Weighed & Measured {HP}

7. the hogwarts express

He wondered if he would get that question a lot. If so, it was going to get irritating quickly.

"Well," he said, thinking his answer over more than he has with Ron Weasley, "my relatives are pretty awful." He was about to say that not all muggles were like that, of course, when he hesitated. He thought of all the teachers who had ignored him, all of the neighbors who gossiped about him. He hadn't met many decent people until Professor Snape came along,

"Let's just say, finding out I was a proper wizard was the best moment of my life," he said simply.

Pansy and Draco stared.

"You mean you didn't even know you were a wizard?" Draco asked, disbelieving. "What about accidental magic? Didn't you ever do anything like that?"

"Sure. But I never realized it was magic until I was nine, when," and here, he hesitated. When Persephone had told him. But he couldn't very well say that, could he? "When I figure out all the strange things that happened were because of me, and not a coincidence," he finished.

Draco looked suspicious, but Pansy didn't seem to mind his hesitation.

"But what about the Dark Lord?" she asked, clearly bewildered. "Didn't you know about him?"

"Not until Professor Snape told me," he said. "The Dursley's - that's my relatives - told me that my parents died in a car crash."

"What's a car?" Crabbe asked.

"Er, kind of like a horseless carriage," Harry said, struggling only for a moment to describe the concept.

He didn't say that the Uncle Vernon had said that his father had been drunk, that it had been his fault that his mother had been killed. That Harry had almost hated his parents for leaving him with the Dursley's, that he had wondered if they cared about him at all before they died.

That seemed too personal, too private.

"I wonder why they told you that?" Draco said. Harry shrugged.

"They hate magic," he said simply, "and anything they see as unnatural."

Pansy and Draco looked outraged.

"Magic is natural!" Pansy exclaimed. "It's the most natural thing in the world."

"They don't think so," Harry said shortly. "It doesn't matter, anyway - I won't see them again until the summer. And I don't want to spend my first trip to Hogwarts talking about them."

Draco and Pansy still both looked outraged, but they seemed to be willing to let things lie, at least, for now.

"Did you ever convince your father to get you that broom, Draco?" Harry asked, desperate to change the subject. Draco pouted.

"No. Mother put her foot down. She said that I can wait a few months to get it."

Harry was a little bit surprised. From what he had seen of the Malfoy's, he would have assumed that Draco's father would be the one putting his foot down, not Narcissa.

"I can't wait to try flying on a broomstick," Harry said. "It sounds amazing."

"You've never flown before?" Pansy asked, clearly outraged.

"Muggle raised, remember?" Harry said. "They don't think that brooms can fly."

"Well, flying is amazing," Draco said definitively. "You'll love it once we have the opportunity. What other classes are you looking forward to?"

"Potions," Harry said immediately, without thinking, his mind going to Professor Snape.

"Really? I'd have thought it was Defense Against the Dark Arts."