Percy is Voldamort's Grandson

Ding-dong alley- is it real? Fake? Who can tell? Chpt. 5

Percy's POV

Yeah, last chapter was pretty dramatic, I know. But that's where we are, off-ing to Hogwarts. After flipping back and forth between camp, and my mom's, and then New Rome to warn them where i'd be in case of world-ending, I left for a place called Diagon Alley. Hard to pronounce, right? It's apparently where wizards gets their shopping done. It's in London, of course. We flew there.
We, being me and Annabeth. Of course, she came. I️ knew she wouldn't be able to stay, but...
I didn't want to do this without her.
This was basically a quest. I'm good at quests, sure, but of all the ones i've been on, its usually with Annabeth. And/or Grover.
I️t would feel weird without at least one of them, and
Grover hadn't been able to come. Some nature-crisis down in California, something about forest fires.  He was a little bit too busy, but promised to try and network with the animals near Hogwarts though, and keep an eye on me through the empathy link.
"Just in case you get kidnapped or killed or something- again." He'd said.
We'd followed the directions on the paper Professor Dumbledore has given us, and had gotten into the magical alley pretty easily.

I️t had been amazing to see all the strange shops. We'd gone to Gringotts, first. Dumbledore has told me there was a fund for muggleborn's that couldn't pay, and to use that, but Chiron had had a different idea.
"Go and use the demigod account," he told me; "the goblins will know how to get you in"

"Demigod vault?" I asked, approaching the head desk.
The goblin (goblin?) looked at me from under glasses. (Why was a goblin wearing glasses?) he grunted what sounded like "This way.", but he was a goblin so it could have been "im going to eat you" for all I knew. But hey, when in a wizard bank, right?

Me and Annabeth followed him to a roller-coaster looking cart. "Does the bank double as an amusement park or something?" My murmured words made Annabeth laugh. She'd looked worried the whole trip here.  We'd been in worst situations, but at least we had each other for backup. This would be the months I went missing all over again. We wouldn't have much chance to have contact, not with the wizards watching my every sneeze. The whole 'Voldemort's grandson' thing really but a bummer on discovering I had magic.

"Here" the goblin grunted, shoving a lamp in my hand. I hadn't even realized we had stoped.

The darkness made it hard to see anything as we followed the goblin down a tunnel of doors. "Lost in thought?" Annabeth asked, and I could hear a smile in her voice.

I smiled, too. "Yeah," We stopped in front of a silver door. "Just a lot to take in, you know." The goblin motioned for me to step forward.

"Wait." Annabeth grabbed my hand and looked at me.

"Yeah?" I prompted when she didn't say anything. The goblin dude was giving us a dirty look that not even the shadows of the door's dragon carvings could cover.

Annabeth shook her head, whatever she was going to say lost in a haze of her studying my face. "Just- just come back to me."

I didn't understand what she was talking about. It was only a bank, wasn't it? I took another look at the door. Was it going to eat me or something? It was big, and by big I mean twice my height, and covered with dragon carvings. There were other carvings, too, stuff from Greek legends. I tried not to look to closely at the minotaur carving. "What do I need to do?" I asked the goblin instead.

He only waved a hand at the door. "Place your hand on the door." He said when I didn't immediately comply. But when I put my hand on the door, nothing seemed to happen.

"Percy, look" annabeth pointed at the top of the door. It was melting!
I jumped back and the door melted away. Inside were piles of gold. I scooped some up and quickly got out. The place didn't feel right to me.
***********
"The last thing on the list is a wand." I told Annabeth, who was paying for all my books. It would be a killer to read them, but they seemed cool. The content wasn't so much along the lines of math and grammar.

"You can go ahead without me." She said, eyeing some of the books with the kinda look that said she wasn't leaving here any time soon.

I kissed her forehead. "Alright. Meet me at the ice cream place when you're done."
Walking to Olivander's was easy once I'd asked a passing witch for directions. Finding Olivander himself, though... the store seemed empty when I first walked it, small boxes piled high in corners and on shelves. I assume that's where the wands are. "Olivander?" I called out.

"Just a second!" An old voice came, and I walked around a shelve to see a man with grey hair precariously balancing on a stool and boxes, trying to reach something. He grabbed a box from a shelve, when the contraption he was standing in collapsed.

It seemed like it happened in slow motion. I wanted to stop him from getting hurt. In a blink of an eye the world has stopped and the ground underneath him had turned as soft as a pillow.

"Merlin's beard!" Olivander said, getting to his feet with a wobble as the floor returned to normal. "That's some strong accidental magic there! I assume you are here for a wand? Come, come!"

He didn't let me get an edge in, except to answer questions. "Which arm is your wand arm?left? Right? Right, then? Alright now hold out your hand.."

A wand was shoved into my hand. "What?.." I trailed off.

"Go on!" Olivander smiled encouragingly. "Give it a wave!"

What would it hurt to try? I waved the wand awkwardly, side to side like this was a movie. Nothing happened.

"That's alright! Plenty of people need to try a few. The wand chooses the wizard, you know!"

I tried to ask what he meant, but only got another wand shoved at me. It felt like we'd gone through half the wands in the store when he gave me a light brown wand with waves carved into it. I waved it, and light poured in from no-where. "Wow." I murmured.

"Wow indeed, young man! This is a very old wand- decades old. I'd given up on finding a wizard for it." Olivander game me a look, like he could see all my secrets.

I paid quickly, and left for the ice cream store to meet Annabeth.