The sun was shining bright. All around us shoppers were bustling about, talking of sales. Somewhere else a group of children were laughing and cheering. We stood in the middle of Diagon Alley and fought.
"This is all your fault," I growled at Harry. "You and your bloody brooms!"
"At least it wasn't dolls!" He pulled a face.
We tried to shake each other loose, but Snape's sticking charm held. Severus had locked my wand away in a drawer back home. I could still only do the colouring spell after a whole year of practice, but had now added red and blue to my repertoire besides the muddy brown, neither of which Snape liked for home decor. Even so, if I had my wand, I would have tried it. "Where's your wand?" I demanded, feeling done with him. "Do a Finite!"
"I don't have it with me."
"That's so stupid."
"You're stupid," he retaliated. To be fair, he immediately looked sorry, even before I teared up. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean it like that, don't cry!"
"I'm not crying," I snapped and sniffed the tears back. I considered kicking his ankle, but with my luck, Minerva will come upon us at that exact moment, and there was already a scolding pending on that one. Hmm. Maybe I should kick him if it would solve the problem. No. I'd rather be lost. "I'm not crying, and I don't care what you think—come on, they're this way!" I yanked him down the street. The faster someone could free me from this awful boy the better.
And he was a boy. That was the strangest thing. I kept imagining him to be older, more mature, but each time I came upon him, he would do silly kid stuff. Pulling faces and fighting with a five-year-old (My birthday was in one week!) being a good example.
"I'm really sorry." He followed meekly while we swerved this way and that through the busy crowd. It was good he did, for tiny little me could never tug such a big lump of dead brain cells anywhere. "Everyone in the Burrow talk like that the whole time. I forgot you aren't a Weasley."
"Whatever. I don't want to talk to you." It was very reminiscent of the time Percy had called me a twat. They both lied. I had dinner at their house twice already with Severus, and no one had insulted anyone else while we were there. I stuck out my chin. "Where's your wand? You should always have it with you!" I considered asking a passerby to free us, but they were all so bloody tall and busy, no one was paying any attention to us.
"If you were older, you would know about the Trace," Harry said in a snotty tone. "We're not allowed to do magic out of school until we're seventeen—"
"That's so much rot," I scoffed. "Percy told me the trace is just for the kids that live between the Muggles."
Harry said something nasty under his breath. "Okay fine, it's at home, Mum took it off."
It took me a moment to remember the 'Mum' in question was Molly and not Lily. Two months, and he called her that so easily, while I still only called Snape Dad half the time. I swallowed the jealousy down. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did she take it off?" Asshole.
"None of your business."
"I hate you."
"Whatever," Harry Potter sighed, and we marched on in silence. Neither Minerva and Colin, nor the Weasleys were anywhere to be seen. You'd think Colin would have missed his idol by now, or someone would search for the Saviour of Wizard kind. Where the hell were they?!
"Harry Potter! As I live and breathe! I thought I would be seeing you today," a smarmy voice called from across the street, and we turned hopefully to it. It belonged to the most fascinating person. The man practically glittered, making everybody around him appear dull. Even the colourful shop window he was standing against seemed to pale in his presence. Where the old Dumbledore had cultivated an eye twinkle (which I sometimes did without being aware), this wizard sparkled. All over. From his perfectly positioned forget-me-not blue hat and sweeping robes that matched the colour of his eyes, to his golden curls. The effect was blinding, and we gaped awestruck when his smile eclipsed the sun. "You must have been looking all over for me! Well, search no more! Here I am!"
He crossed the street, uncaring of the human traffic that had to make way for him, a whole entourage following on his heels. A short man was waving an old fashioned camera—even larger than Colin's—around, and a gaggle of women were simpering in his wake. He passed a bag carelessly in their direction to open his arms wide to us. No, to Harry. I was shunted aside when he grabbed Harry's free hand and shook it heartily. "Oh what a pleasure it is for you to meet me, the great Gilderoy Lockhart! You must be all agog at the news!"
Holy fucking hell! JKR got the man down to a T.
"What news?" Harry said when the man clamped his arm around his shoulders and turned him to the gathering crowd.
"Smile for the camera, Harry!" The next moment a flash went off and thick purple smoke rose to the sky. For once I was spared being blinded, since I was tucked firmly behind Gilderoy Lockhart's butt. The only thing still keeping me there was the stupid sticking charm of Severus. Wait until I saw him again!
"Excuse me!" I shouted, and kicked at his robes, hoping to connect with bone. Thank God I was there when Minerva decided on the new assistants. At least I could stop his application at the get-go. "Can you move, you're standing on a child here!"
It was Lockhart's turn to say 'What?' and he turned around. "Oh my! A little urchin!" he called out and scrunched his nose up in disgust at the sight of me, rearing back. "What on earth are you wearing?"
I looked down. Ah yes, my dragon puke robe. Dear Norbert. So it's a bit spotty, it's not as if it had holes in it. Nothing wrong with it. "Clothes. Let's go, Harry!" I tugged on Harry's hand. If JKR was to be believed, then the next bit won't be fun. I'd rather be gone.
"Oh, you've got a little admirer, Harry. If I can give you a piece of advice," he lowered his voice, "it is best to just give a quick autograph and shoo them on their way; you don't want them to turn into stalkers." He lowered his voice even more. "Especially these types." Next moment he started tugging at our joined hands. "Off you go, my darling. I know you might not want to wash this hand that touched our Saviour, but he will have to cleanse his. We do not know where you've been."
Oh, this was precious. I opened my mouth to give him what for but he was faster.
"Dear me. You seem to have gotten stuck." He pursed his lips. "No matter, I know just the spell, why I've struggled with the Ghastly Glue-Slugs in Guam, and you simply need to melt it off!" Gilderoy Lockhart took out his wand and raised our hands higher for the crowd to see. "This unfortunate little urchin seems to have attached himself to our dear Harry Potter! I will now attempt to melt the—"
There was no other recourse open to me. No way was I going to let this man melt the skin off my hands! I've seen enough of Moody to know not everything can be healed. I raised up on my toes and bit him. Hard. I dug my little milk teeth into the skin of his wrist with all the might of my jaws. He stopped tugging and let out an embarrassingly high-pitched yelp, and I released him to shout: "Run, Harry!"
We ran. My five year old legs (Birthday in one week!) were used to running all over Hogwarts, mostly to hide, and I scarpered off with a surprised Harry in my wake.
"Come back!" Lockhart yodelled after us. "You haven't heard the news yet! Help! Harry Potter is being abducted!" Behind him the crowd went wild and a camera flashed.
"It's just one street," I whimpered when we finally slowed down to look around. None of the quaint little shops around us seemed familiar. No one had followed us, but I was thinking of the fire that Minerva would soon rain down on my poor little five-year-old head. "We'll find them if we just walk on."
"Actually, you're supposed to stay in one place if you're lost and let the adults find you," Harry said.
"We're not lost. We lost them. There's a difference!"
"If you say so."
"What? Are you saying that I'm too stupid to know the difference between—"
"I'm not saying you're stupid anything. I said I was sorry! Oh God, it's Malfoy!" Harry hissed, interrupting our tiff at the sight of blond hair, and he yanked me into the nearest shop. The glass door slammed behind us, and we hurried to peer out the dusty window—did no one here believe in washing glass? Malfoy wasn't anywhere, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief when no one followed us in. The blond hair belonged to a girl, though, and this time I did kick his ankle.
"Ow! Bloody hell!" He danced out of reach. "Stop that—I will tell your dad!"
"Well, I will tell Molly you called me stupid!"
"I said I was sorry!" He ground out through clenched teeth. "And you should call people older than you Mrs. Weasley!"
Oh, this was fun! "What, everyone? Who's stupid now! People have their own names!"
"That's not what I meant—"
"What have we got here?" someone sang from within the gloomy shop, interrupting our fight.
"Come to read your fortunes, little ones?" another asked directly behind us in a weird mechanical voice. Her question ended in a screech that was ten times worse than chalk on a blackboard.
Holy Mother of—I did not clutch Potter's hand. Okay fine, I clutched Potter's hand and tried to climb him like a tree. We stumbled and bumped into each other in our rush to twist around, hampered by our stuck hands, each going the wrong way at first. Laurel and Hardy couldn't have done it better.
When we finally got it right, we came face to face with a witch. She had everything. The pointy hat, the multiple layers of clothes, a wart on her large hooked nose, wrinkled crone like face, and she was even holding a broom. She also stood motionless, her glittering black eyes staring at something behind us. Help!
"Oh dear, don't mind her. I got her in Tokyo to help in the shop," the owner of the first voice sang, floating over. The complete opposite of the scary one, she was dressed in a hot pink pantsuit and had her butter-blonde hair up in old-fashioned ringlets. She looked to be twenty despite speaking like everyone's grandma. "Robots are lovely if you need to lift something in my condition, but oh dear, possess them one time too many, and they do nothing but bother the customers. This one thinks she can tell fortunes!" The ghost laughed, a tinkling sound that rang through the small shop, the merry sound oddly jarring in the doom and gloom.
"Why are all the shops so gloomy?" my mouth asked before I could stop it.
"Albus!" Harry hissed, squeezing my hand, and the Gryffindor in him tried to tuck me in behind him.
"I do not know about the others, dear, but I have too many crystal orbs lying about, just waiting to catch a stray sunbeam."
"..."
"They are a fire risk."
Yeah, okay, that made sense.
She beamed at us herself. "That's how I got this way. Goodness, it was such a fuss, I only had the shop for one day too, how silly of me." She laughed. "Well, you die and learn."
She seemed too happy for me to feel sorry for her, telling of her untimely demise as if it was a great big joke. I had no clue what to do, and Harry seemed to have a similar problem.
"Uhm..." he said.
"Octavia Binns at your service." The ghost introduced herself with a little curtsy. "Now what will it be today, taking Divination, are you? The standard glass ball will do for a start. If you come this way…" she floated off.
We followed, nervously skirting around the strange robot.
"You must excuse me if I don't possess her, I'd rather wait until we fixed her voice box... awful headache... ah, here we are."
We excused her. I certainly could live a long and happy life without having to see a ghost possess scary robotic witches. Globes of every size and colour filled the racks. Tarot cards lined another case, and a nearby table displayed delicate tea cups.
She pointed at the nearest globe and proceeded to talk our ears off. We learned that the Celtic Druids were the first to gaze into the future, and she gave us an impromptu lesson on how a clear quartz ball in the living room soothed a house with many arguments, winking at us as she said so. Then babbled happily about the variety of crystal balls on the market: clear quartz, rose quartz, smoky quartz, citrine, black obsidian, and amethyst, she listed them off, and did not let us get a word in edgewise. Being a ghost, she didn't need to pause for a breath once.
"We're not here to buy crystal balls," Harry said after we had a good look at her wares, shouting desperately over her in depth explanation on the health benefits of Transcendental Meditation. "Divination is in our third year, Percy said, but we are thinking to take it. It's easy, right?"
"As easy as eating pie through a straw," she nodded with a smile. My stomach rumbled on cue. "Hungry one, are you? Would you like some tea? Only you will have to make it yourself."
"No thanks," Harry said just as I was about to accept. "We've got to get going." He started tugging me to the door. "You have a really nice shop!"
"Perhaps you'd like me to read your fortune, only two knuts each, it's the best rates in the Alley!"
This time I was the one tugging at Harry to move. Sybill Trelawney had a habit of eyeing me weirdly, and I did not need to be exposed as an Insert. Who knew what these women could find out!
In our bid to escape, we backed ourselves right into the robot. She let out an ear-splitting sound just as I touched her and spun her head right around like a demon-possessed toy. Her black eyes rolled back into her head, leaving slits of white, and her jaw hinged open.
"Two souls into one, unsundered," the mechanical witch boomed and screeched. "Beware of the written word… Two souls into one, unsundered! Dark days will follow! Death shall come to one! Beware of the—"
Octavia Binns disappeared into the lifelike witch, bringing her to a sudden stop.
My ears rang.
"Oh dear me," she said, her tinkling voice sounding strange coming from the robotic mouth, "which one of you touched her? We have to call the Unspeakables—"
That's it. I had enough. Fuck this. I was going to barf. "Lady. Our hands are literally glued together." I held up Harry's hand and shook it as proof. "Two souls. And Minerva will throw a fit if we don't find them soon, so good job on the dark days. I'm pretty sure we're all going to die, so tell me something I don't already know! How about something useful like where to find the Weasleys?!"
"Two doors down to the left, dear. No need to shout."
I shivered and pressed closer to Harry's side.
"How?!"
"I saw them pass by earlier. You can't miss all that red."
We fled the shop as one. Outside the sun hit us full force, bright colours assaulted my eyes, and someone told us to watch our step. It felt like we've entered another world.
"What was that?" Harry asked, his white face awestruck.
"Magical fuckery. Can we go find the bloody Weasleys now?!"