Hagrid cooks them both dinner that night, and most nights over the next month, though every so often he takes them both out to a wizarding restaurant in Diagon Alley, somewhere he likes or somewhere that caught her eye. August passes in relative peace, with smiles and sightseeing.
"Tomorrow's the big day," Hagrid says, the evening of 31 August after they've eaten. "Feeling okay?"
The door slides open to reveal a plump woman pushing a cart stacked high with candy. "Anything off the trolley, dears?"
Ron - glances rather longingly at the cart, but says "no thanks" in a low voice and looks awkwardly at his knees.
...She's not a candy person but oh no Ron looks sad, and she has all this money -
She counts out some of her pocket money and gets a very large sampling of candies, then turns to Ron and shoves some of it at him.
"Think she already did, dear," the woman says kindly. "I'll throw in an extra chocolate frog, I think, too."
"Happy to help," she says to Harriet, giving her a conspiratorial sort of smile.
She grins back and accepts the chocolate frog gratefully, then piles the candy next to Ron - the bench is wide enough she can sit on the other end with the candy in between them.
She grins back, happy, and starts sorting through the candy a bit.
...Actually, didn't she get a chocolate frog in the hospital? She never looked at the card...
She pulls it out of a pocket after some searching.
"NICHOLAS FLAMEL," reads the little pentagonal card, "1330-1507," with a little picture of a squat bushy-bearded man framed under the label.
As she looks at the picture, it makes eye contact with her and blinks.
“One of the most celebrated alchemists in wizarding history, Nicholas Flamel is the first and only known wizard to have successfully created the Philosopher’s Stone, used to create that cornerstone of modern magical medicine, the Elixir of Life. Flamel created nine Philosopher’s Stones in his life, and donated them to magical hospitals in every part of the world. One such stone has remained in Britain even to this day.”
Super woah!
She carefully puts the card back in her pocket, then sorts through the other candies, looking for very weird stuff to try.
If she's looking for weird she can't do better than Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. (Well, no, knowing wizards she probably can, but they're a classic!)
Ron spies her investigating the box, and between noms of a licorice wand says, "Do muggles have jellybeans? I heard there's a lot fewer flavors in the muggle ones."
Steak and kidney pudding! Not just steak-and-kidney-pudding-flavored jelly bean, either; it tastes and feels exactly like a bite of the real thing.
Weird!!!
She reports this result, and that Muggle jelly beans don't do that, and tries another.
"What, really?" he says. "What do they do?"
(Brussels sprouts, fried in a neutral oil, seasoned with salt and pepper.)
"They mostly taste like sugar and artificial flavoring. Like, fruits or sodas, but only kinda."
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