Josh woke up early the next morning, but he kept his eyes closed. He just lay there in the bed; feeling his own presence. He could tell that the bed was not his own. The blankets had the wrong feel to them, and the mattress was much more comfortable than his. "I must still be on vacation," Josh thought to himself. "I just had a really vivid dream. I'm not a wizard, and I didn't meet a Merlin look-alike who was named Dumbledore. I'm not staying in a free room at a wizard pub called the Leaky Cauldron. And in a few hours… I'm not going to go and buy a wand… A wand!" the last internal comment snapped his eyes open. Any chances of going back to sleep were shattered as he thought of buying a wand. He looked around the room, and realized that he was indeed staying in a room at the Leaky Cauldron.
"I am a wizard." Josh whispered to himself quietly so he wouldn't wake his parents. A pleasant aroma stopped the upcoming shout for joy. Bacon. What a wonderful smell to wake up to. Josh was fully awake now, and ready for a shower and breakfast. He got into his suitcase and got some fresh clothes and his toiletries. Then he crept out of the room and went down the hall to where the shower was. It felt strange to be taking a shower in a place that was separated from the room where he slept. But he tried to get over it and just deal with it. The water was absolutely wonderful. It was perfectly warm and it felt like silk caressing his entire body. Josh was feeling lost in the sensations of the perfectly sublime shower. He stayed in there for an extraordinarily long time; way past the point of where his fingers became wrinkled like prunes.
Josh was finally able to pull himself out of the shower, and he quickly got dressed as he was sure someone else must have been waiting to get in there. Once he opened the door, he saw that the hallway was still empty. Immediately, the aroma of bacon infiltrated his nostrils, and Josh remembered why he had gotten up so early. He went back to the room to put his things away and saw that his parents had already left the room. "I must've spent more time in the shower than I thought…" Josh spoke to himself. "You know, I really need to stop talking to myself. And on that note, I am going down do breakfast."
A silvery voice broke the silence. "Good idea, talking to one's self often leads to insanity."
"What the-? Who said that?" Josh called.
"Nobody," replied the voice again. "I am just the mirror."
"Just the mirror! Since when do mirrors talk?"
"It isn't all that uncommon. Where have you been?"
"Sorry, I'm what you call a muggle-born wizard. This is the first time I've ever come across a talking mirror." Josh reaches out to touch the mirror.
"Don't touch me unless you are planning to clean your fingerprints off!"
"Sorry."
"Don't worry about it. Why don't you just go and get breakfast?"
Josh goggled at the mirror, "Right, breakfast, good idea…" and slowly walked off. It was then that he realized that he was getting ready to walk into a completely different world. This new lifestyle was going to be something he'd have to get used to.
Lost in his own thoughts, Josh didn't notice when he walked right into someone.
"Watch where you're going!" yelled a rather pissed off looking blonde boy. He looked like he was about twenty years old. His long hair was parted perfectly down the center and flowed down to play at the very tops of his shoulders. His face was very smooth and colored slightly pink. The cold steel grey eyes had fire behind them. "What are you staring at!"
Josh quickly averted his eyes. "Sorry, I-I just…"
"Have a stuttering problem? Get out of my way before I hex you, you twit." And the blonde stormed off. Josh watched him for a few moments longer. The blonde man's cat-like grace, whether natural or trained, was absolutely entrancing. The fact that the man's robes were made of a clingy black material that shimmered green and silver made it even more difficult to look away.
Josh hung his head, and walked gloomily to where he saw his parents sitting down to breakfast. He helped himself to a plate, but he wasn't able to eat much. This whole wizard thing was getting very large and was severely ruining his appetite. He merely sat there picking at his plate until his mom asked why he wasn't eating.
"I had an odd dream. I guess I'm a little distracted because I can't seem to remember any of it." Josh hated to lie to his mother, but he knew that if he told her the truth about how he felt about his being a wizard, she would probably change her mind about letting him stay in England and go to the school. At this he forced himself to eat, even if it was only one slice of bacon, and a bit of dry toast.
About halfway through the meal seven different owls flew into the pub and one of them dropped a package in front of Josh. The others were flying about delivering letters and newspapers. The ones who were delivering newspapers would stop and wait for the recipient to put a few coins into the pouch that was tied to one of their legs.
"Oh good, looks like Dumbledore has gotten all of your paperwork together already." Hermione said as she walked up to the table. The Lucas' each greeted her, and then John asked where Lyesco was. Josh opened the package and started to go through everything. She replied to John, "He had to go home for a while to spend some time with his wife, tell her why he was so late getting home and such. He said he might meet up with us again later in Diagon Alley.
"Dumbledore asked me to go over all of the paperwork with you. There are several things in here-" she said as she reached for the package.
"School supply list, Hogwarts acceptance letter, Hogsmeade permission slip," Josh listed them off, interrupting Hermione's speech. She looked slightly miffed. It was either because he had interrupted her, or because someone had observation skills as good as hers.
"Right," she responded. "The acceptance letter is simply a formal welcome to the school. The supply list tells you everything that you will need as a fourth year student at Hogwarts. I will be tutoring you for the first through third year curriculum over the rest of the summer. I am willing to lend you copies of the spellbooks that you would have gotten if you had started four years ago. You will need to get your own copies eventually."
"That's fair. We can find all of this stuff at Diagon Alley?" Josh replied.
"Absolutely," said Hermione. "Now, our first stop will be at Gringotts, so we can change your money to ours. After that we can go to the other various shops and get your school stuff. I think the next stop should be at Olivander's so we can get your wand. Your wand is the most important piece of magical equipment that you will use."
"Why do I need a wand? I just froze a river completely by accident; I didn't have a wand then."
"Okay, freeze this glass of water then."
Josh stuck out his hands and absolutely nothing happened, except for a slight breeze Hermione reported.
"While we ourselves are magical, it is hard to control that magic by itself. I'm not saying that you won't be able to do wandless magic, but it takes training. That is why we use wands. A wand becomes an extension of the wizard; a catalyst of sorts. For the magic to be controlled properly the wand is used. But a wand is more than a tool; a wand is a very important friend to a wizard, and a reflection of that wizard too. There are two major parts to a wand: the core and the body. There are three major core materials: phoenix tail feathers, unicorn tail hairs, and dragon heartstrings. Each material has different qualities and certain areas of 'expertise.' The same thing goes for the wood used for making the shaft."
"Which ones are the best?"
"I don't think that that will matter really, you don't choose your wand, your wand will choose you."
"What do mean?"
"Well, only one wand will be able to work for you. Anything else will just cause destruction in your hands until you get some more training. Even after you learn how to use spells, you will not be able to use someone else's wand and still get as good results as you would with your own. But enough explaining, let's finish breakfast and then get this day started. Tuck in now, you'll need some energy for the day."
Josh was able to find his appetite after this conversation and helped himself to a few of the blueberry pancakes, some eggs, and bacon. Josh's parents were even more amazed than he was when they witnessed the brick wall rearrange itself to grant them passage to Diagon Alley. Once Josh stepped through the archway and into the wizarding world, he felt a sense of fullness and satisfaction that he had never known in all his life living in the American Muggle world. The shops within were absolutely amazing. The shops had signs out front on the street which were constantly changing, advertising different wares they had to offer.
When they arrived at Gringotts, Hermione warned then to keep their heads level and their minds open, because she was aware that they hadn't ever come across goblins before, and wanted to make sure nobody was surprised or insulted. Everything went smoothly, except for a small scene where John lost his temper because the goblins wanted to charge him a 17 conversion fee, but was eventually able to talk him down to 4.5.
With a pouch full of gold, they were all ready to start doing some serious shopping. Their mood was enhanced even more once they stepped outside and were warmed by the sunlight. They took their time getting to Olivander's; they were looking into shop windows, and at all of the people, who seemed generally to be in good dispositions.
Mr. Olivander was rather excited when they arrived, and conjured some tea for all of them while his tape measure was dancing around Josh's body. Mr. Olivander produced wand after wand, and two hours had passed before Josh found his wand. Mr. Olivander was down a corridor gathering a few more wands for Josh to try, and Josh yawned and stretched. One arm was extended in Mr. Olivander's general direction, and he heard a wand vibrating in its box. He dropped all of the other wands and stared. The wand was behind a glass window, there were only six wands in that case at all. They were the wands that had to be quarantined due to the fact that they were extremely powerful, and quite possibly even more dangerous. They were inherently chaotic and didn't like being too near other wands. Mr. Olivander did not create these wands to be like that; honestly it was just a fluke. He didn't even realize what had been going on when he would come in the shop each morning, and find all the wands that were on the shelf scattered across the floor, and the chaos wand the only one lying on the shelf. Eventually he created the glass case just for such wands.
Not one of the chaos wands had aver been sold, and Mr. Olivander didn't like to even bring them up, he felt like he made a mistake each time one of them were created. This had certainly never happened. He had never seen a wand called to a wizard like this before. The old wand-maker pulled out his own, and removed several enchantments that he had placed on the case. He lightly grasped the sleek ebony and silver box and slid it out of the case. Immediately, Olivander replaced the enchantments. Staring at the box he returned to the others, walking in a trance.
"Mr. Olivander?" queried Hermione. "Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost…"
The old man raised his eyes, and a cold chill ran down everyone's spines. "What?" immediately his demeanor changed back to the energetic personality he had before. "No, I'm fine. I was just lost in thought for a moment. Well I believe I have found the wand!" he then proceeded to tell them how and what he noticed. But he did omit the more negative side of this particular wand. "Ebony, fifteen inches, Phoenix feather"
Josh opened the box and was immediately entranced by the sheer beauty and elegance of the wand. When he picked up the wand, he really wasn't sure if he had actually picked it up, or if it had jumped into his hand. When he waved the wand it looked like he had torn a hole into space; which quickly sealed itself.
Mr. Olivander placed an unbreakable charm on the wand's case and handed it over to Josh and had given him all the warnings of not letting it get too close to other wands and such. Basically Josh just needed to keep the wand in its case overnight. Josh was only charged for the material components for the wand, so he had a bit more money he could spend.
Next they went to Madame Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, so he could be fitted for his robes. After that they were coaxed over to Florean Fortescue's for some Ice cream by a familiar face.
"Lyesco!" John called out. It turned out that the reason that John took such a liking to Lyesco was that they were distant cousins, but they don't find this out for a while. But for now they do get into a rather long conversation about various things that happen in the wizarding world.
Things went well for the rest of the day. They picked up his school robes just before the shop closed, and in the mean time they acquired the rest of his school supplies, and a few extras. John got himself a rather handsome set of quills, a few bottles of ink, and several pieces of parchment, so that he and Kay would be able to correspond with Josh. Kay bought an intricately detailed mirror. Completely non-magical, but very ornate.
Life was pleasant and intriguing in Diagon Alley for the rest of the Lucas' vacation time together, it was a tough and, on Kay's part, tearful goodbye, and Hermione and Josh took a portkey from the Leaky Cauldron to Hogsmeade. Lyesco took John and Kay to the airport for their flight back to the United States. Soon Josh will get the first glimpse of his home for the next few years.