The steam from the Hogwarts Express always smelled like a beginning, but for Darla Narcissa Malfoy, it smelled like an expectation.
At eleven years old, Darla already possessed the poise of a woman twice her age. Standing on Platform nine and three quarters, her ice-blonde curls were pulled back in a silk ribbon, not a single strand daring to defy the damp London air. Beside her, Draco only a few months younger and a head shorter clutched his trunk with a mixture of terror and inherited arrogance.
"Remember, Darla," her father, Lucius, said, his voice a low drawl that cut through the cacophony of whistling engines and shouting families. He placed a gloved hand on her shoulder. "The Malfoy name is not a gift. It is a responsibility. You are the first of your generation to enter those halls. Set the standard."
Darla looked up at him. Her dark blue eyes, heavily lidded and preternaturally calm, didn't blink. "I understand, Father."
"And look after your brother," Narcissa added, leaning down to press a cool kiss to Darla's cheek. Her mother's scent vanilla and expensive parchment was the only thing that made the girl's heart stutter with a brief, human ache. "He isn't as... observant as you."
It was the truth. Even then, Darla saw things. She saw the way the sunlight caught the grime on the train's wheels; she saw the nervous tremor in the hands of the boy with the lightning-bolt scar standing a few yards away; and, most importantly, she felt the strange, buzzing energy of the people around her. It was as if their thoughts were hums she could almost tune into a talent she didn't yet have a name for.
As the whistle blew, Darla stepped onto the train, her spine perfectly straight. She led Draco to a compartment, sliding the door shut with a click that sounded remarkably like a lock.
Inside, she sat by the window, watching the English countryside begin to blur into a smear of green and gray. Draco was already boasting to a thick-necked boy named Vincent Crabbe about racing brooms, but Darla wasn't listening. She was watching a girl in the corridor a girl with messy hair and bare feet, staring at the ceiling as if she could see the air moving.
Darla felt a sharp, sudden urge to speak to her. To ask her what she saw. But then she caught her own reflection in the glass the silver Malfoy crest on her luggage, the cold blue of her eyes. She smoothed her skirt, lifted her chin, and turned back to the room.
The "Golden Daughter" had arrived.