20th August, 1895 — Whizzhard Books, Hogsmeade High Street
Jimmy hadn’t looked at the list of NEWT level school supplies properly until today, although it had come weeks ago. What else had come, from a different source, was more interesting: the funds for his tuition. Great-Gran had always paid his way, but Jimmy had known the money wasn’t from her – she didn’t have any – but he had not, until this year, actually held the borrowed key to an anonymous Gringotts vault in his hands.
Jimmy wondered whether he even ought to use the money for school or not – what good would NEWTs do him? But then, if he went, there would presumably be money next year too... His head had been full of ideas the moment he’d stepped out of Gringotts; but this morning, Jimmy had tucked the school supply list in the pocket of his trousers and gone out, whistling and feeling positively wealthy.
He stopped into Whizzhards’ first, with the intention of getting the boring stuff out of the way first, but when he started searching for new textbooks (Great-Gran might have been spendthrift and found him old books, but no second hand racks for him today!), a different book caught his eye. A Complete Compendium of Tracing and Tracking Charms. It would have sounded deathly boring to him any other day, but suddenly Jimmy wondered – could he put it on the letter somehow, and see where the Gringotts key winged away to?
Which left Jimmy, a good quarter of an hour later, perched in a bookshop armchair, head buried in a dense book of Charms and more blind to the rest of the world than possibly he had ever been before while reading.
Jimmy wondered whether he even ought to use the money for school or not – what good would NEWTs do him? But then, if he went, there would presumably be money next year too... His head had been full of ideas the moment he’d stepped out of Gringotts; but this morning, Jimmy had tucked the school supply list in the pocket of his trousers and gone out, whistling and feeling positively wealthy.
He stopped into Whizzhards’ first, with the intention of getting the boring stuff out of the way first, but when he started searching for new textbooks (Great-Gran might have been spendthrift and found him old books, but no second hand racks for him today!), a different book caught his eye. A Complete Compendium of Tracing and Tracking Charms. It would have sounded deathly boring to him any other day, but suddenly Jimmy wondered – could he put it on the letter somehow, and see where the Gringotts key winged away to?
Which left Jimmy, a good quarter of an hour later, perched in a bookshop armchair, head buried in a dense book of Charms and more blind to the rest of the world than possibly he had ever been before while reading.
