DIAGON ALLEY
you done, my dear,” and Harry, not sorry for an excuse to stop talk-
ing to the boy, hopped down from the footstool.
“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,” said the drawling
boy.
Harry was rather quiet as he ate the ice cream Hagrid had
bought him (chocolate and raspberry with chopped nuts).
“What’s up?” said Hagrid.
“Nothing,” Harry lied. They stopped to buy parchment and
quills. Harry cheered up a bit when he found a bottle of ink that
changed color as you wrote. When they had left the shop, he said,
“Hagrid, what’s Quidditch?”
“Blimey, Harry, I keep forgettin’ how little yeh know — not
knowin’ about Quidditch!”
“Don’t make me feel worse,” said Harry. He told Hagrid about
the pale boy in Madam Malkin’s.
“— and he said people from Muggle families shouldn’t even be
allowed in —”
“Yer not from a Muggle family. If he’d known who yeh were —
he’s grown up knowin’ yer name if his parents are wizardin’ folk.
You saw what everyone in the Leaky Cauldron was like when they
saw yeh. Anyway, what does he know about it, some o’ the best I
ever saw were the only ones with magic in ’em in a long line o’
Muggles — look at yer mum! Look what she had fer a sister!”
“So what is Quidditch?”
“It’s our sport. Wizard sport. It’s like — like soccer in the
Muggle world — everyone follows Quidditch — played up in the
air on broomsticks and there’s four balls — sorta hard ter explain
the rules.”
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