Second Time Around

Friends and Scorpions

"Got a secret, can you keep it

Swear this on you'll save

Better lock it, in your pocket

takin' this one to the grave"—Secrets, The Pierces

The doors opened to reveal the Great Hall, exactly the way his mother described it. Draco struggled not to gape in awe.

"Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?" Hermione whispered softly besides him. He didn't answer.

The ceiling looked like a dark night sky, clear of clouds and littered with thousands of flickering candles. "It's not real," Hermione explained to a set of Indian twins. "It's just bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts, A History."

She actually read that thing? Draco threw his copy out a window after the first four pages. The teacher in tartan, who he remembered was called McGonagall, pulled out a small short stool and placed a raggedy old hat on top it.

The Sorting Hat, an age old tradition all pureblood families knew of. Though it was dirty and disgusting, it was the ticket to his future.

Hermione stared at it in confusion. "A hat? What are we supposed to do with it?"

This was strange. Even half-bloods knew about the Sorting Hat, with the exception of Potter, as he had supposedly grown up in the Muggle world - the idea of which still made Draco shudder in distaste.

The hat opened a mouth hidden beneath the creases along its surface and began to sing. Draco didn't pay much attention to the song. It was a load of prattle about what each of the houses were all about. None of it mattered as long as he was in Slytherin.

When the hat was finished the hall broke into a loud applause and Draco half-heartedly clapped. Hermione was a little more enthusiastic. McGonagall pulled out a long piece of parchment. "When I call your names," she called, "You will step up, the sorting hat will be placed on your head and you will be sorted into you houses. Abbott, Hannah!"

And like that, she called out names and the sorting hat cried out their houses. Draco barely paid attention, his heart was beating wildly. What if it didn't work, what if the sorting hat placed him in something ridiculous like Hufflepuff or Gryffindor?

Besides him, someone squeezed his hand. Draco looked up in astonishment to see who would have the audacity to put their hands on him when he saw Hermione giving him a reassuring smile as she whispered 'Slytherin'.

His chest warmed. And he returned it with a small hidden smile.

The exchange went unnoticed by everyone except a bespectacled boy with a scar who watched the scene with interest, having never expected such behaviour from the stuck-up boy from Madam Malkin's.

"Granger, Hermione."

It was her name that shocked him. So much so that his hand went slack in hers as she pulled away quickly and practically ran up to the sorting hat.

Granger. Granger was without a doubt a Muggle name.

There was no name like Granger among the magical community. He would know, he'd been studying magical names since he was two.

He realized she'd been announced a Gryffindor and mentally blanched. She was both a Gryffindor and a Mudblood.

On the train, Draco realised she hadn't said her last name. She'd just introduced herself as Hermione. She'd lied to him.

His head felt dizzy. He barely noticed Potter going into Gryffindor too. Hermione was a Mudblood.

The word burned at his throat. Draco felt so confused. What was happening to him? To have been so interested in a Mudblood.