YM778.TV Chapter 142 - 142
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Walking down the street to the left of Gringotts, one could get to a wide, flat street with well-groomed, closely spaced two and three-story houses along it. Each one had a tiny plot of land in front of the main entrance, where there could be both flower beds and flowers outside the fence and tiny verandas or even tiny parks, but with dense thickets and arches of climbing plants. Along the street on either side were rows of black lampposts with lamps that were obviously magical but now turned off. The kind of old-fashioned-looking lamps that still survive in the historic streets of ordinary London, and there they burn by igniting special grids. I wonder who first came up with this design and brought it to another world?
Even though there were obviously fewer people here, but they looked more solid, much more ordinary, or what? There weren\'t the garish outfits, like on Diagon Alley, as if its visitors had just escaped from the carnival, and even the robes here looked like capes, somewhat old-fashioned cloaks rather than sackcloths with sleeves.
The establishments along the street provided services rather than goods. For example, the law firm "Barksley & Co," in a two-story, architecturally austere house. Or, a little further away, an intermediary firm without a specific name, only on a very old, but, not unlike Ollivander, well-kept nameplate, was the inscription "Intermediary. Contracts, deals, resales."
Every three densely packed houses had access to a well-kept alleyway where four people could be separated without difficulty. They led into small enclosed courtyards where smaller firms, not as old and successful as those on display on the main street, were located.
By the way, from this street, you could get to another one, where there were residential districts, though not the best, and another street led directly to the ministry. It would seem that the distances are too small. We\'re in the Charing Cross area, and the ministry is on Whitehall about a mile and a half away, but it\'s magic, Max! By the way, I still don\'t know what these magical streets are - some kind of dimensional pockets, just hidden areas, or maybe even passages to another world?
After wandering through the streets, seeing wizards hurrying and walking with their children, I reached Avalon. The restaurant was in a small French palace-manor style and was located on a fairly large, by local standards, fenced area, with a high wall of plants and trees, an artificial waterfall, and a kind of winter garden. Outside, beyond the fence, the view clings to the summer verandas below and the covered mansard-type balconies that occupy two-thirds of the space below the second-floor roofs. I bet that from the inside, from the institution itself, and from the terraces, you get a feeling of alienation from the rest of the world. Only the front entrance through the fence and the street behind it hint that you are still in town. By the way, there are also separately existing establishments of a similar kind outside the city. Still, if you believe the conversations, Avalon is more popular for important meetings because it is located in the business and shopping center of London.
After looking around this way and that, I noticed human rather than elf attendants, a couple of obvious guards, and a few customers on the veranda. But most of the visitors still preferred the more secluded places on the second floor or in the inner halls. I don\'t have complete information about the place, unfortunately, but even so, I can imagine some escape routes. I\'m not an expert in this business, of course, but still... Rowena was able to interpret my slight sense of magic and summarized: "An anti-apparation field, like at Hogwarts."
Actually, that was the end of my visit here. Lady Greengrass wrote that she would wait for me here at the appointed time. I only need to introduce myself to the staff at the entrance.
The next point of my visit was to the house at the Grimmauld Place, for not all matters have yet been settled with Lady Walburga\'s portrait. It was for this reason that I did not linger any longer in the magical streets of London, and leaving them through the Leaky Cauldron, took public transport, heading to Grimmauld\'s Place.