After paying, Vera slowly wheeled herself out of the shop.
But the moment she stepped outside, she spotted an especially conspicuous giant of a man standing out in the crowd even from afar.
So that was Hagrid. He really was just as eye-catching as she had imagined.
Then the one beside him had to be the famous Savior herself… Miss Harri Potter?
Fixing her gaze on the bespectacled little girl at Hagrid's side, Vera felt her mind go blank for the first time, to the point that she almost wondered whether she had mistaken the person.
It was clearly a small, undernourished-looking girl dressed in oversized old clothes. Her long black hair was messily tied back, and perched on her nose was a pair of round glasses wrapped over and over with tape. Behind them were a pair of emerald-green eyes.
Most striking of all, of course, was the lightning-shaped scar on her forehead, faintly visible beneath the sunlight.
She was tilting her head up to listen to Hagrid speak, her face full of wonder.
Vera blinked, then checked again and again to make sure she really wasn't seeing things.
Harry Potter had become Harri Potter?
That world-shaking revelation made her hand tighten slightly around her wand as she sat in her wheelchair, staring at the scrawny girl from afar.
Harri Potter—the Savior of this world—was actually a girl.
Her thoughts began racing. Vera pushed her wheelchair deeper into the crowd and quietly observed Harri and Hagrid from the shadows.
"First we've got ter get some money, over there at Gringotts," Hagrid's booming voice carried over.
"Um… Hagrid, who are those people?" Harri replied softly. As they passed several wizards hurrying by, she looked up and asked the question with obvious caution.
Vera noticed that when Harri's gaze swept over them, she instinctively hunched her shoulders a little.
That wary, curious reaction was rather different from the Harry Potter of the original story, who had thrown himself headlong into the wonder of the wizarding world.
"Oh, they look like Aurors from the Ministry o' Magic. Don't mind 'em," Hagrid answered gruffly. "We'd best hurry and get the money. We've got lots ter buy today."
Vera watched thoughtfully as the two of them headed toward the white marble steps of Gringotts, but she did not follow right away.
The Black family was wealthy. The money she had with her was already more than enough for all of today's shopping.
So there was no need to trail after them.
Having made that judgment immediately, Vera turned her wheelchair down another side street and decided to buy the rest of her necessities first.
At Flourish and Blotts, the clerk enthusiastically recommended all the required textbooks for first-years, and even thoughtfully packed the heavy volumes into the storage compartment beneath her wheelchair, which had been enlarged with an Undetectable Extension Charm.
The owner of the cauldron shop picked out a standard-sized pewter cauldron for her, along with a set of crystal potion phials, a telescope, and a brass scale.
At the apothecary, Vera also bought a number of basic potion ingredients, along with some remedies to ease the dull ache in her spine.
When she passed by the ice cream shop, she saw the owner glance her way again, though this time he did not approach.
Then Vera arrived at a pet shop.
The moment she wheeled herself inside, a flood of animal cries and smells came rushing at her.
Her gaze swept across cages of owls, toads, and cats in every color before finally stopping in one corner.
Curled up there was a silver-gray long-haired kitten, watching her warily with a pair of amber eyes.
"That cat…" Vera said, pointing toward the corner—toward the kitten whose fur looked remarkably similar in color to her own hair.
The shopkeeper was a long-faced witch. She hurried over, and when she noticed Vera's wheelchair, something flickered in her expression before it quickly settled back into normalcy.
"That cat has some Kneazle blood in it. Very rare," she said in a lowered voice. "But… it's been here for a month already and has refused to let anyone get near it."
Vera wheeled herself closer to the cage. The kitten immediately turned its head toward her, arched its back, and let out a low, threatening growl.
But when Vera reached out her hand, it suddenly quieted down. Tilting its head, it studied her for a moment, then not only allowed her near—it even lifted its face and rubbed against her palm.
"It seems to like you!" the shopkeeper exclaimed.
As the kitten's tail brushed lightly over Vera's wrist, its amber pupils narrowed to thin slits in the dim shop.
Vera curved her lips in a smile. "I'll take it."
As soon as she said it, she paid without hesitation, all the while calmly observing the kitten's reaction.
The little thing was already curled up in her lap as though it had always belonged there, its claws hooked into her robes, its tail loosely twined around her wrist in a display of unmistakable attachment.
"Looks like it chose you too," the shopkeeper said with a smile. "Have a name for it?"
Vera stroked its sleek fur. "Nox."
The goddess of night.
Her fingers gently combed through Nox's fur. The little creature narrowed its amber eyes in pleasure and began purring softly in her lap.
Unable to help smiling, Vera was just about to turn her wheelchair and leave the pet shop when, the moment she reached the doorway, a huge figure suddenly squeezed in from outside.
"We need an owl—oh! Watch out!"
With Hagrid's rough cry of alarm, Vera instinctively tried to dodge aside. But the space behind her was too cramped, and she couldn't fully avoid the sudden collision.
The wheelchair slid backward from the impact. Vera tensed immediately, able only to grab the armrests by reflex.
In that instant, she heard Nox on her lap puff up in a burst of fur, arch its back, and let out a sharp hiss.
And then another quick, nimble figure darted out from behind Hagrid and caught the wheelchair just before it tipped over.
By the time Vera had barely steadied herself and lifted her head, she found herself suddenly staring into a pair of panicked green eyes.
The girl's hands were gripping the wheelchair armrest tightly. Her glasses had slipped crookedly to one side, and her bangs had fallen apart, exposing that lightning-shaped scar on her forehead.
"I'm sorry! Are you okay?" Harri blurted out in a fluster, her green eyes wide behind her crooked glasses. "We didn't notice you were here…"
Vera swept her gaze over this helplessly frantic Savior and almost immediately noticed the fine cuts and scrapes covering the hand with which she was holding the wheelchair steady.
It was clear enough that this gender-swapped version of the Savior had not been treated much better by the Dursleys than in the original story.
Possibly worse.
"Oh no! I'm terribly sorry!" Hagrid's big bearded face flushed red at once, interrupting Vera's train of thought just as she was about to keep observing. "Little miss, it's all my fault fer bein' so clumsy—"
"It's all right," Vera replied softly, forced to withdraw her gaze. At the same time, she reached down to soothe Nox, who was still bristling in her lap. "We're fine."
Well, he was a half-giant. She couldn't exactly expect too much delicacy from him.
-------
My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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