Come On, Rob a Bank!

Hagrid was clearly a regular at the bar.

The moment the three of them stepped inside, the chattering voices suddenly fell silent, and everyone smiled and waved at Hagrid.

Especially those few old women sitting in the corner, drinking sherry from small cups-they were even more enthusiastic toward Hagrid.

One of them even held out her long pipe to Hagrid, trying to get him to take a puff.

It took Hagrid quite a while to extricate himself.

Not bad-who'd have thought Hagrid was actually a friend to middle-aged and elderly women!

The bartender looked like a shriveled walnut. He picked up a glass, wiped it, and asked, "Hagrid, want another one?"

"No, Tom, I'm on Hogwarts business-I can't drink."

Hagrid refused with a serious face, as if whoever hindered his work was his enemy.

But a man in a top hat beside him squinted his cloudy eyes and said doubtfully, "Really? But when I came in this morning, I saw you..."

"Ahem... I need to take William to Diagon Alley. Goodbye, everyone." Hagrid hurriedly cut him off.

But just as he was leaving, he still glanced at the bartender Tom and asked, "That old Greek fellow hasn't come back yet?"

Tom shrugged and said, "Since he drank with you this morning, he hasn't shown up."

Hagrid looked a little disappointed.

Passing through the bar, Hagrid led the two of them to a small walled courtyard. Apart from a trash can and some weeds, there was nothing here at all.

Roy stopped in his tracks and couldn't help asking, "Hagrid, you said something delayed you this morning-it was drinking here?"

Hagrid scratched his beard and said stiffly, "Dear Roy, I can explain!"

He cleared his throat and said, "Look, I came all this way from Hogwarts to London. Resting here for a few minutes-that's not too much to ask, is it?"

Roy nodded. "Perfectly reasonable."

Hagrid continued, "This is a bar. I can't just sit here doing nothing-I have to give Tom some business. So I bought a few glasses of eggnog to wet my throat. That's not too much to ask, is it?"

Roy cupped his chin. "Well-founded and well-reasoned."

"So you just drank too much?" William cut in.

"No." Hagrid hemmed and hawed for a moment, glanced around, and said quietly, "I was actually about to leave, but then I ran into a Greek.

That Greek chatted with me, said he had a three-headed dog, but the three-headed dog ate too much and he couldn't afford to keep it anymore.

William, you don't know how rare three-headed dogs are, how adorable.

I couldn't just watch a furry little creature like that wander the streets and get sent to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures..."

Hagrid lowered his head like a child who had done something wrong.

"All right, we won't tell anyone," Roy comforted.

Hagrid laughed. "Thank you so much, Roy. You really are my best Muggle friend.

Just rest easy and leave William to me-at Hogwarts, no one will dare bully him!"

Hagrid patted Roy's shoulder with his enormous hand, nearly knocking him flat.

"Hagrid, are three-headed dogs really that adorable?" William couldn't help asking.

"Really adorable!"

With a "meow," an orange cat head poked out of William's backpack. Bobocha glanced at Hagrid in confusion-it seemed to have just heard someone praising its handsomeness.

"You and that little guy will become good friends," Hagrid chuckled and stroked Bobocha's head.

Bobocha let out a "meow" and ducked its head back inside.

At that moment, the heads of the three silly sled dogs inexplicably surfaced in William's mind.

He began picturing a three-headed dog with a Samoyed, a Husky, and an Alaskan head... that really would be adorable!

It was just that in the near future, William would come to understand just how naive and simple today's him was!

Hagrid counted the bricks on the wall above the trash can. Because he was so tall, he had to bend over and stick out his rear.

"Three up-two across-" he muttered. "All right, step back."

He tapped the wall three times lightly with the tip of his umbrella.

The brick he had tapped quivered and began to move, and a small hole appeared in the middle.

The hole grew larger and larger, and soon a wide archway big enough for Hagrid to pass through appeared before them, leading to a winding, cobblestone-paved street that stretched out of sight.

"Welcome," Hagrid spread his arms and announced loudly, "welcome to Diagon Alley."

They walked along the archway. Dazzling sunlight fell on a stack of cauldrons outside the nearest shop.

Above the cauldrons hung a sign: Copper-Brass-Tin-Silver cauldrons, all sizes, self-stirring-collapsible.

"Oh, William, you'll need to buy one," Hagrid glanced at the sky, "but the sun's about to set. We need to get money first."

They came to a snow-white building towering over the surrounding shops. Beside the gleaming bronze doors stood a figure in a scarlet and gold uniform-a being with a clever-looking, dark face and a pointed beard.

"This is the Goblin I told you about," Hagrid said quietly as they walked up the white stone steps toward him.

Roy's professional habit kicked in again. He couldn't help staring at the Goblin's grinning, open mouth, as if he wanted to check the state of his dental health.

William felt that in the future, he couldn't let his family come to Diagon Alley on their own.

Roy was fine-at most he'd take a look at someone's teeth. His mother Lyanna would probably pull a scalpel out of her pocket on the spot and dissect to examine the species differences.

As for Anne, she'd most likely treat the Goblin as a pet and demand to buy it and take it home.

God, what kind of bizarre family was this? William suddenly realized that he was actually the only normal one!

He didn't have so many strange ideas-at most... he'd just had the notion of robbing the place.

William stood before the second set of doors of Gringotts, his figure half bathed in sunlight, half shrouded in shadow.

On the two doors before him were engraved the following words: 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.

For some reason, at this moment, gazing at those lines, William genuinely felt the urge to rob Gringotts.

Well, in his past life, seeing those armored cash-transport trucks, he'd had the same impulse.

But the armed soldiers would always extinguish his desire in the shortest possible time.

Surely there wouldn't be such strong defenses here too?

William looked up at Hagrid and asked quietly, "Hagrid, are the defenses here strong?"

Hagrid nodded. "Of course they're strong. This is the safest place in the Wizarding World besides Hogwarts."

"How so?" William raised an eyebrow.

Hagrid bent down and, in a feverish tone William had never heard before, said mysteriously, "Down there... there are dragons!"

"Dragons?"

Hagrid's eyes shone, and he said enviously, "Yes, I'd love to raise one. I'd give anything for it!"

Hagrid then deflated and said, "But twenty years after the International Statute of Secrecy was enacted, to promote the law, the Wizards' Council formally passed a bill banning dragon-raising.

He gnashed his teeth and said, "I dare say that's the stupidest decision the International Confederation of Wizards ever made!"

Hagrid's description gave William the most vivid picture.

Most crucially, the image of Dragon Mother's great black dragon Drogon surfaced in his mind... if the dragons in the Wizarding World were that caliber, he didn't think he had any chance of robbing the place.

All right, William's desire was extinguished once again-this time by Hagrid's flying spittle.