December 17: 1994
8 days until Christmas...
The clerk at Gladrag's Wizardwear was bored.
He had been at his new job for the past seven hours, and not one customer had entered the store, despite it being a Hogsmeade weekend for the nearby school of Hogwarts.
He crumpled his Daily Prophet into a ball and threw it into the rubbish bin across the store, where it landed on top of an equally crumpled copy of Witch Weekly. If asked, he could probably recite the whole article on the new laws of broomstick regulations; he'd read it so many times.
Brriing!
The clerk sat up straighter as the door swung open and two boys entered.
"Good morning. How can I help you?"
"Just looking," the shorter of the two boys said. He had messy jet black hair and round glasses framing vivid green eyes. As the taller, red-haired boy closed the door, a gust of wind blew a tuft of black bangs back, revealing a lightning shaped scar.
The clerk stared. No one since this morning, and then suddenly Harry Potter walked into the store?
"Which one?" the Potter boy asked, holding up a pair of green socks with purple zigzags and a pair of neon pink socks knitted with blinking Christmas lights.
The red haired boy snorted. "How about these?" He yanked a flashing gold and silver sock out of the Clearance pile.
"It hasn't got a pair!" Potter protested.
"It's not like Dobby will care."
The two laughed.
They dug through the mound of socks for a while before ringing up for them the ugliest clothing in the store: the flashing gold and silver sock and a pair that screamed loudly when it got smelly.
The clerk watched them leave and then leaned back in his chair.
People could be strange.
I always wondered what people thought when Ron and Harry bought those socks for Dobby in fourth year...