Chapter 028

As he looked at the book set on the table, his mind recalled a particular name that had appeared within the third page of the book.

"How about Hedwig?" Harry asked, looking up at the Owl, who had stopped her eating again to look at him. She blinked several times, her head tilting to the left and then the right. A moment past, then two. Harry began to wonder if she would ever answer him, but after another moment she gave what he could only describe as an 'affirming' hoot, bobbed her head up and down once, then went back to eating.

Harry smiled. It seems he finally found a name for his new companion.

The next shop on Harry's list of places to go was none other than Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. There, he got his first sight of who could only be the own of the store, Madam Malkin. She was a rather squat witch, dressed in a mauve robe, and giving him a pleasant smile. While she looked a little odd in Harry's opinion, being so short and all, he couldn't help but decide he liked this woman's cheerful demeanor. And, if nothing else, at least she took better care of her appearance than those other witches he had seen in the Leaky Cauldron.

"Hogwarts, dear?" asked the woman, her kind smile still in place.

Harry nodded. "Yes."

"We've had quite a few Hogwarts students coming in today," Madam Malkin said. "In fact, there's a young lady being fitted up just now."

In the back of the shop, a young girl with slightly curly brown hair tied in a pony-tail, bright brown eyes, and a pretty smile stood on a footstool, while a second witch pinned up her long black robes. Madam Malkin directed Harry onto the stool next to the girl, slipped a long robe over his head, and began to pin it to the right length.

"Hi!" The girl greeted him in a voice that was every bit as cheerful as her smile. "Are you going to Hogwarts too?"

"That's right," Harry told her with a smile of his own, his mind and demeanor easily slipping into that of the polite and helpful boy he acted like whenever he was at school. "From how excited you are I take it you're a first year as well?"

"That's right," the girl said with a nod. "What year are you in?"

"First year."

"Really?" The girl looked at him wide-eyed. She eyed him up and down, and as she did, her cheeks gained a bit of color. Harry frowned when he saw her staring at him, it almost looked like she was eying him through the robe. "You don't look like a first year," she mumbled to herself.

"I get that a lot," Harry admitted, and the mild blush that had been staining the girl's cheeks spread to the rest of her face, as she realized she had not only been caught staring at him, but also hadn't been as quiet as she should have been.

The frown marring Harry's face deepened for a moment as he wondered why the girl seemed so embarrassed. It's not like she hadn't said anything he had never heard before. Or maybe it had something to do with how she'd been caught staring at him?

Well, whatever. It wasn't like it really mattered in the end. Shrugging the thought off as irrelevant, Harry decided to restart the conversation by steering it toward the one thing they had in common. The new school they would both soon be going to.

"Are you excited to be going to Hogwarts?"

"You bet I am!" the girl replied, enthused, her bright smile returning again. It was almost amusing how she seemed to bounce from embarrassed to excited so quickly, a thought Harry wisely kept to himself. "So what house do you think you'll be in?"

"I'm not sure," Harry admitted, almost tempted to shrug, but held himself back for fear of accidentally getting stuck with a needle while Madam Malkin was fitting his robes. "Both of my parents were in Gryffindor, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's where I'll end up. I suppose I will go to whichever house they put me in."

"So both of your parents went to Hogwarts?" the girl asked. Not giving him a chance to respond, she said, "mine too. My mum was in Ravenclaw and my dad was in Slytherin." She paused for a moment, then asked, "are you a pureblood then?"

"Half-blood," Harry corrected her. "My mum was a muggleborn while my father was pureblood."

At that the girl flashed him a grin. "Mine too."

"So what House do you think you'll be in?"

"Well..." The girl actually seemed to ponder it for a moment, before shrugging. "I'm not really sure, I would say Slytherin or Ravenclaw, since my parents were in those houses, but the truth is nobody really knows where they'll be sorted until the sorting takes place. I just hope I'm not in Hufflepuff."

"And what's wrong with being sorted into Hufflepuff?" asked Harry, honestly curious. He also filed away the knowledge that both Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were the other two houses at Hogwarts. Harry had only ever known of Gryffindor, because his parents were in it; and Slytherin, of course, because his father and his group of friends—miscreants his mum had called them one more than one occasion—pranked many of the students in Slytherin. They had not really spoken of the other houses, so Harry had not heard of them.

"Don't you know?" the girl asked, before hurrying on with the answer before Harry could say anything to the obviously rhetorical question. "Hufflepuff's supposed to be the house of cowards and left overs. No one who goes to Hogwarts ever wants to go there."

The girl was leaning towards him slightly, as if what she was telling him was some great secret. Which would explain why she had missed the look of anger on the face of the young woman pinning up her robes. However, while the girl missed it, Harry was in the perfect position to see the expression.

"You were in Hufflepuff, weren't you?" Harry asked of the young woman. The girl's head turned in surprise as she looked at the woman pinning up her robes. Said woman gave the brunette a cold smile.

"Yes," she answered Harry's question. "I was one of those... left overs, as you called them."

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