If You’ve Got a Lantern Hold It High, chapter 3: A Day at Diagon Alley
IF YOU'VE GOT A LANTERN HOLD IT HIGH
Summary: Three years after the war, a stranger arrives at Hogwarts with a letter addressed to Minerva McGonagall by the familiar hand of an old friend. Before the summer is through, the contents of the letter will bring together several lives that might otherwise never have touched.
Chapter Three: A Day at Diagon Alley
“Look!” River cried and Andromeda looked, her eyes following as the girl’s arm pointed, encompassing all of Diagon Alley that stretched out in front of them.
River’s dark eyes were wide as they took in the vibrant chaos of the wizarding shopping street. Her hand held tightly to Andromeda’s, but Andromeda was fairly certain that was from excitement rather than fear.
Serena had offered to stay and watch Teddy at the house while Andromeda took River for her school shopping. It had been the most expedient arrangement, of course, since it was Andromeda who had the familiarity with Diagon Alley that River needed; and a shopping expedition with Teddy, while always highly diverting, did tend to take several times longer than any shopping expedition without Teddy.
Andromeda also suspected, however, that Serena felt overwhelmed at the prospect of so many wizards in one place. But she did not pry. Serena’s reasons were her own, to keep her own counsel about. That she trusted Andromeda with her daughter, that was more than confidence enough.
And so Andromeda and River stood at the mouth of Diagon Alley, the brick wall at the back of the Leaky Cauldron whirling shut behind them. Before them, owls fluttered and took flight from awnings, copper cauldrons teetered in a precarious stack displayed on the pavement, and witches and wizards in robes and high hats hastened to and fro, while sparkling silver letters scrawled out discounted newt eyes, today only across the nearest shop window, disappeared, then began anew.
“The colours,” River breathed, tugging eagerly on Andromeda’s hand. “What are the names for them all? I’ve never seen that one - or that - or that -” Her free arm waved wildly, pointing at a passing witch’s magenta robes, at the gleaming copper of the cauldrons, at the phials of chartreuse potion that bubbled in the apothecary’s window.
Andromeda thought of the muted palette of browns and tans and greens, with perhaps the addition of the purple of heather in late summer, that made up the moorland where River had lived most of her life, surviving in the wild with her pack of werewolves, and she patiently gave names to each of the colours at which River pointed.
A post owl, large and tawny with a letter tied to its left leg, swooped particularly low over their heads as it passed, and River gasped in surprise, then laughed aloud in delight.
“Did you see it?” she cried, spinning on the spot and craning her neck up to watch the owl as it winged away. “I never saw an owl so close before. Quiet told me owls fly around all the time in wizard cities, but I didn’t know they were so pretty!”
Andromeda, though not usually given to impulse, said quickly, almost rashly, “You’re allowed to bring one pet with you to Hogwarts. After we have your robes and books, shall we stop at Eeylops Owl Emporium and see if you find an owl you like?”
But River shook her head, suddenly once again the wise, earnest child who emerged so often from behind those eager eyes.
“No, ma’am, but thank you all the same,” she said politely. “I would love to have an owl as a pet, but I don’t think the owl would love me at the times when I’m a wolf, and that doesn’t seem fair to the owl, I don’t think.”
Andromeda hurt for this child who had learned so young - like Remus, so very much like Remus - to measure the answer to any question first against her lycanthropy.
River, though, had already moved past that disappointment and was skipping forward, pulling on Andromeda’s hand. “The cauldrons in that shop, are they for brewing potions? Like in a potions class? Quiet told me lots of stories about potions classes, and all the magical things potions can do, potions to make people happy, potions to keep people healthy, potions to make people look like somebody else! Do I get to take a potions class? Is there a cauldron on my list, Andromeda, ma’am?”
Once she’d sorted through this rapid-fire delivery, Andromeda delved into the pocket of her outer robe and withdrew the list of required items for first-year Hogwarts students that Minerva McGonagall had provided. Andromeda could not help the painful nostalgia that gripped her heart as she unfurled the parchment and scanned the list, for little on it had changed since she’d undertaken this same shopping expedition with Nymphadora seventeen years before.
Nymphadora had been similarly bubbling with excitement, similarly thrilled at the prospect of all that awaited her at Hogwarts. They’d come to Diagon Alley just like this on a similarly mild late summer day, and Nymphadora had chattered away to her parents about all the magic she would learn and all the friends she would make.
As she had done. She had absolutely done all that she’d dreamed and so much more, and Andromeda had been terribly, fiercely proud of her brilliant and fearless daughter.
Carefully clearing that surge of emotion from her voice before she spoke, Andromeda told River, “It says here you’ll need robes, a hat, gloves, a cloak, various books for each of your classes, a wand, a cauldron, glass phials, brass scales, and a telescope. Where would you like to begin?”
River’s eyes were shining as she looked up at Andromeda. “My wand, maybe? Could we go and get a wand?”
Andromeda nodded briskly. “Of course.”
Traversing the cobbled stones with River, Andromeda felt as if she, too, were seeing Diagon Alley with new eyes. She couldn’t remember the first time she’d come here. As a pureblood witch, she had considered her familiarity with the centres of British wizarding life her birthright. Even later, as a teenager who ought to have known better, she’d pitied the poor Muggle-born children who hadn’t grown up already knowing precisely which brick to tap in the wall behind the Leaky Cauldron, which shops had the cleanest Floo connections and which locations along the street were ideal for Apparition. How sad for them, she’d thought, and how embarrassing, not to simply know it all already.
It was Ted who’d shown her another view. Ted with his puppyish joy, even into adulthood, each time he’d discovered some new facet of the magical world he hadn’t known before. These days, Andromeda couldn’t help but think it was the Muggle-born children who were the lucky ones, getting to walk into Diagon Alley and be dazzled for the first time.
Well, or children like River, or for that matter Harry, who were born to magical families but nonetheless for one reason or another had done most of their growing up far from wizarding society.
They stopped in front of Ollivander’s and River stared up at the shop’s sign, awed. From the outside the place didn’t look particularly impressive, nothing to be seen but a few wands displayed in the dusty windows, but River seemed to sense the magical potential within.
“Until now, I never saw anybody but Quiet use a wand,” she said, still gazing up at the sign over the door: Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. “Not that I can remember, I mean. I suppose I must have seen some wand magic when I was a little kid, but I don’t remember that.”
This much Andromeda had gathered from Serena: River’s parents had been a witch and wizard. River’s mother had somehow incurred the wrath of Fenrir Greyback. Again, like Remus, too terribly much like Remus. But in this family’s case, when Greyback attacked, he had killed the mother and turned her young daughter: River.
The father, horrified, had tried to hide his werewolf daughter from society. When Serena heard - Serena, the mother’s sister, who had also been a werewolf since childhood but had escaped from her own cruel and frightened family - she came and took River away from her father, to raise her in the strict but loving hierarchy of a werewolf pack living on the Scottish moors, far from Greyback and his cruelty.
“How old were you when you went to live with your pack?” Andromeda asked.
River scrunched up her nose. “Maybe…five? I’m sorry, Andromeda, ma’am, I don’t know exactly. Quiet asked me how old I was, too, when he joined our pack, but we don’t count year age so much, like humans do. We keep measure of things by the seasons, and the seasons are a circle that goes on and on. Mama says I’m eleven now, and that she kept track because she knew I might want to go to Hogwarts and that’s when Hogwarts starts, so I guess that must be right. I kind of like that, since I never knew my age before. I’m eleven!” She looked up at Andromeda and grinned.
Giving in to impulse, Andromeda reached out and took the girl’s hand. “Shall we go inside?”
Garrick Ollivander no longer greeted his customers himself. As one effect of his ordeal in the war, the elderly wandmaker had finally given in to the necessity of taking on apprentices. He lurked in the background of the dimly lit shop now, tending his wandmaking workbench while an eager young assistant greeted Andromeda and River at the door. But Andromeda saw Ollivander’s luminous eyes following them as the apprentice drew the usual wide selection of possible wands down from the shelves.
When River found the wand that would be hers, all four of them knew it instantly - Andromeda, Ollivander, the assistant and River herself. Ollivander darted forward out of his gloomy corner, muttering, “Yes, yes, beechwood. Indeed.”
But River had eyes for nothing but her new wand. She gazed up at the silvery cloud of vapour that had billowed out of the wand when she’d waved it. It looked rather like a non-corporeal Patronus. River’s head swung towards Andromeda, the rest of her body still poised in perfect stillness, as if she were afraid of disturbing the cloud of vapour that hung above her.
“I did that?” she whispered.
“You did,” Andromeda confirmed. “How did it feel?”
“It felt…it felt…like magic. Like the charms we cast around our camp to protect us, and the way we run under the full moon, and -” She broke off, the awe overwhelming her.
With a gentle shushing sound, the silvery vapour dissipated into the air and River, with a sigh, let her wand arm fall.
“It felt like it was right,” she concluded.
“Indeed, indeed,” murmured Ollivander, sidling up to River, peering at her with his large eyes. “Beechwood, ten and a half inches, a strong and subtle wand for a witch wise beyond her years, hm?”
River stared up at him. “I - I don’t know, sir.”
But Ollivander didn’t seem to require an answer. He was retreating already, back the murky depths of his workshop, waving a hand at his assistant to box up the wand for River.
Back out amidst the bustle of Diagon Alley, River hugged the wand box to her chest as they walked. Andromeda wondered if River could still feel warmth from the wand, a lingering trace of the spark she must have felt when her hand touched it for the first time. What Andromeda could see without a doubt was that the girl couldn’t stop smiling.
They passed a broom shop on their way to collect the next items from the school list, which led to Andromeda offering an impromptu explanation of Quidditch. River studied the brooms in the window in minute detail and declared them beautiful, her eyes dancing at the thought of a sport played swooping through the air on broomsticks, and Andromeda decided that Ginny and Harry were next on the list of people River must be introduced to.
They bought books and classroom supplies: cauldron, telescope, phials, and scales. There was gold enough to cover their purchases; McGonagall had been very clear on this point. Hogwarts did have funds that could be made available to cover the expenses of students in unusual circumstances such as River’s, and Serena was not to pay a Knut out of pocket.
“Now, your robes,” Andromeda said, consulting the list once again as a gust of wind swept around them. It swirled Andromeda’s own robes about her ankles, a hint of the autumnal weather to come.
River’s current clothing was adequate in terms of warmth, but it was a bit threadbare and certainly much patched. It would be good for her to have new robes in Hogwarts’ uniform black, clothing that would help to signal to the other children that River was, ultimately, more similar to them than she was different.
Their way to Madam Malkin’s shop took them past Gringotts. At the sight of it, River stopped short on the pavement and stared, stunned into stillness by the grand white building with its marble columns and burnished bronzed doors, a goblin in uniform standing guard on either side.
“Is that a school, too?” River whispered to Andromeda. It seemed that to her mind, a school was the grandest kind of place there was and a building this impressive must surely be one.
A woman just then passing them, heading in the other direction, stopped at that and scoffed, staring down her nose at River. She wasn’t anyone Andromeda recognised, though something about the upturned tilt of her nose suggested a Rosier.
“A school?” the woman mimicked. “Fancy that, a child your age not even knowing Gringotts. Can’t you recognise a bank by the goblins scurrying in and out?” She clucked to herself, as she turned to walk away, “Honestly, the types they let into Diagon Alley these days!”
Andromeda felt her blood rising to a boil. She’d left her pure-blood family’s world to escape just that kind of talk. She’d lost her husband, lost her daughter, in the war, and still there were witches and wizards walking about in Diagon Alley who would dare to tell a mere child she was the wrong “type”?
Andromeda opened her mouth to unleash a vengeful defence of River’s inalienable right to stand precisely where she stood - but River was faster.
The girl pulled herself up to her full, though small, height and said in a clear voice, “Excuse me, ma’am. Before you go.”
The woman’s step jerked in surprise, and she half-turned back towards River.
River’s voice rang out clearly. “This is my first day here in Diagon Alley, ma’am, so I’m not sure how you expected me to know it was a bank when I hadn’t seen one before. I was raised to be respectful to my elders, so I won’t say anything more about how rudely you spoke just now. But it seems to me that if you wanted me to know it was a bank, there are much nicer ways you could have said so. Still, I’m grateful for the information, because I do love to learn new things. Good day, ma’am, I hope you enjoy your afternoon.”
Without waiting for an answer, she slipped one hand through Andromeda’s arm, which hung momentarily limp at her side with astonishment, then River tugged Andromeda on along the cobbled street in the direction they had been heading, towards Madam Malkin’s.
They didn’t speak at first as they walked. Andromeda stared down, still stunned, at her small companion. She had a sudden, vivid, and indisputably true image of how River was going to thrive at Hogwarts. The friends she would make, the successes she would achieve. The poise with which she would dispel doubts about her unusual past and uncharted future.
River was going to be extraordinary.
The girl glanced up at Andromeda, seemingly as unperturbed by the encounter in front of Gringotts as Andromeda had been shaken by it. “Andromeda, ma’am?” she asked. “We’re going to get robes now, right?”
Andromeda looked down at River. Then she shook her head. “Not just yet. Let’s make one other stop first.”
Andromeda turned them around, walking back the way they had come. Past Gringotts, past Flourish & Blott’s, past the shop where they’d bought River’s telescope and phials and scales. River looked puzzled, but was too polite to ask why they were retracing their steps.
When they reached the broom shop, where River had so admired the racing brooms, Andromeda stopped.
Here was a child from whom life had taken so much. Her mother, her father, her chance at an uncomplicated childhood. She couldn’t even choose a pet to bring along to school like any other incoming Hogwarts student, because her lycanthropy rendered even that decision fraught.
“We’ve got all your school things, but I haven’t bought you a single thing myself, as a gift, not as a necessity for school,” Andromeda said firmly. “So pick the broom you like best, and that’s the one we’ll get. They used to have a rule not allowing first-years to bring brooms, and they may have that rule still. But we’ll visit the Weasleys sometime soon and Ginny and her brothers will teach you how to play Quidditch, or Harry will, and you can leave your broom with them for a while if you’re not allowed to keep it at school just yet.”
River stared up at Andromeda, her wide eyes wider than Andromeda had seen them yet. “You…you want to buy me a broom for Quidditch, ma’am?”
“Yes,” Andromeda said, struggling between a desire to smile rather more widely than made sense and a need to wipe away a prickling in her eyes. “I would very much like to have the privilege of buying you your first broom. Would you allow me that honour, River?”
Eyes still wide and fixed on Andromeda, River slowly nodded. Then she slipped her hand into Andromeda’s and Andromeda squeezed it. They turned, and entered the Quidditch shop side by side.
(continue to CHAPTER FOUR: The Most Amazing Place)
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(Crossposted from this post on Dreamwidth, which is now my primary journal. Comments are fine in either place.)