It’s cold in England, colder than you anticipate-- It’s not cold so much as an all-prevailing chill, a voice corrects wryly in the back of your head- and you yank your jacket tighter about you, glancing about as if trying to find a sign. Wizards this way!, perhaps.
Diagon Alley . . . hadn’t he said that was in London? Certainly, yes, but London had to be as big as New York; to search blindly for it would be idiotic.
But not as idiotic, perhaps, as the plan forming in the back of your mind. Why not? After all, no one knew you here; what sort of reputation would you have to uphold?
***
It takes two weeks of asking random strangers how to get into Diagon Alley before you meet a wizard who, thank god, buys your story of being a Squib. He gives you a snobbish sort of glance, to be certain, but you’re too used to that to care; the important thing is that he lets you in and leaves you be.
It takes you another hour to locate Gringotts, another ten minutes to both stop staring at the Goblins and work up your courage to speak to them. After some odd minutes spent exchanging American money into English, and further into Wizard, you finally open an account.
You want, you explain carefully, to hold a letter for some seventy years. The goblin’s expression doesn’t change; you wonder if this is normal for wizards. And after seventy years-that was right, wasn’t it? Better make it eighty, just in ca-no, no, seventy-eight (the goblin was growing irritable, but politely so)-yes, in seventy-eight years, you wanted it delivered to the eldest heir of the Black family.
Does the Black family know your intentions, you’re asked, and you reply in your haughtiest voice that they do not and they should not, thanks very much, as it isn’t their business. The goblin raises an eyebrow, nods, and informs you that it shall be done.
And that’s that. You’re left standing there with an oddly hollow feeling in your chest; that feels far too easy.
Now all you have to do is wait, really. You’d added a small epilogue to your letter, one on the back:
I’m here, you said, waiting in Diagon Alley in 1900.
He said he would come, and Sirius had never broken his word.
You exhale slowly, wander outside, sit on the stone steps of the bank and stare out onto the street.
It’s cold in England, colder than you anticipate-- It’s not cold so much as an all-prevailing chill, a voice corrects wryly in the back of your head- and you yank your jacket tighter about you, glancing about as if trying to find a sign. Wizards this way!, perhaps.
Diagon Alley . . . hadn’t he said that was in London? Certainly, yes, but London had to be as big as New York; to search blindly for it would be idiotic.
But not as idiotic, perhaps, as the plan forming in the back of your mind. Why not? After all, no one knew you here; what sort of reputation would you have to uphold?
***
It takes two weeks of asking random strangers how to get into Diagon Alley before you meet a wizard who, thank god, buys your story of being a Squib. He gives you a snobbish sort of glance, to be certain, but you’re too used to that to care; the important thing is that he lets you in and leaves you be.
It takes you another hour to locate Gringotts, another ten minutes to both stop staring at the Goblins and work up your courage to speak to them. After some odd minutes spent exchanging American money into English, and further into Wizard, you finally open an account.
You want, you explain carefully, to hold a letter for some seventy years. The goblin’s expression doesn’t change; you wonder if this is normal for wizards. And after seventy years-that was right, wasn’t it? Better make it eighty, just in ca-no, no, seventy-eight (the goblin was growing irritable, but politely so)-yes, in seventy-eight years, you wanted it delivered to the eldest heir of the Black family.
Does the Black family know your intentions, you’re asked, and you reply in your haughtiest voice that they do not and they should not, thanks very much, as it isn’t their business. The goblin raises an eyebrow, nods, and informs you that it shall be done.
And that’s that. You’re left standing there with an oddly hollow feeling in your chest; that feels far too easy.
Now all you have to do is wait, really. You’d added a small epilogue to your letter, one on the back:
I’m here, you said, waiting in Diagon Alley in 1900.
He said he would come, and Sirius had never broken his word.
You exhale slowly, wander outside, sit on the stone steps of the bank and stare out onto the street.
Wait, yes, but for how long?
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