Maria has never traveled by Floo Powder before, and let's just say, she never she never wants to do that again. She thought learning to fly a broomstick was bad, but this is way worse for her semi weak stomach. "When you asked if I liked the color green, I didn't think you meant something like that."

Julia laughs as she steps out of the fireplace, the green flames extinguishing from around her feet. She rubs Maria's back as the blonde leans over, feeling a bit nauseous. "You'll get used to it."

"You girls okay with finding the stores on your own? We have some business at Gringotts that we need to take care of." Julia's mother asks the girls. "Ethan wants to go with you too. We will bring Andrew to the bank."

"That's fine, mama." Julia agrees, knowing it will be way easier to traverse through the alley with less people.

Julia's father gives a decent sized sack of gold galleons to Ethan. "Spend it wisely, Ethan. That's all you're getting, so make sure you only buy things you want."

Ethan eagerly takes the money and puts it in the pocket of his robes. "Okay! I can't wait to get more Quidditch stuff and candies!"

Everyone smiles at Ethan's cuteness and the adults leave with Andrew beside them. Maria turns to Julia and smiles, excited to go to some stores and buy magic items. "Where should we go first?"

"We can visit the Potions shop to get it over with. I hate the smell in there." Ethan and Maira agree with Julia and the three enter the Potions shop to refill the girls' supplies for Potions class. It took a bit longer than normal, but that was only because Ethan was too fascinated with the solid gold cauldrons and the girls had to practically drag him out of the store.

The next place they visit is the robes shop. After the events of last year, Maria and Julia need new robes. Their last pair was ruined after their encounter with Cade in the Forbidden Forest. The lady who is fitting the girls into their robes keeps fussing about youngsters and not being careful with their own clothing. "Back when I was in school, we had to make due with one tie and two robes. Nowadays, parents are buying three extra bloody robes in the middle of the school year because their children blew up their neighbor in Transfiguration!"

Right when the girls are done getting their robes, they see two girls outside walking together. One has light blonde hair and the other's bushy brown. Maria and Julia sprint outside and tackle their friends in a hug. Julia jumps on Lauren, surprising her. "That's payback for last year."

"Julia! You scared me!" Lauren turns around to see one of her best friends. She remembers last year when she ran into Julia and knocked her over because she was running away from her ex-boyfriend, Alex. Lauren hasn't seen any of her friends all summer, so she's thrilled that she's meeting up with most of them in Diagon Alley. "Thanks for at least not making me lose my balance. How are you two?"

"Awesome! I spent the night at Julia's house and we both got our Hogwarts letters this morning," Maria explains after breaking her and Agnes's hug.

"We got our letters today too. My sister is here wandering around. She told me to quickly go get my books while she checked out the wand shop, and that's when I ran into Lauren." When Agnes mentions her sister, Julia's eyes widen.

"Mary is here?!" Agnes smiles and nods, making Julia ecstatic. "What does she think about everything? Does she think the stores are cool? Have you shown her any magic?!"

"Slow down, Jules!" Agnes giggles at how excited Julia is about Mary finally being exposed to magic. "She loves it, but we aren't allowed to use magic outside school, remember?"

"Oh, her family does not follow that rule." Maria thinks back to yesterday when she came over to Julia's house. They used magic to cook, clean, and even flew on their broomsticks around the house sometimes.

"Speaking of family, where's Ethan?" Julia turns and looks around for her younger brother. She is relieved when she finds Ethan walking toward them carrying a bag and Hannah walking next to him. When they get to the group of friends, Julia looks at her brother. "Sorry we ran out like that, Ethan. What'd you buy?"

"Watching you guys get fitted into new robes was boring, so I saw Hannah and she took me to the Quidditch store." Ethan pulls out a golden snitch from the big bag in his hands.

Julia rolls her eyes, but has to refrain from laughing. "We already have a snitch at our house. Why'd you get another one?"

"Ours is silver!" Ethan pouts, knowing he was going to get judged for his purchase.

"We can just paint it gold." Julia tries suggesting to her brother, but then pats his head. "But, it's your money just like dad said, so I'm not going to say anything else."

Ethan shoves his snitch back into his bag, and with an exaggerated, "Hmph," he smiles again, turning to normal happy Ethan. He turns to the others and asks, "Where do we go now?"

Hannah puts a finger on her chin and thinks about the other places they can go to. She's already gotten her robes, Potion supplies, and even visited a few other stores with Ethan. All she really needs to do is get her books. "How about the book stop?"

"That's where we were heading." Agnes gestures to herself and Lauren. "It's the last place we need to go. I wanted to save it for last because it can get crowded in there."

"Smart," Julia says, which makes Agnes smile confidently.

"I know, I should have been in Ravenclaw." Agnes jokingly says, making the friends all chuckle.

"Well, my sister is helping Stephen get his books right now, so maybe we'll run into them at the store." Hannah informs everyone that Stephen is starting his first year at Hogwarts on the way to the store. Ethan gets a bit jealous, but doesn't say anything. Next year he will be with them at the school, so he just has to wait.

The group of six make their way over to the store, all just glad to be in each other's company again. Ethan is happy that he gets to be a part of the group. After he was secretly told of their adventures last year by Julia, he has become even more excited to get into Hogwarts and join them. Agnes is just finishing her story about her brother, Frank, stealing her wand this morning when she is interrupted by a loud bang sound.

The crowd around the group screams, making the kids scared and all huddle together. The people start ducking and running in all directions. The sound came from the bookstore. Instead of running away like a normal person, Hannah breaks away from the group and runs toward the shop, knowing her brother and sister are most likely inside. Not wanting their friend to get hurt, the group hesitates but follows her.

When they get inside, everything is more chaotic than it was in the alley. Books are strewn across the floor, people are buried under the mess, the stairs that lead to the second floor are broken halfway up. It's almost as if there was a tornado that swept through the interior of the place. Hannah quickly finds Katie and Stephen underneath a pile of hard covered books and torn pages. She kneels down and frantically clears away most of the debris from her siblings. "Katie, Stephen! What happened here?"

"Th-there were two people arguing. They started fighting and one of them pulled his wand out..." Katies tries to explain, but she starts tearing up. Hannah becomes extremely concerned. She's never seen her sister this shaken up before. Katie has always been the protector of the kids because she's the oldest.

"Bloody- Agnes, thank Heaven you're alright!" Mary comes rushing into the store and tackles her younger sister in a suffocating hug. "Please don't tell me you're the one who made this place explode!"

"N-no I didn't!" Agnes hugs her sister back, relieved that she's okay as well. "This isn't the normal for Diagon Alley by the way."

Mary laughs through her tears, not believing that Agnes is able to make a joke in these circumstances. Katie takes a breath and collects herself. She helps Stephen sit up before she starts explaining, "When the guy pulled out his wand, there was a flash and a bang. Before I knew it, the two who were fighting were gone, books were falling from the shelves, and the whole building shook! I grabbed Stephen, but we both fell and we ended up being buried under all the books from the top shelf."

"Did you see who the person was?" Maria asks, knowing she'd feel more comfortable if she was able to get a sense of what the attacker looked like.

Katie shakes her head and stands up, helping her brother up as well. "I couldn't see either of them. They both had on black cloaks with hoods that shadowed their faces."

The group of second year Hogwarts girls all exchange uneasy looks. Ethan understands and starts to get worried too. Lauren looks around the shop to see people still stuck under the debris. "Come on, we should help these people."

Everyone starts shuffling through the books on the floor, trying not to damage them more than they already are. Katie uses a few spells she knows to lift the books off the floor and put them back in their places. Some of the more damaged books she puts in a pile by the broken stairs. Stephen and Ethan help her out by flipping through the damaged books and making sure they're still usable. The ones that aren't get put in another pile to throw away. Julia, Mary, Agnes, Maria, Lauren, and Hannah help people who are still pinned between the floor and a pile of heavy books. People from the outside peek in and see what happened, and start helping as well.

At one point, Agnes sees something odd by the broken staircase. She slowly goes over to investigate, and swiftly pulls out her wand in case anything pops out at her. Not that she knows any spells that will help her, but maybe she can scare the attacker with Lumos or something.

Agnes passes Ethan and Stephen who are still organizing the pile of broken books. She turns to her right and sees a small door underneath the staircase. She mumbles to herself, "Who in their right mind would make a door this small under a staircase?"

The door is black, and if she was just passing by she would have missed it. Agnes kneels down and grips the handle, lifting the hinge and quickly opens the door. She was expecting to find a person hiding in the small room, maybe the person who started the fight. After all, Katie did say that they both vanished. However, instead of anything useful, all Agnes finds is a few cleaning supplies and barrels filled with towels. She is about to close the door, but a fabric on the ground catches her eye.

Agnes kneels down and scoops it up. It looks like a black cloth that was torn from a piece of clothing. When she rubs her fingers over it, the cloth is a bit rough but warm against her skin. Agnes puts her wand and the cloth in her pocket, and quickly turns around when a horrified woman's scream pierces through the store. The bushy haired girl quickly closes the door and runs back to the main area of the shop where her friends are.

"What happened?" Agnes reaches her friends and finds them all struck with terrified faces. Julia, Maria, and Hannah are covering their mouths with their hands and some of them are even starting to tear up. Katie hugs Stephen close to her, and Mary stands protectively beside Ethan. They are all looking at an older witch who fainted, and beside her is a taller man with white balding hair staring up at the ceiling. It takes a moment to realize that the man isn't breathing and that his eyes are void of life. Despite there being no wounds of any sort, no sign that there is something wrong with this man, Agnes starts to feel nauseous when she realizes what happened. "Katie, that flash you saw was green colored, wasn't it...?"

Katie slowly nods, and Agnes's thoughts are confirmed. The man who pulled out his wand must have missed his target and killed this man with the Avada Kedavra curse instead. Agnes and her friends learned about the curse last year.

No one knows what to do as they are frozen in shock and fear. Julia's parents come running into the store followed by Andrew. All the kids process is Julia's parents leading them out of the building and away from the body. Mrs. Copper, Julia's mother, goes back inside to investigate and send a report to her Auror coworkers to come help. Ian finds the group easily after hearing what happened at the bookstore. Thankfully, word around here travels lightspeed.

Lauren hugs her brother and starts sobbing into his robes, letting out how scared she is. Julia hugs Maria, the latter tearing up and shaking a bit. Julia shakes as well, but is too much in shock still to cry. Agnes lets her sister hug her, but she is also too stunned to let out her emotions. Hannah softly cries into Katie's shoulder, and when David comes with the rest of the Miller family, Stephen stays close to them. Mr. Copper holds Andrew and Ethan close to him, rubbing their shoulders to help settle them down.

Not a lot is said for the rest of the day. None of them end up getting their books, not wanting to go back inside the store. The rest of the Aurors come and help Mrs. Copper at the crime scene. Mr. Copper takes everyone over to get a small ice cream, and the big group follows him willingly. Agnes feels her pocket to make sure the cloth is still there and holds Mary's hand with her other one. The only thing anyone thinks of for the rest of the day is, Who was the man in the dark cloak Katie saw?