Pet project with juncici! Each of us made up 25 prompts and 25 story ideas, and we'll be posting drabbles from them. (All...100...of them. Bring it on!) Like Jun-chan said, some drabbles will look a bit like oneshots. |D Similar to 50 Sentences. (You can tell I'm totally ripping this A/N off from Jun-chan. -shot'd-)

M'kay! No idea how much time I spent on this...half an hour? Whipped it up and here you guys go. (A note on Tides: I'M WORKING ON IT, I SWEAR! I just hit...a bit of a block.)

HURRY UP AND POST YOURS, JUN-CHAN!

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(Story Idea: Harry Potter universe

Prompt: "Hickory and phoenix feather," she had said, and he had never heard of any wand more beautiful than that.)

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The first time he meets her formally, she is choking and hacking up dust in a corner of the store, and all he can do is stand and wait. Awkward: folded, goose-pickled arms and nervous, squinted glances. The dust clears away after some time, and he wonders if he hasn't already scuffed a hole into the woodworks of the floor with the toe of his shoe.

"Er, are you---are you alright?" He clears his throat. There is bewilderment in his voice, and it is rightly there---after all, since when would Kuroba Kaito, scion of the most ancient and noble Kuroba line, stutter? It is unseemly. Ungainly. And for some strange reason, Kaito feels he cannot, at any cost, seem ungainly in front of the coughing girl.

She waves away his question with a toss of her wild hair. His eyes can't help but follow the movement. "No, no, I'm alright. Just---how old is this place, really? I'm finding meters of dust in the oddest places." A quick, easy grin. He is struck by how...free she seems, robin egg eyes beaming and chin held at an angle. A strand of her black bangs falls in front of an eye, catching in an eyelash.

He decides, then and there. She is beautiful.

"Well, the sign out front says since 832 B.C...?" Kaito loses the carefully cultivated purebloodedness of his stature with her, no longer worrying about Father and Mother watching him with evaluating eyes. He had long buried the laughing, barefooted silhouette of his childhood (a boy in love with life itself, pulling tablecloths and stealing quills) for, as he had been taught, a public image. A composed, dignified public image of a dutiful son following the Kuroba Touichi's footsteps.

(White, leathered footsteps, with a glinting monocle watching the way...

and oh, he wants to hate Father so much, but he simply can't.)

In front of this smiling, sunshine-blue girl, though, it all strips away, and he is only a hesitant, wishing 11-year-old, no longer a jaded Slytherin to-be trying to be older than he is.

And what worries Kaito the most is that he can't figure out why.

"Really, I was half-joking. Do you take everything so seriously, Mr...?" Still her playfulness.

"Ah. Kuroba. Kuroba Kaito." Here, some semblance of order comes back to the boy. He nods once, expression schooled to be pensive and collected. And---he remembers---extends his hand.

There is surprise in her single blink, and as she takes his hand she says, "W-wow, fancy meeting one of the Kurobas...Tou-san would be head over heels right now."

"And you aren't?" A sly cheekiness, his indigo eyes smirking. Somewhere in his mind he is shocked at how out of character he is acting.

Or had it always been the other way, and he'd been out of character...for...years?

(Ah. There is the Kuroba Kaito. That quill-stealing, tablecloth-pulling boy silhouette...)

"I'm sorry?" A faint blush colors her cheeks. "I---I ought to hit you, just for that."

"Hm? With what? Dust?"

"---No! My mop, of course!"

A confused silence meets the statement.

"I...have a mop. At home. Daddy gave it to me as a going-away present. Since I'm off to Hogwarts and all that," she says defensively.

"Er, alright." He decides to not question her further, and instead moves his eyes across the rows and rows of silent shelves, bloated with dilapidated stacks of silent wand cases. The corridor they are in still has dust swirling around them, and sunlight shows them dancing, flickering. "So, you have your wand yet?"

"Oh! Yes. Just got it, really. Hickory and phoenix feather," she announces proudly, and takes a slim, reddish-brown stick from her pocket. Twirls it in her fingers. He watches, entranced again.

Hickory and phoenix feather. Kaito has never heard of any wand more beautiful than that.

"What about yours?"

"I---what?"

"Did you get your wand yet?"

"Oh! No. I heard you and came in here. Had to see the pretty girl." A crooked grin. (And he is stunned once more at the kind of person she seems to bring out of him. He'd thought he'd forgotten him.) Her eyes widen and her face reddens again.

"You---come on. Let's...go get your wand," she says hastily, and drags him down the aisle. He beams at the shelves.

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Back at the front of the shop, Ollivander smiles as Kaito asks for the phoenix feather wands.