The taxi smelled of engine oil and something sweet — a perfume that lingered from a previous passenger.
The driver glanced at me once, then at my clothes, then back at the road.
He gave me that look grown-ups give children, first sneering that i was some silver spoon whelp with my nose in the air, but after realizing i was honest and kind, he changed to genuinly smile at the sight of a future good rich person if ever such a thing existed.
I paid him with a crisp note with a healthy tip, from the pounds stored away in my backpack and watched his jaw soften.
Money is a useful lie.
Charing Cross Road loomed the way it always had in the tourist maps: a busy ribbon of bookshops and cafés, people with umbrellas dangling from their wrists, postcards fluttering like small resigned birds.
My heart did a little thrill that felt like victory and calculation at once.
This part belonged to the Muggles, and I moved through it like someone wearing a coat that did not belong to them — borrowed, tailored, perfect.
The barrier waited where it always had been, invisible to anyone who did not know to look.
To a child in a corded orphanage coat it would have been nothing.
To me, wearing my finest frippery with a magical heritage the barrier held no sway, proof enough for me to know i was not a squib since the Tavern i was seeking stood out to me like a sore thumb.
A small crowd of what looked like wizards and witches along with their kids were attempting to enter the front door, fighting against the crowd within the bar itself to pass through.
By the time i finally got inside the tavern, i couldnt help but hold my breath.
It did not change much since the stories — the low light, the hum of conversation, the smell of ale and hot tar.
Sketchy looking wizards and witches seated at tables day drinking like it was perfectly normal, but the sanitation... sure this place had existed for over two hundred years now but even still i know their are cleaning spells so just why was there a layer of grunge on just about every surface, even the plates and cutlery itself looked to be pieces salvaged from the bottom of the ocean not clean and ready to present meals to patrons.
But even dodging around all these people, and eerie sights i had realized i was about to encounter my first problem: i was four.
And four-year-olds cannot tap the bricks required to open the barrier to the Alley hidden within.
And not just due to my current height, it was because a magical foci, or wand was required in order to activate the transfiguration that would open the barrier and grant a witch or wizard access.
My mind raced as i considered finding a trash can to stand atop and attempt tapping with my finger, if that failed i could try paying off a wizard in the tavern to open the way for me.
But thankfully as i exited via the back door, one of the previous groups trying to simply enter the tavern was spotted now standing before the brickwall.
Clearly a family about to go out school shopping, consiting of a mother and father, then three kids, two who were older and clearly around 4th, or 5th years, while the youngest was giddier than a hamster on cocaine, clearly a first year about to get their own series of firsts today.
The witch mother drew her wand and in a simple motion tapped three times on the required bricks.
With a shudder the previous solid wall before the six of us began churning and shifting opening up a passageway through the formal gateway between the magical and non-magical world.
Having taken my first steps into the alley with the brick wall resealing before me i simply watched the chaos that was unfold before me — like a ant colony dozens of people were moving about almost frantically, going this way and that, children running wild driving their parents crazy.
Some wore robes, others wearing what they considered to be 'muggle' clothing only to get a full belly laugh from Cassius as he saw them walking around standing out more than anyone could ever manage considering one was dressing up to blend in.
A girl in a ridiculous hat skipped through the crowd, giggling, while a portkey of the alley opened for her with a pop like a bubble casting her away in an instant.
Finally deciding to cast myself in with their lot i entered the chaos before me.
Diagon Alley was nothing like the quaint, tidy lane in the children's stories.
It was massive, the alley itself stretched on for more than a few city blocks — the books and movies would have you believe that the entire alley consited of like 10 shops in total, but in reality there were a hundred storefronts...?
No... More.
The main alley itself held a good couple dozen large shops with various Streets branching off into other alleys within alleys, there was more to this place than just Diagon Alley, and Knockturn Alley.
Even without checking this small wizarding community hidden within the heart of London, spanned more than a dozen city blocks squared.
And it wasnt just shops here either, some branching alleys led to what looked like cramped tenements offering up housing for witches and wizards along with the other various races, visting or working within the alley.
Wizards moved this way and that, bargaining, sampling, shouting over the stalls.
The variety of hats alone could have been a small army.
Children scampered with trunks almost as large as they were; an owl cage rattled as it was carried.
A woman wound a scarf of living starlight around her neck and laughed like a bell.
Gringotts rose before me like a temple made of pale stone and old money.
It was second tallest on the Alley only paling in scale to the Leaky Cauldron itself looming behind me— taller than any shop.
Pillars spiraled, stacked like coins in a child's heap, white stone curling in contradictions and supporting itself as if by some architect's joke.
The whole building looked unstable only to the eye that measured by common physics, but solidity and spectacle in one breath.
Carved dragons made teeth of iron above the archways; sentries — goblins and wizards — moved like shadows both known and unknown protecting the surrounding of the bank.
It felt like a thing designed to be feared and admired in equal measure.
I stopped and looked up.
taking in the grand scale of my first stop within the alley, a place where i could acquire what i would need to make any purchases within the alley.
As everyone reading the stories should know muggles are not given galleons to buy school supplies, that privilege is reserved only for orphans who otherwise could not have funds to do so, muggleborns could exchange muggle money for galleons up to a set amount, the amount being just enough to yearly afford all the required tools of learning for the young witch or wizard.
This very system was one i meant to exploit to acquire the currency of the magical world for myself to act as my seed money to begin my exploits as Arcana on this side of the curtain.