Key Connection

Harry sat still for a moment, before shaking his head and following.

Jean Granger had been searching for her daughter for a few minutes. She had thought she had heard someone insulting her, but by the time she had reached the spot there were some bond haired brat laughing with two dim looking boys wandering alone. Hearing her darling squealing over a book was a balm to her soul. She turned and saw her angel running up with some dark covered thing. As she tried to interpret the "I am excited, let me buy this"-ese of her daughter, she noticed a young looking boy walking toward them from the same direction she had barreled from. She grinned at her baby. "So who is your young friend here?"

Hermione had frozen in a mixture of embarrassment and slight fear. She didn't want to make a worse impression on the boy, he had already seen her cry earlier.

Harry held out his hand. "My name is Harry. I assume that you are Mrs. Granger?" They shook hands as he smiled at the red faced girl. "I am afraid your daughter got a bit ahead of me after she found a book she was interested in."

Jean smiled at the lad. "No worries, I know how she is when it comes to a new book." She carefully ignored the "MOOOOM" from her baby. "In fact, we are having problems finding places to put them all." Harry looked around, then leaned in. "Between you and me, you should probably take advantage of having a magical daughter. Have you stopped by the Trunk Shop?"

The older woman had a confused expression. "Yes, we stopped by there earlier. Tom had to keep moving things out the Leaky Cauldron to our car so we could get the shopping done."

Harry nodded. "Well, let me show you something." He handed her his bottomless pouch. "Reach in there and think about a quill."

Jean reached in... it felt WAY too big. As she thought about the quill she could feel a feather against her fingers. In wonder, she pulled it out.

He pointed. "That is a 'bottomless pouch', one of the more expensive ones, although I believe it is worth every galleon. It even shrinks things slightly if they are too big to fit inside." He took it back and held up what seemed to be a wooden book. "This is my trunk. I asked and got one that is resistant to most types of damage and is of course larger inside than out, but more importantly it has the ability to change size and be nearly weightless."

Harry grinned at the two stunned women. "Now, anyone want to guess what a bookcase trunk is?"

Jean hugged the boy, giving him another shock. "Oh Hermione, I like this one." She held him at arms length, and ignored her daughters fairly loud complaints. "Now, where is this place and how much are they?"

Minerva was trying VERY hard not to get annoyed. Apparently Harry had FAR too much James in him. Just moments before she thought she was done, and now they were BACK WHERE THEY STARTED!

She sighed. At least he seemed to have picked up a friend. Tom Granger was near ecstatic. Apparently moving crap all day had heavily convinced him of any plan that reduced the size and weight of moving his daughters stuff for the next seven years. Having more room in the house thanks to the bookcase trunks was a dream come true. He would never say a word against his darlings, but they were starting to have so many piles of books that moving around was dangerous.

Harry had helped Jean pick some low cost bookcase trunks, since they wouldn't be moved. She was a bit suspicious when he went and whispered to the store owner though. After that conversation, there had suddenly been a "Sale" for people who bought four expanding bookcase trunks, that just happened to automatically sort the books. The price was also suspiciously lower than she had expected.

Harry on the other hand was trying to be as innocent looking as possible, which was making her mom-dar blow off the charts. Still, she couldn't prove anything, and not buying these awesome trunks was clearly NOT an option. She had tried to talk about it to Professor McGonagall, but she seemed fairly stressed right now.

Hermione was still playing with her new bottomless pouch. Harry had pointed out how much better they were than backpacks, and if it hadn't been so expensive the Grangers would have probably bought one for every family member. As it was Tom apparently had his eye on one for next year.

Jean listened in to her daughters conversation while she waited for Mr. Trunks to finish their order. Again, she was not quite sure, but she suspected that Harry had said something as it was taking a bit longer than expected.

Hermione had been distracted for a while now. Finally she looked at the green-eyed boy and gathered her courage. "So... what house are you going to be in? In Hogwarts I mean." Harry leaned against the counter. They had talked about all kinds of stuff while the adults had shopped, and the general houses had been explained fairly early in the process. Apparently Hermione had really enjoyed her Hogwarts history book. "Well, I think it is pretty clear that we will both end up in Ravenclaw."

He saw her slightly disappointed face. "What's wrong Hermione?"

She shuffled her feet a little. "I read that all kinds of great witches and wizards came from Gryffindor. I wanted to be brave."

Harry snorted. At her expression, he explained, "I think you shouldn't expect things to be so cut and dry. No one is completely in one house. You work hard, so you have some Hufflepuff. You are clearly ambitious, so there is some Slytherin as well. I have no doubt you are brave, but what is the one thing that is important to you?" He pointed at the book in her hand with a grin on his face. "KNOWLEGE! THAT is what you live for. Heck, I mentioned a cool book and your eyes became stars!"

She blushed a bit. "But I want to have more friends. If... If I can be a Gryffindor, then maybe I will be brave enough to..."

He put a hand on her shoulder. "Well, you got one friend now, don't you? And you haven't even started yet! If you do end up in a different house, at least you will have a helpful Ravenclaw behind you to give a hand, right?"

He ignored how she seemed to tear up a bit. "Right! And we can learn all KINDS of stuff about magic!"

Harry nodded. "Frankly, I think I will probably be ignoring most of the school stuff anyway." He saw her look of horror, and quickly corrected the statement. "I mean, I will do the classes and work, but I want to spend most of my time in the library, finding new things out, trying out new spells. I mean, you have already memorized all your class books, right?"

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