4 Diagon Alley
"Albert, are you sure we didn't go to the wrong place?" Herb was checking the map in his hand, but couldn't find the bar that Professor McGonagall said about.
"We need to find the bookstore first. The next door to the bookstore is a record store." Albert raised his finger to the big bookstore in front of him, and next door was a record store.
"This is it? But I..."
"...Can't see where the bar is?" Albert finished his sentence for him.
He would have never paid attention to the small bar next to the big bookstore if it weren't for special observation.
People passing by in a hurry did not even look at it, of course, including his father.
"I can see the bar, do you remember what Ms McGonagall said?"
"A Muggle can't see the bar?" Herb muttered, "I hate the word Muggle."
Herb held his son's hand and was moved forward. A few seconds later, he saw the legendary broken cauldron bar.
It was a dirty cramped bar.
"I hate it, it's so dirty."
"Me too, but go in!"
The father and son pushed the door one after another into the bar.
It was dirty, messy and dark.
This was the two people's evaluation of the bar. Inside were some men and women who didn't look normal. Most of them were elderly. They also had ridiculous top hats on their heads, which looked very funny.
If this group of people walk outside the street, they would definitely attract the attention of countless people, but right now, Albert and Herb are as dazzling as a ray of fire in the dark.
Herb immediately calmed down, walked towards the counter, looked at the bald old man and asked tentatively: "Mr Tom?"
"A little wizard from a Muggle family?" Tom looked at Albert, then looked up and smiled at Herb. "You want to ask how to get to Diagon Alley?"
"Yes, Mr Tom, Professor McGonagall said you can guide us to Diagon Alley." Albert also looked at the old man in front of him, barely squeezing out a polite smile on his face.
"Of course, come with me." Tom walked out from behind the bar and beckoned the two to follow.
The three came to the backyard of the bar, where there was only a brick wall, a trash can and a few empty wine barrels.
"This trash can will stay here all the time. You need to count three pieces on top, and then two pieces in the horizontal direction. This is the brick." Tom pointed his finger at the place he had just tapped with his hand and then pulled it out. The wand tapped on the brick three times, then turned to Albert and said, "When you have your own wand, you can open the entrance to Diagon Alley by yourself. Remember, use the wand three times."
The brick knocked by Tom began to tremble and the brick wall moved strangely. A small hole appeared in the middle. The opening of the hole became bigger and bigger. It only took a few seconds to form a strip in front of the three.
A cobblestone street stretched from their underfoot to the front, flanked by shops. There were many wizards and hawking stalls on the street.
"Welcome to Diagon Alley." Tom smiled at the two.
"Mr Tom, how shall we go back later?" Herb asked.
"After you finish shopping, you can open the door as I did just now." Tom answered Herb's question patiently, not forgetting to remind him: "By the way, you'd better go to Gringotts to find the fairy first. Exchange for Kanon. Muggle currency cannot be used here. Going forward from here, the white building is the Gringotts Wizarding Bank."
"Thank you, Mr Tom."
"Happy to help you." Tom smiled and waved to the two of them, then turned back to the bar.
After Tom left, the entrance disappeared and turned back into a wall.
"Let's go and exchange money." Herb took a deep breath.
"It feels very different here." Albert looked at the surrounding shops, smiled and said to Herb, "It gives me the feeling that civilization has gone back by a century."
"To be honest, I doubt the decision of letting you go to Hogwarts. Maybe Daisy's persistence is right." Herb sighed lightly. Although the magical world exists, he does not have a particularly good feeling about it.
"Dad, I don't necessarily have to live in the magical world." Albert couldn't help rolling his eyes and reminding, "I am going to Hogwarts mainly to master this magical power."
"Oh, you are right." Herb's mood improved a bit and the two went through the crowd, to Gringotts.
As Tom said, it was a white building and there was a small figure standing beside the bronze gate, that was... a fairy.
"They are so special." Herb's facial expression was a bit stiff. This was the first time he had seen something other than humans in a humanoid build.
Albert didn't care about it, he looked at the complexion of the fairy. Short, sharp beard, slender hands and toes, and a dark face, a creature with no sense of beauty at all.
When they entered the door, Albert noticed a goblin bowing to them.
There was a second door in the back, silver, with lettering on the two doors. After Herb came closer, he took a closer look and said aloud: "Please come in, stranger, but beware of what it is to be greedy. If you leave the game, just ask for it, and get something for nothing, you will definitely receive the severest punishment..."
"I really don't understand, how hard do wizards need to rob the bank before they need to engrave a warning sign on the door?" After reading, Herb couldn't help but mutter.
Albert wanted to laugh a little when he heard that, and quickly cleared his throat and asked. "How much are you going to change?"
"This?" Herb thought for a while, he then whispered, "One thousand pounds, if it's not enough, we can exchange it again."
One thousand pounds is equivalent to one month's salary for most people.
Albert estimated that it was about two hundred galleons. He nodded and said, "I think it should be enough."
After entering, the two fairies bowed to the two and led them into a tall marble hall. Herb said that he needed to change some Galleons.
The fairy led them to the counter on the right again and handed a piece of parchment to Herb. The parchment was about the exchange rate between British pounds and Canadians and the concept of money in the magic world.
1 galleon is equal to 4.95 pounds.
1 galleon is equal to 17 cikes and 1 cike is equal to 29 nats.
Herb handed the parchment to his son and asked, "How many pounds does it cost to get 200 galleons?"
"990 pounds."
"Please help me exchange 200 galleons." Herb took out 990 pounds from his wallet and let the goblin exchange it for galleons.
"Okay, wait a minute." The goblin took the pounds and started counting.
"Excuse me, Mr Fairy, no matter how many pounds can be exchanged for Galleons here?" Albert curiously asked about the doubts he had from his previous life.
"That's true in theory, but we won't collect too much Muggle currency." The goblin rang the bell and called another goblin to give instructions. The goblin took a bag of gold coins and handed it to Herb. Then led them aside to verify the number of galleons.
"I didn't expect it to be a gold coin." Herb fiddled with Galleon at his fingertips and couldn't help but sigh.
After counting and confirming that they were correct, the two took galleons and left Gringotts.
Walking on a sunny street, the gold coins in the two people's pockets collided with a pleasant jingle, as if urging them to spend the coins quickly.
