Crap. He was going to have to hurry now to find everything else on his list — not just school supplies, but things like toiletries that he would need for boarding, too — and still have time to find the professor and deal with the money, and still get back to Saint James's to meet Aunt Petunia when he'd agreed. He dug his list out of his pocket to have one more look at it, committing to memory all of the things that he still needed to get (and adding a cool wand holster to the list), then dove into the crowd like a man on a mission, heading for the nearest stationary shop.
Almost two hours later — his money-bag much lighter, but his enormous carpet bag much heavier — he had everything on his list except for the books, and he was sort of in a hurry, because he had given himself until three-thirty. Then he had to go find the Hogwarts group and get his bloody bank key, and go change money again. He was really hoping this bookshop Zoe had recommended would have everything he needed and would be willing to sell it to him for seven galleons and change, because even after dickering over literally everything that was all he had left. (He probably should have gotten his wand right after talking to Madam Malkin before going back to clothes shopping, saved clothes for last instead. He could've gotten by with a robe or two less...)
The nameless shop was almost as dark and dusty as Ollivander's, but unlike the wandmaker the bookseller was at the counter when Harry walked in, and the magic around the shop was much less obvious (though it felt more dangerous, somehow). He was also a little younger — old and crotchety rather than ancient and doddering. His expression, seeing Harry, was uncannily like that of the goblin bank-teller this morning.
"Good afternoon, Mister...?"
"Potter. Harry Potter," he answered without thinking, and immediately winced. He'd been trying not to tell people that, damn it.
Fortunately, the old man didn't even entirely seem to believe him. An eyebrow ticked upward a fraction. "Of course it is. I suppose you'd like to sign the book?"
Sign the book? "Er...Zoë, at Mister Ollivander's, told me I should ask you about an occlumency primer? And I have a list of things I need for school, I was hoping you might have some or all of them used, because I'm kind of on a budget and I need to go find the Hogwarts Muggleborn Shopping Trip group in about forty minutes."
The eyebrow rose a few millimetres more, and the man held out a hand, flicking his fingers like give it here, then — presumably for the list. While Harry dug it out of his pocket, the man heaved a heavy, leather-bound tome up from behind the counter, flipping it to the first page. "Read this."
"This" was a contract of sorts, Harry thought, written in language that was positively Shakespearean, to the effect that by signing he agreed to be bound not to reveal anything illegal he might witness here, or testify against the proprietor of the shop or anyone he met here about anything he might find out about them through the Shop, or generally betray Odysseus or the Shop to anyone who might wish harm to him or it.
"What happens if I sign, and then break my word?" he asked, not entirely comfortable with the idea. Not the idea of joining some sort of illegal bookshop club thing (obviously this was intended to make sure no one would get caught, and if he didn't get caught doing something illegal it was fine), but signing what was obviously a magical contract — cold, hard magic practically radiated from the thing — without knowing what it might do to him, in the worst case scenario.
"You can't," the man said gruffly, scribbling on Harry's list. "That's the point. Blood magic, very powerful. Try to speak out of turn or even write something incriminating, your body won't let you. Can't be compelled or coerced when the contract's in effect, closest thing you'll find to a fool-proof insurance policy. We do ask for a donation to join the membership rolls — whatever you can afford."
"Er...how much is all that going to cost? Approximately. Because I've only got about seven and a half galleons left, so..."
The wizard smirked. "About seven and a half galleons, I reckon. Prices are always negotiable. Give us a couple of clips, sign the book, and we can talk."
...Harry could do a couple of clips. He still had all eight of the ones he'd been given this morning, because no one else had charged him so little for anything all day. All eight of them had made their way all the way to the bottom of his money bag, of course, but after a few seconds he managed to retrieve two of them. The shopkeeper handed him a sharp-looking black quill-pen and flipped to the current page for Harry to add his name to the rust-coloured list. Signed in blood?
Well, he had said it was blood magic, Harry supposed. "How do I...?" he asked awkwardly. Did he have to cut his hand and dip the quill in blood, or...? He'd never written with a bloody feather before... (Heh, literally...)
"Just make your mark. Doesn't even have to be your own name. The quill will do the rest."
Harry did put down his own name, mostly because he didn't see why he shouldn't at this point, shivering as the magic of the quill cut into the back of his hand for 'ink' and the magic of the contract took root in his veins, cold and strong and... Well, he knew it was there to physically stop him from breaking his word, so it was sort of like being bound, and he'd generally expect that to be a bad thing, like all the wands locked up in their boxes at Ollivander's, but he didn't really have any intention to break his word, and the magic flowing through him, spreading through every inch of his body with every beat of his heart, actually felt good. Like...really good.
Good enough that his breath caught in his throat a little, taken by surprise.
Odysseus laughed at him, just sort of staring at the book in a daze. "Call yourself a Potter all you like, but blood will out, kid. So, here's the deal. I've got about half of this shite in stock, and substitutes for the rest. Well, except this Trimble bloke — never heard of him, but the Hogwarts Defence curriculum is generally a ton and a half of dragon dung, so I doubt it's any good. I can give you those for seven and four, total. Not a lot of folks down this way looking for introductory charms texts, if you catch my drift. On the other hand, occlumency primers are a bit harder to come by, and the school library will have at least a few copies of all your course books. Irma's a canny old gal, she won't let them out, but you can do your homework there most of the time. Professors might get a bit snippy with you over not having things at the start of lessons, but assuming you really are Harry Potter, get your finances sorted and you can owl order them from Flourish and Blotts or du Lac's, get them within a week or two."
Harry still didn't have an owl, but he knew the school did, and he'd stumbled into a little shop earlier where muggleborns could send normal letters — they had a storefront, like the Leaky Cauldron — with their actual letter and a couple of Morgens or pounds enclosed, and the shop would forward the enclosed letter to anyone by owl. Return post worked the same way, though the original sender on the muggle side had to include a return address for the forwarding service, since most mages were used to just putting down the name of the recipient and the name of the location they were at, like "Hogwarts" or "DLE Headquarters, MoM" or "MOPS" (Muggle-Owl Post Services), and the recipient on the muggle side was charged for return postage, too. People with personal owls didn't understand the concept, apparently. Aunt Petunia, he was positive, was going to be delighted to know that she could send a letter of complaint to anyone in Magical Britain if she knew where they worked, up to and including the Minister for Magic himself. She didn't even need to know his name, just his title.
"Hell, send me an owl and I'll sort it out. I'll be wanting a more substantial membership donation, though — House of Potter can stand to afford a lot more than half a knut, that's for damn sure."
Oh. Right. Harry sort of felt like an idiot for not realising that himself. He wouldn't really be able to read through the books over the next month, and he really would like to, but— Wait. "Is there a public library for wizards? Or, I don't know, some way I could get back here on my own? I live with my aunt and uncle, you see. They're muggles, and Aunt Petunia doesn't want to have to keep driving me up here, so..." He didn't even have to ask to know that. It hadn't been outright stated that Harry would have to get everything on this trip, but it had been heavily implied.
The man just sort of blinked at him for a long moment before shaking himself out of his reverie. "No, we don't have a public library. Where do you think you are, Miskatonic? First thing you're going to need to know about Britain, kid: it's run by a bunch of backward fuckwits who think they're safer not knowing what all might go bump in the night. Why do you think you have to sign a secrecy pact to shop for books?" Well, he'd kind of thought maybe the bookshop sold more than books, like drugs or something, but as far as he was concerned that was none of his business. "There's a bus, though, that can bring you here. Diagon'd be better to stop at, though — don't want a reputation for hanging out down here with the dark and degenerate, you know. Called the Knight Bus. Make sure there's no muggles around and you're not under anti-scrying wards, and stand at the edge of a road with your wand lit. Hold it up like hailing a cabbie. Usually doesn't take more'n a minute or two for them to home in on you. Can't say what their rates are. Probably less than a galleon." He shrugged.
Harry should probably try to keep a galleon, then, just in case he couldn't get the money figured out today and had to wait for the Headmaster to send his bank key to him in the mail, or whatever. Or, worst case, he guessed, in case he needed to go to Hogwarts and demand his key in person. Then he'd have to talk someone into bringing him back down here by magic, that was true, but Harry could be very convincing when necessary. "In that case, I have about six and a half galleons to spend."
"Heh. If you're serious about teaching yourself occlumency, I do have a primer I'll give you for that. Bit of a shite subject to try learning out of a book, but I suppose you're not like to find anyone who'd teach you at your age. Not on the up-and-up, and legilimency's one of those things, don't want some skeezy jackass doing who the fuck knows what in your mind."
"Probably also no one who'd teach me for six galleons."
"That too. If you really are Harry Potter, could just waltz up to the Old Goat and ask him to teach you, just in case the very-nearly-late Dark Lord Whatshisface shows up again. Dumbledore, that is. Or that Snape boy who turned out to be a spy — didn't put it together until she was in all the papers in black and white, but he used to turn up here with the Evans girl, back when she called herself Asphodel. Might be inclined to do her son a favour."
"I think I've exhausted my favours from him grilling him on general shite I needed to know before starting school," Harry informed the old wizard, whom he really couldn't help but like. He might be gruff and clearly doubt that Harry was who he said he was, but he was obviously trying to be helpful anyway. The information about the bus alone was worth six and a half galleons, in his opinion. "I'll take the primer, then, and like you said, if I need to I'll get books from the school library, or convince people to share with me. But hopefully I'll be back in a few days with more money. What are your hours?"
That (perfectly reasonable) question earned him another odd look. "Oh, we're always open for business, but this isn't the sort of neighbourhood for little kids to wander around after dark. Not particularly the sort of neighbourhood for a kid like you to be exploring alone in broad daylight, to be honest, even if there are still a few old-timers around who remember a little girl who looked an awful lot like you dismembering a viv-alchemist who tried to kidnap her when she was your age. Alley sees more auror patrols than it did back then, but still." Harry's confusion must've shown on his face, because the wizard added, "Little Bella Black, grew up to be the most dangerous witch in Britain. Probably still holds the title, even after ten years on the Rock — have to have a soul for the dementors to eat it, see, and rumour has it she sold hers."
Harry understood approximately none of that. "Er...right. I'll be careful, then? I do have to go, though. I still have to find the Hogwarts people and get to the bank, and then back out to muggle London by four-fifteen," he explained, dumping what was left of his gold on the counter, then taking back one whole galleon and one clip. (Dudley would think magic money was wicked cool, even if it was only worth a quarter of a penny, or thereabouts.)
Odysseus, in exchange, plucked a slim book bound in blue silk from a shelf in the next room, and slid it across the counter, sweeping the coins away without counting them. "Don't let any magical authorities see you with that," he warned Harry. "It's restricted to mages seventeen and older. Best case they'll confiscate it and fine you. Worst is a month out on the Rock with the soul-suckers."
"Er...right. Thanks! One last thing, what time is it?"
The man checked his watch. "Three thirty-eight."
"Shite. Gotta run!" He took enough time to shove the book into one of his ridiculously deep pockets (it barely fit), but then he suited action to words — or as best he could, at least, with his very large carpet-bag slung across his back. The old man's laughter followed him out into the street.
The Hogwarts group were, as luck would have it, at Ollivander's, a fact which Harry easily ascertained by asking several of the shopkeepers he'd met earlier in the day whether they'd seen a bunch of muggleborns and their parents wandering around anywhere. He didn't even have to try to get magic to tell him.
It was much more difficult to get his key from the obstinate witch in charge of them, since she was far more interested in yelling at him for preemptively ditching them, as was the bushy-haired girl Harry had locked eyes with on his way into the pub this morning.
"Ah!" Mister Ollivander said, as Harry, slightly out of breath, dragged the door of his (now very crowded) shop open again. "Mister Potter! Back so soon?"
"Er, yeah?" he panted, as the eight other people in the room — Zoë, three muggle adults, three children (two of the adults were with one child; one was on his own, like Harry), and Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall — turned to stare at him as well.
The professor's lips narrowed almost immediately into a stern frown, but before she could say anything the girl trying wands let out a shocked, furious, "You!" Red sparks shot out of the wand she was holding — unintentionally, Harry was sure. They barely made it half-way to him before they sputtered out, but the room still erupted in various objections — "Hermione!" from the girl's mother; "Oh, dear me!" from the other mother; a yelp from the boy who didn't have a parent with him; and "Most certainly not, Miss Granger," from Ollivander, who gingerly plucked the wand out of her hand.
She didn't even seem to notice. "You! You insufferable, inconsiderate jerk! You're Harry Potter!? We waited almost half an hour for you!"
Harry blinked at her unexpected fury, then, quite unable to resist poking her a bit more, grinned. "Really? Why?"
She let out an inarticulate little shriek. "We thought you were late! We thought there was traffic! But you weren't! And there wasn't! I saw you!" ("I know you did," Harry inserted, very amused.) "You just sneaked right by and let us all wait! We've been rushing all day because of you! I barely got to look at any books at all!"
"If it makes you feel any better, I didn't either. Ran out of both time and money. Speaking of, Professor McGonagall, right?" he said, changing the subject and ignoring the girl's continued furious tirade. "Professor Snape said that the Headmaster would send my key with you?"
"Ooh, you have some nerve, lad!" she growled, stalking past him out the door, and grabbing his arm to drag him with her as she did. "Where have you been all day?!"
"Shopping?" he suggested innocently.
"Alone?!"
"Well, yes, obviously." Most of the shopkeepers and stall owners had been very helpful, directing him to friends of theirs who had the next thing on his list, but he pretty clearly wasn't dragging someone around with him.
"Are you out of your mind, boy? What on earth were you thinking?!"
"Er...mostly that it would be boring to stand around while a bunch of other kids got their wands and robes and things, and if you didn't bring my key and I had to get everything with the three-hundred quid Aunt Petunia gave me — which I very nearly did, I was about thirty short, so I'm going to have to owl-order some textbooks or come up here again — I wouldn't have time to find anything decent in my budget, if you even went to any second-hand shops at all. Did you?"
"Did we what? Go to second-hand shops? No, of course not!" she said, bold and condescending, as if only riff-raff stepped foot inside stores for poor people. (Aunt Petunia shared this view, which was half the reason Harry was allowed to buy his own clothes. She didn't want people to see her coming out of a place like that.) "And neither would you have had to if you'd simply joined us as you were meant to! If I could take points before you started school..."
"Well, I sort of assumed that. I meant, did you bring my key? Because I need to run back to the bank and get money to pay back my aunt if you did."
"Of course I did, but we haven't time to go back to Gringotts' now, I'm afraid your aunt will just have to bring you back some other day."
Harry blinked up at her, stunned. "What? It can't be later than three forty-five. I have plenty of time to get back to the bank. I'm not asking you to come with me, just to give me my bloody key!"
"You really think I'm going to let you wander off alone, again? Besides, I sincerely doubt the goblins will deign to deal with an eleven-year-old human, anyway."
"A, I've been on my own all day and I'm fine, and B, how do you think I got galleons to buy all of my things in the first place?" He wasn't going to try to explain the whole issue of mistaken identity because he didn't think it mattered, and he couldn't quite remember the word, just that it meant he was a member of a clan who were ancestral enemies of Gringotts' but with whom they'd reached a truce or something, which meant they held some respect for him, just by default. Even though he wasn't actually from the family they thought he was, it had been enough to get a foot in the door, so. (The few things Harry had heard here and there about the House of Black all day were generally pretty impressive — kind of made him wish he really were one of them. But even if his father was really that Sirius bloke, Harry didn't think it counted as being part of his family, since he'd never even met him.) "Give me my key!"
"I will do no such thing! You're lucky you weren't kidnapped or worse, wandering around Knockturn looking for second-hand shops!"
"Even if that were true," Harry snapped back, deliberately making it clear he didn't think it was, "Gringotts' isn't in Knockturn Alley, is it! It is my key, isn't it? So hand it over!"
"No! You are acting like a spoilt, petulant brat! I will give it to your aunt when she comes to pick you up," the witch said firmly. Which was going to be a problem, because Aunt Petunia had no intention of driving around looking for an invisible magic pub.
"No, you won't, because she's not coming to pick me up, I'm meeting her at Saint James's Square at half-past four, and I do not have time for your nonsense!"
The witch glared down her nose at him. "In that case, I will accompany you to the Square, because I'd like to have a word with this aunt of yours about your abominable behaviour today!"
"I'm sure she'll want to have a word with you too, about why I don't have three-hundred pounds to pay her back, and if you don't give me my key right bloody now, I swear to God, I will march right over there to that auror—" He pointed at one of the red-robed magic police who was very obviously patrolling the alley, maintaining the peace. "—and ask her whether the polite young man she's seen off and on all day, buying his things and bothering no one, or the adult he claims has stolen the key to his bank vault — and who does, by her own admission, have said key on her person, yet refuses to return it — is behaving more abominably, shall I?"
Apparently that was not a tactic she expected him to employ, as she just sort of gaped at him for several long seconds. Long enough that Harry scoffed at her, turned on his heel, and started making for the authority figure, because as Uncle Vernon had taught him while buying Aunt Petunia's car two summers ago (inadvertently — Harry had been standing next to Dudley, the intended recipient of his advice), the trick in negotiations was never to be afraid to walk away. It was a bit of advice which had served Harry well all day, and the same logic clearly applied to this situation too. If the witch thought she was going to lose everything (in this case, a good deal of face and Harry's key), she would cave to his demands in order to keep something (the embarrassment of being caught in a scene to a minimum).
Sure enough, he only got a few steps away before the professor called, "Wait!" fishing the key out of her own coin purse.
Harry stalked back and snatched it out of her fingers, glaring up at her. "Thank you!"
He turned and stalked away again, ignoring the resumption of her bleating protests against his going off alone. The action probably lost something to the fact that he was hauling around a bag almost half as big as he was, but he really didn't care. He needed to be back outside the pub by four-twenty. Preferably a little earlier, since it would presumably take slightly longer to walk back to the square with all of his newly acquired stuff. And it wasn't as though she would leave the other children to come after him. Yes, they did have adults with them, but they were muggle adults, and therefore no more capable of defending themselves from wizards than Harry, who hadn't learned a single spell yet.
Actually, probably much less capable of defending themselves than Harry. Most people didn't like hurting other people. Especially adults. Harry, on the other hand, wasn't afraid to get in a fight with Ripper, much less some random mage he could almost guarantee was not expecting a small child to throw themselves on them like a tiny berserker.
Plus, if that was an option — leaving the rest of the group, he meant — surely she wouldn't have so strongly protested against Harry going back to the bank if she could've just come with him. Er...probably. He guessed she might just be a stubborn, entitled old lady who didn't like having her authority questioned. But either way, he didn't really need her, he just needed the bloody key.
The clock was already striking four when he reached the marble stairs again. The same teller he'd spoken to earlier was still working. She was examining a bunch of rubies or garnets or something with one of those little tiny eye-sized magnifying things — a loupe? — but Harry went over to stand in front of her again anyway, because there was a bit of a line, and he wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't just there looking too busy and important to deal with the customers.
She noticed him immediately, giving him a sharp-toothed grin, more like baring her teeth at him, really. "My shift dealing with you people is over, child. Go wait in line with the other humans."
He gave her an equally (un-)pleasant smile. "Or — and just consider the option for a second — you could take a hundred galleons out of my account and change sixty-two of them to muggle pounds for me because — and hear me out, here — I could alternatively waste more of your time than it would actually take you to do that trying to convince you that you should."
She laughed, beckoning him closer. "Very good, but if you truly were a child of our respected enemies, you would have insulted me in—" presumably the name of the goblin language "—too. Why would an account-holder with a hundred galleons to his name have needed to convert sixty galleons worth of muggle pounds six hours ago?"
Harry pouted up at her. "Because I didn't have my key. See, it's sort of a long story, and I'm in a hurry — like, I need to be out of here in five minutes, hurry — but the short version is I've been raised by muggles, and Albus Dumbledore — the Headmaster of Hogwarts?"
"I am familiar with the man," the goblin said drily, probably because he was also the head of their parliament thing. Well, the wizards' — Harry hadn't asked whether the goblins had any lords in the Wizengamot, but he was guessing not.
"Yeah, well, he's apparently my guardian, for reasons that have not been clearly explained, but he had my key, and he sent it to me with Professor McGonagall so I could get my school things, but I didn't want to go shopping with her because shopping with other people is terrible, so I used the emergency money my muggle aunt gave me in case the wizards continued to be flakes, but now I have to go meet my aunt, so I went and got my key from the professor." He held it up for her to see. "Honestly, I don't know how much money is in the account, but Professor Snape said something snide about Lord Potter the other day and people giving me money because my mother died stopping the Dark Lord, so I'm guessing it's more than a hundred galleons."
The goblin lady took the key, leaning forward to stare at him, examined the number stamped on the key, and then stared at him a bit more. "You're Harry Potter."
"Er. Yes?" Had he forgotten to introduce himself earlier? ...Yes, he realised, he might have done, what with getting caught up in the weirdness of knowing a word he had no reason to know. He had had to sign his name, but he'd been trying to do it sideways with a heavy, unfamiliar fountain-pen, holding the thick magical paper against the side of the counter because he was too short to reach the desktop, so he supposed it might not have been very legible. "What's your name?"
She gave him a word that conjured a mental association of an explosion, a sudden flash of light in the complete darkness of a cave, deep underground. "Firebloom, in English," she added absently, still staring at him.
"That is not nearly a cool enough translation," he informed her, just rolling with the knowing words thing this time. "It sounds like a flower or something, not an explosion. But please, Firebloom? My aunt's going to be really angry with me if I'm late meeting her..."
This was one of those occasions where Harry would prefer not to break the rules, because taking a few extra minutes to get back to the square really wasn't worth missing dinner for three days. Especially if he was trying to do something Aunt Petunia would definitely want him to do, like get money to pay her back. (That was still no excuse for being late, since he should've left the bookshop earlier, but it did make the prospect of being punished for being late more annoying.) If she wouldn't help him, and quickly, he was going to have to ask for the key back and leave, and come back again some other day with that bus. Which, yes, obviously he was going to come back again anyway, but the optimal solution — the one which would provoke the least snide remarks about Harry spending the Dursleys' money — was to get the pounds back now.
The goblin gave him a very put-upon sigh, but scribbled something on a form, then dipped his key into an ink-bottle and pressed the tip of it against the paper, the ink sucked off to form — as Harry saw when she passed it to him — a complex, abstract design in a large box on the right-hand side of the page. This presumably identified his vault somehow, though the number from the key was written in beneath it as well. It authorised the withdrawal of a hundred galleons to be paid out in the form of three-hundred pounds and thirty-seven galleons, sixteen sickles, four knuts, with one galleon and twenty-five knuts retained as an exchange fee, just like this morning, and one galleon as a withdrawal fee. Harry wasn't sure whether that was a flat one galleon or one per cent of the money he was withdrawing, but he didn't really care — he had to go — so he just scribbled his name on the line with the 'X' and handed it back.
This time his copy of the receipt was stamped with a very official-looking stamp which said something Harry couldn't read in Gobbledygook and (he suspected) initialled by Firebloom — her real initials, obviously, not an English "F". She passed it to him along with his small pile of currency.
"Thank you, Firebloom," he said, giving her a much more genuine smile, and making what he thought was a pretty good attempt at saying her name? as he shoved the money into his bag.
Maybe not. She did roll her eyes at him. But she also gave him a less teeth-baring smile. "May you know beauty and prosperity in this time of peace between our clans."
...Yeah, Harry wasn't going to try to repeat that. Way too many weird clicky sounds. Instead he gave her a cheeky smirk. "Back atcha." Then, his eyes falling on the large clock behind the goblin, he added with a small yelp, "Sorry, I've got to go!"
He made it back to the yard behind the pub at four-eighteen — a.k.a., with just enough time to spare to yank off the shimmery, very eye-catching outer robe and shove it into his bag. The under-shirt and trousers looked a little weird, but like he might be taking some sort of ninja martial arts class, not like wizard-weird.
He didn't see the professor, which was just too bad for her, he wasn't planning on waiting around for her. If she wanted to talk to Aunt Petunia she could send a bloody letter — it wasn't, after all, as though the school didn't have their address. And he was glad he didn't, since he managed to reach Aunt Petunia and throw himself into the back seat of her car (with his enormous bag) just as a nearby clock started chiming the half-hour.
"Harry?"
"Yes, Aunt Petunia?" he panted.
"What the hell is that on your arm?"
...Shite. The wand-holster felt so natural there, he'd completely forgotten about it. "Er...weird fashion statement? I did get my key, hang on a second, I've got your money here," he added, changing the subject quickly, digging through the bag of wizarding money for the proper banknotes, and also swiftly untying the holster and dropping it in, out of sight and hopefully out of mind. "And if you get a letter from that Professor McGonagall about me being rude to her, it was only because she was rude first, and didn't want to give me my key because I sort of ditched the group because six hours is not enough time to get a whole new wardrobe and everything else on that list, especially not if I had to wait around for three other kids to get fitted and stuff too. No one got hurt, so it's fine, right?"
He quickly counted the notes to make sure he'd gotten them all before folding them over and handing them up to the front seat. Aunt Petunia tucked them into her handbag without a word.
"And it's not my fault they decided to wait for me when the letter said they wouldn't, and even if it were half an hour is less time than I saved them by not going with them and making them wait while I got fitted for things." Honestly, with how long it had taken to find his wand he was pretty sure they would've had to leave him there and go on without him anyway, if they'd wanted to get done in any reasonable amount of time, even if they weren't going to little hole-in-the-wall shops hunting for bargains and haggling over every single thing.
He forced himself to stop talking, holding his breath as he waited for her response.
It was a sneer. "Oh, poor wizards, being slightly inconvenienced by their inability to follow through on their plans to leave promptly, regardless of whether you arrived on time. They've certainly inconvenienced me enough over the years. Serves the freakish flakes right, as far as I'm concerned. I hope she does write to me, I have a piece of my mind to give her over this whole bank-key business, anyway. I still think they should've mailed it to you with one of those dozens of letters, or better yet told us years ago you've a small bloody fortune hidden away under London. I can't believe they've been making us pay for your upkeep out of pocket all these years!" Harry let out the breath he was holding. Aunt Petunia ranting about the inconvenience of being stuck with Harry without so much as a by-your-leave was like Uncle Vernon ranting about people at work — safe, familiar ground. (She wasn't actually angry at Harry, she was angry at Dumbledore, and as far as Harry was concerned that was fine.) She huffed. "You got all your things? I'm not going to be asked to drive you up here again because you've forgotten magic socks, or some equally silly thing?"
"Well, magic socks seemed like a waste of money, but no. Er. No, I didn't get everything — I ran out of time and money before I got to textbooks. But," he added quickly, as her eyes narrowed at him in the mirror, "I got everything else, and also, no, I won't ask you to drive me up here again. I found out about public transportation, so I can come back for that stuff on my own, and I found out how you can write a letter to someone in their world, even if they don't have their own post forwarding set up. The only thing is, if you want them to send normal letters back you have to pay for the return postage, too."
"You have my attention," she said, shifting the car into gear, the danger of shrieking outrage apparently past.
Harry grinned. He'd just known she was going to like that.