|
The crisp fall morning was completely lost on Draco Malfoy as he walked the grounds of the Manor. Some would say it was a beautiful day, one of the last nice ones before winter, but the cloudless sky and lack of a breeze went unnoticed on the pale young man. The weather held little interest to him; it was too hot anyway. He had spent the morning testing some of the magical barriers around the perimeter of the property. Since they were all spells that the Dark Lord himself put up, no one expected them to break any time soon. That is why the job of double checking them every day fell to Draco, the youngest of the Death Eaters. It was pointless busy work that kept him busy while the rest of the ‘adults’ talked. He’d show them soon enough that was just as adult as the rest of them.
At that moment the wristwatch that he wore piped up. “Eleven O’clock already, Draco. You’re wasting your morning away.” Draco lifted the wrist to his eye level and glared at the watch as if it didn’t need to tell him that this was the biggest waste of time…eleven o’clock? His eyes scanned the bottom of the clock face where the date was displayed. September first. The Hogwarts Express would be leaving London just now, heading towards the school for the start of term. Draco wasn’t typically the type who reminisced, but he couldn’t help thoughts of his first evening at the school from drifting through his mind…
Draco stepped off of the boat at the edge of the lake as if he owned it. He was followed almost immediately by Crabbe and Goyle, who practically fell over each other by the rocking motion of the boat. Draco merely rolled his eyes at the pair of them. He’d known the other two boys since he was younger, as their families were friendly. The three of them followed the rest of the students up to the castle and in the small room off of the entrance hall where they were told to wait. Though everything really was much larger than he had expected, Draco simply shrugged at the interior of the castle as he looked around it with the rest of the first years.
It was then that he noticed that only about half of his classmates were looking around the castle. The rest of them seemed to be staring at the same boy, one with green eyes, messy dark hair, and a thin, lightning shaped scar on his forehead. Draco knew the boy’s name just as everyone else did. He had grown up hearing the story of the boy who lived just like any of the other children from wizarding families, yet his family had a slightly different opinion of the boy than most. Many of the other first years were standing back, whispering behind their hands as they stared at Harry Potter. Not Draco Malfoy. Instead of keeping back, he walked right up to the boy and immediately offered a hand and an introduction.
"I’m Draco, Draco Malfoy. You’ll soon find out that some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there." His hand remained outstretched as Potter merely glanced at it, but that was the moment where it all began.
Draco remembered how he had hated the boy from the very beginning; already Potter had turned up his nose at him, acting like he was better than himself simply for staying alive in a fluke of a moment. A look of disgust crossed over his face as he turned inside the Manor, shoes clicking on the stone steps. Potter had been the only thing that had ruined what should have been a perfect day. He skipped past the rest of that conversation completely and jumped to the moment when the first years all filed out into the great hall. It was time for the Sorting to begin.
The first years entered the Great Hall, which was already filled with the rest of the students and all the professors. His eyes merely glanced around the room once before falling on the stool in front of them and the tattered old hat which sat one top of it. He tried to look as nonchalant as possible, as if this was no big thing. Yet even he could feel his heart beating faster than usual. What were they supposed to do with a dirty old hat? And then it started to talk. Draco listened to the hat’s story, though he already knew how the school was founded and the separation between the different houses. A talking hat really wasn’t that impressive.
The ‘what’ became apparent as students filed forward and the hat was placed on their head. His first thought was how disgusting it would be to have that thing touching his hair, but then it shouted out the name of one of the houses and the student who had worn it joined the ranks among their house. But Draco didn’t need a hat to tell him to which house he would belong. His father and his father before him had all been in Slytherin, and he was confident that he would be no different. Why should he be if his veins carried pure blood from two of the noblest wizarding families in history?
While other students were anxiously pulling at the hems of their robes and whispering to other kids they had met on the train, Draco stood with his arms crossed before his chest and waited. He watched as a girl with way too much bushy hair got sorted into Gryffindor, not long before Goyle joined the Slytherin table. He was impatient, but before long it was his turn as well. His arms uncrossed themselves as he walked easily towards the stool and sat down just before the hat hovered before his head. It didn’t have time to say anything before it made its decision, but he could have sworn that he’d heard a light sigh coming from the hat before it shouted out “Slytherin!”
|
