The Founding Sacrifices

A soft jangling noise echoed throughout the narrow shop, the noise bouncing softly from shelf to box-filled shelf.

A pale girl with delicate, though not classically beautiful, features shuffled out of the snowy cold outside and into the shop's small waiting area, sitting down on the single wooden chair there. She appeared to be about seventeen, or perhaps even a bit older, based on the wise and worldly air with which she carried herself.

From this small set of information, Osric Ollivander concluded sadly that she was too old for him, and so he set about his work again. Osric still had another year of apprenticeship, which entailed polishing, cataloguing and boxing the wands his father made. Upon turning seventeen, however, he would become a full partner in his father's business, or so said his father.

"Your customer," The words floated out from the elder Ollivander's workshop in the very back of the shop.

"But father, I've not done a proper wand-fitting on my own yet! You need to help me with..." Osric's protests were sharply cut off.

"Your customer," insisted his father. "I am too busy."

~ ~ ~

Osric waited a few moments in order to collect his thoughts before stepping out from behind a particularly disorderly shelf full of wands.

Father cannot expect me to do an accurate fitting all by myself, and for a girl! An older girl, at that.

"A bit old to be buying a first wand aren't you?" he ventured, hoping desperately that it was not in fact her first wand that she was here to buy.

I cannot possibly do a fitting for a first wand! I don't even know where to start.

"Hmm?" The pale girl looked up with a slightly puzzled and childlike expression. A few unruly strands of ashy-blond hair fell out from under her blue cap and she looked him right in the eyes, the way a child would.

Maybe less than eighteen years old, then. Maybe seventeen. Maybe even sixteen like me...

Osric became flustered and began to grasp ineffectually for the words he was trying to say.

"I, um, you, just that you seem old... I mean, older than to get a wand... I mean, to get a first wand, you seem like..." He didn't notice that she had begun to smile.

"It's not my first," she said, still smiling. "I broke my other one a few days ago." She paused and waited for his response.

Which didn't come.

"Oh," she continued, feeling a bit awkward, "are you new here? Well, if it helps any, my last wand was of unicorn hair..."

"Oh. Oh, of course, then, we'll, uh, we'll start with those. Which is your wand arm, Miss, um...?"

"Ravenclaw." She smiled, but didn't know why. Something about the pale eyes and nervous manner of this boy made her feel freer than usual, bolder. "What is your name?"

"Osric Ollivander. And, um, your wand arm, Miss Ravenclaw?"

"Oh, left." She blushed at her distraction, which had caused her to forget to answer Osric's question.

"Well then, I ought to get your measurements." Osric fumbled a bit with a long tape measure with bright silver markings.

Blast these cumbersome things!

Uttering a fairly complicated spell under his breath, Osric enchanted the tape measure to take measurements on its own. He then leapt up and began pulling wands off the shelves as fast as possible, trying to intuitively choose wands that would suit a left-handed girl.

"Where did you learn that?" Osric was so startled by the pale girl's question that he nearly fell off the ladder upon which he was perched.

"Oh," he began, "my father is in the wand making business, and I suppose I just picked it up from..."

"No," she cut him off, "how did you learn that spell? The one that made the measuring tape work on its own?"

Osric realized with a horrifying jolt that the tape measure was in the process of measuring from the girl's nose to her navel. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to..." he looked pointedly at the tape measure, saying quietly but forcefully, "that will do." The tape crumpled into an inanimate heap on the floor of the shop.

"Quite alright," she broke in with another broad smile, "I just want to know how you learned that spell. Not everyone knows how, you see."

Osric suddenly understood the girl's question. He smiled self-consciously and answered, "Oh that spell I just learned from, well, I don't rightly know. I suppose I just learned it from working with my father."

"Oh, well alright then," she managed weakly, but her mind was obviously elsewhere, perhaps solving some sort of puzzle, or engineering some grand scheme.

Osric debated whether to disturb her from her thinking, but she was here to buy a wand, after all.

"Right then, try this one." The girl jumped a bit, startled, and then took the wand hesitantly as Osric told her the wand's properties. "Alder and unicorn hair, nine and a half inches, pliable."

His nervousness about his first fitting returning, Osric snatched the alder wand out of her hand directly after she had waved it without result.

"Willow and phoenix feather, ten and a quarter inches, swishy."

Again, no result.

"Elder and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches, quite whippy."

"Poplar and dragon heartstring, twelve and a half inches, flexible."

"Walnut and unicorn hair, eleven inches, rather bendy."

Still no results, and the pile of eliminated wands was growing.

"How about something really unusual? Ash and dragon heartstring, seven inches, pleasantly springy"

Yet again, no result.

"Hmm, how about this," he mused, almost to himself. "Hazel and dragon heartstring, eleven and a quarter inches, nice and supple."

Suddenly, as she flicked this new wand through the air, a stream of glittering bluish sparkles filled the air and floated up towards the shop's high ceiling and stuck there like a smattering of stars, dazzling both Osric and his customer. For a moment, neither moved nor hardly breathed.

"How much?" ventured the girl.

"Hmm? What?" Osric was still staring at the sparkling ceiling in awe.

I have never seen that kind of first-reaction in a wand, or person, before.

"How much does the wand cost?" she repeated.

"Oh, right, that will be 6 galleons and 13 sickles, Miss Ravenclaw."

"Thank you," she smiled again, with a kind of warmth that wasn't quite there before, "and it's Rowena."

"Thank you for shopping at Ollivander's, Miss Ravenclaw." He smiled back.

"Rowena," she insisted.

"Indeed, Rowena," he corrected himself, and bowed her out of the shop.

Rowena... Rowena... Rowena... Rowena... Rowena... Rowena... Rowena...

As he returned the discarded wands to neat stacks on the shelves, his mind kept returning to the image of flaxen hair and a delicate face pulled into a smile, a genuine smile. His father called from the back room, requesting some assistance and inquiring as to whether the fitting went well for Osric, but Osric did not hear him; he was already outside.

Scanning the snow-lined streets for her face, a glimpse of her blue hat, anything that would help him find her, Ollivander walked purposefully towards the Leaky Cauldron.

I must catch her before she leaves Diagon Alley.

Suddenly she was there before him, although he did not know whether this was so by chance or by design on her part.

"I, um," he was again at a loss for words.

Think of something to say before she turns and walks away! Say something smooth! Make her want to stay here with me!

"You, um, forgot something. At the shop. The wand shop. When you left."

"Is that why you came looking for me?" she asked, a curious expression on her face. "I'm almost sure that I took everything with me when I left."

Osric opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again and began a careful study of his shoe instead.

Rowena then opened her mouth to say something herself, but neither of them ever found out what it was she was going to say, as she suddenly found herself mouth to mouth with Osric.

Within moments, Rowena understood what was going on, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he put his arms around her waist. Their unexpected kiss ended, but they remained holding each other in the snow as countless witches and wizards bustled past them, searching out a few last items on their lists before the sun went down.