Shopping

Diagon Alley, London, England, 1992

"Hermione!"

Hermione turned, only to be tackled by her good friend Daphne in what the other girl would later call an 'enthusiastic hug'.

"Whoops, sorry! Here, let me help you up," Daphne giggled, pulling Hermione abruptly to her feet and into another hug. "I've missed you! Where have you been? You never Floo, you never write…"

Hermione laughed. "I've been in Asia, and it is so beautiful there! All the cultures and different languages, there's so much to learn!" she said so quickly that she had to catch her breath afterword. "And the food is fantastic! Granted, I'm not the biggest fan of seafood in general, but everything else was great!"

"Slow down, Hermione, you'll hyperventilate!" Daphne laughed. "Where would we be if you fainted two days before the group birthday and we hadn't gotten presents for anyone except each other?"

Hermione sighed. "Yes, I suppose you're right. I have to admit, having one group birthday is more convenient than having to buy gifts all year round."

"You can thank Henry's mum and Mrs. Malfoy for that. It was their idea to have it in between the twins' and Henry's birthdays," Daphne said. "So that nobody would feel like their birthday was being stolen by everyone else."

"Twi- oh, right, Draco and Adrian are twins," Hermione said, thumping herself on the forehead. "How could I forget that?"

"Well, they don't exactly look like twins. They look more like cousins, actually. And, they don't act like twins, with the finishing each other's sentences and whatnot," Daphne pointed out.

"I thought only Ron's brothers did that?" Hermione asked.

"I hear that some identical twins do that to confuse people," Daphne suggested.

"Oh, I get it; if other people can't focus on one or the other, they'll never be able to tell the two apart!"

"I never thought of that," Daphne admitted.

Hermione looked up and down the busy Alley. "Oh, bugg- uhm, drat, I don't have any robes other than my school ones and I didn't bring those. I stick out like a sore thumb in my Muggle clothes…"

Grinning, Daphne pulled a large box out of her tiny bag. "I thought that might be the case. I got you a set a few days ago; they were having a summer sale at Twilfitt and Tattings."

Hermione grinned appreciatively and opened the box to find a summer set of royal blue robes with a thin, deep bronze-colored trim. Further inspection revealed the robes to be sleeveless, which Hermione greatly appreciated in the heat. The material appeared to be made of something similar to what Henry's invisibility cloak was made from, almost like sewn water.

"Daphne, these are great! They must've cost you-"

Daphne waved her off. "Don't worry about it, count it as either payback or an early Christmas present."

"Payback for what?"

"Last year in general?" Daphne shrugged. "Mostly for what happened to your Mum's kitchen when we had our girl's day out."

"Daph, that was clearly an accident and my mum finds it funny… now."

"Who knew that turkeys could do that, anyways?" Daphne grumbled.

Hermione laughed. She had missed her friends greatly, most especially Daphne. As they were the only girls in the large group, they tended to stick together. The petite girl was quirky, alternately a tomboy and a squealing schoolgirl, and a bit of a show off, but she was probably Hermione's best friend.

"Where can I go to put these on? My Muggle clothes are not getting any better by comparison," Hermione joked.

"Oh, right, you can't very well change on the street, can you? We'll just go into the Leaky Cauldron, they have bathrooms where you can change, I think."

"Great, thanks!"

They went to the pub, and Hermione changed while Daphne remained at the bar.

When Hermione emerged from the bathroom, she found Daphne just as the other girl was paying for two frosty bottles full of a tawny liquid.

"Thanks for the butter beers, Tom. Cheers," Daphne grinned, raising the bottles as she turned away. "Oh, hello, Hermione! I got us some butter bee-"

She yelped as Hermione stormed over and grabbed the drinks. "Hey, one of those is mine!"

Hermione scowled and turned on her heel, marching into the bathroom with Daphne right behind her.

"Hermione, what are you doing?"

Hermione glared as she finished dumping the contents of both bottles into a bathroom sink.

"Beer? What are you thinking, buying beer?" Hermione yelled. "We're only twelve! Alcohol will destoy our livers and more importantly our minds…"

Daphne began laughing.

Hermione paused in her tirade. "What's so funny? Juvenile alcoholism is no laughing matter, Da-"

Here, Daphne clutched her stomach. "Hermione, butter bee-hehehehehehe! Hem, it doesn't have any alcoh-ahahahahahah! There's no beer in this beer!" she howled.

"Wha-what?" Hermione asked, obviously very confused.

"Haha, I keep forgetting that you're a Muggleborn, sorry. Butter beer is a drink. It's all bubbly and fizzy, and it's always cold. Like what Muggles drink, uh, yoda! Yeah, it's just like yoda, Hermione," Daphne explained.

"I think you mean soda, Daph," Hermione said, barely suppressing a laugh. "Yoda is a character from- oh, never mind, you wouldn't know what I was talking about anyways."

"Oh, soda, then. Well, either way, there's no alcohol in butter beer," Daphne said. Sighing, she glanced over at the sink where Hermione had emptied the bottles. "And, you owe me ten Knuts."

"I'm sorry, Daph, I really didn't know th-"

"It's not a problem. Just pay for the new drinks, and we'll be even, Hermione," Daphne assured her. "Now, don't we have some gifts to buy?"

Longbottom Estate, Devon, England,

"Neville! Where are you going?"

Neville sighed, smacking his head softly on the mantle above the fireplace. "I'm going to the Zabini's, Gran, I told you that yesterday," he called.

"Zabini? You mean that woman who marries everything she sees?"

"Yes, Gran, her son Blaise is one of my friends from school? We're going to go to shopping tomorrow, you know, for the group birthday. Anyways, Ron, Henry, Draco, Adrian and I are going to spend the night over at Blaise's, like we talked about, remember?" Neville asked, shifting his duffel bag on his shoulder.

"Yes, now that you mention it, I do remember that. Very well, Neville Francis, do your family and yourself proud in your conduct while you are away," his grandmother said stiffly.

"Yes, Gran," Neville replied dutifully.

"Off you go."

Neville sighed in relief. Grabbing a handful of Floo powder, he threw it on the fire, stepped into the flames, and said, "Villa Zabini," before being whisked away to Blaise's 'summer home'.

Villa Zabini, Outside Verona, Italy

He tumbled clumsily out of the fireplace, narrowly avoiding landing on his face.

"Oi, Neville's here!" Ron bellowed, inciting a race to the fireplace.

Seeing the faces of nearly all his friends, Neville couldn't help but grin.

"Mate, look at you! You're taller!" Draco said, smiling as he greeted his friend.

"And paler," Ron observed.

"You're one to talk, you ginger," Blaise snickered, mussing Ron's hair.

"Oi! Leave my hair alone, you boob!" Ron said, smacking Blaise's hand away angrily.

"Leave Ron alone, Blaise. We can't all be dark-skinned beauties like yourself," a distinctly feminine voice teased lightly.

Neville looked up from the group and saw a gorgeous girl of about nineteen descending the stairs.

"Hey, Neville, would you mind shutting your mouth? That's my Aunt you're ogling," Blaise said, elbowing Neville sharply in the ribs.

"Oh, er, sorry, mate," Neville stammered.

The girl, Blaise's aunt, laughed. "Oh, leave him alone as well Blaise." Here, she winked slyly at Neville, who blushed a furious Weasley-esqe red. "He's cute, in an adorkable kind of way."

The girl was several inches taller than even the tallest among the boys, with long red-gold hair and playful gray eyes. She was certainly well built, in Neville's inexperienced opinion; muscular and still curvy.

"This is my aunt Rachelina Russo, of the Verona Russo's," Blaise said in an imperious- and very high pitched- voice.

"Oh, shut up, you idiot boy," Rachelina laughed, giving her nephew a shove that set him off-balance. Turning to the others, she smiled. "I'm sorry for my nephew. It's Lina to you boys. And- Blaise, may I have the honor?"

He nodded, rubbing his arm ruefully. "It is your house, Aunt Lina."

She smiled at them and even Draco and Adrian, who had been trained all their lives to resist feminine wiles- mostly of the Veela variety, admittedly- were entranced by the mysterious smile that graced her lips.

"Welcome to Italy."

Diagon Alley, London, England

"Who do we have left?" Hermione asked, shifting the many bags in her hands.

"Just Henry and Blaise for me, Ron and Draco for you," Daphne said, peering over the top of the boxes stacked in her arms. "Why do we have to have so many friends, Hermione?"

Hermione laughed and looked over at her petite friend. "Well, all those boys together without us would've died by now, I think."

Daphne flashed her friend a conspiratorial grin. "I suppose you're right, as usual. What if they'd go through the trapdoor without us to watch their backs? They'd have fallen into a trap for sure!"

"Especially poor Neville," Hermione sighed, shaking her head. "He's so clums- oof!"

Hermione was abruptly cut off when she ran into something and lost her balance. Packages strewn everywhere, she waved her arms wildly and grabbed onto the first thing she could- which happened to be Daphne.

Daphne shrieked and toppled to the ground, boxes flying in all directions as she went.

Both girls landed rather painfully on the cobblestone street.

"What did I run into? I didn't even see anything!" Hermione moaned.

"Perhaps because your 'what' is a 'who', and your 'anything' is an 'anyone'."

Hermione and Daphne looked up to see a tiny girl even smaller than Daphne had been last year. She was fair skinned with wild dirty-blond hair and huge light blue eyes that seemed to be staring at a point just behind them. She was surrounded by oddly shaped packages in all sizes. Hermione swore that a few of them even moved a bit.

"Oh, I'm so, so sorry, are you alright?" Hermione asked, coming to her feet and helping the little girl to hers.

"I'm quite wonderful, thank you for asking. It was very polite of you," she girl said dreamily.

"Your elbows are bloody," Daphne observed, dusting herself off.

"I suppose they are," the girl said, seemingly uninterested by this fact. "It's unfortunate that I'm not a Long Tongued Flox Pixie. They have healing properties."

"Really?" asked Hermione. "I've never heard of them before."

"No, probably not," the girl replied.

There was really no good response to that.

"Do you want us to take you to the Apothecary? Some essence of murtlap would fix those little cuts right up," Daphne offered as she started gathering up her packages.

"That would be very generous of you."

After the three girls had collected everything they'd dropped, they made their way to the Apothecary.

"Daphne, I'll pay for the essence of murtlap, since I knocked her down," Hermione offered once they'd found the jar of the paste-like substance in the smelly shop.

Daphne snorted. "Hermione, we don't pay for anything in here. It's one of the ones owned by my parents."

"Wait, your parents own this store?" Hermione asked looking around the gloomy establishment.

"Yeah, cheerful place, isn't it. It's one of a couple hundred, They all look the same, at least to me," Daphne said. "When I get a third of them, I'm going to make them a lot more impressive and a lot less vile smelling."

Daphne took a glob of the paste and spread it thickly on the girl's elbows, and as soon as the cuts were healed, the paste hardened and fell off almost immediately.

"Thank you. My arms feel much better now," the girl said simply. She then set her belongings on the ground and gave Daphne and Hermione each a rather unexpected hug.

"Uh, you're welcome," Daphne said, more than a bit surprised.

"Didn't your parents ever teach you not to hug strangers?" Hermione asked.

"No, only that I shouldn't kiss strangers."

Hermione and Daphne stared at each other incredulously.

"W-who are you?" Hermione spluttered.

The girl looked strangely at her. "I am me, of course. Should I be someone else instead?"

"What is your name?" Daphne clarified.

"Luna Lovegood."

"Oh. Well, that actually explains quite a bit," Daphne muttered.

"Who are you?" Luna asked.

"Daphne Greengrass."

"Hermione Granger."

With that, Luna kissed each of them on the cheek and walked away.

"What was that?" Hermione asked, hastily wiping off her face.

"I guess we weren't strangers anymore."

Vicolo Mistica, Verona, Italy

"Lina! What do girls like?"

"Anything you think they'd like will be good enough for your friends, I promise," she assured them, ruffling their hair affectionately.

"Lina, everything is in Italian! What's this book called?" Ron asked, holding up a thick red book.

"This is called 'Everything you Ever Wanted to Know About Being a Witch or Wizard, but Felt Too Stupid to Ask'," Lina translated. "Didn't you say Hermione was a Muggleborn?"

"That's perfect!"

Adrian inquired about a necklace with a light pink stone pendant for Daphne, Blaise got everyone's presents within minutes, and Neville knocked over a perfume display.

It had been an eventful day, and they were about to go back to Lina's when Adrian begged to make stop at the post office.

"It'll be very quick, I swear, I just have to mail something to someone," he said as he darted into the building.

Five minutes later, he reemerged, smiling, and they went back to the villa to swim the afternoon away.

Unknown Location

"Sir, this just arrived for you."

"Thank you, Jonathan." With wrinkled, shaking hands, he took the package from his many greats grandson.

He unwrapped it, and something he'd never thought he'd see again rolled gently into his lap, followed by a note written in an elegant, curling script.

"Dear Mister Flamel,

"I am sorry that my friends and I stole your Stone. We thought that someone was trying to steal it for real, and besides that, we didn't think that it belonged in a school, especially with all that dangerous stuff around. I only kept it this long so you wouldn't get suspicious of the students or my friends and we didn't even use it. Well, I gave my friend some money, but I didn't use it for anything else, I promise.

"I hope you aren't terribly upset, sir, because we didn't mean any harm.

"A Fiery Friend."

No, Luna is not a lesbian. She's just….. friendly.

And socially inexperienced.

Hahaha, enjoy the update, and Merry Christmas!

-TheNefariousMe