Harry pulled out the Gringotts key. "This is my first purchase for my future career, and I aim to buy a trunk that will stay with me for years, possibly even pass on to my children."
Sarah's eyes widened before she smiled and pulled out a longer list. "Ah, I understand. Not many new students invest in a good trunk when starting school, but I think you will be pleased at the options we provide." She leaned back and opened a door in the back wall. "John, I have a special out here who may need a rush order. Do we have any backlog?"
A rich voice echoed, "No dear, finished my last custom yesterday. I was just replacing some of the recent sells." She nodded and turned back to Harry. "So there are a few things to keep in mind with Trunks... Well, honestly with any enchanted object." She pulled a display toward them from the edge of the counter. "As you can see, we have many woods and a couple of stones we build the trunks out of. Each one has different properties. Wood with certain types of grain or densities are harder to carve runes correctly into them, and other woods like Mahogany are more durable when finished but have latent magical properties that slow construction and raise the cost. The heaviest materials, like quartz or marble, can hold the strongest enchantments but are heavily resistant to some runes like the popular resizing and featherweight runes."
He looked at the samples of wood and the few of stone. "I assume the stone trunks are required for the houses I heard about?"
Sarah nodded. "The number of runes needed for preventing outside influence on multiple rooms, the ones needed for safety and durability... stone works best." She grinned, "But if you want my opinion you should try White Oak or Red Oak for the body of the trunk. It can't expand the most inside, but it is heavily durable, can hold a resizing rune very well, and that species work the best with our modified featherweight runes." She leaned in a little. "The default featherweight runes do not adjust for weight, so an empty trunk is still lighter than one full of rocks. Ours tries to adjust so it always stays around the same amount. Oak can get down to a few ounces at best, although I wouldn't suggest going to that extreme since we would run out of space for the other features."
Harry tapped the White Oak. He liked the shade of the wood and the grain pattern, and the idea of low weight also appealed to him. "Show me what we could do with the White Oak."
It had taken some time, but they had determined the features he wanted. Resizing and featherweight runes, fire/rot/water protection, and most importantly to Harry a strong password lock. He knew it wouldn't be able to resist a dedicated adult wizard, but it should easily handle other kids and so forth from getting curious. He also suspected that his password would be safe, since he could use words and phrases from so many languages now.
It had taken thirty minutes since they had a trunk in storage that was close to what he needed, and he had the Potter crest added to the top in memory of his family. It felt special to make it a POTTER trunk, instead of Harry's trunk. Thankfully neither Sarah nor John had made a huge deal out of who their customer had turned out to be, although he did catch them glancing at his smooth forehead as if the scar would reappear.
Sarah had been fun to talk to while John worked in the back. Harry had asked about other methods of storage and she had told him about bottomless pouches, ones that acted like his wallet pocket but had much larger storage and could warp objects to better fit into the bag.
Apparently they sold bookcase trunks as well, and when he mentioned purchasing one she had told him about her own guilty purchase, the master book.
A master book was made from enchanted metal wrapped in dragon leather, and was apparently massively expensive, using gems and gold under the cover as part of the ruining system. However, for those that were willing to pay a good amount it was an interesting trade of convenience. If you pressed the spine of the master book against a book you owned, it would create some sort of magical link between the two. Obviously the copy protection charms forced the master book to only work on books that were modified. To connect the master book to your purchase, you had to sign your name on the inside cover and place a drop of blood on the signature.
But there-after, the master book would contain a search-able list of all the linked books, and used modified paper creation runes to display the full text on conjured paper, as if the book was inside the metal cover.
Sarah confessed that many of those wealthy enough to afford the master book felt the high cost and inconvenience of the linking process made it a bad purchase, but she felt having her library in her hand was MORE than worth the few hours of setup.
Harry had immediately added two bookcase trunks to his purchase. To any book lover, this sounded way more important than trivial things like portable houses and such, and even with his mental library he loved reading. Apparently the book could be purchased at Flourish & Blotts, one of the larger book stores in the alley. At some point Professor McGonagall had tuned out of the conversation. She had initially protested the cost of Harry's purchases, but he had argued fairly well about how useful each item would be and how it was all education focused... and she honestly had a hard time arguing with the child, he looked so much like James.
Their conversation was interrupted by John who moved the large trunk onto the counter. The wood was shiny, and he opened the lid for Harry. "As you can see lad, there is a sturdy ladder to get down in there. I managed to get you around seven feet cubed space, and took the liberty of installing a set of closets, shelves, and a couple of drawers. Since you paid for the rush job I also threw in a potion ingredient cabinet as well. I know you won't need it yet, but family trunks should have a few interesting extras, right?"
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