"You fool..." is all Narcissa says, but in an almost-endearing tone that Cassie is quick to pick up on.
Just seconds later, Draco enters the room in his green cloak, ready for their departure to the wizarding outlet mall in which they would be shopping in.
"What about father?" Draco asks as he takes hold of his mother's arm.
"He's coming from the Ministry," answers Narcissa. "He will be there."
And with that final reassurance, the three Malfoys are zapped away out of existence from Malfoy Manor and into the existence of none other than Diagon Alley.
Cassie keeps her eyes shut for a few waning moments, shutting down the nausea that threatened to spill after the trip of Apparating.
"I see you've made it in one piece," came the voice of their father. He was walking out of Gringotts Bank with a small velvet bag in his hand. "Here," he takes a handful Galleons out of the bag and puts them into his son's hand, "take these to get all your robes at Madam Malkin's. Don't lose it."
"Where are you guys going?" asks Draco as he pockets the money.
"I'm going to the bookshop to buy all your textbooks and your mother will be looking at wands," answers Lucius without consulting his wife.
Narcissa doesn't protest; she merely tells her children to find her at Ollivanders Wand Shop when they are done at Madam Malkin's and swept off down the cobblestone street.
"Come on!" Cassie says, nudging her brother to move along to the clothing store.
They were immediately greeted by Madam Malkin, a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve.
"Hogwarts, dears?" she said, when Cassie started to speak. "You're not the first to arrive — come with me."
Madam Malkin directed Cassie and Draco to the back of the shop where they were directed to stand on two footstools while two seamstress witches got to work on pinning their long black robes for the fitting.
It wasn't very long before another person had entered the shop — a frail-looking boy with jet-black hair and circular glasses with, as Cassie noticed, startling green eyes.
Madam Malkin greeted him and promptly got to work on his own robes.
"Hello," says Draco, "Hogwarts too?"
"Yes," said the boy.
"My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," said the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice. "Then I'm going to drag them and my sister" — he jerks his head at Cassie on the stool beside him — "off to took at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow."
"Have you got your own broom?" Cassie, who was only mildly interested in flying, asked the boy.
"No," said the boy.
"Play Quidditch at all?" asked Draco.
"No," the boy said again, trying hard to not seem clueless.
"I do —" boasts Draco. "Father says it's a crime if I'm not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you'll be in yet?"
"No," said the boy, clearly embarrassed.
"Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know my sister and I will be in Slytherin, all our family have been, right, Cass? Imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"