Harry rolled his eyes at his friends attempt at copying him. It was actually pretty good. Blaise even decided to pull out larger syllable words that only Harry would ever use in a real conversation.
As greetings came to a close, the groups three chaperones decided it was time to get their attention. Clapping her hands together several times, Misses Davis soon gathered the attention of the children around her. With an amused smile on her face, she began speaking.
"It's going to be a bit difficult for such a large group to move around. Therefore, I want each of you to grab onto someone's hand so that none of you get separated."
"Do we really have to do that?" asked Terry, surprising, as the others had expected Tracey to be the one to speak up and act like a petulant child. "I mean... that makes me feel like a kid."
Harry had to actually nod at that. He agreed with Terry, though he would not say anything to dispute the woman before them.
It may have had something to do with the fact that his hands were already occupied, and the warmth from the skin on skin contact was, while not quite distracting, was certainly not helping him any.
"You are a kid," Mister Granger said dryly, only to be lightly elbowed by his wife. Terry flushed red.
"Be nice," she murmured in his ear. As Hermione's father feigned injury by rubbing his torso where Misses Granger hit him, Misses Davis clapped her hands again to gather attention to herself.
"Now then, each of you follow Harry's, Daphne's, Astoria's and Hannah's example and grab someone's hand so that you don't get separated from the group."
There was a bit of mumbling from a few members of the group, with Tracey being the loudest. Eventually, however, everyone found their hands linked together with someone else's. They looked a lot like a human chain. Misses Davis put a bright smile on her face when she saw this.
"Aw, you guys look so cute! I wish I had a camera!"
The number of scowls she received from the group was rather astounding, and would have put many people at unease had it not been for the fact that they were coming from a bunch of children.
"Now, I need to make a quick stop at Gringotts first so if anyone else needs to make a money withdrawal, this will be your time to do so." She drew her wand and prepared to open the way to Diagon Alley. "Now, as the muggle saying goes, let's get this show on the road, shall we?"
XoX
It was not more than half an hour later that the group left Gringotts with their wallets or purses full. A few of them, like Harry, Daphne and Hannah had brought money with them and did not need to visit their vaults. The rest ended up making a quick pit stop and taking a long, terrifying ride down to the underground vaults so they could grab some money.
After that it was down to the first and most important stop of the day; Flourish and Blotts.
"Geez, it's incredibly crowded here, isn't it?" was Tracey's rhetorical question as she and the others waded their way through the large crowd of people jostling each other to get inside the store. None of them had ever seen the place so crowded before. "Maybe we should wait until the crowd goes away before we start shopping."
"You might have a point there," Hannah looked at the large group of middle aged witches that were literally bumping into each other in their efforts to enter the store. Several people were actually trying to liberally shove others out of the way. It all looked incredibly violent. "I don't know how we're going to get in there right now."
"We could wait until the crowd dies down," Harry spoke up as he looked at the group of people warily. "But if we did that, we wouldn't be able to enter the store until half past four."
"Why is that?" asked Tracey, turning to look at her raven haired friend.
"It may have something to do with the large sign on the window," Daphne stated dryly, pointing with her finger towards the upper floor window. Tracey and the others who had not been paying attention to anything except the crowd all looked up. There on the upper windows was a large banner that proclaimed:
GILDEROY LOCKHART will be signing copies of his autobiography MAGICAL ME Today 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
"Are you serious/We can actually meet him!" Tracey and Hermione squealed at nearly the same time. Hermione then added, "I mean, he's written nearly the whole booklist!"
"Of course that's what you're interested in," Tracey rolled her eyes while Hermione huffed.
"Oh, shush you."
"Speaking of booklist," Neville added, a sheepish look crossing his face as his cheeks became tinged with pink. "What books did we need again?"
"Lost your booklist somewhere, Neville?" asked Blaise, smirking with some amusement. Neville flushed bright red, but nodded.
.
.
.
‼️If you want to access advanced chapters, wait no more and subscribe to my Ko-Fi, where you can buy books in completely downloadable PDF format.‼️
☕️ko-fi.com/skyarc☕️