This is not an "insanely powerful child-wizard gets amazing magical wand" chapter. I hate reading those, so I tried to do something different.

—

Ollivander's head dropped down to one side after the blinding light of the explosion had faded. He seemed to collapse in on himself. His spine curled, his eyes lost their unnerving focus, and his mind retreated inward. The words left his lips in a low monotone. "Well. That doesn't happen every day." He came forward to where Fen was lying dazed on the floor and twisted the boy's arm to bare the wrist. The skin was pale, the veins darker and upraised. He traced a swollen artery. "Damn."

With a wrenching pull, Fen tugged his arm out of the shopkeeper's grasp. He cradled it against his chest and, still half on the floor, backed away towards the door. Somewhat to his surprise, Severus let him.

The darker wizard had his attention on Ollivander. "What?" he demanded.

Ollivander picked up a charred splinter of rosewood from the floor. "The heartstring couldn't take the strain," he muttered to himself. He threw the piece of wood across the room before turning back to the pair. He smiled for Fen. "Well, follow me."

"What happened?"

He glanced at Severus. His usual cheerful manner, undaunted by nothing, had slipped to reveal a bleak stare. The shake of his head was slight, just as slight the gesture towards Fen. "It's perfectly natural," he told the professor, though his levity of tone was for the boy. A broom was now sweeping through the shop to clear away the debris from the wand. He folded his arms and looked down at the gathering pile. "Quite common in the fifties, actually, though I always hoped that I'd seen the last of it. It's a little hard on my wares, you see." The last was said with only marginal humor. "The Ministry's stores were absolutely destroyed the last time around. The junk it issues as wands invariably did that"—he pointed at the pan of rosewood slivers being floated away—"when the children touched them. Mine never fared much better, though at least they could get a wave or two out of them first. I was able to find something that worked, however, so if you'll follow me?"

—

The back room of the shop was much different than the front display. A skylight banished the murky atmosphere that most of Diagon Ally proudly touted. Except for a few wood shavings on a workbench and couple of snapped, scraggly feathers on the floor, the place was spotless. The walls were lined with displays of glass. Fen went up to one and, on tiptoes, peered inside. Cushioned on silk lay a wand. Instead of wood, it appeared to be carved out of a translucent jade. He stared at its intricate designs until he noticed the head over his shoulder in the glass cover's reflection. Ollivander smiled at him when he whipped around to stare.

"From the Orient," said the wizard of the wand. "Over a thousand years old. That silver you might see inside is the hair of a kiilin, the forefather of the unicorn. Beautiful, powerful, and perfect for heavy defensive work, but as you can see, also perfectly impractical." He ruffled Fen's raven hair and didn't notice the boy's sudden flinch. "Why don't you look around, Fenrir? See if you take a particular shine to a wand in my collection."

The man waved Fen on to the next case before unbending slowly, taking his time to return to his full, perilous height. He turned to Severus and said gravely, "Follow me."

—

The third room was very old. It seemed to have been built for the reception of important customers. Several plush chairs sat against one wall. On the opposite was a professional-looking desk. The far end of the room was empty, save for the crackling of wards. Severus recognized the designs. They were the same as the ones carved into the walls of the Potion classroom. Out of curiosity, he had once had a detention student scrub the same patch of wall until the underlying stone was visible. It had taken fourteen hours, but it had been worth it to see the impressive warding structure—for Severus, anyway. The Ravenclaw had never gone near the classroom walls again.

Ollivander gestured for him to sit in one of the velvet chairs. The wandmaker walked to the desk. He waved a hand at a decanter full of violet liquor. "Something to drink?" he asked Severus. After receiving a no for an answer, he poured a glass to the brim and knocked it back. "Witches and wizards used to be fitted for wands in here," he remarked as he poured himself another. Then he added, "Back when the profession was in its glory. Things were different then." He sighed, then shrugged and gestured towards Severus. "About the exploding wands… I was able to discover a solution to the problem because of my study of wands and their making in the past. Wands were made sturdier in earlier centuries. Do you know why?"

Severus folded his arms and shrugged, not seeing a connection between what Ollivander had said and the situation at hand. "Intermixing with the Muggle population weakened magic in the blood over time," he stated flatly. It was a textbook answer. Half-bloods' magic tended to be invigorated by the fresh blood, yes, but over generations the non-magic ancestry always made itself known. The lines weakened, and the only cause for blame was the thinned blood.

"Not quite."

He looked up sharply.

Ollivander glanced at the forefinger he had raised and closed the hand into a fist. He stepped forward and began to pace with the glass still in hand. "In the sixteenth century, apprenticeship was the main form of teaching. Are you familiar with it?"

"I'm a Potions Master," Severus snapped, agitated. "What does apprenticeship have to do with weaker magic?"

The wandmaker smiled and ignored the question. "Oh, good. This will be much easier to explain, then. An apprenticeship typically began at what age?"

"Eleven."

"Exactly. And one became a journeyman at…?"

"Fifteen or so," Severus supplied. His eyes narrowed. "Though—"

"It used to be later? Seventeen?"

"Correct."

Ollivander nodded. "Now what if I told you a wizard wouldn't receive his wand until he was a journeyman?"

"What!"

"Exactly." Ollivander shrugged. "Wizards only started to purposefully use magic after they had mastered the skills of their trade. Accidental magic and the subsequent buildup of power in the blood used to be considered a natural part of the growing process. Of course, that all changed when the Ministry took control of Wizarding society, particularly when it came to the schooling of children. They did away with the apprenticeship system as much as they could, claiming that it was a breeding ground for dark wizards."

The Potions Master did not comment.

The Wandmaker gulped down his glass. "The problem was, there were suddenly hundreds of untrained magical children congregated in small spaces. Hogwarts was somewhat prepared, as all their respective apprentices had traditionally eaten and slept together, but the ministry schools couldn't cope with the concentration of accidental magic." He grinned. "If I remember correctly, some of the less liked teachers actually exploded."

Professor Snape did not laugh.

Ollivander moved on. "So they started a magical youth program, where children were given training wands—essentially toys—until they came of age and were able to use something more powerful. It's still a tradition to buy a better wand after graduating from the Ministry schools, though that's mainly because the wands they're given as children are junk." He took a seat at the desk and seemed to be debating pouring himself a third. "Not that the Ministry would know this or care, but shortly thereafter, wandmakers had to drastically change the way they made wands. The graduates of the Ministry schools just couldn't make the old, stronger kind work. The Ministry had inadvertently changed the way we use magic. It used to be about using the skills any Muggle could develop, and then infusing the end product with a powerful surge of magic. Potion-making still uses that theory to an extent, I believe."

Severus nodded.

"In the 1500s, the art of enchanting died. Magic became less about power, and more about refinement, precision, and ingenuity. Most of the spells we use today were developed in the first few decades after the Ministry took control of education. Neither branch of magic is inferior to the other, mind, just different. And that's the problem."

The wandmaker closed his eyes. "The Ministry was in complete ruin during the war in the forties. Grindelwald had only been the icing on the cake, really. With the Goblins holed up underground because of the Muggle air bombings, money was tight, and the Ministry cut corners. They completely abandoned the Muggleborns. Hogwarts took in as many children as it could—for a time Muggleborns outnumbered everyone else combined, I think—but there were still well over a thousand untaught magical children in Muggle England. Not all Muggleborn, either. In the war, many half- and pure-blooded children were misplaced."

Ollivander sighed. "In some cases, the magic in their blood was repressed and they grew up in a normal Muggle fashion—but in others, the magic wouldn't stay quiet. It was the stress of growing up in war, we think. Five years after the Ministry started the policy, there were untrained teenage witches and wizards causing more trouble accidentally than five Aurors could manage on purpose. In '52, The Ministry decided they were a threat to secrecy, and they were brought in to learn control. Unfortunately, the Untaughts, as they were called, had magic that acted exactly like that of Journeymen of the 1500s. Modern wands aren't built to handle that sort of power."

Severus drew a conclusion. "So you built them wands in the old fashion?"

Ollivander sighed and started pouring. "Unfortunately, Ministry-sanctioned exterminations in the sixteenth seventeenth centuries killed off the species that provided the old power sources. They were deemed too dangerous to live. Though I did have some success with Phoenix feathers with the borderlines, most of the Untaughts burned them out. The children were too far gone. The only solution was to try to match them up with old wands that had survived the years. A program was developed where collection wands and museum pieces could be loaned to students for learning purposes." He stood again. "The theory was that after they learned control, they would be able to handle a normal wand. To my sorrow, this was not the case. After their schooling, the old wands were returned to their rightful owners, and they discovered that no other wand would work for them. They had control, yes, but now they understood the power they could never have. The suicide rates were high in those years." He looked meaningfully at Severus. "The rest turned their backs on Muggle society, though I still see younger versions of their faces…from time to time."

"Stirring story," Severus remarked. "What I don't understand is what this has to do with Svartálfar…Fenrir. I doubt he's eleven, let alone an age where magic would be built up in his blood like your Untrained Muggleborns."

"They weren't all Muggleborn," the wandmaker corrected.

"That doesn't answer me, Mr. Ollivander."

The man shrugged. "One of the effects of large amounts of accidental magic is stunted growth. As you might recall, wizards used to be shorter. All of the Untaughts I dealt with were unusually small, though malnourishment was also a factor there."

Severus closed his eyes.

"Judging by my experience, Mr. Snape, that boy must be at least thirteen. Thirteen was the fringe age," Ollivander sighed. "Half could handle fortified Phoenix feather wands. The others"—he gestured towards the door they had entered—"were lost causes. I'm afraid Fenrir is one of the latter."

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose, not liking one bit where this was going. "Would it be best, then,"—he paused, not quite believing he was about to suggest this—"best to raise the boy as a squib and save him the heartache?"

Ollivander shook his head. "The Untaughts ranged in age from twelve to twenty-two. ...The numbers started staggering at nineteen. Of the thirty or so twenty-two year olds, twenty-four died before we could find them proper wands. Without proper training, the magic built up too much in their blood…and it killed them." He sagged in his chair. "And of the younger ones, several hundred never found a wand they could use. …Like I said, the suicide rates were high in those years." He grasped the glass and downed his third.

Severus stared at him a moment as the complications of that statement sunk in. Then he ran a hand over his face.

The weekend had just gotten worse.

—

It took a few minutes for Fen to notice that he was alone in the room and that there was nothing keeping him from walking out the back door. Severus was gone, and Nibble was busy guarding the front. He could leave this madness, disappear to the fringe of the Muggle world, grow out of his damned childhood, and forget that any of this nightmare had ever happened. He was good at forgetting nightmares.

He straightened his shoulders and started for the door. One hand trailed along the vertical sides of the row of glass cases. He was about ten feet from freedom, when he suddenly stopped. He turned and frowned at the palm that rested on a smooth plane of glass. He tugged. Nothing. He put his other hand on the glass for leverage.

It was fifteen minutes later that Severus and Mr. Ollivander returned to the room to find Fen standing in the same spot, his hands firmly and inexplicably attached to the glass.