If I owned Harry Potter, these chapters wouldn't be coming out one at a time.

A/N: For those of you who loathe the Pit of Voles, this story is now being posted on Archive Of Our Own as well. My username there is "brentdax".

By the way, a fellow by the name of "Super bunny" posted a review I'd have loved to send a private response to, but they posted it as a guest, so I can't. Don't do that if you're going to say anything more substantial than the usual fanfiction_txt tweet—you lose the chance to hear little hints about the story, and worse, you drive me nuts when I want to tease you with little hints about the story and can't.

Chapter Three
The Alley

Dumbledore had been right—Harry's birthday had been quite the occasion. Fascinating and exciting, but also frustrating.

When Harry had opened the door at eight o'clock sharp, his first thought was that Dumbledore had sent a bear to collect him. But he quickly realized this wasn't a bear, but a man—a man twice as tall and five times as broad as any man Harry had ever met. He had introduced himself as Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts.

Harry had been wondering how they were to get to this Diagon Alley—would they ride a magic carpet? Open a glowing doorway? Simply pop away like Professor Dumbledore had?—and was a bit miffed to find they'd be taking the train, but it did give him a chance to question Hagrid about his job while they shared a sticky chocolate birthday cake Hagrid had pulled out of his coat.

"Well, the groundskeepin' part's obvious 'nough. As fer the keys—there's three Keys o' Hogwarts. The Gate Key unlocks the Gates o' Hogwarts; with the Gates locked, yeh won' find a place safer. The Ward Key unlocks the ward room; inside the ward room, yeh can control all the spells on the castle. I hold on ter those two meself. The Headmaster's Key unlocks the Headmaster's Chambers; if he's sacked or quits, the key comes to me, an' I give it ter the next one. I can also take back the Headmaster's Key if I think 'e's hurtin' the kids."

Once they'd reached London—and fought their way through a crowd of well-wishers at the wizarding pub, The Leaky Cauldron—Harry'd had to fight tooth and nail every time he wanted to deviate from Hagrid's instructions. He had steered Harry away from browsing the bookstore, instructing him to get his assigned course books and nothing more; Harry had managed to get The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts, Hogwarts: A History, a guidebook titled Magic for the Muggleborn, and a book on magical government, but any attempt to get books about more advanced magic was rebuffed. Hagrid had also cut off the saleswitch at Mr. Strong's Boxes and Trunks as she was explaining about the special compartments she could add, insisting on an ordinary school trunk, and, though he was happy enough to browse a magical curio shop after lunch, he wouldn't let Harry buy a dagger with a collapsible blade.

On the other hand, after visiting both Harry's trust vault and a high-security Hogwarts vault, he did allow Harry to change some of his wizard gold to Muggle pounds at the bank (Harry had haggled with the goblins—oh, yes, the bank was run by goblins!—over the exchange rate), and at the robe shop, he'd picked up some dark grey casual robes in addition to his black school ones. Wizarding fashion seemed to favor some outlandish colors, but he suspected grey would still fade into the background, just as his friend Ellie had taught him. And Hagrid had even bought Harry an owl. The still-unnamed bird had beautiful snowy-white plumage; after checking with Hagrid, Harry had let her out of her cage to fly to Little Whinging herself, something he got the distinct impression she appreciated.

By the time they returned to Privet Drive, the moon was high and bright, and Harry was seething. If there was one thing the trip had underscored, it was that he was an important figure in this new world. He couldn't afford to walk into it blind—he had to be prepared!

Still, Harry had remained friendly with Hagrid, even as he pushed back as much as he could; there was no sense antagonizing the man, and it was always useful to have a friend with some authority. Harry watched Hagrid stride down the block; Hagrid waved as he turned the corner, and then he was gone.

Harry dragged his new trunk and bird cage past the living room, where he could hear the telly on, and up to his room, unlocked the door, and brought them inside. He opened the window for his new owl, put the cage on his desk, and set the trunk at the foot of his bed. Then he looked toward his pillow and started.

Upon his pillow lay a package, wrapped in red paper with a blue ribbon, and under that ribbon was a card on yellow parchment. Harry glanced at the door before remembering that he'd unlocked it when he came in. How had this gift gotten into the room?

He closed and locked the door, then picked up the package—it was soft and surprisingly light—and read the card. It said, in loopy handwriting:

Your father left this in my possession before he died. He told me that your grandfather, Charlus, gave it to him on his eleventh birthday. Though James is no longer with us to do it himself, I believe it is time it was given to you.

Use it well.

Many happy returns.

There was no signature.

Eager to see what he'd gotten of his father's, Harry tore the wrapping in moments. Something slippery slid out of his hand and onto the bed, where its silvery folds glimmered in a shaft of moonlight.

Harry picked it up, noting the strange way the material seemed to flow in his fingers. It was a piece of clothing, he realized—not a full robe, but more like the winter cloak he had bought with his uniforms. He carried it to the wardrobe and opened the door to reveal a cracked mirror; then he threw the cloak over his shoulders to see how he looked.

And he yelped.

His torso had disappeared!

He reached down to touch his hands to his chest and was relieved to still feel it underneath the oddly flowing fabric. His body was still there, it was just…

Invisible…

Quickly, Harry pulled his arms under the fabric, and they disappeared too, leaving just his head floating in the air. He grabbed the inside of the cloak and lifted it, pulling it over his head, and his reflection vanished completely.

This could be very useful.

In fact, between this cloak and the unobtrusive robes he'd bought earlier, he suspected he could find a way around Hagrid's interference…

Harry shrugged the cloak off and hung it in the wardrobe; then he slipped downstairs to ask Vernon for a lift to King's Cross.

—

The cloak opened up opportunities for Harry that he'd never had before. Each morning he dressed, tucked one of his new books into his rucksack, threw his magic cloak over himself, and snuck out of Number Four. A few blocks away, he would duck into an alley and stuff the cloak into his rucksack. With the Dursleys not seeing him, they had no opportunity to assign him chores, and he was free to spend his days however he pleased.

He mainly spent them reading his new books. His textbooks were all very interesting, although he didn't really understand half of what they were talking about; he suspected that would come in the classroom. Magic for the Muggleborn taught him lots of basic things about magical life, but from the examples they used, he suspected the author had never been around Muggles for more than ten minutes at time. Hogwarts: A History was a dry book on an interesting subject; Harry skimmed most of it, but it only made him more excited for term to start. The Ministry of Magnates was an informative, scathing, outrageous, and hilarious critique of magical government and the people in it; if half the things in it were true, it was no wonder the author had adopted the pseudonym "The Wizard of Oz", because someone would surely have hunted him down otherwise. The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts was fascinating, but when he got to the end and discovered that Dumbledore had taken him from Godric's Hollow to a secret wing of Hogwarts for intensive magical training, he was left wondering how much of what he'd just read was actually true. Nevertheless, he had learned from the book that he was probably sneaking out every morning under an Invisibility Cloak.

Now, though, his month-long wait was over. Harry had released his owl, now christened Hedwig, to meet him at his destination; the hated cage would stay behind at Privet Drive. Vernon had driven him to London, brought him to King's Cross, and glared at him as he pulled his trunk out of the boot and into the station.

It was ten o'clock on August 31st.

Harry spotted a sign for Platform Nine, but that wasn't his destination today. Instead, he headed for the Underground. He bought a ticket with some of the Muggle money he'd changed at Gringotts and got on a train for Brixton. It only took one line change to get to Charing Cross, and from there, he followed the path Hagrid had shown him to the Leaky Cauldron.

This was going to be the trickiest part—Harry was still wearing Dudley's castoffs (though he'd picked the most unobtrusive colors he could), and from what he'd seen with Hagrid, every entrance to the Cauldron drew at least a little attention. He brushed his fringe down over his scar as much as he could, took a deep breath, adopted his best nothing-to-see-here body language, and stepped through the door.

He did get a few glances, but nobody recognized him, at least not backlit by the street. He pulled his trunk to the bar, where he ran into an unexpected obstacle.

"Well," Tom the barman sad, "if it isn't Mister—"

"Evans," Harry blurted. Tom stared at him; Harry tipped his head towards the other patrons. "Harry Evans."

"Right," Tom said, tapping the side of his nose. Something tense in Harry's chest unclenched; the barman was cannier than he'd thought. "What can I do for you, Mr. Evans?"

"I was wondering if I could have a room for the night," Harry said. "Don't want to miss the Express tomorrow."

Gold changed hands, then a key. Tom cast a spell on Harry's trunk and it followed them upstairs.

"No guardians with you today, Harry?" Tom asked on the way.

"No. They're Muggles, you see, and they're a bit nervous about our world."

Tom gave him a searching look. "If you ever need a place to stay for a couple weeks—well, you wouldn't be the first Hogwarts student from a Muggle household I've put up."

"Thank you," Harry said, and he meant it. Of course, Tom would get paid for helping him, Harry realized; that was probably why he offered, but it didn't make that offer any less useful.

Harry changed into his gray casual robes, then threw the Invisibility Cloak over his shoulders and headed down to the bar. A few minutes later, he followed a pair of old witches into the alley.

His first stop was Gringotts. He wasn't sure they would like an invisible person entering their bank, so he hid behind one of the columns that flanked the entrance and whipped off the Cloak, stuffing it into his rucksack. Then he walked in, giving the goblin guards—who had been staring at him ever since he appeared from nowhere—respectful nods.

A half hour later and a few pounds of gold heavier, Harry whipped off his cloak, rounded a corner, and stepped into the Mr. Strong's. The only other person in the shop was the same saleswitch he'd seen last time.

"Oh, hello again, Mr. Potter!" she greeted him.

"Hello ma'am," he said politely. "I'm afraid we were in a bit of a hurry last time, but I was really curious about those options you were talking about…"

From what she described, it sounded like he could get an entire mansion in his trunk, complete with a sunroom with windows charmed to look like a tropical paradise. That was far more than he'd need, though—not to mention far more than he could afford. Instead, he opted to get the main compartment enlarged to the size of a closet, and to get a second compartment with an Ever-Expanding Bookcase. He also got a secret compartment put in—behind the bookcase was a small, heavily warded storage space, which she said would be protected by both a secret book and a portrait (though Harry had no idea how a portrait could protect anything). Nothing could see into it, she claimed, and although he wasn't sure that nothing could, it was probably adequate for a boarding school. Having already hauled his trunk across half of London, he was eager to pay for a permanent Featherweight Charm, too.

Harry was pleased to learn that, instead of selling him a new trunk, the store could retrofit these features into his old one. If he left the key with her, she told him, she would have the elves pick up his trunk and return it when they were through.

"Wait, these…elves can just take anything no matter where it is?" Harry asked.

She chuckled. "Only with your permission, Mr. Potter. A house elf that is bound to a wizard is also bound by wizard laws."

Harry's next stop was Flourish and Blotts, where house elves were the newest addition to a large list of subjects he wanted books on. Harry didn't love books like a few of the students in his school had, but he thought they were dead useful—fiction books were better entertainment than the shows Dudley liked on the telly, and nonfiction books taught him things no human expert would have the time or inclination to. Without a lucky discovery in a public library one afternoon, he would never have learned to throw knives properly.

Harry's first stop was the books on the war with Voldemort—he bought one copy of each. He also picked up a few books of curses and other fighting spells, a directory of British owl-order businesses, and a tiny monograph on house elves that looked like it had been in the store longer than the shelf it was sitting on. Thinking of the Invisibility Cloak in his bag, he looked through a shelf of books on upkeep of magical objects until he found one that included them; then he added a book on concealment magic to his basket.

And so he went through the store, building a small but (at least as far as an untrained eleven-year-old could tell) practical library for himself. He was reaching for a copy of Notable Magical Names of Our Time when his hand bumped into someone else's.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said at the same time as the hand's owner. They looked at each other and both started laughing.

The girl he'd bumped into was a little taller than him, with bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth. She was dressed in Muggle clothes—a blue blouse and nearly floor-length black skirt—and carrying a basket that was absolutely overflowing with books.

"I should have looked where I was reaching," Harry said. "Are you going to Hogwarts too?"

"Oh, yes," the girl said, and words began spilling from her mouth in a torrent of information: "I just wanted to pick up some reading for the train—I've already learned all the course books by heart, but it's all so new to me, nobody in my family's magic at all, you see, so I thought I should make sure I have the requisite background knowledge, I mean, most of the students have known about magic for years and I only learned about it in June—I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?"

It took Harry a moment to respond; by the time she'd finished speaking, his brain had only just reached the phrase requisite background knowledge. "Erm, I'm Harry. Harry Potter."

"Are you really?" Hermione asked. "I've read about you, of course, you're in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts."

"Well, I've only read Rise and Fall, and at least some of the stuff in it is inaccurate—I only found out about the magical world when I got my Hogwarts letter last month, so I certainly wasn't Dumbledore's secret apprentice, and I had no part in brokering any peace treaty with the centaurs of Laconia, wherever that is."

"It's in Greece," Hermione said absently, frowning to herself. "Rise and Fall did seem a little more…exciting than Modern Magical History. I assumed it just included different details, though."

Harry shrugged. "In any case, I'm getting a bunch of books about the war to see how much I can actually confirm." And Harry showed her some of his selections, and she returned the favor, and then they started browsing the bookshelves together, chatting about the books they were looking at ("But how would you even read an Invisible Book of Invisibility?") and their earlier trips to Diagon Alley ("—she wouldn't even let me look at the titles in this section last time—") and what they'd both read about the magical world ("—The Ministry of Magnates said they were lying about being bewitched, though—") and people they'd met ("Is he really mad? Echoes of Grindelwald's War said so, but Modern Magical History claims it's an act—") and their lives before magic ("—but then one of the guards looked out the window and saw me clinging to the gutter—") and the most interesting magic they'd seen yet ("I'd sell everything I own to get a trunk with a library in it—but oh, then I wouldn't have any books to put in—") and, of course, Hogwarts ("—come off it, they can't possibly expect you to cast any spells during the Sorting, they haven't even taught you anything yet—").

Eventually, Hermione's parents came over and told her they needed to go. After she introduced them to Harry (he stumbled over calling them both "Doctor Granger", and Hermione's mother laughingly replied that he'd just demonstrated why he had to call them Lance and Jane), they walked to the check-out stand; there were two clerks, but one of them was arguing with two old warlocks about whether the book they wanted to return was burnt or merely singed. "Ladies first," Harry said, and Hermione and her parents went to the other clerk.

As he waited, Harry thought about Hermione. There was no doubt she was very smart—much smarter than him. She was definitely straight-laced, but she seemed so fascinated by his adventures with his friends, even as she scolded him for them, that he figured he could get her to loosen up. And when she'd talked about her life before Hogwarts, she'd never mentioned having any friends—he suspected she'd been as lonely as Ellie and Jack and Mark and he before they'd found each other, maybe even more so.

You can get help from people who need help.

He had no doubt he could befriend her…

Though as the warlocks cleared out, and Harry tried to get a starstruck clerk to ring up his purchases, it occurred to him there was another option. In the Muggle world, he was "that awful Potter boy", the one who dressed in funny clothes and spent his time with the weird kids. But in the wizarding world, he was the Boy Who Lived. Everybody would want to be his friend—he didn't have to gather up the kids who had nobody else…

"Harry! Over here!"

He picked up his bundle of books and looked to Hermione. Her father was lowering her own, much larger, bundle into a rucksack that seemed much too small to fit them all. (Harry made a mental note to pick up one of those bags.)

The thing was, though, he liked Hermione. Sure, she spent too much time reading, and judging by how she'd lingered over the planners she'd probably be a nightmare around exam time, but she was, in her own way, rather fun.

Either way, he decided as he walked over to her family, I'll keep her.

"Thanks for shopping with me today," Hermione said shyly. "It was fun."

"Me too," Harry said. "I had a great time."

Now to really catch her attention. Hermione seemed a curious sort of girl, and Harry had learned years ago, as he taught another girl how to use the sorts of knives she wasn't even allowed to touch, that nothing bound new friends together quite like a shared secret.

Harry stepped to the side a bit, so he would be blocked from most of the store by one of the shelves, and swung his rucksack off his back.

"Harry?" she asked, brow furrowing.

He reached into his pack and withdrew his silvery Invisibility Cloak.

"What is that?"

"A necessity for any Boy Who Lived," he said with a cheeky grin, and swung it over his shoulders.

All three Grangers gasped.

"I'll show you on the train tomorrow," Harry said from thin air. He was gone before she could agree—he didn't need to hear her response to know what it would be.

—

Once he'd left Flourish and Blotts, Harry headed back to the Cauldron, ordered lunch from the bar, and went up to his room.

"Hedwig!"

The owl, who was perched on one of the posts at the corners of his bed, barked a greeting and swooped down to land on his shoulder.

Harry's trunk was still missing, so he set the bundle of books on the bed and started sorting them out. He turned at a knock on the open door behind him; Tom was standing in it with a tray of steak pie.

"Your lunch, Mr., er, Evans."

"Thanks, Tom. Just put it on the desk, yeah?"

Tom did and then left, closing the door behind him. Hedwig flew over to the desk, landing beside the plate; Harry picked up his new book on magical items and sat down to lunch. He skimmed the book as he read, occasionally picking some steak out of his pie and feeding it to Hedwig.

After lunch, Harry snuck back into Diagon Alley and started exploring the most interesting looking shops he could find. He was lucky he'd looked at the book over lunch, for when he saw a mokeskin pouch in a secondhand shop for only two Galleons, he knew to snatch it up. He also got a Bottomless Backpack like Hermione's, that brilliant knife he'd seen when he was shopping with Hagrid, a perch for Hedwig with a water tray, and a belt holster and polishing kit for his wand (the latter had been recommended by his book).

Then, to prepare for his last mission of the day, he went back to Madam Malkin's. He bought several more sets of casual robes, but he also bought a hat, one that would cover his scar without being too tall or outlandish.

He stopped back at his room to drop off the clothes and backpacks, moved his new knife into the mokeskin pouch hanging from his neck, and put his new hat on. He set up Hedwig's new perch and filled her water dish; she butted her head against his cheek and swooped to her new home for a drink. Then he threw the Cloak back over himself and headed for the entrance to Knockturn Alley.

The Ministry of Magnates had mentioned this place, noting that the only way it could possibly be so bad was if the Aurors (a kind of elite police force, he'd read) meant to patrol it were being paid to look the other way. The glimpses he'd caught of it earlier today had suggested it was too dark and narrow to use his Cloak effectively—someone would surely bump into him. So he'd have to do this the other way.

He ducked into the doorway of an apartment building near the entrance, took off the Cloak, and stuffed it into his mokeskin pouch. Then he drew one of his throwing knives and palmed it in his left hand.

And finally, he built a façade with his body language, just as Ellie had taught him.

My presence is not worth any special notice. I am not afraid to be here. I am not an easy victim. I can take care of myself.

He squared his shoulders and stepped into Knockturn Alley. And as he navigated the twisted street, nobody bothered him.

—

If Diagon Alley had been eye-popping, Knockturn Alley was stomach-churning. There were shrunken heads on display in a cart and dog skeletons scratching at the doors of kennels in a shop window. An old witch with disgusting teeth seemed to be selling whole human fingernails in front of a building offering unspecified "entertainment" using something called "Polyjuice Potion".

Even so, there was an awful lot of interesting stuff in Knockturn Alley. An apothecary carried hundreds of ingredients he hadn't seen in the one on Diagon Alley, and some of them seemed to be merely rare, not revolting. A shop called Borgin and Burkes had a variety of apparently one-of-a-kind objects, including some rare books and a knife imbued with the venom of something called a basilisk. A small boutique, squeezed in next to a shop with a display of horrible giant spiders, displayed a set of vicious-looking, incredibly well-crafted daggers in the window that Harry gawked at for several moments; a sign in the window said:

AWLTHROW'S ARMORY
Purveyor of fine goblin-made weapons
Visits by appointment only

Most of what he saw he simply noted for later; he didn't know what a lot of it was yet, and wasn't about to buy anything from such a shady-looking area until he was sure it wouldn't kill him. The sole exception was a book he found in a secondhand shop.

It was titled Ninety-Nine Charms the Ministry Doesn't Want You To Know.

—

When Harry returned to his room that night, his trunk was at the foot of his bed; on top of it was a pair of heavy silver keys on a ring. Unlike a Muggle keyring, this one was a loop of solid silver, but when he touched his Gringotts key to the metal, it passed through the ring as though it were smoke. Harry added the keys to his bedroom and the front door of Number Four to the ring, too, before turning the first of the silver trunk keys in the trunk's lock.

When he opened the lid, Harry found that his clothes had been hung from a rod on the right end of the trunk and were dangling towards the left end. Below them, most of his other belongings were neatly arranged on shelves. He poked his head into the trunk, and found that the space inside it extended well past the front and back of the trunk.

"I love magic," he murmured. He grabbed the rest of his knives—he'd packed his whole collection—off the shelves and closed the trunk, then reopened it with the second key.

The bookcase within had two shelves, each divided into two sections. Each divider had a wooden handle on it. The whole bookcase was expertly crafted from pine; characters Harry didn't recognize were carved on the faces, and much to his fascination, they silently acted out scenes.

The books he'd brought with him from Privet Drive were arranged within; they barely filled one section of one shelf. Harry started adding the books he'd purchased at Flourish and Blotts. When he ran out of room, he pulled one of the handles to the right, and the entire bookcase slid to the side, revealing more empty bookshelves (with no carvings, he noticed). He put the last few books on these shelves, watching as figures started to appear in the woodwork (perhaps they were drawn from the books shelved there?), then pulled to the right again. The first shelf slid in again, as though the entire bookcase were a lazy Susan.

Mixed in among his original purchases, Harry spotted one he hadn't bought: a brown leather-bound volume titled The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Recognizing the title, he picked up the book and re-shelved it upside down.

Something clicked behind the bookcase, and the entire case slid down. Behind it, he found a painting of an elderly black-haired couple.

The first thing that he noticed was that, like the bookshelf carvings and Professor Dumbledore's tie, the painting moved. The people depicted in it seemed almost alive.

The second thing he noticed was that the man in the portrait had the same messy black hair he did, and the woman had his nose.

The third thing he noticed was that the subjects of the painting could speak.

"Hello, young man! I'm a portrait of Charlus Potter, and this is my wife, Dorea. We'll be guarding your secret compartment."

Harry looked at him with wide eyes, his skin white as a sheet.

"G-grandfather?"

—

A/N: It's worth noting that Harry did not meet Malfoy at Madam Malkin's; he took more time at Gringotts than in canon, so Malfoy had already finished up by the time Harry arrived. Madam Malkin's poor assistant took the full brunt of his asshattery instead.

One more thing: This fic is currently unbetaed, so I could use some help in that department. Obviously my spelling and grammar are at least decent, so I'm more interested in help with Britpicking, characterization, not letting this story teeter into an abyss of clichés, etc.