Chapter Text
I remember when your head caught flame
It kissed your scalp and caressed your brain
(I remember when your head caught flame)
Well, you laughed, baby, it's okay
It's buzzcut season anyway
(Well, you laughed, baby, it's okay)
For Draco Malfoy, summer did not come fast enough.
April had been spent focusing on his tutor lessons. Learning everything he possibly could in preparation for Hogwarts. Although he could not use a real wand just yet, he practiced the motions for basic spells with a pretend one. A children’s one that he was certainly too advanced for now.
He breezed through his arithmetic and skimmed the chapters of books, impatiently sitting through every lesson of the day. The books and the methods no longer fascinated him, the history was dull and the art even worse. Much to his mother’s dismay, he didn’t have a stroke of her passion for painting. Music was a breeze, and his fingers were elegant on the keyboard.
It was all too easy or too boring. And when he was challenged, he felt no desire to jump over the hurdles. Nothing his tutor or his father, whom Draco sat with in his study once a week to learn certain things about the Malfoy family that his tutor wasn’t trusted to teach him, could satisfy him as much as getting his Hogwarts letter and holding his own wand.
He had tried the month prior, with Pansy and Greg, to sneak into the ancestral gallery of the manor and summon a wand. Portraits of past Malfoy family members hung on the walls, they moved and they talked, but Draco did not indulge in their chit chat.
What had always interested him, however, was the wands that hung above them on the wall. Balanced on engraved silver hooks, they had teased him all of his life. Well, for as long as he had understood the power a wand held. Which obviously, he was an advanced child.
They had chosen a different wand each, Pansy had gone for the longest, Greg a double core and Draco unicorn hair.
Summoning was supposed to be the easiest wandless magic a wizard could do. And yet, the three of them had willed as hard as they could for the wands to fall from their elegant perches and yet, not one did.
Draco swore his wriggled but Pansy insisted he was lying. He argued his case, eyes narrowed on his chosen wand, “look, Parkinson, it’s moving,” up until Dobby found them.
Draco had much experience in the topic of sneaking around the manor, but he knew once a house elf had found him, soon his mother would follow. And if Narcissa Malfoy caught him misbehaving, punishment was soon to follow.
“Run!” Greg shouted at the sight of the elf and all three children sprinted from the gallery, all the way outside onto the green fields where they collapsed, panting and red faced but laughing.
May passed along the same lines of April.
His mother held a few spring teas for the ladies and children of society. Draco mustered as much enjoyment as he could, but the only fun parts of these events was seeing Blaise Zabini. Mrs Zabini never let Blaise hang out with them unless she was there to supervise, and she was always reluctant to travel to the countryside.
His father grew impatient with Draco’s impatience during their weekly session. Lucius Malfoy seemed to enjoy nothing more than torturing his son with the business of personal politics and accounting.
Vincent Crabbe and Susan Bones receive their acceptance letters. Draco does not reply to their letters telling him of their good news, nor does he ask his mother if they could come over to the manor, like he normally would.
By mid-May Draco’s third tutor had quit, due to Draco’s disobedience. His father decides not to replace him.
By May 31st Draco had started taking afternoon naps in hope of time passing faster.
He spends the week of his birthday shadowing his father in excitement, not at all dampened by Lucius’ annoyance.
He dines with his parents daily for breakfast and dinner, and somehow manages to close his mouth to swallow his food. “Don’t eat with your mouth open, Draco,” he’s constantly reminded.
The night before his birthday, his mother tucks him into bed. He lays down obediently, smiling as she covers him with his green quilt. She sits next to him and runs her hand through his hair. Her fingers are baby-soft against his scalp. She pauses and cups his cheek, she’s looking at him sentimentally.
“Mother, what’s wrong?” Draco says after a moment.
She smiles at him and her eyes are watering slightly. “Nothing’s wrong, darling,” she says, moving her thumb in circles against his cheek. “It’s your birthday tomorrow. Are you excited?”
He rolls his eyes. “You know I’m excited.”
She laughs gently. “I feel a little sad at the thought of you growing up. It feels like you were only born yesterday.”
“I’m turning eleven,” Draco says, “not twenty.”
She pats his cheek once, twice, before pulling away. “Eleven is an important year for a wizard.”
She rises from his bed and flicks her wand. His lamp dims and the ornate curtains pull themselves shut.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she says and goes to leave the room.
His father stands in the doorway. He, too, is watching Draco weirdly.
Unlike his mother, his father only says, “Goodnight, son,” before steering Narcissa out of the bedroom and closing the door.
Draco is left alone before he has a chance to reply.
Sleep does not come easily, but it does happen, for Draco wakes up on the fifth of june to the sun streaming through the slight gap in his curtains. He forgets just for a second, stuck in that hazy gap between sleep and awake, before bolting upright.
There’s a grin on his face as he slides out of bed. As he steps into his slippers and rushes out of his room. As he runs through the hall and down the curved stairs. As he passes his parents wing and then the sitting room.
He pushes the breakfast room doors open dramatically.
His parents are sitting, relaxed at the table. Newspaper floating before his father’s face as he reads the headlines while sipping his coffee. His mothing takes little sips of her tea..
Three boxes are sitting on the kitchen table before them. One large and long, two smaller ones. There’s an envelope perched on top, but Draco knows that it’s not the envelope.
His pace slows at that and he approaches the table. His mother puts her china cup down.
“Happy Birthday, Draco!” she says, smiling.
Draco frowns. “Where is it?”
His heart is beating fast in his chest. There’s no way he hasn’t received a letter. He has to go to Hogwarts. He’s a wizard, he knows he’s a wizard. His friends all have their letters.
“Where’s what, darling?” She asks innocently.
Draco gapes at her in disbelief. “My Hogwarts letter.”
She merely blinks at him.
Draco is readying for a fight, to demand that his parents must visit Albus Dumbledore, when his father’s paper is lowered to the table.
His father clears his throat and reaches his hand into the inside pocket of his coat. “Oh, do you mean this letter?” he says.
Draco leaps across the table and snatches the letter out of his father’s hand. He briefly looks at the emerald penmanship addressing the envelope to him, before ripping it open and absorbing the contents inside.
“Mother, we must go to the Alley tomorrow,” he says immediately. “I need to be fitted for robes, and we must get my books and perhaps a few of the second year ones too, and I need an owl and a new broom-”
“Slow down,” Narcissa says. “We won’t be going tomorrow. School isn’t until September. You have plenty of time to get everything you need.”
Draco sighs and opens his mouth to argue, but his father interrupts. “Sit down and open your presents.”
After this, the wait for Hogwarts passes even more slowly than the wait for his acceptance letter.
Every night he spends in his bed, he imagines he’s led in the Slytherin dormitory. He eats wishing he’s eating food made by the Hogwarts house elves rather than his own. He traces the fine lined flower on his right arm and thinks he’ll meet the owner of the lily at Hogwarts.
He rereads his books on potions and defence against the dark arts, and continues to practice the motions for transfiguration. He’s determined that he will be the very best at Hogwarts.
He sees Pansy and Greg and Vincent, he writes Blaise and Susan. He’s adamant they’re all going to be in Slytherin together. They spend time together planning everything they want to do. They write a bucket list for all seven years. Pansy’s additions feel particularly scandalous.
The rest of June and July pass, until finally, at the end of the first week of August, his mother tells him to prepare to go to Diagon Alley.
The Alley isn’t new to Draco by any means but he feels like he’s looking at everything through new eyes.
“Darling, are you okay to get your robes fitted whilst your father and I go buy your books?”
And so, Draco is regrettably sent to Madame Malkins alone.
Madame Malkin is a stout, common-speaking lady dressed head to toe in maroon. She’s okay at her job, but Draco knows that his mother’s personal seamstress could do a lot better. And, would be gentler.
He stands proud on the plinth she puts him on, chin high and back straight. But he’s rather uncomfortable as she measures him and drowns him in different fabrics.
“Mr Malfoy,” she says after a moment, “would you be okay to take off your shirt?”
Draco huffs, but does as is told. He feels exposed and cold in the openness of her room.
“Arms out,” she instructs. “That’s a lovely mark you have on your arm.”
Draco turns his head to look at the lilies on his upper arm himself. He smiles smugly at her. “I know,” he says, “My soulmate will only be the best.”
Malkin hums and dresses him into a new shirt. What will be one of his uniform shirts. She’s poking him with pins when the bell chimes and another boy enters the shop.
He’s a short, skinny boy. Obviously poor, Draco can tell from his shabby hand-me-downs and crooked glasses. And, his hair is a mess. All the same, Draco has nothing better to do than talk to him as he’s herded onto the plinth next to him.
He looks over and there isn’t much distance between them. Draco can see the freckles on his cheeks.
“Are you going to Hogwarts too?” Draco asks, tilting his head to dodge the pins the seamstress puts in his collar.
“Yes,” the boy says quietly.
“My mother and father are next door buying my books,” Draco says, attempting to make conversation. “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.”
The boy does not look impressed by Draco’s plan, and so he continues. “Have you got your own broom?”
“No,” he says.
“Oh,” Draco returns, “but you do play quidditch? 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?”
The other shakes his head mutely.
“I suppose no one really knows until they’re there,” Draco gives, “ But I know I’ll be in Slytherin, all of my family have been.” He snorts. “I think I’d leave if I got Hufflepuff.”
Draco frowns at his lack of interest, he sighs hoping the boy realises his disappointment. “Where are your parents?”
The response is a flat, “They’re dead.”
“Oh, sorry,” Draco says. He’s thinking about who this boy could be, of what families he knows were wiped out in the war. “But they were our kind, weren’t they?”
“They were a witch and wizard if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t think they should let the other sort in. They’re just not the same, they’ve not been brought up to know our ways-” Before Draco could continue, he interrupted a frustrated looking Madame Malkin.
“That’s you done, Mr Malfoy,” she says shortly, waves her wand and Draco’s original garments are returned to his body. As she’s saying it, the doorbell chimes again, but rather than another customer it’s his mother.
She smiles at him and places a handful of galleons on the counter.
Draco steps off his stool and towards the boy. “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy,” he says proudly, holding his hand out.
“Harry,” the other boy says before weakly shaking his hand.
Draco’s mouth drops open, not only because he’s realised he’s talking to the Harry Potter and he looks like that. But because his right upper arm burns, it itches like a rash. It’s like he’s been sitting in the sun and his arm is encased in heat.
He touches it gently and goes to say more, but his mother interrupts and pulls him out of the shop before he has a chance to go on.
His heart flutters as he walks behind her. Just as they get to the crossing to meet his father, he anxiously tugs on her sleeve.
“Yes, Draco,” She says tiredly, not looking at him,”we’re going to look at the racing broomsticks.”
His desire to look at brooms has disappeared.
“Mother,” he says faintly, “that boy was my soulmate.”
She turns to him then, shock on her face.
“His name was Harry.”
Harry was having a terrible summer.
Since school had ended it had been catastrophe after catastrophe. From an inconvenient incident with a boa constrictor at the zoo to shattering a kitchen plate with merely the force of his anger from across the room, the Dursleys hadn’t taken to him too kindly. Although spending an unfortunate amount of time in his cupboard was rather boring, it did make life easier.
It seemed easier to sit locked away with his stomach aching and rumbling rather than wait at the table for the scraps Aunt Petunia was willing to share. He felt less jealousy inside his cupboard than he did watching Uncle Vernon and Dudley scoff enough food for a full second plate. It was easier to hold his wee than it was to risk crossing the landing past Dudley’s bedroom.
And at night, when quiet, if Petunia had happened to not lock his cupboard, but rather trust he wouldn’t come out, he could rummage the back of the kitchen cupboards and fill his stomach. He could eat in the fridge light at the kitchen table and pretend he was a normal boy, in a normal family, sneaking from his room for a midnight snack. So far, nobody had caught on to his midnight activities.
July passes and he counts the broken limbs of his toy soldiers, the spiders legs that crawl across the ceiling, and, frankly, the amount of sheep he can imagine as he succumbs to sheer boredom. He spends a few afternoons pruning Petunia’s vegetable patch. It’s hot and their leaves are yellowing and wilting, but Harry does his best to water them and nourish them as Petunia would wish. He pulls potatoes from the ground, garners a few tomatoes and even manages lettuce. None of which he tastes, but the satisfaction of their growth is enough (so he tells himself).
His birthday comes and goes and Harry is still mostly shut away.
Roughly a week later, Harry’s isolation and boredom is brought to an end.
Harry is sitting on his mattress, fiddling with his toy soldiers when he hears a knock at the door. It isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but listening to the ongoings of the rest of the house is his only entertainment.
He hears Vernon rise from the breakfast table with a hefty sigh. There’s another knock followed by a “Alright, alright, I’m coming!” grunted from Uncle Vernon.
The click of the door. A startled gasp, another grunt, this time much deeper than his uncle. Harry narrows his eyes and presses his head as close to his cupboard door as he can, attempting to squint through the tiny gaps in the wood and hear anything more.
“Vernon Dursley of Number Four Privet Drive?” the deeper voice asks. His accent is thick and Scottish.
“Y-yes,” Uncle Vernon stutters.
Harry doesn’t hear what is said next, but he hears heavy boots stomp their way into the house and down the hall, past his cupboard and into the kitchen. He can’t make out the exact words that are said, but there’s a high pitched shriek and what Harry knows is the thump of Vernon’s thick fist against the table. He’s shouting, his voice rising higher and higher in indignation. Petunia is shrieking, but the Scottish man is rivaling them all with the depth of his voice.
It feels enough to shake the floor.
Harry’s heart is hammering in his chest. He shuffles away from the door as the voices grow closer and closer to him. Until they’re right outside of his cupboard. Harry is having the slow realisation that the angry Scottish man is here for him…
The door swings open and Harry comes face to face with a large, round, bearded head. The man, well, Harry almost feels hesitant to call him a man as his head is the size of his cupboard door, is peering in at him with narrowed eyes and furrowed brows. His cheeks are flushed beneath his beard and he’s looking at Harry with such fury, Harry knows not to move.
Over the top of his head, he sees Aunt Petunia, shaking her head anxiously with her hands over her mouth.
“Yer keeping him - ‘ARRY POTTER - in a CUPBOARD?” the giant bellows. “An’ he don’t know nothin’ about ANYTHIN’”
Harry shakes his head, rather offended, “I’m okay,” he attempts to say, but he’s cut off by another shout from the giant. He feels as if the walls of his cupboard are suffocating more than ever. It’s as if this foreign man has broken the little peace he had found over summer.
“Come on, ‘Arry,” the giant beckons and backs away.
He looks at the three adults in front of him. Uncle Vernon is shaking with rage, hands balled into fists at his side. The giant is watching Harry, waiting. Harry doesn’t feel fear at the sight of him, something in him tells him this man doesn’t want to hurt him. And, yet, he feels so offended by the sight. Offended that this man is shouting about the injustice of Harry’s life. He thinks that he hasn’t needed or waited for anyone to stand up for him in a long time.
Petunia is ash grey, she’s looking at harry almost mournfully.
“Lily an’ James would be rolling in their graves,” the giant says, shaking his head vehemently.
It’s the mention of his parents that encourages Harry towards this stranger. The thirst for knowledge he could never get from his aunt and uncle.
James, he thinks, James Potter, that’s a good name.
He rises from his mattress and clambers out of the cupboard. He looks up at the giant, whose head is brushing the ceiling, adjusts his glasses and nods. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon part to let them through almost automatically. They don’t interrupt as Harry is led out of Number Four.
He looks in as he reaches the front door. He looks down the hall at his aunt and uncle. He looks up the stairs and Dudley is sitting on the top step, eyes wide and face purple.
It’s on the front lawn that the giant sighs, turns and introduces himself. “Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts” he states, putting his dinner plate sized hands on his hips. “Yer a wizard ‘Arry.” He gives him a letter.
That is the start of Harry’s introduction to the wizarding world.
He peers up at Hagrid in amazement, partially in disbelief, but also thinking, if this is a dream, it’s the best one he’s ever had.
He’s taken to Diagon Alley where he is handed an impromptu meet and greet with every witch and wizard in the Leaky Cauldron, including one of his new school teachers. He walks the cobbled streets to the bank, anxiously messing with his fringe as all eyes follow him through the roads. He finds some reprieve in Gringotts, where the goblins care about managing his money rather than his fame. He’s told the difference between knuts and galleons and sickles, and sticks a load in a pouch, which he gives to Hagrid for safe keeping. Or, rather, getting lost in the vast pockets of his coat.
He’s entertained by the notion of dragons, something that yesterday he would have thought impossible, but now is a frightening, but exciting, reality. He enjoys the journey to vault seven hundred and thirteen, leaning over the side of the cart with the wind in his hair. Looking out at the ravine of sparkling vaults is possibly the best view he’s ever seen.
Outside in the sunlight, Harry feels breathless. He feels a rush of hope and excitement. It feels like it’s exploding out of him.
He’s sent to Madame Malkins for his robe, where he meets a haughty boy with a pointed face and white-blonde hair. The boy is snobbish and talks of himself above everyone else, he talks of Slytherins and Gryffindors and blood differences. Harry begins to understand that the wizarding world is as full of prejudice as the muggle one. But he nods politely as the boy talks and accepts his introduction as he goes to pay for his robes.
“Draco Malfoy,” he states, puffing his chest out.
Harry shakes his hand, “Harry,” he offers, and rather hopes Hogwarts is big enough that he never has to bump into Draco Malfoy again.
Malfoy’s mouth drops open slightly and he's rubbing his upper arm rather awkwardly, but then his mother is dragging him out, their freshly bought robes flying out of the shop after them.
Harry is left scratching his neck awkwardly. He thinks perhaps it’s the texture of the fabric.
He pays for his robes, and he reunites with Hagrid. He eats a chocolate ice cream cone, which tastes the same as a muggle one, except he’s sat on a bench built for wizards by wizards. He’s tempted by every book in Flourish and Blotts, but settles only for what is on his list. Hagrid says Hogwarts has its own library. He purchases a cauldron and vials and various other shaped glass objects that are apparently needed for potions class (potions class!) and gets the required ingredients alongside.
Then, he makes potentially his favourite purchase of the day, a snowy owl, whom he calls Hedwig.
After this, Harry finally gets his wand. It's a long process, but the old, omniscient seeming wizard knows what he’s doing, and every wand Harry is handed feels a little closer to right rather than wrong.
Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches. It rushes with power in his hand, his fingers tingle to touch it. It’s like touching an electric spark. He’s overwhelmed by the feeling of magic in his body that he fails to truly understand what Ollivander means when he says the core of his wand is the brother to Voldemort’s.
But as the day comes to an end, Harry feels his spirit fade ever so slightly. Another month he must suffer with the Dursleys, a month spent torturously waiting for September First to arrive.
He’s given Dudley’s second bedroom. His books and his cauldron and his new wand get locked in his cupboard, he feels sadness to part from them. Hedwig however, gets to keep in his room, and she’s the only real company he enjoys.
He’s no longer allowed to touch Aunt Petunia’s vegetables. He stays out of Uncle Vernon’s way in fear of him making good on his promise to stamp the magic out of him. Dudley antagonises him, scathing remarks thrown across the hall and in the kitchen, but does not touch him, as if Harry’s skin is diseased with something catchable.
Soon enough however, September First comes along. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia reluctantly drive him to King’s Cross station. Harry had been rather anxious they would refuse.
With the help of a motherly ginger witch, herding her own children, he makes it onto platform nine and three quarters. He searches the platform for the white-blonde hair he had met at Madame Malkins a month prior, and is relieved not to find him.