"Of course, what type of trunk would you like? A basic model for first years?" he asked after looking at her. It was clear that this man had an opinion about the way she was dressed. Perhaps he thought she was poor because the clothes screamed 'Muggle-born'.
"Maybe an advanced model, please. I would like one with a basic security system at the very least. I intend to place all my school supplies plus my clothes in it."
The man stared at her pensively for ten seconds then nodded, before levitating a trunk on his right with his wand. Of a green-black colour, it appeared solid and unremarkable.
"This is the T35 design. It has two extra compartments in addition to the basic model I recommend for Hogwarts third-year students, and it has extra-security features so you can lock your trunk and the compartments with a password and your wand."
She examined the trunk, still asked to see two others and for a demonstration of the safety measures before taking the first trunk he had proposed. She paid thirty Galleons for this purchase, thanked the vendor for his time and went out again into the streets of Diagon Alley.
Having her trunk, she could finally begin purchasing her school supplies. Her next stop was the book store, Flourish and Blotts, as it was only two shops away from the one she has just left.
Flourish and Blotts was completely different from any other book store or library she had ever been in. To begin with, it was impossibly larger on the inside than the outside. It was maybe four or five times the size of the trunk store, and a lot of this space was full of books. Rows upon rows of books. Thousands of books. All categorised by magical subjects, of which there were plenty. Transfiguration, Charms, Herbology, Potions, and so much more, all waiting to be read.
First things first, she searched thorough the store for the eight books on her list, which were the basic readings for a first-year Hogwarts student and cost 6 Galleons, eight Sickles and nine Knuts. After finding the books needed for Hogwarts' courses, she then tried to find other interesting books to buy. She didn't know anything at all about the wizarding world, and figured she'd best not begin her life by insulting or not knowing what every witch took for granted. Although she had not the money on her (or for that matter in her trust vault) to buy all the books in this library, she could try to read more than the normal curriculum of her new magical school. She wasn't going to make the travel to Diagon Alley every day anyway, so a bit of extra reading wasn't going to empty her trust vault in one shopping session.
She had already bought A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot for history lessons, but she added Great Wizards of the Twentieth Century, The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts, and Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy, which seemed to be the more relevant titles the library owned. At least by the time she read these books she would have a clear idea of what events had happened in the last decades in the magical world.
There were more history books, of course, like Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century, Modern Magical History, and A Study of Recent Developments in Transfiguration but she had neither the money nor the will to read dozens of books all at once. All of the books looked like they would be interesting, but she had several years to buy and read them all. Assuming the library of Hogwarts didn't have them. The store wasn't going to magically disappear tomorrow, at least she hoped not. Given what she had learnt and seen today, she was not going to rule out something like a shop disappearing in the void as a magical impossibility immediately.
She still bought the Cast-a-spell Handbook, Abracadabra: An A-Z of Spooky Spells and Curses and Counter-Curses by Vindictus Viridian, but with six more books she had enough reading for August, and it cost her another four Galleons, one Sickle and two Knuts.
She passed the next half-hour searching through amusing titles, when she found next to a section dedicated to a discipline called Arithmancy an entire wing dedicated to one person. At first, she thought it was a bad joke, but then she read the titles, having names such as Neville Longbottom and the Bulgarian Purple Dragon, Neville Longbottom and the Vampire's Spell, Neville Longbottom and the Race Through Time, Neville Longbottom and the Ultimate Tournament and at least what looked to be twenty other books with similar titles, all bearing the description in the first page of being 'True Story!'.
Alexandra was not sure what disturbed her more, the fact that people were writing books about one person, the fact that the boy in question (at least according to what her account manager had told her) was barely the same age as her, or that the entire shelf next to her was full of dolls and toys at the effigy of Neville Longbottom, the Boy-Who-Lived.
Picking up the one titled Neville Longbottom and the Manticore's Revenge, she opened the book to the first page and began to read. Rapidly, she saw the story was pure nonsense. She didn't even have to read past the first chapter to know Neville Longbottom was going to defeat the Manticore at the end of the book (although the fact that Manticores existed in the magical world was definitely not a good thing) while the Boy-Who-Lived had already defeated twenty evil adult wizards alone in the first chapter. How a five year-old boy was supposed to accomplish this monumental feat at an age a normal child was in primary school, she had no idea, the author having left this minor issue to the imagination of the reader.