Brave New World (Jory/Hyacinth)

[Jory Addison]

Jory smiled, but shook his head at the mirror's life story. He let it go on for a minute or two, though, and distracted himself with some of the odds and ends in the immediate area. "Ask it if it can point us to some trunks," he said under his breath to Hyacinth. He typically had no patience for the mirrors. But maybe he was biased, as the one his mother had was a bit of a nag.

[Hyacinth Duprel]

Hyacinth nodded lightly at Jory's advice, but waited for the mirror's story to finish before asking. I don't know for certain, the mirror replied, but one was dragged past quite some time ago. It went left, I know, because I used to sit by a stack of joke wands there. Hyacinth thanked the mirror. Could you do me one favor? it asked, and Hyacinth nodded. Move me up near the windows before you go?

With the mirror tucked under his left arm, Hyacinth was soon on his way again. The mirror commented now and then on the things it saw, on this item or that being overpriced or beyond repair, or something being an especially good find, and Hyacinth spoke back to it, the dreamlike feel of all this enough to overwhelm any shock he might have otherwise felt.

[Jory Addison]

Jory absently listened to the conversation between Hyacinth and the mirror, but was more interested in the various things he saw. As he passed one table, he was unable to stop himself from picking up a well used set of divination supplies in an old wooden box. He had a set of everything included, but he could never have too much of it. Soon, though, they were faced with trunks of every imaginable size, shape, and color, including a pink one with kittens on with emitting a faint mewing sound.

[Hyacinth Duprel]

The mewing had Hyacinth's kitten tumbling over itself to look out of the cauldron and past the bag it was in, and Hyacinth set down his bags there to keep it entertained. "There are many trunks!" he exclaimed as he propped the mirror nearby to see. Don't buy the pink one! The mirror advised. When Hyacinth gave a soft laugh, the mirror went on. Don't buy the one in the corner, either. It's marked down because of the boggart inside.

[Jory Addison]

Jory's eyes widened. "You mean the guy's letting a boggart just live in a trunk? Where people can just buy it?" That seemed incredibly dangerous, even if a boggart didn't cause actual physical harm. "Um, a boggart is this thing that turns into your worst fear when you see it," he explained to Hyacinth.

[Hyacinth Duprel]

Hyacinth's eyes widened, then closed, and with his hands free, he was able to cross himself again. He wanted nothing to do with a trunk that had such a horror inside, and wasn't at all comfortable being near it. If it required being seen, he simply wouldn't open his eyes. "I will not see this thing! Maybe we go instead..."

[Jory Addison]

"Calm down," Jory said. "If it's locked up it's no worry at all. Here, look, this is one of the ones I was telling you about." He stepped over to a trunk with three locks on it. A small ring of keys was tied to the handle by a string long enough to let him unlock one of the locks. "There are bigger ones, too."

[Hyacinth Duprel]

"It can not come out?" Hyacinth asked, peeking between his eyelashes, as though a loose boggart wouldn't know the difference. He crossed himself again in the moment before he reached down to scoop up his kitten and held it close against his chest with one hand.

When he finally opened his eyes enough to see what Jory was doing, and that he was doing it to a trunk that wasn't even near the corner, he relaxed a bit. "It is empty," he said of the trunk. "How will I know that it will work?"

[Jory Addison]

"It can't come out unless we let it," Jory said, shifting to put his box in the trunk. "Watch." He locked the middle one back, then moved the key to the first and unlocked it. When he opened the lid, the trunk was empty again. "See? And watch..." A moment later and he had unlocked the middle one again and pulled his box back out.

[Hyacinth Duprel]

For once a show of magic didn't frighten Hyacinth, likely because it was nothing compared to the thought of Satan stepping out of a trunk to claim his soul. His kitten was purring as though he hadn't had a momentary death grip on it, and now he knelt beside Jory, stroking his pet.

"And the third lock?" he asked. "Do all the locks work?" The trunk itself didn't look in the least odd aside from the locks, but those were easily explained. It was very simple, with its slightly faded red wood, flat top, and sturdy fittings, and he liked it quite a bit.

[Jory Addison]

Jory gave it a shot and nodded, "Yep. This one looks like a good one, unless you think you need a bigger one." It wasn't a tiny trunk, but Jory knew that after a couple of years his own had gotten overfull. He now had to shrink things if he wanted to fit everything into it for a trip.

[Hyacinth Duprel]

"No, this is very big!" Hyacinth said. Considering he'd needed to buy school uniforms, what he'd brought from home had fit into his admittedly overfilled backpack. This trunk was bigger than his dresser, and there were three compartments. Hyacinth tucked his kitten in one of his hoodie's pockets, then reached for the stacks of bags he'd set down nearby.

Everything he'd purchased fit easily into one compartment, including the cat carrier. There was even enough room for the books he still needed. With his backpack dropped into a compartment that had a set of small drawers set into the lid, he would have no problems.

Before they left the shop, Hyacinth propped the talking mirror up in a window near the door, where it could see the goings-on of Diagon Alley and perhaps talk to the customers. It wished them well with a much better attitude than it had begun with.

The bookstore was just as impressive, but there was far less decision-making to be done, and so things moved quickly. Hyacinth bought A History of Magic, Magical Theory, One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, Magical Drafts and Potions, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, and a few others, and, feeling much better about things than he had when he'd begun, he headed off with a kitten in one hand and a trunk in the other for the train which would take him to Hogwarts.