It wasn't Ollivander's main shop, which was obviously located in Diagon Alley, but rather a smaller repair shop for those who couldn't make it all the way to London. There were used wands for sale, and I toyed with a couple while I waited for the witch or wizard I could hear bustling around in the storeroom. A dusty shelf by the window had an unlabeled box on it. Glancing out the window - it appeared that Potter and Lily were done arguing and had rejoined - I toyed idly with the box. The grainy bits of dust clung to the sleeves of the large gray sweater I wore (one of Stan's sweaters that Gran hadn't managed to confiscate).
"Interested in wand-making?" Inquired a creaky old voice from behind me.
"Hm?" I whirled around, clutching the box.
"Wand-making," the wizened old wizard was nearly bent in two with age but he wore a vibrant robe with embroidered galaxies. He gestured with knobby fingers at the box, "that's a wand-making kit you've got there."
"Is it really?" I gasped, rushing to lay it on the counter so I could open it up and see the contents.
The old wizard started removing items from it, listing them off as he went: "Soft cedar, eighteen inches so you can carve just about any length," out came a thick block of wood; "Three strands of unicorn hair, two tablespoons of ground dragon heartstring, and pinch of Sphinx's fur," a pouch with assorted baggies followed the wood; "A lathe for carving," a sheathed knife was laid out beside the other items. The box seemed endless as he pulled more and more items out.
"This is wonderful," I sighed. My fingers ran over the objects, feeling them so I would know them in a way my eyes could not. "I don't know how to make wands, though."
The wizened old wizard eyes me for a moment. "For three galleons and four sickles, it's yours. I'll give you my old wand-making book. It's how I learned."
I counted out the money, not even twinging at the cost as I tried not to gush, "Oh, thank you. Thank you, this is wonderful…"
When he came back from the storeroom with the book, after I had paid and we had repacked the box, he paused thoughtfully.
"You may have questions. If you do, owl Octavius. I'm just filling in for him today. He might not respond quickly - hardly ever does - but he will at some point. Just address it to 'Octavius Bliss'."
He bustled me out of the shop, annoyed, I think, at my endless thanks. I clutched the box to my chest, having refused to allow him to put it in a bag for me. My other bags were all tucked in the crook of my elbows.
"What do you have there?" Potter eyed the box suspiciously.
"Nothing," I said, but a broad grin spread across my face and I couldn't stop from squealing a little in glee.
Lily and I managed to ditch the boys after that, dodging into Gladrags and insisting they shouldn't - and couldn't - follow us while we clothes shopped. After that, our errands having been finished and both of us feeling a little too uncertain to join John and Robert for a meal at the Three Broomsticks, we headed back to Hogwarts.
Tammy, much to my pleasure, joined us at the Gryffindor table for dinner. Between her, Linda, Penelope and Mary, I realized Lily and I were the only ones wearing trainers and trousers instead of skirts and makeup. Mary caught my eye and winked.
"Oi, Lily, you didn't get dressed up for your date!" she teased.
"Date?" Lily frowned at us all. "You know I didn't have a date."
"What?" Tammy gasped, "But I heard…"
I almost laughed, but managed to turn it into an awkward snort at the last second. Embarrassingly, I also had to wipe my nose immediately after.
"Attractive, lion lass." Sirius's bark-like laughter sounded behind me. The four Gryffindor Sixth Years boys plopped down around us. Thankfully, I ended up between Lupin and Mary, neither of whom was making fun of me for my rather unattractive laugh. I glanced at the other girls. Everyone had become rather silent, afraid to tease Lily about her non-existent date in front of Potter who was notoriously obsessed. Of course, they didn't know he had spent most of the day tagging along with us (or so it seemed) and thus would know Lily's only date had been me.
"Did you leave from Hogsmeade early?" Lupin asked, his golden-brown eyes meeting mine. "We didn't see you again."
"They were probably still in Gladrags, Moony," Pettigrew pointed out. "Don't girls always take a few hours in clothes shops?"
Lily and I looked at each other, and then she threw her head back, wavy red locks falling off her shoulders, and laughed and laughed. Snape, over at the Slytherin table, looked over sourly, glaring at Potter who didn't even notice. No, I mused, he wouldn't notice Snape - not when Lily was looking so spectacularly radiant.
"Yes. Rather, no. Er, I mean…not all of us." I stammered, unsure of how to answer. After all, Tammy, Mary, Linda and Penelope could spend hours looking at the formal robes, which I unfortunately knew from experience. Lily was really the best at snagging beautiful bargains quickly and effortlessly at robe shops. And me? I didn't really have much of an interest in robes. I likes the loose-fitting types, and I could just take Stan's robes once he grew out of them for that.
"Do you have a speech impediment?" Potter leaned across the table to peer curiously at me. I blinked owlishly at him.
"Of course she doesn't," Lily snapped, offended on my behalf. "It's just hard for one person to answer for all of us."
Mary twirled one strand of blonde hair and pursed her lips, staring at Sirius. He quirked an eyebrow at her, but she made a show of being bored and rolled her eyes towards the entrance, waiting for Roland Hooch to find her.
Pettigrew, I noticed, watched the exchange with a rather fascinated gleam in his eyes. I shuddered when he licked his lips.
"So who went with whom?" Lupin asked. He didn't actually look curious, but I appreciated his attempt at conversation. I could only eavesdrop on Potter trying to convince Lily he wasn't a toe-rag, and in fact had many redeeming qualities before I fake-vomited.
"Mary went with Hooch," I glanced at Lupin from beneath my lashes, hoping to study him unobtrusively. He was tapping his foot and staring at the entrance. He didn't care, as I suspected, but I continued anyway. "He's Rolanda's – you know, our chaser – older brother. 'Course, he's in Ravenclaw, not Gryffindor."
I turned when a half-eaten roll hit my shoulder and bounced off my plate. Linda and Penelope were both sneering in my general direction.
"That's rude," Lupin noted mildly, but his foot stopped tapping and when I glanced at him he was staring at Linda and Penelope with rare focus.
"It's not the first time," I said it matter-of-factly, and then turned when Tammy jumped up to greet Thicknesse. Personally, I had been shocked when Tammy said she was dating a Slytherin, but he was low-key. As far as I knew, he'd never even had a detention.
"Ignore them, then, they'll get tired of it sooner or later," Lupin advised. "Plus, let's face it, they both have a, er, well, a bit of a reputation."
"Get thee gone," I muttered with a grin, quoting my favorite playwright.
"Exactly, lion lass," Potter said with a wink, having apparently stopped arguing with Lily long enough to eavesdrop.
"I'm rather impressed," Lily said when we finally escaped back up to the dormitories to unpack our bags. At my confused look, she laughed. "I'm impressed you manage to fit all of that into just two bags!"
"Ah, yes. Just one of my many talents." I said flippantly. We both shared a chuckle, and then dug into the bag from Honeydukes to gather our supply of sweets. Lily went straight for the Fizzing Whizbees. I searched out the bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans.
I hesitated before removing the books from their bag, surprisingly shy all the sudden. I wondered what Lily would say when she saw the illustrated, young-adult's Guide to Dragons I had found. Scamander, the author, was the uncle of one of the students here at Hogwarts.
"Anyways," Mary cleared her throat to get our attention from where she lounged on her bed, "something interesting happened today."
"What was it?" Lily asked curiously. We both leaned in to make sure we could hear clearly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Linda and Penelope lean in as well. Apparently, even though they followed the trend in thinking I was a criminal like half the student body, that wasn't enough to stop them from wanting a good pit of gossip.
"Have you notice how attractive the new Head Boy is?" Mary whispered.
"John?" Lily frowned. "He's cute, I guess."
"But you think Robert's cuter," I teased.
"Cute? He's cute?" Mary hissed. I laughed.
"He is a bit more than cute," I mollified her.
"Well I'm glad you think so." Mary drawled, giving me a meaningful look. I stared blankly at her. "Aren't you going to ask?" she prompted me.
"Ask what?" Linda slid off her bed, squeezing to stand between Mary and Lily's beds. Lily, on the other side of Mary, rolled her eyes at me. She, like me, had apparently noticed how fickle Penelope and Linda had been of late.
"It's none of your business, but if you must know, I want someone at least to say 'Why, Mary? Why are you glad Genre thinks John Abbott is a bit more than cute?'" Mary shook her head, annoyed, and pushed herself up. Blonde hair, knotted from how she had been laying, stuck up in a few different directions.
"You think the Head Boy is cute?" Penelope snorted, scooting to the edge of her bed. "He's a prat. He keeps giving Sirius," her cheeks turned red as she said his name, "and his friends detentions."
"Unthinkable, really," I deadpanned. I ignored Penelope's sneer. Lily opened her mouth to say something, but when she caught a look at my face, she shut her mouth and just turned her back.
"Fine. You know what? I'm not telling you guys what happened." Mary snapped, folding her arms crossly in front of her.
"Please, tell us," Linda said with a warm smile.
"We're just playing," Penelope added.
"Shod off, you buggers," Mary muttered, snatching her dark-colored wand from the bedside table and flouncing away. "You both are absolute witches anyway - and I don't mean the magical kind!"
Linda gasped, and then glared at me before flouncing to her bed. "What?" I snapped. "Mary said it, not me!"
"Great," Lily chided me quietly, when Linda and Penelope were muttering with their heads tucked near each other, "now she'll never tell us."
"Why does it matter?" I shrugged.
"She said it was interesting," Lily pointed out. I propped my elbows on my bed, spinning my wand through my fingers thoughtfully. Our party, which we had been planning, was obviously cancelled. Tammy was busy somewhere with her boyfriend (good for her), and Penelope and Linda were not getting over their little snit.
When Lily finally went to bed, I had to decide if I wanted to read the material from McArthur, the dragon book, or a new mystery novel (Whiteout Wands) I had picked up. Drawing the curtains around my bed, I pulled out the pouch with the dragon scale from Cadie and Stan. Maybe I could identify it, thus figuring out where my siblings actually were. Clearly, they lied about their positions in Romania. Or, I could read the book my grandma had bought me during the summer about becoming an animagus. I had skipped through it a bit then, but as the beginning of the school year drew closer I had been too anxious to sit and read. I spread all of the books on my bed to look them over before finally putting the animagus one aside with a sigh, along with the mystery and wand-making book. Really, keeping my siblings out of trouble was much more pressing.
Although the moving images in the book were just photos and not the real thing, I could feel myself breaking out into a cold sweat as I tried to concentrate on the words in the book. The pouch that contained the beautiful blue scale was under my pillow – I pulled it out to look once again at the shape and color. Obviously I couldn't identify the dragon by the way it looked, since I hadn't seen it, but I could identify the dragon breed based off the shape of the scale, and then attempt to narrow it down by the color.
The edges of the scale were rather sharp, and the tip of it tapered quickly leaving the whole scale rather skinny. I studied the page I had turned to, full of sketches of different scale types. I quickly discounted the English and Welsh dragons, which had thicker scales that were more rounded than pointed. After careful examination, I decided I could also discount the dragons that had fur as well as scales – the scale I held had no pits for hair follicles. I turned the page to look at more sketches of more scales. Some of the desert dragons had scales that were sharp and thin like this one, I realized…
I woke up with my face pressed against the dragon book – the scale was resting on my pillow. I blinked to try to clear my blurry vision, and then decided that showering was more important at the moment than continuing my research.
For a Sunday morning, the Great Hall was rather packed. I carried my dragon book with me, my finger lodged firmly between the pages to keep my spot. The girls were all still asleep in the dormitory, but I saw Lupin and Potter near the end of the table. It would be awkward to go sit by them, but then again, they sat by us all the time…
Potter solved the problem for me when he looked up and saw me.
"Over here, Pokeby!" he called, folding up the parchment they had in front of them before I approached. The two boys scooted apart, leaving room for me in the middle. I plopped down, my book in front of me.
"Dragons?" Lupin leaned against my side to get a better look at the cover. "That seems like an odd choice. I thought you were afraid of animals."
"I am," I shrugged, "No getting around that. I'm just…trying to identify something."
"The teeth from the beginning of the term?" Potter asked, peering at me astutely.
"Er…no." I paused, my mind going in twenty different directions at once it seemed. Should I tell them about the scale? The gossip had eased off finally about me being in an illegal contraband ring (although Penelope and Linda hadn't given up on it yet), and I definitely didn't want to start it up again. On the other hand, I hardly felt like the boys would run their mouth about it – at least not Lupin and Potter. Pettigrew might. He was always spouting out random things in hopes of getting a girl to listen to him (just not girls as "uncool" as those of us in Gryffindor, according to him on the train that one day). I also didn't know if Black would go around telling people.
"You don't have to tell us, if you don't want to," Remus said. Oddly, that decided it for me. I reached into the pocket of my trousers to wiggle the scale out.
"I want to know where this came from," I said softly, slipping the scale into James's open hand. "If they were honestly working at a dragon preservation camp...well, they wouldn't be sending me teeth and scales would they?"
"Wow," he breathed, "this is bad." He passed the scale back to me, and I pressed it into Lupin's palm, careful not to cut him with the sharp edges.
"Wicked," Lupin murmured and curled his fingers around it, brushing by my fingers. I jerked my hand away, shocked by the contact. I could feel heat in my cheeks, but I turned to the book and let my hair cover my face for a second. Potter snorted softly under his breath.
"We won't tell anyone," Potter swore. "Let's see what you've got so far." He nodded toward my book. I pulled it closer to us and flipped it open to the page I had fallen asleep on.
"Desert dragons?" Lupin asked, squinting at the sketched scales. "I guess it didn't come from Romania."
"Romania?" Potter flipped to the next page.
"That's where your siblings work, isn't it?" Lupin asked, looking up from the book to see my expression.
"It's where they say they work." I nodded, wondering briefly how Lupin always seemed to know – or remember – the small details.
Potter flipped the page again and we all caught our breath. Indian dragons. The scales were slightly wider than the desert dragons, although they tapered into the same sharp point. The size, just about fourteen centimeters, was a perfect match. The page referenced page 231 in the same book to see more on Indian dragons. I flipped urgently to the 200s until I reached the chapter we sought.
There were several pictures, most of them of serpentine dragons. One of them, sliding smoothly through water, caught my eye with its brilliant shade of blue that seemed almost purple and then nearly black at the different turns and shadows. I shuddered, feeling sweat slide down my temple.
My finger traced the section beside the picture.
"The Pa Snake," Lupin read out loud, breathing in my ear so quietly only Potter and I could hear, "is one of the two dragons native to the Ganges River. Commonly associated with marshlands, this dragon was first sighted by the famed wizard Leonidas Barnabilius."
The rest of the section outlined the feeding habits of the mostly-aquatic dragon. I swallowed a mouthful of bile.
"I can't believe this," I finally snapped, slamming the book shut and narrowly missing Lupin's fingers. "Those lousy…ugh!" There were no words to describe my siblings.
"Are you okay?" Potter asked.
"No." I tried hard not to snap at the boys, who were after all just helping me. "They lied to me. They left me with a woman who didn't even deal well with kids when the kids in question were hers. Mom and Dad died and then Stan and Cadie just left me." My voice cracked unbecomingly. "Excuse me," I muttered and practically shoved the boys aside to escape the bench, taking the book with me. I knew where I was going – to the room that seemed to house me whenever I was upset.