco said with a smirk. "He called me 'Little Master Draco' until I was nine. Making him drop the 'Little' was difficult. Try asking him yourself."

Harry looked down at Dobby, who was looking up at him with shining eyes. He looked at Draco again, who waved him on with a grin.

"Dobby," he said hopefully. "Could you please maybe just call me Harry?"

"The Great Harry Potter is so humble!" Dobby said reverently. "He even says 'please' to Dobby! Dobby does not deserve such kindness!"

"Yes, but Dobby, could you pl- I mean, could you possibly just call me Harry?" he tried. "I don't think you need to call me 'Great', is all."

"The Great Harry Potter is so modest, too!" Dobby said joyfully. "Dobby will do anything the Great Harry Potter wishes of him!"

Blaise and Draco were cackling behind them. Even the portrait above the fireplace was snickering at him.

"But could you -"

"Hey," Blaise choked out through his laughter. "Could the Great Harry Potter possibly see a way to having Dobby get me some treacle tart?"

Harry sighed. "Dobby, never mind. My pig of a friend here would like some treacle tart. Could you…?"

Dobby's eyes brightened. "Anything for the Great Harry Potter!" he turned to Blaise and said, "The Great Harry Potter's Pig of a Friend will have all the treacle tart he desires!"

Dobby disappeared with a crack, and Harry grinned at Blaise.

"So, 'the Great Harry Potter's Pig of a Friend'," Draco said with an evil grin to match Harry's. "You do realise he'll be calling you that for as long as you know him now, right?"

Blaise had been staring at the spot where Dobby had been with an incredulous sort of hilarity.

"He'll actually call me that?" he asked with a grin. Draco nodded. "I can't tell if I should laugh or…"

"You could help me convince him to change his mind," Harry said hopefully. Blaise laughed at him.

"Not likely. I'm going to enjoy watching your failed attempts. Hey!"

A plate of treacle tart had appeared quite suddenly on Blaise's lap, complete with fork and napkin.

Blaise grinned. "I could get used to this," he said, digging in. In the short silence that followed, Harry decided to ask Draco something that had been bothering him since the train ride.

"Draco, why did you say that to Hermione?" he asked. Draco knew exactly what he meant, and flushed.

"I just thought -"

"No you didn't," Blaise interrupted from behind his treacle tart. Draco glared at him.

"Alright, maybe I didn't. I probably shouldn't have said that to her."

"No," Harry agreed, "You shouldn't have."

"She's going to find out eventually, though," Draco said uncomfortably. "That most wizards don't like muggles and muggleborns. Marrying them dilutes your magical blood, it shouldn't even happen."

Blaise had stopped eating his treacle tart halfway through this speech, eyes wide, and looked as though he wanted to hit Draco over the head with it to stop him from talking.

Harry stared at Draco. "So marrying muggleborns is a bad thing?"

Draco looked worried, but nodded uncertainly. Blaise shook his head slowly, covering his mouth with his hand as though watching a train wreck.

"So," Harry continued angrily. "What you're saying is, that it's a bad thing that my parents got married, and it's a bad thing that I was born?"

Draco's eyes widened, and he shook his head immediately. "No! That's not what I meant at all!"

"It's what you said, though," Harry said coldly. "You said my mother, being muggleborn, should never have married my father. Which means I should never have been born."

Draco shook his head again, and stood up when Harry did.

"Harry, that's not what I meant," he insisted uneasily.

"It's certainly what you said, though," Harry replied, and went upstairs, feeling deeply offended and very upset. He changed into his pyjamas and got into bed, pulling the curtains immediately. He didn't open them till morning.

The next morning at breakfast, Blaise took Draco's usual spot next to Harry, and Pansy took the seat on his other side.

"I told Draco he was being an idiot," Blaise tried. Harry glared at his pancakes.

"You think?"

"He feels really guilty," Blaise said after a moment of silence. Harry looked up and realized that Draco hadn't come to breakfast. He was probably trying to avoid Harry's yelling at him again.

"He should feel really guilty, Blaise!" Harry said furiously. "Can you believe he said that about my parents?"

"If it makes you feel any better, he didn't mean it about you or your parents personally," Pansy said reassuringly. "He sometimes just doesn't think. I don't know why he was spouting all that pureblood stuff yesterday, but I'm pretty sure he won't do it again. Blaise yelled at him, and when I found out, I yelled at him too."

"Does he still believe it?" Harry asked. He looked at Pansy and Blaise. "You're both pureblooded too. Do you believe it?"

Blaise allowed himself a smirk. "I don't exactly come from a traditional pureblood family, Harry." Harry raised an eyebrow at him, and he answered the question. "No, I don't believe it."

Harry looked to Pansy for her answer. She seemed to be thinking about how to phrase it. "I don't really buy into it, Harry," she said slowly. "But what you have to understand, is that it is traditional pureblood thinking. All the really old families that still follow the old customs do believe in it. A lot of it doesn't make sense, like purebloods being smarter. Compare Vince and Greg to Hermione, for example. But it gives them power, like in the last war, so no one really challenges them about it."

Harry grimaced. "Draco seemed smarter than that, though," he said. "He didn't have a problem with me, Hermione or Dudley last year."

"Harry, he doesn't have a problem with you!" Pansy exclaimed. "You're his best friend! He probably assumed you would agree with him."

"I think we said it already," Blaise reminded him. "Draco can be extremely stupid sometimes."

Harry nodded emphatically. "He really can. But I don't know if I can be friends with him if he thinks so little of me, what with my being muggleborn."

"Halfblood," Pansy corrected him. At his stare, she frowned defensively. "What? Just because I don't believe it, doesn't mean I don't know it. Your father was pure and your mother was muggleborn, so you're halfblood. Your children would be first generation pure if you married right, so purebloods don't really have a problem with you."

"That's ridiculous!" Harry exclaimed. "You sound like my Aunt Marge, breeding dogs!"

"Don't let Draco hear you say that," Blaise muttered under his breath.

"You, Blaise, are not helping," Pansy said, reaching past Harry to poke him.

Blaise shied away from her and smiled winningly at Harry. "He really is sorry," he said convincingly. "He spent last night and this morning getting yelled at and he looked absolutely horrified at what he'd said to you from the very start of it."

Harry was slightly mollified. "Really?"

"Really," Blaise confirmed. "He's probably kicking himself like a house elf for it right now, and that's why he didn't come to breakfast."

"Alright then," Harry said, and, feeling a bit more cheerful, finished his breakfast.

The end of that day found Harry studying with Hermione, Dudley and Neville. Draco had apologised to Harry profusely, and promised that he had meant absolutely no offence in what he'd said. Harry had given him a tentative forgiveness, as long as Draco promised not to say anything of the sort to him again.

Which brought him to where he was, Hermione's first study session of the year. Harry hadn't even been surprised that it was on their first day back in classes. This was Hermione, after all. Dudley and Neville certainly weren't going to argue about it. Indeed, Dudley was writing furiously, although it was in his little book rather than on his homework.

After saying hello, Neville and Hermione immediately launched into a description of their first Defense class, which the Slytherins didn't have until tomorrow.

"…hung me from the chandelier!"

"He was only trying to give us a bit of hands on practice, Neville!"

"Then why did he run away after he set the pixies loose?"

Hermione flushed. "Well clearly, he had to retrieve his wand…"

Harry was intrigued. "What happened to his wand?"

"…"

"One of the pixies threw it out the window!" Neville said, shooting Hermione a victorious grin. "It was ridiculous!"

Harry laughed. Hermione frowned at him. "I wouldn't be so hasty," she told him stiffly. "He did give us a test first thing."

Harry looked at her in horror, but Neville laughed. "And what was the first question?" he asked Hermione.

Hermione flushed. "He was just making sure we'd really read the books!"

Neville raised his eyebrows at her. "Do we really need to know his favourite colour?"

Harry laughed. "That wasn't really the question, was it?"

Neville nodded, grinning at him. Harry was suddenly struck by something.

"You're in an awfully…good mood today, Neville," he noted. Neville was normally very quiet, so this boisterous behaviour was a contrast to the boy Harry had gotten used to last year.

"We had Herbology first thing today," Neville said cheerfully. "It's my favourite subject."

"And Professor Sprout adores him," Hermione said with a smile. "He got us all sorts of points."

Neville gave her a pleased grin. "That reminds me," he said. "Ron Weasley wants to join our study group, Hermione. I invited him today, but he said something about it being first day back and that I was crazy. I told him we meet here on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, he might be around tomorrow."

Hermione seemed to consider it.

"I suppose so," she said reluctantly. "But make sure he understands how things work here. He has to be polite."

"Hey, Dudley," Harry said, trying to rouse Dudley from his book. "How did you like Lockhart?"

Dudley looked up at him and blinked as though he'd only just realized Harry was there. "It was fine," he said absently, and went back to his book.

Harry frowned.

"He's been like that since school started," Neville whispered. "The other boys in Gryffindor tried talking to him yesterday, and he snapped at them. That's part of why I invited Ron, because he was so offended and I didn't want him to think Dudley just didn't like him. Hermione and I are getting worried about him. Was he doing it during the summer, too?"

"Not really," Harry said, watching his cousin with concern. "After his mum left, he was really depressed, you know, but he seemed to get over it a bit. Then he started spending a lot of time in his room doing what I thought was his homework, but was probably writing in that book, now that I think about it."

"What kind of book is that?" Hermione asked him. "Where did he get it?"

"I don't know," Harry said thoughtfully. "He must have bought it in Diagon Alley. He and Uncle Vernon went there without me a few times, so I don't know when."

"Do you think it's cursed?" Neville asked them in concern. "They're pretty common, you know. Some of them don't let you stop reading once you've picked them up. My Great Uncle had one, he didn't ever let me touch it."

"So Dudley could have one that won't let him stop writing?" Hermione asked worriedly. "Where would he have gotten it?"

"Not a clue," Harry said, shaking his head. "Like I said, I only went there with him once in the summer, and Uncle Vernon will buy Dudley anything he wants. He wouldn't know the difference, anyway. Listen," he said, looking at Dudley again, who was still scribbling away in his little book, completely oblivious to their whispered conversation. "Do you think it could just be a normal book, and he's just not taking what happened well? My Aunt was really…horrible about it when she left. I can't imagine it's been easy for him to get over it."

"You know him better than we do," Hermione said. "If you think he'd react like this normally…"

"I don't know," Harry said in frustration. Dudley had never had any issues he couldn't wheedle and demand his way out of before Hogwarts. This could just be Dudley. The thought was worrying.

"Let's just keep an eye on him, then," Hermione said. "He didn't take the book out during Herbology today, and when he did during Transfiguration, he put it away when Professor McGonagall told him to. As long as he's eating, sleeping, and doing his homework, I don't think we should worry about him too much. It could just be his way of dealing with things."

The Slytherin's first Defence class began with a test, true to Hermione's prediction. And just as Neville had said, it was positively ridiculous.

"I answered each question with a question," Blaise revealed afterward. "'What's Gilderoy Lockhart's favourite colour?' 'How is this going to help me defend against the Dark Arts?' 'What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition?' 'If you just went about publishing it in a book, how could it be secret?'"

After the test, though, Lockhart didn't set pixies on them or anything exciting like that. He seemed to have learned from the Gryffindors, and instead read them a passage from his book until the bell rang.

"I hope the rest of the year isn't going to be like that," Draco sneered as they left, Crabbe and Goyle trailing them unobtrusively. "That was pathetic."

Harry and Blaise agreed emphatically. Pansy shrugged.

"At least he's pretty to look at," she said. All three of her friends stared at her. "What?" she asked defensively. "I'm a girl. What did you expect? He is pretty to look at."

"What about the fact that he's clearly an pompous fraud?" Blaise asked her. "Does that factor in at all?"

"Well I never said he couldn't be a fraud," Pansy said dismissively. "He's just a pretty fraud. Which makes my year a bit easier. Knowing that he's a fraud, I don't have to pay attention to a single word that comes out his pretty head."

Harry made a face at her and she stuck her tongue out at him.

"I'm just making the best of things," she smirked, and they followed her to lunch, shaking their heads.