Beyond the Borders
Beyond the Borders
I was almost surprised to hear Lucius’s footsteps behind me as the shop door swung shut. “Good plan with the teapot. I’d be too old to get away with it. I’m meeting some guys from school. You want to see those banners or did you say it to get out of there?”
“Both.”
“Perfect..” Lucius beckoned to a big slab of a boy plowing through a crowd of kids gathered round a shop window. “Well, Goyle, you made it I see.”
Goyle blinked. “Yeah. Who’s the runt?”
“A first year. Where’s Crabbe? We got to get to Knockturn Alley. Little Sirius here can hang out and wait til we get back.”
I didn’t want to spend the day being called Little Sirius or hearing how great Lucius was. But I didn’t want him planning it for me.. Before I could say so the crowd shifted and we were in front of the most amazing display I could have imagined.
The window was full of broomsticks. Little-kid play brooms stood in the front corner. Regs and I spent hours chasing round the garden on a pair like that when we were small, our feet barely an inch above the ground. The back wall held broad-tailed brooms for long distance travel. Mostly there were racing brooms! Shooting Stars, Comets and Clean Sweeps with long handles and tail twigs tapered for sweeping turns. They gleamed with polish and begged to be taken out and flown.
“I want that one” said Lucius. “When I make Slytherin’s Quidditch team this year.”
I followed his finger. “The Shooting Star or the Clean Sweep?”
“The Meteor, idiot. It’s from the oldest Pureblood broomcrafting family in Britain. Their reputation-”
“You can’t fly a reputation.” The speaker was a tousle haired kid. We traded grins. “Besides, they’ve got a drag in the twigs. It makes them wobble in the turns.”
Lucius scowled.
So did Goyle. “He’s got a nerve talking to you that way. Say, twit, don’t you know who you’re talking to here?”
“Yeah,” I grinned up at Goyle. “He’s talking to someone who doesn’t know twigs about a good Quidditch broom.”
“This-” Goyle elbowed past me, his face going the colour of my father’s best burgundy wine. “Is Lucius Malfoy, from one of the oldest Pureblood families in-”
“So?” The kid cut in. “My family’s Wizarding pure as far back as King Arthur. That doesn’t mean I can make a Quidditch Broom.”
“His family-” Goyle gestured to where Lucius had been. But Malfoy had stepped back so that he now was almost behind Goyle’s shoulder.
“His family,” I moved so that the tousle headed kid and I were shoulder to shoulder again. “Isn’t here to look out for him right now, are they?”
“You going to beat the bludgers off him during Quidditch games next year too?” my friend asked as Goyle snatched for his collar.
“There you are!” said a muddy sort of voice behind us. Another moving mountain rumbled by, pushing my friend and me out of his way. He crashed into Goyle, who’d started to lunge in our direction. Goyle stumbled back into the wall. The new kid stood amid the laughter, his long arms dangling. “I was looking for you! Where’s Malfoy?”
I tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at two hands waving from behind Goyle’s shoulders. “Excuse me, Lucius is busy hiding right now, but I think that’s him there.”
“Mmummmmpf vvmmm!” A muffled voice shouted into the back of Goyle’s robes.
Goyle turned. “Sorry, whadyasay?”
When Malfoy’s face appeared it looked even more like my Father’s best burgundy than Goyle’s had done. It was hideous with his white-blonde hair. “I said ‘get them!’”
The crowd parted. My friend and I dashed over the cobbles, Crabbe and Goyle thudding behind. We ran, laughing harder and louder the fainter their steps grew, til we were too winded to go on. Outside Florean Fortesque’s Ice Cream Parlour we sagged against its warm summer bricks and waited for our breath to catch up with us.
“Did you see Goyle’s face when the other kid rammed into him?” His words were tangled between gasps and laughter.
“Yeah, I did!” My stomach was tired and aching with all that delicious laughter, but I couldn’t stop. Only managed to flap my arms a little. Then doubled forward, caught in a fresh gale of mirth. “And did you see how Malfoy’s arms were waving up and down and up and down like that?”
“Yeah!” My companion struggled to put on an earnest and helpful look as he gazed up into empty air and pretended to tap on an invisible shoulder. “And you saying, ‘Excuse me, but Lucius is busy hi… hi… hiding right now!’”
“I gotta tell you,” I pushed the hair out of my eyes and grinned over at him when our laughter had slowed enough for words. “That you saved me from a fate even worse than spending the whole day with that git!”
His eyebrows rose, disappearing into his tousled black bangs. “Is there one?”
“Oh, yeah! There is! Him thinking he can tell me where to spend it!” The last of the delicious laughter had gone. My grin held for a moment longer, then fell. I pushed away from the bricks, shrugging away a sudden chill. “Like I’d ever want to go to Knockturn Alley with him and those creeps he hangs out with.”
“Is he supposed to be a friend of yours or what?”
I sighed. “My Mother wants me to know someone when I start school next week.”
“Well, that’s solved then.” He grinned. “Now you know me.”
“You’re going to Hogwarts?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m here for supplies. I wish we didn’t have to wait til next year to get our own brooms, don’t you? Did you see the Shooting Stars? I’d love to have one someday. I want to try out for my House team this year.”
“Do you think you’ll make it?” I asked. “What position do you want to play?”
“Seeker.” He said without hesitation. “Like Shelbourne in the World Cup last year. I don’t know if I’ll make it. There hasn’t been a first year on a Hogwarts team in eighty or ninety years. I’ll try out anyway. I mean, you never know. Right?.”
“Right.” Cheering him on would be as much fun as trying out myself. I hadn’t thought of having fun at Hogwarts, but this kid was a first year from a Pureblood family, like me. We could share a dormitory in Slytherin! He hadn’t said how he expected to make the team, only what he hoped to do even if it was unusual for a first year. If a branch led over a wall outside his room, I knew he’d climb it. I touched the galleons in my pocket. “Want to have an ice cream before we check out the rest of Diagon Alley?”
He got lemon squeeze, I had ginger ice. We ate as we looked in shop windows. We bought string-less yo-yos and were seeing who could keep theirs going longer when we spotted a sign. Bottom-Basher Boom-Boom-Boomerangs it read. Should we buy some to set on Lucius, Crabbe and Goyle? The idea of boomerangs chasing them while nudging their backsides and making huge exploding noises doubled us up laughing. With some regret, we dropped the plan. “I don’t really want to search for them in Knockturn Alley.” said my friend. “That place gives me the crawlies.”
“Yeah?” I glanced at him. I knew my father had business there from time to time.
“Yeah. There’s potions to erase your memory and enslavement bracelets to make you do things against your will for the person with the key. And teacups that stick to your tongue til you tell the person who gave you the tea what they want to know.”
“If they stick to your tongue,” I asked starting my yo-yo going again as we turned away from the Bottom-Bashers. “How can you answer their questions?”
He thought about it. “Good point. You want to go ask?”
I forced a laugh. “No! They might ask us to tea. What else have you heard about?”
“Oh, jewels with disaster curses hidden in them, things like that.”
I bent to pick up my yo-yo which had bounced off a wall and thudded to the ground. He sounded like that stuff gave him the creeps, but it was tales heard second hand. I’d seen the things he talked about- and more- in a glass case in our parlour. “So, you really don’t like all that dark arts stuff then?”
He shrugged. “It’s a cheat. Planning ways to make things happen you don’t have the guts or power to manage in the open. It’s being a coward, isn’t it?”
“Yeah!” It was the word for how my Mother had acted, freezing my hands so she wouldn’t have to ask for my book list in case I said no. I was liking this kid more every minute. I got my yo-yo going again. “Right! A cowardly cheat!”
“Anyhow,” said my friend. “There’s a sweet shop I want to see. It’s a Muggle shop, so the toffee won’t shriek or sizzle, but it tastes so good it makes you glad you don’t need to pay attention to anything but eating it. What are you looking at?”
“You!” I said. “You’ve been to a Muggle shop?”
“Well, yeah. It’s just the other side of the wall into Diagon Alley. Want to come?”
“Me?” This kid traveled between worlds like I walked from one room to another!
“Yeah. Why not? C’mon. You got the ice creams. This is my treat.”