About three hours later.
With Snape leading the way, Ian had bought nearly everything on the list.
There weren't that many supplies needed by first-year Hogwarts students. Aside from the required textbooks, they only needed a few things for Potions Class and Herbology.
Three plain work robes.
A plain pointed hat for daytime wear.
And a pair of protective gloves—any gloves made from material similar to Dragon Hide would do. The gloves Snape bought for Ian were made from Hungarian Horntail hide.
They were expensive.
Their protective qualities were also absolutely top-notch.
Since Ian didn't have a single Galleon to his name, he naturally had no say in choosing the gloves. All he could do was watch Snape pay for and buy nearly all the necessities.
To be honest,
although he had handed almost all his savings to Mrs. Elena to help his brothers and sisters get through the winter, Ian had actually kept a decent amount of pounds for himself.
He had planned to exchange them for wizarding currency at Gringotts, but Snape showed no intention of taking him there. There was nothing Ian could do. With money that was useless in the magical world in his pocket, all he could do was watch Snape decide what he would need for school.
Many of the things Snape bought didn't really match the items listed on the school supply list. In many cases, he had gone for more luxurious and expensive options.
But—
whenever Ian tried to ask about it, Snape always managed to shoot down his questions with some sarcastic remark.
Expensive things had their reasons for being expensive.
As a soon-to-be first-year at Hogwarts, Ian had no grounds to argue with Snape. He could only watch as Snape decided what he needed to buy.
Every time he saw Snape pull out his wallet to pay, Ian's suspicions about him grew. The Snape he knew wasn't nearly so enthusiastic or responsible.
As many fanfics had pointed out, Snape might have been a wizard with a remarkable personality, but he was clearly unfit to be a Hogwarts professor.
Setting aside his frequent mockery of students from other houses, most people hardly thought well of him, given his "house prejudice," which was practically a form of racism.
And yet,
throughout this trip to Diagon Alley to buy the essentials, Ian had felt Snape's sharp tongue every moment, but he had also seen how seriously and meticulously Snape took his education.
They had to buy the best cauldron.
The protective gloves and plain work robes were made from the finest materials, too.
Even the textbooks they had bought first were brand-new, full-price copies. This was clearly beyond what a Hogwarts student loan should cover.
To be fair,
even setting aside the fact that they were brand-new, the things Snape had bought for Ian were all top-quality goods.
Whether it was the brass cauldron worth dozens of Galleons or the gloves made from Hungarian Horntail hide, they were unquestionably among the finest of their kind.
Hogwarts was indeed an ancient magical school. But Ian knew enough basic economics to know that its student loans couldn't possibly be this generous.
Economic principles were easy to understand, and they applied in any setting. If Hogwarts' student loans were enough for an orphaned young wizard to buy such extravagant items, what kind of staggering economic impact would Hogwarts be creating in the wizarding world every year?
"Hogwarts can't be that wealthy."
Ian's judgment wasn't baseless.
If Hogwarts' student loans were really that generous, then Ron, the good friend of that Chosen One, Harry Potter—the Ron often portrayed in fanfics as a cuckold—wouldn't have been so down on his luck.
Just think about it.
He was already in his second year,
and he was still using a wand his older brother had discarded.
Could that have happened if Hogwarts' student loans were generous enough? Ron's younger sister had even bought secondhand books and equipment when she started school.
As members of a Pure-blood family, the Weasley family couldn't possibly have been ineligible for student loans. Given their financial situation, the only reasonable explanation was that the loans could only cover a batch of secondhand goods.
The family had won the lottery and gone traveling right away, only to return after they'd gone broke. It seemed likely that the money keeping the children in school came from student loans, too.
A young wizard from a poor family should only be able to scrape together enough through student loans to buy a set of secondhand textbooks. That was the most reasonable explanation, and the one that made the most sense economically.
And yet,
every single thing Snape had bought for Ian was a luxury item, despite being a necessity. That naturally led Ian to wonder and speculate.
Just how much did Snape feel he owed him to spend so lavishly on his behalf?
If Ian's parents hadn't been dead,
he would have felt that those gloves made from Hungarian Horntail hide were too hot to hold!
"Professor, does Hogwarts really insist on everything being top quality?"
Ian couldn't bear to keep wondering. After Snape bought him a limited-edition telescope, he finally couldn't hold back and asked.
"As a student, you should spend your time thinking about how to learn as much as possible at Hogwarts. That's far more important than puzzling over such pointless and meaningless things."
Snape answered without expression. He watched coldly as Ian packed the things they had bought into his trunk, then strode off toward the next place on their list.
Ollivanders Wand Shop.
This was arguably a more important destination than any bookstore. It was the only wand shop in Diagon Alley—or even the entire British Isles—and the sort of beginner's village every traveler to the wizarding world was bound to visit.
Time had worn the shop's sign until it was mottled and faded. The tiny, shabby storefront hardly looked like the legendary place every young wizard had to visit.
Compared with the splendor of Gringotts and Flourish and Blotts, Ollivanders Wand Shop was completely unremarkable. And yet it was one of the few "territories" Voldemort had never even considered conquering.
A business with no competition and no way to copy it could afford to be this bold. It was like the many great clans of ancient China: no matter how the years passed, nothing could affect them in the slightest.
"This is the last stop."
Snape paid without hesitation, but when he spoke, he was a man of few words.
Ian had been looking forward to this moment for a long time. He gazed at the faded sign above the unremarkable little shop, his eyes full of anticipation, along with a hint of nervousness he couldn't quite explain.
It was no wonder he felt so on edge.
After all,
of everything he knew about this world, aside from Harry Potter and the pretty Hermione, this place was undoubtedly one of the most mysterious.
People said the entire Harry Potter story was inseparable from Prophecy. And whether in the original story or in fanfics, Ollivanders Wand Shop was the place with the most chilling prophecies of all.
The failure of You-Know-Who.
Dumbledore's death.
Those prophecies about other people were small potatoes.
Ollivanders Wand Shop, where the wand chose the wizard, held the most chilling prophecies in this world. Even beings as powerful as Dumbledore and Voldemort had their futures declared with a single sentence at Ollivanders. Harry Potter, too, couldn't escape the prophecy made when his wand chose him.
If the owner of Ollivanders Wand Shop didn't have a gift far beyond that of an ordinary seer, Ian figured he would be the first to stand up and say he didn't believe it.
The first part of the ending had already hinted at it.
What prophecy could possibly beat yours?