By What Measure the Strong?

The shop was a mess and it was getting late. Rejected wands and discarded boxes were scattered about the floor, forming small mounds around a stocky young wizard on a stool. He was looking down, absorbed in studying his shoes as his empty hands twiddled their fingers.

An elderly woman scowled at him, the stuffed vulture on her hat scowling in turn at the excited old man who was trying to explain that there were no wands left in the store that could possibly suit the boy.

"Really, Mr. Ollivander, I hardly understand this. You are supposed to be the - Neville dear, sit up straight - finest wand-maker in all of Britain. How can you not have a wand for Neville?" She nodded as her grandson muttered, "Yes, Gran," and straightened, without breaking her speech. "And is this not the second time you've told me that? I never would have trusted him with his father's wand if you and every other wand-maker in Britain hadn't told us there was no wand of Neville's own."

Neville Longbottom's mind raged at his grandmother's words. What did she mean, she wouldn't have trusted him? Was he really so worthless? "Besides, I lied to you!" he screamed in his head. "I didn't drop it in the lake and watch the giant squid stick a tentacle to it and eat it. It broke. It broke in a battle you'll never hear of because I can't tell you about it." Unconsciously, he made a fist thinking about the fight in the Ministry basement. "I fought Death Eaters. I saved Hermione Granger. I was bleeding and too hurt to cast spells properly and I carried her to safety anyway." His last thought cheered him, which he needed every time he remembered the fight where he'd let Her escape. If they were all Muggles, carrying Hermione would've been a heroic, impressive display of manly strength, and he'd have been loved for it.

His grandmother went on talking to the wand maker, unaware of Neville's unvoiced response, and now ignoring him altogether.

"Mrs. Longbottom, this really is quite interesting. While any witch or wizard can cast spells with another's wand, for the best results and for better safety, every wand should be matched to its own appropriate user. I've never encountered someone so unmatchable. Quite intriguing."

Mrs. Longbottom harrumphed.

"I wonder," Ollivander continued, trying to placate the woman and her leering bird, "if maybe he needs a special core. After all, while throughout Britain most wands are made with unicorn tail hair, dragon heartstrings, and phoenix tail feathers, there are alternatives. For instance, I know many families with veela ancestry like to incorporate that veela ancestor's hair in their wands." He paused, looked at Neville, nodded briskly. "Yes, I have an idea. Excuse me for a moment."

As he hurried into a back room, Mrs. Longbottom turned to Neville again. "I had hoped to be through with this nonsense after your first year, Neville. Why you can't find a normal wand like everyone else is completely beyond me, to say nothing of the shameful way you lost your fathers wand! When are you ever going learn how to be responsible?"

"Maybe you should ask the WAND EXPERT about my wand, Gran, and give me peace already!"

Neville said nothing.

"Ah, here it is!" Ollivander announced, returning to the main room seconds later with a small parchment in hand. "A list of lesser-used cores," he explained. "As you know, I stock this store only with wands containing the three main cores, and I rarely ever work with other core materials. However, because a wand must be suited to its user's personality, magical abilities, self-image.... Well, the point is, some wizards need other cores, and I think you may need a rare one, Neville."

"Rare?" Neville asked.

"Well, we can't be certain until I've made the wand and you've tested it. But yes, there are materials used very rarely in cores, for various reasons. Giants' rib-bones are too large and hard to carve into an appropriate size for a wand, for instance, while salamander tongues are dangerously incompatible with most wizards. And some cores are just far too hard to come by to be used regularly. I think you need one of those."

"Hard to come by? Why is that?" Mrs. Longbottom asked.

"Well, there's nearly no demand for this material, but at the same time there's not a large supply. Or at least, legal supply, though I'm told that illegally it's almost as rare. Still, I think it will just be a problem of finding someone with a few. I expect whoever has one would be glad to part with it. And I assure you that it will be well worth the trouble if the wand fits Neville. Obviously, if it does not accept Neville, I'll just keep it for some other witch or wizard. But as things stand now, there is not a wand in this store that I am willing to sell you. Now, a few questions for Neville. Tell me, Neville, what's your best class at Hogwarts?"

"Herbology."

"Why is that?"

Neville frowned. "It's what I'm best at. I like it. I know I'm getting an O on my O.W.L. But I might have scored well in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and I ...."

Ollivander shook his head as Neville drifted off. "That's not what I mean. Why are you good at Herbology? Why do you like it?"

"Oh. Because of," he said, dropping his head and whispering, "because of the dirt. And the way the plants grow. Back before I was, well, I mean, back when my family thought I might be a squib -" he flinched before his grandmother's glare, "I thought I could go live as a Muggle, and be a farmer, or a gardener, and I would feel like I was doing magic. Because I was making things grow. From the earth."

Ollivander smiled, despite the disappointed expression on Mrs. Longbottom's face. Before she could lambaste Neville, the craftsman spoke up. "Good, good! That's a helpful answer, Neville. Just the sort of thing I need to know. After all, it is a wizard's sense of himself as a wizard that causes a wand to choose him. I could ask other things, to be more sure, but I think I've delved into your psyche enough. Yes. Yes. Very interesting. After all, this is the reverse of the normal order of things; usually I make a wand and then find a witch or a wizard for it, but this time I have the wizard and must make a wand for you! I'll have to take a few more measurements of your arm and hand, to size it properly, but I can tell you now what I believe the wand will be. It will be made of yew, and its core will be a Sasquatch toe-bone."

"A what?" both Longbottoms asked.

"A Sasquatch toe-bone."

"But what's a Sesquitch?" Neville asked.

"Sasquatch. They're magical creatures, native to North America."

"America?" Mrs. Longbottom shouted. "So that's what you meant when you said it might be illegal! That's not 'might be', that's 'is'! My grandson is not getting an illegal wand."

"Oh, no! I assure you, I'll buy from a reputable Canadian source, and I'll make sure everything is in compliance with the law," Ollivander tried to reassure her. "Now, Neville, I've never seen one, but I've heard they're hairy, with arms and legs, and are larger than a man but not as big as a Giant. Similar to Yetis, but they live in forests. Some of the more modern Muggle-repelling charms were based on their ability to blur everything about themselves except their footprints."

"And if that's what Neville needs, why didn't you say so when Neville was starting Hogwarts?" Mrs. Longbottom said.

"If I'd had the wand, it would have known enough about Neville to choose him, but nobody else knew enough about Neville yet to tell me what sort of wand would probably choose him."

Neville's interest had perked at all this, though it had clearly earned his grandmother's disapproval. "Why's it illegal that it's American?"

His grandmother ignored the question. Mr. Ollivander was more forthcoming, though not by much. "Oh, ever since the early 1800s, the International Laws For The Quarantine And Embargo Of The Orneries has, among other things, banned nearly all contact or trade with most American Wizards, who used to be called Orneries. Fortunately for us, while the Sasquatch mostly lives within the United States, it is also native to some parts of Canada, so I can try to get a bone from there. Now, please, we do still have work to do. If you'll hold out your wand hand again, I need to measure the thickness of your fingernails."

Neville held out his hand, paying no attention to what Ollivander was now saying about the different measurements as a measuring tape flitted about him, checking things almost at random: the width of his tongue, the distance from his ears down to his shoulders, how far his middle finger extended from the others. His mind was on the things the aged wizard had said about Sasquatches and America. He was concentrating on the trivia, trying to be sure that he would remember it long enough to learn more. "I bet Hermione doesn't even know about all that. I could study it, then owl her and tell her about it. She likes learning things." The idea pleased him, in a way he didn't specify with words. He merely gained a general feeling of comfort as he thought of telling Hermione Granger something she didn't know.

Some time later, the measurements finished and Ollivander having promised to make the wand (twelve and three-quarters inches long, unyielding, yew, with a Sasquatch's toe-bone for a core, let's-hope-this-works) as soon as possible, the Longbottoms exited the store onto Diagon Alley. "That certainly took long enough," the matriarchal witch said. "Come along, Neville. We need to be getting home."

Neville straggled for a second, wondering if he should try to get permission to do some other shopping of his own. He ruled out the idea, knowing that Gran would be irritable from the time spent at Ollivander's after failing to find a wand at every other shop in Britain and would be in a hurry to get to the Leaky Cauldron and Floo home. Besides, there was nothing he might need for the project he had slowly been formulating over the past few weeks that he couldn't buy in the Higham Wizard's Quarter or order by mail, and all the money he could get to without having to ask his grandmother for the Gringott's vault key was in his bedroom at home.

Having decided there was no way and no reason to linger in Diagon Alley, Neville hurried to catch up to his grandmother before she noticed him lagging. When he had nearly caught up to her, he slowed his pace, trying to match hers and stay slightly behind her, and the two walked in silence until Mrs. Longbottom nearly marched into a pair of hags leaving Flourish & Blotts, their arms full of fresh copies of the same book. The near-collision caused one of the books to fall, and Neville bent to pick it up. "Oh please don't make this cause a scene," he thought, "not here, not with hags." As he grabbed the book, he looked it over: More Tips For Serving Men, by Richard Kanamit-Kiel. A picture of what must have been Kanamit-Kiel, a tall man with a facial deformity, was on the cover, smiling and waving banally from next to a reviewer's quote: "This long-overdue sequel to the classic bestseller is a surefire hit with even the most demanding tastes!" Neville picked it up and handed it to the hag, wondering why she and her friend had so many copies of some strangely titled self-help book. His courtesy seemed to satisfy the hags, and the two pairs separated without incident.

The Longbottoms were not five steps away from the hags, though, before Neville's grandmother had something to say. "Despicably rude, those two!" she remarked. "They nearly bowled me over, and not a word of apology. Neville, you be sure to always be courteous with people."

Neville muttered something he hoped she would take for agreement and thus let the matter drop. He was more interested, anyway, in the hags' parting comments, which he could hear from his spot trailing a few feet behind his grandmother.

"Ruddy old bint," one of them told the other. "Typical witch, no concern for anyone," her friend replied. Neville was inclined to agree, but smart enough to keep his mouth shut. He had to live with the ruddy old bint for another two summers.

The two humans made it the rest of the short way to The Leaky Cauldron and took the Floo Networks home without incident. It was by this time well into the evening, and Neville was glad to be dismissed while his grandmother went about cooking. When she called him to supper, it might have taken long enough that her foul mood from the trip to London would have worn off. "Of course, she'll just find something else to be angry about. My hair will probably be parted wrong," Neville thought. Having been excused until suppertime, Neville went upstairs to his room, as there wouldn't be enough time to properly check on his garden (still only half-cleared in the week since his return from Hogwarts) and clean up the Muggle way.

When Neville opened the door to his room, light greeted him. He loved the way the room's lamps were enchanted to light up whenever he came in. Or more exactly, he loved that the lamps, which had been enchanted to light up whenever anyone entered the room, did it the same for him as for everyone else.

The room was sparsely decorated, almost bare. There were hardwood floors and a color scheme of blue cotton sheets, blue knit rug, and light, almost off-white, blue walls and ceiling, but there were no decorations on the walls and few knick-knacks on his dresser, his bed-stand, or his desk. Mrs. Longbottom disapproved of posters and trinkets. Neville didn't mind though. The only things he valued that were suitable for display were pictures, and he did have a few of those scattered about the room. Most were of his parents. A few were of his friends at school. Some of those even had him in them. Everything else either was alive or fit into a small chest that was now sitting on one of his semi-unpacked school trunks. The chest was one of the most expensive things he owned. He had been afraid of losing a key or forgetting a combination or spell, so he'd saved and scraped for months to pay someone in Higham to enchant it. Now it could only be opened if it was touching his skin. He kept things like gum wrappers in it.

Neville sat at the desk, which was covered with scribbled notes scattered between two pictures along with a Muggle seed catalogue and several open Herbology, Transfiguration, Potions, and Charms textbooks. He gave a sad smile to one of the pictures. It was only slightly younger than he was and it showed his parents while they still had their sanity. He gave the other picture a smile, too, and blew it a kiss before he started to shuffle the notes around, trying to find where he had last left off.

It took only a few minutes before he decided to just start with the parchment in his hand. It was one of the early ones, from when the project was just a set of vague ideas bouncing around in his head. Like all his writing, the print letters were heavily slanted and changed size with every word, and usually within a word, but they were never misshapen and it really was easy to read. On this sheet was a short list of colors: Red, Gold, Yellow, Orange, Brown, White. Neville studied the list for a moment, then opened a drawer in the desk and fumbled around in it for awhile. Eventually he found a quill in decent shape, and with it he scratched through orange. After a bit more thought, he scratched through yellow as well.

Neville leaned back in his chair, admiring the new list of colors. Though white wasn't obviously her color, the way brown was, it was a subdued color, like her, and it made other colors seem brighter and more vivid, just as she made him stronger. And besides, it symbolized purity; surely she'd appreciate that. And the other two, red and gold. Gryffindor colors. Colors to be proud of, and colors that were as much his as they were hers. They had to stay.

He set the list back on the desk and reached for the seed catalogue, flipping through it and glancing at the strangely still colored pictures of the various flowers. The red and gold and white were easy enough to find, and he had dog-eared several pages of poppies and roses with the proper shades of those colors. After several cycles through these pages, he circled two of the flowers with his quill. Hopefully he could get them from some nearby Muggle shop. He could handle their money well enough, after three years of Muggle Studies and having been to garden shops and florists fairly often in his last few summers, but their owl-free post still confused him.

Brown though was a problem, as the color had just never been popular with the Muggle flower-breeders of yore. He flipped through the roses and poppies a few more times, and finally gave up on finding an appropriate natural source of brown. He tossed the catalogue aside in favor of one of the Transfiguration texts, knocking a Potions text and several of his notes onto the floor.

"Oh, bugger that" he muttered. He shot out his hands, grasping each of the pictures with one to make sure neither of them got knocked over. Satisfied that neither the gust of wind from the thick brochure flopping down nor the impact of his elbow with Magical Drafts and Potions had endangered his two beloved pictures, he released them and pushed his chair back so he could bend down to pick up the fallen things.

Just then, his grandmother called him.

"Neville! Supper!"

"Oh, bloody hell." He stood up, grunted a little as he pushed around the notes on the desk for a second, then yelled back, "Coming, Gran!" Finding a mostly-blank parchment (on one side he'd spilled something and scribbled a set of half-abbreviated words scrunched together: poisonthorn because canthave, potingrnt) he flipped it over and wrote on the backside, in big letters, "Order Flowers Today: Black Peony seeds, and rose seedlings: Species Rose R. rugosa, Julia's Rose, Gabrielle Noyelle." He carried it with him to the door, where he realized that without his wand, there was no way for him to attach it to the inside of the door. No way, then, to be sure he'd see it the next morning.

"Bloody, bloody hell," he told the door. He crumpled up the parchment and tossed it over his shoulder as he went into the hall. Behind him, the light died.

Supper went well. As he had hoped, the time spent preparing the meal had gotten his grandmother's mind off of her irritation at him and his need for a new wand. She chided him very little during the meal.

"Neville," she said, "Griselda Marchbanks is coming by tomorrow. You'll need to be here for that."

"Yes, Gran," he said. "Do you have any idea when? I was hoping to go and buy some seeds and stuff for my garden tomorrow." He smiled politely, waiting for her answer. "Oh, how brilliant! She probably found out one my test scores already and is going to tell Gran before the main owling. Probably Divination, with my luck."

"Oh, not before teatime. You can have the morning to do your shopping. But at least try and remember that you'll need to get yourself cleaned up before she gets here if you've been mucking about in that garden of yours."

Neville nodded. If he was right about her having his O.W.L. marks already, he was perfectly happy to put up with another stern old lady for the afternoon. There was no way Divination could be the only score ready, and he had only ever been sure of one prediction in that class: he would fail the O.W.L. The plants and seeds he'd decided to use as raw materials for his project would be purchased by then, and with luck, he'd be able to send out owls telling people his test scores before he went to sleep. His good ones. "Oh, they'll love getting those!" he thought, feeling fit to burst out laughing. He held it back, though, not wanting the beef in his mouth to fly all over the table. "The dumb Squib got some Outstandings! That'll make them feel good." He kept eating, vacantly answering his grandmother when she said anything. It didn't matter, though, what happened the rest of that night. He'd already decided and settled it - tomorrow could be a good day.