"My father's next door buying my books and Mother's up the street looking at wands," he says. He has a bored, drawling voice. "Then I'm going to drag them off to look 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?"

He seems to have indulgent parents. "No, I don't."

"Play Quidditch at all?"

Some sort of sport she's guessing. "No, I'm more of a books person."

"Eh, books. I play—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?"

House? She has no idea what he's talking about but it seems like she's supposed to. "I haven't given it much thought."

"Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been—imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"

"I think I'll be happy to be there and learning no matter what house I'm in."

He grimaces. "Wouldn't be that happy if it put me in Hufflepuff. Father would probably just send me to Durmstrang. I say, look at that man!" he says, nodding towards the front window—

—where a familiar giant can be seen, grinning at Sarah and pointing at two large ice creams to show he can't come in. 

"Hagrid's helping me with shopping, it's nice that he got me ice cream."

He turns his grimace to Sarah. "How do you know him?"

"The school sent him. I'm an orphan."

"Oh—that's the groundskeeper, right," says the boy. "I heard he's a sort of savage—lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed."

She isn't going to insult anyone behind their backs without a much better reason. Hagrid has a bit of a temper but "He seems to be a nice person."

"Why is he with you? Didn't you have any other family than your parents? They were our kind, right?"

"If I did they also died in the war." Well, maybe not but if not she's not sure why they didn't raise her instead of the Dursleys.

"Oh. I'm sorry," he says, not sounding it. "Anyway, I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you? They're just not the same, they've never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families. What's your surname, anyway?"

But before she can answer, Madam Malkin says to Sarah, "That's you done, my dear. If you wait a bit I can get you other robes than school ones."

"I'll wait." Sarah agrees. And then to the boy, "I'm Sarah Potter."

"Potter?" he squeaks. "Wait—that's the scar—you're Sarah Potter?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Well—where have you been?"

"I've been living in the muggle world. I'm not sure exactly why."

"You what?"

"And that's you all done!" Madam Malkin tells him.

"—we'll see each other in the train, I guess," he tells Sarah.

She nods. "I expect we will."