Disclaimer: I do not own the works of Harry Potter.

Synopsis: Either Harry's wand is talking to him, or the teen is having a psychotic break. Honestly, he's not sure which possibility is worse. (Gen)

Notes: I can't tell if I like it or hate it, but here's another little fic I wrote to power through a case of writer's block. Unbeta'd, so apologies for any mistakes.

What's in a Wand

Harry's teacup jumps and lets out a ribbit. Groaning at his continued failure to get this transfiguration right, the teen slaps his wand onto the desk.

"Ouch! Watch it!" A high pitched, childlike voice calls out in irritation.

"What? Who?" Harry whips his head around in confusion. No one else in class is looking at him, and he doesn't remember any of his classmates still sounding like five-year-olds anyways. Finding no explanation for what he had thought he'd heard, Harry picks his wand back up and tries the spell once more.

A ceramic frog clatters onto the tabletop.

"Ugh!" Harry groans as he petulantly slaps down his wand once more.

"Ow ow ow ow ow! Don't be so rough, my knight!" The strange voice calls out again.

Harry feels a sinking dread form in his stomach as he stares at his wand. Harry quickly looks around to make sure there is still no one paying attention to him before hunching over towards the wand.

"Hello?" He whispers, feeling like an idiot.

"Yeah, hi. Stop hitting me on things!" The voice replies almost instantly.

The teen groans. Of course his wand is talking. Harry is not looking forward to finding out whatever crazy curse or bout of insanity has caused this. It isn't enough to have a psychotic dark wizard out for his blood, no, he has to be hearing voices. From his wand.

"You're doing it wrong."

"What?" Harry asks, startled out of his thoughts when he hears the voice again.

"You need to flick me harder. And enunciate better - you're talking like your mouth is full of slugs. Honestly."

Groaning again, Harry stares at his wand, not sure if he really wants to pick it up again. But class is almost over and he does have a spell to perfect. So he grabs the talkative piece of wood.

When he tries the spell once more, Harry takes his wand's advice and is rewarded with a shining blue teapot sitting still and solid on his desk.

"See, told ya."

Grimacing at the smug voice, Harry slams his wand back onto the desk. Hard.

"Ow!"

…...

"So… what are we doing?" The bring voice calls out eagerly as Harry whips off his invisibility cloak. The Restricted Section of the library is dark and spooky this time of night, but Harry is determined to find his answers.

"Not 'we', 'I'. I am here to figure out why my wand is talking. Or why I'm imagining my wand is talking. Last time I heard voices no one else could, there was a giant snake roaming around trying to kill people. I've learned the necessity of finding out what I'm dealing with."

"You think I'm a giant snake?"

The teen rolls his eyes at the piece of wood in his hand. "No! I just want to make sure you aren't a sign of something out to kill me." Fingers skimming the titles in front of him, he tries to find something that looks like it may have answers. As he looks, he thinks aloud, "Maybe the Voldemort cast a spell on my wand and is talking through it. Though I don't know why he'd sound like a kid..."

"Dear Merlin, how can my valiant knight be such an idiot?" The wand exclaims, childish voice ringing through the darkness. Harry winces slightly at the exasperation in it's sweetly psychotic voice. "What's the first thing you learned about wands, Harry?"

"Uh… they cast spells?" Harry says, scratching his head as he tries to think back to the overwhelming days when he has first learned about the existence of magic.

"BEEEEEP! Wrong! Geez, this is sad."

Harry feels his agitation rising. "Look, I didn't ask for this so why don't you just-"

"A wand is an extension of the wizard, Harry" the wand says, suddenly sounding solemn and serious. Harry cuts off his angry retort as he hears the shift in tone. "You remember that, inside. The wand is the wizard, the wizard is the wand."

Harry things about it a moment and it does ring true. Though, thinking about it that way, Harry feels a lot more anxious about his talking wand than he did before, "I'm crazy aren't I? If the wand is me, then you're me, and I'm just talking to myself. I've gone completely around the bend!" The boy's breathing is rapid and shallow by the end of his outburst.

"Maybe," the wand says smugly. "You could always test that."

Harry hesitates a moment, debating whether he really wants to ask his wand - which he was increasingly worried was just his own insanity taking form - what it meant. But Harry has always been ruled by his curiosity.

"How?"

"You want me to tell you how? How should I know?" The wand snipes, disdain clear in its high, childish voice. Losing his patience and feeling stupid for asking in the first place, Harry growls and tosses his wand up and over the bookshelves. He hears a loud "Oomf!" and a clatter as it lands in the next aisle.

Calming almost instantly, Harry sighs and starts heading around the bookcase to pick up his wand. As he walks, he hears his wand call out a series of random statements. "Immolation sacrifice rituals! Fire and sight! Burning, drowning and burying!"

Brows furrowed, Harry hurries over to the wand. "What the bloody hell are you on about?" He mutters.

"Take a look," The wand replies cheekily.

"Take a look where? Crazy piece of…" As the boy-who-lived crouches down and picks up his wand, the words on the spine of a book hear his hand catches his eye.

'Immolation Sacrifice Rituals'

Eyes widening in surprise, Harry quickly skims the bookshelf. Sure enough, he finds two more tomes that match the words his wand had shouted out.

"So, you can see?" Harry asks, staring at the wand uneasily. It didn't look like it had any eyes but in a world of magic, he could never really be sure.

"Of course not. I'm a wand, Harry, not a dog. I cast magic. I feel magic. And these books are covered in magic!" The irritated voice that rings in Harry's ears doesn't fit the innocent scene of a stick of wood lying on the dusty ground. Harry simply stares in silence, lost in how surreal his life was at the moment.

"Harry?"

Shaking his head to clear it, Harry reaches down and picks up his talkative wand.

"I'm still not convinced that I'm not just crazy," Harry admits as he whips some dirt off of his wand. While the wand's ability to see things Harry couldn't seemed to prove the wand was able to sense things Harry himself was not, that ability wasn't a strong enough argument to clear away all doubts. And if he wasn't crazy, why would his wand be talking to him anyways?

"Does it matter? I'm here and you're here and we're stuck with each other."

A childlike voice and childlike logic. But maybe a more childlike outlook is what Harry needs - with the war raging on outside of the school walls, the boy has felt very old lately. "I guess it doesn't."

….

"Help! Thief! Fire!" The childlike voice rings out across the potions classroom as Professor Severus Snape takes the confiscated wand to his desk. "Help! Unhand me you fiend! Do not touch me! Help! Harry!"

The teen in question stares at the wand in dismay. He's really not sure if he should be laughing or crying at this point.

"Harry! Rescue me my stupid knight! Don't leave me here to die!"

Crying, Harry decides. He should definitely be crying.

"Potter, if you want to complete your detention before curfew, I'd highly suggest you begin scrubbing," Professor Snape sneers at the boy. Luckily for Harry's sanity, the professor then places his wand on the desk. While his wand still cries out for Harry, it quiets a bit now that it is not being held. Harry looks away from the desk and starts scrubbing, doing his best to ignore his wands pleading.

It's about an hour into detention when Harry looks up from a cauldron he'd finally finished scrubbing and realises that his wand is silent. A sharp jolt of panic shoots through the boy and he whips his head up. There his wand is, safely on the desk in front of the classroom. Harry lets out a relieved sigh then scowls at his own foolishness. Was he really getting so used to his crazy talking wand?

"Harry?"

The voice sounds tired and timid, very unlike any time he's heard his sassy wand speak before.

"Harry?" It calls out again, and Harry bites his lip to remain silent. He wants to respond to his wand, disturbed by how sad it sounds. But he also doesn't want to be caught talking to thin air by Snape. Though the thought of his professor gives Harry an idea.

"Professor?" Harry calls out loudly and as politely as he can. He may not be able to directly talk to his wand right now, but maybe just hearing him nearby would be enough.

"Harry, is that you? Oh Harry, Harry Harry! My knight! My glorious knight!" His wand gushes loudly, calling for its master. So loudly that Harry can't hear whatever it is Snape is saying in response to Harry's call.

"Uh, nevermind Professor," Harry says quickly, wanting to end any conversation before he could get in trouble for not hearing what the man is saying. The potions master glares at the boy and snarls something. For once, Harry is glad for his wand's volume as it drowns out whatever demeaning insult the professor had sent Harry's way.

It's another hour before Harry is finally done with his detention. When Snape returns his wand, Harry nearly sobs in relief. He'd been getting a killer headache from his wand's screeching the past hour. The teen rushes through the dark hallways until he deems it safe to talk to his magical stick.

"-arry, where were you? I was so alone. I thought I'd rot there and-"

"Hey, I'm back, please calm down," Harry whispers urgently. He really can't take much more of his wand's theatrics. Luckily for him, his wand does calm down. Harry's able to continue to his dorm in blessed near-silence and the wand merely hums in contentment the rest of the way.

Once Harry is in bed that night, wand on the pillow beside him, the wand speaks again. "I missed you," the childlike voice whispers. Harry smiles. Despite his wand's tantrums, he had kind of missed being able to talk to it as well.

"Goodnight," he responds as he falls into a deep sleep.

…

"Duck!" The frantic voice of Harry's wand sends the boy flying towards the ground just in time for a bright green flash to pass by over his head.

That was a close one.

Springing back to his feet, Harry sprints for cover, casting out stunning and stinging spells at the Death Eaters all the while. Once he reaches the Quidditch stands, Harry ducks under the bleachers and is able to catch his breath for a moment as the sounds of the continuing battle rage around him.

"I need to find Voldemort," Harry whispers into the shadows. "Can you feel him?"

Silence greets his question. Then a reluctant voice fills his head.

"Yeah."

"Where is he?"

"Harry…" His wand sounds small, scared. It reminds him of the time, over a year ago now, that his wand had been confiscated in detention.

"We need to end this," He tells the wand, conviction clear in his voice. "This has gone on long enough."

There is another drawn out silence. Then the voice states tells him exactly where to go.

Even after discovering that Voldemort is fighting near the Greenhouses, it's no simple matter for Harry to get there. With the bulk of the professors and Aurors working to keep the Death Eaters from entering the school through the main doors, Harry has to face the Death Eaters between the Pitch and the Greenhouse on his own.

"On your left! Crippling hex!"

Harry casts the appropriate shield without looking - trusting that the information is correct. He gives a grim smile as the flash of a spell hitting and fizzling against the barrier proves that once again his wand was correct. "Thanks."

"Thanking yourself seems silly," his wand's voice states. "But do go on, I don't- behind you!"

Harry grunts as a burning hex hits him before he can turn fully. Turning his focus on the Death Eater, he hurls an overpowered transfiguration spell at the wizard who ambushed him. He follows up the spell with one that shatters the giant teacup that had moments earlier been a Death Eater.

Harry's scar begins to burn when he finally comes upon Voldemort. He finds the man in the middle of some sort of ritual, focused fully on the spell and obviously trusting his lackeys would keep his enemies occupied.

"Now's your chance," the small voice of Harry's wand whispers. "Let's go say goodbye to that ugly mug."

"Yes, let's," Harry agrees grimly, clenching the wand and thinking quickly. He's not sure what will happen when he interrupts the ritual, but he's also pretty sure he shouldn't let the psycho finish it.

"Do it," the wand urges.

Harry casts the most powerful blasting spell he knows.

The resulting explosion pushes Harry off his feet. Ears ringing, the boy quickly scrambles to his hands and knees, then to his feet. He sees something on the ground that sends a deep twinge of sorrow through him before refocusing on the dangerous wizard across from him.

The old wizard hasn't yet recovered from the shock of the attack. Taking the chance, Harry rushes forward, tackling the wizard and screaming as grabs the man's head and pounds it hard into the ground behind him. Blood flies through the air as Harry repeats the action once, twice, three times more.

When the former dark lord stops twitching below him, the red rage fades from Harry's vision and he clambers off the man. With the immediate danger taken care off, Harry lurches over towards what he saw earlier.

There, lying in the dirt, are the shattered remnants of his wand.

"Hello?" He whispers, knowing there won't be an answer.

Harry isn't sure how long he stands there, staring at the wooden splinters. Eventually, he hears Professor McGonagall and the Headmaster call out to him as they rush to his side. They're quiet as they take in the bloody remnants of Voldemort's body. Then Voldemort's body is aflame, Dumbledore is pocketing his own wand, and McGonagall is urging Harry to head towards the others.

The teen quietly gathers up the wooden splinters before following the professors away.

….

Voldemort is dead. The Death Eaters are scattered and on the run. The war is over.

The Wizarding World has been a flurry of celebrations and excitement since that final battle and it has taken Harry several long days for Harry to find an opportunity to sneak away from the worried friends and enthusiastic well-wishers that have been surrounding him.

The teen wanders around the grounds for almost an hour before perching on the edge of the bridge. He swings his feet over the edge and stares into the waters for a long moment. Then he draws out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. It's almost physically painful for Harry to unwrap the cloth and reveal the shards of wood that once made up his wand.

They are useless now - just a pile of splinters.

He won the battle, survived against all odds. Soon, Harry will go and buy a new wand. But something inside of him knows that his new wand would remain quiet. The childish voice that had kept him company the last two years is gone. A hot tear slides down Harry's face.

"Thank you," Harry whispers into the dawn mist. Then he moves his hand, and the shards of wood slide from his palm and fall into the foggy river below him. "Goodbye."

When the sun rises fully and burns away the mist, Harry stands and walks away, ready to embrace his future.