CHAPTER 4: DIAGON ALLEY
Harry stepped out of the fireplace into the quaint little joke shop in Diagon Alley, to be confronted by a large hippo in a tutu, that promptly exploded and sent flowers raining down everywhere.
"Ah, Harry, you're the first?" A laughing face punctuated by red hair peeked through the shower of flowers.
"Rats," said the second Weasley twin, who Harry couldn't see. "We were hoping to get Percy with it..."
There was a coughing noise, and a startled exclamation as someone came through the fireplace behind him and roughly collided with him.
"Oy, Harry, move!" Ron yelped as they both tried to regain their balance. "Mum and Ginny are coming next!"
Harry, on his knees in the mess of flowers, crawled through them in the nick of time; Ron was not so lucky. "Ouch, Mum! You're stepping on my fingers!"
"Sorry, Ron," Ginny's voice called.
"What are you doing on the floor...?" Mrs. Weasley tutted. With a flick of her wand, the flowers still falling were redirected to a safer place, although they were still piled ankle high.
With a grunt, Bill joined the situation through the fireplace, bumping into his mother. He tried to slip around her, but nearly got poked in the eye with her wand, and almost lost his balance.
Harry stood up, raising one eyebrow at the comical sight and trying to hold back laughter. Ron was half kneeling, half sitting in front of Mrs. Weasley, who had flowers draped in her hair, and Ginny was balancing on one foot, trying not to step on her brother. Bill's feet were almost hopelessly tangled in Ron's robes, and as Ron struggled to get up, Bill lost his balance and toppled Ginny over with him. Ginny, who had grabbed at the mantle in her panic of being dragged down, had accidentally grabbed a bottle, which slipped from her fingers and spilled all over Ron, Ginny, and Bill, turning them into newts.
The proprietors of the little store were both laughing loudly at the scene; George buckled over holding his sides with laughter and Fred leaning up against the mantle of their fireplace, wiping away tears. "That was so good," he gasped between breaths.
Mrs. Weasley pointed her wand at her children, watching them squirm away from each other for a moment, and turned them back.
There was a tense moment as Mr. Weasley came through the fireplace, but it was avoided by some quick Apparating by Bill and Mrs. Weasley.
"What--?" He asked, glancing down at Ron and Ginny sprawled on the floor.
"Don't ask," Harry replied, helping Ron to his feet while Mr. Weasley helped Ginny.
A small white ferret wandered up to them, gazing at them with pleading eyes.
"Please tell me," murmured Mrs. Weasley to George and Fred, deadly serious, "That this isn't a student. A Hogwarts student?"
"Um, well..." George began.
"You see, Mum," Fred stammered when his brother faltered.
"Turn him back." She snapped, watching the little animal with narrowed eyes.
"Ah, well, Mum-" Fred began slowly.
"Turn him back." Her tone left no space for question.
"Okay..." George said, and pointed his wand at the ferret, who shrank back from it. A burst of light exited his wand, and the ferret exploded into...
"Neville?" Harry asked, grasping the smaller boy's arm and hauling him to his feet.
"They offered me a piece of candy... I should have known..." Neville stuttered, looking around anxiously for his grandmother.
Ron shuffled up to him and said, "My brothers are horrible, aren't they? Don't accept anything from them."
Mrs. Weasley rounded on the twins as soon as she was sure Neville was all right. "I only let you have this shop because some person had the foolish idea to give you money to start it. If I catch you doing this to any other student..."
"Mrs. Weasley?" Harry asked softly, trying to soften it up on the twins. After all, it had been he that ad given them the money to start the shop in the first place... "What time were we supposed to meet Hermione?"
Neville squealed when he noticed his grandmother peering through the shop window, and with a rushed, "See you at school," he dashed outside.
"At eleven." With a quick consultation to her watch, she turned to George and Fred and said, "Don't let me catch you two doing it again," shaking her finger at them. "We've got to go find Hermione, so behave yourselves."
"Thanks, Harry," Fred murmured to Harry as he moved past him. "We owe you two now."
Harry smiled at him, watching out the window for Hermione. An owl fluttered past and landed on the sign reading "Gred and Forge's Joke Shop," as he and Ron exited the shop together, reminding Harry of Hedwig. He had sent her off with the revised letter right after he had showered. He hoped his mentor would be able to understand the dream better than he had.
Harry looked around, searching for Hermione's bushy head of brown hair, or Crookshank's bottle brush tail. Ron ran his hand through his red hair, almost knocking his elbow into Harry.
"I wonder if she's going to be okay," Ron muttered as they walked down Diagon Alley.
"Yeah, so do I," Harry replied. "I wonder if Malfoy will have heard of it by the time we get back to school."
Ron's eyes blazed and Harry knew he had said the wrong thing. Ron had a rather personal vendetta against Malfoy, due only partially to the fact that he was a Slytherin Pureblood. Draco Malfoy continually mocked Ron's family because they were poor "Muggle-loving freaks." He continually taunted Ron with that, and he had taken recently to taunting Hermione as well. Harry was another of Malfoy's favorite taunts, but he didn't normally let it sting. He and Hermione had a hard enough time trying to hold Ron back from attacking Malfoy that if he let himself get angry over words, things could turn out rather ugly.
"Yeah, well I'll show him this year," Ron snarled. "I'll make sure he won't laugh at us ever again."
"Ron, you'd just be goading him on, and you know it. He won't back down because you beat him up, and with Vol--You-Know-Who--rising..." He let the sentence hang, not wanting to say any more.
Ron's eyes went wide as he stopped and turned to face Harry squarely, saying, "I know exactly what Malfoy could call down upon us. You're a living example of that. I look at you--at your scar--and wonder how you could survive Vol--You-Know-Who's curse, and if you could survive it again. But I'm not going to cower beneath Malfoy any longer." He would have continued, but Ginny ran up and cried, "We've found Hermione, now we're going to Flourish and Blott's to get some books."
"Is she all right?" Harry asked, as he and Ron exchanged meaningful glances.
"Yeah, she looks all right, but she's quiet."
However, when they approached the cluster of Weasleys outside of the bookstore, Hermione was speaking rather vigorously to Mrs. Weasley.
She paused when she saw them, and something burst forth in her eyes that reminded Harry suspiciously of Arlé's emeralds. He backed away a few steps almost involuntarily, but Hermione didn't notice this, or if she did, she wasn't reading into it.
"You have no idea how much I've missed both of you..." Hermione began, and her eyes glistened now as she pulled them into an awkward hug. It must have shaken her up a great deal more than she was letting on to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Harry reflected.
"Come along, now," Mr. Weasley said, herding his troupe into the bookstore. "We'll catch up with you three later, in Fred and George's shop."
"Do you have the globe with you?" Hermione asked softly as they moved away from the Weasleys.
"No, it's at the Burrow," Harry replied, and Ron arced an eyebrow in confusion.
"I got a globe from Snuffles for my birthday," Harry quickly explained. "He sent me a letter telling me not to send any more owls unless he sent one first."
"Do you know what it does?" Ron demanded. He was rather anxious about the globe, seeing how trouble always seemed to find them in unknown ways.
"Well, think about it, Ron," Hermione interrupted. "Snuffles wouldn't put Harry or us in danger. He must know what it is, or what it does..."
"I think we should show Dumbledore," Ron suggested.
"He might take it away from us," Hermione responded.
Harry looked at his two friends, and wondered when they had changed opinions. Hermione was always the Let's-stay-on-the-safe-side-of-things type, while Ron was more of the Let's-use-it-and-ask-what-it-is-later type. "Well, let's check it out tonight," Harry said, and led them to the ice-cream shop.
They sat down at a table outside to eat their ice cream, still guessing about what Harry's globe might be.
"If I didn't know any better, Harry," Ron joked, "I'd think you liked Hermione more than me. After all, you told her about the globe and 'forgot' to tell me..."
"Well, you're even now," Harry pointed out, "Because I haven't told Hermione about my dream."
Hermione looked at him for a moment curiously and said, "So are you going to spill it now?"
He quickly related the dream in full detail, surprised at how much he remembered of it. Hermione's eyes widened and Ron's narrowed as he recounted it.
"And you haven't forgotten it?" Ron asked once Harry had finished. At Harry's negative shake of his head, Ron continued, "Then it must not have been a dream..."
"Well, what else could it have been?" Hermione asked quite sensibly.
"I.." Harry began hesitantly, still not sure if he wanted to tell them what he thought of it. "I think it's my connection to Voldemort--" His friends winced, and he corrected himself, "--You-Know-Who getting stronger."
They stared at his forehead, like little first-years when they first realize who he is. Fortunately, Ron and Hermione didn't start babbling incomprehensible things like many of the firsties do.
"Are you sure?" Hermione asked softly, her fingers twitching as if she wanted to reach out and touch the lightning bolt down his forehead.
"No I'm not, but it's the only thing I can think of that would give me this sort of impression."
"But if that's true, why did he just show you his death? Why not do something more powerful?" Ron asked.
"It was enough..." Harry murmured, closing his eyes at the combination of memory and scar-pain that sprouted yet again.
Hermione added, "What stronger thing could he do to bring Harry down than show him exactly how the victims died?"
"He may not know he has this power over me... So let's keep it that way. Tell no one."
Hermione bit into her cone and said, "But didn't you already tell Dumbledore?"
"Yes, but he should know about this," Harry replied, finishing off his cone.
"Where are we going now?" asked Ron.
"We should go to Flourish and Blott's, I need to buy a few new books," said Harry, standing up and rubbing his scar a little self-consciously.
"So do I," Hermione said, and they walked off, Ron still eating his cone.
Harry stepped out of the fireplace into the quaint little joke shop in Diagon Alley, to be confronted by a large hippo in a tutu, that promptly exploded and sent flowers raining down everywhere.
"Ah, Harry, you're the first?" A laughing face punctuated by red hair peeked through the shower of flowers.
"Rats," said the second Weasley twin, who Harry couldn't see. "We were hoping to get Percy with it..."
There was a coughing noise, and a startled exclamation as someone came through the fireplace behind him and roughly collided with him.
"Oy, Harry, move!" Ron yelped as they both tried to regain their balance. "Mum and Ginny are coming next!"
Harry, on his knees in the mess of flowers, crawled through them in the nick of time; Ron was not so lucky. "Ouch, Mum! You're stepping on my fingers!"
"Sorry, Ron," Ginny's voice called.
"What are you doing on the floor...?" Mrs. Weasley tutted. With a flick of her wand, the flowers still falling were redirected to a safer place, although they were still piled ankle high.
With a grunt, Bill joined the situation through the fireplace, bumping into his mother. He tried to slip around her, but nearly got poked in the eye with her wand, and almost lost his balance.
Harry stood up, raising one eyebrow at the comical sight and trying to hold back laughter. Ron was half kneeling, half sitting in front of Mrs. Weasley, who had flowers draped in her hair, and Ginny was balancing on one foot, trying not to step on her brother. Bill's feet were almost hopelessly tangled in Ron's robes, and as Ron struggled to get up, Bill lost his balance and toppled Ginny over with him. Ginny, who had grabbed at the mantle in her panic of being dragged down, had accidentally grabbed a bottle, which slipped from her fingers and spilled all over Ron, Ginny, and Bill, turning them into newts.
The proprietors of the little store were both laughing loudly at the scene; George buckled over holding his sides with laughter and Fred leaning up against the mantle of their fireplace, wiping away tears. "That was so good," he gasped between breaths.
Mrs. Weasley pointed her wand at her children, watching them squirm away from each other for a moment, and turned them back.
There was a tense moment as Mr. Weasley came through the fireplace, but it was avoided by some quick Apparating by Bill and Mrs. Weasley.
"What--?" He asked, glancing down at Ron and Ginny sprawled on the floor.
"Don't ask," Harry replied, helping Ron to his feet while Mr. Weasley helped Ginny.
A small white ferret wandered up to them, gazing at them with pleading eyes.
"Please tell me," murmured Mrs. Weasley to George and Fred, deadly serious, "That this isn't a student. A Hogwarts student?"
"Um, well..." George began.
"You see, Mum," Fred stammered when his brother faltered.
"Turn him back." She snapped, watching the little animal with narrowed eyes.
"Ah, well, Mum-" Fred began slowly.
"Turn him back." Her tone left no space for question.
"Okay..." George said, and pointed his wand at the ferret, who shrank back from it. A burst of light exited his wand, and the ferret exploded into...
"Neville?" Harry asked, grasping the smaller boy's arm and hauling him to his feet.
"They offered me a piece of candy... I should have known..." Neville stuttered, looking around anxiously for his grandmother.
Ron shuffled up to him and said, "My brothers are horrible, aren't they? Don't accept anything from them."
Mrs. Weasley rounded on the twins as soon as she was sure Neville was all right. "I only let you have this shop because some person had the foolish idea to give you money to start it. If I catch you doing this to any other student..."
"Mrs. Weasley?" Harry asked softly, trying to soften it up on the twins. After all, it had been he that ad given them the money to start the shop in the first place... "What time were we supposed to meet Hermione?"
Neville squealed when he noticed his grandmother peering through the shop window, and with a rushed, "See you at school," he dashed outside.
"At eleven." With a quick consultation to her watch, she turned to George and Fred and said, "Don't let me catch you two doing it again," shaking her finger at them. "We've got to go find Hermione, so behave yourselves."
"Thanks, Harry," Fred murmured to Harry as he moved past him. "We owe you two now."
Harry smiled at him, watching out the window for Hermione. An owl fluttered past and landed on the sign reading "Gred and Forge's Joke Shop," as he and Ron exited the shop together, reminding Harry of Hedwig. He had sent her off with the revised letter right after he had showered. He hoped his mentor would be able to understand the dream better than he had.
Harry looked around, searching for Hermione's bushy head of brown hair, or Crookshank's bottle brush tail. Ron ran his hand through his red hair, almost knocking his elbow into Harry.
"I wonder if she's going to be okay," Ron muttered as they walked down Diagon Alley.
"Yeah, so do I," Harry replied. "I wonder if Malfoy will have heard of it by the time we get back to school."
Ron's eyes blazed and Harry knew he had said the wrong thing. Ron had a rather personal vendetta against Malfoy, due only partially to the fact that he was a Slytherin Pureblood. Draco Malfoy continually mocked Ron's family because they were poor "Muggle-loving freaks." He continually taunted Ron with that, and he had taken recently to taunting Hermione as well. Harry was another of Malfoy's favorite taunts, but he didn't normally let it sting. He and Hermione had a hard enough time trying to hold Ron back from attacking Malfoy that if he let himself get angry over words, things could turn out rather ugly.
"Yeah, well I'll show him this year," Ron snarled. "I'll make sure he won't laugh at us ever again."
"Ron, you'd just be goading him on, and you know it. He won't back down because you beat him up, and with Vol--You-Know-Who--rising..." He let the sentence hang, not wanting to say any more.
Ron's eyes went wide as he stopped and turned to face Harry squarely, saying, "I know exactly what Malfoy could call down upon us. You're a living example of that. I look at you--at your scar--and wonder how you could survive Vol--You-Know-Who's curse, and if you could survive it again. But I'm not going to cower beneath Malfoy any longer." He would have continued, but Ginny ran up and cried, "We've found Hermione, now we're going to Flourish and Blott's to get some books."
"Is she all right?" Harry asked, as he and Ron exchanged meaningful glances.
"Yeah, she looks all right, but she's quiet."
However, when they approached the cluster of Weasleys outside of the bookstore, Hermione was speaking rather vigorously to Mrs. Weasley.
She paused when she saw them, and something burst forth in her eyes that reminded Harry suspiciously of Arlé's emeralds. He backed away a few steps almost involuntarily, but Hermione didn't notice this, or if she did, she wasn't reading into it.
"You have no idea how much I've missed both of you..." Hermione began, and her eyes glistened now as she pulled them into an awkward hug. It must have shaken her up a great deal more than she was letting on to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Harry reflected.
"Come along, now," Mr. Weasley said, herding his troupe into the bookstore. "We'll catch up with you three later, in Fred and George's shop."
"Do you have the globe with you?" Hermione asked softly as they moved away from the Weasleys.
"No, it's at the Burrow," Harry replied, and Ron arced an eyebrow in confusion.
"I got a globe from Snuffles for my birthday," Harry quickly explained. "He sent me a letter telling me not to send any more owls unless he sent one first."
"Do you know what it does?" Ron demanded. He was rather anxious about the globe, seeing how trouble always seemed to find them in unknown ways.
"Well, think about it, Ron," Hermione interrupted. "Snuffles wouldn't put Harry or us in danger. He must know what it is, or what it does..."
"I think we should show Dumbledore," Ron suggested.
"He might take it away from us," Hermione responded.
Harry looked at his two friends, and wondered when they had changed opinions. Hermione was always the Let's-stay-on-the-safe-side-of-things type, while Ron was more of the Let's-use-it-and-ask-what-it-is-later type. "Well, let's check it out tonight," Harry said, and led them to the ice-cream shop.
They sat down at a table outside to eat their ice cream, still guessing about what Harry's globe might be.
"If I didn't know any better, Harry," Ron joked, "I'd think you liked Hermione more than me. After all, you told her about the globe and 'forgot' to tell me..."
"Well, you're even now," Harry pointed out, "Because I haven't told Hermione about my dream."
Hermione looked at him for a moment curiously and said, "So are you going to spill it now?"
He quickly related the dream in full detail, surprised at how much he remembered of it. Hermione's eyes widened and Ron's narrowed as he recounted it.
"And you haven't forgotten it?" Ron asked once Harry had finished. At Harry's negative shake of his head, Ron continued, "Then it must not have been a dream..."
"Well, what else could it have been?" Hermione asked quite sensibly.
"I.." Harry began hesitantly, still not sure if he wanted to tell them what he thought of it. "I think it's my connection to Voldemort--" His friends winced, and he corrected himself, "--You-Know-Who getting stronger."
They stared at his forehead, like little first-years when they first realize who he is. Fortunately, Ron and Hermione didn't start babbling incomprehensible things like many of the firsties do.
"Are you sure?" Hermione asked softly, her fingers twitching as if she wanted to reach out and touch the lightning bolt down his forehead.
"No I'm not, but it's the only thing I can think of that would give me this sort of impression."
"But if that's true, why did he just show you his death? Why not do something more powerful?" Ron asked.
"It was enough..." Harry murmured, closing his eyes at the combination of memory and scar-pain that sprouted yet again.
Hermione added, "What stronger thing could he do to bring Harry down than show him exactly how the victims died?"
"He may not know he has this power over me... So let's keep it that way. Tell no one."
Hermione bit into her cone and said, "But didn't you already tell Dumbledore?"
"Yes, but he should know about this," Harry replied, finishing off his cone.
"Where are we going now?" asked Ron.
"We should go to Flourish and Blott's, I need to buy a few new books," said Harry, standing up and rubbing his scar a little self-consciously.
"So do I," Hermione said, and they walked off, Ron still eating his cone.