Moonrise || Harry Potter Twilight Crossover || FanFiction

Chapter Sixteen: Bella's POV

                 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN:

Bella's POV:

I followed Hermione through the small, dusty pub, filled only with a trickle of witches and wizards. The old, wizened looking barkeep shot Harry, Ginny and Hermione a toothless smile and a quick wave, which they all returned.

Hermione seemed so at ease here, and I was reminded, again, that this was her world, her real world. To me, it felt like some kind of fantastical dream and a part of me was still expecting to wake up at any moment. The three lead me out the back of the pub, to a small, walled courtyard, with a dustbin. Hermione approached the dustbin and tapped on the brick three up and two across from it. Before my amazed eyes, the bricks started sliding across, first creating a small hole that I wondered if we were going to have to crawl through, then growing until a large archway was formed.

"Oh my god." I murmured, for what felt like the billionth time since Hermione had taken me via Side-Along Apparation to The Burrow. Hermione turned back and smiled at me.

"I know, right?" She said, her voice soft, the amazement still evident in her tone. "I'll always love this. The magic hidden, right before us." I nod, and follow her through the archway, and into Diagon Alley.

It's everything I expected, and nothing I could have ever dreamed of at the same time. Everyone was clad in robes or frills, long, wide and conical hats, or ankle-length gowns. The first building I saw was an imposing snow-white, multistoried marble building, which Hermione pointed out as Gringotts. In front of the Wizarding Bank were several short, fair-skinned creatures, each about a maximum of 48 inches high, that I assumed were goblins.

Despite everything I'd seen, they still seemed extraordinarily strange, with their dome shaped heads, pointed noses and ears, and extremely long fingers and feet. Perhaps sensing my stare, one of the goblin's head turned towards me, and I met it's- his?- dark, slanted eyes. I resisted the urge to shudder, and tried to smile at it. It didn't smile back.

The words from one of the letters Hermione had sent me after her first visit to Diagon Alley swam to the front of my mind. She'd labeled it as something carved into marble inside the strange Wizarding bank that I'd found absolutely fascinating at the time, but now I shuddered.

Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there.

Anyone who tries to rob that bank had to be absolutely insane.

Almost as if she was reading my thoughts, Hermione gave a shudder of her own. "I never want to set foot in that place again," she muttered to me, "I'm pretty sure they still haven't forgiven us for breaking in." I literally choked on my own spit, and turned my wide-eyes to my sister.

"You broke into there?" I say, my voice somewhat hysterical.

"And rode a dragon out." Harry answered for Hermione, and my sister gave me a shaky smile.

"Story for another time." She said.

"Cripes." I mutter, shaking my head, before following Hermione around the curve of the cobble-stoned street.

My jaw popped open, and I was unable to close my mouth as my eyes drank in my surroundings. It was amazing- there was no other word for it. There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments I had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles and even cages filled with owls of all different sizes and colors.