Side Story One: His First Friend (Harry's Perspective)
When the Malfoys emerged from Gringotts into the sunlight, Diagon Alley had grown even busier than before.
The goblin guards in their scarlet-and-gold uniforms bowed them out with the particular ceremony reserved for clients of standing. Lucius acknowledged this with the barest inclination of his head—the Malfoy equivalent of warmth.
With the school year fast approaching, it seemed every young witch and wizard in Britain had descended on the Alley simultaneously, moving in a dense, chattering current along the narrow cobblestones. Keeping one's distance from other people had become largely theoretical.
The Malfoys stood at the top of the Gringotts steps, none of them in any hurry to enter the flow.
"They've turned Diagon Alley into a pigsty," Lucius said, squinting with refined displeasure.
"Then we split up. It'll be faster." Narcissa was already assessing the crowd with brisk efficiency.
"I'll go to Flourish and Blotts for the books," Lucius said, apparently deciding this for everyone.
Narcissa fixed him with a look of cool blue-eyed challenge. "Ladies first, Lucius. Did I not get a choice?"
"A proper gentleman doesn't send his wife through a crowd carrying an armful of heavy spellbooks." A rare flicker of softness moved through Lucius's grey eyes. "Cissy, why don't you take Draco to Ollivanders? Or see if there's anything new at Twilfitt and Tattings."
"I'm shopping for Draco today." Narcissa gave her husband's arm a light, precise pinch. "I'll take him to Ollivanders myself—I want to make sure he gets a proper wand. Draco, go to Madam Malkin's first and have your robes fitted. Then come and find me. Yes?"
"I have no objection," Draco said.
He watched his parents briefly—Lucius already turning away, Narcissa already moving—and thought, not for the first time, how much had always been happening between them that he had simply failed to notice as a child.
He'd been too absorbed in his own little world to see it. A blind, self-important boy who took everything at face value and missed almost everything that mattered.
Not this time.
Before long, Draco was standing on a footstool in Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, patiently enduring the tap of measuring pins while a young witch worked around him with professional speed.
He wasn't particularly focused on the robes.
Through the shop window, he could already make out two figures approaching along the street: one absurdly large, beetle-eyed, and unmistakably Rubeus Hagrid, gamekeeper of Hogwarts—difficult to miss under any circumstances—and beside him, dwarfed by comparison, a small dark-haired boy in clothes that were several sizes too large.
Potter.
Before they reached the door, Draco turned to Madam Malkin with his most disarming expression.
"Madam, forgive me—do you happen to carry Invisibility Cloaks?"
Madam Malkin was a short, plump woman in purple robes who greeted everyone with the same professional warmth. Anyone who mistook that warmth for softness didn't know her well. She was shrewd, discreet, and not in the habit of selling high-end, heavily regulated magical goods to eleven-year-olds on a whim.
Her eyes sharpened slightly at the question.
Draco had anticipated exactly this. He let a look of innocence settle over his face. "I'm asking for my mother, actually—she's tied up at another shop and asked me to make enquiries. She'd order through proper channels, of course."
Madam Malkin studied him for a moment, then smiled again. "In that case, my dear, let me get you a business card and our current catalogue. Mrs. Malfoy is welcome to owl us at any time with her signature. We provide the finest magical garments for wizarding families."
The card and catalogue had already been tucked into Draco's dragonhide satchel—an expandable model, no larger than a palm on the outside but with considerable internal space, entirely weightless—by the time the shop door swung open and Harry Potter stepped in.
An Invisibility Cloak would be considerably useful. Draco vaguely recalled that Potter had one of his own, likely the one that had allowed them both to survive more than a few close calls. Having independent access to one had its obvious advantages.
In his past life, sneaking out of the dormitory in first year had cost Slytherin fifty points. He had no intention of repeating that particular embarrassment.
Madam Malkin was already directing the new arrival onto the footstool beside him.
Draco made his decision quietly: pleasant. Approachable. Nothing that could go wrong. He could not afford to fumble this the way he had before.
"Are you going to Hogwarts too?" he asked.
"Yes," Potter said. He looked slightly on edge, glancing around the shop as though cataloguing his exits.
Understandable. At this point, the boy had probably been in the wizarding world for all of a few hours.
Draco looked him over without making it obvious—the secondhand clothes, the shoes with worn soles, the glasses mended with what appeared to be tape. Whatever the Potters' fortune amounted to on paper, precisely none of it seemed to have reached the boy wearing it.
Topics of conversation presented themselves and were dismissed in quick succession.
His parents: orphan. His family background: wealthy in theory, evidently not in practice. Pure-blood versus Muggle-born politics: a reliable way to ensure Potter would despise him before either of them had finished their robes fitting.
Quidditch? The boy had almost certainly never been near a broomstick.
"Do you know which house you'll be sorted into?" Draco settled on the least fraught option available.
"I don't know." Potter looked more uncertain still.
He had no idea what Sorting even meant. That much was obvious.
Draco felt something unexpected—a flicker of genuine sympathy.
Hogwarts was, by any measure, a complicated place to arrive at with no prior knowledge whatsoever. What had those Muggle relatives of his been doing? What had Dumbledore been doing, for that matter—leaving his so-called saviour entirely in the dark for eleven years while expecting the boy to simply turn up and figure it out?
Draco pushed that particular irritation aside.
"Don't be nervous." He made a deliberate effort to keep his tone easy rather than condescending. "You're clearly not very familiar with Hogwarts yet. I can tell you a bit about it, if you'd like."
The dark-haired boy looked at him with cautious curiosity, then nodded.
"There are four houses—Slytherin, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. Each one corresponds to one of Hogwarts' founders." He watched something click in Potter's expression—the relief of a person receiving information they'd been missing without quite knowing it.
"Each house values different qualities. Slytherin favours ambition and resourcefulness. Gryffindor values courage and a taste for adventure." Potter was listening with the careful attention of someone committing things to memory, which was, Draco thought, both slightly touching and a little alarming. These were things most wizarding children absorbed before the age of seven.
He continued. "Ravenclaw prizes intellect and a love of learning. Hufflepuff values loyalty and hard work." Potter nodded.
"Most people, if they're honest, hope for Gryffindor. The current Headmaster, Dumbledore, was a Gryffindor himself."
"Do you want Gryffindor?" Potter asked suddenly.
"No." Draco didn't hesitate. "I'll be in Slytherin. My family's always been Slytherin."
He had never seriously considered any other house, not even now. Whatever people said about Slytherin—and they said quite a lot—it was his, and he had no intention of being ashamed of it.
"Some people assume that anyone sorted into Slytherin will turn out dark," he said, watching Potter's expression shift with recognition of where this was going. "Because he was a Slytherin, of course."
Potter's jaw tightened slightly at the unspoken reference. "Voldemort attended Hogwarts?"
"He did." Draco kept his voice neutral. "Hogwarts has existed for a thousand years. In all that time, it has produced exactly one Dark Lord. Slytherin has also produced some of the most distinguished witches and wizards of the last several centuries. Using one man's crimes to condemn an entire house is rather like assuming every Gryffindor will make the same choices as the worst Gryffindor who ever lived." He let that sit for a moment. "It's not a particularly careful way to think about people."
Potter said nothing, but nodded slowly.
"In general," Draco added, "I think it's unwise to judge someone based on surface appearances before you actually know anything about them."
Potter looked at him with an expression that Draco found difficult to categorise—somewhere between thoughtful and unsettled, as if the words had landed somewhere more personal than intended.
Draco shifted his glance toward the window, where Hagrid could be seen outside holding two ice creams and peering in with his small beetle-black eyes. "Take that fellow out there, for instance. Most people would take one look at a man that size and decide he must be frightening."
"He's not," Potter said, with a slight defensiveness that was rather endearing. "I know him—he works at Hogwarts."
"Gamekeeper, isn't he?" Draco said lightly. "I've heard he has a remarkable affinity for magical creatures."
Potter nodded again, more easily now.
"He might even teach us something about them one day." Draco kept his face perfectly straight as he thought of Blast-Ended Skrewts and Flobberworms and a certain insufferable hippogriff that he was absolutely, categorically, not going to be goaded into insulting this time around.
"He's a good person," Potter said simply. "He came with me today."
"You'll find more of those at Hogwarts," Draco said.
He carefully did not ask where Potter's family was.
Potter was quiet for a moment. Then, as if deciding to trust the general direction of the conversation: "What's a chocolate frog?"
Draco blinked.
"A wizard sweet," he said, with admirable composure. "Frog-shaped chocolate. Each one comes with a collectible card—famous witches and wizards. There are hundreds of different ones."
He kept his voice matter-of-fact, though something twisted slightly in his chest.
He remembered the Hogwarts Express. He remembered sitting across from Potter with Crabbe and Goyle flanking him, extending his hand, offering his name—and being refused. I can choose who I associate with. That was what Potter had said.
Draco had spent a considerable portion of the next six years trying to convince himself that he hadn't cared.
He had cared rather a lot.
"My measurements are all done, dear," Madam Malkin said pleasantly.
Good. End it here, while things were still warm and uncomplicated.
Draco stepped lightly off the footstool and turned back to Potter. His heart was moving faster than he would have liked, which was irritating, but his face gave nothing away.
"We'll see each other at Hogwarts, then." He extended his hand. "I'm Draco Malfoy."
Potter didn't hesitate. He reached out and shook it.
"Harry Potter."
"Nice to meet you, Harry Potter." Draco allowed himself a small, genuine smile. Then he turned and walked out of Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions at a pace that he hoped conveyed someone with places to be, rather than someone who had just held their breath through an entire conversation.
The door swung shut behind him.
He exhaled.
Went rather better than last time.
Side Story One: His First Friend (Harry's Perspective)
For eleven years in the Muggle world, Harry had been the last one picked.
In PE class they divided into teams, and he was always what was left over. The neighbours thought him strange—strange enough to cross the street, which he suspected had something to do with the steady stream of rumours Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had been circulating about him since he was old enough to be talked about. His clothes were Dudley's cast-offs, his glasses were held together with tape, and Dudley's gang had done a thorough job of making sure any potential friendships were quietly strangled before they could start.
Nobody had ever particularly bothered to find out what he was actually like.
The boy in Madam Malkin's had been the first person to tell him not to judge by appearances before knowing someone.
Harry turned the words over in his mind as Madam Malkin finished his hem.
It's unwise to judge someone based on surface appearances before you actually know anything about them.
There had been something pointed about the way he said it—as if it were a rule he had thought about carefully, not just a thing you said.
The boy was obviously from a different world entirely. His clothes, his manner, the kind of unhurried self-possession that he seemed to carry without effort—it all said that he had never had any reason to doubt that the world would treat him well. Harry found this both slightly alienating and oddly comforting.
He was also clearly quite proud of himself. That much was plain. But when he spoke, the pride didn't translate into cruelty, and Harry found that he couldn't quite dislike someone who had just quietly explained the entire Hogwarts house system without once making him feel stupid for not already knowing it.
He'd also shaken Harry's hand without so much as a flicker at his name.
That was new. In Harry's experience, people either went very quiet and stared, or immediately launched into a list of questions he didn't know how to answer. The platinum-haired boy had done neither. He'd simply continued the conversation as if Harry Potter were a perfectly ordinary person—which, Harry suspected, was exactly the point.
Hagrid was his first friend in the wizarding world. Harry knew that with certainty.
But when it came to someone his own age—someone who had looked at him directly and decided to extend a hand anyway—
That had been Draco Malfoy.
He was going to Slytherin, the same house as Voldemort. He'd said so himself, entirely without embarrassment. But then, he'd also said that Voldemort was one person in a thousand years, and that it wasn't careful thinking to condemn everyone else by association.
Harry couldn't find much to argue with in that.
He watched the pale-haired boy disappear through the door and felt, tentatively, something that might have been the beginning of looking forward to September.