Inspired by the Mesteria's "Senses" challenge. A huge thank you to my beta, Desmothene, for being awesome and editing this in record time!
The old man paused for a moment to admire his handiwork, just a brief glimpse of row upon row of neatly stacked boxes, each one containing a precious wand. Each one unique, individual. Resuming his absent-minded straightening, Olivander penetrated deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of aisles that made up the back of his shop. His monotonous routine ground to a halt at the end of the last aisle as his hand just barely glanced the corner of a box, turning it a fraction of a degree until it made one completely continuous line with the other boxes around it, singing an unbroken harmony. Perfect. Olivander waved his wand rather impatiently at the broom busy scouring the floor for a minute trace of dust, and it fell dormant at once, making a jarring crack against the stone floor as it completed its graceful arc toward the unforgiving stone.
The broom's owner, hands stained a deep brown from the richly colored wood polish that by now was all but part of the permanent coloring of his nimble fingers, took no notice of it, and made his way toward the tiny office situated at the very back of the shop. Here, the pattern of cleanliness and order was broken in a sudden and rather disconcerting manner. Papers teetered precariously in piles dangerously near falling, crumpled order forms littered the ground, and a tiny mouse in the corner nibbled at the remains of a ham and cheese sandwich. Olivander spared his small companion not a glance as he set about the long and laborious task of recording the day's sales. Each wand was carefully marked down, along with its measurement, core composition, and, as an afterthought at the bottom of the column, its new owner. Olivander never forgot a wand. Never. But if he should, his files certainly wouldn't.
His hand paused for a moment at the start of an entry. Yew. 13 inches. Powerful, very powerful. One of his finest. And inside, at the very centre of the wand, lay a single phoenix feather, taken from a domesticated creature, of all things! Still, a handsomer bird one couldn't find if one trekked the world over and poked one's head into the centre of Heliopolis, the origin of phoenixes. No, that wand had been special, perhaps even more special than most of his others. Of course it was beautiful, smooth to the touch and polished that pearly white, smelling of that enchanting combination of wood and raw, unharnessed magic. Pure power. Olivander breathed in deeply, inhaling the scent as if he were again in his workshop, breathing in the grainy sawdust particles and feeling the warmth in his right hand as his wand brought more of its brethren into existence. His perfect partner. Olivander snapped himself out of his reverie just in time to hesitate again, this time over the name of the peculiar boy that had been chosen to yield that wand, and again was lost to his perfect memory, tinged with the tingling of his wand. His sixth sense.
That morning had been unseasonably warm, and with the sun, the schoolchildren flocked in droves to Diagon Alley. Why, he himself had had two customers before noon! At exactly 12 o'clock, he put a sign on the door that read "Out for lunch – please return at 12:30".Olivander ate his usual – ham and cheese on rye bread. He could again taste the delicious morsels as they slid down his rather dry throat, could feel the thick, crinkled paper as he balled up the sandwich wrapper and threw it toward the garbage bin (though missing by almost a foot).
He could hear the noisy laughter of older Hogwarts students outside of his window and could feel, rather than hear, the silent discomfort and fear of the first years, dragged by their enthusiastic parents from shop to shop. 12:25. Olivander rose slowly from his chair and stretched luxuriously. Perhaps he, too, would go for a stroll and enjoy what was sure to be a pleasantly cool evening after closing up shop that day. 12:29. Olivander smartly picked up his feet where another man might have dragged his and marched back to work, swiftly popping out from behind the thin veil that separated the storage space of the back room from the rest of the store just as the delicate clock on the wall struck 12:30.
Olivander froze. Sitting in the very back corner, so inconspicuous that Olivander might have missed him, was a pale young boy, no older than eleven or so.
The hair on the back of Olivander's neck stood straight up and his wand shuddered.
"Hello there. You must have missed the sign on the door – It says that I do not get back from lunch until 12:30."
"Oh, is that so? But isn't it 12:30 now?" The boy spoke carefully, feigning slight confusion. (Olivander could tell such things by now, though the child was obviously a master already. And besides, his wand was practically vibrating in his grip, putting him more than a little on edge.)
"So it is. I assume that you are here for a wand?"
Olivander's voice became business-like and brisk, masking his confusion and annoyance with his newest customer.
"You assume correctly." The boy's voice, too, changed, discarding at once the fake confusion for something much more cool. Though it was Olivander's shop, neither of the two doubted who was really in charge. At the age of eleven, his voice rang with authority. A wave of his wand to Summon his tape measure soon put the boy in his place, though.
Olivander remembered with a slight smugness how his newest customer had jumped in shock when the tape measure came speeding into the room, stopping just short of hitting the boy full on in the face.
"What was your name again?"
"I never did say. Tom. Tom Riddle." Tom Riddle's mouth turned down at the corners as he made this pronouncement; even his own name seemed to be displeasing to him.
"Well, Tom – "
"Mr. Riddle, sir, if you don't mind," Tom interjected.
A ghost of a smile lit Olivander's face. "Well then, Mr. Riddle, which is your wand arm?"
"My left."
Without another word from Olivander, the tape measure got to work measuring the boy, as did Olivander, though the latter measured Tom mentally. The wand chooses the wizard, of course, but if one followed strictly that principle, he could wave every wand in the shop before finding the right one. No, there were standards, rules, that these things followed, and many a time it was more instinct than anything else. Olivander just had that knack. It was part of what had kept him in business for so long. People liked feeling an immediate connection to a wand, and trying out a thousand different ones before finding that perfect match was not at all an ordeal most people wanted to wait through, as Olivander had found out the hard way as a novice wand-maker when several customers simply walked out after half an hour or so. But this boy had far more patience than any of them, because forty-five minutes and two leaning stacks of boxes later, Olivander was no closer to finding a match than when he had first heard the chilling voice come out of the dark corner of his shop.
"No matter, no matter!" he said cheerfully, snatching back another wand and delicately placing it in its box before moving it, too, to join the others in the "discard" pile. "Hm, now, perhaps we could try a less traditional wand. How about this one? Holly and unicorn hair, nine and a half inches?" But the wand only shot out a few feeble sparks and then grew cold again.
"Sir, I don't think that this is right, either." Tom Riddle looked as though he had just about given up hope himself that he would ever find the extension of his arm that he yearned so desperately for. Olivander could see it in his eyes as they slid over his own wand, hungrily soaking in every detail. But then, out of the corner of his eye, Tom Riddle saw something.
Walking over to the far right side of the room, he set his course directly for the thin package second to last on the top shelf. Watching the boy walk, observing some almost imperceptible change in his air, Olivander's own wand started to vibrate, so hard that it was a struggle to keep hold of it, and he felt a strange urge to cry out. But just as a strangled warning was about to leave his lips, Tom Riddle's spidery hand plucked the wand from its nest and swept it grandly out in front of him. Olivander barely had time to react. Instantly, a stream of fire trailed after the tip of the wand, snatching at the bottom of the shelves that were lined with his prized creations. Olivander extinguished the threatening blaze with a well-placed spell of his own, and wondered to himself of the potential of a boy that had created fire in his first attempt with a wand.
Tom Riddle smiled a strange smile.
Thoroughly unnerved by now, Olivander could only say, "Well, it seems we've found the wand for you!" But out of the corner of his eye, Olivander could have sworn he saw the boy mouth, "I found". Olivander collected his money a bit more hastily than he would have otherwise done, and then the boy known to him as Tom Riddle turned and walked out of his door.
As the world turns. What a strange thought! Still, Olivander had a feeling that he would never again see that same boy walk through his door again.
And for some reason, it made him the tiniest bit sad.
Sitting back in his office, Olivander shuddered at the memory, and, for the first time in his memory (which meant "ever", of course), he closed up his files before he had finished detailing the day's sales. He would just have to finish them the next morning. Leaning back in the worn chair, Olivander turned off the glare from the desk lamp and contented himself to think. But only one thought came to his mind:
He hoped that he never did see that boy again.
As the world turns.