"What's your family like?" Hubert asked. "You must have someone, I will assume. Parents, siblings, other relatives?"
"Well, I have parents, of course," Draco answered in a snide tone. "No siblings; it's just me. Why, is it fun having siblings?"
Hubert shrugged. "It can be. I suppose I am lucky to have Fleur and Gabrielle. It might have been nice to have a brother, but I suppose I do have Raoul. Anyway, what are your parents like?"
Draco sighed. "That's a difficult question. They're difficult, to be honest. I'm not sure how to describe them. Your usual purebloods, I guess. Do you know, I almost didn't go to school here."
"You didn't? Why not?"
"My father wanted to send me to Durmstrang," he answered. "I heard them arguing over it once. My father wanted me to go to Durmstrang, but my mother was insisting I come here instead. Obviously, she won in the end, since I'm here."
Hubert knew why Draco's mother must have refused to send him as far away as Durmstrang. There was that; it would be so far away from home that she wouldn't even have the comfort of knowing her son wasn't too far away. On top of that, Durmstrang did not have the best reputation, and Hogwarts no doubt had a much better one.
"Well, let's talk about you, then," said Draco. "What about your family?"
"It's me, my parents, and my sisters," Hubert replied. "We live close to Beauxbatons Academy, so when I first started going to school there it was a comfort to know I wasn't too far from home. Of course, I had Fleur and I met Raoul, so it didn't take long for me to settle in. You seem to be doing rather well here with the other Slytherins," he remarked.
Draco scoffed. "Them. We're all expected to band together and be friends, and they were clearly in need of a leader when I got here, so I took it up. You don't have anyone like that at your fancy school?"
"Hmm." Hubert thought quickly. "I guess the closest is Fleur. She's always with a group of friends, and all the boys are entranced by her. Except Raoul and I; she's my sister, and I don't think Raoul quite gets what the other boys see in her."
"Does she have a date to this stupid ball, then?"
"She does. She's going with Roger Davies, the captain of the Ravenclaw quidditch team. Why, were you going to ask her?"
Draco scoffed again. "Absolutely not. I doubt she even knows who I am. I play quidditch, too, you know. Yes, I just haven't mentioned it," he said at Hubert's surprised look. "I'm the seeker for the Slytherin quidditch team. It's a shame all the matches were cancelled this year; I was looking forward to revenge on Gryffindor for last year.
"Well, anyway," Draco continued, "I should be getting off to my next class. I don't why I even stopped to talk to you."
"Neither do I," said Hubert. "But it wasn't so bad."
Hubert was still trying to make sense of Draco Malfoy, but hadn't quite figured him out yet. Draco acted like he had no real interest in Hubert, yet they had begun to have real conversations with each other. To Hubert that made no sense, but it apparently did to Draco, so Hubert was simply going along with it.
He had meant to ask Draco about the Yule Ball. He didn't know if he had a date yet, but he was bound to by know. Hubert himself did not have an actual date. Cho had already been asked by Cedric Diggory, and Cho's friends had also gotten dates already, including Marietta, whom Raoul had rejected. Since neither of them had a date, Hubert and Raoul decided they would just show up together, even if they just wound up sitting in a corner the entire time.
However, Hubert was now wondering what it would be like to have someone like Draco Malfoy as date to a party.