HOLLA! Thank you for waiting. CHRIS COLFER SHOULD HAVE WON THAT EMMY! And thank you for the reviews and followers. Anyways, ON WITH THE STORY! Sorry for those who were confused by the change in relationships. It has come to my attention that this story is a classic "Sue fic", or so I've been told. So, I've decide to spice things up a bit by changing the plot of the story a bit.
Previously on The Southern Country Belle:
"Welcome Devin and Andrew to Diagon Ally!"
Chapter 3: Shopping and Grimwald Place
Devin's POV:
I had never seen such a beautiful yet strange place! We stepped through the archway. I looked quickly over my shoulder and saw the archway shrink instantly back into solid wall. The sun shone brightly on a stack of cauldrons outside the nearest shop. Cauldrons - All Sizes - Copper, Brass, Pewter, Silver - Self-Stirring - Collapsible, said a sign hanging over them. "You will be needing one, " said Dumbles, "But we have get your money first." I wished I had about eight more eyes. I turned my head in every direction as we walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, "Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad... "
A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium - Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about my age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look, " I heard one of them say, "the new Firebolt 3000 - fastest ever - -" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments I had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon... "Gringotts, " said Dumbles. We had reached a snowy white building that towered over the other little shops. Standing beside its burnished bronze doors, wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold, was...something. "Yes, that is a goblin, " said Dumbles quietly as we walked up the white stone steps toward him.
The goblin was about a head or three shorter than me. He had a swarthy, clever face, a pointed beard and, I noticed, very long fingers and feet. He bowed as we walked inside. Now we were facing a second pair of doors, silver this time, with words engraved upon them:
Enter, stranger, but take heed Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there.
"You would be mad to try to rob it, " said Dumbles. A pair of goblins bowed us through the silver doors and we were in a vast marble hall. About a hundred more goblins were sitting on high stools behind a long counter, scribbling in large ledgers, weighing coins in brass scales, examining precious stones through eyeglasses. There were too many doors to count leading off the hall, and yet more goblins were showing people in and out of these. We made for the counter. "Good morning, " said Dumbles to a free goblin. "We have come to take some money out of Ms. Devin Grissom's safe. ""You have her key, Sir?" "Have it right here." said Dumbles, smiling brightly, holding up a tiny golden key.
I watched the goblin on their right weighing a pile of rubies as big as glowing coals. The goblin looked at it closely.
"Very well," he said, handing it back to Dumbles, "I will have Someone take you down to both vaults. Griphook!" Griphook was yet another goblin. Once Dumbles had put the key back into his robe, we followed Griphook toward one of the doors leading off the hall.
Griphook held the door open for us. I had expected more marble, but was surprised. We were in a narrow stone passageway lit with flaming torches. It sloped steeply downward and there were little railway tracks on the floor. Griphook whistled and a small cart came hurtling up the tracks toward us. We climbed in and were off.
At first we just hurtled through a maze of twisting passages. I tried to remember, left, right, right, left, middle fork, right, left, but it was impossible. The rattling cart seemed to know its own way, because Griphook wasn't steering.
My eyes stung as the cold air rushed past us, but I kept them wide open. Once, I thought he saw a burst of fire at the end of a passage and twisted around to see what it was, but too late - we plunged even deeper, passing an underground lake where huge stalactites and stalagmites grew from the ceiling and floor.
The cart stopped at last beside a small door in the passage wall, and Andy got out and had to lean against the wall to stop his knees from trembling.
Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, I gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.
"All yours and your brother's," smiled Dumbles.
All mine and Andy's- it was incredible. All the times I had worked for money, and there had been a small fortune belonging to me...and Andy, buried deep under London.
Andy helped me pile some of it into a bag.
"The gold ones are Galleons," Dumbles explained. "Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it's easy enough. Right, that should be enough for a couple of terms, we'll keep the rest safe for you." He turned to Griphook. "Please take us back."
"Great, back in this infernal cart, and don't talk to me on the way back, it's best if I keep my mouth shut," said Andy.
One wild cart ride later we stood blinking in the sunlight outside Gringotts. I didn't know where to run first now that I had a bag full of money. I didn't have to know how many Galleons there were to a pound to know that I was holding more money than I had my whole life.
"Might as well get your uniform," said Dumbles, nodding toward Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. "Listen, Devin, would you mind if I slipped off, I need to speek to Sirius." He asked, so I entered Madam Malkin's shop alone, feeling nervous.
Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve.
"Hogwarts, dear." she said, when I started to speak. "Got the lot here, another young woman being fitted up just now, in fact. " In the back of the shop, a girl with long, bushy hair was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up her long black robes. Madam Malkin stood me on a stool next to her slipped a long robe over my head, and began to pin it to the right length.
"Hello," said the girl, "Hogwarts, too." "Yes," I said.
"My father's outside waiting for me to be done so that we can go buy my books and mother's up the street looking at cauldrons," said the girl. She had a bossy, yet excited voice. "Have you got your books yet?" the girl went on.
"No," I said.
"Play Quidditch at all?"
"No," I said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch could be.
"I don't, but my frind does. What house are you in?
"I don't know," I said, feeling more stupid by the minute.
"Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I'm in Gryffindor, I'm a muggleborn."
"Mmm," I said, wishing I could say something a bit more interesting.
"I say, look at that man!" a boy who had just been brought into be fitted suddenly exclaimed, nodding toward the front window. Andy was standing there, grinning at me and pointing at two large ice creams to show he couldn't come in. "He's a muggle, isn't he."
"He's my brother," I said. This boy strongly reminded me of Jackson.
"Ah, yes. I do hope he winds up in Knockturn Ally and killed by Death Eaters"
"Don't. You. Dare. Insult. My. Brother." I said coldly.
"Whatever." said the boy, with a slight sneer. "Why is he with you. Where are your parents."
"America, and he's the new Muggle Studies teacher." I said shortly. I didn't feel much like going into the matter with this boy.
"Oh, But they were our kind, weren't they."
"They were human, if that's what you mean."
"I really don't think they should let the other sort in, like you, Granger." He said, sneering at the girl next to me. I felt the sudden erge to punch his lights out. They're just not the same, they've never been brought up to know our ways. What's your surname, anyway." But before I could answer, Madam Malkin said, "That's it. You're done, my dear," and the boy hopped down from the footstool.
"Well, I'll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose," said the drawling boy, who then with one last sneer, walked out.
Once he was gone, the girl turned to me.
"I'm so sorry for that. That's Draco Malfoy. He's an arse. I like the way you stood up for your muggle brother. I can tell we are going to be great friends." She said sticking out her hand. I quickly took it, smiling. "My name's Hermione Granger."
"Devin Grissom." I said, happy to have a new friend in this strange world.
oOoOo
I was really happy as I ate the ice cream Andy had bought me(coffee with choco jimmies).
"What's up?" Andy asked.
"Nothing," I lied.
We stopped to buy parchment and quills. I got really excited over a bottle of ink that looked 3D as you wrote.
We bought my school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all. Andy had to drag me away from Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying and Much, Much More) by Professor Vindictus Viridian.
"I was trying to find out how to curse Jackson."
"I'm not saying that's not a good idea, but Dumbledore said that students can't use majic outside of school."
We then got a nice set of scales for weighing potion ingredients and a collapsible brass telescope. Then we visited the Apothecary, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor; jars of herbs, dried roots, and bright powders lined the walls; bundles of feathers, strings of fangs, and snarled claws hung from the ceiling. While Andy asked the man behind the counter for a supply of some basic potion ingredients for me, I examined silver unicorn horns at twenty-one Galleons each and minuscule, glittery-black beetle eyes (five Knuts a scoop).
Outside the Apothecary, Andy checked my list again.
"Just your wand left —Oh, and a pet."
Twenty minutes later, they left the pet store, which had been dark and full of rustling, mewing, croaking and flickering, jewel-bright eyes. I now carried a large cage that held a beautiful midnight blue owl, fast asleep with her head under her wing.
"Just Ollivanders left now — only place for wands, apparently."
A magic wand… this was what I had been really looking forward to.
The last shop was narrow and shabby. Peeling gold letters over the door read Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window.
A tinkling bell rang somewhere in the depths of the shop as they stepped inside. It was a tiny place, empty except for a single, broken spindly chair. I felt strangely as though I had entered a very strict library; I swallowed a lot of new questions that had just occurred to me and looked instead at the thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling.
"Good afternoon," said a soft voice. Andy and I jumped.
An old man was standing before them, his wide, pale eyes shining like moons through the gloom of the shop.
"Hello," I said awkwardly.
"Ah yes," said the man. "Yes, yes. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Devin Grissom." It wasn't a question.
Mr. Ollivander moved closer to me. I wish he would blink. Those silvery eyes were a bit creepy.
Mr. Ollivander had come so close that he and I were almost nose to nose. I could see myself reflecting in those misty eyes.
"Well, now — Ms. Grissom. Let me see." He pulled a long tape measure with silver markings out of his pocket. "Which is your wand arm?"
"Er — well, I'm left-handed," I said.
"Hold out your arm. That's it." He measured my arm from shoulder to finger, then wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit and round my head. As he measured, he said, "Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, Ms. Grissom. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard's wand."
I suddenly realized that the tape measure, which was measuring between my nostrils, was doing this on its own. Mr. Ollivander was flitting around the shelves, taking down boxes.
"That will do," he said, and the tape measure crumpled into a heap on the floor. "Right then, Ms. Grissom. Try this one. Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible. just take it and give it a wave."
I took the wand and (feeling foolish) waved it around a bit, but Mr. Ollivander snatched it out of my hand almost at once.
"Maple and phoenix feather. Seven inches. Quite whippy. Try —"
I tried — but I had hardly raised the wand when it, too, was snatched back by Mr. Ollivander.
"No, no — here, ebony and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches, springy. Go on, go on, try it out."
I tried. And tried. He had no idea what Mr. Ollivander was waiting for. The pile of tried wands was mounting higher and higher on the spindly chair, but the more wands Mr. Ollivander pulled from the shelves, the happier he seemed to become.
"Tricky customer, eh? Not to worry, we'll find the perfect match here somewhere — here, oak and theastral hair. 14 inches. Nice and supple."
I took the wand. I felt a sudden warmth in my fingers.
I raised the wand above my head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of green and silver sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls.
Andy whooped and clapped and Mr. Ollivander cried, "Oh, bravo! Yes, indeed, oh, very good." He put my wand back into its box and wrapped it in brown paper.
I paid seven gold Galleons for my wand, and Mr. Ollivander bowed us from his shop.
The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky as Andy and I made our way back down Diagon Alley, back through the wall, and into the back room of the Leaky Cauldron, which was currently empty. As we walked in, Sirius greeted us with a hug.
"Have fun shopping?" He asked. We nodded. "Great. Okay, grab your stuff and we will be on our way."
"Where are we going?" I asked, curious.
"We are going to where I live." He then took Andy and I's hands and we apparated away.
oOoOo
We landed on a deserted street and I nearly collapsed. I seriously hate traveling like this. Once I got my hearts and lungs to work properly again, I joined Andy and Uncle Sirius. Uncle Sirius muttered something and then the houses 11 and 13 began to move. Inbetween the two was another house. Soon enough, the houses stopped moving.
Uncle Siruis then turned to us.
"Welcome kids to number 12 Grimwald Place!"
Finally! Sorry for the long wait. I was experiencing a bad case of writers block. Anyways, what do y'all think? Please Review, comment, give critique..anything really!
~Percabeth :D
