The backpack was a concession to practicality that he had been thinking about since he'd considered, in the Room of Requirements, what it would mean to carry seven subjects' worth of books and equipment between classes every day in a building with seven floors and moving staircases.
The trunk solved the problem of storage. It didn't solve the problem of transit.
He found the shop two doors past the trunk-maker — a narrow establishment stacked with bags of every description, from the plainly functional to the extremely magical. The proprietor was a wizard of perhaps sixty whose entire professional identity appeared to consist of having strong opinions about the correct solution to carrying problems, which Ron found, under the circumstances, a genuinely useful quality.
He described what he needed: a standard-looking school backpack, nothing conspicuous, with an Undetectable Extension Charm and a Featherlight Charm both properly integrated — not added later as secondary enchantments, which tended to interfere with each other, but worked into the structure of the bag from the construction. Enough internal space for a full day's books and equipment across multiple subjects. Enough organisation to make retrieval efficient rather than archaeological.
The proprietor produced three options. He examined all three, tested the extension enchantments by putting his arm in up to the shoulder and confirming the space, and selected the one whose exterior was most unremarkable — dark canvas, plain buckles, nothing that would attract comment in a corridor or a classroom.
"Secondary locking charm?" the proprietor asked.
"Already have the trunk," he said. "But a basic closure charm. Something that doesn't open accidentally."
"Standard Sticking Charm on the main flap," the proprietor said. "Releases with intent. Won't open if it's dropped or jostled."
"That works," he said.
He paid, transferred the backpack into the wardrobe compartment of the new trunk for transport, and moved on.
The pensieve came from a specialist shop three doors down that dealt in memory-related magical instruments — pensieves of various sizes, memory extraction equipment, storage solutions, and the associated accessories of a practice that required precision tools to do correctly.
He had thought about the pensieve carefully before deciding to buy one.
The argument for was straightforward: he had access to two complete sets of memories — his own previous life and Ron's — and the ability to review them in a pensieve with the clarity of full sensory experience rather than simple recall was useful in ways that justified the cost. He also intended to use it for the purchased memories, which were going to constitute a significant learning resource and which he wanted to be able to revisit accurately.
The argument against was that he was thirteen years old and a pensieve was an unusual piece of equipment for a student and might raise questions.
He resolved this by keeping it in the locked fourth compartment where no one who wasn't specifically invited would encounter it.
The pensieve he chose was not the largest available — not the grand stone basin of Dumbledore's design — but a practical personal model, shallow enough to be efficient, deep enough to work properly, made from a silvery alloy that looked built to last rather than to impress. It fitted neatly into the fourth compartment's stabilizing base as though it had been designed for it, which it had, because he'd sent the trunk-maker's specifications to the pensieve shop when he'd placed the order.
He bought the memory extraction tool as well for when he didn't want to use a wand — a fine-tipped instrument for drawing memories cleanly from the temple without distortion — and a set of fifty blank memory vials.
The memory section of the general magical goods shop was his next stop.
It was in Wiseacre's, which he'd known primarily from Ron's memories as a source of school equipment but which turned out, on the upper floor, to stock a curated selection of educational memories. Not the deep personal variety — those couldn't be sold without consent protocols that made the process prohibitively expensive — but the constructed educational variety: carefully assembled memories of expert practitioners demonstrating skills, available as a teaching resource for self-directed learners.
The selection was organized by subject and level.
He worked through it methodically.
Potions memories for years one through five, with particular attention to the third and fourth year material that he hadn't yet covered and the fifth year content he wanted to preview. The demonstrator in these was a Potions master he didn't recognize whose technique was — watching the memory index description — precise and well-explained. He bought the full set.
Charm work, years one through five. The same principle: he had reasonable first and second year practical coverage from the Room of Requirements work, but having expert demonstrations of the spellwork available for review was different from his own practice and complementary to it.
Defense Against the Dark Arts — more selective here, because the subject had been inconsistently taught for long enough that the quality of available memories varied significantly. He bought the theoretical content and the specific memories flagged as demonstrating canonical spell-work, and skipped the ones that appeared to have been assembled by practitioners with views he found questionable.
Transfiguration, full set. This was the subject where he was most conscious of a gap between theoretical understanding and practical fluency, and expert demonstration was likely to be the most efficient bridge.
He did not buy Divination memories because there were no Divination memories worth buying, and he did not buy History of Magic memories because Binns's approach to his own subject was adequately represented by the textbooks and adding his voice to the experience would not improve the content.
He paid for the full collection, transferred the memories into his vials with the extraction tool according to the shop's instructions, organized them in the fourth compartment by subject and year, and closed the trunk.
Forty-three vials. Each one a session of expertise he could review as many times as needed, from the inside, with full sensory clarity.
He thought about the months ahead and felt, with quiet satisfaction, that he was building something solid.
The camera was straightforward.
He'd found the Muggle shop on his own — a photography supplier in the nearest town that stocked polaroid cameras alongside its more modern offerings — and had purchased the camera there on an earlier trip, negotiating with the teenager at the counter who had explained the film mechanics with the slightly bored thoroughness of someone who had given this explanation many times.
The enchantment work had been done by an advertisement in the back pages of the Quibbler, as planned. The enchanter — a wizard working from a small workshop in a converted garage who had no apparent interest in where his clients came from or what they intended to do with the results — had spent two hours on the camera with the focused attention of someone who found the problem technically interesting.
The result was a Muggle Polaroid camera that produced animated photographs in the wizarding style, developing within thirty seconds into images that moved as magical photographs did — present, continuous, looping in the natural way of captured moments rather than static images.
He packed it in the fifth compartment, cushioned against the other contents.
The Knockturn Alley portion of the list he handled alone, while his mother was completing her own errands.
He had told her where he was going. She had given him the specific expression she gave things she wasn't certain about.
He had explained the protective gear — its purpose, what it was made from, why he'd had it commissioned rather than buying something off a shelf — and she had listened and then said, with the resigned acceptance of someone learning that their child had updated views on preparedness: "Be back in an hour."
The leatherworker's shop was at the less hostile end of Knockturn Alley, which was a relative statement but a meaningful one. The work was ready — had been ready for two weeks, the artisan having owled him when it was done with the professional brevity of someone who didn't add words to communications that didn't require them.
He tried it on in the fitting room.
The vest first. Basilisk hide, cured and finished to a flexibility that the artisan had spent considerable effort achieving, because basilisk hide at full stiffness was protective but impractical and what he wanted was protective and wearable. It sat against his body — currently enlarged to his existing size and configured to resize as he grew, which the artisan had achieved through an enchantment she'd worked into the hide itself rather than adding as a secondary charm. Invisible under robes. He checked this in the mirror with his school robes over it and confirmed: nothing visible.
The arm bracers next. Same material, same flexible finish, sitting under the sleeves of his shirt with the same invisibility when covered. He flexed his hands, tested the range of motion, found it acceptable.
The boots last. These had required the most work — boots that were both protective and practical were a more complex design problem than a vest — and the artisan had resolved it by using basilisk hide only for the outer layer and the toe, maintaining the flexibility of a conventional boot with the protection where it mattered.
"Good fit," the artisan said, from the doorway of the fitting room.
"Excellent work," he said, and meant it.
He paid the remaining balance, packed the gear into the wardrobe compartment of the trunk — it would go under his robes, but transporting it in the wardrobe compartment was cleaner than wearing it through Diagon Alley — and left Knockturn Alley.
The Invisibility Cloak he collected from the enchanter in the converted garage on the way back through the Muggle side of London, where the cloak-maker — a different craftsperson from the camera enchanter, one who specialized specifically in concealment work — had completed the Demiguise hair weaving with the thoroughness her reputation had promised.
Demiguise hair cloaks were not the Invisibility Cloak. He was clear about this distinction and had been clear about it when commissioning. The Invisibility Cloak was singular — an actual Deathly Hallow, with properties that went beyond the natural qualities of Demiguise hair and wouldn't fade with time. A Demiguise hair cloak was the best available practical alternative: genuine invisibility for its lifespan, which was several years before the hair began to fade to translucency, at which point it would need to be re-woven.
It was enough.
He tried it in the cloak-maker's workroom — a plain room with good lighting specifically so that clients could confirm the effect. He looked at where his hands should be and found nothing. He walked to the mirror and found an empty room reflected back at him.
He bought it, folded it into the expanded pouch alongside his money, and left.