August 1993
It turned into something like a routine, over the days that followed — Harry showing up most mornings not long after I’d opened, drifting between shelves or settling at the window table with a book, then wandering off around midday to haunt Florean’s ice cream counter instead, the way boys his age gravitate toward whichever adult in the street will let them simply exist without asking too many questions.
I didn’t mind it.
If anything, I found myself looking forward to it more than I probably should have admitted out loud — the quiet, undemanding company of someone who’d clearly decided, somewhere in that first conversation about the ring, that my shop counted as safe.
It was on one of those mornings, about a week into the pattern, which he walked in with a different kind of purpose than usual — not drifting, not browsing, but straight to the counter with the particular set jaw of someone who’d rehearsed what he was going to say and wanted to get it out before he lost his nerve.
“I’ve got a Potions essay due the first week back,” he said, without preamble.
“About properties of moonstone in sleeping draughts.
I don’t—” He stopped, started again.
“I don’t really get it.
The book doesn’t explain it properly, it just says what to do, not why.”
I recognized that particular frustration instantly, and felt an odd little pang of sympathy for it — the specific misery of textbooks written for people who already understood the subject, handed to people who very much didn’t.
“That’s a fair complaint.
Most textbooks are written by people who forgot what it’s like not to already know the thing they’re explaining.” I nodded toward the small table near the window, the one I’d started keeping for exactly this kind of conversation, ever since the ink-stained boy from Flitwick’s group had lingered over the same spot weeks before.
“Sit, if you like.
I can probably help.”
He sat, a little warily, like he expected the offer to come with strings he hadn’t spotted yet.
“You know Potions too?
I thought you did Enchanting.”
“Enchanting is my specialty, but you don’t get through a proper education without a decent grounding in everything else.
I did get an Outstanding in my Potions NEWTs” That was, I reflected, a fairly generous way of describing an entire NEWT-level curriculum dropped into my head by an entity I’d met after dying, but it had the benefit of being essentially true.
“What does the book actually say about moonstone?”
He pulled out a slightly crumpled piece of parchment and read, haltingly, a passage that was — I could tell within the first sentence — technically accurate and almost aggressively unhelpful, all properties and no explanation, the magical equivalent of being told a fact without ever being told why it mattered.
“Right,” I said, when he’d finished.
“Forget the book for a second.
Do you know why we use moonstone specifically, instead of any other pale, shiny mineral or rock someone could’ve picked?”
He blinked.
“I — no.
I never really thought there was a reason.
I thought it was just…
the ingredient.”
“There’s always a reason, even when the books don’t bother explaining it.” I leaned forward slightly, warming to the subject in a way that surprised me a little — I hadn’t expected teaching to feel this satisfying, hadn’t really done it since arriving, and found I’d missed it without realizing.
“Moonstone absorbs and holds moonlight, properly, at a magical level, not just decoratively.
Sleeping draughts work partly by mimicking the body’s natural response to darkness and lunar rhythm — your body already knows how to wind down at night, the potion’s just nudging that response along faster and more reliably than simply lying in a dark room would. This chapter was copied from novelping.com without permission.
Moonstone’s not just an ingredient that happens to work.
It’s doing a specific job nothing else quite replicates as cleanly.”
Something shifted in his expression as I spoke — the particular, quiet click of a piece of information actually landing rather than just being memorized, and I watched him lean forward slightly himself, genuine curiosity replacing the wary, dutiful posture he’d walked in with.
“So if you used a different pale stone,” he said slowly, working it out loud, “it wouldn’t actually do the same thing even if it looked similar in the potion because it doesn’t have the ability to absorb moonlight?”
“Exactly that.
You could brew something with that ingredient and it simply wouldn’t work the way it’s supposed to, because the actual mechanism relies on a property specific to moonstone, not just its appearance.” I sat back, letting him sit with that for a moment.
“That’s the difference between memorizing an ingredients list and actually understanding potion-making.
Once you know why, you stop needing to memorize quite so much, because half of it starts making sense on its own.”
He was quiet for a moment, looking down at his crumpled parchment with an expression I hadn’t seen on him yet — not the wary calculation from his first visit, not quite delight either, but something closer to relief, like a weight he hadn’t realized he was carrying had just gotten fractionally lighter.
“Nobody’s ever explained it like that before,” he said, quietly.
“Usually people just tell me to read it again if I don’t get it the first time.”
That admission sat heavier in the room than I think he meant it to, and I chose my next words carefully, unwilling to let the moment tip into pity, which I suspected he’d hate more than almost anything.
“Well.
Most people teaching a room of thirty kids don’t have time to explain the why behind every single ingredient.
That’s not a flaw in you for not immediately following it.
It’s just a limit of how most classrooms work.
Snape however is a completely different bag of worms.” I nudged the parchment back toward him.
“Want to actually write the essay now, or d’you want to talk through the rest of the properties first?”
“Rest of the properties first,” he said, immediately, with more enthusiasm than I suspected he’d shown for schoolwork in a long while, and I felt something warm settle in my chest at having been, apparently, the reason for it.
●●
We worked through the essay properly over the better part of an hour — not me writing it for him, which I made a point of being clear about early on, but walking through each property the same way I had the first, letting him arrive at the actual sentences himself once he understood the reasoning behind them.
By the end, he had a page of notes considerably more thorough than the assignment strictly required, and an expression of quiet, surprised pride that made the whole hour worth considerably more than any Galleon I’d have made selling him something instead.
“You’re good at explaining things,” he said, as he was packing up to leave, sounding faintly surprised by his own observation, like it hadn’t occurred to him this was a skill some adults simply had.
“Better than most of my professors, no offense to them.”
“None taken.
I like the subject.
I think that helps more than people realize — it’s a lot easier to make something interesting to someone else if you actually find it interesting yourself.” I hesitated, then decided to say the rest of it anyway.
“For what it’s worth, Harry — you asked good questions today.
Better than good, actually.
That’s not nothing.
A lot of people just want the answer.
He looked briefly, genuinely startled by the compliment, like it was an unfamiliar shape in his hands and he wasn’t sure where to hold it.
“I just don’t like feeling stupid,” he admitted, quieter now.
“Everyone always acts like I should already know things.
Being famous, and all that.
Like I’m supposed to have it all figured out.”
I let that sit for a moment before responding, careful not to rush past something that had clearly cost him something to say out loud.
“You’re thirteen.
Nobody’s supposed to have it figured out at thirteen, famous or not.
Anyone who expects that of you is asking for something unreasonable, not something you’re failing to provide.” I said it plainly, without dramatics, the same matter-of-fact register I’d used describing moonstone.
“Not knowing something yet isn’t the same as being stupid.
It’s just where you are right now.
Doesn’t mean you’ll stay there.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite categorize — something between disbelief and the cautious, unfamiliar beginnings of actually being reassured.
“Thanks,” he said eventually, a little rough around the edges.
“For the essay help.
And — that.”
“Anytime.
I mean it.
Door’s open.” I nodded toward the little table by the window.
“That spot’s yours, if you ever want it.
For homework, or just to sit somewhere quiet that isn’t crowded with people who already know who you are.”
That, I suspected, landed harder than the moonstone had — I watched something in his shoulders ease in a way that had nothing to do with Potions at all, the particular relief of being offered a place to simply exist without an audience.
“I might take you up on that,” he said, and for the first time since I’d met him, the smile that followed didn’t look like it was fighting its way past caution to get there.
It just arrived, easy and real, gone almost as soon as it appeared but unmistakably genuine while it lasted.
He left a few minutes later, essay notes tucked carefully into his bag like something worth protecting, and I found myself standing behind my counter afterward with the particular, quiet satisfaction of having done something that mattered rather more than a good day’s sales.
I made a note in my book that evening, right below the line about the door staying open.
Harry — likes understanding things, not just being told them.
Doesn’t get asked good questions much.
Ask him plenty.
I underlined that last part twice, and went to go check on the steady-hand device, still waiting patiently in the workshop, feeling, for reasons I didn’t examine too closely, considerably lighter than I had all week.
Add this to your library Donate powerstones