Chapter Seven: In Which We Come To An Agreement And Stick To It
The clock on the nightstand by my bed in the twins' room read 5:42 when I woke up the next morning. I stretched and yawned, then slid out of bed onto the floor.
It was the day we were going to go to Diagon Alley for Bill's school supplies. The twins and I were excited out of our skulls, for we'd never been to Diagon Alley before.
3 hours and 29 minutes later, we had piled into a turquoise Ford Anglia, which somehow managed to ea-sily accomodate 9-and-a-half people (Mrs. Weasley was pregnant as of 3 days ago). We were on our way to Di-agon Alley, or as Fred and George and I liked to call it, "Di Al."
"Let's see..." muttered Mr. Weasley. "Ah, here we are, Charing Cross!"
He parked the car outside a record store which had a pub next to it with a sign that read, "The Leaky Cauldron." The crowd was completely ignoring it.
"They can't see it, can they?" inquired Percy. Mr. Weasley shook his head.
"Why not?" asked Fred.
"They're Muggles," explained Mr. Weasley. "Only wizards can see it. If Muggles could see it, they would be going in."
"Oh," said George.
We walked into the Leaky Cauldron and on to a dingy little back room with a brick wall. Mr. Weasley took out his wand and tapped a brick on the wall. It folded back to reveal the alley.
I gaped in wonder. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Shop windows proudly displayed their products. I looked around. Telescopes, cauldrons, barr-els full of eel eyeballs were showing. I couldn't help but give a little squeak of pure amazement and delight.
"Cool!" squawked Charlie, standing in front of a window a little ways down. "The Nimbus Nineteen Ninety-One!"
Fred, George, and I hurried down to catch up with him. We gasped in unison. There, right through a thin sheet of glass, were broomsticks. Shiny, new, with freshly polished wooden handles and trimmed tails. I had possessed a toy broomstick when I lived in Godric's Hollow, but it got blown to twigs when Mum and Dad kicked the bucket. I longed for a brand-new one like the ones on display.
"Hey!"
It was Ron. He seemed to be very excited about something, for he was grinning ear to ear and grabbing me by the hand. "Lookit, lookit!" he squeaked. He dragged me forward, toward another shop farther down.
"It's so COOL!" he shrieked, stopping and turning to face the window.
"Easy, Ron," said Charlie, who was trailing along behind us. "It's only Gambol and Japes..."
I was about to ask what Gambol and Japes was...but then I saw it. The twins and I gasped again. To me, it was like all the fun in the world smushed into one window. It was a joke shop.
Fireworks zoomed around the interior. We couldn't take it anymore. We ran inside.
It was heaven. Everywhere I turned, there was another ridiculously cool thing. I twirled and howled with joy. Pink, purple, orange, red, yellow...I tripped and fell, but picked myself up and kept running...pop, zing, boom...I darted around throngs of people...
"OOF!"
I had crashed into Fred.
"Watch where you're going!" I squealed.
"You watch where you're going!"
I rolled over on the ground and tried to hit him. My hand just flailed twins laughed at me.
About 3 minutes later, the Weasleys came and got us. We spent the rest of the day in Diagon Alley, shopping for new robes, schoolbooks, and a wand for Bill. Oh, the rest of Di Al was fun, don't get me wrong, but the thing is, the joke shop was special.
Later that day, after we got back from shopping, the twins and I were sitting in our room. We were all still thinking about Gambol and Japes. At one point we all looked up at each other. We reached a silent agreement. We could talk to other people about the fact that we liked the joke shop, but not how much we liked it. We wouldn't talk about how completely free we felt, or how being there gave us an overwhelming urgre to run, twirl, scream, forget everything in the world except us and the booming fireworks.
But, even though we agreed not to tell anyone about this, we silently agreed something else, too. We'd never forget it. We accepted that we'd always feel this way about the bright flashes of pink, purple, orange, red and yellow.
We agreed, without saying a word, that someday, we'd make those booming fireworks, those flashes of colour, those things that made little kids just like us shriek, whoop, and laugh.
We understood that we all wanted to do the same thing with this, giddy, wild feeling.
We wanted to create those feelings ourselves.
We wanted to open a joke shop
