Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
i. book signing
Finally, it was the first of September. The day the summer holidays end and all the young witches and wizards set off to return to Hogwarts.
The weather was nice. The sun splayed bright, yellow rays across the blue sky. The clouds were puffy and white, like balls of cotton. The air was warm and the wind was slight. Chatter filled the open sidewalks and kids dressed in long, black robes ran past giggling with pointed wants. It was a good day and everyone was excited to return to Hogwarts for the next ten months.
Matilda had come along with her dad. He was usually the one that would take his daughters to catch the train. Diagon Alley was full, as one would expect it to be. Parents and their children rushed to gather all the supplies from the list that they had forgotten about all summer long.
Though, in the masses of people, Matilda had lost sight of her dad. He'd been pulled away by her insistent older sister, pleading for him to at least look at the new brooms. Harper claimed she needed a new broom if the Hufflepuff team would stand any chance at winning a tournament this school year. Last year they ranked dead last, coming behind Gryffindor who had lost to Ravenclaw before Slytherin defeated them in the final tournament. Harper was unbearable all summer, complaining about their defeat, and practicing on her broom well into the early morning hours.
She'd made her way inside Flourish and Botts. At least there she knew her father would be able to find her. Matilda always found her way inside the bookstores. She looked along the dusty shelves, waiting for a title printed on the worn spines to stick out. Matilda could not help to scoff as she had come upon an entire shelf dusted and cleaned to perfection and filled with books authored by Gildroy Lockhart.
Gildroy Lockhart was one of the biggest names in the wizarding world at the moment. After everyone had read about all of his fantastic tales and acts of heroism many mothers and daughters swooned. Matilda did not. She'd tried reading some of what the man wrote but she could not quite believe any of it. Much too fantastical to be the truth she thought. She didn't get the craze over the man, though she did believe it had something to do with his glistening smile and a head full of luscious gold curls.
