Chapter 3: Diagon Alley

A/N: Sorry for not updating for a long time. Just not many reviews made me kind of cranky, and my second reviewer, EG, gave me that extra motivation to keep on writing. Thanks! I was on no wifi vacation, by the way, so I couldn't post anything.

I usually keep author notes short, but pls do review! Okay, so I hope you enjoy this chapter!

I appeared at Diagon Alley, which had gone through some major changes.

What to do? Well, I thought, the whole reason I came here was to get some money to buy an owl.

And so, very enthusiastically, I took out my wand, and started doing some silly magic tricks. I figured that some of these spells hadn't been invented yet, and decided to try my luck.

3 hours of juggling fiery balls and tap dancing later, I was starting to lose hope. I looked at the money that I'd received; 3 sickles and 5 knuts. Not very much.

"What the hell am I going to do?" I grumbled under my breath.

"You've got a big mouth for a girl." Said a rather deep voice, startling me.

I looked up and saw a familiar face.

"Malfoy?" I said before I could stop myself, "What are you doing here?"

Malfoy furrowed his eyebrows, "Sheesh, I'm just getting some school supplies. The real question is. What are you doing here? I've never met you before."

"But…" that was when I remembered that I was in the past, and that Malfoy's family went way back. "You've just got that complexion, I guess." I managed, mentally cursing.

"Well, everyone does know me, I suppose, but I think that I would remember you if I'd met you before. What year are you in?" Malfoy asked.

"7th." I answered, feeling sort of faint.

"What's your name?" Malfoy asked.

"Alice Gr- I mean Dupont." I barely caught myself before saying my actual name. Goodness! I needed to practice that.

"Okay…" Malfoy eyed me confusedly, but I put on my best poker face. "I'm Abraxas Malfoy, pleased to meet you."

"Yeah, same." I said nervously.

Malfoy eyed me suspiciously once more before asking, "So how come I haven't seen you before?"

"I'm a transfer." I said.

"Hogwarts never gets transfers!" Malfoy exclaimed.

I resisted saying, well now it does, and instead said, "There's some sort of war going on in France right now. I used to go to Beauxbatons."

"That explains it." Malfoy said, the suspicion mostly gone from his voice, though his questions were far from done. "So, what were you doing at Diagon Alley right now?"

"This probably sounds really stupid, but I was trying to get some money to buy and owl so I could send a message to professor Dippet." I admitted.

"You still haven't registered as a transfer yet?" Malfoy's eyes widened slightly.

"Well, excuse me, I've been busy doing other stuff!" I snapped.

"That's not the point, it's just that yesterday was the due date for registration." Malfoy explained.

"Oh crap." I muttered. "What am I going to do?"

"Your parents aren't very strict, are they?" Malfoy asked, suppressing a laugh.

I turned silent.

"Did something happen in that war you were talking about?" Malfoy's voice softened, and I almost screamed at how concerned he sounded. This was Malfoy, for goodness sakes, the family of prats and self-acclaimed ruler of muggles and muggleborn wizards and witches.

"Yeah." I said, unsure of what else to say. My mother had died, 2 years ago. As for my father – I never met him.

"I won't ask anymore, but since you're a pureblood…"

I frowned suddenly and interrupted him, "How do you know?"

He looked at me confusedly, "You told me your last name was Dupont…"

This took a while for me to process. I wasn't all that familiar with my mother's side of the family. She had eloped with my father, and accidentally killed her own brother while trying to get away. She clearly wasn't the most loved in the family and neither was I.

Well, I liked to think of it as eloping, but they never really got married. They only ran away.

But either way, I didn't like thinking about their relationship, or how I came to be. To my mother, I was a bad living memory of my dad, Mr. Mysterious.

But the Dupont family was as concerned with blood as the Malfoy's, which meant they loved arranged marriages. This also meant that they hated mysterious suitors with no know origins whatsoever appearing and eloping with their daughter.

According to the secret journal I had found in my mom's room, they whipped their house elves and always gave muggles dirty looks. Once Arthur Dupont, her grandfather, had tried to burn down the house of this one muggle who had spit on his shoe.

Luckily, his wife stopped him in time, convincing him that they didn't want to go to Azkaban. They also tried to ban muggleborn children from going to Beauxbatons, which hadn't turned out great for them, fortunately.

"I'm different from the rest of my family." I said stiffly, after like a 5 second pause.

"That explains some of it." Malfoy said sort of nervously I noted.

"I'm not really in the mood to talk right now, okay, so give me some personal space, so I can make some money to buy – Hey!"

They man dressed in black scrambled away with my 3 sickles and 5 knuts.

"Get the hell back here!" I yelled angrily starting to chase him. Who did he think he was?

"Wait!" I felt a hand on my shoulder. I tried to duck away from his grasp, but years of quidditch must have made him good at holding on.

"Get off!" I nearly screamed, causing some people to look over at me.

"I can help you though!" He protested.

"He just stole my money, and you're definitely not helping me!" I managed to yank myself free, but the thief was nowhere in sight.

"Damn it!" I yelled, once again drawing some unwanted attention to myself.

"I'll let you borrow my owl." Malfoy snapped annoyed.

"You will? Okay. Do you have it right now?"

"Um, wait, let me call it." He looked slightly nervous as he whistled a strange tune.

I tried to copy it, miserably failing. Hey, I never said I had any vocal talent.

"He should be here any moment." Abraxas muttered. Sure enough, a gray figure began making its way towards us. As it got closer, I could see that it had brilliant silver plumage, with dark feather tips. His eyes, or maybe it was a girl, it wasn't like I could tell the difference, were bright yellow.

Even as a non-animal person (I do like them, they just don't like me! Especially cats. Man, Crookshanks hated me so much.), I had to say "Aww, that's so adorable."

The owl ruffled his, or her feathers, obviously pleased at the complement.

"His name is Burrito." Abraxas said proudly. "He's very well trained – only second to my dad's owl, Snake."

"An owl named Burrito. That's not weird at all." I said, but I concentrated on the last part of his sentence. Everyone in Abraxas's family owned an owl. I felt an irrational surge of jealousy rise.

"Well, do you want to send your letter or what?" Abraxas asked.

"Yeah, yeah. Of course." I said.

I'd never even owned a pet before – unless you count the time I'd secretly kept a stray dog in my backyard, but that was before I'd started at Hogwarts the first time.

Dogs seemed to be the only animals that remotely liked me. I suppose it's a family trait; animals hated my mom too, but dogs, for whatever reason cuddled up to her, maybe sensing her loneliness and sadness. Too bad she didn't like dogs; she had kicked out my stray dog while I was at Hogwarts for my first year.

I handed Abraxas the letter, avoiding getting too close to the owl. He told something to the owl, and the bird flew off. I barely paid attention. For some reason, I felt like I was in some sort of daze, a dream of some kind.

"Do you want me to help you pay for the rest of your stuff?" Abraxas asked.

"What?" I snapped out of my daze, since I was so surprised. Since when did Malfoy offer to help me pay for stuff? "But I thought that you said that you needed to like tell them before."

"Well, the Gryffindor saint will probably convince Dippet one way or another."

"Gryffindor saint?" I wondered aloud.

"Dumbledore – the annoying old codger who does everything nobly. But he hates us Slytherins anyways. He thinks were always doing something wrong." Malfoy wrinkled his nose.

"What house do you think I'll be in?'" I asked, honestly curious about what house I'd be put in this time around. I was pretty sure I'd get put in Gryffindor again, but perhaps the war had changed me more than I realized, even though Hermione said, that I hadn't gotten any more mature since first year.

"Probably Gryffindor, though I feel that you have enough ambition to be in Slytherin though. Honestly, I'm hoping you'll be in Slytherin." Abraxas confessed, slightly lowering his head so that I couldn't see his expression.

I was kind of pleased by the complement, but it also came with a lot of other emotions. I certainly didn't want to be in any house except for Gryffindor, and especially not Slytherin! Also, why was Abraxas acting so weird?

"Okay, cool." I said awkwardly. "Where do we go first?"

"Do you like shopping?" Abraxas asked.

"Meh. Lavender and Parvati told me I had the most boring style ever. And they said it makes me look like a boy." I admitted.

"What do you usually wear, then? If it's that uniform, I don't think that it looks like what boys wear." He said.

I studied his clothing. He was wearing some vest thing with a white sweater underneath and long pants that were like jeans except black, smooth and with big foot holes. What were they called? Something to do with slacking off.

"Nah, I usually just wear a t-shirt and jeans. Maybe a hoodie when it's cold." I told him, wondering how the 1940's style was for girls.

To my surprise, Abraxas laughed, "I thought you meant like vests and trench coats and stuff."

"Ew! No." I exclaimed. When I saw his hard look, I quickly added, "Um, that's the French fashion."

"Strange." He murmured. I stared at my toes.

"Okay then, so do you want to buy clothes for the school year, or do you already have some?" Abraxas broke the awkward silence.

"Not yet." I said without much enthusiasm.

"Great!" Abraxas expressed the exact opposite of how I was feeling.

Abraxas wasn't too happy two hours later. I had rejected practically everything he'd shown me. He probably would have yelled at me if the storeowner hadn't been so near.

But it wasn't my fault. There was no way I was humiliating myself by wearing that.

Finally, I relented to buying some ugly, but not hideous robes.

"You," He grumbled. "Are extremely difficult."

"Not my fault all the stuff looks bad!" I protested.

"Whatever." He said. "Let's go get you a new wand."

I was about to tell him that I already had one, but I decided that it was better to have a backup wand. It wasn't like I was spending my own money.

We arrived at Ollivander's, which looked the same as always, except… the owner of the store.

He had reddish brown hair, a long nose and energetic brown eyes… definitely not the old man I'd known from my time. He looked like he was in his twenties.

"Hello," He said cheerfully. "How may I help you?"

"A wand for this lady." Abraxas said, gesturing to me.

"Hmm," He said. "I've never seen you at all before."

"She's new." Abraxas said.

I let Abraxas do the speaking. I was already tired of my stupid cover story.

"A transfer?"

"Yes."

"Well, then we'll see what wand we can find you." Ollivander said.

Not a single wand worked. Not the oak which exploded something in the corner, nor the ash wand in which a vase got transfigured into a farting frog, whom ended up jumping and tooting in front of the none too happy Abraxas's face, nor the plenty of other wands which created one disaster after another.

Abraxas apparently wasn't up to the risk anymore, and left in the middle of my tiresome wand search. Ollivander finally sighed and told me to pass my hand over each wand on the shelves.

Most of the wands didn't react. Occasionally, a wand would back away a little. I felt a strong urge to stick my tongue out at it. This experience was really ruining my self-esteem.

Finally, when it was starting to get quite uncomfortable just walking through the shelves, I saw a slight tug in a wand case. I froze momentarily, and the wand came flying towards me.

It was in a dusty green case. I opened it and found a long, plain, yellowish brown wand. It didn't look very special at all, at least compared to my ebony one. Kind of disappointing.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Elm, 11 ½ inches, flexible, dragon heartstring core." He replied.

I didn't say anything. I had heard that elm was a wood only for purebloods. While I knew it wasn't true, it wasn't the Gryffindor's favorite wood.

"Cool," I managed, taking it in my hands. The ebony wand in my pocket was vibrating slightly. Was it reacting to the elm wand?

The wood was cool and smooth, but it felt heavy in my hands. It was too long, too boring. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I was disappointed.

I was used to the leather grip on my short, light ebony wand. I could make quick movements with it, and it never seemed to miss a beat.

Abraxas chose that moment to return. "You done?"

I nodded mutely.

He paid Ollivander 7 galleons.

"Thanks," I told him, well, I wasn't sure which one I was thanking, so both, I guess. I tried for a smile, but it turned out pretty weak. All the energy had drained from me, all of a sudden.

Abraxas walked out of the store, and I followed him. I felt better almost immediately. Maybe it was the dusty air, I decided. I could feel the wand – my new one – in my pocket. It was so cold I could feel it through my shorts.

"What time is it?" I asked Abraxas.

He frowned, "About 5:30, I think."

I sighed in relief. "Still half an hour till I have to talk to Dippet."

Abraxas shrugged. "You should probably get some robes first."

I groaned.

"I thought girls liked shopping." Abraxas said.

"Maybe the ones you know." I murmured pessimistically.

Whoa, cranky. I wasn't on my period (I know, TMI, gosh, it's rated T!), so I wasn't quite sure of the cause.

"Okay…" Abraxas looked at me warily.

I frowned. I had never been considered a scary person. During a duel, I was perhaps intimidating. But Abraxas had never seen me duel.

Either way, I walked into the clothes shop, dragging him with me. Maybe I was going to have to shop, but I wasn't shopping without company.

10 minutes later, let me make a teensy weensy correction: Abraxas picked out the clothes, and I said yes or no, well now, it was basically no or no. I could tell that Abraxas was on the edge of screaming.

He came back with two fugly robes I would never wear.

"No, and where on god's green earth did you get that thing? Just to clarify, that means no as well." I said. It was becoming quite a routine now.

Okay, maybe I was doing it a little bit on purpose, but can you blame me? It was fun seeing what a boy could come up with for me to dress in.

The next time he entered, before I could comment, he glared at me and said, "Get out, I'm not taking any of your criticism."

I didn't need to be told twice. I rushed out of the stupid clothing shop, a rather large smile plastered on my face. I hadn't had that much fun in ages!

But before I could walk for long, I heard yells from nearby. I followed the angry shouts to the source to see an abandoned alley, except… 3 boys were hovering over something small, sticks and rocks in their hands.

"Let's teach this little beast a lesson…" Said one of the boys. He was taller than the others, and had messy brown hair, though I wasn't sure, because mud was all over his neck and back, so he could have been blond for all I cared.

But I didn't process any of that. I was so horrified for a split second that I was frozen. As soon as the boy raised his hands up, fire started up in my body.

"Stop it! Right now!" I yelled as loud as possible. It echoed down the alleyway. When they turned around and saw their faces, I realized that I hadn't come up with the best strategy.

My first instinct was to run and punch them all in the faces, or knee them where the sun don't shine. But I stopped myself. I looked at their ripped muscles and scarred faces, and realized that I couldn't beat them in physical combat.

They glared at me expectantly, and for a moment, I was scared that I would become that small creature they were beginning to attack.

"Don't harm it!" I said. What the hell was I doing? Why in the world was I talking? Talking wouldn't get anything done. I resisted the urge to pick up my ebony wand and blast them in the faces. They were expecting that.

"Or what, princess?" One of them snarled.

It wasn't their leader. No, my eyes were glued on the leader. He had a crazy, hungry look in his eye. It scared me more than I wanted to admit.

The leader smiled cruelly. I felt a shiver go down my spine. And for once, I realized what I had to do. I had to act afraid, let my fear show. I couldn't keep it in and charge blindly…

"I'll-I'll hurt you!" I cried out weakly.

"Shall we teach her a lesson too?" I heard the leader ask. My fear eased as they took the bait. They began to approach.

I fell to the ground and began to shiver, "No, p-please!"

My hand reached behind me. Gah, my ebony wand was too far back. It would look suspicious if I went to grab it. So I grasped my elm wand instead.

I counted inside my head. 5…4…3…2…1… I whipped out my wand. And shouted "Stupefy!" As loud as I could.

It knocked two of them out. The third, who was the creepy leader guy, looked around bewildered, a bit too late when his two friends came crashing down on him, needless to say, he wasn't getting up for a while.

I was about to turn around and leave when I noticed something in the background. I mentally face palmed myself. Of course! Why had I come in the first place?

The animal was no larger than a baby rabbit, with fur like a rabbit and ears like a cat, completely black unless you count the gold eyes, filled with fear. A niffler, I realized.

I was no expert in care of magical creatures, considering I had gotten a "poor" on the test, but nifflers were too adorable not to know about. They were the Pomeranians of the wizarding world.

I rushed over to the poor animal, scooping it up in my palms. The poor creature whimpered sadly and snuggled up against me.

I immediately fell in love and mentally congratulated myself. I had finally found an animal who did not absolutely hate me. Then, I realized the emergency in front of me; the niffler was bleeding. I didn't know if it was just a cut, or as severe as a broken spine, but I wasn't about to make it worse with my abdominal healing skills.

I needed someone to help me heal the niffler… that's when I remembered; I had a meeting with someone who could potentially help me heal the niffler.

I also realized something else; I was late for the meeting with that someone.

I raced over to 3 broomsticks, hopelessly late for not the first time.

A/N: Again, really sorry for this seriously late update; it was partially my fault, and partially the no wifi part. This was a pretty long chapter, and please review, because there is doubts that there will even be a next update. I don't even know if anyone is reading this fanfiction anymore, but I'm crossing my fingers. Can we please get to five reviews? This is a pretty long chapter J