The criteria is below:
Summary: One of the most important 'rites of passage' in any witch or wizard's lives is receiving their first wand. We've seen how Harry received his, but what about all those other characters? The wand chooses the wizard, or so Mr. Ollivander says, but why?
Rules:
1. You may choose any canon character and write a story about them receiving their first wand.
2. Harry may not be used since we have already seen him receive his first wand.
3. You can either write a one-character story based on the challenge, or you may write about multiple characters each receiving their first wand.
4. You must adhere to all that is known in canon about wands. Example: If you choose to focus your story on Hermione, she must receive the wand that she has in canon (thirteen inches, vine wood, dragon heartstring core). The same applies to other characters we know about (i.e. Ron, either of Harry's parents, Cedric, Krum, Fleur, and Hagrid).
The Last Wand is one of the two Second Place Winners for the General Category!
I’m not JK Rowling and I’m not making any money from this. Um, well, apart from the Festival prize, that is.
August is always the busiest month for me. For the rest of the year, I get very little custom; it is only the occasional witch or wizard in need of a replacement wand who will visit.
Today is Thursday, 20 August. For the last two weeks I have had new Hogwarts students coming to my shop, looking for their first wands. Yesterday, Molly Weasley was here with the last of her brood. I have always suspected that young Ginevra would be powerful and it seems that I was correct. Beech and dragon heartstring, ten inches, quite whippy. Excellent for charms and hexing; we can expect to see some impressive work from her.
I have sold three wands so far today. I’ve been on my feet all morning, so I think I deserve to sit here with a cup of tea.
I hear the tinkling bell from the shop and reluctantly get up: my next customer is here already. She stands in front of my counter with her father. I recognise him; an eccentric, but a good man. I remember when he came in here to buy his first wand – it must be more than thirty years ago. There is a sadness about him now that was not there then: I remember hearing that he lost his wife a couple of years ago. I know I have never met the daughter before, but something about her is familiar. Her wide, pale eyes shine silver: I have seen eyes like that somewhere before. She has an air that is unusual in an eleven-year-old, oddly calm and detached. I stare at her for a moment, fascinated by those eyes, and she returns my scrutiny calmly. Eventually, I break the silence.
“Luna Lovegood.” It is a statement, not a question. Most children of her years would be disconcerted, but she looks vaguely amused.
“You’re Julius Ollivander – the finest wandmaker in Britain.”
“Thank you. We Ollivanders have always taken pride in our craft.”
Seeing her confidence, her father settles himself in the spindly chair that I reserve for the purpose and I glance towards the window, at the single wand that lies on a faded purple cushion. It has been there for some years now, alone, waiting for its partner. Maybe, just maybe…
Seven wands have been displayed on that cushion over the years, but only one remains. The first was before my time, of course, but I heard about it from my father.
He inherited the business at an unusually early age, when my grandfather failed to return from a wood-harvesting trip to the jungles of Borneo. A young man of great intelligence and even greater eccentricity, my father had barely finished his apprenticeship and was full of ideas. He had little patience with tradition and felt that the family was unnecessarily limiting itself by insisting on using only the three standard wand cores: unicorn hair, phoenix feather and dragon heartstring. He began to experiment with other magical substances and rapidly achieved his first success. The wand was made of walnut, with a core of Demiguise hair given to him by a friend who was skilled in the capture of these great beasts. The Demiguise is able to vanish at will; they are peaceful and graceful, yet remarkably powerful. Their hair is highly prized but can be temperamental. Few wizards would be able to wield such a wand, but my father felt that, in the right hands, it had enormous potential. Unwilling to shelve his creation with ordinary wands, he placed it on a purple cushion in the window.
Within a year, it was sold, to a boy about to enter Hogwarts. Albus Dumbledore was obviously a wizard to watch. Even while still at school, he and his wand showed unusual abilities. Yes, he bought the first of the seven and it has served him faithfully ever since.
Over the next three decades, my father collected feathers from a variety of magical birds, and purchased hairs from breeders of flying horses and fancy Hippogriffs. He even approached the centaurs, reasoning that their hair should be more powerful than a unicorn’s. They refused, of course. Such a proud people would hate to be regarded as mere providers of wand cores. I am somewhat surprised that they let him live.
In his workshop, he continued to experiment, fruitlessly. He encountered one problem after another – the magic leaked out in storage, the materials proved incompatible with any known wood, or they became ineffective once confined in a wand. He began to think that beginner’s luck had created Dumbledore’s wand. Eventually, he succeeded in making just two wands. I remember them from my childhood, sharing the cushion in the window.
“Which is your wand hand, Miss Lovegood?” I ask. She stares at me for some time before replying.
She is left handed. Good: an opportunity to try out some of my more unusual wands. She holds out her wand arm when asked, and gazes unblinkingly as my tape begins its routine of taking measurements, reminding me of another left-handed witch who was here years ago.
She was small and painfully thin, with mousy hair and thick glasses. She drifted into the shop, ignoring her parents’ excitement, and seemed almost detached as she tried wand after wand. Eventually, I thought of the window display. There were six wands by then, all remarkable in their different ways, but I’d seriously wondered whether any of them would ever be sold. Dumbledore was and is unique, after all, and I’d never really believed in these exotic cores.
I realised my error when Sybill Trelawney found her match in a slender satinwood wand containing the feather of a female Augurey. These birds appear mournful and are often considered unlucky: for years it was believed that their throbbing cry foretold death. Perhaps an appropriate choice for the great-great-granddaughter of a famous Seer…and the wand does not appear to have brought her bad luck.
A few years later, the other wand from my childhood was also sold, to a blond lad with strikingly blue eyes. I admit I am still surprised that that wand found a partner. Made of rosewood, with more decoration than the usual Ollivander style, it was considered by many to be the most beautiful wand my father ever made. I found it hard to believe that a Fwooper feather had sufficient power to make an effective core, but it appears that I was mistaken. With the right wizard, it seems that the most unlikely wands can work well. That good-looking lad has now grown into a handsome man. I met him again just yesterday and he assures me that he is still using that same wand, with obvious success. Gilderoy Lockhart has certainly achieved great things.
I watch as my tape measures Miss Lovegood’s right earlobe, before making my first decision and turning to the tottering shelves at the back of the shop where I keep the left-handed wands. I begin with unicorn hair, the original Ollivander core and still the most popular, particularly with young wizards and witches. This wand is beech, nine and a quarter inches. She takes the wand from me, looking thoughtful, and waves it, with no apparent result. Hmm…perhaps a different combination: seven inches, hawthorn, phoenix feather core…
No, not right at all. The balance is wrong – this wand is too short for her – and neither the core nor the wood resonates with her magic. She waves it half-heartedly before handing it back to me and I select another wand.
Unlike my older siblings, I was drawn to wandmaking from an early age. I loved the smell of the wood store and the palpable magic that radiated from the hundreds of small drawers where the core materials were kept. Even before I received my Hogwarts letter, I could use the lathe and often accompanied my father when he was collecting wood locally. When I left school, he encouraged me to apprentice with a young wandmaker in France. The elegance of Mélusine Leblanc’s styling was already recognised, but the attraction for my father was her use of Veela and mermaid hair as cores. I enjoyed my years in Tours – not least because I met my wife there - but I remained firmly devoted to tradition in my own wandmaking. My father resigned himself to having an ‘old-fashioned’ son and left me to make most of the standard wands while he continued his research.
I select an ebony wand next, thirteen inches, with a dragon heartstring core. It is almost identical to young Severus Snape’s wand, a personal favourite that I was almost sorry to sell. I love ebony – it makes such elegant wands, although it can be difficult to work. It has a tendency to chip, so that a moment’s inattention can ruin hours of effort. It seems to suit wizards who are somewhat…unpredictable themselves. I sense a keen intelligence behind Miss Lovegood’s dreaminess and she clearly has the potential for great power, even if it is unfocused as yet. I wonder whether ebony will suit her...but no. I am wrong, as I was about Harry Potter last year – and this wand is too long for her. My measurements suggest that she needs a wand between nine and ten inches long, but my father taught me always to try a variety of lengths. As he always said, measurements can be misleading: Filius Flitwick is not an obvious candidate for a twelve-inch wand, after all.
The fourth of the seven, The Black Wand, as I thought of it, was made of ebony, containing a single whisker from a Nundu. These giant leopards are, in my opinion, the most dangerous beasts on this Earth, their breath causing horrifying disease in Muggles and wizards alike. My father, who was developing a taste for pursuing dark creatures, was one of a large group of wizards called in to deal with a Nundu that was terrorising a village in Kenya. After the beast was slaughtered, he cut off a few whiskers and managed to incorporate one into a wand. That provoked more arguments between us than anything else. Such a wand would be drawn to the Dark Arts. My father thought it would suit an Auror in need of a more powerful replacement for a standard wand, while I feared that it was inherently evil.
It remained unsold for years after his death, still in the window display. As the years passed, I was beginning to think that I might have been wrong about The Black Wand: hadn’t Grindelwald used a Gregorovitch wand, after all?
How could I have been so complacent? By then, I had unknowingly sold a wand that was destined to go out into the world and commit atrocities far beyond Grindelwald’s. In retrospect, I am surprised that the boy who bought that yew and phoenix feather wand was not attracted to the ebony one in the window, but it was destined for a witch, not a wizard.
I remember her so well as an eleven-year-old; Bellatrix Black, as she was then. A beautiful child, with her shining dark hair, so unlike the straggling dirty-blonde locks of the girl in my shop today. Bellatrix was only too aware of her looks: she was arrogant even at that age. She seemed to think it my fault that it took so many attempts to find her wand. I well remember her mounting anger as I repeatedly failed – until I looked in the window. The Black Wand is destroyed now, but nothing can undo its deeds. Matching her with that wand was my second terrible mistake.
I turn once again to Miss Lovegood and notice that the single wand in the window has drawn her attention. Like Sybill Trelawney’s, it has a core associated with death and the circumstances of its creation can only have emphasised any such effect. It may be that losing her mother so young has created a bond between this girl and the wand, and it undoubtedly has a power to match hers. Well, we shall see. There are other wands to try first.
On holiday in Greece one year, my father befriended a griffin. These beasts, half-eagle, half-lion, are ferocious carnivores, but a few powerful wizards have tamed them. My father’s friend donated a few hairs and feathers for his experiments and one of the hairs was later successfully housed in a fine wand of olivewood, harvested on that same trip.
Many years later, he tamed a wild Thestral. I well remember my eldest grandson running into the house one day yelling that great-grandpa was flying. What was the old fool playing at? He’d never been all that good on a broomstick.
“But he’s not on a broomstick, Gramps. He’s just…flying!”
I ran out into the yard, followed by a growing number of children, all laughing and pointing. The black horse was visible to me, of course, but I realised how it must look to them. Eventually, we persuaded him to land, but he rode the animal most days after that. He never succeeded in making a Thestral-hair wand, though.
There are now a dozen rejected wands in front of Miss Lovegood. I am beginning to believe that she is destined for the wand in the window, but the process of matching wizard and wand is well established. It is important to be methodical and I must continue with my usual routine.
I have only departed from it once.
I recall the day when Remus Lupin first stepped into my shop, just over twenty years ago. I already knew about him, of course. My granddaughter Sophie is my assistant in the business – she makes more wands than I do, these days – and she has been best friends with Remus’s mother since they met on the Hogwarts Express. She’d told me of his condition and his parents’ worries about his education. Now he was to become the first werewolf in living memory to be admitted to a wizarding school. He was a small, serious, unhealthy-looking child – even at that age, his transformations had begun to take their toll.
To the best of my knowledge, I’d never sold a wand to a werewolf before. I’d been wondering what the correct wand would be and how the wolf in him might influence his magic. On an impulse, I led him straight to the window. I almost regretted my haste when the first two wands produced no reaction, but as soon as he touched the olive and griffin hair wand, sparks flew from it.
At an age when most wizards would be contemplating retirement, my father returned to Greece to visit his griffin friend and heard of a fierce beast terrifying the inhabitants of a nearby island.
He remains the only wizard to have successfully slain a Chimaera, but the effort exhausted him. I was called to fetch him home, since he was too weak to Apparate. He sat around the house for weeks afterwards, listless and apparently drained of magic. Then, one day, he came into the workshop and sat at his old bench. He had a hair from the Chimaera’s mane and wanted to make a casing for it. That wand became an obsession – he seemed almost his old self while he was working on it.
Mr Lovegood is showing signs of impatience, fidgeting in his seat, but his daughter merely stands behind her growing pile of rejected boxes, looking politely bored.
“Another difficult customer, I see.” I am aware of the excitement in my voice.
I Summon the wands from the top shelf, where I keep the rarest woods, remembering a young witch who somehow managed to knock them all down.
Nymphadora Tonks tripped over the chair as she entered the shop and blushed to the roots of her curly red hair. I hate clumsy customers – in a shop this tiny, they can be disastrous. I hoped she would find her wand quickly, but she proved to be almost impossible to match. Usually I begin to develop a feel for the wood that will suit a customer, but with Miss Tonks, my instinct failed me. Many wands seemed almost right, but no consistent pattern emerged. Eventually, I decided to try the wands in the window. As I turned away, I saw her face screw up in concentration. When she joined me, her hair was straight and brown. Well, how interesting: a Metamorphmagus. I wasn’t surprised after that when the Chimaera-hair wand proved to be a match. She waved it and all the boxes flew off the top shelf at the back of the shop – the only time I’ve seen that particular reaction.
“Try this one: purpleheart and…”
“You’re a Chromophile!” she interrupts.
I blink at her, puzzled. “A Chromophile, Miss Lovegood?”
“Yes, a wizard who can see beyond the normal spectrum. It’s a rare gift.”
“I’m afraid I’ve never heard of Chromophiles. I have a certain…sympathy…for wood and for wand core materials. Other than that, I have no unusual abilities, I assure you.”
“But then why did you say it’s purple?” She sounds almost accusing now. “It’s brown.”
“Purpleheart is indeed purple when freshly cut, but it fades to brown with time. This wand was made a few years ago. It is possible to spell the wood to retain its colour, but I prefer to use as little magic as possible in my wandmaking.
“As I was saying: purpleheart and phoenix feather, ten inches. Unusual, but I have a feeling it may suit you.” She takes it from me, but again she shakes her head, laying it carefully back in its box. She may be unaware of the wand’s resonance, but I felt it.
“What do I try now?” She believes that I am running out of ideas. In answer to her question, I gesture towards the window. “Purpleheart again, nine and three quarter inches, containing a single hair from a Thestral.”
As he recovered some of his physical strength, my father took to night-time walks. We often found him wandering Diagon Alley at odd hours and once he even managed to get into Muggle London, wearing only a nightshirt. One night, he went missing for longer than usual. We searched the area, but found no trace. I had just returned home when I heard the sound of huge wings from above: the Thestral, which had been missing since before my father’s trip. It was coming in to land in the yard, an awkward manoeuvre even in daylight. As I looked up, I saw its rider slip and fall. The horse, startled, flew off. We never saw it again. I ran to where my father’s body lay on the cobbles, knowing I was too late; he must have been killed instantly. Caught in the fingers of his left hand was a single black hair; he had grabbed at the Thestral’s mane as he fell. Unthinkingly, I untangled the hair and put it in my pocket.
Weeks later, when I was sorting through my father’s possessions, I came across his notes detailing his experiments with Thestral hairs. I realised that there were a few rare woods he hadn’t tested. Driven by a strange compulsion, I searched through the wood store until I found the purpleheart. It is rarely suitable for wandmaking, but I have always had a particularly strong affinity for this wood: I am the only living wizard with a purpleheart wand. Feeling that I was completing my father’s work rather than acting for myself, I shaped the wand and inserted the hair I had taken from his hand – the only time since my apprenticeship that I have departed from wandmaking tradition.
Miss Lovegood walks across the small room to the cushion, looking nervous for the first time. Her father and I watch as she picks up the wand. She gives it a small wave, producing a fountain of bubbles. Generally a child with a first wand will produce a single spark; it is only the occasional powerful one who will manage to produce a stream of sparks or a different reaction. Miss Lovegood smiles dreamily as she watches the bubbles float for a moment before popping. She brings the wand over to me; I wrap it up for her and her father hands over ten gold Galleons.
She smiles up at me, and suddenly I realise where I have seen those eyes before: I see them every time I look in a mirror. Yes, now I am sure; the last of the seven has found its destined partner.
My fourth satisfied customer of the day.
Author’s notes
1. In PS, Mr Ollivander says to Harry, ‘We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers and the heartstrings of dragons.’ I am aware that this story could be taken as contradicting canon, but, since there are only seven unusual wands, I don’t think he’d mention them as exceptions in an introductory talk to a new customer. He says in GoF that he’s never used Veela hair in his wands because he finds it unpredictable (suggesting that he does have some experience with Veela-hair wands at least).
2. The Acromantula originated in Borneo, hence Grandpa Ollivander’s disappearance.
3. According to Griselda Marchbanks, Dumbledore was remarkable even at school – he ‘did things with a wand I’d never seen before’ while taking his NEWTs. Obviously he’s a powerful wizard, but an unusual wand might have helped. A Demiguise wand could explain why he doesn’t need an invisibility cloak to disappear.
4. Mélusine is a water-fairy or mermaid from a medieval French story, so it seemed an appropriate choice of name for a wandmaker using Veela and mermaid hairs.
5. J. K. Rowling says in Fantastic Beasts that the only wizard to kill a Chimaera was himself killed soon after in a fall from his winged horse.
6. Mr Ollivander and Luna have eyes that are described very similarly in canon: wide, pale and silvery.
7. Thanks to assorted family members for checking through the completed story. Above all, a huge thank you to GM Weasley for her input at so many stages of writing it. Her plot suggestions, relentless hunting down of unnecessary adverbs and general bullying (in a good way, of course) made this story what it is.