Luna knew that she was strange. It was hard to miss, with everyone acting like the things she saw didn't make sense. What she wasn't sure of was whether people just couldn't see the things that she could, or if they were very good at ignoring them in a way she couldn't. Either way, when you're not totally sure what you're seeing matches what everyone else is seeing, it's hard to seem normal. Even if you think you're talking about something completely safe and obvious to everyone, you could find out you're totally wrong too late.

She'd mostly decided to just own it. Spending a lot of time trying to work out what other people thought they saw and only talk about that was a lot of thankless work that would fall apart when she didn't get it perfectly right anyway. Better to just be up front, give people the benefit of the doubt, and act like it didn't bother her that they were upset. Certain people, like her uncle, she had to be extra careful around because of his problems, of course, but she couldn't imagine trying to adjust what she said for everyone. For all she knew, what everyone saw was slightly different, and the things she avoided when talking to one person would need to be totally different for someone else.

Honestly, if she tried she might be better at it than other people, even though they all seemed to agree on some kind of mutual social context she was missing. She definitely felt like she saw a lot of things that other people missed, but, again, she wasn't sure if they were missing it, or if for some reason they just thought it wasn't polite to talk about. Like she realized that her uncle's problems with "freaks" had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with his own insecurities. And that, even though she couldn't remember exactly why she didn't have any friends at school, her cousin Dudley definitely seemed to feel guilty about it.

But, she couldn't really recall ever having many friends, so it didn't bother her that much that she didn't have any at her school. She could tell that all their problems, like her uncle's, were really more about their insecurities than about her in particular. It just seemed like everyone was trying really hard to be normal, and it didn't seem to make them happy, just angry when someone didn't waste as much effort on it as they did.

"I would like to have some friends, though," she admitted, out loud. As easy as it was for her to follow people's' internal monologues, she sometimes forgot that nobody else could follow hers, and that she'd need to use her words to explain things. "Maybe these snakes will be my friends, do you think?"

Piers Polkiss, confused but not willing to give up the opening that had fallen before him after months of work, sidled up next to her in front of the Brazilian boa constrictor habitat and said, smoothly, "I'll be your friend, Luna."

"Oh, no, you're Dudley's friend already," she shrugged, trying to convey a complex understanding of divided loyalties, her own difficulties with her cousin, and how she didn't like how Piers was a budding bully. "Besides, I'm going to a different school this year. I imagine I'll have to make friends there."

Piers nodded, since he was going to Smeltings with Dudley, and, as far as he knew, Luna would be going to the local school. Luna, however, had an intuition that it wasn't Stonewall High that was in her future. "We'll still see each other outside of school, though," Piers tried, not willing to give up the chance he'd been waiting all year for.

"I don't think it's the same, though," she explained, remembering one of the kids in her class talking about a penpal in Canada. "Your classmates won't believe you have a friend that they don't get to meet."

"Huh," he allowed, not having thought of it like that before. What use was going with a girl if the other boys wouldn't believe you? How would they even know how mature you were, an eleven-year-old who already had a girl, if they had to take your word for it? Crush instantly put aside, he exclaimed, "Dud! The snake! I think I see it." The boys then entertained themselves bothering the poor constrictor, bred in the zoo.

Sometimes Luna felt like she'd been bred in a zoo. It was why she thought the snake might want to be her friend. But, it seemed, reptiles didn't understand her any better than people.

The next month of summer seemed to last forever. Though her aunt and uncle continued to mention Stonewall, she'd noticed they weren't actually following through with any preparations, like they were waiting for something. Her aunt was going out of her way to help her understand things like makeup, boys, and her body in a way that clearly made the woman uncomfortable, but she felt was her duty to impart while she had the chance. Her uncle, though it pained him, actually tried to talk to her several times about not seeming too strange, though he often cut himself off with, "But maybe, for them, you're not strange. What do I know?"

And so it was, in late July, about a week before her birthday, that a letter came through the mail slot.

Ms. L. Potter
The Smallest Bedroom
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey

"My letter came," announced Luna, who had been told to get the mail.

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley shared a look over the breakfast table, an argument that finally had to be resolved because they were out of time, which Dudley missed. He instead asked, "Who'd be writing to you?"

"It's probably from her new school, Dudley," his father allowed, finally ceding the inevitability that the strange, spacey girl would never be able to pretend to be normal, even if they could hide the wizards from her and force her to go to Stonewall High. Best to get her out of the house for most of the year. On glancing and seeing that it was, indeed, a strangely medieval-looking letter on parchment with a wax seal, he nodded to his wife, grabbed the car keys, and said, "Why don't you and I go to the shops and get breakfast while your mother and cousin talk?"

And with that, he exited the house and left Petunia to do all the explaining.

"Sit down, Luna," her aunt said, trying to work her way up to the explanation she'd been dreading all year, perhaps even for a decade. As the girl sat, putting the rest of the mail on the table and continuing to hold the envelope addressed to her, Petunia asked, "Do you remember how we said your parents died?"

"In a car crash," Luna responded, though she'd never believed it. In the last year, they hadn't used the story about them being drunks, but she'd heard it from other children who had gotten the story from Dudley over the years. It didn't make sense to her.

"Right," her aunt continued, then admitted, "That wasn't really what happened, but it was the best explanation we could come up with. You see, well," she took a breath, then just came out and said it. "You're a witch, Luna."

The girl just nodded. That made sense.

Petunia, nonplussed that the girl was taking this so easily, tried to explain the gravity of the situation, "You're a witch, and your parents were killed by a dark wizard. We had hoped that you wouldn't be magical, because that world is dangerous. Your mother went into it and…"

The mental puzzle finally completed for Luna, pieces assembled from her discussions with her aunt over the last year, and she reached out a small hand and took Petunia's larger one, "It's okay, Aunt Petunia. I'm sorry you couldn't go with her and protect her. I'm sorry you can't go with me."

Petunia hadn't actually made the mental connections herself, her mind so full of over twenty years of justifications and anger, but as Luna said it, she knew it was true. She clenched her niece's hand in her own and started to cry. Not quite aware she was rambling, she explained, through her tears, "I even wrote to the headmaster, but he said he couldn't take me because I wasn't a witch. And Lily and I just grew further and further apart, and then she was gone."

The girl didn't respond for a while, her eyes caught by the glisten of her aunt's tears and the pretty patterns her aura made as the knots that were deep within, little buzzing flies of energy that had always clustered around her head, began to untangle themselves. Finally, a truth that Luna had been unconsciously telling herself in her last year of grief, came out in words, "If magic is real, then mummy probably isn't really gone. We'll see her again, someday." She didn't notice that her own eyes were leaking.

While the Dursleys went to church on holidays to keep up appearances, like most good, normal, modern British people they weren't really particularly religious, and never gave much thought to the afterlife. But Lily had mentioned the ghosts she'd seen at school, and hinted at how many things that "muggles" wrote off as myths and legends were very real. Part of the schism between the Evans girls had been the much bigger truths that Lily saw that Petunia never would be allowed to see. But maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't hurt for her to have a little faith. "Oh, Luna, I hope so. I hope so, so much."

Once the two had just sat for a while and had a good cry, still holding hands and glad after all that the Dursley men had absented themselves and not been annoyed bystanders to the emotion, they finally noticed the letter still sat, unopened. With a table knife and unconscious skill, Luna broke the seal and read over her acceptance letter to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"We'll need to figure out how to send a reply, and how to get those school supplies," Petunia explained, frustrated. "They used to send someone to help Lily. I guess they forgot they asked for you to be raised normally, and wouldn't have access to those things."

"The owl is waiting outside," Luna said, casually, nodding outside where, in fact, there was an owl in a tree visible through the kitchen window. "I'll get paper to write a reply."

Her aunt, still constantly confused by which things the girl noticed, nodded and watched her write her reply in handwriting that had always been a little more formal than what she'd been taught in primary school. "Make sure to ask for someone to take you shopping. I don't think we'll even be able to find the place."

When Vernon and Dudley returned with pastries, it was obvious even to them that some cathartic bonding had happened. It would be months before they'd truly wrap their heads around the change in how Petunia reacted to things she'd previously considered freakish.

Word came in another letter that a Mr. Hagrid would be around to take Luna to buy her school supplies on the morning of her birthday, so they planned her party for suppertime that evening. It was enough of a novelty that they were bothering to have a party for the girl that they took the disruption to the day in stride. On the morning itself, Dudley wound up answering the knock at the door and looked up at the caller. And up. And up.

The tremendous man (who looked like he'd bang his head on their ceilings if he came inside) momentarily struck the poor boy as some kind of bear. Tangled black hair and beard blended into a black overcoat worn even in the middle of summer, with beetle-like eyes staring down. "Yeh must be Dudley?" he rumbled, partially dispelling the idea that he was a beast. "I'm Hagrid. Here ta take Luna shoppin'."

"Luna!" Dudley shouted, slowly backing up and not taking his eyes off the man and trying to figure out whether it was rude to leave him standing outside rather than see if he could actually squeeze inside without breaking the door. "Your ride's here!"

The girl in question skipped up, wearing a pretty floral dress much more appropriate to the weather, unconcerned about the size of her guide to the wizarding world. "Thank you, Dudley." With a slightly raised voice she told her aunt in the kitchen, "Mr. Hagrid is here. We're going shopping."

Petunia walked in, her eyes widening at the size of the man at her door and realizing she needed to keep the interaction at a minimum before the neighbors saw. Though she guessed he was at least generally strange rather than specifically strange in the way that wizards dressed. It would be much harder to explain someone in a pointy hat and robes on her doorstep. "Have a good time, Luna. Please keep her safe, Mr. Hagrid, and have her back here for supper. I'm sorry I can't accompany you, but my husband is at work."

Clearly prepared for a rougher welcome, Hagrid nodded, and said, "Will do, miss. Well, let's get goin' then, Luna." He gestured to a motorcycle that still seemed a little small for him that was parked on the street, with a sidecar attached. "Hope yeh don' mind, but I though' it'd be easier then takin' the train, an' Dumbledore said it'd be okay."

Petunia clearly wasn't sold on her niece riding on such a vehicle, but Luna just gave her dreamy smile and said, "I'm sure it will be fun. Will we fly there? Oh, goodbye Aunt Petunia, Dudley."

Stepping away from the house and handing her a helmet, Hagrid asked, "How'd yeh know it could fly?"

Putting on the helmet and getting in the sidecar, Luna simply explained, "You're dressed for Scotland, and you wouldn't have driven all that way. I guess it could teleport."

"Yeh don' miss much, do yeh?" Hagrid asked, putting on his own helmet and starting the bike. "Just like yer mum. You look a lot like her, but yeh don' have her eyes. Las' time I saw yeh, you was only a baby, and we weren't sure about how the hair would turn out."

It was difficult to talk much over the sound of the motorcycle and wind, but he formally introduced himself as Rubeus Hagrid, keeper of the grounds and keys at the school, but just "Hagrid" was fine. Once they were out of the neighborhood and didn't seem to see anyone around, he winked at her conspiratorially, and flipped a switch that caused the bike to lift off the ground. Luna giggled, and yelled over the rush of air, "Don't forget to make it invisible!"

Hagrid, who had been about to forget to activate the charms to camouflage the spelled motorcycle, chuckled and flipped that switch too. Much faster than they'd have gotten there if he'd had to take the muggle streets, they were flying into London. From the air, it was obvious to Luna that the roads in the area they were flying toward were subtly distorted and pushed out of running truly parallel, bent around the Y-shaped alley of colorful buildings that was totally contained by more mundane buildings facing the distorted roads.

He carefully set the bike down on the roof of one of the smaller buildings on the street, angling between the walls of the two buildings on either side. Strangely, despite the nice view it would have given, neither large building had windows facing each other, as if they thought they were flush against the other building. The flat rooftop had a stand where several weirdly-adorned brooms were propped up, and a covered doorway seemed to lead into the building.

"Right, then!" Hagrid announced, shutting down the flying motorcycle and taking off his helmet. "Hopefully Tom won' mind me parkin' up here. I usually take the floo, but seein' as yeh ain't got one, it was nice ta take the bike out. It was actually how I took yeh to yer aunt's house when you were a baby."

Luna just nodded, barely remembering to take off her helmet. There was so much going on around her that she was lost in the noise of what she was seeing. "This is nice," she summed up.

"Wait 'til yeh see the alley, proper," Hagrid enthused, opening the roof door and ushering her ahead as he contorted himself to squeeze in and down the stairs. "This is the Leaky Cauldron," he explained as they descended into a dimly-lit and deteriorating pub, "It's a famous place."

The old man at the bar whose hair and teeth seemed to have fled the sinking ship that was his face asked, "The usual, Hagrid?" Luna noticed the people already drinking, and a small part of her that Petunia Dursley had influenced was slightly offended at the public inebriation before lunch even.

"Can't, Tom, I'm on Hogwarts business," Hagrid replied, though Luna noticed him look longingly at the bar as if he would rather have a drink. "Hope yeh don't mind I parked the bike on the roof. Helpin' a new first-year do her shopping." He gestured at Luna beside him, seeming to halt clapping her on the back, either because of a last second realization of his relative size or the relative dirtiness of his hands compared to her pretty summer dress.

The bar had a collective gander at the girl, who was dressed like a muggle and looked around the bar dreamily, taking it all in, but didn't have the usual out-of-place look of a new muggleborn student. They would have shrugged and gone back to their business except that Hagrid noticed a pale young man as he was crossing to the back.

"Professor Quirrell!" he announced, booming voice carrying across the pub floor, "Luna, Professor Quirrell will be one of your teachers at Hogwarts."

"Luna P-P-Potter?" the young man exclaimed, put on the spot, taking Luna's hand in a delicate handshake. Luna just cocked her head, looking, but Hagrid nodded, so he gushed, "I'm p-pleased to meet you."

At Hagrid's prompting, the nervous man went on to make a joke about how he was teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, but didn't think Luna would need it. Luna was only half paying attention, noticing a strange gap in his aura, as if something made its home there and was currently missing. "Are you okay?" she asked, looking over to the center of the gap, on the back of his head.

"I d-d-don't know what you mean?" he insisted, patting the back of his balding head self-consciously, but looked even more terrified than his resting state. "Well, I b-better g-g-go g-get the b-book I c-came for. See you in c-class, Ms. P-P-Potter." And he quickly bowed his way out of the bar.

While they'd been talking, the rest of the bar had organized itself into a line to meet the girl who'd now been announced. Apparently she didn't look at all like they'd been expecting. Luna vaguely cataloged faces of excited well wishers, nodding along until Hagrid finally told them, "We've got ter get on. Lots of shoppin'. Let's go, Luna!" He extricated them and they moved into the walled courtyard behind the pub, shutting the door before he explained, "Did I warn yeh you was famous?"

"Why am I famous?" Luna asked, distracted by the intricate lights woven through the back wall of the courtyard.

Suddenly realizing he'd have to explain a lot, Hagrid slumped and said, "Did yer aunt tell you what happened to yer parents?"

Luna nodded, "Eventually. A dark wizard killed them." This conversation was suddenly serious enough to pull her attention back to the man she was pretty certain was half-giant, though she wasn't totally aware where the information about giants was coming from.

Hagrid leaned against one of the non-magical walls and told her the whole rambling story, of how Lord Voldemort (the name shocked her a bit, though it was the first time she'd heard it), which he'd prefer to refer to as You-Know-Who, tried to take over, Headmaster Dumbledore (a great man!) and her parents had been fighting the dark wizard and his minions, and how he'd killed her parents and tried to kill her too but had somehow failed. "...an not a mark on yeh, neither, though he were destroyed."

"So I'm famous because You-Know-Who didn't manage to kill me when I was a baby?" Luna asked. It seemed strange, but then she shrugged, "I guess people need a symbol. I wonder if it will be hard, being famous."

Hagrid watched her for a moment, as wrong-footed by the girl as most people were, then just nodded and tried to remember the combination to open the wall, finally tapping a pattern with his pink umbrella. Luna watched the magic unlock the puzzle in the wall and make the bricks fall away, part of her mind cataloging the fragile aura of whatever Hagrid had hidden in that conspicuous device. He swept his arm to show the alley that they'd seen from the air, a riot of shops and colors, "Welcome to Diagon Alley!"

Luna's senses were overwhelmed by all the new impressions, yet also it was like coming home. Places and colors she'd never seen before were somehow familiar, memories in her head that had come unmoored finally having context. While she still didn't know how she could possibly know these things, the information was there like intuition. "We'll need to go to the bank, first, to change the money Aunt Petunia gave me," she finally said, matter-of-factly.

"Tha's right," Hagrid admitted, shrugging and deciding to roll with the little girl's strange way of knowing some things. "But yeh won't have to change yer money, if'n yeh don' wanna. Yer parents left ye plenty'a money fer school in yer vault. Best teh use that, anyway, since the goblins charge a lot ta change muggle money."

Luna nodded, since that made sense too, and followed the big man to the big bank. With the same distracted grace, she took in the goblin tellers, the immense underground cart system, and the Potter trust vault. It was only Hagrid's secret business in vault 713 that drew a comment from her. Regarding the fist-sized, grubby package, its light still great even through the concealing spell papers and the overall enchantments of the vault, she said, "The headmaster must trust you a lot, to handle something like that."

Hagrid puffed up, putting the package in his coat, and said, "It's an honor an' a privilege, indeed. But it's best if I keep me mouth shut about it." He did, but that seemed to be mostly to keep his insides together on the ride back up out of the bank's tunnels. By the time they were leaving the bank, he was looking downright queasy. Stopping at the clothing store, he asked, "D'yeh mind if I go get a pick-me-up at the Cauldron? Them infernal carts always do me." He didn't really wait for a response before heading off as soon as she was entering the shop.

Luna wasn't certain that Hagrid was the best chaperone.

The shop wasn't busy, and after asking if she was getting fitted for Hogwarts, the shop owner put her up on a stool next to a boy whose hair was nearly the same white as his skin, and started pinning up a robe. The boy glanced at her, his face pinched in the effort, she thought, of puffing up his aura. "You're a Weasley?" he asked, not quite sneering.

She thought about it, and shrugged, "Thank you. You're rather weaselly yourself." He did look a bit like a ferret.

He blinked for a moment, confused, then explained, "No, the Weasleys. It's a family. My father told me they all have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford."

"Oh! Have I finally gotten freckles?" Luna asked. Despite her auburn hair, she'd always been impossibly fair skinned, and thought she could do with a freckle or two.

"So… you're saying you're not one of the Weasleys?" the boy asked, trying to pull the conversation back on track.

"I suppose not, but they sound nice," she smiled. "It must be fun to have siblings. I only have a cousin."

"I'm also an only child," he drawled, "but I rather enjoy it. Wouldn't want my parents' attention split." He seemed to consider, then asked, "Pureblood?"

Luna sensed that the word meant something that she ought to understand, but decided she was enjoying making the boy keep up. About halfway through a conversation her brain would usually catch up with her mouth, but she didn't see much point in apologizing for what she'd said before she had all the information. "I assume so. I try not to eat too many sweets at home, and I haven't been ill."

Eyes crossing from the description, the boy latched on the acceptance and his own observation that she seemed to have the unconscious poise of a pureblood (not that he'd seen any muggles up close to compare to), and nodded, asking, "Know what house you'll be in yet?"

"Unless something goes very wrong while I'm out shopping," she nodded sagely. "Are you homeless?"

"What!? No! My family owns the largest manor in Britain!" if her tone wasn't so innocent, the boy would swear she was making fun of him. "I mean your house at Hogwarts. I assume you're getting school robes. I know I'll be in Slytherin. All my family has been."

Finally, with all the references to his family, she figured out the shape he was trying to puff his aura into. "You know, you're going to hurt your magic, trying so hard to be your father like that. It might be easier to be yourself." Before he could respond, she noticed that Hagrid was back with a pair of ice cream cones, waving one to get her attention. "Oh, good, Hagrid's back."

Still not having worked out how to respond to the comment about his father, his thoughts derailed and he asked, "I've heard of him. He's a sort of servant, isn't he?"

"I'm not sure there's anyone that isn't some sort of servant," she mused. "Unless you're the queen. But there aren't very many of those."

"I mean, I heard he's kind of a savage who lives in a hut on the school grounds, gets drunk, tries to do magic, and sets fire to his bed."

She cocked her head. "Your father told you that, right? Do you know that you stand differently when you're repeating something he told you?" She shrugged. "I guess it must be easier to not have to come up with your own opinions." She brightened as she realized something. "My aunt has a lot of opinions about our neighbors. I bet I could save time by just assuming they're right."

Finally overloaded, the snobbish rich boy could only stare, and hadn't managed a comeback by the time the elderly clothesmaker told her, "That's you done, my dear."

"Thank you," she told the woman, then smiled at the boy, "See you at school!" She paid for her robes and headed out to meet Hagrid. "Thank you for getting me an ice cream, Hagrid," she told him. "I've just met a boy that wants to be his father. He was very confused. He says his whole family is in Slytherin, and I'm not sure what I should be."

"Better any house than Slytherin," the big man groaned around a mouthful of ice cream as they walked along the alley. "Not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one."

She nodded, thinking about it. "That's sensible. Put all the bad children in the same place. I assume they don't teach them much?"

"What? No, they take the same classes as anyone."

"Less sensible then. No point knowing who's bad when they're children if you're going to teach them to be bad adults."

Hagrid backpedaled, "Well they're not all bad. Most of 'em are just stuck up, but a few're nice. It's just, the few bad ones always go there."

"Oh, that would make it harder," she allowed. "What are the other options?"

"Well, there's Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff." Luna perked up at the second option, it called to something inside her, but Hagrid continued, "Yer parents were Gryffindor. Dumbledore were there too. An me!"

Luna considered it quietly as they picked up her books, tools, and ingredients, buying rather more of the books than were strictly required. Finally, Hagrid dropped her off at Ollivanders to get her wand, hurrying off again with a mention of a birthday present.

The magic at hand in the shop was amazing, the dusty, close shelves of wand boxes overlaid with a kaleidoscope of colors, primarily oranges, whites and reds, potential and humming rather than active. She barely noticed when the old man arrived at the front of the shop, regarding her as she regarded his wands. He eventually broke the silence himself, with, "Luna Potter. I thought I'd be seeing you soon."

Slowly tearing her gaze away from so much potential magic, Luna asked, "Do you recognize everyone?"

He nodded, "Those that so resemble their parents, at least. You look much like your mother, and I briefly thought it was her returned again. I worried she'd damaged her wand, ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Perfect for her skill at charms. But then I saw your eyes, and realized it must be her daughter."

She met his eyes, so silvery like her own, and gave him a wan smile, "I'm glad to meet someone else that knew her. My father as well?"

"Mahogany. Eleven inches. Pliable. Good for transfiguration and raw power."

"Ah," she understood. "It must make it easy to remember people, when you can match them each to something you made."

"Indeed it does," the old man smiled his own thin smile. "I noticed you actually seeing the wands. Few do. The last who did, well, I regret selling him the wand. Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Very powerful. With it, he took your parents from you."

Luna didn't break the gaze, but gave a slight frown. "Is it hard? Knowing that some of the beautiful things you make will be used for evil?"

Ollivander was the one to break the stare, realizing the young girl with the slightly protuberant eyes may never need to blink. "It's the hardest thing about the job. But so many more are used for great good. And we cannot assume that any child will go on to do evil." He reached into a pocket and produced a tape measure, asking, "Now, which is your wand arm?"

The measuring and choosing was actually somewhat anticlimactic. The second wand he handed her warmed, and burst forth a rainbow of sparks as she swished it.

Seeming put out that it had gone so simply, the old man explained, "Ten-inches and slender. English Oak with an acorn pattern. A unicorn hair core. Do you know the meanings of these substances?" When she politely inclined her head for him to go on, he continued, "The unicorn hair provides a consistent foundation, if not the most powerful. Difficult to turn to the dark arts, and loyal. The oak is good for those of an intuitive mindset and affinity with nature.

"With the hair, this wand will be especially faithful. But it will demand equal faith, strength, and courage from you, my dear. Just as the wood is rigid, you must be unmoving in the face of adversity, lest you break rather than bend."

"And it looks like it will be the perfect size to fit behind my ear," Luna enthused.

Speechless, Ollivander let her pay and leave the shop with her new purchase, wondering that such a straightforward wand went to such a complex girl.

Hagrid met her outside and handed her another small package. "Happy birthday, Luna! I wanted ter get yeh a familiar, but I couldn't find one that seemed ta match yeh. So instead I got yeh dragon skin gloves with a sizin' charm so they'll grow with yeh, keep yer hands safe in herbology and when tendin' creatures."

She quickly put on the supple green gloves, "Thank you Hagrid, they're beautiful."

"I always wanted a dragon, meself," Hagrid explained, as they started walking back out of the alley to take her home after a very satisfying birthday shopping trip.