"It was an honor to be introduced, I'm sure.  We were just having Clover fitted for her school robes; she should return any minute and we can conclude our business."

"I don't mind waiting," Malfoy says, and takes a seat by the door.

Indeed Madam Malkin returns just a few moments later, with a robe for Clover to try on.  She adjusts the fit magically a bit.

"That should do," she says.  "I can have a few matching sets for you in a short while, or I can post them to your room at the Cauldron if you prefer."

"I think we'll take our leave here," McGonagall says.  "Thank you, Madam Malkin."

And they depart.

"I apologize, Miss Evans-Potter," McGonagall says.  "That was a little more excitement than I had intended for your first day in Diagon Alley."

"What was that about?"  She makes her voice quiet, earnest, a touch somber.

McGonagall will usher her somewhere a hair more private than the middle of the street to have this conversation.

"Ten years ago, a dark wizard - a wizard who uses dangerous and forbidden magic for evil ends - attacked your family.  Her name, or the name she used, was Maledict Gaunt.  In the battle that ensued, both your parents were killed, but Maledict Gaunt was also killed."

Nod.

"Before that night, Maledict Gaunt had been active in the - criminal underbelly of magical Britain.  She was gathering followers, and seeking out lost dark magic.  And she was so secretive that very few people even believed she existed.  But after that night, Lucius Malfoy came forward, saying that he'd been under - a powerful dark curse, cast by Maledict Gaunt, that forced him to do her bidding, called the Imperius Curse.  He was able to provide the Ministry with a great deal of information about Maledict Gaunt's activities and her erstwhile allies, which was instrumental in managing the chaos that followed."

"Magical British tradition holds that he owes your family a debt," she says, "because your mother is the one who broke that curse; since she has passed, that debt passes to you.  And Lucius Malfoy is a - very traditional man."

"I see," she says, still injecting that touch of solemnity into her voice.  "It's good that he's out, though."  This is not even so egregiously phatic an inanity as to be unpleasant to say!  "And - not to be mercenary - " an English teacher had called her thinking mercenary once, and she's gotten a lot of mileage since out of using the term to be self-effacting " - but it doesn't seem like unpleasant news for me to learn that someone is in my debt."

"Someone being indebted to you is still an entanglement in politics," McGonagall says, "and being entangled in politics can be dangerous no matter how advantaged you think you are, especially for someone as young as you.  I think your best course by far is to focus all your attention on Hogwarts for now."

"I suppose I can understand that," she says, in slow contemplative tones.  She probably doesn't need McGonagalls immediately-right-now verbal acquiescence to find a way to open lines of communication with Malfoy, if that ever seems like a good idea.

"I'm glad to hear it," McGonagall says.  "Now, we have one more piece of important shopping to do today."

Grin.  "My wand."  She's genuinely pretty excited about getting a wand, though she still does the childsface-reaction manually.

"Yes indeed."

And so, Ollivanders'.

The first step in getting a wand is apparently a personality quiz.  (She prefers incarnadine, she's partial to snakes but she'd prefer to be trapped in the body of some kind of primate with useful limbs, she'd rather an invisibility cloak than a broomstick though that might change as she grows up, she'd rather be a metamorphmagus, she continues answering honestly just in case it's genuinely important.)

He has her try some of the standard get-to-know-you wands.  Unicorn hair does not agree with her.

She keeps her face on; but this is not comfortable.  This process makes her feel far too percieved.

He tries a beech.  He tries an ebony.  He tries a hawthorn and a hornbeam, a reed and a red-oak, a sycamore and a walnut and a yew.

He gets a look on his face.  If you knew him, you'd recognize this look.

"Surely not..."

He tries a pine, paired with a very particular phoenix feather.

She can't help but let her face lapse, when her hand touches this wand.

She arcs it through the air, carefully, and lines of light trail and curve away from it, silver and green, coiling and slithering in the air like sea-snakes.

He chortles darkly to himself.

She examines the wand, rolling it and twirling it gently between her fingers.  Her eyes go to Ollivander's face.

"What is the significance of this wand, exactly?"

"That wand is sib to a wand once used by Maledict Gaunt," he says.  "It is the wand she used to kill your parents."

"What does it mean for wands to be siblings?"

"Sibling wands have cores given by, or taken from, the same creature," he says.  "As for what it says about the wielders - that can be hard to say.  Sometimes sister wands will recognize each other in battle, and in turn sometimes their wielders will recognize themselves in each other.  Sometimes their fates will be somehow entwined."