Dear Vanessa,

Wow, I really wish you were here. I bet you could get lots of poems out of London! Today we went looking for school supplies for Jessi. The wizarding world sure is weird...

Love,

Mallory

"Look at these!" I pressed my face up against the glass to look at the beautiful little red birds. "But why are they all wearing muzzles?"

"Here's why." Jessi tapped the label on the side of the glass. Apparently the song of these birds would kill the listener immediately. Probably not a good gift for Claire, then.

We had spent the whole day in Diagon Alley. Jessi had gotten schoolbooks, some scary-looking potion supplies, some long black robes, and a disappointingly plain wand from a weird little old man. And...at least Jessi and I had fun. We had run into Mary Anne at the pet store, where she told us that Claudia refused to come out of a place called Fortescue's and Kristy and Abby were learning about the British monetary system. (I've read enough to know that quid dutch must be what it's called when British people each pay for their own part of the date.) We had left Dawn and Stacey at the robe shop, where Dawn was trying to convince Madame Malkin that undyed hemp robes would be better for the environment than the heavy dyed robes and Stacey was going through some gold spangled dress robes and wondering how they would go over in New York.

"What about those crabs?" I asked Jessi, pointing at a tank of beautiful jeweled crabs. "Do you think the triplets would like those?"

One of the crabs spouted a giant gout of flame. Jessi nodded. "Oh, yeah, the triplets would love those."

"Yeah, you're right. My parents probably wouldn't." I looked over at Mary Anne, who appeared to be debating whether or not to pet a slinky black cat that was perched on the counter.

"Mary Anne!" I yelled.

"What?"

"It's not cheating on Tigger if you pet another cat."

She paused. "Are you sure?"

"Yep. I promise."

"Okay!" She started petting the cat, but kept glancing suspiciously all around the store.

"Maybe Margo and Claire would like one of these." Jessi tapped on a cage of very furry chipmunks. I poked a finger through the bars, and all the chipmunks suddenly grew huge horrible fangs.

"Oh well. Maybe a magical pet wouldn't go over so well in my family, anyway." I turned away from the chipmunks...

...and fell in love.

The most gorgeous, most hunkified boy I'd ever see had just walked into the pet shop. He had light blonde hair, almost silver, and pale gray eyes. He was an an older man, most definitely--he had to be at least twelve, maybe thirteen. It was all I could do not to stare with my mouth hanging open as he strolled around the pet shop, accompanied by two other (definitely not cute) boys.

"Hmm," my future husband said. "What do you think about getting a pet this year?"

One of the other boys squinted at a large cage of vampire bats. "What about one of these?"

The gorgeous boy sniffed. "What would I do with one of those? Maybe I can ask Father to get me a dragon."

"I don't think that would be a good idea at your house," the other gross boy said. "It'd eat your horses or something."

I didn't even pay attention to the rest of what the boys said. Not only had I found the most gorgeous boy in the world, but he had horses! And maybe he was getting a dragon! He must be very rich, I concluded. That's why he had the last living horses in England. I felt very proud of myself for realizing this, and wondered if I should get a notebook like Harriet the Spy.

"Mal. Mal?" Jessi was elbowing me in the side, which brought me back down to earth from my wild fantasies of going on dangerous notebook spying missions with Gorgeous Boy. "C'mon. We're going to round everyone up and head back to the Leaky Cauldron for dinner. We've got to be up in the morning so we can catch the train, and we'll have to be up pretty early for Claudia to get packed."

"Okay," I said vaguely. Jessi gave me a weird look, but I didn't care. This was tru luv!