Harry Potter and the Gift of Memories [Harry Potter Fan Fiction]

Chapter XXXV: Holiday Shopping, Part II

Diagon Alley was even busier than usual. There would normally be upwards of one-hundred witches and wizards roving the alley and shops at any given time. Now it looked as if there were more than a thousand.

The street were jam-packed with people bustling to and fro, pushing and shoving as they made their way into specific stores so they could get on with their holiday shopping. Mothers clutched their children's hands tightly so they would not get separated amidst the chaotic throng of human bodies. Fathers had their youngest children riding on their shoulders to keep them from being trampled by beings three to four times taller than they were. It was, in a word, mayhem. The entire alley was in frantic disarray as everyone tried to get their Christmas shopping done.

Harry casually wove his way through the throng of people, gliding through the mass of flesh and clothing that bunched around him like a parody of a blanket. The only good thing he could see from having so mane people crowded into a single area was that no one would notice through the mass of bodies.

Not that it mattered if they actually looked at him. He didn't really look like himself at the moment. With messy blond hair and high cheeks bones, Harry looked more like an aristocrat's son than himself. The only features he had been unable to mask was his messy hair style, emerald green eyes, and the scar on his forehead currently hidden underneath his hair. For some reason, his magic could not hide those features. He assumed it was because they were such an innate part of him that his magic simply refused to hide them.

Following the directions he had received from Tom, Harry made it to one of the many stores lining the alley. The store in question appeared to have been taken straight from the first century. A midieval building made of worn bricks with a thatched roof and a large chimney. There were no windows to this store, only an entrance that used a curtain to keep from revealing the interior instead of a door.

Harry pushed the curtain aside and entered. The first thing he noticed was how very cluttered the store was. Filled with tables and stands that contained all kinds of items he could only assume were magical in nature, the tiny shop contained very little room to move about in.

The shop itself was not very large, making Harry suspect the owner was not using any kind of magic to expand the store. Or maybe this was just the room where all of the items being sold were kept. He noticed that there was a doorway near the back behind a counter. Harry didn't know all that was involved in enchanting. Perhaps some forms of enchantment required powerful and complex rituals that required a lot of space, and the room in back took up most of the expansion charm? Or maybe he was just over thinking things, as was his wont.

“Ah, a guest, and one so young, too.”

From the doorway in the back came a woman so wrapped in clothing that the only thing Harry could distinguish were yellow eyes glowing like twin moons. She dressed in what appeared to be a combination of a witches robes and clothing from India. Her long, dark purple robes had more accoutrements than he had ever seen on a person and clung to her womanly frame yet revealed very little he could discern. A dark cowl wrapped around her entire head, covering all but her eyes and giving her a mystical appearance.

She walked forward with slow, measured steps, stopping in front of Harry and examining him.

“And what can Madam Amora do for you, young one?” she asked in a misty voice that Harry supposed was designed to add to her mystique.

“I was told that you were the best person to go to for people who wanted something enchanted,” Harry answered. “I was hoping to ask you about your price range for custom enchantments.”

“That would depend on what I am enchanting,” the woman replied in her airy voice. “Different items have different enchantments.”

“Jewelery mostly,” he told her, “though depending on what enchantments you can provide, I may also have you enchant some clothes as well.”