Harry Potter and the Gift of Memories [Harry Potter Fan Fiction]

Chapter VII: Of Clothing and Wands

 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 owner 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.”