Harry.
‘My father’s next door buying my books and mother’s up the street looking at wands,’ said the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice. ‘Then I’m going to drag them 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 I’ll smuggle it in somehow.’
Harry was strongly reminded of Dudley.
‘Have you got your own broom?’ the boy went on.
‘No,’ said Harry.
‘Play Quidditch at all?’
‘No,’ Harry said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch could be.
‘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,’ said Harry, feeling more stupid by the minute.
‘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?’
‘Mmm,’ said Harry, wishing he could say something a bit more interesting.
‘I say, look at that man!’ said the boy suddenly, nodding towards the front window. Hagrid was standing there, grinning at Harry and pointing at two large ice-creams to show he couldn’t come in.
‘That’s Hagrid,’ said Harry, pleased to know something the boy didn’t. ‘He works at Hogwarts.’
‘Oh,’ said the boy, ‘I’ve heard of him. He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he?’
‘He’s the gamekeeper,’ said Harry. He was liking the boy less and less every second.
‘Yes, exactly. I heard he’s a sort of savage – lives in a hut in the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic and ends up setting fire to his bed.’
‘I think he’s brilliant,’ said Harry coldly.
‘Do you?’ said the boy, with a slight sneer. ‘Why is he with you? Where are your parents?’
‘They’re dead,’ said Harry shortly. He didn’t feel much like going into the matter with this boy.
‘Oh, sorry,’ said the other, not sounding sorry at all. ‘But they were our kind, weren’t they?’
‘They were a witch and wizard, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I really don’t think they should let the other sort in, do you? They’re just not the same, they’ve never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families. What’s your surname, anyway?’
But before Harry could answer, Madam Malkin said, ‘That’s you done, my dear,’ and Harry, not sorry for an excuse to stop talking to the boy, hopped down from the footstool.
‘Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,’ said the drawling boy.
Harry was rather quiet as he ate the ice-cream Hagrid had bought him (chocolate and raspberry with chopped nuts).
‘What’s up?’ said Hagrid.
‘Nothing,’ Harry lied. They stopped to buy parchment and quills. Harry cheered up a bit when he found a bottle of ink that changed colour as you wrote. When they had left the shop, he said, ‘Hagrid, what’s Quidditch?’
‘Blimey, Harry, I keep forgettin’ how little yeh know – not knowin’ about Quidditch!’
‘Don’t make me feel worse,’ said Harry. He told Hagrid about the pale boy in Madam Malkin’s.
‘– and he said people from Muggle families shouldn’t even be allowed in —’
‘Yer not from a Muggle family. If he’d known who yeh were – he’s grown up knowin’ yer name if his parents are wizardin’ folk – you saw ’em in the Leaky Cauldron. Anyway, what does he know about it, some o’ the best I ever saw were the only ones with magic in ’em in a long line o’ Muggles – look at yer mum! Look what she had fer a sister!’
‘So what is Quidditch?’
‘It’s our sport. Wizard sport. It’s like – like football in the Muggle world – everyone follows Quidditch – played up in the air on broomsticks and there’s four balls – sorta hard ter explain the rules.’
‘And what are Slytherin and Hufflepuff?’
‘School houses. There’s four. Everyone says Hufflepuff are a lot o’ duffers, but —’
‘I bet I’m in Hufflepuff,’ said Harry gloomily.
‘Better Hufflepuff than Slytherin,’ said Hagrid darkly. ‘There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one.’
‘Vol— sorry – You-Know-Who was at Hogwarts?’
‘Years an’ years ago,’ said Hagrid.
They bought Harry’s school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all. Even Dudley, who never read anything, would have been wild to get his hands on some of these. Hagrid almost had to drag Harry away from Curses and Counter-Curses (Bewitch your Friends and Befuddle your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying and much, much more) by Professor Vindictus Viridian.
‘I was trying to find out how to curse Dudley.’
‘I’m not sayin’ that’s not a good idea, but yer not ter use magic in the Muggle world except in very special circumstances,’ said Hagrid. ‘An’ anyway, yeh couldn’ work any of them curses yet, yeh’ll need a lot more study before yeh get ter that level.’
Hagrid wouldn’t let Harry buy a solid gold cauldron, either (‘It says pewter on yer list’), but they got a nice set of scales for weighing potion ingredients and a collapsible brass telescope. Then they visited the apothecary’s, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor, jars of herbs, dried roots and bright powders lined the walls, bundles of feathers, strings of fangs and snarled claws hung from the ceiling. While Hagrid asked the man behind the counter for a supply of some basic potion ingredients for Harry, Harry himself examined silver unicorn horns at twenty-one Galleons each and minuscule, glittery black beetle eyes (five Knuts a scoop).
Outside the apothecary’s, Hagrid checked Harry’s list again.
‘Just yer wand left – oh yeah, an’ I still haven’t got yeh a birthday present.’
Harry felt himself go red.
‘You don’t have to —’
‘I know I don’t have to.
