If you ever need to buy school supplies for your young witch or wizard, the best place to visit is Hogsmeade, a quaint English village located in the heart of Orlando, Florida.
There you can buy the black robes that pass for a uniform at Hogwarts, that foremost school of Magic and Witchcraft. Regardless of what House the sorting hat has assigned them to, you can find other necessary attire, such as sweaters, hats, and scarves, to match the colors of Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Gryffindor.
First-year students, and careless students who need a replacement, can find the wand that suits them best at Ollivander's Wand Shop.
If your young witch or wizard is into sports, they likely play Quidditch. The older brooms Hogwarts assigns their students tend to pull to the side, and can prove truculent at times. For a more responsive model, I suggest the Nimbus 2000. What it costs you in money, it'll make up on the field. The increased performance might be enough to get him or her on one of the House teams.
Or perhaps your children look to the heavens for their inspiration. You'll find a wide variety of telescopes to help your children interpret the meaning of celestial movements.
Of course, every young woman needs her own mirror, if only to remind herself--every day--who's the fairest of them all. It's her, naturally.
Dragon Dave
With all the shops in Hogsmeade competing for our attention, one that captured it fully was a candy store. This display of Chocolate Frogs, along with the trading cards of witches and wizards included in each box, tantalized us with the possibility of compiling the complete set. (And, no doubt, a formidable army of frogs).
This display of delectables confounded even the most jaded palates.
While a display of Peppermint Toads had us croaking with delight,
this selection of Fudge Flies didn't promise us a pleasurable buzz.
In the end, we purchased an item both practical and tasty: a chocolate cauldron. I could eat the inside, and then use prepare potions. Of course, after storing away all the potions I could hope to need, I could then consume the cauldron in a manner befitting an accomplished wizard like myself.
Talk about having your cauldron and eating it too! But then, chocolate is a magical food.
Dragon Dave
When a steward opened our door, he ushered us from our cozy six-passenger compartment, and we walked down the train car's narrow hallway.
Disembarking the Hogwarts Express, we followed our fellow travelers out of the station, and soon saw signs marked Hogsmeade. We didn't recognize the name, but the air seemed fresher here in the country. And after our brush with the Dementors, any destination would have come as a relief, even the busy, noisy, crowded metropolis of London. Or for that matter, the busy, noisy, crowded metropolis of Orlando, which we also seemed to have departed. In any case, before us lay a delightful English village, with many shops and streets to explore.
A surprising large number of people filled the streets. Perhaps it was the local market day?
We could only wonder what we would discover in the village of Hogsmeade.
Dragon Dave
