The Shopkeeper of All Worlds in the British Wizarding World

Chapter 409 Gift
The next morning, Ryan woke up very early. When he opened his eyes, he saw Hermione also opened her eyes and looked at him.

"Good morning, Merry Christmas." After greeting each other, the two got up to wash up. Of course, while the other was washing up, each party put their gifts in the pile of gifts at the other's bedside.

Here I have to praise the owls in the wizarding world, even though they closed the doors and windows when they went to bed yesterday, but these gifts still appeared at their bedside early this morning. This magical situation can only be explained by magic.

The Christmas gift Hermione gave Ryan this time was a men's necklace that looked very old, like the kind that ancient nobles hung outside their dresses. Ryan took a closer look and found that there was a rune on the necklace that could make people's brains clear. Unfortunately, this enchantment had lost its effect over time. However, judging from the degree of magic loss, this necklace had a history of nearly a thousand years.

After turning over the largest red spinel in the necklace, Ryan finally found the origin of the necklace: the gold setting of the gemstone was engraved with Richard I. This inscription means Richard I. If the year of the necklace is taken into consideration, the identity of its owner is obvious: Richard the Lionheart, one of the most famous kings of Britain nearly a thousand years ago.

"Thank you." Ryan thanked Hermione while holding the necklace. "This is really a very precious gift. Especially the alchemical runes on it, even though they are no longer effective, they still have a high reference value."

"As long as you like it, I found this from the pile of junk in the Room of Requirement. It was a little deformed when I first took it out, and it took me a lot of time to clean and repair it." Hermione said as she opened the gift Ryan gave her. Soon she opened the gift box Ryan gave her and took out a baseball-sized crystal bottle filled with golden liquid.

"This is..." Hermione looked at the bottle in her hand seriously, "Delight Potion? But this bottle of medicine is not so shiny. But it doesn't look like Felicis Felix either. After all, Felicis Felix isn't so transparent, and its viscosity isn't as high as this."

Looking at the distressed Hermione, Ryan revealed the answer: "You don't have to guess. This potion doesn't exist outside. It's a potion I invented myself. It's made with the blood of the Reem cattle seized from the vampire last time. After drinking it, it can permanently increase the drinker's strength to the maximum extent. The only drawback is that it can only be drunk once, and the effect cannot be accumulated."

"The blood of the Riem cattle? I've seen a brief introduction to this animal in the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Their blood is extremely popular. As far as I know, it's very expensive and has always been in short supply."

"For an old vampire family, this kind of thing is not impossible to obtain." Ryan continued to open the packages containing gifts. "I suggest you drink this bottle of medicine quickly. This kind of thing will only make sense if you drink it."

"Hmm." Hermione pulled out the cork directly, then tilted her head back and drank all the potion in the bottle.

"I just felt my fingertips getting a little warm." After drinking the potion, Hermione sat on the sofa for a while, but she didn't feel the strange feelings she had imagined. "I thought it would be like in the movies and comics, where after drinking it, my whole body would ache, I would struggle desperately, and then my body would change immediately."

"Do you think this is Captain America's super soldier human transformation potion?" Ryan was a little amused. "Even if we are wizards, we still have to follow the basic principles. If we don't want too strong side effects, then this kind of change cannot be completed immediately in a short period of time. And since you said so, why did you just open the bottle and drink it?"

"I trust you won't hurt me." Hermione raised her eyebrows mischievously. "By the way, why do Harry and his friends' gifts this year seem to be wholesaled from somewhere? Why are they all Honeydukes Christmas candy gift packages?" She raised a few Christmas gift packages in her hand and waved them at Ryan.

"I think they might have something wrong?" Ryan remembered that in the original text, before Christmas, Harry had a dream about the soul fragment of Voldemort in Nagini. He also saw the scene where the big snake bit Mr. Weasley. It was no wonder that he didn't see Harry and the others when he left school by train. They should have gone to No. 12 Grimmauld Place by then.

He had remembered this matter, but he had been busy dealing with the giant recently and had forgotten about it. Because of Ryan, Hermione's relationship with Harry was not as close as in the original text. To Dumbledore, Hermione and Ryan were more like members of the Order of the Phoenix who were inspired by him. So Dumbledore did not inform Hermione of this matter as in the original text. Although he did not know why the Weasley family members who had a good relationship with them did not tell them about this, it would be inappropriate to ignore it now that they knew what was going on.

"Why don't we just write a letter and ask them what happened? After all, they are our friends." This suggestion was agreed by Hermione, because she was also a little worried about what bad things had happened to Ginny and Percy, who usually got along well with her.

After writing the letters to the twins and Ginny and putting them in envelopes, the two of them came to the open-air garden on the roof of the hotel. Looking at the drained open-air swimming pool and the empty flower pots, Ryan knew that this place should be very popular in the summer. But it was winter now, and there was no one here.

"Okay, now I'll summon an owl." Ryan took out his wand and quickly tapped the wall three times, then paused for a few seconds and quickly tapped again. "This is the method Percy told me. He said that in Europe you can use this method to summon owls in the wild, but you have to pay extra for the owls you summon."

Sure enough, not long after Ryan put away his wand, he heard the sound of flapping wings in the distance. Then, seven or eight plump chickens, no, owls, huddled together on the railing of the open-air garden.

"I need to send two long-distance mails to the UK. This is international mail and needs to fly very far." Ryan took out the two letters and waved them. "Who can help me with this?"

As soon as the words fell, a large owl, almost the same size as Hermione's Hermes, squeezed out from the group of owls of all sizes. It was also an eagle owl. The most conspicuous thing was that there was a small leather bag hanging on its left leg, with gold-plated Russian letters on it saying: Cuckoo Owl Post Office, safe, fast and accurate.

"Let me think about it. Oh, Percy said the next step is to take a handful of coins and put them in front of the owl." Ryan muttered as he took out a handful of Knuts from his pocket. The owl in front of him really moved, tapping the coins gently with its beak.

"Twelve kats, not expensive." Ryan counted the coins the owl had knocked over and put the twelve kats into the pocket on the owl's foot. After receiving the money, the owl raised its other foot and let Ryan hang the letter on it before flying away.

"It's really troublesome. Why don't wizards use stamps?" Hermione complained, "So what should we do now?"

"It will probably take a day for this kind of international mail to arrive. Why don't we go to the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the Nikulin Circus today? We can't just sit there and wait. The letter will probably arrive by the time we get back in the evening."

The two of them had a great time that day, and when they came back and had dinner in the evening, the twins and Ginny's reply arrived. As expected, their father was seriously injured by a snake attack, but unlike the original text, Mr. Weasley was only seriously injured by the snake venom after being bitten on the arm, and the injury was lighter than before.

At the same time, the twins also explained why they didn't write to them: Mrs. Weasley felt that since Mr. Weasley was not in danger, it was not necessary to implicate his friends and make them have a bad Christmas, so she didn't allow the children to write to their friends about it. So it wasn't until Ryan and the others took the initiative to ask that they told them the truth.

"Really." Ryan shook his head gently, and once again felt that the Weasley family were all good people. Since this was the case, it was necessary to visit them. Anyway, the mission to Russia this time had been completed, and there was nothing important left. The only regret was that the time for this trip with Hermione was a little short.

(End of this chapter)