you raise me up || harry potter (revamped)

Chapter 2: Madam Malkin's

Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve. "Hogwarts, dear?" she said, when Harry started to speak. "Got the lot here—another young man being fitted up just now, in fact."

Harry didn't quite know how to correct her as she led him to the back of the shop. In actuality, she felt an odd tingle of satisfaction in her stomach at being called a "young man," and it felt strange.

She settled down in a stool next to a boy with buttery blond hair and bone china skin. There was an air of privilege about him, emanating from both his haughty chin and the faint scent of what smelled like an expensively subtle cologne.

"Hello," the boy said. "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," said Harry, looking down at her dark hands. She'd rarely spoken to boys her own age; they either avoided her or she tried to avoid them. The boy sitting next to her looked very different from the ones who stole her textbooks and kicked muddy footballs at her head at school, but somehow he reminded her of them. She wondered how she could get away from this conversation.

"My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," the boy drawled. "I'll probably try to get them to buy me a broom — first years aren't allowed to have them, but I'll probably convince them to get one for me. I'll smuggle it in somehow."

Harry refused to glance at him. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. They were all the same, these boys who preened and paraded and begged for attention.

"Play Quidditch at all?" the boy asked.

"No," Harry said, wondering what on earth Quidditch was but unwilling to ask.

"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," Harry said, feeling stupid.

"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?"

The feeling of stupidity grew, and with it, a tinge of guilt. He was just trying to make conversation, after all. Harry had met enough bullies to last a lifetime, but she always had the feeling that the way she talked back to them didn't help, nor her baggy hand-me-downs and reclusive disposition. But even so, Harry turned her head away. The boy seemed to sense Harry's disinterest, for he fell silent.

Harry watched Madam Malkin gather up fabric and wondered if boy robes were different from girl robes. Madame Malkin slipped one over her head.

Harry bit her lip.

"Erm..." she started.

"Yes, dear?" Madam Malkin said absentmindedly.

I'm not a boy, Harry almost mouthed the words. But surely it wouldn't hurt if Harry didn't make the correction?

"Never mind," she said.

The boy looked at Harry curiously. Harry pretended not to notice.

"I'm Malfoy," the boy said suddenly. "Draco Malfoy."

Harry glanced over at him. "Harry," she said shortly.

"Harry, what?" Draco asked, looking a little put out that Harry wasn't more impressed by the introduction. Harry almost laughed; a Muggle-raised orphan who knew nothing about the wizarding world was the wrong person to be impressing.

Madame Malkin chose this moment to bustle away, murmuring about forgetting fabric in the storage room.

Harry sighed. Given what she had experienced at the Leaky Cauldron earlier that day, she could only guess what Draco Malfoy's reaction would be.