Note:
Sometimes in dialogue I like to leave out who says what and assume the reader will follow who is saying each line. Please tell me if you find any dialogue confusing. I will respond to all reviews :) and probably go look at your stories too.
—Albus—
It was the season for Hogwarts-bound customers once again. Ollivander sorted galleons, sickles and knuts into a drawer behind his front counter, the payment for an elegant elm and unicorn hair wand with silver trim that he had just sold to one young Scorpius Malfoy. The thin faced boy's excitement had clearly shown through his efforts to act dignified and grown-up. Youth! Young people were all so eager to grow older, but Ollivander at times wished he could feel a bit younger.
He wandered back into his shop. Certainly he was getting old, but there had been a time he had felt even older still, and he was grateful to have been given a rare gift of renewal. He stopped in front of a drawer. He opened it, and remembered:
A battle at Hogwarts...the words scuttled up through the floorboards in old Muriel Prewett's house...Harry Potter dead? It was hard to understand what they were saying downstairs. Ollivander wanted to roll over, but was too exhausted. His mind and body were filled with confusion and pain. Out his window the evening sky glowed fiery crimson. Perhaps the world was ending, but he was too old, much too old and weak to do anything for it. After a time the house fell quiet and he lay shifting in and out of sleep.
There was a noise at the window. An owl...Ollivander was sorry he could not get up to let it in, but it found a way to open the window itself. It was big for an owl. No, it was a phoenix! In over eighty-five years, Ollivander was lucky to have seen five phoenixes. Three were wild; he had traveled in search of them and gathered feathers from their nests, but two were pets. One, a pet of the witch Liliko on the Tongan islands, had given six feathers. The other was Albus Dumbledore's own Fawkes who had given two, and Ollivander recognized him now.
"Ah Fawkes...why, even you are looking old and tired."
The scarlet bird alighted on Ollivander's nightstand, and bowed its head. It closed its eyes.
With effort, Ollivander reached up and touched Fawkes' neck. "You miss him? The world misses him, my friend."
Fawkes shook his head. A tear began to glisten in his eye.
"Ah, no no, I hope you don't consider any of this your fault. He-who-must-not-be-named would have sought and gained power with any other wand," Olivander took a heavy breath, "and we gave Harry Potter the best wand with which to oppose him. If he has now found the Wand of Destiny, why, then Destiny must take responsibility." Ollivander began to cough.
The tear dropped onto Ollivander's hand. Fawkes leaned close, and another fell upon Ollivander's cheek. His coughing subsided. In the quiet room, Ollivander stroked Fawkes' feathers and Fawkes let tears fall.
The pain was gone. Ollivander began to admire Fawkes' tailfeathers with a wandmaker's eye. He was feeling more like himself.
Fawkes straightened up on his perch and ruffled. He looked right into Ollivander's eyes, reached down with his beak and plucked a long feather. Just one. Ollivander sat up, and took it. Then Fawkes flew to the windowsill, and Ollivander stood and followed. He watched as the stunning bird flew away into the darkening scarlet sky.
Back in his shop, Ollivander held the wand box. He opened it and lifted out the gracefully shaped, undecorated, fourteen inch wand. It had been his most difficult project:
He carefully kept the precious feather while he made a new wand for dear young Luna, and took care of a flock of customers whose wands had been broken or stolen during the war. The phoenix feather was always at the back of his mind.
It was Ollivander family tradition to pair phoenix feather with aspen, cedar or yew to produce powerful wands with quick responses. Old Gregorovich had often put his phoenix feathers in elm or fir to moderate the feathers' impetuosity, but Ollivander did not want to stifle any of this feather's independence or power. He expected this to be the last phoenix feather he would ever work with, his traveling days being past. It was a singular offering of renewal from Fawkes, and Ollivander almost believed, from Albus Dumbledore himself. Rebirth, for a world emerging from war. This feather would become Garrick Ollivander's greatest wand.
He considered duplicating Harry Potter's wand by coaxing the feather into a holly wood sheath. It had indeed produced powerful results. Cypress was also noble, but Ollivander did not consider it an option, as most cypress wands he had ever sold had eventually been broken or defeated.
Another idea kept tugging at his mind. The Elder Wand. Harry Potter had used it to defeat He-who-must-not-be-named and to repair his own broken wand, a marvelous feat. Potter had said the wand was now buried again with Dumbledore, and though Ollivander found this disappointing, he respected the wand's final resting place. The Elder Wand could not be retrieved, but perhaps a replacement could be made.
Ollivander searched out a fine block of elder wood, and began preparing it. It took many days and nights of labor. It took the greatest care. The magical properties of both wood and feather had to be protected and enhanced as they were fitted together.
Joining them was more difficult than Ollivander had anticipated. He eventually discovered that one drop of the Draught of Peace and a mild sticking charm, along with his best wand enchantments and techniques, brought them together.
Ollivander finished the wand, and wondered who it would choose. Ollivander would do his best not to sell it to an opponent of good, but it was hard to tell what a young person would become. It would undoubtedly have to be someone great, perhaps a child of the remarkable Ginevra Weasley and Harry Potter himself. Ollivander had assumed it would be their eldest, but in many old tales it was the third and youngest sibling that proved the wisest and strongest.
A ring at the door interrupted his thoughts. Still with the wand in his hands, Ollivander hurried to the front of the shop.
"Mr. Harry Potter, why, I was just thinking of you...how is your wand? And Ginevra's? And young James'?"
"All very good, Mr. Ollivander. I have James' wand here." He patted his pocket. Then he indicated the boy by his side. "This is my younger son, Albus."
"Albus Severus, yes..." Ollivander observed the boy. He looked even more like his father than James had. Like most first years he seemed nervous, but he was also perceptive as he gazed around the shop and then looked at Mr. Ollivander.
"It's nice to meet you, sir."
"Indeed."
"Um...I would like a wand please."
Ollivander had been distracted. "Yes yes, let's see..." He was about to hand the boy the wand he was already holding. The wand. He shook himself.
"Shall we start with something made of holly, like your father's?"
Harry Potter read each box as he had two years ago with his older son.
"Hmm, how about apple and unicorn hair, ten inches?" Ollivander offered. The wand trembled slightly when young Albus grasped it, a shiver in the apple-wood that only a wandmaker would notice. Ollivander frowned.
"Pear and unicorn hair, thirteen and a quarter inches?" This one seemed calm. The apple wand could have been intimidated simply because it was too short.
Ollivander tried an elder wood and dragon heartstring wand. Harry Potter's eyebrows raised when he read "elder" on the label. The wand was warm to the touch, but Ollivander felt it pull his arm toward Mr. Potter where it sensed more immediate strength, not his son. He pulled it back.
The hesitation Ollivander recognized from a few apple and pear wood wands made him reluctant to try the elder phoenix wand for this boy. Wands saw past the timidity of childhood and knew that this wizard might be too powerful, too curious and ambitious. Years ago, Ollivander would have been eager to match the strongest wand to the strongest wizard, but he had learned to be careful.
Yet, power and ambition were not necessarily evil, and wands sensed potential and probability, not certainty. It could not have been a meaningless coincidence that Ollivander had been holding the wand when the Potters arrived.
"Mr. Ollivander, are you feeling well?" Harry Potter asked after a moment.
"Yes, my apologies. I was just thinking. We could try a sycamore wand, like your brother's."
"What about that one?" The boy asked, standing on tiptoe and pointing to the elder and phoenix wand.
"That one, hmm? Very well then, I do wonder..." Ollivander said, and presented it to Albus Potter. It grew a little warmer as he took it. "Indeed!" said Ollivander.
The boy smiled and waved it, but nothing happened, and his smile disappeared.
Of course, it would not be easy to please. Convincing it would take something more than a wave. "Try a spell." Ollivander suggested, "I am sure you have learned the words for a—"
Without much thought Albus pointed the wand at his father. "Expelliarmus." He said. But Harry Potter's Auror instincts reacted and he spoke the same spell at nearly the same moment.
A jet of white light burst from Albus' wand tip and met a jet of red from Harry's, crackling, in the middle of Ollivander's shop. A golden dome began to form around the father and son. Harry Potter was caught by surprise, and being unthreatened, must have felt no reason to push his will, while Albus was clearly desparate to prove himself to the wand. White overcame the red even before the dome had fully formed, and Albus' hand on the wand was vibrating so hard he let go and the connection broke.
"Magnificent," Ollivander whispered, "Fascinating."
Harry's wand jumped from his hand toward Albus, but the boy was too startled to catch it. It landed at Albus' feet, and his father picked it up.
"You said there were only two!" Harry Potter demanded.
"There were only two. Fawkes brought me another feather the night you battled He-who-must-not-be-named at Hogwarts."
"Fawkes..."
"It had been a year since Dumbledore's death. I do not know where Fawkes was before he visited me, nor where he went after."
"...so that must be why you healed so well." Potter said. "And you made another wand."
"I made this wand, which may be the greatest wand I have ever made, Mr. Potter."
Albus waved the wand again and a shimmering stream of crystal-white magic flowed from it.
Ollivander nodded, and retreated into his shop for the box. When he came back, Harry Potter was examining the wand with his son looking on eagerly.
"The color of the wood," Mr. Potter said, "reminds me of..."
Ollivander handed him the box.
"Elder." Potter read aloud and shook his head. "Al, maybe we should keep looking for a different—"
"But I really like this one, Dad. It works for me, you saw."
"The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter."
"I think the wizard can always make the final choice. Elder wood is known to be disloyal and demanding isn't it, and phoenix feather also has to be controlled by a strong will. They both can act on their own. It seems like a dangerous combination."
"Ah, so I thought as well, at first; elder and phoenix feather have similar properties of potency, awareness, and demand for a strong owner," said Ollivander.
"However, after much consideration I believe their demands are very different. Elder is quick to sense power and claim a wielder, working at its full strength right away, but it is also quick to change hands when it encounters someone who seems stronger. Phoenix feather, on the other hand, Mr. Potter, is slow to accept ownership. It will work reluctantly at first, but after a few months if pleased with its match, will show its true power and become deeply attached. Like a phoenix bird, its allegiance is hard won and hardly ever lost. If it does pass to a new owner, it will be to a friend or heir, not an enemy." Ollivander said. "I am curious to see how these opposing tendencies will merge. Dangerous? Perhaps, if not directed right. The one thing that is clear, is that this wand has chosen your son. If it demands a strong wizard, then it must have found one."
They both looked at Albus. The young boy stared up at them for a moment with wide green eyes, but then smiled.
"I can balance it on my chin."
He tossed his head back and stuck out his chin, placing the end of the wand below his lower lip. It pointed straight up for several seconds, while he kept moving slightly to hold it in balance. Then he dropped his chin down and caught the wand in his hand.
Ollivander scratched his head and said, "if that is the measure of a strong wizard, then there we have it!"
There was a commotion in the street outside and a young girl's voice yelled, "James!"
Mr. Potter looked out the window. "Dumbledore's Beard!" he exclaimed, tossed Albus his bag of coins, and ran out.
The young Mr. Potter paid for his own wand, thanked Mr. Ollivander, and turned to go. He cast a door opening charm, which worked perfectly.
"Well Albus," Ollivander mused, "We may grow old and die, but greatness rises anew."
Albus Potter paused and nodded thoughtfully. "Yes sir, I suppose it does."
—
Notes:
Liliko is a Tongan name that means bird. As I invented her just now, several ideas sprouted and she is actually a really cool character...maybe there will be another story about her...maybe involving the Scamander family...