In Between The Lines

Chapter Three

Draco's POV:

The train began to slow down after Hermione left, it's old breaks screeched and jolted Crabbe and Goyle awake. I laughed as they fell to the ground, imagining Hermione doing the same in the hallway. The train finally came to a stop, voices filled the halls and older students were pushing the younger students out of the way, perhaps Hermione was right to get a head start, I was definitely not going out there until I was sure it had calmed down. I may be a Malfoy, but older students had the liberty to push around first years all they wanted, a liberty I would exercise as soon as I could but will respectfully stay away from until then.

Crabbe was standing by the door, under my orders to tell me when the halls weren't so packed, while Goyle was stuffing his robe's pockets with the rest of the candy. I told him when he first started the chocolate was going to melt and stain his new robes, but, after making sure I wasn't forbidding him to do it, he continued to stuff his pockets till his thighs looked lumpy and crinkled when he walked. He had just finished when Crabbe said the halls are almost empty so I don't have time to order him to take some out so he doesn't look ridiculous and embarrass me.

We began shivering the closer we got to the front of the train, but I kept quiet and ignored the other two's complaints as I searched the crowd for Hermione's bushy head, instead I found a familiar colored boy walking up to me with an eyebrow raised. Crabbe and Goyle became attentive when they saw him approaching with a challenge in his eyes, but I just smirked and crossed my arms.

"Zabini."

"Malfoy," Blaise Zabini nodded to me, taking in Crabbe and Goyle who relaxed when they recognize him. The Zabini family wasn't well known, but Mrs. Zabini is for her long list of deceased and rich husbands, I'd over heard Mother gossiping with her friends about the causes of deaths. Whether his mother should be in Azkaban or not, Blaise was still a decent bloke who was invited to the Manor often in our childhood. He wasn't a loner like Nott, but he did not follow me around like the rest of the pureblood children, instead we made compromises on everything, agreeing on very little things but never having to big of a fight that we become enemies.

"C'mon, follow me - any more firs' years?" The four of us looked up and see a large, hairy man surrounded by young children looking up at him with a mix of awe and disgust. It was the man, Hagrid, that Harry Potter was so fond of. Despite all of us wanting to just walk with the older students and avoid this lump, we walked towards the beastly man. "Mind yer step, now! Firs' years follow me!"

Barely making it through the narrow and slippery pathway, we all followed Hagrid down the steep narrow path. Some of the other students fell into the mud, and most of them in the front got splashed every time Hagrid stepped in a puddle, but the four of us stay standing and respectable. Nobody talked as we walked, to which I was grateful for, instead we focused on where we were stepping, straining our eyes to see in the dark. I spot Hermione at the front of the group talking to the toad boy again, looking carefree. My chest hurt at the thought of her having friends outside of my group of friends, that she would rather hangout with them than with me, but I pushed that feeling away and demanded my brain to think rationally, I'm a Malfoy, of course she and any friends she makes will want to hangout with me.

"Yeh'll get yer firs' sight o' Hogwarts in a sec, jus' round this bend," Hagrid yelled over his shoulder.

There was a collective "Oooh" from the group in the front as they saw Hogwarts for the first time. Even the well known pureblood children like myself had never seen Hogwarts in person, and there was only a small amount of paintings hidden around the world that most people never see. To see Hogwarts in all of its magnificence and experience the total awe that comes over you, you have to go to Hogwarts.

"I'm glad Mother didn't send me to Drumstrang," Zabini muttered to me, and I nodded. Nothing would beat Hogwarts now that I had seen it.

Drumstrang, the other wizarding school for just boys, and just pureblood boys, was newer than Hogwarts, with a newer castle and lots of new routines that Hogwarts is too old fashion for. Father wanted to send me there, and before I wanted to go there too, but Mother said that men that went there always came out messed up and dull because that's what the castle did to you. Her and Father went to Hogwarts together, Father in the year below her, and she always said those were the best years of her life, that she wanted me to have the ability to experience that too. Muggle-borns be damned.

"No more'n four to a boat!" Hagrid called from the front of the group, his voice echoed back to the three of us. Crabbe and Goyle stretched to see over the heads of other first years, reporting to me that there was a fleet of little boats sitting in the water by the shore.

When we reached the boats, there were not many students left so the three of us shared a boat, Crabbe and Goyle making up for a fourth person. Before the boats started moving together towards the castle, I spotted Hermione following behind the boy that lost his toad- Neville. She looked up after settling in the boat to find Potter and Weasley sharing the boat also. I chuckled as the boats began to float across the water at the disappointed look on her face, she looked around the boats but stopped after a moment when she doesn't find what she was looking for. Zabini and I don't talk while on the boat, sitting next to each other on the front seat while Crabbe and Goyle sat behind us eating the rest of the candy. Everyone is silent as they stared up at the Hogwarts castle. It towered over them as they sailed nearer and nearer to the cliff on which it stood.

"Heads down!" yelled Hagrid as the boats in the front reached the cliff. The boats preceded to glide through a curtain of ivy that hid a wide opening in the cliff face, all of us lowered our heads to avoid getting hit in the face. As I lowered my head, Zabini simply raised his hand and brushed the ivy away from him, causing me to scowl and sit up straighter than him.

The boats continued to carry us down a dark tunnel. All of us refrained from speaking and it caused every drop of water in the black tunnel to echo through the whole thing. The tunnel seemed to take us right underneath the castle, but the professors must not see any reason to add magical nights to ensure first years aren't afraid of the castle they will spend the next seven years residing nine out of the twelve months of the year in. Instead they left the underground cave as it is, dark and wet.

The boats reached a type of underground harbor. As each boat docked itself, we clambered out onto the rocks and pebbles. Hagrid began checking the boats as the last of us made our way onto the ground, I saw Hermione standing next to Neville, a few steps away from Weasley and Potter whom were looking around the cave in amazement. It was just a cave.

Just then, Hagrid called out to Neville, asking him if the toad he was holding was the one he lost. The chubby boy's face lit up upon seeing the toad, taking it from Hagrid and showing Trevor to Hermione who looked excited for Neville. After giving Neville his lost toad, Hagrid thundered up the passage way of pebbles, his lamp leading the rest us us through the darkened passage.

Eventually we came out onto smooth, damp grass in the shadow of the castle. Everyone seemed relieved to not have to continue walking up a steep slop made of small rocks, but Zabini and I observed several students that had grown fidgety the closer we got to the castle and the sorting ceremony. Hagrid led us up a flight of stone steps, all of us crowded around a huge oak door.

"Everyone here?" Hagrid asked, looking over his towering shoulders. "You there, still got yer toad?" I looked where his eyes are and saw Hermione not too far from me nudged Neville who was holding his toad much too tight.

Hagrid nodded at the sight, turned, and knocked three times on the castle door.