Chapter Six: Bippity Boppity Boo

Sami woke early the following morning. It was a Saturday, and she hoped to be out of the infirmary and into the main school as soon as possible. Shortly after eating her breakfast – a plate of eggs, bacon and sausages, sent up from the kitchens – Madam Pomfrey was called to the door to the hospital wing.
A severe looking-woman entered the room, shortly preceding Hermione, Harry and Ron. She was wearing emerald robes and her greying hair was pulled tightly back into a bun underneath her black pointed hat. Her silvery-grey eyes were behind a pair of square glasses, and she was carrying a roll of parchment under one arm.
After a brief discussion with Madam Pomfrey, who seemed to disagree wholly with whatever the woman had told her, she marched towards Sami's bed with a tight-lipped smile.
"Hello, Miss O'Rourke. I am Professor McGonagall; I teach Transfiguration here at Hogwarts. Today, you, Miss Granger, Masters Potter and Weasley, and I shall take a trip to Diagon Alley where we shall purchase your school supplies," she noticed Sami cast a nervous glance towards Madam Pomfrey's office, "Don't worry – Madam Pomfrey has agreed that you are in good enough health to take the journey. If you'd follow me now, please, we shall get going."
Sami sprung up from the bed, glad to have finally received the opportunity to look around the school, and joined Hermione, Harry and Ron in following Professor McGonagall's brisk pace.
"Have you been reading my notes?" Hermione asked her, but was told to 'let her be!' by Ron. Sami barely heard this exchange, she was too busy gawping in awe at the interiors around her.

Paintings lined the walls, and like the pictures in Hogwarts: A History they moved – but the difference with these were that the occupants could enter each others' canvases and socialise. The first time she had spotted them moving was when she had been groggy and half-asleep, so she had simply thought she was imagining it. They were all grouping in large crowds, peering out of the frames at her and whispering to each other. It was really quite entertaining watching them glance away, pretending they weren't spying, as she waved cheerily to them.
Around a sharp bend, another corridor yawned ahead of them. This one had windows punctuating one side of it; outside, vast grounds stretched far, all meeting in a dense forest that stretched as far as Sami could see. Small clusters of students were outside, dressed in their own clothes. It was shocking to think that this magnificent castle and its immense grounds were so adeptly disguised to an outside eye. Sami wondered how they were to leave the school – where was Diagon Alley, anyway? If it was far, she doubted they would use the Hogwarts Express for such a tiny group of people. Maybe it was only down the road – maybe it too was disguised, and thousands of witches and wizards had flocked there for years, right under her and other Muggles' noses.
As the end of the corridor neared, they headed down a few flights of stairs. By now, Sami was almost completely lost – all she knew was that the floor they were on now was two lower than the hospital wing. She was just about to ask which floor they were currently striding down, when Professor McGonagall whisked them around a corner and into a flood of students. They were at the grand staircases, some of which above them were moving about at will. Passing through the crowd, Sami felt increasingly self-conscious as she felt the stares of other students. After noticing a fair few gawps at her dress, she wrapped George's robes around her and hoped that they were nearly wherever they were supposed to be going.
Once they had descended two more flights of stairs and paced down countless more corridors, McGonagall led them into a large, circular room that looked as if it was her office.
She walked directly to the fireplace and uttered, "Incendio!" with a flick of her wand. Sami had read about this charm in Hermione's book, and the results were just as she anticipated, albeit much more impressive than she had imagined. From a small pot that was positioned near the hearth of the now crackling fire, McGonagall scooped a handful of a glittering powder, which she proceeded to dole out to the children.
"Floo powder," she said to Sami matter-of-factly. "It's easier to explain by showing you. Mr. Potter, could you begin for us please?"
Harry stepped close to the fire, which was glowing amber, and thrust his Floo powder straight at it. The flames suddenly became emerald; he walked right into their midst and proclaimed 'Diagon Alley!'.
With that, he had vanished.

"Remember, loudly and clearly," McGonagall said, "Now you, Miss Granger."
Hermione did the exact same thing as Harry and she too disappeared.
"Miss O'Rourke, you next."
Sami took a breath and drew nearer to the fire – once again pleasant, crackling ochre. Into the flames she scattered the powder and stepped. They were licking at her open flesh, making her rapidly hotter and more uncomfortable.
"D-Diagon Alley!" she yelled, and fell forwards into a bright, multicoloured chasm. She felt herself spinning, her head swimming, becoming woozier by the second, until at last her body left the psychedelic blur and landed on a cold stone floor. Two hands were reaching for her, and she was helped to her feet by Hermione and Harry, who looked equally dizzy. A moment later, Ron rolled out of the grate with a moan. Professor McGonagall followed, managing to climb out as gracefully as ducking from inside a fireplace could be. The children smoothed their clothes, Professor McGonagall adjusted her hat – which had bizarrely stayed to her head throughout the Floo powder transit – and they all looked about their surroundings.
Around them were piles and piles of books, all stacked to the ceiling. At a glance, Sami could see varying volumes with peculiar titles, such as Taming Your Skrewt: A Sore Owner's Handbook, and Bippity Boppity Boo: Simple Charms for Wizarding Children. A special display in the window of the bookshop they were standing in held towering heaps of copies of a book entitled Who Am I? that didn't seem to be selling well.
It was then that a short man wearing brown robes peered out from behind one of the stacks of books nearby.
"Hello, Professor – what is it you're after today?"
He was scrutinising the expressions of the students accompanying McGonagall, trying to decipher the situation.
"We need another set of the booklist for Hogwarts this year," she said, examining her roll of parchment.
"Ah. Righty-o, then..." The bookseller vanished behind his towers of stock again and returned a few minutes later carrying a tall hoard of books. His eyes then slid fearfully to the far corner of the room, where a cloth-covered cage was rattling and snapping viciously.
"Never again, not a chance," he murmured as he pulled on a pair of leather gloves and hastened to whip off the cage top. Inside were three thick, furry volumes that were careering around the cage trying to tear each other with their sharp jaws. The bookseller reached apprehensively into the cage and grabbed the nearest copy, which was aiming to sink its teeth into his forearm. Fearful of being mauled, the bookseller quickly grabbed a leather belt that was lying on the tabletop nearby and tied it around the eccentric book, clamping its mouth shut.
"There you are," he said wearily, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
Professor McGonagall handed him some gleaming coins and they swiftly exited the bookshop, allowing the poor man to simmer in peace. Then, she turned to her students.
"I am going to Gringotts for Miss O'Rourke's money exchange. In the meantime take this purse and begin to purchase her supplies while I am gone. I'll reimburse myself later. Stay out of trouble, now!" She subsequently walked towards a huge, imposing building that looked like it was carved entirely from milky-white marble. This must be a wizarding bank – the idea of exchanging Sami's sterling money made a lot of sense, as she had not recognised the funny coins Professor McGonagall had used to pay for her textbooks.
Harry suggested they buy Sami's school robes next, as a shop named Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions stood a few yards down the cobbled street which wasn't at all busy that particular day. Not long after Sami had entered the shop and been welcomed brightly by a squat, pleasant witch, the school robes, jumpers, socks, and skirts had all been administered to her. The next stop would be for quills and pots of ink to write with, a practise that Sami was amused by. These were purchased at Scribbulus Writing Instruments, Sami choosing an elegant purple and ivory quill.

After a few more shops had been visited – in addition to a short stay at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, which Harry had particularly recommended – and the four were weighed down under cauldrons and bags, there were only two more vital pieces of equipment that were needed: a pet, and a wand. The latter was what Sami had been waiting to buy all day, having imagined swishing it à la 'Bippity Boppity boo' style and unlocking polished cabinets and lighting its tip. Of course, she knew that it wouldn't be a tacky black-and-white one – especially not a joke wand that collapsed with the phony kids' party magician's sleight of hand – but a sturdy, wooden article. Her short yet highly informative stay in the magical world so far had confirmed it to be traditional and conventional.
For means of the former, they headed to a small shop that was chock-full of cages and tanks that were packed and piled on top of each other like sardines, each containing an animal. There were vivid orange snails that stuck to the top of their glass tank which were being pawed curiously by cats of every colour or pattern a person could think of; rabbits that metamorphosed right before their very eyes; tortoises with gleaming rhinestones and rubies encrusted upon their shells, and a colony of bats nesting on the ceiling, to name but a few of the both peculiar and intriguing creatures that Sami had the chance to own. By this time, Professor McGonagall had tracked her and the others down, refilled the purse that had nearly been drained completely, then told them to meet her outside a pub she called The Leaky Cauldron at two o'clock, which had given them an hour.
Sami, having heard the pros and cons of various animals in the shop from Hermione, Ron and Harry, walked to the counter, clutching the jangling purse in her hands. A witch with a scarlet pixie cut and nose ring was serving behind the desk, and was currently trying to poke shreds of lettuce into the tank of a small lizard that was breathing jets of fire. As marvellous as the more exotic and extraordinary species were, Sami's mind had been made up on a common animal that had caught her eye from the moment she entered the shop.
"I'll take this one here, please," she asked the moody clerk, pointing to a stocky owl with beautiful chestnut-coloured plumage that mingled with a snowy white. It had fluttered right past her, skimming her nose, when she had stepped through the door, and the supple, velvety feel of her feathers, as well as her wide, shining brown eyes, had attracted Sami's attention.
"Sure you want this one?" the shop assistant jabbed her thumb towards the owl, "It's a tawny, and they're associated with bad luck, even death. This girl's had trouble being sold since she was brought here. Been waiting for an owner for nearly two years now, she has, but not a soul'll touch her, what with the superstition..."
The fact she had been waiting to be bought for so long settled Sami's longing for her even further. She nodded firmly and handed over the price – with some help from Harry – of the delighted owl, despite the clerk's disapproving expression. A cage and some other caring tools were distributed, and Sami left the shop thrilled, with another new friend, whom she christened 'Morrissey' after her favourite singer.
Not too far down the street stood Ollivander's Wand Shop, and along the way Hermione's curiosity burned too deep to keep quiet. So, as casually as she could muster, she asked Sami: "Your accent's wonderful, where were you brought up?"

Sami smiled as memories of Mayo, the county of Ireland she used to live in, came flooding back to her. Her great-uncle Patrick's cat, a scruffy tabby – appropriately named Cat – that would only come at her call, no-one else's; the bubbling brook that snaked around the family's fields, curving and twisting, meandering right to the sea; the stars, winking at her from the inky-black sky at night, displaying a gallery of shimmering constellations she would join together with her finger; her cottage, picturesque and painted white, constant smoke puffing from its chimney, keeping the place cosy. That house deserved to be on a postcard, the seven-year-old Sami would think, as she would skip past it on her way to Molly Flynn's house every morning. Mrs. Flynn baked the nicest apple pie she knew of, which was simply a bonus reason to visit Molly, a girl she had been best friends with for as long as she could remember. Sami used to pretend that she and Molly were sisters, and they promised each other that when they were older, they would buy a posh apartment in the big city, Dublin, and pluck cream cakes from their butler's silver platter. Mrs. Flynn could join them, of course, as well as Katelyn and Nana Healy and Cat.
This promise was never kept.
When Sami was eight, Nana Healy passed away, leaving her and Katelyn with no other relative in Ireland. By now, their Granddad Healy had too passed – their father's parents had died a few years before Sami was even born – along with great-uncle Patrick, and their only other surviving family member was their mother's older sister Maeve, who had lived in England since she had been allowed to move away by her parents at the age of 21. Auntie Maeve was kind enough, but she worked full-time and the sudden burden of two young girls was quite a heavy load for her. Sami and Katelyn liked their auntie enough, but a few years after taking them under her wing, Auntie Maeve also passed away. The sisters were at a loss what to do, being aged eleven and nineteen. They eventually ended up staying in their auntie's house under the care of her beloved housekeeper Annie, a pleasant elderly woman who had been rewarded for her long-time services to Auntie Maeve in her will that bequeathed the house and half of her money to Annie. The remainder of Maeve's wealth was split between Sami and Katelyn – despite being only a quarter, the inheritance they received was substantial. Annie had been reunited with an old friend by mutual connections, and seeing as Katelyn was then twenty and perfectly responsible and capable of handling Sami, who was just as mature and sensible as her elder sister, she used her inheritance from Maeve and migrated to Spain with her rekindled old flame, William. Sami and Katelyn weren't bothered too much about living without an adult, they felt free.
After explaining this – in briefer terms – to Hermione and the boys, Sami realised that death had followed her around for the entirety of her life. This was a gloomy thought, and she tried to push it to the back of her brain, the murky depths that were never visited and contained past nightmares and embarrassments.

"Well, your past is definitely a story to tell – I've just lived the same place all my life," Hermione said, "It explains why you've lost part of the Irish accent, though... Hold still a moment," She leaned forward and plucked a small beetle from Sami's shoulder, swiping it across her palm so that it flew away into the sky.
They had stopped in the front alcove entrance to a small brown shop. Through the windows Sami could see countless piles of what looked like shoeboxes neatly stacked along bookshelves and in every space of floor the owner who had arranged them could find. As they stepped onto the threshold, an aged man with wispy white hair and an olive coat poked his head from a door at the rear of the store, and hurried over to them. His large silver eyes bored deep into them, looking like their twinkle reached inside their souls. He clapped his hands together when his grazing scope of the four children landed on Sami.
"Ah, we have not met previously, and you are not in possession of a wand, I note," he said, "so I presume this is the reason for you entering my shop?"
He carried straight on talking without giving her the chance to answer his question or even to nod, for he had dashed away, hopped onto one of those ladders that could be propelled across the length of the shelves, and had began to rifle through the shoeboxes, his gaze flitting from their neat labels to Sami's person.
After a few minutes, and a few different shelves, he scurried back to them, holding about a dozen boxes and murmuring to himself. He fanned them out on a nearby table that Sami was sure had not been there before and proceeded to open the first box. From under sheaths of wadded tissue paper he lifted a wand, holding it by its tips with either index finger.
"Walnut. 9 ½ inches. Unicorn hair."
Sami guessed that he was describing the wand, but had no idea how 'unicorn hair' related to it. She held it and, following his prompts, waved it around a little, feeling rather silly. The man – she assumed to be Mr. Ollivander – shook his head passionately and put it back in its case, muttering again. The next wand he handed her was accompanied with 'Maple, dragon heartstring, 11 ¾ inches'. She didn't even receive the chance to sway it, for he took it back immediately on the grounds of it being 'far too long'. At the height of 5ft 1 inch, Sami didn't expect to grow much taller; all of the Healy women were short and petite, less than 5ft 5 inches. Mr. Ollivander then moved another of the three remaining boxes to the rejected pile.
"The wand is comprised of four qualities that make each distinguishable. Not quite unique, as there are certainly more wizards and witches than possible feature combinations, but certainly distinguishable. These qualities are: length, strength, type of wood, and core. Length generally varies from seven inches to fifteen. By 'strength', I mean whether it is flexible or sturdy, swishy or rigid. The type of wood is fairly self-explanatory, but holds great importance to the personality and traits of the wand. It needs to be fairly balanced with the ultimate character decider, the core. Cores come in many varieties and are the most crucial part of a wand... some are extremely difficult for the wand maker to extract, boomslang venom for example" – he shuddered – "is dreadful to try and use, it takes great skill to craft a wand with that core.
Ah – I beg your pardon, I was slightly carried away there... let me fetch some more willing contenders for you..." he once again disappeared to the shelves, leaving the children alone to talk. Hermione, Harry and Ron all produced their wands to show Sami, each describing their own wand's materials. Sami was nearly finished hearing the story of how Ron's last wand had snapped, and of his and Harry's 'alternative' journey to Hogwarts the previous year, when Mr. Ollivander returned with two more boxes.
"You have been a wonderful challenge thus far, Miss – oh, excuse me, I don't know your name," he frowned to himself as Sami told him, "Miss O'Rourke. You are certainly a unique character, and consequently require a unique wand. These four are the only ones that have offered themselves to be worthy of the test.
You see, the wizard does not choose the wand – the wand chooses the wizard."
Sami now had four wands to try, one of them destined to belong to her. After another maple had proved to not be her 'perfect match', Ollivander drew in a breath. The next wand he lifted, he held in his fingertips, scrutinising its beautiful decoration.
"This wand is its only kind in the world. Exquisite embellishments, intricate to obtain wandwood, and a rare core."
Sami marvelled at the wand, noticing how its handle depicted symbols that curved and swirled. It was a creamy colour and it felt wonderfully light to hold, she found as Mr. Ollivander handed it to her carefully. She gave it a wave, it abided to her motions precisely.
"Ivy. 8 inches. Augurey tail feather. Swishy."
He gestured her to flick it sharply using his hand; smoke rings puffed from his thumb. Sami copied him, using the wand, and the same grey whirls of smoke were emitted from its tip, swirling about the air and curling into spirals that floated around Ron's head and morphed into a sooty halo before evaporating, the final trace of them being the flecks of dust that came to rest on Ron's shoulder.
"That, Miss O'Rourke, seems to be the wand for you. Care for it well – the Augurey may carry bad omens around with its wings, but the feathers that lie in your wand will only bring beautiful spell work. The ivy that stung so many it touched previously will only protect you from the Dark forces that surround us and try to puncture our skin with their thorns.
"Hm. If you would excuse me, I'm going to write that down..."
"Er – Mr. Ollivander? My wand?"
"For you – free of charge," he said, eyes twinkling as he waved elegantly to them and walked back through the rear door that led to a storeroom of some sort. Sami admired her wand before slipping it into the pockets of her robes. Harry checked his watch and saw that it was nearly two o'clock; Professor McGonagall would be waiting for them at the Leaky Cauldron in ten minutes.
Hearing the bell chime merrily as the door swung shut, they left the shop and set off along the cobbles.