When harry had gotten back to the Dursleys – Hagrid had acquired a train ticket to Little Winging for him – Harry noticed that his relatives seemed to fear him. This development on the one hand suited him just fine because they avoided him like the plague, but on the other hand it got annoying really fast when they would scatter from any room the young wizard entered. But he could understand their fear, because if their roles were reversed he was sure they would use magic on him. But Harry tried to be the better person and kept polite to them the few moments he was out of his room.

For most of his time was spent in his new room, which until recently had been Dudley's second bedroom. In said bedroom he spent most of his time reading the various books he had purchased in Diagon Alley. He started with the introductory books to the wizarding world and used a piece of parchment to keep track of the various other books mentioned so he could order them later as reference material.

The first night after his shopping trip, Harry had the urge to put the blood red gem he had gotten from his vault under his pillow while he slept, so he did just that. It strangely wasn't any more uncomfortable to sleep with this rock under his pillow then it was to sleep without it there on the already uncomfortable bed.

While reading the introductory books Harry came across mentions of the subjects Ancient Runes and Arithmancy which were respectively needed for the creation of most magical devices and wards and for the creation of spells. He decided to ignore the note that said that the subjects were only taught from third year on in Hogwarts and put both subjects on his ever increasing list of books to order.

Another thing he was glad he had come across while reading the introductory books was how to get onto platform 9 and ¾ which Hagrid had forgotten to mention. It really was very simple but Harry figured that if he hadn't known how to do it he couldn't have done it himself and that would have been very embarrassing and not at all a good way to make a first impression.

When Harry was done reading the introductory books, which took him a couple of days, the boy wizard started reading his first year books while again making notes of which books were mentioned to order them later. This came in handy especially with his potions book for it appeared that a lot of foreknowledge was expected in that subject. Harry could see how this would be a hindrance to those like him who hadn't lived in the wizarding world.

Done with his school books a week later, Harry decided to order the books he had make note of during his reading. When he first opened the owl order catalogue Harry was surprised to see that it already had a credit of 250 galleons for which he could buy books. Well, books and other things, for it turned out that the catalogue was for more than just one shop in Diagon Alley. He could, for example, also buy potion ingredients with it.

In the end Harry spent more than a hundred galleons on all the books he wished to buy, which turned out to be as easy as tapping what you wanted with your wand and then on the first page confirming your order. Of course, after having ordered them he had to wait for them to be delivered. The boy-who-lived spent this time by reading through the catalogue and seeing what they had to offer. He didn't end up buying anything else but he did make a mental note of the so called ever-refilling pantry which he figured he might need if the Dursleys' fear of him wore of and they stopped feeding him properly at some point.

It surprised Harry greatly when it only took a couple of hours for his purchase to arrive when he figured it would take at least a couple of days which was mentioned in the catalogue. But Harry continued reading with vigor. Starting with the various reference works he had ordered.

While reading his books, Harry began noticing that his reading speed had increased greatly since he had entered the wizarding world. Initially he could read about thirty pages per hour, but that speed was now a bit over sixty; he had counted. Another thing he noticed was that it was easier for him to make connections between what he was reading and prior knowledge. This didn't make him some kind of super genius but he figured that it would be a massive help. He thought that with this ability he would be able to come in the top couple percent of his year. That was, of course, dependent on the fact that he hoped that wizarding children weren't all cleverer then muggle children.

He spent most of his time until the first of September reading almost a lot of the books he had purchased. And noticed that his reading speed kept slowly increasing. With his increased reading speed and cleverness Harry figured he might be able to continue study all the things muggle children would learn during high school if he could procure the necessary books. But for that he would need pounds, muggle money, of which he had none.

So he turned to the catalogue with which he could procure a lot and turned to the section from Gringotts which he had previously mostly ignored. The section turned out to be more interesting than expected. The two things that stuck out to him as being useful were the ability to increase ones catalogue credit directly from the vault and to order money in a variety of currencies to be own delivered for a small delivery fee of 1% of the total amount to be delivered (rounded up to the nearest sickle.)

In the end Harry decided to have order 100 galleons to be converted to pounds (at a rate of nearly 25 pounds to the galleon) and delivered to him for a galleon. When the money arrived a couple of hours later Harry decided to go to London to do some muggle shopping the following day.

When the next day rolled around Harry went to London with the bus in the morning after the Dursleys that he would be gone for the day and be back for dinner. Of course he took his bag connected to his trunk and his wallet which he had put inside it. He first spent a couple of hours going from bookshop to bookshop buying whatever books took his fancy. He bought a myriad of language guides and dictionaries from various languages, both dead and alive, course books for both high school, sixth form and university, and even a dozen books of literature.

Following his book buying spree, Harry had a nice lunch before continuing on. He visited an optometrist to get some better glasses which he was very satisfied with. He even got a pair of sunglasses that had the correct lenses too. Harry also spend close to an hour in an office store buying various notebooks and other writing supplies. He figured that even though the supply list called for parchment and quills, there was no reason he couldn't make his notes on normal paper with pen or pencil. In the end his shopping trip was very successful.

AN: As you can see, this chapter too isn't very long. That is mainly because I have laid out what I want to write about in each chapter, and there just wasn't a whole lot going on during the summer before Harry's first year that was worth writing about. The next chapter, however, is promising to be longer for there are a couple of interesting conversations during the train ride… Also, I want to thank my single reviewer for pointing out a couple of typo's in the first chapter.

Published: 03 April 2016
Updated: -