The next couple of days were a strange dance of getting me situated. Despite McGonagall's protests, Hogwarts was not really prepared for a penniless 15-year-old with unusual training to show up to school a month early with nothing but the clothes on his back. My corner of the fifth year boys' room in Gryffindor tower had become highly thrift-shop chic with all the school supplies that had been dug up from the school's lost and found.

Each of the other four beds in the room anchored a handful of belongings left behind for the summer by their occupants, and I was grateful that nothing indicated my dorm-mates were going to be snobby purebloods obsessed with new clothes. At least my secondhand robes had been re-tailored to mostly fit me. When I'd first gotten them, I had a substantial amount of wrist and ankle escaping.

Clothes and the like were the least of my supply issues, however. "While I'm sure it's not your preferred method, I think we can find you a suitable wand to at least demonstrate competency," McGonagall insisted.

I knew that wouldn't work. Magically speaking, I was the asshole that you would never trust to drive your Porsche without burning out the gearbox, but who could do all kinds of tricks in a diesel-engined pickup. But I failed to come up with a metaphor that would work for a witch without a lot of experience of technology. I just tried to explain it as, "Justin tried to teach me wands starting out, and I burned out every one he handed me. Magically, I'm a clumsy brute."

She clearly didn't believe me, but equally didn't want to see me break an expensive wand if I wasn't exaggerating. "I've never heard of such a thing. Albus uses a wand without issue, and he's the most powerful wizard I know of." When I just shrugged, she allowed, "Perhaps he'll have some insight."

After a brief floo call to the headmaster (one of the most confusing things entering magical society was their love of using fireplaces for communication and transport), he stepped through into McGonagall's office. The other night's outfit was apparently not pajamas, as today's was an equally flamboyant violet-and-emerald-moons ensemble. "I hear you have a problem with controlling your wand, my boy," he winked.

I still wasn't over how he'd kept quiet about what he'd seen in my head and seemed to be avoiding any chance of giving me answers. So perhaps I was a bit too forward with my retort that, "I hear many witches prefer a big staff to a well-controlled wand." McGonagall made a small, irritated intake of breath that let me know I'd be in trouble later, but Dumbledore merely grinned.

"That was certainly true in history, if not so much recently." He set what looked like a slightly-oversized cigar box on McGonagall's desk and flipped it open to reveal that it was packed full of wands. Most of them were heavily scratched and dinged up. "See if you can find one that feels compatible. All of these are at the end of their practical service, so it's no hardship if you destroy one in the testing."

This wasn't the first time I'd done such an exercise, and I had a good feel for foci after learning to make my own. It didn't take long for me to select one with a reasonably close resonance to my own magic. I held it in my right hand and pushed a trickle of power through it as proof, causing it to emit orange sparks.

"Excellent. Perhaps a simple wand-lighting charm to start?" the headmaster suggested.

I nodded and tried to be gentle, wordlessly casting the light spell into the wand. The tip burst into brilliant white light that was painful to look at directly. It also flickered alarmingly, like a spotlight on a transformer about to blow. Within a couple of seconds I thought I was about to lose it and canceled the spell.

"Very interesting. I have a suspicion. Perhaps the levitation charm?" He produced a paisley handkerchief from a pocket and dropped it on the floor between us and the door.

I knew what he was getting at, and got out of the chair, pushing it away from the handkerchief. "Wingardium leviosa!" I swished. I flicked. There was a simultaneous snapping and ripping sound as the wand shattered into splinters that disturbed the paisley-colored snow that floated in the air above where the handkerchief once was. "That's pretty normal," I admitted. "Sorry about your handkerchief."

"Quite alright, my boy," he allowed. "Minerva, perhaps I can shed some light on the situation. You see, Mr. Dresden isn't exactly unusual. It's just that wizards or witches of his temperament don't tend to make it to Hogwarts, or fail out quickly due to not taking to wands. Reports are that one of the incoming students, Mr. Finnegan, is likely to be a risk case of this kind."

"So he needs remedial wand-handling classes?" she asked.

Dumbledore shook his head. "If he was 11, and this was a mild problem, it might be correctable, but would also permanently handicap him as a wizard. Consider an analogy of wands as delicate rapiers. You would struggle to find an expert swordfighter who was not a master of the rapier. Yet imagine handing one to our large friend, Hagrid. Does the fact that he tends to break the delicate blade mean that he is hopeless as a fighter?"

I answered for her, since I already knew the metaphor. "No, you hand him an axe or greatsword." This was exactly why I'd asked Dumbledore if this was a dueling school.

"Exactly. Minerva, Mr. Dresden simply has a magical strength that far outstrips his magical finesse. Even training him to use a wand without destroying it would mean limiting him to the level of that finesse, while constantly having strength that wasn't able to be applied. It may be challenging to adapt some of our standard lessons, but I support his request to create his own foci. It might be interesting to see if we can better accommodate some of the other students in this manner as well. After all, Godric Gryffindor himself preferred to cast with sword and rod."

"Very well," McGonagall agreed, seeming to see the sense of it. "I'll move the charms, defense, and transfiguration tests later and contact Professor Babbling about whether making your own foci would serve as a useful test of your knowledge of ancient runes. I think we have a large stock of cores and other materials in the runes lab but Mr. Dresden will need to find compatible wood from the forest. So speaking of Hagrid…"

And that's how I found myself meeting the only person in the castle taller than me.

It wasn't even a contest. If Professor McGonagall was standing on my shoulders, she could maybe look Hagrid in the eyes. While I'm sure the job of gamekeeper suited him, he'd probably want to stay outside in his oversized shack even if he had another job. I wasn't sure he could even fit through all the corridors of the school I'd passed through. But he appeared to have an extremely friendly and pleasant nature. If you were that big and difficult to get along with, it wouldn't be long before people got out the pitchforks.

"Yer a wizard, Harry?" he asked me as we set out into that afternoon into the apparently-forbidden forest. He'd tied up his long, curly hair and beard as a nod to the warm summer day, and his giant black hound dog bounded along after us. "It's just, I never met no wizard, didn't use a wand. Even I could use a wand, back when I were at Hogwarts. Had'ta get one twice as big as the other students, o'course, or wouldn't'a fit in my hand."

"I… actually might be able to make due with something like that," I admitted. "My blasting rod wasn't much bigger than that. Different way of setting up the core, though. Did you have to special order one that big?"

"Oh, aye, Ollivander didn't want ter do it, neither. He hates to custom-make wands fer folk. Likes'ta just make up a whole load'a different ones and hope y'ill find one that matches ya." He stomped over a hillock into a part of the woods that was already getting darker due to the dense tree-cover. I didn't add anything, and he ventured, "It broke my heart when they snapped it."

I could tell this was a difficult conversation, and thought about just leaving it alone, but I bit and asked, "Why would they do that?"

"Bad business back when I were in school. Got blamed fer somethin' I didn't do. It's real easy to expel the big chap. Can't have a wand if ya don't finish school. Dumbledore's a great man, though. At least I have a job an' a house."

"Well, as someone the Ministry also just tried to railroad, that sounds even crazier than what I'm going through. Bet you didn't even get a trial."

"O'course not. Another student's word against mine, an' he were the old headmaster's favorite. To be fair, truth potion don't work too well on a guy my size. An' it were all Dumbledore could do at the time pushing to keep me out of Azkaban…" We crested another rise and dropped to a part of the forest that looked more like an orchard, all the trees in regular rows without too much undergrowth. "Anyway, here's one of the tree farms. All old growth hardwood. Oh no, shame about that one."

Hagrid had noticed an oak tree in the back that looked like it had split open from a lightning strike. It was a wonder it hadn't lit it and the rest of the woods on fire. Maybe it was during a hard rainstorm. While I was looking at all the other trees, and even grabbed a couple of dry fallen branches that might make good blasting rods, the lightning-struck tree was calling to me somehow. When I touched the trunk, I knew that this was exactly the kind of resonance I'd been looking for.

I wasn't expecting a swarm of fist-sized spiders to rush out of the middle of the storm-split tree trunk and right toward me.