Fortune of Fate (A female Harry Potter fanfiction)

[7]

  Rose didn't know where to run first now that she had a bag full of money, she didn't need to know how many Galleons there were to a pound to know that he was holding more money than she'd ever had in her whole life- more money even Dudley had ever had. 

  "Might as well get yer uniform," Said Hagrid nodding to Madam Malkin's Robes for all occasions. 

  "Listen, Rose would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts carts." He did still look a bit sick, so Rose nodded and entered Madam Malkin's shop alone, feeling nervous.

  Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve. "Hogwarts dear?" She asked eyeing the girl up and down. 

  When Rose started to speak the woman cut her off. "Got the lot here- a young man being fitted up just now, in fact." In the back of the shop, a boy with a pale pointed face was standing on a footstool while a witch pinned up his limp black robes.

  Madam Malkin stood Rose on a stool next to him, slipped a long robe over her head, and began to pin it to the right length.

  "Hello, Hogwarts too?" Asked the boy, "My father's next door buying my books and Mother's up the street looking at wands, then I'm going 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 smuggle it in somehow." Said the boy, he had a bored, drawling voice.

  This kid reminded Rose strongly of Dudley. "Have you got your own broom?" The boy went on. 

  "No." admitted Rose embarrassed. 

  "Play Quiddich at all?" 

  Rose wondered why on earth Quidditch could be.

   "No." Rose said again.

   "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 boy glanced at Rose for about a half second, noticing how one sided the conversation seemed.

   "No." Said Rose feeling more stupid by the minute, she looked away from his gaze. 

  "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 boy remarked. 

  Rose wondered if Hufflepuff was an animal.

   "Mmm," said Rose wishing she could say something more interesting. 

  "I say, look at that man!" Said the boy suddenly, looking towards the front window.

  Hagrid was standing there, grinning at Rose and pointing to two large ice creams to show that he couldn't come in. 

  "That's Hagrid, he works at Hogwarts." informed Rose, pleased to finally know something to keep up the conversation. "Oh, I've heard of him. He's sort of a servant, isn't he?" snorted the boy. "He's the gatekeeper," said Rose narrowing her eyes.

   She was liking the boy less and less each second.

  "Yes, exactly. I heard he was some sort of a savage - Lives in a bit on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed." The boy laughs slightly. 

  "I think he's brilliant." Rose said coldly looking him in the eye. "Do you?" Said the boy. "Why is he with you? Where are your parents?"

  Rose felt a slight pang in her chest. But she simply looked at Hagrid again and smiled. "They're dead." She said shortly. She didn't feel like going into the matter with this boy.