AN: So this is a day later than normal, but it is still the weekend! This chapter is necessary and I hope that does not make it boring because that is my fear. The only thing I hate more than terrible grammar in fanfic is when authors make excuses like "Sorry that was boring, but I needed to put it in there." You have to be careful on this site, lovelies, and I am so happy that in your caution, you choose to read this... and maybe review?
Chapter Five: Harry Potter and the Wizarding Alley
After flipping the OPEN sign to CLOSED, Mr. Malfoy turned on the boys with his hands in a steeple. "Now, Harry, Draco has been to Diagon Alley a few times in the past so he may tell you that he knows his way around, but stay close to us and you should be a-"
The door bust open in a cloud of light with something that resembled a pig emerging on the other side with a pink probiscus and a furry behind. "Malfoy! What are you doing with this boy? Dumbledore sent me to his house, and guess wha'! He weren't thar!"
The blond man waved off the half-giant and put an arm around Narcissa as her eyelids started fluttering in anxiety at the new arrival. Draco grabbed Harry's hand but dropped it a second later. Harry wiggled his fingers in hopes of touching the other boy again, but gave up once Mr. Malfoy started talking in a calm, pureblood tone, "Hagrid. I have received permission from Dumbledore to accompany you and Harry to Diagon Alley seeing as that he has become friends with Draco."
"Fine, but I get to take Harry in me sidecar," he grumbles as he taps the end of his sooty umbrella on the carpeted floor with its blade tracks from years of service to the English skating community.
"Please, Hagrid, allow us to apparate as a group of five, "it shall save time."
Hagrid grumbles an agreement and hangs the umbrella on his belt loop before taking a sideways glance at Harry. "Nice to finally meet ya, boy." He extended his hand, so big that he had to make his own oven mitts. "T'is a pleasure. Name's Rubeus Hagrid. Head Gamekeeper at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
Narcissa scoffed, her eyelids finally slowing down to an andante tempo rather than their frenzied allegro from before, "You are the only gamekeeper at Hogwarts."
Hagrid shrugged for he knew his place and how he ranked among the Wizarding Social Ladder but whispered to Harry as the five of them moved into a circle to apparate, "Just 'cause I'm the only one, don't mean that I ain't the best one."
Harry chuckled to himself as he joined hands with Mr. Malfoy and Hagrid, watching as Draco shuddered at the half-giants touch not out of disdain for he did not know Hagrid's story of how he had come to lose his magic but more out of fear for this large man who waved around an umbrella like he had seen police wave around clubs.
Mr. Malfoy closed his eyes after asking if everyone was ready. Harry had said yes without knowing what he was ready for.
To him apparating was like being a dead goldfish flushed down the toliet only to resurface in a swere pipe that transported you to the surface of the sun and then let you freefall to the tip of the Eiffel Tower where the tip poked you all the way through before you fell down and landed right behind a bunch of muggles taking their Christmas photo.
He wanted to change his answer to no. He was not ready.
Sometime in the voyage, he had closed his eyes like Mr. Malfoy but opened them at Hagrid's prodding and was immediately glad that he had said yes.
To Harry, Diagon Alley was Disneyland (sorry to all of my readers who haven't been there) with strange characters and fantastic sights. wizards looked like Mickey and witches like Minnie with the first sight of Gringotts like Space Mountain to a muggle-raised boy. The two grown men lock eyes to confirm the decision of the first stop before grabbing the boys' hands and strutting to the door nestled between the pillars as tall as Hogwarts Great Hall with Narcissa skittering behind before Lucius snapped at her that she could go to talk to Madam Malkin. She bowed her head and left the men as if it was Game Day Sunday and she didn't understand the rules to Football.
Mr. Malfoy did not even have to clear his throat once inside the marble cave with its podiums that reminded Harry of his school in Little Whinging before he was able to get service. He snapped his fingers over Harry's head until Hagrid handed him a slip of parchment with Harry's vault number on it. "I'll need the key to this vault and also to go my vault."
"Ope! Dumbledore'll wanting me to retrieve a special something from this vault too," he muttered as he handed a folded letter with the Hogwarts seal on it to the goblin who was already turning around to lead them to a cart. He took it in his spindly hands and cracked the seal before sneering at Hagrid with a twitch in his nose.
"All right," he grumbled before again turning and waddling to the back of the hall and pulling aside a tapestry before ushering the men onto a cart. "First to the Potter Vault."
Harry had never been on a roller coaster, but when Draco shouted, "This feels like a coaster!" when they took off, he could not help but laugh and agree and throw his arms up with the other boy. "This never gets old."
They took one last loop-de-loop before jerking to a stop in front of a nondescript door with only a vault number as identification.
Hagrid pulled himself out of the cart first and gave Harry a hand before asking, "How much money d'ya reckon you'll be needin'?"
"Uh," Harry stammered as the goblin unlocked the door with a key the size of his pinky. "Maybe a hundred pounds. Would that do?" All of the other men burst into laughter as the goblin smirked to himself and pushed the massive door aside.
"Harry, boy, you won't be needin' pounds anymore. Have a look here." Hagrid waved his arms towards the open door that now displayed a pile of silver and gold for the viewers. It was large enough to stop the Malfoys' laughing.
Harry raised his eyebrows in confusion as he sifted through a pile of copper sickles while the others came inside. "So my parents were oafs? They collected fake money? What am I supposed to do with this? I'll never be able to buy all of my books now."
The Malfoys would have laughed if they were not so star struck, and Hagrid was too busy enjoying their astonishment to poke fun at Harry's naivete. "This is Wizard money, 'Arry, and as your friends are finding out, your parents were rich."
Malfoy spread his arms and turned in a circle in one of the few spots that did not have coins and trophies stacked on the floor. "So this is where the Potter fortune went! So here are their trophies! And I had almost forgotten that James came from a pureblood family before he married that filthy m-"
"Don't you talk about Lilly like that. Here, Harry, take this," he commanded as he shoved a pile of galleons into the boy's hands. "Let's go. Grindewald, we are ready to leave!" He marched out of the vault and sat down with Harry to watch the Malfoys get dragged out of the room.
"Next, the Malfoy vault," Grindewald announced as he started pumping the handle as they plunged deeper into the depths of the bank as the gas lamps increased in number and darkness set in. They passed other carts at breakneck speeds, and Lucius barely had time to wave to his friends. "The Malfoy vault."
"Stay here," Lucius ordered the rest of the cart as he put up his hand to stop them before snatching his key from Grindewald and slipping into the vault after unlocking it and pressing his nose to a touch pad near the lock.
Draco smiled at the two people across the way. "You know, I've never been in the vault myself, so don't, uh, feel left out. I'm sure there's nothing in there. My idea is that father puts all of our money into the rink, you know, with skates and all."
"Draco..." Harry shook his head to reassure his friend that he did not care to see the Malfoy vault.
Mr. Malfoy jumped into the cart and nodded to Grindewald, muttering, "We can go to your vault now, Hagrid.'
The gruff man nodded as they climbed into the stratosphere where the doors grew smaller and smaller and the track thinner and thinner. The group started to tilt back and forth with increasing speed until Grindewald finally stopped them at a dead end at the top of the bank's vault space. "Allow me," he whispered as he jumped down to the vault's platform and ran his finger along the door, setting off a series of unlocking bolts and sliding ball bearings before the door swung open as if of its own accord. Hagrid took a step to the side as if shifting his weight to let Lucius see in. The blond man craned his neck to see but retracted it once he saw that the only contents of the vault was a parchment-wrapped parcel tied in string that butchers used to tie up meat. "Off we go," he mumbled once everyone was resituated.
Harry spent the return trip staring at an oblivious Draco who was distracted by the apparently interesting cave walls that had mini waterfalls running down their sides, but water was nowhere near as blue as Draco's eyes or as fascinating. The blondie yawned and to Harry it was cuter than any cat video any muggle would watch on youtube.
They came to the end all too soon and the grown-ups decided to split up much to the boy's dismay so that Hagrid could take Harry to Ollivander's and Draco could go to Madam Malkin's.
"If you'll excuse me, Harry," Hagrid grunted as they made their way down a side street with curvy shop walls and stained glass windos in shop doors. "Run along to the end of the street there to Ollivander's and I'll join you in a moment. I have something to... purchase."
Harry nodded and smiled at his new friend before running ahead as Hagrid doubled back. He skidded into Ollivander's store, ringing the bell as he pushed open the door. A cloud of dust surrounded him as he shuffled his feet inside in idleness as he waited for someone to respond. A scruffy old man tip toed forward to not kick up to much dust or alert the boy as he spun in circles to take in rows and rows of shelves filled with boxes too small to hold shoes as he might have guessed they did.
"Harry? Harry Potter?"
"Oh, yes!" The boy spun around, kicking up more dust and walking over to the counter. "Could you help me?"
"Help you? Why, of course! I have been waiting for this day since you were born. I already have a few choices picked out for you. Now, here, uh, try this one!" He whirled around and threw aside a pile of spell books to get to a box of wands that he plopped onto the counter. "It's pine wood with a dragon scale core."
Harry took it, having no idea what he was doing, took the stick from Ollivander and waved it around. The dust swirled around him in a tornado that sprouted darts to stab at him more the longer he held the wand. He dropped it at his feet and bent down to pick it up before Ollivander jutted out his wand and shouted "Accio wand!" before the boy could touch it again.
"Well, well, well. I had hoped it would not come to this, but if a wand such as that will not work... you might try this one." He handed Harry a holly branch and took a step back for fear that a disaster would strike again.
This time, though, the dust swirled around Harry in a playful breeze to the sound of harps as Harry's eyes lit up and he smiled at Ollivander as the older man came out from behind the counter to take the wand from Harry.
"This is the one, Mr. Potter. How curious. Holly branch and..."
"And what?"
"Phoenix feather..."
"What is phoenix feather?"
Hagrid peeked his head into the shop.
"The same phoenix who gave a feather to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named..."
"Who's that?"
"Ah, 'Arry," Hagrid bellowed as he set something down outside the door. "Let's buy that wand for you and then find those Malfoys."
Ollivander smiled a greeting and accepted the galleons that Harry handed over before sliding the wand back into its box and giving it to Hagrid. "Well, see ya 'round, 'Vander," Hagrid muttered before escorting Hagrid back to the street where he picked up a golden cage that housed a Snowy Owl. "Meet Hedwig. She's yours!"
Harry snatched the cage away with a grin and beamed up at Hagrid before unlatching the door and letting the bird soar above them. "She's beautiful," Harry cried as Hagrid laughed at his antics. She spread her wings and flew in a spiral like a water spout in the clear sky over Diagon Alley. "Thank you, Hagrid. This is the best gift I've ever gotten."
Hagrid forced a smile at the truth of Harry's last statement. "Well, it's no problem. Now, let's be off." He clapped a hand on Harry's shoulder and Hedwig followed them for a ways before plunging down and flying into her cage as they passed gingerbread stores and Mary Tudor roofs until they arrived at the stained glass windows of Madam Malkin's right as the Malfoys were leaving.
"Well," Lucius droned, "we have purchased almost all of our necessities, so we will be seeing you later, Harry. Hagrid. Draco, say goodbye to your friend,"
Draco nodded and bridged the gap between him and Harry in a hug. "I'll see you on Platform 9 and 3/4," he whispered into the other boy's ear.
Harry pulled away to ask, "Where?" but Draco only stroked his cheek and chuckled to himself.
"Don't worry your pretty little head about. All in due time."
AN: So this was pretty long, but I expected it to be like that. I am not sure what the next chapter will be, but in writing this, I think it will start when Hagrid leaves Harry in King's Cross or maybe after he crosses the barrier... We'll see :)