A/N: couple of days later than I thought it would be up, but here it is!
DEDICATION: this chapter is dedicated toooo that random year eight who I glared at in assembly; sorry i'm TRYING not to be mean to randoms!
DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything you recognize, but I do own the character Shona…because it's me. NOT A MARY SUE. REPEAT: NOT A MARY SUE.
And Disney owns the princess dresses, I only mention them once, but yeh.
Third stop: Madam Malkin's
I came into he shop, determined to leave this one as I found it. I was met by the lovely sight of a rather large teenage boy with his arms in the air, as a short, motherly woman in a frilly grandma dress took his measurements.I turned around, maybe I should come back later. But I was stopped by a shrill voice, muffled by a mouthful of pins.
"Give me a moment; I'll be right with you!"
Every inch of the wall space was covered by hanging outfits, and there were piles of clothes on the tables and floors. There was nowhere to sit, so I stood around, not risking touching anything, as the boy bought his school robes. Not that I was eves dropping, but it sounded as if he'd gained more than his uniform could handle.
Madam Malkin came over, looking at me in the assessing way of a seamstress.
"About year four of five? Need adjustments for school? A new skirt or dress maybe?"
"Actually, I'll need new everything, I'm new."
"New? Well you're the third this year, apart from the first years of course."
I was steered towards a little stool in front of a mirror, and Madam Malkin bustled around, grabbing measuring tape. She tapped the tape with her wand, and it rose, unreeled and started taking my measurements, while she jotted them down on a pad of paper.
"Wont be a second." She said and disappeared at the back of the shop. I walked over to one of the racks, and pulled out a dress. I held it up to my body and looked in the mirror, it was nice and simple, not too fancy, but still elegant enough for formal wear. It reminded me of Disney princess dresses; I'd always wanted a dress like that. Not that I'm a particularly dressy person, at my high school, I refused to even buy the uniform dress.
"That could be adjusted for you, if you like." Madam Malkin said from behind me.
"Oh! No, I don't need a dress-"
"Why not? If you're new, I'm guessing you don't have dress robes yet?"
I shook my head.
"You'll need some then!" She took it from me, and her fingers expertly pinned it, until it looked about my size.
"Well…I guess I do…"
I am so weak.
Weak people shouldn't be given money! Yeah, it was the money's fault!
She fitted my school clothes, chatting to me as she did. She took up both parts of the conversation, answering her own questions. Madam Malkin reminded me of a hair dresser, seemingly always busy, gossiping about people I'd never heard of, and asking me questions she didn't really care about for the sake of conversation.
Then I asked about pants.
"School pants? Oh, no, not for the girls."
I gasped, then gasped again, because gasping caused a pin to poke me.
She raised her eyebrows at me.
"I can't not have pants!" I sort of loudly whispered, like I had a cold and couldn't speak, partly panicking.
"It's uniform policy, if you have a problem, you'd better ask someone from the school!"
I left that shop in a state of shock. No pants? What is this place?
Leaving Madam Malkin's, I had quite a large number of bags, there was a lot of clothing I needed for a full uniform. They were canvas bags of course, plastic is terrible. No one else seemed to be having any trouble with bags, they probably made them shrink or something.
Next stop was Flourish and Blotts.
As I was walking down Diagon Alley, which was quite crowded for that time of day, I thought I saw someone I recognized, a little way away. I paused and jumped, in an attempt to see over peoples heads.
But jumping caused a little woman to bump into me, scattering both our bags. I swooped down to pick them up, apologizing, but somehow I managed to trip up a boy too. He and his bags went flying too, landing on one of the ladies bags.
"There are delicate objects in there!" She shrieked.
The boy and the woman, and also another boy and an old man who had joined them, started arguing. I hurriedly picked up my own bags and ran into Flourish and Blotts.
It was like entering heaven. Except better.
Books, I'm pretty sure, are my reason for living. Without them, I would not be here today.
The book shelves in this place were packed to the ceiling, with every single variety of books imaginable. I walked forward slowly, my mouth open in awe.
Suddenly, my slow amazement at this god creation was taken over by an urgency to buy and read every single one of them. (A/N: i'm like this in real book shops, seriously XD) I started running my fingers along the spines of the books, prowling the shelves. I still didn't know what year I would be in, I'd have to ask Dumbledore and come back later, or another day even for my text books. But I'd put some money aside especially for this.
In the end my pile of books included:
Enchantments in Baking, The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts, Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy, Curses and Counter-Curses, Sites of Historical Sorcery, Common Magical Aliments and Afflictions, New Theory of Numerology.
Luckily, not all of them were that big, to this pile wasn't HUGE. It took quite a chunk out of my money, but it was WORTH it! The shopkeeper gave me a special bag because id bought so much, that didn't weight hardly anything, but could hold loads of books without seeming to. Fancy stuff, I wish id had one of these back home; it would have been extremely helpful.
Last was the Magical Menagerie.
I was allowed either a rat, owl, toad, or cat, from what I remembered from the books. I walked into the shop and winced – the animals were either tortured, or throwing one wild party. Mostly it was the cats. They didn't have owls in here, the owls were at Eeylops Owl Emporium, but I wasn't that fond of owls at all.
I thought it over as I stuck my fingers into the cages, and watched the poor shopkeeper struggling with what looked like a very violent purple toad.
If I was going to do the whole witch thing, I might as well have a black cat right?
I came out the shop with a new lifelong friend. She wasn't entirely black; she had white paws and white splotches on her eyes. Even though she wasn't exactly a kitten anymore, she still acted like one. She didn't walk with feline grace, or dart from shadow to shadow. She just plodded along, going right wherever she wanted, regardless of what was in the way.
She was perfect.
I named her Slice, because she looked like a jaguar, because she was black. As in, jaguars-have-sharp-claws-which-will-slice-you-open.
I walked to the place I'd agreed to meet Dumbledore, but I couldn't see him.
"Shona Edwards, I'm here on behalf of Albus Dumbledore."
I turned around to see someone who was DEFINITELY not Dumbledore.
A/N: muahahah cliff hanger! Everyone, read my friend Mia's stories – they're a million times funnier than mine! Her author name is Ocicat. She does Twilight and Harry! Parodies! Woo!
