Summary: It was a broken down old building in an age of space travel and flying cars to every Muggle that saw it. It was nothing special, except to one curious girl with no past or future.

Between the tiny Oliver Wood on her shoulder and Evangelina in the paintings, Katie had a very in depth tour of most rooms. Occasionally Evangelina was more helpful than Oliver, as he was too busy making snide comments regarding a group of people known as Slytherins. Other than that, he was very helpful. It was Oliver who had introduced Katie to the House Elves, strange little creatures with enormous bat-like ears and bugged-out eyes. It was them who had kept the castle in such wonderful condition.

Today Oliver, Evangelina, several of the other paintings, and the numerous ghosts that had begun to re-emerge were going to begin training Katie as a witch.

Katie wasn't sure she really liked the idea, but they had assured her that she would never have any need to leave the castle so there was very little chance of her being discovered. So Katie had reluctantly agreed to learn magic.

"First thing's first!" Evangelina exclaimed. "We need to get you a wand. Nick, would you take Miss Bell down to the storage rooms where Minerva hid the wands."

"Most certainly! This way, Miss Bell!" the old ghost called jovially. Katie nervously followed the ghost into the dark basement below the classrooms.

"Why were all the wands hid down here?" Katie asked, more to herself than anyone as she smacked into a wooden beam for the third time and tried to comb thick cobwebs from her hair.

"To protect them from the Radicals," Nick replied easily. "Minerva didn't want those barbarians getting a hold of such valuable things as wands before the next generation of witches and wizards could be trained up."

"Oh."

Katie didn't say anything more until they entered a small chamber at the end of the cluttered hall. Rows and rows of long, narrow boxes extended out in every direction.

Nick muttered under his breath as the two of them stared at the mess of boxes. There was no sense of organization to any of it.

Katie took a cautious step forward and picked up a box. She blew the dust off before opening it. The wand inside was a warm red color about 10 inches in length. As she gripped the wand a pile of empty boxes beside her exploded into flames.

"I don't think that's the one for you," Nick coughed, staring at the smoldering pile of boxes. Katie nodded her agreement and quickly set it aside.

Three hours and 120 wands later, Katie was getting extremely irritated. Not a single one of the wands had been willing to work for her. Only 63 boxes remained to be tried, or so Nick said. Katie sighed, picked up the next wand and got another violent result.

All too quickly the pair had gone through every single wand in the basement and not one of them had worked for Katie. Now all that was left was to try making a wand.

Nick seemed nervous but Katie figured not much else could go wrong. The wand cores were labeled and placed in neat rows along the shelves above a workbench at the back corner of the room. Hundreds of wands shells lay in the boxes around her.

"What kind of wood were most of those wands?" Katie asked over her shoulder.

"Holly, ash, willow, maple, walnut, mahogany, birch, yew, and rosewood," Nick replied.

Katie dug through the box marked "Experimental Woods." She dug through the cold wooden shafts and then stopped suddenly. Her fingers brushed a warm, soft-feeling yet very hard piece of wood. She pulled the wand shell out of the box and into the light. It was nearly 11 inches long and the label on the tip read "African Blackwood." Her small hand wrapped perfectly about the thickest part of the shaft. Now for the core.

She had Nick read off the cores that were used in the other wands and was left with three cores she might be able to use: one Chimera scale, one Ocammy feather, and a handful of Ashwinder Ashes.

The vial with the Chimera scale seemed to glow whenever Katie brushed her hand over it. Neither of the other two reacted.

The young woman examined the vial for a moment. Then set about determinedly making her wand.

Four Hours Later

Katie smiled with tired satisfaction at the shining black wand in her hand. The whole thing felt perfect. Nick was even impressed by the wand. Neither of them were quite sure how Katie had actually managed to make the wand, but neither intended to complain.

"I suppose the others are probably getting worried," Katie murmured thoughtfully.

"No, Miss Bell," Nick said. "I'd informed them of your task so they could go about other things while they waited."

"Thank you." Katie trudged back up the long hallway to where the others had reassembled.

Tiny Oliver was especially intrigued by Katie's handmade wand. The others were interested that she was able to actually make the wand.

The ghost of a young woman was the first to begin Katie's teaching. Surprisingly Katie had little problem picking up any of the spells. They seemed to be almost second nature to her. In fact, at one point she actually knew a spell before anyone taught it to her. No one was quite sure how that was possible, but they did everything they could to encourage these memories.