Harry Potter and the Revival of the Wand Works

It had been two weeks since the Harry had arrived home. He had a bit of a routine going by now, because every day he got up at four and scrambled to the football stadium in the invisibility cloak and made his way past the night watchman. Then, he left at about seven and ran past the day watchman, who had been replaced after Harry's first expedition to the Quidditch field, and replaced by a very grumpy young man who seemed to prefer grunting and talking to himself on the benches outside the stadium to actually making sure that no one entered it. Then he would make his way through the morning crowds and get back to Privet Drive by the time Uncle Vernon was leaving for work. Uncle Vernon seemed to be constantly working; he was always at the office and when he came home (usually at about eight at night) he ranted and raved to Petunia about the problems he had faced at work and finally stopped yelling at around ten.

Harry was quite enjoying himself this summer. Quidditch was going marvelously, and he was playing very well. Each day, he pulled out the letter from the International Wizards' Confederation as if just to make sure that his invitation had not been revoked. He pondered ways to ask the Dursleys if he could go, and since their moods towards him had not been worsened, they would probably say yes, but Harry didn't know what he would do if they said no. He just had to get to that camp. He finally worked up the nerve to ask Uncle Vernon one evening, because the camp was inching closer each day and Harry had still not responded to his invitation. He wandered down the stairs and silently prayed that Uncle Vernon would agree.

"Er- Uncle Vernon?"

"What do you want now?" he answered.

"Well, remember when I opened that letter on the first night I got here? About the qui- football camp? And I said that I wanted to go?"

"I remember, my boy," Uncle Vernon grunted

"The camp is coming up in a week, and I was just wondering if I could go. I mean, I've behaved well this summer so far, and pretended like I'm normal and everything, so do you think I could? I'd really like it, Uncle Vernon."

"I suppose so, long as it's free. Won't go paying for you to head off to some hundred pound camp when you're just visiting," he said.

"It is," Harry lied quickly, but he didn't see the point in telling Uncle Vernon about the gold in the Gringotts vault, which would be enough to cover ten thousand Quidditch camps.

"So how will you get there? Do you need a ride?"

"No, I should be okay. I'll just take a bus or call a cab."

"But you said it's in Scotland, my boy! You can't go taking a bus that far!"

"It's alright. I'll manage to get there with a friend from school or something."

"Never knew football was big with your type. Your mother was always rambling on about how good your dad was at some nonsense game on a broomstick. You don't know what that was all about, do you?"

"No, 'course not," feeling as though he might as well do the thing properly, he said, "My dad probably didn't even play a game like that. She was probably just making it up. And football is enormous at my school. We play it all the time."

"Good, well maybe we've got a future star for England! It runs in the family, I guess..." Harry stifled a laugh as he imagined Uncle Vernon hauling his massive body around a football field.

"Well, thanks for letting me go to the camp," Harry said.

"Will you be back here before school starts, and after the camp is over?"

"Yeah, probably for about two weeks," Harry replied.

"Okay, as long as you're coming back, it should be okay," Uncle Vernon said as he turned and walked out of the room.

"What should be okay?" Harry muttered, but Uncle Vernon was already gone.



Harry spent the next two days in preparation for the camp. He wanted to sharpen his skills a bit more, but he couldn't find any extra time to sneak out in the next few days. As soon as Uncle Vernon had agreed to allow him to go, Harry had sent Ron an owl telling him about the invitation and how excited he was. Ron replied the next day, saying the twins had been invited too, as well as Angelina and Katie, two of the Gryffindor chasers. Ron had heard that about two hundred of the best young quidditch players from around the world were coming to the camp, including, it was rumored, Viktor Krum. Harry couldn't see why Krum would come to a camp to develop his talents, when he was already the best seeker in the world, but Ron insisted that he was going to be there.

When Harry sent back his invitation with an acceptance note attached, he received a schedule for the camp and instructions for getting there. Harry read that the Knight Bus would be the official source of transportation for the camp, and rides for all camp participants would be free. When the Dursleys continually pestered him about how he was going to get there, Harry broke down and told them he would take a plane to Amburgdale. Uncle Vernon pretended to be extraordinarily concerned with Harry's safety while he was on the flight, and he even looked up Amburgdale in an Atlas only to find that it wasn't listed. Harry had quite a job explaining that it was such a new and tiny town that even the most inclusive atlas would have left it out, while in reality Harry thought that it was probably an all-wizarding village, like Hogsmeade.

All in all, Harry was very glad to be getting ready to leave. The sugary-sweet Dursleys were almost as bad as the mean and rotten Dursleys, because while the mean Dursleys were natural, the sweet Dursleys were all too fake. Even an outsider would have been able to tell that the play they were putting on was only an act. It did not take rocket science to figure it out.

On the list sent by the organizing committee, Harry was informed that he should bring several sets of Quidditch robes, his broomstick, a set of balls, and one dress robe. Harry didn't have several sets of Quidditch robes, and he didn't have a set of balls, so he just improvised. He threw in a couple of golf balls that he stole from Uncle Vernon's dresser and added a few extra regular robes to make up for the quidditch robes. Harry had his Gryffindor quidditch robes, but he didn't have any others. He wondered what the dress robes were for. If it was a ball, he sincerely hoped that Cho Chang would not know anyone else at the camp so that she would have to dance with Harry or not at all. He wasn't sure if that was what he really wanted, because he would much rather have had all of Hogwarts at the ball and Cho still dance with him, but he didn't really care.

Harry sorted through all of his Hogwarts things and decided that he would bring some extra gold from the bottom of his trunk and his potions book. He hoped that Fred and George, being two years ahead of him, could help him with his essay on highly reactive potion ingredients, or maybe his timeline of the Ministry of Magic in Britain, or even his Divination summer star chart. He had realized that he only had a few weeks left to finish all of his holiday work. In all his time at the Dursley's, he had barely even opened a book.

The Dursleys asked Harry if he wanted a ride to the airport, and Harry repeatedly told them that he would take a cab because his flight was at three a.m. and he didn't want them to have to bother with taking him in the dark of night. It was really just an excuse, as he didn't need a ride to the airport at all, and he didn't have to leave in the middle of the night.

Finally, the night of July 14 arrived, and Harry went to sleep with the promise of quidditch camp the next day.



The alarm went off at four a.m., just as Harry was having a dream about flying all the way to Amburgdale because Voldemort had attacked the Knight Bus. He knew the dream was insane, and the Knight Bus was one of the last places that Voldemort would bother attacking, but he couldn't help worrying, since at the end of last year Harry had witnessed Voldemort's rebirth at a cemetery.

He shook himself awake and got out of bed. It was still pitch-dark outside. He had left his trunk downstairs last night, and he would just pull it out of the door and hail the Knight Bus from the corner. He didn't dare do it from the sidewalk in front of the Dursleys, because if they woke up and saw the bus in their front lawn, he imagined that they might panic. Once he was outside, he tried as hard as he could to move the trunk quietly along the walk and up to the corner, but he dropped the side once when he was in front of Arabella Figg's house. He was afraid that she might wake up, and he would have to explain to her why he was out in the dead of night with a broomstick, a wand, robes, and an invisibility cloak, which he was not looking forward to, but she didn't come outside.

At the corner, he pulled out his wand from beneath his pajamas and hailed the Knight Bus. Since the last time he had hailed the bus it had been on accident, he wasn't exactly sure how to do it, so he stuck out his wand arm and waved it around a bit, then did it holding his wand. In about thirty seconds, the Knight Bus pulled up to the curb.

"Welcome, this is the Knight Bus, and you're conductor this evening is Ernie...Wait, I've seen ya before! Yer Harry Potter! I member when you came on this here bus last time and told us that you was Neville! Ern- Harry Potter's back on the bus! Well Harry, we know where you're going. We've got a list, right here, of all the quidditch folks who's goin to the camp over there in Amburgdale. You can join 'em in the back, if you like, there's a couple from Bulgaria and Russia, the United States, and one from Scotland... we're on our way to get some from up there in Northern Britain, the Burrow, I think they call it..." Stan Shupike exclaimed.

"Thanks, I think I'll just head to the back."

In the back of the bus Harry found about twenty children, some his age, but most of them sixteen or seventeen. Several were speaking in some language that Harry had never heard before, and even more of them had strange accents that Harry supposed must be from Scotland, the United States, or Australia. They were all wearing their pajamas, but seemed much more interested in talking than sleeping. A couple had a game of Exploding Snap going on, and another had a silvery gobstone set, and more were playing wizard's chess. Harry wished that Ron was here. He was excellent at wizard's chess.

Harry didn't know any of them, so he took his trunk and put it under a bed next to the congregation of teenagers. It dropped with a loud clunk, and Harry found twenty people staring at him, and glancing at his forehead. He nervously flattened his bangs, but the damage had been done.

"It's Harry Potter!" said a young American wizard. She looked like she was about fifteen. They all murmured in agreement, and one boy spoke up and said, "Nice to meet you, Harry. I'm from the United States, you know, the Salem Witches Institute? No? Well, my name is Roger Cronin, and I'm a Chaser," he said proudly.

Another girl said, "I'm Catherine Manlow, but everyone calls me Icicle." Harry wondered why as she spoke an unnatural hush fell over the room. He also wondered why people called her Icicle, when she had dark ebony hair and deep brown eyes. He couldn't help noticing how gorgeous she was, or how all the boys looked at her with a certain respect when she spoke. "I'm from Scotland, and I'm a seeker. What are you, Harry?"

"I'm a seeker, too," he answered, but the voice seemed to be coming from somewhere other than his own voice box.

"Wonderful. Then I expect I'll be seeing you at camp, since it will be divided into groups based on position," she told him. His first impression of her was that she had a know-it-all air very similar to Hermione's, except, he couldn't help but admitting, Catherine was a whole lot prettier. "Would you like to play me a game of wizard's chess?"

"Er- sure. But I'm warning you, I'm rather bad at it," he answered, and was relieved to find that he had regained control over his voice.

They sat at a large table, and a few of the other wizards came over to watch their game. Catherine/Icicle took an early lead, smashing two of his pawns, his bishop, a rook, and a knight all in seven moves. She seemed even better than Ron, and she had his king pinned down before Harry had even managed to capture one of her pieces. He felt a little embarrassed at being beaten so badly, but everyone else cheered for him when he got up, giving him the impression that they had lost brutally to Icicle too.



At about seven, the Knight Bus reached the Burrow. Harry hoped that Ron would come out to wish Fred and George well so he could at least fit in a couple of words with Ron, he had no such luck since Fred and George entered along amid a frenzy of conversations in several languages, every imaginable game, and the shouts of the now-thirty teenaged wizards. There had been a few stops in Ireland and Northern Britain before they reached the Burrow. Fred and George came in with an enormous trunk balanced between them. They greeted Harry with two loud shouts.

"Hey Harry!" yelled Fred over the noise.

"How're the Muggles treating you?" George said.

"Blimey Harry, you've grown this summer! You've just about passed us up, not that it's too difficult..." Fred exclaimed.

"Fred's just bitter because you're taller than him. But who's the better beater, that's the question," George explained.

"Well, that may be true," answered Harry, "but last time I checked, I'm the better seeker."

"No, I'm not sure that you're right, Harry. I've converted. Now I follow the Holy Order of the Seeker," said George with a wink.

"Guess what. Ron would've wanted to tell you, but we're spoilers and we wouldn't want him to have all the fun! You'll never guess," Fred said.

"So just tell me then."

"Percy's engaged! To Penelope Clearwater, you know, his girlfriend. She's got a job for the Society for the Promotion of Intercontinental Educational Transfers, she's the Vice President. Don't ask me what she does; I've no idea, but it's supposedly (at least Percy likes to think) that it's quite a big job, even though she never does anything - "

"Except write Percy love letters-" George interrupted.

"And so they're getting married. She's got quite a lot of money, don't know where from-"

"Probably stole it-"

"And now that Percy took Crouch's job, he's got some gold too-"

"We tried to bum some off him for our joke shop, but it's no good because he thinks it's a waste of time anyway, just because it's not for the Ministry-"

"So they're moving in to a big house in the Hogsmeade Hills," Fred finished.

"We've been invited to live there for the holidays. We would take 'im up on it, simply because it would be wicked to live with walking distance of Zonko's, but how fun would living with Percy be?"

"Yeah," chimed in Fred, "He'd be like, 'Now, young boys, mind you behave yourselves and become prefects for your final year at Hogwarts'."

Harry personally thought that living with Percy would be about as fun as living with the Dursleys, but he kept that opinion to himself.

"So," Harry said, striking up a conversation, "You been to this camp before?"

"Nope," they said together. Fred finished, "We were invited two years ago, but we couldn't come because mum and dad couldn't spare the money."

"But we've heard that it's bloody brilliant. Supposedly, they get international players to teach the clinics, and there are tons of great players from who knows where, and there's a great party at the end of the session."

So that's what the dress robes were for, thought Harry. Maybe the party would be a little less nerve-racking than the fancy dress ball he had attended at Hogwarts during his fourth year. He hoped so; that ball had been much more trouble than it was worth.

Fred and George moved on to talk to an Irish wizard they knew, who was apparently a Hogwarts seventh year the year before and had been the beater for the Ravenclaw team. Harry had never seen him before, but Fred and George were certainly good friends with him. He then saw the twins move on and join a lively game of exploding snap with Icicle, Roger, and two girls named Seline and Sandra that he had met earlier that morning. He decided that he would join the game too, simply because he lacked anything better to do.

"May I join in?" he asked the group.

Roger looked a little uncertain, but everyone else nodded. Harry sat down next to Seline and Fred because he didn't really want to sit next to Icicle, though he didn't know why.

Harry's hand was horrendous. However, with each draw his hand got increasingly better until he was ready to lay down his cards. When he went out, his cards didn't explode and he had the best hand anyway so he was the runaway winner. Roger was last, and looked very angry that he had been beaten so badly. Harry didn't see why anyone would care; it was just exploding snap, not even a big game like quidditch.

Fred and George bolted toward the doors when Angelina and Katie got on the bus, which left Harry sitting next to Seline and Icicle, who looked very pleased that she was now next to Harry. He wanted to get away as soon as he could, so he pretended to look very pleased when a huge boy got on the bus and got up and ran to the door. Since Harry didn't even know him, he found himself in an awkward situation, but he was not nearly as uncomfortable as he was sitting next to Icicle.

"So, er, what's your name?" he asked the boy, who looked very much like Goyle.

"Germaine," he answered, in a tone so final that Harry had no choice but to turn around and head right back to the exploding snap game.

He won twelve straight games before Roger, Seline, and Sandra gave up, with the accusation that Harry was cheating, because how else could he win so many games? Icicle stayed in, and once again people crowded around the table. Most of them were rooting for Harry, simply because it seemed like everyone was tired of Icicle winning all her games. He was dealt a decent hand but drew two awful cards, then three good cards to make him have a flush. He finally went down, and his cards didn't explode. Icicle laid down her cards with a flourish. A royal flush. Everyone began to scatter, disappointed that Icicle had won another game. But once they started to turn around, there was a loud explosion as every one of Icicle's cards went up in smoke, followed by a loud cheer.

After that, Harry went and sat with Fred and George on a large couch. They had taken this opportunity to create a catalog of all of their Weasley's Wizard Wheezes products, and were planning on selling them to the quidditch players at the camp. Once they were done with their catalog, Fred stood up and hollered:

"Hey all you quidditch players! My brother George and I have a bunch of products that will put Zonko's out of business in a couple of years. Anyone who wants to see 'em can come right over, we've got samples of everything!"

A couple boys about Harry's age came over and checked out the products. Fred and George looked so thrilled that people were interested that they gave each of them a free toy wand. When the boys picked them up, they turned into large rubber duckies. They laughed and introduced themselves as Colby and Damon, two sixth years at Amburgdale School of Wizardry and White Magic. Colby and Damon were so pleased with the toy wands that they went on to purchase ten canary creams, five ton-tongue toffees, twenty silent mints, and another toy wand, a hover broomstick (that would hover three feet off the ground and then suddenly drop its rider), and an electric chess set (that would zap anyone who touched its pieces).

Stan announced that the Knight Bus would be reaching Amburgdale any minute, an announcement that was greeted by thirty loud cheers. The card games broke up, and the party temporarily stopped. People began to pack their trunks back up and stuff their Wizard Wheezes purchases into hidden places.

At ten after twelve, the Knight Bus pulled in to the Amburgdale Station.