(HOGWARTS MYSTERY) Janelle Morgan -- Year 1: The Forbidden Corridor

Chapter 2: A Knowledgeable Friend

With a purpose, I walked casually through the cobblestone street of Diagon Alley, careful not to catch anyone's eye. I saw a small group of witches and wizards conversing and eating ice cream outside a 'Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour'. As I passed them by, I had accidentally caught the eye of a wizard—or maybe he had caught mine first—that seemed to be looking at me like I had no right to be wandering around here alone. Then he turned to the others and murmured something to them in a low voice that I could not hear before turning his head back in my direction. I was pretty sure the wizard had somehow recognized me as the 'possibly cursed' sister that my 'definitely cursed' brother was related to. Before everyone else in the group could turn and notice me, I looked away from them and quickly slipped into the nearest shop opposite them. I didn't bother reading the shop's name; I just wanted to escape the group's seemingly aggressive stares and didn't want to deal with the attention they seemed eager to give me about my brother's incident.

Luckily it was a shop I actually needed to find. It was a retail store that sold every kind of robe imaginable, from casual to formal, from school robes to plain everyday robes, from crazy to sane, you name it. Most of the school robes had a range of four colors, possibly representing the Hogwarts Houses: red for Gryffindor, blue for Ravenclaw, green for Slytherin, and yellow for Hufflepuff.

I pulled out my letter and looked over the list of things I needed for the year. One of the things on the list I was required to bring were a few sets of robes to wear for school and to wear for outside of class, and this store seemed like the place to shop for those exact things.

As I was perusing through all of the colorful ties for each of the Houses—I had admittedly found myself attracted to the red and gold striped ties that were for Gryffindor House—a seemingly elderly woman came up to me, seeking my attention. She had introduced herself as Madam Malkin and kindly offered to help me find the right robes I needed for school. As she was performing body measurements on me, she had briefly asked if I was related to the 'cursed' boy that was mentioned in the Daily Prophet for being expelled from Hogwarts last year—which was his fifth year—and I quickly said, "No." Madam Malkin said that the 'cursed' boy—Cursed Boy is not his name; it's Jacob, I thought but did not say—and I looked a lot alike, but I shrugged the idea off. Unbeknownst to her, she was right, of course. When we were young, people often commented that it was obvious that Jacob and I were siblings, because we had the exact same nose, chin, and hair and eye color. If only he hadn't disgraced our family name and disappeared from us, I would've still thought of him as a part of the family. It seemed impossible now.

Luckily Madam Malkin didn't say much about the 'Morgan Incident', mainly because she probably sensed that I didn't care to talk about it, but I didn't think she thought it seemed a personal topic to me—it was, but she didn't need to know that.

After I bought all my robes for school, I left 'Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions', which happened to be the name of the shop I had snuck in to escape the group of witches and wizards outside of Florean Fortescue's. Luckily the staring group was no longer in the area, which was a relief. I'd made a mental note to myself to keep looking down to the ground so as not to catch a single person in the eye for the rest of my shopping experience.

Unfortunately, that didn't seem to work out in my favor, because I had accidentally bumped into someone coming in the opposite direction.

"Sorry," I apologized quickly, instinctively looking up at whom I had stupidly collided with.

"No, it was my fault," said the dark-skinned girl in front of me, straightening her rectangular glasses on her face. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

We paused and looked at each other. She was a cute girl with dark skin and even darker hair draping over her shoulders and past her elbows. She wore large glasses that probably very rarely left the inside of a book. She appeared to have come from an Indian family, despite having the same accent as me. Between the two of us, we looked similar in height and age.