Jörmungandr

Red Hot Cinnamon Sweets

Her trip to muggle London was... depressing.

The Blitz was technically over and reconstruction was beginning, but the healthy pulse of the city was gone. London was a veritable ghost town compared to what it would be in fifty years.

Compared to what it was just ten years ago.

No crowded sidewalks. No bustling thoroughfares. Only the occasional pedestrian, head down, looking tired, walking quickly to their destination. A lorry here or there loaded with deliveries. Anyone who could afford to evacuate to the countryside already had.

It reminded her too much of what the city became when the Hallows were destroyed. The stench of heat and hunger and humanity. A forgotten corpse with desiccated buildings as bones.

She would keep her trip short.

Gringotts had started exchanging galleons for pounds in the sixties, but before that most exchange houses were under the table. (She had a feeling that there would be a thriving exchange down somewhere in Knockturn, but didn't want to go down there in the middle of the day when a girl like her would draw notice.) But a few pointed questions at the Leaky Cauldron with her sad, skinny face got the name of Magpies. A shop a couple blocks south of Diagon Alley in full-blown muggle London.

It was quick, she only needed one galleon for nearly a hundred pounds. Wartime inflated the price worse than she remembered. Though, she supposed it made sense. Muggles were in desperate need of gold to fund their own war effort, and blood burned gold always. There wasn't a conflict that could escape it.

Next, clothes. There were still shops open in the wealthier districts—god help a peer deprived of their whims—but she needed clothes that wouldn't attract attention. Just needing things from a common muggle household. She found a small shop off the main street for menswear and shoes. She picked up shirts and trousers, making some excuse about a husband and the burdens therein, before leaving quietly.

When she went after the wand, a muggle disguise would come in handy.

Then, books!!

The almanac was easy enough—the next full moon was in about a week—and a couple of basic fold-out maps of Europe to track movements. An out-of-print tourist guide to London to better familiarize herself with the subtler customs of the time.

Lastly, were the texts for Riddle.

A late-war bookshop didn't have the greatest variety of academic texts, but she picked up a general history of philosophy book that went over the foundational ideas of Socrates to Descartes to Kant. Then, another text for going over Weber, Marx, and Simmel's work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and, lastly, texts from Mannheim, Marcuse, Schumpeter as more 'contemporary' counterparts to them.

A half a dozen books covering structures of power and people and the relationship between the two. The strengths, weaknesses, and the cyclical nature therein should buy some trust at least, right? Especially from Riddle, poor orphan that he was, who wouldn't have access to high-level formal education.

(She did not touch Freud with a ten-foot pole. As hilarious as it would be to see Riddle confront his mommy and daddy issues through a Freudian lens, it would get her nowhere. At best, he would think her stupid; at worst, he would kill her.)

Outside the endemic plight caused by a half decade of war, it was a pleasant trip.

She picked up some spicy cinnamon candy at a little worn-out sweet shop past the bookstore. Little red-hot hard candies that tasted like a bite on the tongue and the heat of a curse. She left the rest of her pounds with the owner. The least she could do for this version of her country.