A very merry shopping trip
The Ways Of the Faeries are mysterious. The Ways are the most treacherous means of magical travel known to Wizardkind.
And Albus Dumbledore, holder of various titles, the only one of which he preferred to be referred to being the Headmaster of the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Hogwarts, just used them like it was the easiest thing in the world.
And it truly was. All that he was asked to do was to think of his destination, similar to when he apparates, but instead of spinning on the spot, he took a single step forward with the little princess’s hand in his with his eyes closed.
And just like that, there he was, in front of the Leaky Cauldron, student in hand. Around them, none of the Muggles gave any indication of what must have appeared to be an old man with a shockingly long beard and a little girl with mismatched eyes, one of which shone with a charm unlike any other.
The little girl was also an oddity in and of herself, considering that all she was wearing was essentially a lightly-woven poncho. But no Muggle even turned so much as a weird side-eye at her.
“The Faerie Ways will hide (obfuscate) us from the eyes and ears of the normal (oblivious) folks!” Said the little heterochromatic girl to the question he had yet to ask. And somehow, to his ears, she seemed to have managed to speak multiple words at the same time.
He eyed the little girl and her too-wide smile as she did her best impression of the exact thing she supposed she was, a cute, oblivious little girl who held no secrets.
Her guise would have held up perfectly well too. Albus was getting old after all, and perhaps he had begun hearing things. It wouldn’t have been too odd of a thing. Except that her eyes were shining in a manner that practically shouted ‘I’m lying’ to the old and still kicking headmaster.
He did not say or do anything. Albus simply stared at Tania’s face for a good three seconds and began approaching the Leaky Cauldron, little mischief-maker in tow. He cast the disillusionment charm and a spell of magic removal on his person every five seconds. As a healthy precaution.
When he opened the way to Diagon Alley, a little bit of the inner Faerie of the girl popped out. The first time he tapped on a brick, the eyebrows on the little girl, beautiful they may be, even to a disillusioned Albus, rose higher and higher, till they almost disappeared up her hairline.
When Albus re-adjusted his glasses again and tapped the last brick on the sequence with a dramatic flourish that may have included a minor spell that made the opening of Diagon Alley more grandiose than it actually was.
Just as the bricks began rearranging themselves, the little girl’s clothes too morphed into a simple and elegant sundress.
She simply stared around her, spinning in place as Albus caught up to her. “Now,” said Albus as he caught up to the starry-eyed little girl, “the first order of business here is to get to-”
“The clothing store!”
The old man stopped in his footsteps and turned to look at the little girl with him, and recalled the fact that she was wearing her familiar and not actual clothes.
Correction. Cloth, singular. All she was wearing was the sundress she had conjured from her friend and nothing else.
A good laugh, a kick to the shin and a few stares from a couple of bystanders later, the strange duo found themselves before the doors of Madam Malkins’. It took some effort for Albus to convince the lady to accept his sickles for her service as she made several sets of clothes for the little girl.
Curiously, most of the clothes were summer-themed, even though Tania had not given her any sort of instruction at all. As she walked out of the changing booth, wearing a light yellow one-piece smock that reached a few inches below her knees with a matching cute hat made to shade her from the sun on her head, something happened that neither she, nor her newly appointed guardian had anticipated.
She was intercepted at the door by a boy whose hair was blonder than hers was, and that was most certainly a feat worth mentioning. He seemed to have a case of (insubordinate idiot syndrome) resting greater-than-thou face. His face brought back memories that Tanya would rather not remember, so she hid her face behind her hat as she headed towards the nearest sweet shop.
Tania had no doubt in her mind that that would be where her erstwhile guardian would be. However, she was stopped again by the boy as he pulled her arm towards himself.
“You… Who are you? Why have I never seen you be-” Tania may have been stripped of the majority of her powers and status by her mother’s edict, but she could still bedevil a little kid to cling to absolutely nothing and talk to air as if it was her.
She also had just enough authority to ask a pixie floating nearby to bother the bothersome blonde boy. Once that bother was dealt with, Tania headed to the nearest place selling sweets.
She found him, exactly as she had expected, in the ice cream store. Which was somehow different from a sweetshop that also sold ice cream in a manner Tania did not wish to dive into right that instant. She knew that someday she would, however, much to her own current distaste.
He too spotted her and took them both to their next destination, wading through the crowded street to where he had planned to first take her, the bank.
“But why the bank? I may be the rightful princess and future Lady of all goblins, but that does not mean that I will have an account in their bank. Right?”
For some reason, the headmaster only gave a cryptic smile and stroked his beard as they walked through the doors. They found an open counter easily enough. They were right after a mountain of a man and a small child. Whom, of course, Tania found interesting.
“Is he a half-Giant?” she asked the headmaster, to which he nodded. She had more questions, but that was not the time, nor the place for it.
But he did look quite out of place among the goblins. A Giant among Goblins. Tania chuckled as she thought of the concept. When they arrived before the goblin, he simply looked down down at his papers and signed for his newest customer to state their business. And when they did, he stopped doing his papers.
Every Goblin in earshot stopped doing their papers. In fact, one Goblin who had been transporting paperwork between clerks for approval stopped dead in his tracks. All due to what Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, and frankly, a wizard they could not give any less care about, said.
“I, as the guardian, wish to make a withdrawal on behalf of my charge, the Princesse of the Fae, Titania Erbe Silber Retterin Fee.”
Quietly, the Goblin raised himself off his seat to look at the one claimed to be his princess, finding a little girl in a yellow smock licking the last of the scone off her fingers. When she looked up from her latest treat to look at the Goblin, he felt the dual-coloured eyes shine faintly with magic and gaze straight into his very soul. Something he had thought he had traded away for something more meaningful, like gold, like every Goblin before him had and every Goblin after him would do.
He quietly leaned back into his seat and took a short, slightly quivering breath and told the Professor and his charge, “Which vault do you wish to open? The ones available to the Princess would be-”
“Vault 001, if you would. And please, how fast do you think it will be?” Dumbledore asked calmly, with a small smile playing across his face at the clear shock on the Goblin’s face.
But Goblins were nothing if not professional. The old Goblin regained his composure and poker face within seconds of losing it and stood up on his chair, “I, Gornik will be the one to lead you to the Vault you wish to see. Vault 001 is… finicky.”
As he jumped off his high seat to the floor with a surprising amount of spryness, he offhandedly continued, “All non-Goblins are not allowed to retain memories of this trip, excluding the Queene herself, so you have my apologies, Princesse, I have been informed that this could be slightly unpleasant.”
And thus, Tania and her guardian found themselves inside a sweetshop later that day with an entire hour’s worth of memories missing from their memories and a new set of robes on Tania. Her familiar had again returned to the form of a cat and was quietly purring as she stroked his back. Not one person spoke a word till after they had their fill of their respective snacks.
Tania had ordered for herself some chocolate truffles and some tea, without milk. Of course, the tea had been changed into a steaming hot cup of cocoa by Dumbledore before it had reached the table.
When asked for the reason for his interference, he explained that no child whose height from head to toe was less than his beard needed strong tea. Unfortunately, Tania had to comply with his impeccable logic, after all, she wanted to actually grow to a decent height when she grew up. No part of her wished for anything else.
“Well…” Said she, breaking the silence, pointing to the mess of ‘necessary items’ around them, which extended from the sensible stuff, like her new clothes, to the books and stationery items for her new school, but even there, Tania could see the idiocy of the new society she was joining.
“Professor Dumbledore, no, guardian mine, why in the name of my mother’s name, may she never hear of this conversion, do we have parchment and quills for our personal use instead of proper pens, pencils and paper? The things invented quite the while back for ease of writing and for the improvement of legibility? And don’t try to sell me on the concept that wizards cannot use pen and paper. How else will the books right next to the parchment and quills have been made? Answer in the order of the questions I asked you, if you will.”
Tania could see the intense twinkle in his eyes as he contemplated his answer, looking exactly like a poor man’s Merlin as he did so. “Well, little faerie, if you must know… It is by the mandate of the government.”
All of the rage and frustration left her body as Dumbledore’s answer reached her brain to be properly processed. It was such a nonsensical answer, and yet it made all the sense in the world.
“But… why?” Asked Tania, with the tired frustration extremely evident in her voice.
“The Ministry of Magic was created in the year 1707, you will learn most of this in your History of Magic classes but for this particular question, all you need to know is that one of the clauses stipulated that all students of Hogwarts needed to be provided quills and parchment, which would be their means of communications with the school, whether it be through exams, assignments or whatnot. Of course, since parchment and quills are cheaper than pen and paper, it has remained the standard ever since. I expect all of this to change within the next decade, of course, but your objections have been noted, little witch-to-be. Any questions?”
Tania had many things to argue with, but she gave up midway with a sigh and picked up her stuff for her to get the very last thing on her list.
“Alright, so where do we go to get a wand, whatever the heck that is? Please tell me it will be quick, at least?”
Dumbledore smiled softly, and led them to the wand store. And, as it turned out, the choosing of the wand was not quick. Not even a little.
When they had come inside the store, it had been an utter mess with wreckage on the floor and wands piled up on a corner. The proprietor, however, did not look the least bit irritated by the fact and had an air of self-satisfaction around himself.
An air that promptly proceeded to show itself the door and disappear when Tania did not get a single wand to cooperate with herself. What showed up to replace it, however, was not an aura of depression or resignation, as might have been expected, but instead a fierce aura full of interest and something Tania respected a lot, which was his love for his own profession, and the need to make sure that his customer got the very best of what he could offer.
Before they could truly get into the process of getting Tania her wand, the proprietor of the shop, who asked Tania to call him Mr. Ollivander, got sidetracked by her guardian, who took him aside, beyond even the range of Tania’s ears and returned fifteen minutes later, without, as Tania made sure to point out, Ollivander himself.
According to Dumbledore, Ollivander was struck by a lightning bolt of inspiration and was using it to the absolute fullest. He then proceeded to conjure a full chess set and challenge Tania to a match.
As it was a casual match, and Tania had not interacted much with chess in her past, there was no time limit and she was free to stay still to think as much as she wished.
She lost her first four games within fifteen minutes, each in wildly different ways, but all within the first six moves. She lost her fifth game within ten moves, and the next in eleven.
It was in the twenty second move of their seventeenth game that a very dishevelled and charred Ollivander returned from the back of his shop with an elegant wooden box that seemed to magnetise itself to Tanya’s eyes.
He seemed to be saying something, but she did not hear a word that was being said, until finally, the box was opened, and the object being held flew to within her grasp. Immediately, the world seemed to come into focus, every little thing becoming more relevant to her.
It was the most magical experience, it was like the drugs and magic she used to utilise for combat effectiveness but did not numb her in the ways she was used to. Simply put, she suddenly felt like she had regained a piece of herself that she had lost long before.
The object in her hand was what was called a wand, about the size of her arm, thin and sleek, with a strange bump around two thirds of the way down from the pointy end, after which the wood seemed to changed into a darker material, the perfect size for her to wrap her hand around and not lose her grip.
As Tania admired her new wand, the words being said to her finally started getting through to her.
“What is in your hands is quite frankly, my masterpiece. It is not very often that a humble wandmaker gets to work with materials of such myth and legend. Both the wood and the core had been primed and readied by your guardian before it reached me, leaving me to bond them and make the wand. The materials cooperated more than I could have ever imagined, leading to this perfectly bonded wand.”
He stopped for a moment to collect himself and then continued, with an emphasis on the bits Tania wanted to hear. What exactly was the wand she had fallen for at first sight made of? “This wand is made from two of the most magical substances known to wizardkind. The wood is a branch from, I am informed, the oldest Hawthorn tree and the core is a single strand of hair from the daughter of the Queene of all things magic, the Faerie Queene, Titania herself!”
Tania felt a surge of energy rush up from her arm at the mention of her mother’s name. Her wand seemed to be a bit feisty and temperamental.
“The wand, of course, will be the standard twelve galleons. As much as I wish to give it to you for free, for providing me with this great chance to work with stuff from legends, my pride will not let me.”
Thus, Tania had gotten for herself all the things she needed for her first trip to Hogwarts. Behind her, a little boy with a strange scar left the alley.