Chapter 72: Diagon Alley and the Leaky Cauldron

Thus, Ivan and Harry lived in the Leaky Cauldron for the remaining two weeks of summer vacation.

Ivan had more to do now, as Harry was very excited.

Over the next few days, he visited almost every magic store in Diagon Alley. He convinced them to advertise in the newspaper and, thanks to the increased sales of 'The Magic of Hogwarts', many of them were willing to do so, paying much more than they had initially paid.

This allowed Ivan to make a lot of money, and he bought himself many things, such as ingredients for potions far in excess of the normal amount used by young wizards.

Last year, when he was preparing the multijuice potion, the book that recorded the formula had many potions that improved his combat ability, which was very useful. If he had to buy the finished product, it would have cost many galleons, it was more cost effective to make his own.

In addition, he bought a fascinating real-time constellation model.

With that, he no longer had to go to astronomy class, Ivan was sick of freezing every Wednesday night in the astronomy tower, especially considering his extreme fear of heights.

Then he went with Harry to buy a few things from their school supply lists.

They went to Madam Malkin's robes for all occasions first to buy a new robe and just as they left the store, they saw a crowd of people huddled in front of a store.

Curious, they approached the store, and Ivan noticed that it was a Quidditch store, which had a beautifully handmade broomstick in the store window.

"Firebolt, it's the best broomstick on the market! The broom is made of ebony wood, it's made of birch or hazel, and it has numbers engraved gold on it."

Ivan just glanced at it and lost interest, but Harry, next to him, almost had his face pressed against the glass window.

"Come on Harry, you already have a broom, so you don't need to buy a new one," Ivan said, and then thought of the 2001 Nimbus his parents gave him for Christmas last year that had been lying under the school bed the whole time.

Harry said, "But this is the firebolt, it's the fastest broomstick in the world."

But Ivan rebutted him, "But it's also the most expensive!"

Harry nodded approvingly, he looked at the tag, it said the price was negotiable, he didn't want to think about how much it was worth, but one thing was for sure, he might not be able to afford it.

It took a lot of effort to pull Harry away and if he had let him, he would have stood there all day looking at the broom.

After leaving the Quidditch store, they went to Flourish & Blotts to buy new textbooks.

She needed a new Defense Against the Dark Arts book, while Harry needed a book for Care of Magical Creatures and Divination.

But they were surprised when they entered Flourish & Blotts, which was in disarray, with the beautifully bound spell books gone, replaced by large metal cages containing perhaps two hundred monster books.

These books were locked together, where they fought and bit each other, torn pages flying everywhere.

"Are you Hogwarts students?" The manager greeted them impatiently, but when he saw Ivan, he smiled and said, "Oh, it's you, Mr. Mason, what book do you need?"

In a single year, Ivan bought over two hundred magical books at Flourish & Blotts, making him the most popular customer.

"What are these books about?" said Ivan as he pointed to the iron cages.

"Forget about them, these monster books are horrible. I've never seen such a horrible book in my life, they're worse than the invisible book of invisibility. I've been bitten five times this morning," said the manager, and as his voice dropped, two monster books piled on top of another, and after the resulting struggle tore it apart.

"No! Enough, enough!", The manager stuck a cane through the bars and pulled the books apart, shouting, "I'll never order these books again, never again! It's a nightmare, and if I find out which idiot has designated those books as teaching materials, I'll kill him!"

When he heard her words, Harry acted as if he knew nothing.

Hagrid had given him a copy of the book the other day, which gave him a sick feeling, he knew Hagrid should have assigned the book as a textbook. No other teacher would except Hagrid.

Ivan, seeing how pitiful the manager was, decided to tell him how to tame the book, he said, "Actually, it's very simple to deal with these books, just stroke their spines and they'll calm down."

"What?!" the manager exclaimed.

Ivan gestured to the other to take a book out of the cage, the book tried to bite, but as soon as Ivan slid his index finger up and down the spine, the book shuddered and opened, lying quietly in his hand.

"My goodness, Mr. Mason, that's amazing!" the manager exclaimed, "You've saved me a lot of trouble!"

The manager told several employees to take out the monster books and, after calming them down as Ivan had done, to tie them up with string.

The manager gave Ivan and Harry the best possible discount.

Ivan was frank, he took a few books, including some third year books.

The second year curriculum was exactly the same as the first year curriculum, and most of the material had already been learned by Ivan.

So he decided it was a waste of time to go to second year classes, so he decided to attend third year classes, which Professor McGonagall agreed to at the end of last year.

Harry bought Intermediate Transfiguration by Emeric Switch, The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 3 by Miranda Goshawk, and Performance in the Future by Cassandra Vablatsky.

But Harry didn't look at his new books, his eyes fell on another book, The Omen of Death, which sat on the little table and read in big red letters, What do you do when you know the worst is coming?" he asked.

"Oh, I wouldn't read a book like that if I were you," said the bookstore manager when he saw Harry's gaze fall on the book, "When you read this book, you start seeing signs of death everywhere, it will scare you to death."

Despite the manager's warning, Harry still stared at the cover of the book: there was a dog on the cover, almost as big as a bear with two big glowing eyes. The dog looked strangely familiar to him.....

Harry tugged Ivan and gestured for him to look at the cover.

Ivan looked at the cover, the black dog looked like Sirius Black, it looked like the harbinger of death, no wonder Harry felt a little uncomfortable.

Harry looked at the book and whispered, "Ivan, didn't you say that night..."

"I think it was just a stray dog!" said Ivan, then added between gritted teeth as he thought about how he was chased down the street for several blocks, "Yes, a very nasty stray dog."