AN: This chapter took a long time to edit! Again, I own nothing you recognize. The dökkálf as they appear, Baltasar, and the Rasmussens are original.
August 6
It had been a relatively peaceful few days in the house after Neville's contentious eleventh birthday. Clare and Augusta had reached a tentative accord, but the little house was quieter than it had ever been. Neville thought even Britta was quieter, no longer shrieking and crying to play with the boys all the time. The three children sensed the turning tide and tension in the house, even if they didn't quite know what it meant.
After much deliberation and debate, it was decided that Elroy Ollivander would be invited to the Rasmussen home. While Clare had successfully made the case that it was unnecessary to shop in Diagon Alley, since all of his spellbooks and things could be purchased via owl order and Diagon Alley would be mobbed with students and parents, Augusta had drawn the line at a wand. Neville would only be wielding an Ollivander's wand, the finest wands in the wizarding world according to her. Oscar had begun to open his mouth after that pronouncement, but a quick stamp on the foot by his dear mother made him hastily cover it up with a cough.
Grandmother Longbottom wrote Dumbledore to persuade Ollivander to make the journey to the Rasmussen home in Norway. Dumbledore's reply, received last night, said to expect Ollivander late morning of the sixth.
Neville still wasn't happy to be forced to attend Hogwarts. He couldn't quite bring himself to look at his cousin Oscar, feeling a small degree of shame and sadness that he would not accompany his dear playmate to Valhalla. But this morning, the wandmaker Mr. Ollivander was coming to their home, and bringing the finest wands in Britain for Neville to choose from.
A wand… if anything could make The-Boy-Who-Lived feel better, it would be to have a wand of his very own.
"Niels!" The ringing voice of his aunt brought him back to reality, to his untouched breakfast at the kitchen table.
"Goodness, Niels you haven't eaten anything," Clare scolded while clearing Britta's dishes. She was dressed in her official Ministry robes, a solemn, deep indigo, with the coat of arms of Norway on the left breast, the Norwegian Lion; a golden beast crowned and axe wielding.
"Where's Oscar?" Neville asked through a bite of his geitost and rye.
"He already went to town, finishing his summer project for Art and Architecture. He'll return by lunch. Britta is coming with me to the Ministry this morning."
"So who will stay with me to meet Mr. Ollivander?"
Clare gave him a sympathetic look. "Your grandmother wishes to be present during the visit."
Neville gulped. That was the last thing he wanted.
Aunt Clare kissed him on the forehead and strode from the room. He absentmindedly rubbed her kiss, which was just to the right of his scar. He was eleven and while he felt as though he didn't need to be babied, he did like Aunt Clare's displays of affection.
"Finish your breakfast boy, clear those plates, and then follow me into the living room please. Mr. Ollivander will be arriving from Hogwarts shortly by Portkey."
Grandmother Longbottom appeared in the doorway, looking at her grandson sternly. Neville saw that she had some of her nicer robes on, a deep crimson with the Longbottom crest emblazoned on the right chest. He nervously hid the lower sleeve of his own robes, with a slight grass stain still apparent, and rushed to carry out her commands.
The two remaining Longbottoms stood silently in the living room, Augusta stoically, Neville with some trepidation, until suddenly a wizened man spiraled into existence from nowhere.
The wandmaker appeared in the living room, holding on to a large brown trunk. He did not smile, but looked closely at his welcoming party.
"Ah, yes of course. Neville Longbottom."
Neville took a step closer toward the odd little salesman, and gave a slight bow, as his grandmother had instructed him to do with wizards and witches of great stature. Neville felt ridiculous bowing, but the old matriarch was watching his every movement like a hawk, ready to swoop down on him at the slightest opportunity.
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Ollivander."
The old man chuckled, and looked at Neville closely.
"You're not quite what I expected, young man, but you do resemble your mother. Alice Taggerly, nine and three-quarters inches, birch and unicorn hair, pliant. In short, the perfect wand for an aspiring Herbologist, and useful for charms."
Neville wasn't entirely sure how long nine and three-quarters inches were: he knew the silly Americans and Brits used a different measuring system, but since he was grateful for the recollection about his mother, he kept quiet and didn't ask.
"Your father meanwhile," and here, the old man gave a dignified nod to Grandmother Longbottom, who dipped her head in response.
"Your father favored a rowan and Welsh Green dragon heartstring wand, twelve inches, steadfast, excellent for dueling. Well, I say he favored it; it's the wand that chooses the wizard, of course. Now then, which is your wand arm?"
After Neville held up his left arm, Ollivander flicked his own, and tape measures flitted about, examining the circumference of Neville's skull and area round his ankles, things he didn't quite think were necessary.
"Try this: Ash, phoenix feather, eleven and three quarters inches, a bit whippy."
Ollivander handed the wand to Neville, but no sooner had he started a basic wand motion than Ollivander had snatched it back.
"Nothing, hmm? Perhaps this one, yes, spruce, unicorn hair, twelve and a half inches, forceful."
And so it went on, for the better part of a half an hour: Neville in arrested motion, with wands rotating in and out of his left hand, and Ollivander making odd comments and searching for different choices. Augusta looked on it all with equanimity, but Neville felt worse and worse the longer it went on. He was a wizard, right? So why would a wand not choose him?
At last there was only one wand left. Ollivander faced the young boy, who seemed shaken by the process.
"Well now, Mr. Longbottom. It certainly cannot hurt to try. Beech, dragon heartstring, nine and three quarters inches, rigid."
Neville grasped the wand, and much to his surprise Ollivander did not pluck it out his hand before he went through with the final wand motion. Instead, the old man smiled sadly at the boy. Neville wasn't quite sure why, until he too just knew this was not his wand either: there had been no reaction. The wandmaker had been kind, wanted the boy to have a full wave with at least one of the wands. With a sinking, heavy heart, Neville passed the wand back to Ollivander under the weight of Grandmother Longbottom's disappointed gaze.
"How very curious, curious," Ollivander muttered to himself as he placed the final wand back into the trunk, and closed it with a snap of the lock.
"What's curious, Elroy?" Augusta questioned the wizard sharply.
Fiddling for a moment with the latch and then shrinking the trunk with flick of his wand, Ollivander sighed and turned to face the two Longbottoms.
"There was a wand I had made years ago, that sat in my shop for decades…I thought it would be sure to claim him…" he trailed off, and then fixed his eyes on Neville.
"But it claimed another first-year Hogwarts pupil only two days ago."
He shuffled towards the boy, and touched his shoulder slightly, the calm eyes of Ollivander flicking from Neville's eyes to his scar.
"I had expected great things from you, Mr. Longbottom. I am sorry."
The wandmaker stepped back and touched the gold phoenix brooch on the lapel of his robe, and vanished with the tug of the Portkey.
August 7
Neville sat in his bed, a glum expression fixed on his face. He sighed as he looked at his new wizarding possessions scattered across his room: Vali sprawled at the end of his blanket, the bundle of black robes in the corner, the precariously tilting stack of schoolbooks on the floor beside his night-table, the set of new quills and parchment for essays lying on his desk. Yet what good was it all, if he didn't even have a wand, for Merlin's sake!
He'd tried to distract himself reading a few of his new books, flipping diligently through The Standard Book of Spells and becoming enthralled by his Herbology text. But he couldn't get Mr. Ollivander's pity and his grandmother's cold face out of his mind. With only five hours of darkness, Neville was unable to find comfort in sleep, and had been up stewing for hours.
"Niels?" His aunt knocked softly on the door, and peeked into Neville's room. "I'm taking Oscar to Baldrmarket for his school supplies, and I'd like it if you came along."
Neville colored slightly, doubly saddened and frustrated at the thought of Oscar shopping for Valhalla, the place he'd always dreamed of attending, while he wasn't even wizard enough to acquire a wand! Aunt Clare sensed Neville's wave of emotion, and quickly came to sit beside him on the bed.
"Your grandmother has already agreed to watch Britta: I told her that I might need you to assist with holding bags to make shopping more efficient."
She paused and looked at Neville's crestfallen face.
"What I didn't tell her is that you'll be making a stop of your own, to get a wand."
Instantly, Neville's face lit up with joy, though it quickly subsided to fear.
"But- but Aunt Clare, all the wands rejected me that Mr. Ollivander had! So how can I get a wand?"
Aunt Clare looked at him kindly. "You know, when I went shopping for my wand, none of the Ollivander's wands chose me either."
Neville caught his breath, not daring to believe it. He knew his aunt had a wand, but to think she had gone through the same thing…
"Really?"
"Really. And I was so disappointed, I started to cry right in the middle of shop. I thought I wasn't magical enough to get a wand, and that I wouldn't get to go to Spoorfalds. That's the all-witches academy that I attended instead of Hogwarts, a small school on an island off the coast of Wales."
"You didn't go to Hogwarts with my mother?" Neville was curious.
Clare smiled slightly. "I was five years older than Alice, and my parents were more protective of me. I was accepted, but my parents preferred I attend a school for witches only. Spoorfalds had the best reputation then, so that's where I was sent. Of course Alice reasoned Mum and Dad down until they agreed to send her to Hogwarts."
"And you didn't mind? Being sent somewhere you didn't know anything about, that you didn't want to go to?"
Neville hung on his aunt's explanation, amazed at the similarities between their situations.
"Well at first I did. Especially when I didn't get a wand at Ollivander's. But my father took me to Llewellyn's in York, and my wand finally chose me there. And when I got to Spoorfalds, I made great friends and enjoyed my classes the first six years, and then Johannes arrived for a year of research with the Runes professor."
Clare's eyes had misted and she had a faraway look, and Neville wasn't sure quite what to say.
"So…where will I go for a wand?"
The question snapped Aunt Clare to attention, as she shook her head and smiled, clearing the memories.
"You are going to Baltasar's in Baldrmarket. He's quite good, Oscar and your Uncle Johannes both got wands from him."
Neville opened his mouth to ask another question, but Aunt Clare cut him off and stood up.
"You've got half an hour to wash your face, get dressed, and put breakfast in your stomach. Now get to it!"
As soon as she had left, Neville was up and running to the bathroom, washing his face with record speed and thrashing about to get out of his pajamas quickly. He was going to get a wand, he could still be a wizard, and his aunt had given him some small hope that he could find happiness at Hogwarts after all.
Baldrmarket, Trondheim
Clare and Oscar Rasmussen exited the Floo gracefully, while Neville clambered out, smoothing his hair over his telltale scar. In the general reception of Orkwund Bank in Baldrmarket of Trondheim, Neville couldn't help marveling at the bustling activity. Wizards and witches were swarming about in cloaks, robes, and Muggle attire, and dökkálfar were swiftly processing the queues for payment of school fees and withdrawals. The beautiful ivory interiors and vaulted ceilings caught Neville's eye every time he entered Orkwund.
"Oscar, will you be fine getting money for your school things from our vault if I give you the key? Neville and I need to get money from his vault."
The second-year Valhalla student stood straight and proud. "Of course, Mama, I'll be fine."
Clare took the vault key from around her neck, and handed it to Oscar. The tall boy strode off with a nod at Neville. Clare took off in the opposite direction, Neville scurrying behind her trying to keep up. They were headed to the rear of Orkwund, where the private offices were. At a familiar door, Clare stopped abruptly and made a small nod while curving her left hand into C-shape and affixed her hand to her chest.
"En lysende stjerne følger den sanne alver, overlevende fra skjebnen."
Neville hastily followed suit with the sign as Clare spoke clearly to the dökkálf standing in the small office. It was a statement that recognized the dark elves as the oldest magical beings in Norway, their ancestors surviving the great war between the first wizards, giants, and other magical beings and creatures in the Nordic Golden Age of Magic. Elves had chosen sides in the war, and followed either Freyr or Surtr, the two half-giant wizards that cultivated alliances with the alfar. Though he emerged victorious in the final duel, Surtr went mad from Freyr's attacks, and invoked the power of the volcano, unleashing flames across the battlefield and consuming most of the combatants. The elves that had flocked to his side were protected from the flames, but their fellow alfar fighting for Freyr were wiped out along with most everything else. Norway for hundreds of years lacked any prominent numbers of witches and wizards, as a result of the devastation.
Like all dökkálfar, the elf was thin, tall and with dark skin, so blue it was black, or black it was blue: skin colored like squid-ink, Oscar the artist had always said. Paired with incandescent silver-gray hair, the dark elves of Norway had looks to make an impression. The dökkálf repeated the gesture, curving his hand and offering the traditional response to Clare.
"Sjelen i Skuld, kjøtt av Life, kan vår seid forene oss og bevare freden av den nyfødte verden."
While the later Viking Muggles had misinterpreted the legendary half-giant wizards as deities to worship and spoke of Freyr and his "light elf" followers with reverence, Surtr's elven allies were cast into myth as deformed, evil creatures. Modern Norwegian wizarding lineage was founded in the intermarriage of the descendants of Lif and Lífþrasir – Muggles that survived the war – with the descendants of Lady Skuld, the half-elven half-witch queen of old, who eventually came to Norway from the land now known as Denmark. The children of these two lines repopulated Norway with magical beings.
The dökkálfar, though they had retreated from the Muggle world to lands below ground, renewed their ties with the wizards and witches of Norway, and helped restore the knowledge and grandeur of ancient Norse sorcery. As the magical population came together and codified laws and banking, the dökkálfar were asked to guard their finances, as the wizards trusted them beyond all others to be fair and judicious with the individual and collective wealth of the magical nation.
The exchange of greeting ended, Clare sat down gracefully in one of the chairs in the office. She gestured for Neville to sit beside her, which he did a bit warily. The dökkálf remained standing.
"Good day, Master Hammars," Clare addressed their accountant. Neville knew the dökkálf had an elfish name as well, but they were secret names kept only among their own kind.
"We would like to make a small withdrawal from Niels' Gringotts account. A Galtap card, and 100 Galleons please."
Hammars blinked once.
"Of course. The Hogwarts Trust, I presume."
Clare nodded her assent.
"One moment."
Hammars strode from the room. Neville was never truly sure how the dökkálfar and the Gringotts goblins communicated and transfers were made. Clare had told him the Gringotts goblins were frightfully territorial over their clients' investments and funds, and most British wizards living abroad were unable to transfer or withdraw money from their home accounts if they did not appear in Gringotts in person. Neville never had to. It might have been a perk of being The-Boy-Who-Lived, but Neville wasn't sure: the dökkálfar had their own fame, notoriety and power among the non-human magic users and a well-respected, equal place in Norwegian magical society that the Gringotts goblins probably couldn't help but admire, even if grudgingly.
The dökkálf returned with the small black card known as the Galtap and a dark green moneybag. It provided an immediate link for merchants with the accounts of customers, in which the customer tapped the card with their wand to authorize the purchase, and the merchant tapped to complete the transfer. It was all the rage in the larger cities of Scandinavia, a convenient invention by the dökkálfar.
Clare and Hammars exchanged the appropriate farewells, and then his aunt was steering him out of the corridor to the exit, where Oscar stood waiting, tapping his foot and jangling his own moneybag.
"Are we going to Baltasar's now?" Oscar asked as they began walking.
"Yes dear," Clare replied. "Now, Niels, Baltasar is a bit, well, odd. But don't worry, he's quite an accomplished wandmaker."
"He's completely mad," Oscar whispered in an aside to his cousin, "but he'll sort you out. Gave me my wand with no difficulty."
Neville swallowed nervously. He'd already had one disastrous meeting with a wandmaker, and he wasn't much hoping for anything better this time.
Baltasar's shop was only a five-minute walk from Orkwund, although Neville couldn't quite absorb all the little intricacies of the alleys of Baldrmarket on the journey. He was focusing too much on his nerves, and his desperate fear that he wouldn't find a wand ever. So when the party stopped in front of a small storefront at the end of an alley, with cloudy, dirty windows and seemingly poorly lit, Neville was caught off guard to his aunt's declaration, "Ah! And here we are!"
Pushed through the front door, Neville saw that appearances were certainly deceiving in this case. The drab, shabby outside gave way to black and white marble floors, long, golden wood counters, and twinkling fairy lights illuminating shelf after shelf after shelf of wands. Neville was in awe at the sheer simple grandeur, but where was Baltasar?
"Ah yes, Niels Lindhal." Neville jumped (so did Oscar and Clare, though they covered it a bit better) and he turned to regard the young, tall, dark haired man smiling sardonically at his customers. Did all wandmakers have that eerily omniscient attitude, knowing every customer name before being introduced?
Suddenly the man who Neville presumed to be Baltasar rounded to look at Oscar.
"And Mr. Rasmussen! My how you've grown in a year. You're the spitting image of your father Johannes." Oscar stood straight at attention and looked proud.
"Eleven inches, sturdy, dragon heartstring of a Norwegian Ridgeback, bird cherry wood: truly a son of Norway for such a wand."
Oscar smiled broadly at the compliment, while Neville felt his heart sink. He was a son of no one and nowhere, that's how it felt to him. As if sensing his customer's change of mood, Baltasar turned back to Niels.
"Now, your aunt tells me you exhausted dear Mr. Ollivander of all the wands he had brought to your home?"
Neville nodded, slightly wary of the tall dark-haired man before him. Baltasar's green eyes flashed brightly.
"Bah, Elroy is a silly old man these days. Only three possible cores for all the witches and wizards of Britain… preposterous. The man is lazy in his old age, resting on his laurels."
The wandmaker clapped his hands together. "I on the other hand, relish a challenge. I'm relatively young compared to the ancient masters like Ollivander and Gregorovitch, and slightly unproven beyond Norway, so I daresay I'd better welcome one! So Mr. Longbottom, or shall we say Mr. Lindhal," and here the owner smiled knowingly in the face of Neville's amazement, Oscar's protective stare, and Clare's sharp glance, "let's get to it."
Gesturing hospitably to the stool beside the counter, Baltasar swished his wand and boxes upon boxes of wands haphazardly stacked themselves around the room.
"These wands, Mr. Lindhal, have languished in this shop and others for many years, some for centuries. Each is a unique combination of core and wood, to the point that they are somewhat odd, in that it took considerable skill to marry the elements."
The wandmaker opened the first box.
"Here you are, sandalwood and salamander heartstring. Twenty-nine centimeters. Give it a wave."
Feeling as though he were doomed to repeat a second round of endless wand rejection, Neville halfheartedly began to wave the wand. Baltasar simply plucked it from his hand.
"Hmmm, no aromatic wood then. Or reptilian cores," the wandmaker mused quietly. He studied Neville closely. "Dragon heartstrings I'd imagine are out as well."
Neville squirmed slightly on the stool, thinking of his father's rowan and Welsh Green heartstring wand his grandmother's face had all but told him he was unworthy of.
"Let's see what you make of this," Baltasar thrust a new wand in Neville's hand. "Cherry and unicorn tail hair, thirty-two and a half centimeters. Go on then."
Neville again gave it a wave, which lasted a bit longer than his previous attempt before Baltasar removed the wand from his hand.
"Hazel and merrow scale, just over twenty-six centimeters."
Neville has scarcely begun when that wand was plucked from his hand, and a new one placed in it.
"Dogwood and phoenix feather, thirty-eight centimeters."
This wand suffered the fate of the others, being banished back to the box and put back on the shelves. Neville looked at his aunt and cousin with some resignation, but Baltasar chuckled slightly.
"Do you know what I am looking for Mr. Lindhal?"
"No, sir." The young boy shook his head and directed his attention to the man.
"As a wandmaker, I am able to fashion wands for wizards and witches. But unlike say Ollivander, the skills that set me apart from other wandmakers aren't in the craftsmanship. I can identify, indeed see, the connections between wizards and wands, through natural talent and years of study."
Neville remained silent as Baltasar summoned lids off of the stacks of boxes and levitated the wands in air.
"I can tell when a witch is using a wand that isn't particularly suited to her nature or her abilities, and I can advise a wizard on what wand he should select as a second wand for a specific purpose, say dueling or warding."
He looked closely at Neville, and smiled a bit. "After that last wand, I saw that your core should be a flight-capable magical bird. And the wood, while I'm not sure, I think you'd fit best with something in the birch family."
Baltasar swished his own wand once, and four wands shot forward across the counter from the pack of levitating wands. The others fell back into their respective boxes, and with another swish, the boxes went back to their places on the packed shelves.
"Now Mr. Lindhal, if you'd kindly move your hand slowly over the wands before you, I wonder if we might uncover a wand that finds itself well-suited to you."
On the spot, but willing, Neville stretched out his left hand over the first wand. He left it there uncertainly for a few moments, before moving slowly to hover his hand above the second wand. He was beginning to feel immensely foolish, but much to his surprise, as his hand slid to the third wand, there was tingling in his fingertips and the wand jumped into his hand, causing pleasant warmth to spread through his arm.
"Oh!" came Aunt Clare's exclamation, and Oscar whooped.
"Splendid! And now, give it a wave," the wandmaker encouraged.
Smiling broadly, Neville waved the wand, and bright silver sparks and smoky black jets came shooting out.
"Mr. Lindhal, I believe you've found your match. A sliver shy of thirty-six centimeters, hornbeam and ramnmar tail feather, quite a potent combination with possibility for anything, really."
"Ramnmar?"
The joyous family sobered quickly, hearing the ghostly avian creature's name uttered as Neville's core. Ramnmar were magical ravens endemic to Norway, Sweden and Finland. They possessed a homing sense much like owls, but instead of mail, they delivered nightmares and ill omens in the dreams of the recipients. They were notorious in Scandinavia as portents of doom.
The wandmaker shrugged, and took his place behind the counter again.
"It's a slightly more common core than you might think, especially here where ramnmar are still found in the wild and tail feathers are more readily obtainable."
He shook a finger at the pale faces before him. "I'm not a superstitious man; I'm a realist. But if you believe that they are the birds of death, you'd also agree that ramnmar represent intelligence, leadership, and victory in battle. I'll admit, the wand is a powerful one, and hints at greatness."
He shrugged again, and looked directly at Neville. "But The-Boy-Who-Lived… a wand of some power would be expected to choose you, yes? Never fear, Mr. Lindhal. I guarantee it will work as well for pranks and youthful pursuits as for vanquishing dark wizards."
He winked. Oscar brightened considerably at the joke, and Clare handed Baltasar the black Galtap card to deduct the eight Galleons from his school fund. Neville remained quiet, the dark brown wand clutched tightly in his hand. He stayed pensive; he wasn't sure how to feel about Baltasar, or Ollivander, or creepy, cryptic old men with wands in general. He managed a small "thank you" as Baltasar bowed them from his shop.