Another super long AN coming up. I had to attempt to recreate the money system, but I had to change the costs of everything in cannon to follow the conversion that J.K. Rowling gave. I used the Harry Potter Wiki for this story, so there's $6.64 (US dollars) per Galleon.
I know nearly nothing about money, but when I looked it up, people spend about $230 spent on textbooks per semester. On average, each textbook will be $30, since paper is easier to manufacture in the wizarding world. There are 8 textbooks, so the first-year textbooks combined cost about $240. I know some textbooks can cost hundreds of dollars, but again there are massive production costs in there and I'm doing my best to keep this as simple as possible. I'm going to assume a wand is about $300, the price of a cheap iPhone. This is likely enough for Ollivander to live on, especially if the government helps to pay for wands. Online, it costs about $25 for Hogwarts robes as a Halloween costume. The students need 3 sets. These are easier to manufacture due to magic, but they also have extra spells and enchantments on them.
Dragon hide gloves sound like they'll probably cost at least $25. A cauldron will be $50 at least. A telescope is cheaper due to magic, but it's still at about $100. The glass/crystal phials will be about another $50, and the brass scales will be at approximately $50. The winter cloak will be another $30, since it should be more expensive than the Hogwarts robes. A hat adds another $15.
Combined, this means school supplies cost at least $935 (774.93 Pounds), which is insane as far as I know. I'm not in college yet, but middle school (I suppose in Britain it's called something different, but I mean the school one goes to at 11) supplies only cost a hundred or two dollars at most. It's about 140 Galleons. For this, I will use the following values (they differ from cannon, but I don't want to calculate how much each Galleon is worth from the confusing costs):
Wand at Ollivanders: 45 Galleons
Three Sets of Plain Work Robes (Black): 3 Galleons and 13 sickles each (11G, 5S total)
One Plain Pointed Hat (Black) for day wear: 2 Galleons 4 Sickles
One Pair of Protective Gloves (dragon hide or similar): 4 Galleons
One Winter Cloak (Black, silver fastenings): 4 Galleons 9 Sickles
Textbook (On Average): 4 Galleons 10 Sickles
1 Cauldron: 7 Galleons 9 Sickles
One Set of Glass or Crystal Phials: 7 Galleons 8 Sickles
1 Telescope: 15 Galleons
1 Set of Brass Scales: 7 Galleons 9 Sickles.
Total: 141 Galleons and 5 Sickles ($938.2 or 777.54 Pounds – 359.99 Pounds in 1991)
I know it's different from cannon, but I worked really hard on it. Please be nice. Also, I'm changing around some of the dates of birth with the older characters to form 4 time periods of important characters: 1940s when Tom Riddle attended Hogwarts, Marauders era, current era (where the main characters are in Hogwarts), and the next generation era (from epilogue).
If you really don't like the wand price, pretend that the government payed for a lot of wand costs before, but can't afford that after the increased war time.
Disclaimer: I obviously don't own the Harry Potter Universe, or else I would be able to buy a computer that consistently connects to Wi-Fi.
Hermione stood with Professor McGonagall in front of the red brick wall. It seemed rather inconvenient for this to be the only way into Diagon Alley – imagine if Tom started charging money to use the entrance. The professor tapped a select brick thrice with her wand, and the bricks began to rearrange themselves into an archway. Hermione stepped through, and was immediately overcome with a thousand different strange sights, noises, and smells.
It wasn't particularly bright or busy, but everything was moving. Most buildings were only a single story high, likely because that had been the quickest way to rebuild them after the war. Splashes of bright color lit up the atmosphere, though, preventing it from becoming too gloomy. "First," Professor McGonagall explained, "we shall go to Gringotts to exchange your money."
"Is that some sort of bank?" Hermione asked, tearing her eyes away from a bookshop.
"Yes. Gringotts is run by the Goblin Nation. It is one of the few buildings in Diagon Alley that was not destroyed in the war." Professor McGonagall stopped outside of a huge building made of marble. Hermione whispered the poem to herself as they stepped into the bank and shuddered.
A large granite counter was at the far end of the room, with seven goblins sitting behind it. At each station was a large sign: there were Muggle and Foreign Money Exchange, Artifact Negotiations, Quick Withdrawals, Consultations and Investments, Inheritance, Vault Setup, and Vault Withdrawals. Under them were what looked like translations into French, German, and several languages that Hermione did not recognize. Professor McGonagall lead Hermione over to the exchange station, where she handed in her 420 pounds over to the Goblin, who gave her what he said was the equivalent of 399 pounds back in galleons. She had 174 galleons and 13 sickles and 25 knuts exactly, which Professor McGonagall said was more than enough to buy her school supplies.
First, they went to Ollivanders to buy her wand. They stepped into the wand shop and Hermione heard a small bell ring. Mr. Ollivander rode a ladder from the back of the shop, which he leaped off of. "Ah, it is always wonderful to see new students, off to seven years of a magical education at Hogwarts…" He said wistfully.
"Five years." Hermione muttered under her breath.
"Are you not a new student? Did you move here?" Mr. Ollivander asked, somehow managing to hear her.
"I'm going to leave after I take my O.W.L.S." Hermione explained.
"Not very academically inclined?" He asked, as his animated measuring tape began to dance around.
"No, I want to go back to the Muggle world and be a scientist there."
"Why ever would you want to be a little Muggle scythe-itis?" Mr. Ollivander asked curiously, scribbling down notes on a roll of parchment that was magically held up in the air.
"Scientist, and I'm not going to even try to explain it to you." Hermione said. "You wouldn't understand."
"Ah, yes, the dreams of youth." Mr. Ollivander said patronizingly. "Muggleborn?"
"Yes. Does it matter?" Hermione challenged.
"No, of course not." He said. "It simply makes the wand fitting easier if I am able to have a starting point in the form of your parents' wands."
"Oh." Hermione said, deciding not to press the issue of her career dreams further. "That makes sense. But why do we need a specific wand?"
"The wand chooses the wizard, or in your case, the witch. Each of my wands has a magical core, Miss Granger, and magical wood, along with runes, a design and a precise length. All of these factors together decide how a wand channels your magic. They form the frequency, which we must match to your own magical frequency." He explained.
"That sounds interesting. Is there a book on it?" Hermione asked curiously.
"Wand lore is a closely guarded secret, but you should be able to find some basic information on it in Flourish and Blotts." He suggested.
"Thank you, Mr. Ollivander." She said as he passed her a wand.
"Unicorn tail hair with willow, extremely bendy. Give it a wave." He encouraged. The wand had a flower design on it and felt (a kind of vibrating, tingling feeling, sort of like the frequencies that Mr. Ollivander had mentioned) like Earth to Hermione, although she wasn't quite sure why or how. The second she picked it up, Mr. Ollivander snatched it out of her hand. "Definitely not."
Next, he took out a reddish-brown wand, simple-looking, with tiny runes around the base. The wood was smooth and beautiful. "Acacia and phoenix feather." Hermione gave it a little flick, and Mr. Ollivander took it away. "Close." He said quietly.
"Perhaps…fir and dragon heartstring, unyielding." He passed Hermione a stiff, tan-brown wand with runes drawn all over it. She flicked it, and one of the windowpanes shattered.
"Sorry!" She squeaked.
"No matter." Mr. Ollivander quickly repaired it and passed her the next wand, a brown one with a vine-like pattern winding upwards. "Vine and dragon heartstring." Hermione waved it, and she felt like there was something pushing out, trying to get through, but it died down. "No, maybe once, but this wand is not for you."
"Pine may be the one. Pine, pine, pine..." He muttered, searching the shelves for the next wand. "Pine and dragon heartstring, good for nonverbal magic." He said, handing her another wand. Hermione waved it, and he snatched it out of her hands. "No, no…" He began to search again.
"How did you know it would be good for nonverbal magic?" Hermione asked.
"A good scholar of wand lore knows the strengths and weaknesses of each wand. Hmm. Maybe…ah, we shall try this one next." Mr. Ollivander said, handing her another wand, this time made of a rich brown wood. Hermione felt some sort not-sound from it, and it gave the impression as if it simply wasn't there and would channel anything through it. Runes were carved in a spiraling pattern up the wand. "Walnut and dragon heartstring." Hermione flicked this wand too, and several books rose off the desks and floor, beginning to spin around. She smiled, and set the wand down on the desk. "Yes. This is your wand, Miss Granger. Use it well." He seemed to be on the verge of saying something.
"What does the wand mean?" Hermione questioned.
"Walnut wood seeks highly intelligent witches and wizards, especially innovators and inventors. They possess unusual versatility and adaptability. Dragon heartstring wands learn quickly and have the most power out of any of the three cores. This wand will perform anything you desire of it." Hermione beamed, but Mr. Ollivander continued on. "I must warn you, however, that dragon heartstring is generally the easiest core to turn dark. The walnut wood is not known for its allegiance to the light either. This does not mean that either you or the wand is dark. It simply means that the wand has the potential to turn."
"I remember every wand I have sold, Miss Granger." Mr. Ollivander told her. "It seems not yesterday that a very gifted young girl came into this shop. She, too, received a walnut wand with a dragon heartstring. And she, too, promised that she would be careful and use it well. You would not know her, but this girl became Bellatrix Lestrange. I would not advertise the fact that your wand is so similar to hers."
"But –" Hermione said, "I don't know who that is, but I won't ever go dark. I promise. Most of the dark side hates Muggleborns like me anyway, from what I heard." She added.
"There is more than one type of darkness, Miss Granger. Take care that you are not led astray." Mr. Ollivander warned.
"I'll be careful!" Hermione promised, worried about the wand. But it hadn't felt evil when she had picked it up. It hadn't felt dark. Hermione would never kill people unless she absolutely had to. But you added that unless on at the end, a piece of her mind said. If you were really a good person, it would be never kill ever. Period.
Good people have to kill sometimes. Hermione reminded herself. If they don't stop the evil guys, so many people will die. "Thank you, Mr. Ollivander." Hermione said, taking the wand reverently and searching for a place to put it.
"You should buy a wand holster." Professor McGonagall recommended. She payed 2 galleons for a black holster that she could strap to her arm and 45 galleons for the wand. It was the most expensive thing Hermione had ever bought in her life. She experimented with it for about a minute, but couldn't figure out how to snap her fingers in order to bring her wand to her hand. Eventually she settled for pulling it out and learning how to snap later. "Thanks for the advice." Hermione said. She was still upset with Professor McGonagall, but her real issue was with Dumbledore. Professor McGonagall was just doing what she was told. She didn't see it as kidnapping. Dumbledore was the one who had told her to do it, though, the one who had said that she was a 'flight risk' and couldn't even say goodbye to her parents in person, the one who had threatened to wipe her parents' memories. Hermione hated Dumbledore, although she knew she couldn't let him figure that out. She had to make him think that she was adjusting perfectly well, for her parents' sake.
"Who is Bellatrix Lestrange?" Hermione asked as she walked with the professor down the street. "Not that I want to emulate her," she said quickly, "but if everyone knows about her and V – sorry, You-Know-Who – I should know too."
"Very well then." Professor McGonagall said as they purchased a cauldron from the smelly potions shop. Hermione's parents had sent her a trunk via regular post, which had somehow ended up in Hogwarts. Professor McGonagall had cast a spell on it to make it lighter, and add a bit of extra space. Any more space would require advanced knowledge and a lot of time and effort, so she would have just enough room to cram in a few extra books.
"Bellatrix Lestrange was a Slytherin student who attended Hogwarts along with You-Know-Who. She was a pure-blood supremacist, although at first she seemed rather shy and not at all aggressive. She was from of one of the original 28 pure-blood families, and a member of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Bellatrix Lestrange was one of the original Deatheaters, then called the Knights of Walpurgis. Since then, Lestrange has done some incredibly evil things, killed countless numbers of people. She is absolutely loyal to You-Know-Who, and is completely insane. She doesn't care who she hurts, and she loves inflicting pain on others. She is the reason that there is only heir of the House of Longbottom is eleven years old."
"You said is…she's not dead?" Asked Hermione.
"She's in wizarding prison; Azkaban. It's guarded by dementors, who are the exact opposite of the Patronus Charm that Professor Dumbledore used to contact your parents. The Patronus Charm is fueled by happy thoughts, but dementors suck all of the happiness and joyous memories out of you. They extinguish light and make you lose the will to live. Dementors can suck out your soul."
"And they use those creatures?" Hermione asked, horrified.
"Some people deserve them." Professor McGonagall said, her face twisting into a strange and terrible expression. Hermione resisted the urge to back away. An angry witch could be scary. "Many, many people died in that war. And those people killed them. Bellatrix Lestrange admitted to her crimes in front of the Wizengamot, and laughed when she was told her sentence. She claims that You-Know-Who shall come back from the dead and reward her. Some people deserve Azkaban." Hermione wasn't sure of that. Losing memories of happiness seemed like it could be even worse than death. "Besides, if we don't feed the dementors, they could try to escape and feed on us." So the wizarding world routinely sacrificed criminals to evil creatures, and it though the Muggle world was backwards.
"Well, it's my wand," Hermione said. "And Mr. Ollivander said that the wand itself isn't dark, just that someone bad could use it. But I'm going to use it to fix the Wizarding World." Hermione said that to give the impression that she was accepting this world on her own, and wanted to bring about positive change in the society that she was planning to live in. But even as she said it, she wondered if that might be a worthy goal. Maybe she could do something to help the world.
After all of her purchases, Hermione had 23 galleons and 4 sickles remaining, since she had purchased some parchment and quills. She looked around Flourish and Blots for good books to spend her remaining money on, and eventually picked out Hogwarts: A History; Analyzing the Wizarding Government from and Outside Perspective; A History of the War Against You-Know-Who; A Basic Explanation of the Mind Arts: Animagi, Occlumency, and Legilimency; Notable Wizarding Achievements of the Past Few Centuries; The Standard Book of Spells: Grade 2; Technomancy: A New Field of Research; and A Guide to Wizarding Culture in Britain and France.
"That's a lot of books." Professor McGonagall commented.
"You can never have enough books." Hermione told her seriously.
"I do believe that I must place my bet on you being in Ravenclaw."
"Ravenclaw's the smart ones, right?" Hermione asked. "And the teachers seriously have a betting pool on who goes to what house?"
"Yes, and of course not."
"I see." Hermione said. "What am I going to do for the next three weeks?"
"You can read your textbooks, and those…seven, is it?" Hermione nodded. "And those seven other books. You can learn Wizarding games, of course, but there won't be anyone to teach you. I suppose you could get an early start on studying."
"But…we're not allowed to cast spells when school is not in session, are we?" Hermione asked cautiously. She couldn't believe that a teacher was telling her to break the rules.
"I believe the proper wording is 'outside of school'." Professor McGonagall said. Hermione paused for a second, thinking. Normally, strict Professor McGonagall would never advocate for bending the rules. Maybe this was some sort of apology. Nothing could ever make up for what Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore did, but perhaps she was trying. Hermione hated both of them, but again, she hated Dumbledore more.
On one hand, it wouldn't do for Hermione to go making more enemies, and it would be useful to have someone she could ask for information. Perhaps Professor McGonagall could be persuaded to convince Dumbledore to let her return home for Christmas.
On the other hand, Professor McGonagall was likely attempting to convince Hermione to trust her simply so that she could report back to Dumbledore. Anything bad she said about the Wizarding World could and would be used against her.
"But that's not fair," Hermione protested. "The others didn't get a chance to try magic early."
"As a matter of fact, many of them did. Most of the pureblood students have been practicing basic magic for years behind the safety of their parents' wards. The Trace cannot reach them there. In addition, some half-blood students have practiced as well. The Trace is on the child's wand, and to a lesser extent on the child. Many wards will prevent the Trace on the child from activating, and the child can use their parents' wands. Even if the magic is detected, parents are trusted to discipline their children as they see fit."
"So everyone will know magic except for me?" Hermione asked, upset.
"No. Most children will only know theory and how to cast a basic Lumos spell. There are plenty of other Muggleborns such as yourself. I would watch out for some of the purebloods, though. They may know some nasty hexes, although they've never tried them before." Hermione nodded. That was useful information. And it looked like she wouldn't be too far behind. She really did feel bad practicing, though. Maybe if she just learned Lumos?
"Thank you, Professor." Hermione said, taking care to smile. This teacher could be useful, and she would stop at nothing to get back home.
That's it for Chapter 3! Please review with any comments, ideas, or constructive criticism you have. I would still love input as to what House the main characters should be in. I have a tentative idea, but I'm not certain and they keep stepping into one House only to end up acting like another. Thank you so much to Darth Void Sage of the Force, Firey Phoenix01, Qtelatino1, Snake D'Morte, animikiikaa, nsaifnabi, and skyjadeprincess for your support!
