6 Diagon Alley

After dropping all the materials I had collected till now for the rituals, and petting Butch for a bit and then once again putting him down to sleep, since he woke up when I apparated with him, I once again apparated back to the Leaky Cauldron. This time, not disturbing Tom, since he was busy with a customer, I quickly approached the wall behind which lay the Diagon Alley. Levitating a small stick, I tapped on the bricks in the correct order, causing the bricks to fold onto themselves. I stand there for a bit, admiring the sight before me. I could have simply apparated inside the Diagon Alley, but I loved this view too much to do that. Since, it was still quite early, there weren't many people on the street.

Since, I was taking a break from training today, I decided to enjoy myself a little bit (you don't get any time to enjoy yourself as a house elf). My first stop today was an ice cream parlour which was famous across all of England for its amazing flavours. The name of the shop was Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. They sold many different flavours of ice-cream, from vanilla and chocolate to pumpkin and garlic. Although some of the flavours were simply atrocious, the others were simply just as heavenly. I decided to order a tender coconut flavoured ice cream. It was so good, that I ate two more ice-creams. Paying for the ice-cream, I left quickly, since I was receiving some negative attention from the other patrons of the shop. After all, you don't see a house elf eating ice-cream in an ice-cream parlour by himself.

There were some wizards and witches who did treat their elves kindly, but even they were frowned upon, since house elves were considered inferior beings. Having my mood dampened, I simply decided to ignore the people and enjoy the sights.

My second destination for today was Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment. The shop was painted in a shiny dark blue colour, and had the name of the shop written above the window of the shop in large cursive bronze letters. A bell chimed as I opened the door. The inside of the shop was filled with different sorts of magical equipment, such as cameras, radios, binoculars and telescopes, and wall clocks. This store basically sold almost every legal magical equipment and artifacts. Browsing through all the rows of shelves, I took anything that caught my eye and dumped them all into the magical cart that was following me. I didn't need to worry about money, since currently I was very rich. Of course, I needed to watch my spending in the future, since currently I don't have any source of income.

Deciding that I had collected everything I wanted to buy, I quickly lined up in a queue. The cashier was a little bit surprised at seeing the amount of things I bought, but quickly started to calculate the total amount I had to pay. In total, I bought a pair of binoculars, a telescope, a tent which from the inside had the size of a small house, a ball which never loses its momentum, a set of five tiny toy soldiers who attack any target with a soft sword, and a magical mirror which when tied to a ward can be used to see everything going on in the area of the ward. In total I had to pay an exorbitant amount of seven hundred galleons. After putting all of the things inside my backpack, I headed out of the shop.

My next stop was Magical Menagerie, a magical creature shop, which sold magical creatures and everything that is needed to take care of them. As soon as I entered the shop, I was hit by many different unpleasant scents. The shop was full of magical creatures and was also very cramped and noisy. There were many different creatures such as, rabbits, firecrabs, bowtruckles, poisonous snails, rats, owls, and many different kinds of animals. I started to look through the cages which contained the creatures. Eventually though, stopped in front of a small brown owl. The owl was currently turned away from me with its back towards me. As I was observing the owl, it suddenly turned its head 180 degrees towards me. Surprised, I backed towards the shelf opposite to the owl and hit my head on it's glass cage. As a reflex, I turned around to see that the cage contained a bowtruckle, who had fallen from the tree it resided in. The bowtruckle seemed to be flailing its arms in anger, but surprisingly upon seeing me it immediately stopped and started to walk towards the glass of the cage, and put both its arms on the glass, observing me. I was a little surprised since, bowtruckles were very aggressive towards anyone, who intruded upon the tree that they resided in. Ordinarily, if something like this happened, the bowtruckle would be screeching loudly and trying to hit me. But, here it was completely docile, not even showing a hint of aggression.

I turned to the right and the left to see that in the other cages, the other bowtruckles seemed to have noticed me and were also pressing their hands atop the glass of their cages. I was starting to freak out a little bit now. If it was only one bowtruckle, I would have assumed that it was somehow special, but here all the bowtruckles seemed to be observing me, without showing any hint of aggression. I turned around and noticed that every other creature seemed to be acting normally. Even the small brown owl was once again turned away from me.

I had seen a bowtruckle once before when I was tending to my master's garden, and it had behaved very aggressively towards me. I couldn't understand. What changed ? Deciding to ponder upon it later, I resolved to buy at least one bowtruckle.

Five minutes later, I exited the shop with a bird cage with the brown owl, and a glass cage containing a bowtruckle and a small bonsai tree levitating behind me. Letting my curiosity win over me, I decided to cut short my trip for today. I still needed to buy some tools but it could wait for a few days. Apparating on the spot, I came back to my house, and put all the equipment I bought in the cupboard, and then freed the owl from its cage. Contemplating upon it, I carefully opened the door of the glass cage in which the bowtruckle lived. I was ready to defend myself if it attacked, but it seems I didn't need to worry at all. The bowtruckle, slowly and carefully came out of the cage, and walked straight towards my feet. It paused for a moment, and then started to climb my leg. As it was a pit painful, since it was climbing on my leg by burrowing it's branch like arms on my body, I slowly brought my arm around it and then carefully yanked it from its position and put it atop my right shoulder.

The bowtruckle seemed to think this place was good enough, as it immediately started to sleep after positioning its torso on my neck. Carefully sitting down on the sofa behind me, I decided to just sleep for a while as well, since the bowtruckle didn't seem to be aggressive towards me.