Ollivander's was as musty and dusty as Harry remembered. Wand boxes still lined the sides of the room, and the measuring tape was just as annoying. The change began when Harry started trying wands.

"Nope!" Ollivander said, snatching back another wand which had done… absolutely nothing. Ollivander didn't seem surprised, or worried, but it was extremely worrying for Harry. "Nope!" That one had been cherry wood. Harry quite liked the look of cherry wood. Still no reaction though.

"Hmm…I wonder…" Ollivander said. And then, just as last time, Ollivander brought out the Holly and Phoenix. And unlike last time… "Nope!"

"Mr. Potter," Ollivander finally asked, after the thirty fourth wand, "can you already perform some spells?"

Harry glanced at Professor McGonagall, who had been becoming as worried as Harry after wand after wand showed no reaction, but now seemed as curious as Ollivander.

"Erm… kind of?" Now they looked even more curious. "I mean, I wasn't, like, saying stuff like Professor McGonagall did when she teleported us to the Alley, but… I'd sometimes, um, do stuff?" More staring. "On purpose?"

"Like what, lad?" Ollivander asked.

Harry thought back. "Let's see… I can move stuff any way I want, I can hide my things from my cousin, I can make my finger light up like E.T., I can lock and unlock my door without touching it, I can heal papercuts, um… I fixed a broken pencil once? Oh! I also got one piece of paper to turn into two, but the second one disappeared after a bit… I can also figure out where things I lost are, and I can make things smaller, and I cleaned the bathtub once without using anything, and… um… I think that's it?" Harry knew he hadn't mentioned all he had learned to do—like hell he would tell them that he knew how to stun people—but hopefully that list was sufficient enough to explain whatever was happening with the wands and, hopefully, get him labelled a genius. He remembered well enough from the first time around the benefits that got Hermione—time turner, anyone?

"Well!" Ollivander said, obviously impressed. "That's quite a list!" Professor McGonagall looked similarly stunned. "Alright, then. Let's go about this a different way." In a flurry of movement Ollivander had spelled all of the previously tried wands to go back to their previous locations. He then opened a drawer in his desk, pulling out a… thing. It was vaguely wooden, or at least it seemed to be, and Harry was fairly sure it had a shape, for all that he had no idea what it was… it kind of looked like the "impossible trident" that they'd gone over in art class one day, but it was also… moving?

"This, young Mr. Potter, is a wood lelifer, which will help match you with your ideal wand wood. As you can see, the cylinder I touched has become hornbeam wood, which is what my wand is made of. It's not ideal, mind you—there's a reason that I generally use trial and error to choose a wand, on top of which if you currently have a wand bonded to you it will only show that wood—but it does come in useful on occasion, as in this case." Harry nodded to show that he understood, but honestly trying to figure out what parts of the "lelifer" actually existed was taking up most of his attention. Was this what surrealists were constantly imagining? "Alright then, if you would just place your hand on one of the cylinders…"

Harry tentatively grabbed one. Under his hand he felt the wood—for it was definitely wood—shift, and grains of all colors formed small rivulets in the wood, almost solidifying that particular part of the 'lelifer' more in reality.

"Ah! A good selection, I should think." Ollivander said. He released the cylinder he had been holding and bent over, his nose barely a hairsbreadth away from Harry's hand as he inspected the grains. "Hmm… Ah-ha!" Ollivander dashed to a section of the wall, barely glancing at the stacks for a second before pulling out one, two, three wands. He then dashed to another part of the store and added four more to the pile, before returning to Harry and taking back the lelifer. (Honestly Harry was relieved—it might have been fascinating, but he was also getting a headache trying to understand it.)

"Now, Mr. Potter, if you would, please place your hand over each of these one at a time and cast the levitation charm—I'm sorry, that would mean to make the wand float. Don't touch the wands, however."

Harry shrugged and put his hand over the first wand but, to his surprise, it didn't move. "Umm… why isn't it working?"

"Hmm?" Ollivander said. "Oh, wands are naturally resistant to un-wanded magic. Only those that are naturally attuned to you will move at all."

Harry nodded, still perplexed (why? Actually, why for everything in this shop. None of it made any sense!) and moved to the second wand. The third was the first to have a reaction, but it wasn't big enough for Ollivander, so he moved to the fourth and then the fifth.

It was the sixth that finally really reacted. "Ouch!" Harry shouted as the wand slammed into his hand. It dropped to the floor as Harry rapidly flapped his hand, trying to get rid of the stinging in his palm.

"And there you are!" Ollivander said as he picked up the wand. (In the background McGonagall sighed, relieved.) It was white, and about as long as his previous had been. "11 ½ inches, and reasonably supple. Your wand is Aspen, with a phoenix feather core—donated from Sparky, that would be the New Zealand Moutohora Macaws mascot, just two years ago. He quite likes donating feathers, you know."

"Umm… no, I didn't know that." Harry said as he tentatively took back the wand.

"I do like a good Aspen wand," Ollivander said, moving to his desk to ring them up. "Its owners tend to be accomplished duelists, with a strong, determined mind to back up quite a bit of natural power. Quite revolutionary, too—did you know that the magical Scandinavian revolution was started with not one, not two, but three separate owners of Aspen wands simultaneously? I've always felt that the owner of an Aspen knows when it's time for a change."

"Oh." Harry said. "Cool." That was… interesting information, actually. On the whole, the rest of his wand hadn't changed much—still pretty flexible, still about 11 inches, still with a phoenix core (and this one, thankfully, did not come with any implications), but the wood was a pretty big shift. While Ollivander hadn't talked much about his wand wood the first time (Fawkes' contribution being by far more interesting), after Ron had gotten a new wand and explained some of the lore surrounding it Harry had taken it upon himself to learn more about his own focus.

Holly wands, he had found, were apparently meant for those on quests, which would work well in either life, but it was also typically paired with someone who was quick to anger. Honestly it should have been less of a surprise to him that the wand was different this time around—by 17 in his previous life he'd actually learned quite a bit about controlling himself, and in this one his emotional control, particularly in regard to rage, had significantly improved. He was sad more, sure, and anxious a lot as well, but he was very rarely outright angry.

"Well, Mr. Potter, now that we, finally, have your wand sorted out, let's adjourn to Flourish and Blotts." Professor McGonagall nodded amicably at Ollivander and led Harry out of the store.

To the complete and utter shock of Harry, Flourish and Blotts was… utterly the same. If he didn't know better, he'd even say the dust mites were in the same place. That said, his actual experience in the store was noticeably different. True to her word, after ensuring he had purchased the necessary texts, Professor McGonagall had moved to talk to one of the clerks, leaving Harry to his own devices.

Initially eager to take full advantage of the respite and buy as many books as possible, Harry soon found himself disappointed. He'd snapped up some books on himself fairly quickly (three nonfiction texts which looked fairly respectable, and another three fiction books—one from each author who was publishing stories about him), before searching for a book on economics. But there weren't any. In fact, there wasn't even a section on money of any sort at all. Thankfully, there was a section on magical law, but—amazingly—magical British law was apparently even longer than the muggle kind: there were exactly fourteen labels spread throughout the seven rows devoted to it that informed any browsers, again and again, that "WE DO NOT CARRY ALL CURRENT LAWS. PLEASE SEE CLERK FOR SPECIAL ORDERING." In fact, three of the four rows were completely full of short packets, each less than 50 pages in length: Wizengamot Major Decisions 1564, Wizengamot Major Decisions 1670, Winzengamot Major Decisions 1899… They weren't in order either, which made everything much more fun.

At the end of the day, though, those shelves were useless to Harry—he highly doubted that the Deputy Headmistress would let him buy the lot of them, especially given that they were 5 sickles each, and it wasn't like he knew what years were important or not.

So he moved to the other side of the law section. There, at least, things were labelled by topic rather than year. After a bit of skimming, Harry finally selected three books that he could reasonably come across as wanting: "Magical Law and You," by Gregory Stint; "Magical Laws for Underaged Witches and Wizards," by Polly Brown, and "The Magical Judiciary: An Overview," by Ben Cordon. The sad thing was that Harry didn't even really have to narrow his choices: overwhelmingly, the books were… disappointing. One book, for instance, by Alexander Proudfoot, was touted being the most popular of its kind (it was a general overview of the Magical legislative system and which laws might affect the average wizard, like Gregory Stint's book), but most of the it was just propaga for the Wizengamot and the "wonderful" job they were doing, and while a few laws were mentioned the majority of the rest of it was just 'don't break the law and you won't get in trouble'. And, honestly, Harry could see why it was one of the more popular choices—most of the rest were worse.

Deciding that he needed a change of pace, Harry darted over to the section labelled "Magic." By far the largest section in the bookstore (taking up about 1/3 of the entire shop), the section had 12 long rows: Divination, History of Magic, Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Charms, Astronomy/Charms, Potions/Alchemy, Magical Creatures, and Herbology.

Harry decided to peruse each in order. He skipped divination.

History of Magic was notably more useful—History had always been a favorite subject of his, up until Professor Binns ruined it. Thankfully, his extensive time in the library this lifetime had brought it back.

Regardless of his personal opinions, though, that particular aisle was still very, very useful. First of all, it had what might have been the only book even vaguely touching on the economy in the whole store (outside of law, which honestly barely qualified); it was a thin, cheap looking book titled "The History of Magical Currency," and it was written by Tyler Greg, who was, according to Harry's quick skim of the forward, a muggleborn. He added the book to his pile.

As well as Tyler's book, Harry was also able to snap up another history on himself (he'd gotten the others from a separate section titled "Biographies"), a book outlining the past 800 years of magical inventions, and a book on the general history of magical Britain, all of which, with the exception of the text on inventions, were written by half-bloods. The invention book was written by a pureblood, the same as the law books he'd picked up.

None of the other books passed his initial skim of "not complete drivel" (although, to be fair, he was being rather harsh), so he moved onto the next aisle and picked up a primer on Ancient Runes, before immediately passing by the rest of the aisle to get to arithmancy.

As far as he could tell, arithmancy and potions were the closest the magical world got to 'innovation.' According to Harry's recollection, no new transfiguration or DADA spells had been made in over 60 years, divination was… divination, ancient runes were ancient, as were the stars, and alchemy had so dropped in popularity that it hadn't been taught in Hogwarts since Dumbledore's time. Honestly, Hagrid's "invention" of blast-ended skrewts and Fred' and George's various products were the only examples that came to mind of any magical innovation in his lifetime, and not only were both of those currently in the future, they were also either actively frowned upon (as in the case of the joke shop—Fred and George had mentioned more than once the trouble of getting it running in the first place), or actually illegal (as in the case of Hagrid's 'experiments', although to be fair he could understand why.)

That said, he knew for a fact that spells were being invented at this very moment. Or this one. Or… well, the point is that the invention of spells, or improvements on old ones, was something that witches and wizards were actively pursuing; Hermione had made a point of emphasizing that whenever he'd complained about the sheer amount of time she spent on the homework for that elective.

Given that, if he was to improve magical science—make not only spell creation, but also potion creation and ward creation and et cetera creation a thing—arithmancy seemed to be the best place to start.

Given that, the aisle was…

Well.

He supposed it made sense, anyway. No way would he get lucky for once. No, instead he'd get to have the utter joy of slogging through magical mathematics, where nearly every symbol and its corresponding use was different from what little of calculus he already knew, and rather than, you know, actually writing about the work, every single beginner's text in the row used the "let's just show the work of how a bunch of different spells were created, without once adding notes or anything of the sort so our readers can understand what is happening" method of teaching.

He selected one at random (honestly, he really couldn't tell the difference between one or the other), and darted past the Transfiguration row (sorry Professor, he just couldn't see the point right now) to go straight to DADA. Ah, DADA. Home sweet home.

Harry picked up not, one, not three, not five, but seven books in the DADA aisle—the set on spells that Sirius and Remus had gotten him, the book Remus had taught from, and the book Crouch had used, a book written by a muggleborn on combining non-magical and magical defenses (there was only one copy), and a book on the theoretical side of DADA (because Professor McGonagall had already had a lifetime to drill the importance of theory into his head, and it had stuck.)

Finally, though, both because the remaining books were less clearly useful and because he knew he was on a clock, Harry moved to the next row: charms. Actually, the next two rows were charms, as well as half of the one after it, but there were actually some pretty clear differences between the aisles: the first was more scholarly, the second geared towards day-to-day use, and the third focused on charms based around the natural world and potions.

From the first Harry selected a single book on the currently known effects of "just about anything" (as the book cover proclaimed) on magic. In the second he was more indiscriminate (there were spells to brush his teeth! And tie his shoes! And clean rugs!), but after he began having trouble carrying the small basket stacked with so many books, he put all but two, one on household spells and the other on tips to using spells for reasons other than their main purpose, back, which left him with 20 books.

His school materials had ended up costing him about 250 Galleons (it should've been less, but the lock on his trunk, the extra potions supplies, and the more expensive, but longer lasting, clothing choices that Professor McGonagall had opted for had driven the cost up.) This left him with 150 to do as he wished. While the books he currently had totaled up to a cost of 92 Galleons (for all that they varied significantly in individual price), which actually left him with 58 more Galleons, but he also wanted to hold some back in case he wanted to buy something during the school year. Five more books, Harry decided, would be sufficient. For now.

The final charms row, which was combined with Astronomy, ended up being relatively useless to Harry, but he did pick up a short volume on charm use in potion making—like hell was he going to let Snape ruin potions for him in two lifetimes.

Continuing in that vein, in the next aisle, which was primarily potions, he bought two volumes on the subject: one focused on technique, and the other ingredients. He'd rely on his memories of his last lifetime on actual recipes (the only reason he'd even picked up so many books in the DADA row at all was to avoid suspicion.) He didn't bother with any books in the alchemy section of the row, not knowing enough for it to be currently useful, and skipped the final two rows—Magical Creatures and Herbology—entirely.

After stopping by a special display case to pick up the latest "Hogwarts: A History" (which was apparently a more popular book than either Harry or Ron had ever given Hermione credit for), Harry turned to his final book.

Out of the goals he hadn't yet addressed, occlumency was already out, given that he hadn't even seen a text referencing it in more than the barest terms. Journalism, too, didn't seem to be covered beyond actually selling the Daily Prophet, so that was out too. This left language—specifically German and French, or really anything at all about the magical countries the other Triwizard participants hailed from.

But there was a problem.

The entirety of Flourish & Blotts was split into six sections: Magic, Law, Biographies, Hogwarts Textbooks, Fiction, and Antiques, in descending size.

There was nothing about international anything. The closest Flourish and Blotts got was History of Magic, which mentioned wars and conflicts with other countries, but solely based on the British view of them, and Biographies, which included a few non-British members, such as Andros the Invincible. That said, when Harry went to check, even they were almost uniformly free of any descriptions of the culture, climate, government, anything of the country.

Harry knew for a fact that other magical countries existed—the Quidditch World Cup was proof enough of that—but apparently anything about the countries themselves, rather than their particularly famous citizens, was not worth mentioning.

After two full circuits around the store Harry finally stumbled upon something at least vaguely related to his initial search: a thick book, titled "Classifying Creatures", in the magical creatures row he'd skipped earlier. While much of the book was simply on how dangerousness was ranked, one chapter, titled "Citizenry and Magical Creatures," was the first he'd found which directly discussed another magical country in specific terms. Not only that, but the first country mentioned was France.

As the book explained, in France Veela were considered legally equivalent to witches and wizards (it was obvious the author did not agree, but that was besides the point.) This left the British government in a bit of a quandary when it had to deal with the upcoming visit of a French Veela diplomat—after all, under British law Veela were not considered equal by a pretty significant margin, and were in fact not even allowed within the Ministry of Magic.

The author (Philip Greengrass) went on to explain how, through some very specific wording and an expedited act of the Wizengamot, visiting French Veela specifically were given the status of foreigner, rather than creature-import. Greengrass also mentioned that this was not the only case of a similar workaround being done.

As fascinating, and horrifying, as that was, he could also see Professor McGonagall tapping her foot impatiently by the register. He dumped the book in his basket and made his way to the cashier. He'd read the rest of the chapter (and his other books) when he got home. For now it was almost 13:00, and time to be done not only with the store but the shopping trip as a whole.

Professor McGonagall's demeanor showed that she agreed.

Bookworm! Goal completed. 150 XP awarded.

Hogwarts! Goal completed. 1,000 XP awarded.

You have leveled up!

Congratulations, you are now level 14.86.