The Serpent Beguiled Me and Other Stories

The Beginning of All Wisdom

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Aristotle

Harry had never experienced this amount of freedom before in his life. For the first time ever, he had two whole weeks to do what he liked. There was no one around to tell him what he should be doing and when he should be doing it.

All Harry had to do to gain this freedom was accidentally blow up Aunt Marge and then worry about expulsion and getting arrested until Minister Fudge put his mind at ease. Now Harry could stay in the Leaky Cauldron by himself until school started. Hopefully Ron and Hermione would meet up with him soon, but Harry wasn't sure exactly when they'd show up since both had spent their holidays abroad.

Harry ate a hearty breakfast in the main room of the Leaky Cauldron his first morning there and afterwards he took his time strolling through Diagon Alley, taking in exactly what sort of shops were there to be found. Before his first year Harry had been so overwhelmed by everything that he'd barely been able to understand anything of what he was seeing the first time he set foot in Diagon Alley. And before his second year Harry had been surrounded by Weasleys, who turned out to be rather chaotic in their shopping habits. Harry had only been able to get the items on his list before Mrs Weasley ushered them all back through the floo.

But now Harry could finally examine every last inch of Diagon Alley to his heart's content. First he made a quick stop at Gringotts and filled his money pouch with gold. And then he systematically started entering stores, beginning at the end of Diagon Alley and working his way forwards back to the Leaky Cauldron.

Most stores were somewhat interesting, even if Harry wasn't interested in purchasing anything there at that time. The clothing stores were a bit boring, as was the shoemaker, but the luggage store was far more interesting than Harry remembered. Hagrid had basically pushed Harry towards the standard school trunk two years ago, but now Harry realized there were many more models to choose from, many with undetectable expansion charms on them. They were quite expensive, though, so Harry kept his gold in his pouch for the time being. He didn't want to blow through all his money on his first day in Diagon Alley.

Halfway through the morning, Harry entered a small shop called Madam Celeste's Enchantments and Curiosa, which was a rather fancy name for a rather small space filled to the nook with all sorts of magical trinkets and gadgets. A young man with a bored expression on his face stood behind the counter, paging through a newspaper as though it was the dullest thing he'd ever read. Harry didn't dare touch any of the baubles around him. He'd since learned that touching enchanted items without understanding what kind of magic they did exactly was a very stupid thing to do. It didn't take very long for Harry to shuffle across the entire length of the store until he reached the counter.

Harry was about to turn around, not wanting to bother the clerk when he wasn't planning on buying anything anyway, when a small stand on top of the counter drew his eye.

LEARN ANY LANGUAGE DURING YOUR SLEEP! GUARANTEED!

Harry leaned a little closer. The stand held amulets half the size of a playing card. They were made of dark wood with many runes inscribed in them. They hung from leather straps, each with a different paper tag on it, listing their language. French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Swedish, Polish and many, many more. There were also a few more exotic languages to be found, like Mermish, Gobbledygook and Elder Futhark Runes.

The runes one especially drew Harry's attention. Ancient Runes had been an elective they could sign up for. It had seemed rather interesting, but Ron had convinced Harry to choose Divination and Care of Magical Creatures instead. Harry hadn't wanted to disappoint Ron, so he'd dropped the idea of learning runes.