Dealla pushed open the door to the most famous bookshop in Diagon Alley with a little more enthusiasm than strictly necessary. Other than getting her wand at Ollivander's, and browsing through potion ingredients at the apothecary shop - which had been a lot of fun, although her mother had insisted that she wouldn't need any of that, since basic ingredients would be provided for her in Potions class and she would not enable Dealla to try more advanced (and dangerous!) potions lest both of them ended up in trouble with the Potions teacher - this had been the part of getting her Hogwarts supplies that Dealla had been most looking forward to.
All those books!
Her parents had a modestly sized collection of books, a lot of which Dealla had read - all of the compelling novels with smart, sly protagonists, all of the potion books her mother would let her have, some of the spell books her father hadn't managed to keep out of her fingers, although of course she hadn't been able to cast them.
But this? This! This was a whole new world for her. Books in shelves along the walls, books in stacks on the floor, books in chests, books hanging from the ceiling! All type of books, too. Fiction and non-fiction, big, heavy books and tiny books that fit into the palm of Dealla's hands, one small, rather dusty section even declared that you could find Muggle books there! Not that this held much attraction for Dealla - she'd grown up surrounded mostly by Muggles, and she'd read her fair share of their books. Also, the Muggle books to be bought here were probably horribly outdated, considering how well the wizarding world tended to keep up with Muggle culture and technology.

Dealla barely even noticed her mother entering the shop behind her, she was already heading towards a stack of books titled "The Most Important Tips and Tricks for Witty Witches". She had tried to convince her mother that she could do her shopping by herself, her mother needn't tag along for it, but Alexandra Prince had calmly insisted that she had her own shopping to do anyway, and it just so happened to lead her to the exact same shops Dealla also had, and wanted, to visit.
Her father had stayed at home, in Whitehaven - although there would be no way to hide that his daughter was starting to attend Hogwarts this year, they still wanted to try to stay out of sight of his parents for as long as they could. Hayden and Rosalie would start pulling strings soon enough.

"I don't think this is on your list, is it?" her mother asked, amusement plain in her voice.
Dealla sighed and dropped the book back on the stack. She hadn't even managed to open it yet. She turned around. "But mom," she whined, using her best puppy eyes on the tall, slim woman in front of her. "Shouldn't I have something to read in my free time, too? This sounds really useful!"
"There's a whole library at Hogwarts," Alexandra reminded her, entirely unmoved. "A rather large one, too. You can come back to whine at me when you've read all the books there."
Dealla pouted harder, but her mother remained firm and unyielding, so Dealla finally gave up and whirled to another section that had caught her eye. All this knowledge, collected in one place! Not that she cared about all of it, she wasn't a nerd after all, but she had promised herself she would leave her mark on the pages of history, and that began with knowledge, and school. Every important person in history had started small, after all. At least the interesting ones.

After quite a while of twirling from one section of books to the next, and several times of her mother shutting down her pleas to "But can't we buy this one? Just this one - pleeeease?" sometimes even before Dealla had even opened her mouth, she had finally calmed down enough to start looking for the books she actually needed to buy for school.
Magical Drafts and Potions, that sounded like a useful book, and one that she would probably already know cover to cover before stepping onto the Hogwarts Express on September 1. There was a good chance she'd already know a lot of the potions in it, but there was nothing bad about starting with the basics.
Book of Spells, yes, that one too. She also acknowledged the need for Magical Theory and A History of Magic - there was a lot to be learned from the pages of history! - but Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them made her scowl as she dropped it into the bag her mother patiently held open for her. She wasn't looking to work in a pet shop, nor was she going to be a zookeeper or whatever the job at Hogwarts was called of the guy who took care of all the magical animals on the grounds surrounding Hogwarts. She wasn't going to move to Romania to tame dragons, either. So what was the point? She could spend her money and time on much more fascinating, and helpful, topics!
"Do you have everything?" her mother asked finally, when all Dealla had been doing for the past few minutes was waste time and inch closer to one very large and very promising tome that had something about hexes on its cover.
She froze, somewhat guiltily, and glanced back at Alexandra, who was watching her knowingly.
"Let's go," Alexandra said, smiling. "I'll buy you some ice cream at Fortescue's, how about that? Does that make up for not being able to buy more books than you can carry?"
"A little," Dealla admitted, slightly mollified.
She paid for her school books - her mother had allowed her to manage the finances herself, although all she had gotten was exactly seven Galleons which pretty much only allowed her to buy what was listed in her letter - and, with a last, regretful glance back, left the shop.
Still, there was a small fire of excitement burning in her stomach. Excitement about the books she had just bought, about the wand she was going to buy next, and about all that awaited her from now on.
It was a whole new world hereafter, too.