Blaize and his mother left the store. Outside Elladora Zabini turned to her son.
"That was a good display of proper pureblood behaviour, Blaize. Try to stay in his good books. He'll go far with his take on things. If he is anything like his father he will attract many people with his charisma and as he also got his mother's catching eyes, he will be someone the girls will fall over in a few years' time. Having someone like him as an acquaintance or even a friend is always beneficial, even if he is a halfblood. At least James married a powerful and very smart muggleborn and not one of the plain ones." She said.
"Yes, mother. I intend to keep a respectful and friendly relation with him. I'm a bit fascinated how mature he appears. He really thought his future plans through. Not like many others I met so far." Blaize answered.
"Indeed. I guess you're talking about Draco?" Elladora asked.
"Among others. But he is a good example. He only uses his father's influence and wealth to reach his goals, that's not very cunning and ambitious. While he reaches his goals that way, if anything ever happened to Lucius, he wouldn't have an alternative plan. With Potter I had the impression he had already thought of several ways to reach his goals and that he could quickly adapt if one plan didn't work out. I'll observe how he develops over the years."
.....
Harry's next stop, after ordering some casual wear robes for everyday outside of classes and a good amount of high quality pants in dark colours, silk dress shirts in white, black, green, blue and grey, two warm coats in black and dark green and a lighter jacket in beige for spring and autumn, was the cauldron shop where he got two pewter cauldrons. One as a spare or in case he wanted to brew two different potions at a time. He looked at the telescopes but decided he would get one in the muggle world. The ones here, even if they were charmed, were less powerful than even a good quality standard student telescope for muggle students. He hadn't been interested in Astronomy so far, which meant he wanted to have the best possible equipment. He would forego a telescope with electric features, as the magic of Hogwarts would interfere with it, but that wouldn't be a problem. They were just coming up anyway. He got a nice set of brass scales as well.
He asked an employee at the shop that sold parchment, ink and quills, how long a quill normally lasted, how much parchment an average student needed over a year and how much ink. He got two packages of parchment, six bottles of ink, one was a colour changing kind, which Harry liked, ten quills, two were spares and for training his writing skills, he fully intended to get a fountain pen and notebooks for each subject in muggle London for his own notes and loose papers for rough drafts, no need to waste expensive parchment after all, and only use the quill for official assignments.
They then went to an apothecary Harry had seen in one of the side alleys which was much better structured and cleaner than the one in Diagon Alley itself. This Apothecary was smaller and had slightly higher prices, but Hagrid had also told him that Professor Snape, the Potions teacher at Hogwarts always ordered his personal ingredients here. The quality of the ingredients was higher and made for better results in brewing. The owner of the apothecary was a witch that was working on her mastery in potions. She was very helpful and additionally to the standard ingredients for first year students, Harry got two books. One on brewing techniques and colour schemes in potions and one on the 1000 most common ingredients in potions. The book listed their properties, their uses with some examples for potions, their reactions with other ingredients and also had warnings for what not to do with them to avoid accidents.
The witch told them she wished that these two books would be made mandatory reading material for Hogwarts students, but the Board of Governors didn't think it necessary. She also informed him that Professor Snape advised all the new Slytherins to get these books. Next to the ingredients Harry got a set of crystal vials that were spelled to be unbreakable if they fell down, which happened more often than one thought, the witch told them. She handed Harry a package with the correctly stored ingredients and one with the safely stored vials and told him they would be perfectly stored like they were until he needed them at Hogwarts.
Then Harry had a little buying spree at Flourish and Blotts. He didn't only buy the books on the list, but also a bit additional reading material on the subjects he would have this year. He got two books on Transfiguration, one on Herbology, two on Defence Against the Dark Arts, one on Charms, he left the Astronomy books behind as he knew the ones in the muggle world were more extensive in their information, he already had some history books, so he only got the listed book and he got himself books on Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. He wanted to get an idea what the subjects were about before he made his decision at the end of second year which subjects he would take. Then he got a book with all the laws in the British magical world, the self-updating version, one book about the ICW and their laws, a book with low level curses, a book about advanced potions and one about rituals.
The employee knew Harry by now and just smiled at the amount of books he had bought again. If that boy wouldn't become a Ravenclaw, he didn't know. All Harry's purchases were stored in his trunk, which made for much easier transport.
.....
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