Rich Boy Brings Trouble

Diagon Alley was an odd name, I thought, for a place like this. Some kind of rickety cobbled street with a bunch of old buildings? If I had my way, I would've given it a more fittin' name. Something like... well... I'm not sure, but it would've been better than this!

Amalia was gripping my shoulder tightly. I needed some kind of distraction. Shabby Alley? Cobbled... way?

Another one of her squeals snapped me out of it. What was I doing wastin' my time with names? I was never much good with those. And Amalia was right here, ramblin' on about...

"...finally outta tha' stuffy little village, gettin' t' see some real excitement..."

...something I couldn't grasp, but enjoyed hearin' about.
Really, I was just happy to see her excited. Excited for me, no less.

"Look, over there! That store, with the golden letterin'! Zach, we've got t' go there first!"

Before I could object, I was swept away by my elated sister. It was hard not to get caught up in her excitement, especially when I got a peek at what was sittin' in one of those curved merchandising windows.

"Ah, welcome, welcome!" An old voice rang out across the stuffy store. "Please do excuse the mess."

I caught a hint of some sort of spoken-word recordin' coming from upstairs. I couldn't make out much more than the lyrics. Somethin' t' do with girls and money.

"And the noise. You've caught me on such short notice..."

The source of the older voice soon became clear, as a white-haired man with more wrinkles than I could count emerged from the shadows. His face was hard to make out until he lit up the entire room... with nothin' more than the wave of a wand.

"Whoa..." ...it was hard not to let a bit of my excitement slip out.

"Ah, Amalia!" The old man trilled.

The instant he recognized my sister, her face somehow lit up even more than it already had. "Mr. Ollivander! Guess what? Gueeessss what?"

I held back a chuckle as I saw the man wince a little. He gave Amalia a cautious reply, to which she almost interrupted him.

"Zach's here! Zach! I told you about him, didn't I? I've got t' have!" Every word flowed into the other, one after another, barely any room to breathe thrown in between each word.

This 'Mr. Ollivander' chap didn't seem very receptive to Amalia's diatribe, especially as it continued on and on. Eventually, he had to cut her off.

"Miss Amalia, I'm very glad for you and your brother, but you must understand that I cannot remember every word my customers speak."

"But you remember all their wands! You sold 'em all and haven't forgotten one! Why can't you remember everythin' they say?" Amalia pouted.

Ollivander seemed to take offense to this, which amused me more than it probably should have, and neglected to reply to Amalia anymore. Instead, he turned his attention to me.

"Young... Zach. Zachary, is that your full name?" He lowered his tone of voice for the second bit and knelt down to make sure I'd heard.

I nodded confirmation, and Ollivander continued his speech. "Young Zachary! I must assume you are here for a wand, yes?"

The statement made me blink a bit. My own wand..? Right, that had been obvious from the start, hadn't it? That display window...

"I'll be payin'!" Amalia butted in, apropos of nothing.

Ollivander pointedly ignored her, focusing his attention entirely on me. I gave him a nod-- a very timid one, I may add, more timid than I should have-- and his previously tense grin begun to relax into a somewhat unnerving smile.

"Very well, then. Let's waste no more time with idle talk..." ...Ollivander mumbled as he swept past me, tottering over to Amalia's left as he reached for a wand case... "...and begin with this."

Mr. Ollivander presented me a case, which he soon slid to the left to reveal a cushioned box. Inside it lay a long, brown-ish wand.

"Phoenix feather, ebony wood. Just like your sister's," the old man chuckled. "It never hurts to try something familiar with blood relatives."

I couldn't help but stare. Part of the staring was out of shock-- I still had yet to really process that I was going to be owning something so cool, or that it was even real-- and part of it was out of cluelessness.

It was hard not to blush when Ollivander felt the need to clarify. "Just take it out of its case and see how it feels to wave around."

I did as he commanded, and... well, I didn't know what to say. "It feels like a stick."

Mr. Ollivander frowned...

...and so began a grueling, several-hour session of trying out various sticks.

"Ebony, dragon heartstring. Give it a wave."

Nothing.

"Pine, Unicorn hair."

No change.

"Applewood, Veela lock!"

Not a sound.

After an hour of testing, Amalia left the store. She'd loudly proclaimed her boredom and left me to rot, finding herself chasing a stray kitten soon after leaving the store.

"Ah, she's..." Ollivander trailed off.

I just watched her run out of sight, not even taking one look back at the store she'd left me in. "She'll be back, probably." It was hard to hide my disappointment.

"If you're sure she will... let's continue."

And so we did, for another two hours.

"Holly, phoenix feather..." The old man began to tire, handing me an incredibly dusty case and prying the wand out of it while he spoke.

I snatched it up in no time and gave it another swish... with no results.

Ollivander's expression truly soured. "That... was the last of them."

He had to be jokin', right? I blinked. "You-- what? The last of them?"

Ollivander gave me a curt nod and began to climb up an obscenely large ladder. "The last." He coughed. "Every single one... in my store."

Upon descending back to the floor, the old man looked frailer than ever. "You've tried out so many that you've kicked up more dust than my great-grandson on one of his music benders," Ollivander laughed in a half-hearted manner.

Whatever this meant for me, I couldn't really grasp. Not a single wand in England's most prestigious store had my name on it. Not one responded to my magic. "Does this... does this jus' mean I won't get t' be a wizard?"

"I... well..." Mr. Ollivander's eyes darted from side to side. He noticed my face beginning to scrunch up and almost began to panic--

SLAM

--when a door from upstairs flew open.

"Uuuugh, I'm sick of hearin' this!" A younger voice called out.

I struggled to make out even those words, as they were accompanied by the loudest music I'd ever heard.

EIGHT FINGERS IN YOUR MOUTH AND TWO STICKIN' OUT YOUR NOSE
FURTHER DOWN THE HALL, THE ROOM OF JOKER-O'S

"Oliver, for God's sake, turn down that music!!" Old Mr. Ollivander yelled, his throat clearly struggling to overpower the music.

"WHA'?" The young voice called back.

THAT'S WHERE YOU GET BEAT BY 17 WICKED CLOWNS
FOR THE 17 DEAD BODIES NEVER FOUND

"TURN IT OFF!" The old man yelled again, his words cutting through the music and leaving the room in silence.

"You're no fun, gramps!" The voice called.

Not long after, a black-haired boy-- definitely older than me-- slid down the bannister and landed on two feet. The boy was dressed very strangely, with foam headphones hanging on his collarbone and some kind of choker on his neck, covered in clothing straight out of a medieval torture chamber or some kind of mall rat coven. He extended a hand to me, which I promptly shook, and introduced himself. "Oliver Ollivander, at your service."

"Nice to meet you," I mumbled.

"He's not got a wand, yeah? Not one in the store that suits him?" Oliver repeated, turning his attention to his... grandfather? I figured grandfather. He'd said 'gramps', after all.

Mr. Ollivander was about to reply, but he seemed to catch onto... something, and quickly began to scowl. "Oliver, don't you dare bother with those... things. They are waste, meant to be disposed of and forgotten! Not sold to customers!"

"Yeh, yeh, I've heard it all before. You've told me. You've failed to stop me." Oliver boasted, his tone very clearly trying Mr. Ollivander's patience.

The boy let go of my hand and began to pace, his hands gesturing in elaborate ways as he detailed his thought process. "So, mate, grandad here's trying to put you off. He's not got you a wand, yeah? So you gotta go to his competitors. His rivals across the street. The poors, the lesser-off. The ones with the shittier wands."

"Oliver, language!"

The boy pointedly ignored his grandfather and continued. "That'll be a stain on your reputation, and a hole in our wallet. We don't want that, yeah? So you can stay here. You can try out even more wands that gramps is hidin' from you."

Mr. Ollivander's expression became dangerously cross. "Oliver, don't you dare."

It was a little uncomfortable being in such a situation. I kept my head down and nodded.

Oliver seemed to take that as confirmation to keep on talking. He gave me another wide grin that sent a shiver down my spine. "But there's a reason he's hidin' these from you. They're failed experiments. Meant t' be trashed, yeah? Because they're too dangerous for kids like you."

"Kids like me?" I couldn't help but challenge the assertion. I had no idea what he meant, of course, but it certainly wasn't anything good. I raised my voice and straightened my posture. Was this kid trying to scare me off?

Mr. Ollivander forced himself between us and stuck out a hand in my direction. "You won't be touching any of these! Ignore all my grandson is saying, it--"

THEY JUMP ON YOUR BACK UNTIL YOUR RIBS CRACK
TOSS YOU IN THE CART AND PUSH YOU DOWN THE DEADLY TRACK

Ear-piercing music blasted out of the kid's headphones while he stood, proudly, holding up his walkman and increasing the volume.

"Expelliarmus!" Mr. Ollivander roared, his wand immediately shooting out a giant sparkly bolt of lightning--

Whoa! Oliver threw up some kind of glowing shield-thing, and the lightning bounced right off.

"I-- Wh--" I couldn't help but stammer. What had I just seen? Was this real magic, or--??

The glowing shield in front of Oliver and I faded away into nothingness, leaving nothing but a very angry old man glaring at us.

Oliver's grin faded to a frown. He shut the Walkman off and adopted a more serious tone. "Let me do this, gramps. You haven't had any other successes, and his only other option is Gregorovitch's. Give the kid a chance, yeah?"

Mr. Ollivander seemed more than displeased at the idea. It took several minutes of thinking for his expression to lighten up a little, after which he just sounded defeated. "Fine, let him try. It is not my duty to deny a boy a wand, nor our family a profit."

I suppose someone must have picked up on my concern, as I found Mr. Ollivander laying a hand upon my shoulder and softening his expression. "Zachary, before I let Oliver have you, I must express two things. First, my condolences. I haven't had a student without a wand here in... decades, I believe. Not since the nineteen-fifties. You must be a very special boy for such a thing to happen."

I knew he was just trying to make me feel better, but the comment bothered me. For a moment there, he almost sounded like mum. The very mum I was trying to escape from with this whole Hogwarts business.

"And, second... I cannot help you if Oliver's suspicions are correct. I am well-experienced with wands of my own make. I can give the exact details of near any wand I've made. I know the ins and outs of how almost all of them work. These wands... are a mystery to me. They're a mystery to Oliver, too. Only one man knows how they work... and that man no longer makes such things."

I heard a hint of pain in his voice as he spoke those words. I wasn't sure why. I could only assume that something terrible had happened to that man... and hope that I didn't turn out the same way.

"Right, then, that's enough chit-chat! Off we go!" Oliver started pushing me towards the northwestern corner of the store.

"Good luck, Zachary! May you find a wand that suits you... here, or elsewhere!" Ollivander called after us, his voice growing more and more distant...

...as Oliver brought me into a dusty old closet in the back.

"Lumos!" He pulled out his own wand-- short and pine, ornately carved-- and lit up the dark room with a flash of light.

Once an innumerable amount of small creatures had scurried away and my eyes had adjusted, I was greeted with... well, a rather disappointing sight, really. Given the context, I was almost expecting some kind of vault with a skull-shaped lock.

Instead, I was greeted with a shoddy table and a pile of cases very different to Ollivander's. Most of the cases seemed haphazard, made out of old shoeboxes or repurposed solid baskets, instead of Ollivander's uniform and professional boxes. Instead of sliding wands out the side of them like Ollivander's did, most of these cases seemed to have two little clasps in the front that would open up the top of themselves.

"Right... does it matter which one you choose first?" Oliver left his glowing wand atop a dusty nighttable stuffed away in the corner of the small room. "It doesn't, really. Choose... whichever."

I decided to reach for the first case on the top. It was colored brown and felt like wood, but the clasps were barely working and the lid was half-open. I opened the top to take a look...

"That one's Ebony... 'n Thestral hair. Really really particular, it'd be." Oliver plucked it out of its case and plopped it in my outstretched hands. "Give it a wave or two."

I did as he asked... and felt no difference. "What am I supposed to be feelin'? This doesn't seem any different t' what your gramps was doin'," I huffed.

Oliver crossed his arms, examined the stick for a moment... then snatched it, and put it back in the case. "Not yours. You'll know when it is."

He slipped the case onto the side of the table without a care, letting it hang off the sides for a moment before pushing it back into the pile, and plucked another case off the top of it.

Bright yellow, clearly some kind of repurposed shoebox, with an oversized lid and a half-ripped top. "I've tried this one the most. Probably should've started wif it. Fir 'n dragonstring, probably normal. But it's one'a his, so you get to try it out."

And so I did... to no fanfare. But one of Oliver's comments piqued my curiosity. "One've his? Whose?"

Oliver stole away the wand and case, slipping one into the other and putting them both back in the pile. He didn't give me a single look while he spoke, instead searching through the pile for yet another case. "Gregorovitch's. Some Slavic bloke."

Oliver's brows raised and, for just a moment, he shut his mouth. He slipped a hand out of sight, then plucked another case from the pile and continued. "Rumor has it he'd gotten his hands on this crazy-powerful wand, long ago. Somethin' snapped in him once he did... 'n he kept trying to recreate it."

Before I knew it, another case was before me. This one was... startlingly uniform. Compared to the other cases, it almost looked professional: completely clad in steel, with working clasps and a fitting top. The only hitch was that it was scratched all over, and some of the grey paint on it was peelin'.

Oliver was beginning to play up the theatrics. His wand began to dim, and I could tell his tone was beginning to wobble.

"There's a couple've his failed attempts in here. Most wouldn't really be called 'failed' by normal wand standards, really. They're just a bit uncarved and not made of very typical wood. But they were failed to him. Failed... because they weren't that wand. The most crazy-powerful wand there was."

Oliver's tone began to crescendo. "The wand... known as the Elder wand."

I could've sworn I heard thunder crack somewhere, but couldn't figure out where.

Oliver's tone snapped back to nonchalance immediately after. His wand's light returned in full force, and the room became familiar once more. "'Course, they only called it that for its wood. So, by any standards, this could be an 'elder wand' if you really wanted it to be."

Ollivander's grandson moved to open the case, and presented me with... a wand unlike what i'd seen before.

The other two wands from this pile weren't very finished. I could tell from the way they were carved. They all looked rough. Splinter-y, almost. You could see bits of them flakin' off as you watched, and I had no idea how you were supposed t' do magic with them.

But they all looked normal, somehow. Brownish. Bark-y. Like they were just a few pieces of sandpaper away from really makin' it as proper wands.

This one didn't. It was... polished. To an absurd degree. It was almost sickly-lookin', with a pale color, and far more intricate than the other wands. It still looked stick-y, sure. All the wands in this pile did. But it didn't splinter. It didn't flake. You could trace a finger down the side and come away with a cleaner fingertip than when you'd began. Despite it all, the wand looked rugged. It tapered off from a thick handle into a pointed tip, chunks of it clearly carved off at random, with the only real denomination of handiwork bein' the little dragon sleepin' at the very end of the wand's thick bottom.

"You've been starin' at this an awful long time. Aren't you going t' pick it up already?" Oliver yawned, reaching for his own wand while barely watching.

"Yeah, sorry. It was jus'... interestin'." I forced myself to finish.

"Don't worry about pickin' it, those are really catty types. Elder got its reputation for a reason, yeah?"

The warning didn't help the odd tension I was feeling on my way to pick it up. I hovered a hand over the thing for far too long, my mind racing with a strange urgency that eventually overtook me. I grabbed the wand out of the case--

--and felt a rush of energy, of some sorts, light up my entire body.

Oliver seemed astonished-- he made some kind of curse, under his breath, and nearly dropped the case.

Immediately after, his expression became completely unreadable.

Whatever he said didn't register. All I could do was stare at this wand. Smooth, but rugged. Failed, but coveted. Polished, but... natural. The entire thing was full of contradictions. If the wand was meant to choose the owner, as Mr. Ollivander had so suggested during the several hours we'd spent going through these things... what did that mean for me?

For minutes after, Oliver was silent. He didn't speak a word. I hadn't even noticed the time until he said something again-- I was too busy confronting the tsunami of thoughts freezing me in place.

Eventually, he spoke in a tone that I couldn't really understand. Some mix of concern, delirium, regret and... delight?

"I hope your sister's a rich girl. Gramps is not goin' to be lettin' you go with a good price on that one."