I Was Bored, So I'm Exploring (Open)

Susan was slightly bored. She was waiting for her mother to get off work, and she'd gone wandering around Diagon Alley. Her mum didn't mind, as long as she didn't actually leave the shopping area, and she checked in every once in a while. Cathy knew her daughter was smart, and wouldn't go with anyone that she didn't know. Susan also wore a bracelet on her right wrist that had a tracking device in it. That had been given to her when she was little, and she rarely took it off.

At the moment she was exploring the Magical Menagerie. She looked at all the rats along the shelves. She giggled as they started doing tricks to get her attention, and moved further down to see a puppy that looked like it was a Golden Retriever. She waited for the little fur ball to show what magical power it had, and was rewarded by the long snake like tongue it posessed sneaking out to the other side of its pen to get the bone lying there.

Further down, Susan saw kittens that were able to change their own fur, just by licking it. One went from a short haired Calico to a long haired Persian and back again. Another merely changed its coat from a pretty smokey gray to midnight black.

She was so inerested in all the animals that she jumped when someone tapped her on the shoulder and gave a small squeak of surprise. She spun on her heels to face the person that had touched her, nearly backing into a display of rat tonic in the process.

"You scared me!" she said.

Finn giggled when Susan jumped, and he had to hold on tight to the little toad he had in his hand so he wouldn't run away. He recognized her from the school they both attended, but he didn't know her all that well. He especially hadn't known that she knew about witches and wizards...but obviously she must if she was in Diagon Alley. Finn was here with his sister Zoe. Or, at least, he had been with her before she got boring and went to look at clothes. He was tired of having only sisters. Why couldn't he hang out with his dad more often and actually do manly things? He didn't care if he was only nine, he HATED clothes shopping! So...he ditched his older sister and went off exploring. Luckily, his adventure was worth it. He had already found a friend.

"Hi, Susan. It is Susan, right? Or maybe you're her sister, I can't remember the name. Anyway... Sorry I scared you. I really just wanted to say hi. And to show you Wilberforce. Do you like him? He's my toad. Or, he will be once I get my sister to buy him for me. Do you have any pets?"

He giggled again as Wilber started trying to hop out of his hand again. He watched with shining eyes as a worker gently took Wilber from him and placed him in a container for safe-keeping. The man said he would keep him safe until Finn was ready to purchase the toad. Finn was fine with that, as long as Wilber didn't get mixed up with any other toad. He already felt a connection to him. He sighed and turned back to Susan.

"I sure do hope Zoe buys him for me. I think I'd miss him if he ever went away."

Susan's eyes widened. This boy knew her name? And that she had a sister? How was that possible? Then she looked a little closer and realized that she knew him. He was from her school. And she'd thought that she was the only one from a magical family there!

"Your name is Finn, isn't it? I'm Susan. Sarah is in Ireland with our daddy. She doesn't have powers, and I just got mine. My brother Matthew is at Hogwarts. He's a first year." She looked back at the kittens that had been licking and changing their fur, wishing that she had one of them. Maybe her mummy would let her have a pet now that they were living with Oliver and Ashton.

"I don't have a pet, but I want one. I come here a lot to look at the animals. I want one of these kittens if my mummy will let me have one." She smiled as the kittens went to their food dish, two of them still only half changed and a third with its fur sticking out in all directions as it had licked itself wrong.

She looked at Finn and then to the counter where his toad Wilbur had been taken.

"Want to look around with me some more?"