New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤
✦
Snape vomited.
Violently.
In all his eleven years, he had never felt anything so nauseating.
The drink had no real taste at all, yet the moment it went down, it made him sick beyond belief.
How was that supposed to be beer?
It was clearly an emetic.
The nausea surged again, and Snape hurriedly bent over the toilet for another round.
‘Damn Ashworth!’
He cursed inwardly again and again.
‘Of course.
He did it on purpose.
He wanted me to embarrass myself.’
‘And he made me waste a whole Galleon.’
Callan had given him nineteen Galleons for no reason, but in Snape’s view, that was a completely separate matter.
The two things did not cancel each other out.
The gratitude was still there.
It simply could not erase the malicious little joke.
Fortunately, Lily had not seen it.
That was Snape’s only comfort.
When he finally staggered out, Tom immediately raised his glass and shouted, “To our little hero!”
“To our little hero!”
The guests echoed him one by one, all smiling.
Snape, however, was too dazed to care.
He forced himself back to the table.
There, Callan was still studying the red liquid with wary concentration.
Only one mouthful had been taken from it.
“Gamp’s Old Gregarious. Merlin’s beard…”
When Callan saw Snape’s blank expression, he stared in open wonder and had to try very hard not to laugh.
“How was it?” he asked.
Snape’s lips trembled.
He answered viciously, “Try it yourself and find out.”
Callan shook his head without a shred of guilt.
“I am not short on money.”
Including the student aid fund, he now had nearly four hundred and fifty Galleons.
Wherever he went, he could not be considered poor.
There was no need to take such a risk.
And Callan had never had the slightest intention of trying it.
As far as the future he remembered went, no one had ever managed it.
That alone showed how terrifying the thing was.
Who knew whether the pub owner who invented it had some private grudge against Gamp and had created the drink to punish him, along with everyone who thought of him afterward.
Seeing Callan like that only made Snape angrier.
He badly wanted to throw the entire glass in Callan’s face.
Fortunately, before Snape could do anything that reckless, Tom interrupted.
Smiling, he brought over two glasses of juice as free drinks and quickly took away the mostly untouched Gamp’s Old Gregarious.
Clearly, he had also noticed the look in Snape’s eyes.
Callan quietly tasted the juice, wondering whether juice in the magical world was any different.
Before long, he noticed movement at the pub entrance and reminded Snape, “The Evans family is here.”
Only Lily noticed The Leaky Cauldron at first.
After leaving the car near a neighboring shop, she led Mr.
and Mrs.
Evans and Petunia inside, the three of them crowding so close behind her that they made an awkward little procession.
“Hi, Callan. Severus, what happened to you?” Lily asked, both curious and concerned.
He was no longer trembling, but his face was still frighteningly pale.
At that moment, a nearby customer answered for him.
“He’s our little hero!”
The pub burst into laughter again.
“Nothing,” Callan said at just the right time, rescuing Snape before the boy could explode on the spot.
“Let’s go.”
Callan pulled Snape to his feet, politely greeted Mr.
and Mrs.
Evans and Petunia, and then the group followed Tom toward Diagon Alley.
Everything went smoothly.
The only small incident happened at Gringotts, when the goblin from earlier saw Callan again and thought he had deliberately brought in a whole group of young wizards whose exchange allowances Callan meant to use.
His eyes nearly bulged out.
Fortunately, Callan explained in time and managed to calm him down.
Mr.
and Mrs.
Evans were delighted that their daughter could attend a magical school.
They looked around in wonder the entire way.
Petunia was not as hostile toward Lily anymore either.
It seemed Dumbledore’s visit had indeed helped.
She merely kept telling Lily what she absolutely had to buy for her in the future.
Beyond that, there was nothing.
As for Lily herself, she cried out in surprise when she saw Callan’s bag of money.
She spent most of her time looking after Snape.
Especially after learning that he had to go to the second-hand bookshop, she helped him pick out the used books in the best condition without the slightest disgust.
That truly helped Snape a great deal.
Given how pale and miserable Snape still looked, Lily’s help seemed all the more meaningful, especially beside Callan’s relaxed idleness.
“Callan, why are you just standing there? Come help.”
Only after Lily complained did Callan reluctantly crouch down to help.
Even so, Snape no longer needed to buy things like robes second-hand, which perhaps made him feel a little better.
Most of what first-years needed to buy was more or less the same.
There were no major changes to the required books either, though the editions had changed.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, for example, had already reached its forty-third edition.
Even in his seventies, Newt Scamander was remarkably energetic.
Age had not stopped him from exploring magical creatures, and he seemed to have devoted his life to revising the book.
He would not receive the Order of Merlin, Second Class, until 1979, and would not retire until the 1990s.
He truly deserved his reputation as one of the great magizoologists of his generation.
Then again, the magical world did not have many true experts in any field.
After that rather uncharitable thought, the group finally arrived at the last place they needed to visit.
The shop was small and shabby.
The gold letters over the door had peeled with age, but they still read: Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 BC.
In the dusty window, a single wand lay alone on a faded purple cushion.
“This is the best wand shop?”
Not only Lily, but even Mr.
and Mrs.
Evans looked somewhat doubtful.
“Yes.”
Callan nodded with a laugh, longing bright in his eyes.
“They have been making wands for over two thousand years. The oldest, and the best. Come on. Let’s go in.”
Led by Callan, everyone walked into the wand shop together.
✦
✦
✦
Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.