I know you - Jasper Rowle

Diagon Alley

A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying

Eeylops Owl Emporium – Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown and Snowy.

Several boys of about Astra's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. 'Look,' Astra heard one of them say, 'the new Nimbus Two Thousand – fastest ever –' There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon ...

"I'll take you to go and get your uniform first,' said Lupin, nodding towards Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. "You alright to stay here by yourself kid? I saw something while we were walking and just wanted to go have a look at it real quick."

"Yeah that's okay Rem," she smiled, giving him a quick hug before she entered Madam Malkin's shop alone, feeling slightly nervous.

Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve.

'Hogwarts, dear?' she said, when Astra started to speak. 'Got the lot here – two young men being fitted up just now, in fact.'

In the back of the shop, two boys, one with curly brown hair and the other with straight brown hair were standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up their long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Astra on a stool next to the one with straight brown hair and blue eyes, slipped a long robe over her head and began to pin it to the right length.

'Hey,' said the blue eyed boy, 'Hogwarts too?'

'Yes,' said Astra with a nervous smile, turning to face him

'are you excited?' the blue eyed boy asked her, happy to have someone to talk to besides his cousin who always just seemed to snap at him whenever he spoke.

'Mhmm, my uncle always talks about his days back at Hogwarts! It sounds su-' she gets cut off by the brown eyed boy on the other side

'Could you stop talking so loud? Merlin, people would think that you are old enough to have manners by now,' the boy scoffed, rolling his eyes as he stood up a little straighter, staring in front of him.

Astra's freckled cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but before she could apologize, the blue-eyed boy intervened. "Piss off, Rowle. You're one to be talking about manners," he snapped, turning back to Astra. "Ignore him. Someone shoved a stick up his ass when he was a baby, and it still seems to be up there."

Astra stood in silence, slightly taken aback. "I'm Theodore, by the way—Theodore Nott," the blue-eyed boy continued, trying to salvage the conversation.

"Nice to meet you im Astra B- I a-" she stopped, deciding not to say her last name. Whenever someone found out her last name, they generally gave her a look of horror before quickly excusing themselves.

Before she could finish, the brown-eyed boy interrupted again. "Could you stop chatting, Nott? It's not a tea party," he complained, rolling his eyes.

'Have you got your own broom?' Nott questioned. He was pretty tall for his age, and his aura was quite cold, but Astra was glad she had someone to talk to besides Remus. She was pretty much kept in secret from the world, it was just her and Remus in their small little house.

'No,' said Astra, though she did want one, she wasn't going to get Remus to buy her one, it wasn't a necessity and she didn't want Remus spending more money than he had to.

Jasper spoke up, looking at her with raised eyebrows, 'Play Quidditch at all?'

'No,' Astra said again, "but I really want to... I read about it all the time. Follow all the games in the newspapers. I haven't played it though, I dont have a broom and I haven't got anyone to play it with either, im hoping that I can play when I go to school."

"Sorry to hear that, I'm sure you'll get to p-"

'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?' Jasper suddenly spoke up, cutting Theodore off

'No,' said Astra, she really didn't mind what house she was in. Remus always made sure to remind her that it didn't matter what house she got sorted into, it all comes down to her decisions in life.

'Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been haven't they Nott – imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?'

'Actually no,' said Astra, glaring softly at the boy.

'I say, look at that man!' said the boy suddenly, nodding towards the front window. There was a giant man standing there, talking to a boy with glasses who looked to be the same age as them.

'I'm pretty sure that's Hagrid, my uncle has talked about him' said Astra, 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 Astra. She 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.'

'Well my uncle thinks he's brilliant and so do I,' said Astra coldly. While Remus wasn't really her uncle, he had raised her since she was a baby. She was a bit older than a vast majority of the people in her grade since she was born in the middle of the year, just after the cut off to be in the grade above.

'Do you?' said the boy, with a slight sneer. 'Why are you always bringing up your uncle? Where are your parents?'

'Mum's dead, dads gone,' said Astra shortly. She didn't feel much like going into the matter with this boy. She didn't really know much about her parents, all she knew was that her mother had died when she was just a baby and her father was in Azkaban for matters Remus didn't like to delve into.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Theodore speaks up truthfully, "My mother is dead too."

'Oh, sorry,' said the other, not sounding sorry at all. 'But they were our kind, weren't they?'

'Our kind? They were a witch and wizard, if that's what you mean.' Astra spoke up, slightly confused

'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?'

"You can't be serious? Do you know how stupid that sounds? They're still wizards aren't they, so why shouldn't they get to come to Hogwarts?" Astra said, her face scrunching up in distaste as she leaned forwards to look at the boy

But before Jasper could answer, Madam Malkin said, 'That's you done, my dear,' and Astra, 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.

Astra just ignored the boy, turning to Theodore, "It was nice to meet you Theodore," she muttered out, giving him a small smile before turning to leave the shop.

Astra was rather quiet as she ate the ice-cream Remus had bought her

'What's wrong?' said Remus.

'Nothing,' Astra lied. They stopped to buy parchment and quills. Astra cheered up a bit when she found a bottle of ink that changed colour as you wrote. When they had left the shop, she said, 'Rem , do you know anything about the Nott and Rowle families?'

Remus nodded his head, eating his ice-cream, "they're both pure-blood families, very strict on the whole pure-blood supremacy stuff. Can't think of any Nott's or Rowle's that werent sorted into Slytherin, big supporters of you-know-who."

'Okay,' said Astra, nodding her head softly. She told Remus about the two boy's in Madam Malkin's.

'– and he said people from Muggle families shouldn't even be allowed in –'

'I'm afraid that there are quite a few people who think like that Astra. Especially the house of Black... your father along with a rare few others were the only ones who didn't care for that stuff. If that boy had known who you were – You're last name means a lot in the Wizarding World Astra, its unfortunate but its true."