Draca Malfoy and the Philosopher’s Stone - Chapter I: Robes Fit for a Witch

 Draca Malfoy pouted as she stood on the footstool, and allowed Madame Malkin’s assistant to pin her dress robes to the right length. 

Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve. Then the doorbell rang, and she hurried off to answer it. Draca could easily make out the witch’s cheerful voice. "Hogwarts, dear? Got the lot here—another first year being fitted up just now, in fact. A young lady."

Madam Malkin returned with a skinny boy in glasses, and stood him on a stool next to Draca.

"Hello," said Draca. "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," said the boy.

"My father's next door buying my books and Mother's up the street looking at wands," said Draca, casually. "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 father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow."

Draca forced a smile. She knew she couldn’t bully her father into buying her anything, but something the boy standing next to her made Draca want to seem more cool and impressive. She wondered if they would end up in the same house at Hogwarts?

The boy looked uncomfortable.

"Have you got your own broom?" added Draca.

"No," said the boy.

"Play Quidditch at all?"

"No," he said again, looking befuddled.

"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, lamely.

"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?" She winked at him.

"Mmm," said the boy, looking embarrassed.

"I say, look at that man!" said Draca, nodding toward the front window. A giant brute was standing there, grinning at the boy and pointing at two large ice creams to show he couldn't come in.

"That's Hagrid," said the boy, looking pleased. "He works at Hogwarts."

"Oh," said Draca, "I've heard of him. He's a sort of servant, isn't he?"

"He's the gamekeeper," said the boy. He was looking more and more uncomfortable every second.

"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."

"I think he's brilliant," said the boy, coldly.

"Do you?" said Draca, with amusement. "Why is he with you? Where are your parents?"

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

"Oh, sorry," said Draca, trying to keep her voice cool. "But they were our kind, weren't they?"

"They were a witch and wizard, if that's what you mean."

Draca nodded. So that meant the strange, skinny boy was also a pure-blooded wizard, the same as her? "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 get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families.”

The boy’s eyes went wide behind his round spectacles. Draca noticed he had bright green eyes, but his glasses were old, scratched, and banged up. Did the orphanage not have any witches or wizards good enough at magic to repair them? Was he not being provided for? There weren’t that many pure-blooded Wizarding families left, and she was sure she knew them all by heart. Curious, Draca leaned in closer to the boy’s face. “What's your surname, anyway?"

But before the boy could answer her, Madam Malkin said, "That's you done, my dear." 

Looking relieved, the boy hopped down from the footstool.

"Well, I'll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose," said Draca, trying to keep her voice composed, like a polite young lady of the nobility should.

As the boy disappeared, Draca examined her own robes. “An orphan from a pure-blood wizarding family? Intriguing. Can’t be too many boys fitting that description at Hogwarts.”

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