When Duchess stepped out of the shop, Hermione and her parents were laughing together, but they stopped and smiled at her as she approached them with the box under her arm.
“You look so happy!” Hermione said to Duchess as Duchess bounced towards her parents. “Why don’t you put the wand in your satchel so you don’t drop it?” Duchess looked up at Hermione,
“It won’t fit, will it?” She asked Hermione.
“Of course it will!” Hermione replied. “I charmed it myself! Go ahead, just open it up and toss the box right in.” Duchess complied. She pulled open the drawstrings, and even though the opening was way too small for that wand box, it seemed to just vacuum the box right into the satchel without even being prompted. Duchess gave Hermione a surprised look. “Now,” Hermione continued, “if you want it, just stick your arm right in there and take it out. The satchel will always know what you want when you want it, and you’ll always get exactly what you need.” Duchess was in awe,
“Thank you!” Duchess said to Hermione again.
“Just don’t tell anyone at school it was a gift from me. I can’t spend all my days charming all these satchels for them. If they want one, they can learn how to do it themselves.” Duchess held up her wrist and watched the satchel dangle back and forth in awe. “Let’s move on, shall we?” Hermione said. And together they continued down the cobblestone road.
“We’re going to the apothecary shop next. When you are at Hogwarts, you will take a variety of classes. One of them is potions,” Hermione began.
“Are all these classes going to be on top of my regular classes? Like English, math, history, and science?” Duchess interrupted.
“Actually, you won’t be taking what you would call Muggle classes. It’s kind of intertwined. Composition will be integrated with any and all classes where you have essays to write. Math and science are integrated into potions. So even though you don’t think mixing potions is ‘magical’, it is still a very important class in more ways than one,” Hermione explained. They continued down the street until they approached a scary-looking shop.
“I know it looks intimidating. The owner is just a bit odd, but he has the best of everything you need. Let’s go.”
There was no one inside the potions shop. Hermione went to the front to ring the bell. As she waited, Duchess roamed around the shop. It was a dark shop with shelves lining the walls and rows running down the middle. It looked like a library, but instead of books, there were jars with labels in English and Latin. There was almost everything from creepy animal parts to plant extracts.
The potions shop thrummed with quiet life: from the back room came a faint hissing and bubbling, as though a dozen cauldrons whispered secrets to each other. The air shifted with every step, steeped in an aroma that was at once acrid, spicy, and sweet— never quite the same twice. Shelves towered to the ceiling, stacked with strange jars and dried herbs, while rolling ladders creaked along the walls of their own accord. Near the counter, a lazy, orange-eyed cat dozed atop a bundle of dried nettles, barely twitching an ear. An enchanted ledger hovered beside the till, scratching out your growing total with a quill that moved as if guided by invisible fingers.
One shelf had glowing glass jars with name tags tied around it. There were powdered root of asphodel, moonstone dust, wolfsbane extract, (labeled handle with care), unicorn hair, crushed bezoar, sliced mandrake root (kept under a soundproof dome… she wondered why) and pickled shrivelfig. All of these words sounded foreign to her, and the one word that didn’t sound foreign… “unicorn…” It wouldn’t actually be a unicorn, right?
The next row over had a sign that said, “Preserved Creature Parts Floating in Greenish Fluid.” Here, she saw jars of basilisk scale, grindylow tentacle, dragon heartstring, eye of newt, fairy wings, and boggart bile.
“Duchess!” Hermione called to her. Duchess ran back up the aisles to the front of the store, careful not to run into anything.
When she arrived at the front of the store, Hermione had a large cardboard box all wrapped up for her. “Open up!” Hermione said brightly. Duchess opened up the satchel and once again, Hermione dropped the package into the satchel with everything else.
“Thank you!” Duchess said to Hermione once again. She was so grateful.