The Dragon of Malfoy Manor

They always dined at eight, and the Manor would probably have fallen down if they hadn’t.

On the whole, Dracaena had had a satisfactory day. She had her robes and her books and a cauldron, and she had a wand, which had come down to dinner up her sleeve. What she hadn’t got was a racing broom. She had gone on about it from the Apothecary’s all the way to the Leaky Cauldron, and her father had listened with beautifully polished indifference and hadn’t bought one.

She came down the main staircase in her third-best dress, past the tapestry at the turn without looking at it. Dobby brought the soup.

“I made a friend today, at the robe shop,” she said.

“Did you, darling?” said her mother.

“But he was odd.” She tasted the soup. “He seemed rather clueless. And his hair! I don’t believe he owns a comb. And he was friends with the gamekeeper.”

“I hope you were civil to him,” said her mother, who was watching her.

“Perfectly. I said ‘Charmed’, exactly as you do.”

“Dracaena,” said her mother.

“I was!”

Dobby whisked the soup away, brought in the fish, and went back to his place by the sideboard. Her father laid down his knife.

“You will meet a great many children at Hogwarts, Dracaena, and a good many of them will not be worth knowing. There has been riff-raff at that school ever since that man was given the running of it. Half your year will never have set foot in a decent house. So you will be careful whom you make friends with. The wrong sort do not always look it, and a boy who keeps company with a gamekeeper is not a promising start.” He picked up his knife again. “Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle will be in your year. Their fathers are old friends of mine. If you should run into any trouble, you will have them beside you. And there is Nott’s boy.”

“Yes, Father.”

“It isn’t good for her to have nothing but boys for company,” said her mother. “You might try to make a friend of a girl or two, Dracaena. The Parkinson girl, perhaps.”

“Pansy Parkinson cries when she loses at Gobstones.”

“My daughter can hold her own,” said her father, to her mother.

Dracaena grinned into her goblet.

“And there is one in particular.” He turned the stem of his glass between his fingers. “There is a boy who will be in your year. A Mr Harry Potter.”

Dracaena’s fork went down with a clink.

“The Harry Potter?”

“There is only the one.”

“He’s coming to Hogwarts? This year? With me?”

“He is exactly your age. I want you to make a friend of him. I want you to do it on the first day, before anybody else has the chance.”

“Why?”

Her father glanced at her mother before he answered.

“Because nobody yet knows what he is. There are people who believe the Dark Lord died that night, and people who believe he went somewhere to wait.”

Her mother set down her glass.

“If he waits long enough,” her father went on, glancing at her mother, “the boy who stopped him will be worth more than anybody in the country, to one side or the other. I should like to know which side before anyone else does.”

By the sideboard, Dobby’s hands stopped for a moment and then went on folding napkins.

“How shall I know him?”

“He has a scar, I am told. Nobody knows where Dumbledore has kept him these ten years, so he may be a little peculiar.”

Dracaena thought about that through the fish. She’d heard the story, of course; every child had. But she had never thought of him as a person, somebody you might meet. He would be tall for eleven, she decided. He would have beautiful robes. He would be the sort of boy who came into a room and didn’t need to say anything. And he would know at once who the right sort were, because he was one himself.

“I shall find him on the train,” she said.

“Make sure you do,” said her father, and went back to his dinner. Dracaena waited, but that seemed to be all she was getting.

After dinner she went up to her room, planted herself in front of the long glass, and held out her right hand to it.

“I’m Malfoy,” she said. “Dracaena Malfoy.”

She tried it both ways: her mother’s, the hand held out low and soft to be taken, and her father’s with Mr Crabbe and Mr Goyle, a firm grip and one shake. She chose the second. She’d spent enough afternoons with Vincent and Gregory to know how boys did things.

She didn’t think about the boy from the robe shop again that evening, except twice. Once was when she remembered that his mother and father were dead. The other was when it struck her that his hair stuck up everywhere except at the front, where it lay flat across his forehead as though somebody had pressed it there, and she couldn’t think why anybody would.

Both times she told herself not to be silly. Harry Potter would certainly own a comb.