Ashen Evergreen
Above the window of the store, inscribed with golden lettering was a faded sign.
Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C.
The shop's display consisted of a solitary wand lying on a lustrous purple cushion in the window, in clear view of the entire world, surrounded on either side by a set of five other wands of varying lengths, colors, and carving shapes, each one propped up by invisible means as if floating suspended in a tank of fluid.
"Here's where I'll buy a wand?" Harry asked.
"The Hogwarts fund already covers your wand. We're simply here to match you to one and pick it up, so we don't have to do so later," Sirius replied. He opened the door, and a chime sound filled the air; crisp and loud. As Harry stepped in, he looked around the store.
It was, compared to 12 Grimmauld Place, or most of the places that Harry saw in the magical world so far, very jumbled and messy.
The interior of the store, apparently providing most of the wands in the British Isles, was cluttered and claustrophobic, filled with stacks of boxes up to the ceiling. Every corner and inch of the store had a thin layer of dust covering it, including the air, where it hung in almost spectacular flakes reflected in the rays of halcyon light from the chandelier. Although the air was musty, it was also filled with a kind of striking magical vivacity, like static energy waiting to lash out and be released into the world like a bolt of lightning. At the back, a man was frantically rearranging wand boxes and muttering to himself, his hair graying, hands calloused, and robe a spotted, ratty green with frayed threads hanging loose from his belt. Harry stared at him for a long moment, while Sirius coughed repeatedly, drawing the man's attention.
"Professor," Mr. Ollivander spun around and greeted with respect in his voice.
"Wandmaker," Sirius replied. "We're here to match young Harry Potter to a wand."
At that, Ollivander reached into his coat's chest pocket and pulled out a monocle seemingly made from the detached bottom of a bottle, placing it gently over his eye and leaning forward to stare at Harry for a moment, his eye seeming enlarged and unnaturally amplified through the lens. As Harry looked back, he saw red veins in the eyeball.
"So it would seem." Ollivander leaned back, pulling the monocle off. And then he smiled, showing wide teeth. "In that case, nothing less than the best of my stock will suffice."
Sirius flinched, coughed, and sputtered. "I don't think we can-"
"On the house, Professor," Ollivander said with a smile, as he looked over at Harry. "And certainly nothing less."
He marched across the store, and Harry followed after him with a sprightly confusion and curiosity in his step. Mr. Ollivander opened the store window display and reached inside. He gently grasped the central wand lying on the cushion, reverentially, with both hands, as if he were handling a sacred relic.
Its color was light, almost flaxen in shade. It was unadorned, without even a carving; an indistinct length of smooth wood. As Ollivander moved the wand, Harry observed as it seemed to come into animation in his hands, a shimmer of distorted air and faint purple sparks dancing at its tip, before it settled down.
"This one," he said. "Ashwood; twelve-and-a-half inches, supple, with a core of noble Phoenix feather. Do not be mistaken by its plain appearance. This piece is an import from Rome, from over a thousand and five-hundred years ago. It's one of the last remaining wands of its sort made before the burning of the Roman wand groves."
"I, uhm." Harry stopped, as Ollivander ran a finger across the wand's length.
"It'll be perfect for you," he said.
Geist piped up at that moment, Hold on. No shot he's going to give it to you?
Ollivander handed over the wand to Harry, who reached out.
No shot it's going to bond. Absolutely no shot. Roman wand wood? To someone like-
As soon as Harry's finger brushed against the wand, a bolt of liquefied electricity and fire ran down his arm in the blink of an eye, changed direction at the chambers of his heart, and went into his brain, exploding much like a flower blossoms, melting his skull and stretching his neurons across space and time, conjoining his essence with the universe, his every thought written plain on a loom of the cosmic palimpsest. All of the suspended motes of dust floating around arrested their constant flux, and Geist's voice slowed down to a flicker of prolonged letters, a syllable per hundred seconds.
Around himself, Harry could hear a rising crescendo; a sharp note of music, accompanied by mysterious voices whispering incantations and chanting the same repeated phrase of words. "Arahad, yarad! Aermora Bravus! Mors temporis, solnyel khaosu, terminus spatii, myesca can'vic; medevaeris aen operaete! Aurora!"
Harry was locked in this void of incomprehension, in the decisive moment when his finger brushed against the wand, for what felt like eons.
And then, as if nothing ever happened, time resumed. Harry blinked and realized he was holding the wand, its tip glowing with a brilliant silver light, its brightness so incandescent that both Sirius and Ollivander had stepped back and shielded their eyes. Harry looked back at the wand, and the light didn't hurt him.
As he breathed out, and his brain returned to its usual modality, he realized the wand's sharp incandescence was only growing, and it was starting to radiate a perceivable heat that warmed his fingers. "Uh, uhm, how do I turn it off?"
"A Patronus at his age?" Sirius questioned loudly instead of replying, the question directed at Ollivander. "How? Is that because of the wand?"
"A wand, even one with a Phoenix feather, may not cast a spell this grandiose on its own!" Ollivander replied, across the store. "He must be very talented, or very happy! Dear Merlin, my boy, did someone ever hand you a stick of wood that cured your life of all its problems?!"
"How do I turn it off?!" Harry shouted. He attempted to flick the wand forward repeatedly, as if that would somehow magically detach the light in the same way that a sticky wad of snot detaches from one's finger, his attempts becoming more intense and snappy with each one.
DON'T. YOU'RE GOING TO-
And, somehow, it happened.
Sirius was fast to shout, "Take cover!"
An orb of pure, white-hot light shot forward across the store from Harry's wand, floating past aisles of stacked wand boxes, and blasted into the far wall of the store with an ear-piercing crack of annihilated brickwork and wood, mortar and dust flying outwards from the store like a bag of flour that someone had smashed with a hammer. Almost like grapeshot or shrapnel, fragments of brick flew down and smashed into the alleyway wall of the store adjacent to Ollivander's. It was pure luck that no one had been standing there, as they would've been shredded into pieces by the force and sheer eyebrow-scorching heat of the explosion.
All three of them stood in the aftermath, Geist's commentary unusually blank and nonexistent, as they observed the dust settle over the alleyway. A single wizard, outside, moved closer to the alley, casting a spell to vent the dust as he moved forward and looked into the store.
"Is everything alright in there?"
"Just... matching a wand," Ollivander answered.
"Ah." A beat of silence. "I see."
"I, uh, I, uh." All of a sudden, Harry felt very wobbly and weak in the knees, and his chest felt cold like someone had placed a melting shard of ice close to his heart. He felt dizziness and vertigo fill his mind, a ringing in his ears; he stepped back and bumped into Ollivander, who laid a hand on his shoulder to support him in remaining standing.
"I..." Sirius went silent. He looked over at Ollivander, staring at the hole in his wall. "I'll... repair it. And cover the re-enchantment fees."
"N-No need. I, uhm, believe my insurance packet will cover that," Ollivander replied. His lips squared. "If barely."
Sirius approached Harry and very gently plucked the wand from his unresisting fingers. "I'll give it back to you at home, Harry... After some... instruction, on how to not do that again. If something like this happened at home, Kreacher would pull out his own hairs."
Harry nodded blankly, in agreement. He was too stupefied to respond in speech, and his ears were still ringing a little.
After confirming the transaction with Ollivander and going to the checkout simply for the sake of recording the bureaucratic process, Harry apologized sincerely, "I'm sorry for blowing a hole in your wall, Mr. Ollivander. I'm very sorry."
The man laughed, simultaneously unnerved and genuinely amused. "I- well, there's no reason to apologize. Accidents do happen, especially when matching a wand, though I confess I have never seen an accident of this scale. Still, it is not unexpected, and of no issue! It was my own prerogative and choice to offer you a wand so powerful, after all. However, even a young wizard of exceptional power would struggle to cast a spell like that by accident, at your age - and even with that particular wand. I am suitably impressed by the feat, Mr. Potter, and hold no resentment or grudge."
I have never before felt any kind of sympathy, empathy, or fellowship for Garrick Ollivander. As a matter of fact, I always sternly believed that he was unacceptably eccentric, poorly-groomed, strange, and that his store was a mess in dire need of fixing and cleaning. However, right this moment, I actively overlook those aspects simply to extend a sad tendril of mental force and lay it on his shoulder in support. Well done, Harry Potter. You've made me feel genuine sympathy for one of those manchildren wizards - a feat that I believed to be almost impossible until this point.
As they stepped out of the store, it had started to rain, and the people walking down the street now used spells or umbrellas to shield themselves from the rain. Sirius frowned and moved his wand in a momentary pattern, creating a dome over their heads, invisible save for the way it stopped the rain and forced it to flow aside. Harry's wand box tucked away in Sirius' pocket, they stopped close to a store with screeching and shouting animals, called the Magical Menagerie.
"I believe we should get a pet for you. An owl is useful for delivering letters."
Owls are dumb and common. Go for a raven.
"Can I have a raven instead?"
Sirius frowned. "A raven? Why?"
"Are ravens bad?" Harry frowned himself.
"Yes- Er, no... sort of," Sirius commented. He watched Harry with a squint, sighing for what must've been the tenth time on that day. "Although there's nothing wrong, they have a strong cultural association with the Dark Arts. It'd definitely... shape people's perceptions of you."
"Aren't I famous?" Harry asked him. "Like, too famous? So famous it's basically toxic to my life?"
Sirius sputtered, blinking at the way Harry phrased it. "I-"
"So, it'd make sense to reduce my reputation, no?"
"Harry, that's not how reputation works. You wouldn't become less famous or interesting simply for having a raven; interest in you would stay the same, only now it'd be shaped with slightly more negative preconceptions by those who aren't..."
"Open-minded?"
Sirius sighed. "Let's go with that."
Go for a raven anyway. It's worth it. Best flying animal.
"Eat my shorts. I want a raven anyway. They're cool and totally valid and fly."
"Owls can fly as well," Sirius argued.
"It's slang for something that's cool."
"I don't understand Muggle-raised kids nowadays." Sirius pressed a pair of fingers to his nose and exhaled, eyes closed. "Very well. A raven, then."
"And I want ice cream," Harry said, catching the glint of an ice cream parlor from the corner of his eye.
Sirius stared at him. "But we haven't even had dinner."
Put your hands together and make puppy eyes. He didn't comment on this yet, but you have your mother's eyes; 'like shining emeralds.' He'll cave in faster than that wall you blew up.
"But it's my birthday! Come on, Sirius, please?" Harry put his hands together and made puppy eyes.
After five more pleases, Sirius caved in, like the weak-willed man he was.
---
After returning home, Harry received several birthday gifts from Sirius, Kreacher, Dumbledore, and even Mr. Shacklebolt.
You may select three (3) gifts to receive in total, a maximum of one per person (except where noted otherwise,) or, you may select any number of gifts you wish, spending 1 Gnosis for every selection over two (2), still with a maximum of one per person (except where noted otherwise.)
If you do not pick any gifts from a specific individual, it will be assumed they sent you a gift anyway, but one which is unexceptional (clothes, food, money, etc.)
At the moment, you have 4.1 Gnosis.
[ ] Sirius Black - Dragonscale Jacket - An impressive jacket, slightly too large for you, that acts as a natural magic-repellant and is naturally durable, without weighing significantly more than ordinary leather.
[ ] Sirius Black - Moral Compass - A gift apparently unlocked by your impressive application of the puppy-dog-eyes technique. According to Sirius, so long as you follow the compass' direction, you'll be able to avoid any heinous crimes... Geist considers this gift useless, claiming that his own moral compass is superior in every way.
[ ] Kreacher - Moonglass - A magnifying glass apparently useful for Astrology, capable of outlining constellations when pointed at the sky.
[ ] Kreacher - Humble Pie - Baked at Sirius' request. Its effects are unknown, but can be guessed from the name.
[ ] Headmaster Dumbledore - Chewing Gum - A single stick of chewing gum in a foil package, ordinary and indiscernible in brand. What could he mean by this? It can be taken alongside any other gifts from Dumbledore.
[ ] Headmaster Dumbledore - Hansen's Natural Soda - A can of Hansen's Natural Soda? What could he mean by this? It can be taken alongside any other gifts from Dumbledore.
[ ] Headmaster Dumbledore - A Pig In A Suit - A pig in an elegant three-piece suit fitted for it. Has a collar with the name, 'Peggy,' and a note requesting that you protect it. It can be taken alongside any other gifts from Dumbledore.
[ ] Mr. Shacklebolt - Combat Wand Holster - Allows you to quickly and easily draw and holster your wand, but some people might give you odd looks.
[ ] Proposition - If you so like, propose gift ideas (as well as who they're from) to the QM: do this outside of a vote. If the QM greenlights the idea, it may be voted for. Unlikely to be approved for many reasons, do not be too disappointed if I say no.
What flavor of ice cream did you eat? Although the choice may appear simple, it can in fact influence the fates of thousands of men in the years to come. What is more important than an ice cream dessert shared in the company of your godfather?
[ ] Cackling Witch Apple - An exquisite and sweet flavor, resembling the sprightly juices of a sugary apple with subtle but sublime hints of cider and caramel, conjoined to produce a seamless and incredible whole. It colors your tongue green and makes you cackle!
[ ] Silvercone Angel - A fluttery taste, like a cloud rendered into solid pale cherubic mist, this scoop of ice cream dissolves on the tongue with an explosion of brilliant vanilla and creamy. Makes you feel uplifted and happy.
[ ] Simple Muggle Chocolate - A flavor infamous and well-liked by many witches and wizards for its simple, delightful lucidity and tasteful coherence! Experience the complete mundanity of a Muggle's daily life with a lick of this delicious chocolate ice cream!
[ ] Wildling Strawberry - A wild strawberry imported from the exotic far lands! Its savage taste spreads over the tongue like the impending invasion of the Anglo-Saxons, reminding you that your duty is to protect the ancestral land! How frightfully delicious.
[ ] Dazzleberry Cream - Among the finest and most dazzling flavors, the succulent and stunning Dazzleberry Cream will shock your tastebuds to the same degree that you will shock everyone by selecting this exquisite and unexpectedly rich taste to be a guest on your tongue!
[ ] Luminous Corona - A taste of sunlight guaranteed in every sample! The exquisite flavor of the Luminous Corona scoop will make your every single lick into a vision of awesome possibility and endless revelry with its sharp and electric vanilla aftertaste!
[ ] Butterbeer Float - Are you a fan of butterbeer? Now introducing: the Butterbeer Float! An incredible and satisfying float of the finest and freshest butterbeer on the market with an accompaniment of cream and chocolate flakes on top. A fun swirly straw is included!
[ ] Draconian Fireball - Are you a fan of warmer treats? Do you hate getting brain-freeze from eating too fast? How about an ice cream that warms your heart? That's right - with the Draconian Fireball, every taste of this classical cold confection may fill your heart with the sharp heat of a dragon's breath!
[ ] Ambrosiac Nectar - An odd golden favor sits in one of the baskets, shining with inner splendor and light, flavorful like a peach syrup rendered into silky puffs. It fills your mouth and makes you feel divine. +1 Ambrosia.
[ ] Pick-Three Sundae - A haughty sundae that knows it is better for its multiflavor content, the Pick-Three Sundae doesn't bend to prideful customers, only servicing those it deems deserving of its favor! It shall provide a neverending font of chocolate sauce, if you beg for it enough!
[ ] Bertie Bott's Every-Flavored Ice Cream - A different flavor with every lick! Now you may fill your palate with Bertie Bott's endless palette of piquant and nauseating possibilities until your heart is content and your mind is joyful!
[ ] Write-in. (Subject to QM veto.)
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), is not productive. You have your opinions, I have mine, we cannot change each other's. Batting this argument around for more pages will frustrate both sides so can we agree to disagree?
