This is sort of funny, and sort of not.
Day before yesterday I was out shopping. Because for that emergency Healing course I'm doing at St Mungo's, the one Dolohov got me into, I needed this very specialised Healer's kit and also a set of robes. They're done up to keep the weather out if you're outside and also they resist stains even if people bleed all over you, and if you spill one of the nastier potions on yourself it's supposed to just roll off. The kit's got potions in it and self-wrapping bandages and all sorts of other extremely useful things.
Pansy wanted to pay for it for me but I hate taking money from her if I don't absolutely have to and I had some saved. I keep it in her vault, because paying for a vault from Gringott's is expensive (especially if it's not some vault your family wrote the contract for 500 years ago) and Pansy wants me to be able to get at the money in there anyway -- I just keep track of what I put in and make sure not to take out any more than that. Anyway. They have three different versions of the kit, cheap, middling and dear, and I'd figured I'd just get the cheap one. The extra cost is mostly the case, not what's in it; the most expensive one is charmed to be extremely light plus you don't have to actually CARRY it in your hand, it'll just sort of follow you around. Plus I think you can whip it around in front of you to ward off some curses, though probably not anything all that dire, I'm sure it doesn't do anything a shield charm can't do.
Anyway.
So, I go to the shop. I'd looked up the cost of the kits and the cheapest (with the robes) I could just afford, but then they didn't have any of the cheap kits out, and when I asked about them the woman in the shop was really rude about it, said she didn't know how I was going to pay for the course if I couldn't afford the kit (I could afford it, I just needed the cheap one, I don't know what her problem was) and just in general acted like, I don't know. Like Padma Patil on a bad day.
Finally she gets one out from the back and I fill out the slip to transfer money out of the bank vault. She takes it with this enormous sigh, like I'm HUGELY inconveniencing her, and then she looks at it and her eyes get really wide.
Because, it turns out, Antonin Dolohov already paid for my kit (he bought me one of the really nice ones) and it was waiting for me behind the counter and they were supposed to be watching for me and somehow, they'd thought that anyone Antonin Dolohov was sponsoring would ... well, they probably thought I KNEW he'd paid for the kidt. He's paying for the course, but I assumed I would pay for the kit. Anyway. She was so VERY embarrassed at being rude that to make up for it she offered me a substantial discount on my robes. Like, she didn't ACTUALLY say, 'please don't tell your immensely powerful patron that we were nasty to you!' but ... that's why.
Anyway, I thought, 'I will have to tell Ron about this, because he'll find it hilarious, sort of!' (I can't tell Pansy, she'd be cross I was going to buy myself a cheap kit instead of letting her get me a nice one for Christmas) But of course it sort of went out of my head, after I got home.
Dolohov really wants me to be in his debt. He wants to be sure that I know I'm in his debt.
I should probably write to him, too, tonight.
