ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴅʀᴀᴛᴛᴇᴅ ʟɪʟᴀ ʜᴏʟᴍᴇꜱ || ᴅʀᴀᴄᴏ ᴍᴀʟꜰᴏʏ x ᴏᴄ || ʏᴇᴀʀꜱ 1-3

diagon alley

"We must be here," I told my father. "Can you see it?"

"It's hazy, but yes," he answered.

We stepped out of the car and made our way towards the Leaky Cauldron. The pub inside was bustling with people, all very likely to be on their way to Diagon Alley. A very large, burly man was there with a small, wiry kid with messy black hair. The man seemed to be making conversation with the bartender. I wasn't sure quite what it was, but my intuition drew my attention toward him — this boy would be important.

"I believe it's back this way," my father said, snapping me back to the moment. He was pointing towards an opening to a courtyard. The courtyard was quite unkempt, but I located the dustbin immediately. I led my father over and found the specific brick with ease. I rapped on it and the wall began to slide open. My father's eyes grew wide, as did mine.

The wall revealed a road bordered by colorful shops on either side, a whole plaza that could definitely not fit where it was meant to in the streets of Muggle London. There were many advertisements littered about for different shops. The place itself was packed with people, most dressed in robes. I wondered how they weren't dying of heat. Even here, summers can get to be uncomfortably warm.

I took out my list of things to purchase.

"We should go to Gringotts first," I told my father. "We can exchange our pounds for wizarding money."

"Alright then," he nodded, amused as always at me taking the lead. "I don't suppose that it's that massive building right there?"

"Good eye!" I beamed at him. He grinned back. I was going to miss him so much at Hogwarts.

Once we reached the building and climbed the steps we reached a set of bronze doors flanked by two short, relatively ugly creatures. Goblins. They stared at us as the doors opened. I supposed that we looked relatively out of place; me in my blue jeans and grey t-shirt and my father in his khakis and button up. The other wizards wore long robes of many colors, but mostly neutrals and blacks.

Once we came through the doors into a small entrance hall, there was another set of doors also flanked by goblins. These doors bore a message:

"Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there."

"Huh, she wasn't kidding," I remarked.

Upon entering the bank, there was a long hall lined by counters. Sitting at the counters were goblins, dressed very professionally. I approached one that didn't have people standing in front of it. I cleared my throat, but the Goblin didn't look up.

"Excuse me," I said.

"One moment please," said the goblin impatiently. I stepped back, as he did seem to be very busy writing something onto some parchment with a quill. It was very intriguing that quills were used instead of modern pens and pencils. Was everything going to be old-fashioned? Did Wizards not have computers?

"Yes?" The goblin said, finally looking up. He looked down at me and my father over his incredibly large and pointy nose.

"We would like to exchange some Muggle currency for Wizarding currency," I answered. "You take pounds, correct?"

"Yes, we do," he sounded quite bored. "Hand them over and I will do the transactions for you."

My father handed over a few hundred pounds. I felt bad, knowing that this was well out of our budget, and that he'd need to work a few extra hours in order to pay it off. Being a single father of one child isn't easy on the mind or the paycheck. His job paid moderately well at least, he was an economist. Hence why I'd asked Professor McGonagall about recessions.