Not many people knew about the small girl that lived in the cupboard under the stairs. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon liked it that way.
Harriet Euphemia Potter had incredibly messy hair and bright green eyes. The only thing she liked about her appe...
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Harriet had never believed she would meet a boy she hated more than Dudley, but that was before she met Draco Malfoy. Still, first-year Gryffindors only had Potions with the Slytherins, so they didn't have to put up with Malfoy much. Or at least, they didn't until they spotted a notice pinned up in the Gryffindor common room which made them all groan.
Flying lessons would be starting on Thursday—and Gryffindor and Slytherin would be learning together.
"Typical," said Harriet darkly. "Just what I always wanted. To make a fool of myself on a broomstick in front of Malfoy."
She had been looking forward to learning to fly more than anything else.
"You don't know you'll make a fool of yourself," said Ron reasonably. "Anyway, I know Malfoy's always going on about how good he is at Quidditch, but I bet that's all talk."
Malfoy certainly did talk about flying a lot. He complained loudly about first-years never getting in the house Quidditch teams and told long, boastful stories which always seemed to end with him narrowly escaping Muggles in helicopters. He was a very obnoxious kid. Harriet was glad that Percy Weasley kept taking points from him.
The first time it happened, Ron and Harriet started sniggering and Malfoy started complaining and said his father would hear about it. Whatever that meant.
He wasn't the only one, though: the way Seamus Finnigan told it, he'd spent most of his childhood zooming around the countryside on his broomstick. Even Ron would tell anyone who'd listen about the time he'd almost hit a hang-glider on Charlie's old broom.
Everyone from wizarding families talked about Quidditch constantly. Harriet's dorm mates didn't seem that interested in in. Well, Milena did, but she rarely talked to Harriet so she didn't know much about her interests. Thankfully Hermione Granger hadn't tried to talk to her again, but Harried doubted she would like Quidditch. She probably thought school was only for learning.
One time at breakfast, Ron started arguing about football with Dean Thomas, one of the boys in his dormitory. Ron couldn't see what was exciting about a game with only one ball where no one was allowed to fly.
Neville had never been on a broomstick in his life, because his grandmother had never let him near one. Privately, Harriet felt she'd had a good reason, because Neville managed to have an extraordinary number of accidents even with both feet on the ground.
Hermione was almost as nervous about flying as Neville was. She didn't seem to be interested in it, but just wanted to be good at everything. Unfortunately for her, flying wasn't something you could just learn by heart out of a book—not that she hadn't tried. At breakfast on Thursday she bored them all stupid with flying tips she'd got out of a library book called Quidditch Through the Ages. Neville was hanging on to her every word, desperate for anything that might help him hang on to his broomstick later, but everybody else was very pleased when Hermione's lecture was interrupted by the arrival of the post.
