Chapter 18 - Shopping

I went to my room and called Sherry. I asked her opinion on where to store the things I had taken from the vaults. I asked her if I should store it in the French vault. The only problem was that I had to go to France to take control of the vault as it was still under my mother's name, and only then would I be able to add items to the vault. I could still store money there without taking control of the vault. Sherry was not strong enough to pop me to France so I had to travel on my own which was difficult. She told me the vault had the lowest security and it was not good to put this much money in that vault and since I had not yet taken control of the vault, it was even less secure.

Since I could not store the money in a vault, I decided to do some investing. I had a lot of free money in my hands and I also knew which companies would perform well in the future. The vault in France had nearly 15,000G which was enough for me till I take control of the family vault so I could do anything with the nearly 80,000G I had in my hand. The items from the vault could be stored inside my house without any problems. They mostly included some weapons, books, jewellery, etc.

After making up my mind I went to sleep. The next day after waking up and completing my morning exercises, I informed the matron that I was going out and went to my house. I decided to postpone my Hogwarts shopping until I finished my investment plan. First I told Sherry to go to Gringotts and exchange about 79,000G into pounds. She took the money from yesterday's trunk and put it into a new trunk and popped away. She came back with the exchanged 395,000 pounds.

After that I started planning with Sherry. I decided to open an investment account in my name itself. It would cause the authorities some attention due to the large amount of money under a child's name but I had the help of magic to avoid the unwanted attention.

So me and Sherry disguised went to the Barclays bank. It was very easy to open an investment account under a 11-year old's name with some confounding spells from Sherry. As per my instructions she also added a mild Notice me not charm on my age and date of birth in the files. This would avoid me any unwanted attention for now. Then we went to an investment broker and I bought the stocks for famous tech companies which I knew would make it big in the future but were now only growing like Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Sony, etc. Companies like eBay, Amazon and Google were not yet founded but I could wait. I decided to buy their stocks when they were at their lowest which I knew was when there was a huge stock market clash somewhere around the year 2000. I signed the papers, finished the formalities and went back to my orphanage.

The next few days I went through my parent's things to decide on what all I needed to buy before going to Hogwarts. I matched the books in the list with the ones in the library to find which all new books I did not own. I did not want to buy books that I already had with me. It was a waste of money and I did not have any problems with using the second hand books. After looking through the books I found out that I needed to buy only two new ones. The potions and DADA books. I can guess that these books would be a downgrade from my parent's books but I still had to buy them.

I needed a new trunk as the trunk my parents used were standard school trunks while what I needed was a high quality trunk with various compartments for my things. I also needed to buy a new potions kit and quills. The old ones in my house would cause judging looks from my classmates due to their condition since I had used it for these 4 years and were not in a presentable condition.

I did not need to buy a pet as I could not have one in the orphanage, it was against the orphanage rules. I also did not need one at present.

In the end I had a very small list. New clothes, a new trunk, 2 books, potions kit, quills, parchments and other miscellaneous things.

So after I had planned everything, one-day early morning I left the orphanage with Sherry. She popped me to Diagon Alley and went back as I did not want people to know I had an elf. My first stop was Madam Malkin's. I asked for a standard set of Hogwarts robes in good quality material. I did not go overboard with Acromantula silk as I felt it was a waste of money and I will soon outgrow the robes. An ȧssistant took my measurements. I told her to show me the list of charms that could be added to the robes and she gave me a list. I looked went through the list and selected the charms I needed on my robes like self-cleaning, wrinkle free, self-sizing, etc. After noting down everything and payment, she told me that my clothes would be ready in 4 hours and I could wait there if I wanted.

I left the shop and went towards the Trunk store. At the store I bought a Dragon hide trunk with four compartments. One for potions supplies, One for library, One for clothes and another for miscellaneous items. I also told the shop keeper to add a secret compartment which had various enchantments and protections to hide it. I told him to add most of the normal enchantments to the trunk along with anti-theft runes with password lock, feather light rune and the rune for shrinking and enlarging the trunk with a tap of the wand so that I could carry the trunk in my pocket. I could not go around London dragging a large trunk along with me. I then told him to inscribe my inscribed my initials CDF and the Falken Family insignia on the trunk. He told me it would be ready in half and hour so I waited as I needed I needed the trunk to do my other shopping. I did not want to carry the things I bought in my hands and the trunk would help a lot to store them. After 30 min I collected the brand new trunk and paid for it. It was a bit costly but worth it.

My next stop was the shop named Flourish and Blotts. From there I bought the two books I needed on my list. I did not need any other books for extra reading as I could read them from the Hogwarts Library. I stored the two books in the library compartment of the trunk.

Next I went to a stationary store to buy self-inking quills, parchments and other such items listed in the letter. I even bought a Dicta quill so that I could record the lectures easily. Going to the Cauldron shop I bought a cauldron of better quality than specified as I would need it to practice much higher level of potions than the standard Hogwarts syllabus. I bought two sets of potion ingredients and stored all the items in the trunk. The store clerk recommended to me to buy books on basic potion practices as the Hogwarts professor was a poor teacher but I declined it as I had already read much more advanced books on potions. I did thank her for the recommendation though and said I already had a similar book at home.

After that I went around the Alley looking for things that may catch my interest and bought some miscellaneous items. I did not buy a Quidditch broom as I had no interest in the sport and I did not like the idea of flying on a broom. To me it looked weird and seemed uncomfortable. Quidditch was a game which was just thrilling to watch from the side-lines and nothing else. No person with a touch of common sense would risk his life in a game which could very much lead to death for the enjoyment of others. It was also a sport in which the seekers were more important as they decided the winner in nearly all matches. I felt bad for the other players on the team. All their hard work in scoring and saving goals will be wasted if the enemy seeker catches the snitch. I liked Football as a sport more.