Draco and the cupboard

Draco Malfoy followed his father into the dingy little shop, bored out of his mind before now. He felt unsettled, like he was being watched, but shrugged it off as the moving eyes in the glass jar to his right.

"Touch nothing, Draco." His father droned on, but Draco ignored him. The shop was very brown- the walls were brown, the floor was brown, all the shelves were brown- he felt like the most colourful thing in the room, as he was wearing a bright green robe his father had forced upon him. Deciding to take a look around, he broke away from his father to go find something interesting to entertain him. The shelves were littered with all kinds of nick-nacks, out of order and messy. He could only wonder why his father would enter a place like this; something which his father would often deem 'below him'.

"I thought you were going to buy me a present." He said half-heartedly, reaching for the eyes he saw earlier,

"I said I would buy you a racing broom," Draco heard his father impatiently drum his fingers against the wooden counter at the back of the room. Draco sighed,

"What's the good of that if I'm not in the house team?" Draco knew his father wanted him to play for Slytherin, but he would much rather spend his time on something else. Maybe there was a chance his mother would come to watch him compete if he got in, though? His parents had spent so much time downstairs with their mysterious 'guest' that Draco was starting to feel he was spending more time with Dobby then his own Mother. Draco peered over his shoulder at his father, who looked like he was expecting him to say something more. Draco shook himself out of his thoughts and quickly rattled on about Potter, since that always seemed to lose his father's interest; "Harry Potter got a Nimbus Two Thousand last year. Special permission from Dumbledore so he could play for Gryffindor. He's not even that good, it's just because he's famous ... famous for having a stupid scar on his forehead ..."

Draco bent over, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow and glanced over an abundance of skulls on a lower shelf, "... everyone thinks he's so smart, wonderful Potter with his scar and his broomstick-" He mumbled along into his sleeve, until his father couldn't bear to hear anymore,

"You have told me this at least a dozen times already," His father groaned- looks like Draco needed to work on his excuses- Draco saw his father's scrunched up face from behind his sleeve, "and I would remind you that it is not -" His father searched for the right word, "prudent - to appear less than fond of Harry Potter, not when most of our kind regard him as the hero who made the Dark Lord disappear - ah, Mr Borgin." A crinkly old man appeared from the oak doorway and his father, quite happily, left their conversation. Draco frowned at his father, his face flushed with embarrassment from the 'Fond of Harry Potter' thing. He wasn't fond! What a daft accusation!

"- and young Mister Malfoy, too - charmed..." Draco momentarily took a break from his anger to nod curtly at the greasy-haired man, his father, however, did not do the same. Draco continued to roam the store as his father conversed further with the stranger. Draco couldn't be less interested in their conversations. Furrowing his eyebrows again, Draco felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand, a chill skittered up his spine. He looked over again at the moving glass eyeballs, but they were all facing away from him to inspect his father.

"The Ministry wouldn't presume to trouble you, sir, surely?" Draco heard the man at the counter ask his father,

"I have not been visited yet. The name Malfoy still commands a certain respect, yet the Ministry grows ever more meddlesome. There are rumours about a new Muggle Protection Act - no doubt that flea-bitten, Muggle-loving fool Arthur Weasley is behind it -" While his father continued, he swore he heard a noise coming from his right, it sounded like a person. Draco scrunched up his face; what if it was a stow-away Muggle that got into the shop? No, no, that's absurd. His father had told him all his life that Muggles were primitive people, carrying disease and illness in their blood. No savage would be able to get into a wizard place undetected. So what was it? Some kind of creature? Draco strained to hear it again, but all noise was drowned out by his father's ranting. Spotting a severed hand on a nearby couch, Draco spun around to face his father,

"Can I have that?" He hollered, pointing at the thing. There was a brief moment of silence before his father responded, and Draco heard a shuffling from a dark cupboard in the corner of the room.

"Ah, the Hand of Glory!" The man scurried towards Draco, going on about candles or something similar. He heard his father comment on his grades, to which he responded with "It's not my fault, the teachers all have favourites, that Hermione Granger -" Draco heard a short grumble from the cupboard before his father snapped at him;

"I would have thought you'd be ashamed that a girl of no wizard family beat you in every exam."

Draco snapped his head to the side when he heard the cupboard give a small 'Ha' when he turned red. So it spoke, then? Oily-man and his father talked about muggle-managing while Draco took his chance to investigate the noises. He passed a hangman's rope and a cursed necklace- that supposedly killed nineteen muggles so far- then finally reached the dusty old cupboard. It was open just a crack, and in the darkness he could see a scared-looking green eye near the back of it. Normally he would think it was a house-elf or some monster, but the thing had given itself away. Just above its dark eyebrow; a lightning scar. So, Potter was scared? Embarrassed? Maybe wearing something humiliating? Whatever it was, he didn't want draco to see. Draco could see soot covering his face and a cut below his eye- probably a mishap with floo powder. Draco knew his father wouldn't want him talking to Harry, plus, Harry probably didn't want to talk to him after he turned him down in the first year and started their rivalry. Draco hesitantly reached out a slender hand, about to open the big oak doors when his father, from behind him, yelled out for him to come. Draco spun around, purposely dropping the white handkerchief that his father gave to him for Christmas (a lousy present), and re-joined him out the shop.

Through the window of the shop, Draco saw Harry come out of the cupboard, pick up the handkerchief and examine it, before wiping his face and hands with it. Draco wondered if Harry noticed the print of the Malfoy crest on its corner, he also wondered if Harry thought Draco dropped it by accident. 'Oh well...' Draco thought as he followed his father into the bustle of people, 'Maybe we'll be friends in another lifetime.'