Harry Potter and the Heir of Slytherin

The Awkardness of Youth

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.

"The books we need are Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2. Break with a Banshee, Gadding with Ghouls, Holidays with Hags, Travels with Trolls, Voyages with Vampires, Wanderings with Werewolves, and Year with the Yeti," Harry recited all of the books they needed to get dutifully, without even bothering to look at his booklist, which was nowhere in sight.

"Not very original title's are they?" asked Terry, getting a snort of amusement from Blaise.

"No, not very original at all."

"Come on, Daphne!" Astoria shouted excitedly over the loud crowd as she tightened her hold on her sister's hand and tried to pull the older blond girl inside of the store with her. Key word being tried. She was, unfortunately for her, much too small and weighed far too little to pull her sister anywhere. "Hurry up! We get to see a real life celebrity!"

Daphne rolled her eyes a bit, but complied all the same. And since her hand was connected to Harry's, it wasn't long before she was also pulling him inside.

This had the chain reaction pulling everyone else inside since they were all still connected at the hands.

Because they were so small, they managed to push their way through the crowd of people more easily than an adult would. It was still a tight fit though and several people got bumped into or smacked.