Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling does. I might not be the first one to create and have ideas like this. Tell me if there is so I can read it and stay away from its plot. You ought to know that I took a lot from the book.

"Speaking to each other"

'Thoughts'

"Mind speech through bond"

~-The Rise of Darkness-~

Chapter 2

After asking permission from Mrs. Cole, Harry and Hermione left the orphanage wearing casual clothes. After following the directions Professor McGonagall told them, Harry and Hermione stood outside the Leaky Cauldron. It was a tiny, grubby-looking pub. The people hurrying by didn't glance at it. Their eyes slid from the big book shop on one side to the record shop on the other as if they couldn't see the Leaky Cauldron at all. They are getting excited on what they will find there. Flattening Harry's bangs to hide his scar, they entered the pub. For a famous place, it was very dark and shabby. A few old women were sitting in a corner, drinking tiny glasses of sherry. One of them was smoking a long pipe. A half- giant and a man wearing a purple turban are talking at one side. A little man in a top hat was talking to the old bartender, who was quite bald and looked like a toothless walnut. Thankfully, no one paid attention to them. Asking Tom the barman where the entrance to Diagon Alley is. Tom led them through the bar and out into a small, walled courtyard, where there was nothing but a trash can and a few weeds. Counting three up and two across from the trash can, he tapped the brick three times before standing back. The brick he had touched quivered - it wriggled - in the middle, a small hole appeared - it grew wider and wider - a second later they were facing an archway large enough to fit them.

"Welcome," said Tom, "to Diagon Alley. Come back if you need to eat or rent a room."

"Thank you, sir." Greeting Tom back and stepping inside Diagon Alley. Looking at their back, they saw archway shrink instantly back to a wall. Turning to Harry, "Harry can you take a look at the letter Professor McGonagall gave us." Hermione requested. Harry complying opened the letter. It contains two pages. The first page contains:

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorcerer, Chief. Warlock, Supreme

Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Mr. Potter/Ms. Granger,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on September 1.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall,

Deputy Headmistress

Opening the second page is the list of all necessary books and equipment they needed:

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

UNIFORM

First-year students will require:

1. Three sets of plain work robes (black)

2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear

3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)

4. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)

Please note that all pupils' clothes should carry name tags

COURSE BOOKS

All students should have a copy of each of the following:

The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk

A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot

Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling

A Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration by Emetic Switch

One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore

Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander

The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble

OTHER EQUIPMENT

wand cauldron (pewter, standard size 2) set

glass or crystal phials

telescope set

brass scales

Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad

PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS

The sun shone brightly on a stack of cauldrons outside the nearest shop. Cauldrons - All Sizes - Copper, Brass, Pewter, Silver - Self-Stirring - Collapsible, said a sign hanging over them. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head, saying, "Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad..." A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium - Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus

Two Thousand - fastest ever -" There were shops selling robes, shops

selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon.

"So where are we going to go first." Hermione asked.

"Gringotts," Harry answered, "we'll get some money from our vaults to buy anything that can help us."

They had reached a snowy white building that towered over the other little shops. Standing beside its burnished bronze doors, wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold, was a goblin. They walked up the white stone steps toward him. The goblin was about a head shorter than Harry. He had a swarthy, clever face, a pointed beard and, Harry noticed, very long fingers and feet. He bowed as they walked inside. Bowing back, they never saw the goblin smile and mutter, "Well, it seems that some humans have manners." Now they were facing a second pair of doors, silver this time, with words engraved upon them:

Enter, stranger, but take heed

Of what awaits the sin of greed,

For those who take, but do not earn,

Must pay most dearly in their turn.

So if you seek beneath our floors

A treasure that was never yours,

Thief, you have been warned, beware

Of finding more than treasure there.

A pair of goblins bowed them through the silver doors and they were in a vast marble hall. About a hundred more goblins were sitting on high stools behind a long counter, scribbling in large ledgers, weighing coins in brass scales, examining precious stones through eyeglasses. There were too many doors to count leading off the hall, and yet more goblins were showing people in and out of these. Harry and Hermione made for the counter.

"Good Morning," said Harry to a free goblin. "We've come to take some money out of our vault."

"What are your names?"

"Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, Sir."

"You have your key?"

"Yes." Harry produced a tiny golden key from his pockets.

"That seems to be in order. Griphook!"

Griphook was yet another goblin. He led them to one of the doors leading off the hall. Griphook held the door open for them. They were in a narrow stone passageway lit with flaming torches. It sloped steeply downward and there were little railway tracks on the floor. Griphook whistled and a small cart came hurtling up the tracks toward them. They climbed in and were off. At first they just hurtled through a maze of twisting passages. Harry tried to remember, left, right, right, left, middle fork, right, left, but it was impossible. The rattling cart seemed to know its own way, because Griphook wasn't steering. Harry's eyes stung as the cold air rushed past them, but he kept them wide open. Once, he thought he saw a burst of fire at the end of a passage and twisted around to see if it was a dragon, but too late - - they plunged even deeper, passing an underground lake where huge stalactites and stalagmites grew from the ceiling and floor. The cart stopped at last beside a small door in the passage wall. Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, Harry and Hermione gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts. Buying an enchanted bag, which can carry a lot of money from Griphook, took about a thousand galleons from the vault.

They went back outside basking in the sunlight but still feeling a little dizzy from their cart ride.

"So, where are we going first?" Harry asked.

"We'll get our uniforms first. Then we get our books, equipment, potion ingredients and our wands."

Hermione answered.

Going into Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve.

"Hogwarts, dears?" she said, when Harry started to speak. "Got the lot here - another young man being fitted up just now, in fact."

In the back of the shop, a boy with a pale, pointed face was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up his long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Harry on a stool next to him, slipped a long robe over his head, and began to pin it to the right length and did the same for Hermione.

"Hello," said the boy, "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," said Harry.

"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 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?" the boy went on.

"No," said Harry.

"Play Quidditch at all?"

"No," Harry said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch could be.

"I do - 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 Harry, feeling more stupid by the minute.

"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?"

"Mmm," said Harry, wishing he could say something a bit more interesting.

"This is getting irritating." Hermione said to Harry through their link. "Can he even notice were not listening to him."

"You there," the boy caught sight of Hermione's bored look, "you do not even know what I am saying do you?" he said, with a slight sneer. "Why is he with you? Where are your parents?"

"They're dead," said Harry shortly. He didn't feel much like going into the matter with this boy.

"Oh, sorry," the boy said, not sounding sorry at all. "You must known each other then. But your parents were our kind, weren't they?"

"They were both humans, if that's what you mean."

"I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you? The boysaid, never considering the answer given. "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." They both glared at him.

"What's your surname, anyway?" Never noticing the glares he was receiving.

But before Harry could answer, Madam Malkin said, "That's you done, my dear," and Harry, not sorry for an excuse to stop talking to the boy, hopped down from the footstool.

"Well, I'll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose," said the drawling boy.

After buying their robes, they stopped to buy parchment and quills. They bought their school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all. Not only buying their school books, they also bought Hogwarts, A History, Introduction to Mind Arts-Occlumency and Legilimency, a book about bonds, and books about battle and defensive magic. They bought a pewter cauldron and they got a nice set of scales for weighing potion ingredients and a collapsible brass telescope. Then they visited the Apothecary, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor; jars of herbs, dried roots, and bright powders lined the walls; bundles of feathers, strings of fangs, and snarled claws hung from the ceiling.

Twenty minutes later, they left Eeylops Owl Emporium, which had been dark and full of rustling and flickering, jewel-bright eyes. Harry now carried a large cage that held a beautiful snowy owl, fast asleep with her head under her wing. They also bought owl treats, knowing that having an owl will be useful for contacting anyone.

They also bought trunks that can has many compartments for their books, clothes, equipment and the like.

Lastly, they needed a wand. The last shop was narrow and shabby. Peeling gold letters over the door read Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window. A tinkling bell rang somewhere in the depths of the shop as they stepped inside. It was a tiny place. They felt strangely as though he had entered a very strict library; he swallowed a lot of new questions that had just occurred to him and looked instead at the thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling. For some reason, the back of his neck prickled. The very dust and silence in here seemed to tingle with some secret magic.

"Good Morning." said a soft voice. They jumped.

An old man was standing before them, his wide, pale eyes shining like moons through the gloom of the shop.

"Hello," said Harry awkwardly.

"Ah yes," said the man.

"Yes, yes. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Harry Potter." It wasn't a question.

"You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work."

Mr. Ollivander moved closer to Harry. Harry wished he would blink. Those silvery eyes were a bit creepy.

"Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favored it - it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course."

Mr. Ollivander had come so close that he and Harry were almost nose to nose. Harry could see himself reflected in those misty eyes.

"And that's where..." Mr. Ollivander touched the lightning scar on Harry's forehead with a

long, white finger.

"I'm sorry to say I sold the wand that did it," he said softly.

"Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Powerful wand, very powerful, and in the wrong hands... well, if I'd known what that wand was going out into the world to do..."

He shook his head and then, to Harry's relief, spotted Hermione.

"And who might you be?"

"My name's Hermione Granger."

"I've never seen someone like you visit my shop once. You're muggleborn then. Hmmm," said Mr. Ollivander, "Well, now - Mr. Potter. Let me see." He pulled a long tape measure with silver markings out of his pocket. "Which is your wand arm?"

"Er - well, I'm right-handed," said Harry.

"Hold out your arm. That's it." He measured Harry from shoulder to finger, then wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit and round his head. As he measured, he said, "Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, Mr. Potter. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard's wand."

Harry suddenly realized that the tape measure, which was measuring between his nostrils, was doing this on its own. Mr. Ollivander was flitting around the shelves, taking down boxes.

"That will do," he said, and the tape measure crumpled into a heap on the floor. "Right then, Mr. Potter. Try this one. Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible. just take it and give it a

wave."

Harry took the wand and waved it around a bit, but Mr. Ollivander snatched it out of his hand almost at once.

"Maple and phoenix feather. Seven inches. Quite whippy. Try -"

Harry tried - but he had hardly raised the wand when it, too, was snatched back by Mr. Ollivander.

"No, no -here, ebony and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches, springy. Go on, go on, try it out."

Harry tried. And tried. He had no idea what Mr. Ollivander was waiting for. The pile of tried wands was mounting higher and higher on the spindly chair, but the more wands Mr. Ollivander pulled from the shelves, the happier he seemed to become.

"Tricky customer, eh? Not to worry, we'll find the perfect match here somewhere - I wonder, now - - yes, why not - unusual combination - holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple."

Harry took the wand. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wand above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls.

Mr. Ollivander cried, "Oh, bravo! Yes, indeed, oh, very good. Well, well, well... how curious... how very curious... "

He put Harry's wand back into its box and wrapped it in brown paper, still muttering, "Curious... curious.."

"Sorry," said Harry, "but what's curious?"

Mr. Ollivander fixed Harry with his pale stare.

"I remember every wand I've ever sold, Mr. Potter. Every single wand. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather - just one other. It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother why, its brother gave you that scar." Harry swallowed.

"Yes, thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember... I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter... After all, He- Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things - terrible, yes, but great." Harry shivered. He wasn't sure he liked Mr. Ollivander too much.

Mr. Ollivander did the same procedure for Hermione - scaring her. Hermione fared a 12 ½ inch vine wood for the wand with dragon heartstring as the core.

Paying 12 galleons for both wands they thanked Ollivander and left the store. They stayed at the leaky cauldron for a meal and when they got to the orphanage the sun is already starting to set. Putting their things at the right place and telling Mrs. Cole the reason why they were late, they slept knowing that their life will be interesting.


Authors Note: Well you should have noticed that I really took a lot from the book. I have done my best. Dumbledore's reaction will be at the next chapter.