Great Things
Prompt: Abstract magic

#​

On an average day, the back room of Diagon Alley’s ice cream parlor would typically smell of sweet elderberry sorbet, iced mooncakes, and Butterbeer. But today, for the first time in what felt like ages, it was filled with smoke and laughter.

“If you think you’ve an easy advantage over all of us, Albus, you’re wrong.” Florean Fortescue wagged his pipe at Dumbledore accusingly. “Meet my eyes as much as you like, you won't uncover any secrets that way.”

“I'm wounded, old friend,” Dumbledore said. “You think I’d stoop to such lows?”

Garrick Ollivander chuckled quietly and rearranged the coins in front of him. “Dumbledore doesn’t need Legilimency, Fortie. A mountain troll could notice your tell.”

“And,” Aurora Sinistra added, “it’s all the more noticeable the more you try to close your mind.”

Florean replaced the pipe in his mouth. “Fine,” he grumbled, replacing his coins in a small leather pouch. “Urdrig. I’m out.” Purplish-grey smoke curled from his mouth in petulant bursts, forming loose, unruly spirals that matched his wild grey hair. Still, Garrick noticed the corners of his friend’s mouth twitch briefly upwards. He knew Florean well enough to recognize when he was in high spirits. Even Garrick was willing to let himself feel a brief flicker of the same warm nostalgia. It was nice to return to the old routines, which years of war and grief had forced them to neglect.

“You are a delightful addition to our Ballynok game, Aurora,” Garrick said. “Albus used to always invite Filius or Horace to these gatherings. Imagine my surprise when he turned up with you.”

Dumbledore glanced happily at Professor Sinistra and said, “After weeks of meetings with the school governors, I sought a friend who could drown out the coughs and sputters of old warlocks.”

“I see only one elderly man in this room, Albus,” Florean said, pipe between his teeth.

“Certainly,” Dumbledore said. “I find my coughs and sputters the most tedious of them all.”

Garrick smiled at Professor Sinistra. “You’re a quick study, Aurora, it’s quite impressive. I should have known better than to gamble against a witch wielding a dogwood wand with a dragon heartstring core.”

“Oh!” Aurora said, beaming. “You remember the wand you sold me!”

“Don’t encourage him, hen,” Florean said with a pained look. “He needs to learn that this tick of his isn’t nearly as charming as he thinks it is.”

She sighed, looking at her coins. “Well, unfortunately for me, it appears that dogwood and dragon heartstring can only take me so far. Urdrig. Besides, I have a feeling it’s never wise to bet against Dumbledore.” She gestured at the large bid Dumbledore had pushed to the center of the table.

“Perhaps,” Garrick conceded. “It’s no match for Albus’s elder wood wand, and, ah,” he snapped his fingers absentmindedly, “forgive my forgetfulness, Professor, what is the core of your wand, again?"

"I would say 'nice try,' Garrick,” Dumbledore said cheerfully, “except that it might've been your weakest attempt yet. And Aurora, you overestimate my Ballynok skills. Although I am wise enough to guess you only want to end the game early to study the Mourning Moon tonight.”

She laughed. “I’m sure I bored you to tears this morning, talking about it all through breakfast.”

Garrick’s eyes became unfocused as he stared at the coins in front of him. Of course. The Mourning Moon was in the sky tonight. Phoenix feathers that were plucked during this time were strikingly magical.

Garrick sighed. He should’ve known that Dumbledore would be no less industrious in peacetime.

Albus cleared his throat. “Well, Garrick? Feeling confident?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Have some courage, man.” Through the smoke, Albus’s eyes caught the candlelight as he smiled over his half-moon glasses. “Don’t underestimate yourself.”

“Sometimes restraint is the best thing a wizard can exercise.” Garrick surveyed the coins before him, irritated by these sudden distractions. He’d nearly forgotten the coins’ true value — the value he'd seen before he'd taken most of them out of his leather pouch. Four of the coins in front of him — two silver, one made of stone, and one made of alabaster — were actually four gold coins, that was easy enough to remember. The obsidian coin he'd grabbed from the community pile was, in fact, an obsidian coin. But his last wooden coin — that had been obsidian, right?

Garrick clicked his tongue softly. Florean Fortescue and his blasted goblin games.

“Well, everyone,” Garrick said, “this seems as good a point as any to end the night. I've an early morning tomor —”

“It’s an odd coincidence you mentioned my wand, Garrick,” Dumbledore cut in, “because I was actually planning to make this game a bit more interesting if you happened to raise the stakes.”

“More interesting?” Garrick frowned at the large pot in the center of the table. “I’m not sure that’s even possible.”

“I thought I might have something far more engaging to wager.” Dumbledore examined his elder wood wand with a half-interest. He smiled at Garrick, who had frozen in his chair, eyes wide. “Let me be clear,” Dumbledore said, “lest you think this a suspiciously bold wager: I am not betting my wand. I am offering you the opportunity to examine it, if I lose. I’ll confess, I’ve been a dreadful friend to have kept it from you all these years. It’s quite the secret.”

Dumbledore’s offer had jogged Garrick’s memory like a lightning bolt. He was certain now that he had four gold coins, and two obsidian. “And,” Garrick said, “if I lose?”

“If you lose,” Dumbledore said, “then I would humbly ask you to craft a wand, with materials of my choosing.”

The room stilled. Florean looked up at Dumbledore with a deep, disapproving frown. Aurora’s gaze flicked nervously between Dumbledore and Garrick.

Garrick gave a shaky scoff. “Not this again,” he said. “For now, it’s unnecessary for me to make any more wands. My inventory is diverse, it’s robust. A good wandmaker knows to pause for a decade or so and wait for a new generation of dragons and unicorns.”

“Certainly,” Dumbledore said, “and you are the expert. But in this particular case, I must respectfully —”

“Yes, Albus, I am the expert, as much as you may think otherwise,” Garrick said. He threw his cloak around his shoulders and snatched his hat off the table. “Keep your gold and your wand. You have won both, after all. Besides, I’m sure I could write to Gregorovitch. With a bit of prodding, he’d likely share what wand he sold to that terrible wizard, all those years ago.”

“While that conversation undoubtedly would be interesting to you,” Dumbledore said, “it would not give you any insight into my current wand. This is not the wand Grindelwald received as a boy.”
Garrick furrowed his brow. Florean and Aurora continued to watch them.

“Grindelwald couldn’t have...” Garrick paused. “He didn’t make a wand for himself... did he?”

“No. He sought a particular one out, and he found it.”

Garrick stared at Dumbledore, turning that statement over in his head. What could that mean?

Dumbledore’s wand switch had been apparent to Garrick mere days after the defeat of Grindelwald. It wasn’t just that the curious elder wood wand had caught Garrick’s eye the moment he’d first seen Dumbledore cast magic with it. The object had a palpable energy to it. It produced a tension in the air, as if a long, drawn-out hum suddenly stopped. Even now, as Dumbledore used his wand to levitate and rearrange his seven coins on the table, there was a ringing in Garrick’s ears.

Three years ago, he had promised himself he would never make another wand again. However, he wouldn’t have to, if he won.

Garrick sighed, placed his hat back on the table, and returned to his seat. He gathered his remaining Galleons and placed them in the middle of the table. “I see your twelve Galleons, and I raise you any wand of your choice.”

Florean leaned over to Garrick and muttered in his ear, “More than anyone, I agree that returning to your work would be good for you. But don’t let him force you into it.”

Garrick shrugged. “Perhaps luck will be on my side tonight.”

Florean raised his eyebrows dubiously as Dumbledore tossed his wand into the pot.

"Well." Dumbledore clapped his hands together. "Let's see what we have here."

Florean raised his hand and, after a second’s hesitation, snapped his fingers. For a moment, nothing happened. Then Garrick's silver coin popped, not unlike a kernel of corn, and transformed into a gold coin. Each coin eventually changed in much the same way — a few at a time, then many at once, until a thunderous cacophony of pops and jingles filled the room as the coins rattled on the table.

Dumbledore’s seven iron coins lay in a line on the table. Seven of a kind — one of his coins had in fact been two. Garrick stared at them and felt a prickling, feverish sense of dread.

#

Dumbledore tapped his wand on the table, and the Galleons and Sickles in the middle of the table rose into the air then cascaded like a waterfall of gold into a small pouch that he held out. “The phrase 'embarrassment of riches’ always comes to mind in this situation,” he said as the last few sickles clinked into the bag, “but if Ballynok teaches us anything, it’s that nothing gold can stay. I’m certain you’ll win it all back the next time I’m here, Florean.”

A stony expression had clouded Fortescue’s face, and Aurora’s eyes were flitting nervously between the three wizards in the room. Garrick asked, in what he hoped was a casual voice, “Shall we make an appointment to discuss what sort of wand you’d like me to craft? In a month or so, perhaps? I’ll be freer in the new year.”

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows and smiled. “I’m surprised you’re so booked up. I had no idea Ollivander’s experienced a Christmas rush. A wand is a rather odd gift to buy a friend.”

“Well.” Garrick coughed. “People are accident-prone this time of year. Office parties at the Ministry, family gatherings — wands are dropped and stepped on with a frequency that breaks my heart. I often wonder why we abandoned wand scabbards years ago. I think it might do the wizarding world some good to —”

“When was the last time, Garrick,” Dumbledore asked, “that you obtained a phoenix feather on the night of a Mourning Moon?”

Garrick’s eyes flicked to Aurora Sinstra, who was bidding Florean goodnight. “Plenty of times.”

“I’ll admit,” Dumbledore said, “my understanding of wand-making is rudimentary at best, so forgive me for forcing you to entertain the theories of a novice. But the fact that you’ve sworn off crafting wands during a time of such historic significance...” Dumbledore looked thoughtful as he watched Florean levitate the table and chairs to a corner of the room. Once the room was tidied, Florean pulled a box of jelly slugs off a shelf in his stockroom and began to munch on them, casting sulky glances at the table that had previously supported a fair amount of gold. “Wands made during this time could contain some exceptional magic, don’t you think?” Dumbledore asked.

“There is something unsavory, Dumbledore,” Florean said, still skulking in the corner, “about meddling in the affairs of a grieving man.”

Could historic significance of a particular time influence the magic of a wand? It was the kind of theoretical question that Garrick used to love to debate, and even now he felt a ripple of his former curiosity. Would a phoenix feather procured on the first Mourning Moon after You-Know-Who’s death be any different than any other phoenix feather? Who could say? The thrill of an intriguing wandlore experiment stirred something in his Ollivander blood. In his darkest days of late, however, he had started to wonder whether a passion for wandlore was passed down through generations of his family like some sort of hereditary curse.

Garrick donned his hat and said, suddenly animated, “Albus, even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to find a phoenix in time. Even if I did somehow manage to travel to Asia tonight for a quick jaunt to the top of the Himalayas, these hunts can take weeks before we’re successful. Even if I knew precisely where a nest was — and I’ve not corresponded with my contacts there for, Merlin’s beard, two years at least — one does not simply track down a phoenix in a matter of hours.”

“Ah! Well, thank goodness you’re well acquainted with one of the three people on earth who has managed to successfully domesticate a phoenix.”

Dumbledore’s smile wavered as Garrick paled and his eyes widened in sudden horror. He turned on his heel.

“Ollie?” Florean looked up from his snack, baffled, as Garrick shouldered past him and out the door that led to the front of the shop, behind the ice cream parlor’s counter. Garrick, who’d spent thousands of hours of his life in this shop, was better equipped to navigate it in the dark than Dumbledore was, and he stormed past the buckets of ice cream on display behind the glass until he reached the part of the wooden counter that flipped up. It fell back down with a bang as Garrick made his way across the tiled floor, and he heard a soft but satisfying “oof” as Dumbledore stumbled behind him.

Garrick’s breath caught in his throat as he strode out into Diagon Alley, illuminated by a few lanterns and that blasted Mourning Moon shining above his head. He put his hands on his knees before Dumbledore eventually joined him.

“Garrick, I —”

“Absolutely not.” Garrick's words came out in a short, ragged croak.

“I thought it was obvious what I —”

“That was not what I agreed to,” he said, raking a hand through the air. “Had I known that was what you were getting at, I would never have agreed.”

“I assumed, incorrectly, that you always knew I was talking about Fawkes. As ego-bruising as it is to admit, I’m in neither the mood nor the shape these days to scale the Himalayas at a moment’s notice.”

Garrick straightened shakily. “I’ll make you a wand. But I’ll not use another feather from that bird. What could come of that, but another Dark Lord?”

“That’s the sort of nonsense I would expect to hear from a wandmaker with a fraction of your knowledge and talent, Garrick,” Dumbledore said. “Surely you don’t believe that a wizard is made Dark by his wand.”

“Back at my workshop,” Garrick pressed, “I have tail hairs from unicorns that I stumbled on in Brocéliande, and wood from that forest as well. I would be happy to work with those materials, to make you a wand from that.”

“That’s excellent news,” Dumbledore said with a smile, “but you will have to do that work on your own time.”

Garrick turned away from Dumbledore and strode down Diagon Alley in frustration, drawing his traveling cloak a little tighter around his neck in the brisk night air. He weaved his way around a smattering of shoppers, Dumbledore trailing close behind. Garrick was still readjusting to a thriving Diagon Alley, especially this late in the evening. Less than a month ago, the high street would have been deserted at this hour. But now that witches and wizards could move without fear through their communities once again, it was startling how rapidly things had returned to normal. Or, somewhat normal. Nearly every weekend, the Ministry had to calm a jubilant crowd that was attempting to restart the celebrations of the first of November, and the confetti beneath Garrick’s boots made it clear that everyone’s high spirits would not be subsiding any time soon.

After the Dark Lord’s fall, Garrick had watched the celebrations from his flat above the shop. Relief and joy washed over him, and he laughed for the first time in three years, watching Florean dance ridiculously with Madam Malkin. Garrick had turned to his wife, in hopes that this might be the first thing that could coax her off the sofa. However, when he saw Elspeth’s vacant expression had not changed, he had sobered immediately.

Garrick pushed this thought from his mind and turned a sharp corner, down the cramped space between Quality Quidditch Supplies and Eeylops Owl Emporium, with Dumbledore not far behind. A couple mice scurried behind a stack of wooden crates along the brick wall. The path narrowed as he neared his destination, and Garrick turned to his side to squeeze between the buildings.

He gave a relieved sigh as his claustrophobia gave way to the wide expanse of Flutterleaf Park.

All the trees had shed their leaves, but the park — a remarkable achievement of an Extension Charm within Diagon Alley’s existing Extension Charms — had always been Garrick’s daughter’s favorite part of Diagon Alley, even in winter and even before the first snow. Grass sprawled as far as the eye could see, and a pond was just visible at the end of the path that began right at his feet. He walked forward, slower now, drinking in the air that was so much fresher here. Tall lanterns lit the path, but so did an occasional fire that huddles of witches and wizards had conjured in the cold, as did lights from flocks of fairies that flitted from shrub to shrub.

Garrick folded his arms under his cloak, and his knobble-knuckled fingers brushed against her pear wood wand he always kept nestled beneath the seam. Ten and a quarter inches. Unicorn hair for the core, naturally. Fern always had an affinity for unicorns, even as a young girl. Whenever the Ollivanders would visit Elspeth’s Muggle relatives, Elspeth and Garrick would always have to lecture their daughter — in vain — not to mention unicorns to her cousins. Fern found it heartbreaking that everyone wasn’t in on the secret. Her accidental magic was troublesome enough, and the breathless, unnervingly detailed stories she liked to share with anyone who would listen were enough to turn Garrick’s hair grey.

As an adult, Fern had been a valuable Beast Hunter, even if she and Garrick often disagreed about experimental crafting techniques, such as using fire breathed from the phoenixes and dragons to strengthen the wands. After her death, replacing Fern had proven impossible. Garrick’s description of “stumbling on unicorns in Brocéliande” was quite the understatement — it had taken him days to find any magical beasts. With Fern’s help, they could have found a herd in a matter of hours. It didn’t help that Garrick had trudged through the forest much slower than he usually did, wondering why he was even there. The woods had felt quite haunted.

Dumbledore joined Garrick on the path, and the headmaster’s eyes were trained on the night sky. Garrick assumed momentarily that several owls swooping overheard had caught his attention, but, of course, it was the moon that was on his mind, he realized with a sigh.

“Did you read the Prophet today?” Garrick asked, his boots crunching along the path. “The Ministry is considering renaming this park after the Harry Potter boy.”

“I did hear that, yes. What do you make of it?”

“I don’t think Marty Flutterleaf would mind. He was quite embarrassed to have it named after his family in the first place. I don’t believe he thought they were notable enough.”

“I’d beg to differ.”

“So would I. I don’t think Ollivander wands would have seen the improvements they did over the past several generations without the Flutterleafs’ contribution to herbology. But,” he shrugged, “they may call the park whatever they please, as long as I can still have access to the trees whenever I like.”

“Ah, how intriguing. The wood here is good enough for wand crafting?”

“Yes — simple, unassuming trees are sometimes best for certain wands, especially when you’re looking to balance out a particularly powerful core.”

Dumbledore smiled. “I’d hoped as much. That’s why I was planning to show you a specific plant in the Forbidden Forest, for the wand wood I had in mind.”

Garrick turned sharply toward Dumbledore. “The Forbidden Forest?”

“Yes.”

“But the merchant restrictions on that land... ?”

“Are overridden as long as you’re in the presence of the Headmaster of Hogwarts.”

“Yes, indeed,” Garrick said, thinking. “Oh, very good. Well, well, well...”

“Would you like to see it?” Dumbledore said, offering his arm.

#

A braver, wiser wizard than Garrick Ollivander would have been terrified to find himself in the Forbidden Forest at this hour. Insidious noises punctuated the fog and the darkness around him — leathery wings beat through the air, legs scuttled over frost-covered tree roots, sudden feral cries rang out without warning. Instead, however, Garrick felt only giddy. He was surrounded on all sides by endless sources of magical materials, and it overwhelmed any sensible desire to flee that he should have felt.

He scraped some moss off a rowan tree with a fingernail and sniffed it, then absentmindedly let it crumble between his thumb and forefinger as he examined the bark. If Garrick could trust his instincts, the tree had been a longtime home for a wood nymph roughly five years ago, but hadn’t been inhabited by anything more magical than a bowtruckle since then. The wood would pair well with the unicorn hairs back in his workshop. He moved forward to break off some branches, then hesitated. His habit of gathering wand materials wherever he went had proven difficult to kick. If he was no longer going to make wands, there was no reason anymore to find interesting wand wood or impressive magical creatures. Garrick caught up with Dumbledore, briefly, before he was distracted again by a chestnut tree. He wished that it were April, rather than the end of November, so that he could properly examine the foliage. He squinted up at the branches in the darkness, before he heard Dumbledore calling his name.

“This isn’t a place for tarrying, Garrick.” Dumbledore was several paces ahead of him. “Fear not, this holly I have in mind will be interesting as well.”

Garrick felt that prickle of excitement and dread again. Holly had, naturally, been at the corners of his mind when he’d tried to anticipate what kind of wand wood Dumbledore would want to pair with Fawkes’ feather. The plant of death and rebirth...

He shivered in the cold, and then hurried to find Dumbledore.

A large stag looked up, then leapt away as Dumbledore approached a holly bush. The plant didn’t appear to be anything special; it was a bit scrawny, in fact. But Garrick Ollivander, like Dumbledore, knew that appearances could be deceiving. However, as Garrick leaned in and inspected the holly — moving steadily round the plant, examining the soil around it, testing the give of its branches, taking note of the crooked direction in which it grew — he brushed off his hands and cleared his throat.

“Forgive me, Albus, but this specimen is, erm... quite underwhelming.”

“It is dreadfully flimsy, isn’t it?” Dumbledore smiled and loosened the purple scarf at his neck.

Garrick bent down and searched for a branch that would work best. Dumbledore pointed his wand at his throat, cleared it and said, “Sonorus.” Then Dumbledore began to whistle a low, melancholy tune that likely could be heard throughout the Hogwarts grounds.

It sounded like a phoenix’s song, and yet... the same tune, mimicked by man, had the opposite effect that a phoenix’s warbled notes should. Light tendrils of anxiety crept around Garrick’s mind as he realized that Dumbledore was calling Fawkes to him, and he thought about the last time he’d seen Fawkes’ feather core wand.

It had felt surreal, when Lord Voldemort had walked quietly into the wand shop three years ago. The bell had jingled as the Dark Lord shut the door behind him and Garrick stood frozen behind the counter. Voldemort had paced around the shop as if he worked there, looking up at the shelves with keen interest.

Voldemort had pulled a wand box off the shelf and ran a finger slowly along the side of the box to remove the dust obscuring the scrawled text. “Redwood and unicorn hair. Eleven and a half inches. Crafted in the year seventeen fifty-two... fascinating... and yet, it’s found no owner?”

“Wands are patient,” Garrick had rasped, almost automatically. “They — they will wait, for the right person to come along.”

Voldemort considered this as he removed the wand from its box. He curled it through the air, swiftly conjuring a geometric mandala out of silver light that glittered in the dim shop as the lines connected, swirled and looped before him, until Voldemort vanished it with a dismissive flick.

“It gives me no pleasure to end sacred wizarding lines,” Voldemort said softly, replacing the wand back in its box. “Lines that could have produced great witches and wizards who might have served my wizarding world very well, generations from now.”

Garrick did not move, his feet rooted to the floor.

“Seventeen fifty-two — a great era,” Voldemort continued. “I wonder who this wand is waiting for... hopefully someone who comes of age in my lifetime.” His lips curled as he replaced the box on the shelf. “Ollivander’s was not selling wands to Mudbloods in the mid 18th century, if the historians are correct... What a tragically brief tradition.”

“Tragic indeed,” Garrick countered, his voice trembling, “if that wand is waiting in vain for someone who never had a chance to walk through these doors.”

“Someone who does not have the resolve to discover these doors and force their way through,” Voldemort said, producing his own wand, “was never much of a wizard to begin with.”

If Garrick had not already been a dead man in that moment, he knew that his small comment of dissent had certainly made him one. He thought desperately of how he could keep Voldemort from reaching his family upstairs, what he could possibly say to pacify him, but then his eyes focused, almost out of habit, on the raised wand.

“Mr. Riddle?” he whispered, stunned. Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Powerful. Garrick, like many others, had assumed that Lord Voldemort had emerged from a school other than Hogwarts. No one seemed to know who he was, and his Dark magic was so foreign to Garrick, so unique and strange, that he had likewise assumed that his wand had also come from elsewhere.

But it had not. The wand that had caused so much destruction, that had taken so many lives... Garrick had sold it to a small, pale boy half a century ago. It was horrid, and yet... and yet...

“That shape that you conjured just then,” Garrick rasped, “what is it? What does it do?”

Voldemort laughed softly. “More than you could ever fathom materializing from one of your wands, I imagine.”

“Try me,” Garrick demanded, with more conviction than he ever thought he could summon before the Dark Lord. He had to know: What great magicks had Tom Riddle advanced with an Ollivander wand, one that appeared to be unchanged from the day it had been sold?

Riddle raised his wand again, and black-green light fluttered not only through the yew wood but through the veins in his hand as well — a prepared Killing Curse manifesting in a way Garrick had never witnessed before. In the moment when he knew he was about to die, his thoughts did not turn to memories of his wife or his daughter, but of a strangely contorted yew tree that grew in a dark and overgrown graveyard.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Curious, curious... Even Lord Voldemort still used the verbal incantation for the Killing Curse, thought Garrick, who was dazed and unsure why he was not yet dead until he saw Fern, lying motionless at the bottom of the staircase in the shop. Fern, who must have heard the conversation as she descended, of course she had. Fern, who had undoubtedly tried to take action when Garrick had done nothing...

“Perhaps now you will understand what you are risking, if you continue to sell wands to those who are undeserving.” Voldemort left the shop as casually as he’d arrived, the bell jingling as the door closed behind him.

#

Fawkes flew as magnificently as he had the day Garrick had taken a feather from him.

The phoenix glided down into the Forbidden Forest as if it were a dance. Who could say how Fawkes managed to swoop through the branches without snagging its glittering golden tail, which swished across the forest floor as it landed on Dumbledore’s outstretched arm. As it folded its impressive wingspan at its sides, the bird puffed itself out in a brief, frenetic shiver before settling again.

Garrick regarded it warily, from a distance. He couldn’t be certain in the dark, but Fawkes appeared to be strong and healthy and nowhere near a Burning Day.

Dumbledore turned to Garrick. “I ASSUME — ”

Garrick nearly fell to the ground, clutching his ears as Dumbledore’s voice reverberated around them, and Fawkes flapped its wings in alarm. Dumbledore shot Garrick an amused, apologetic look and nullified the charm at his throat.

“You did that on purpose,” Garrick said, massaging his temples.

“I would never.” Dumbledore smiled. “I assume you’ll want to return to your workshop?”

“Yes. All my materials are back in Diagon Alley.” Garrick proffered his arm. “I’ll bring us directly into the shop, I suppose.”

“Actually,” Dumbledore said, “would you be opposed to traveling by different means?”

Garrick frowned for a moment, confused, and then realization dawned on him. “Is it safe?”

“I wouldn’t advise you try it with other phoenixes, but with Fawkes, it’s a perfectly reliable form of transport.”

Fawkes cocked his head at Garrick, who hesitated. “What do I need to do?” Garrick asked.

“Stepping a tad closer would be a good start, I think.”

He was still several meters away from Dumbledore and his phoenix. The bird opened its beak, and one soft, clear note echoed through the forest.

Fern hadn’t been as good with phoenixes as she was with unicorns. Five years ago, at the top of Mount Kailash, she and Garrick had rested briefly in their tent after two freezing days’ worth of unsuccessful hunting. That morning, Garrick heard her put the kettle on, and he emerged from his bedroom to find her sipping tea, lost in thought as she stared, bleary-eyed, into the middle distance.

“All this work,” she had grumbled, “and the wand may just go to some quill-twiddler who uses it to enchant paper airplanes at the Ministry of Magic.”

“Not everyone can go on adventures,” Garrick had said, examining the flute that he used to attract nearby phoenixes.

She’d frowned with a smile. “That’s the funny little myth of the wizarding world, though, isn’t it? We can certainly all go on adventures.”

Dumbledore cleared his throat, bringing Garrick back to the present. “We don’t have a great deal of time left,” he said.

Garrick took an unsteady breath and strode forward, and, just as he reached Dumbledore, smoldering ringlets began to swirl around the phoenix until the three of them were suddenly, terrifyingly engulfed in flames. Garrick gave a shout as nothing but fire filled his line of sight, and then, abruptly, the only lights before his eyes were the tall lanterns along the cobbled road of Diagon Alley.

Garrick was trembling uncontrollably, and he stumbled to his right. Clouds of vapor poured off their bodies in the brisk air as the fire around them dissipated, and yet Garrick was unharmed.

Dumbledore seemed delighted by Garrick’s reaction as Fawkes settled on his arm. “I’m shocked you’ve never traveled by phoenix before. What did you think?”

“Albus, that was... that was...” He was exhaling in short bursts, trying to gain control of himself. “Phenomenal.”

“Quite the thrill, isn’t it?” Dumbledore said. “And the further one travels, the more exhilarating it is, I find.”

“I think I felt this way once in 1927, when Florean convinced me to smoke some crushed Billywig stings.”

“Did you, now? What a compelling endorsement for narcotics.”

“Albus, if I die of a heart attack tonight, you’ll have my wife to contend with.”

Dumbledore chuckled, and the two of them started walking toward the wand shop.

Garrick glanced over at Fawkes atop Dumbledore’s shoulder. "When was your phoenix’s last Burning Day?" he asked

“Seven years ago. In fact, it’s his birthday today, in a sense.”

Garrick stared. “You don’t say.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said. “I fed him his favorite meal this morning. All the learned experts say that phoenixes most enjoy the gum of frankincense, but, in fact, I’ve found over the years that there’s nothing Fawkes fancies more than a plate full of flobberworms. He prefers them toasted, to Hagrid’s great distress.”

Garrick fumbled with the key as they reached the wand shop, unable to stop inspecting Fawkes out of the corner of his eye. Its scarlet feathers shone so brightly against the shop’s grimy windows and chipping black paint that he wondered if there was still some fire smoldering beneath them. A soft warmth emanated from the bird still, like a recently extinguished bonfire.

The bell bounced against the door as he opened it, and Fawkes left the headmaster’s shoulder to glide inside while Dumbledore followed. Garrick’s eyes adjusted in the gloom. Even as a cold wind blew into the shop, he lingered at the entrance, his hand on the door. Fawkes perched atop a lamp on the counter, eying him, and the two held each other’s gaze.

"And you're fine with all of this, then, are you?" Garrick asked with narrowed eyes.

Fawkes blinked back at him.

"I used to be just as confident in my abilities," he muttered, shutting the door with a snap. He walked behind the counter, took out his wand — hornbeam, dragon heartstring, eleven and three-quarter inches, brittle — and began to summon his materials. His favorite carving knife and sanding stone flew out of a nearby drawer; a tape measure and his bottle of almond oil emerged from a cupboard behind him. He flicked his wand above his head, and a bottle of firewhisky eventually appeared at the top of the rickety staircase, spinning rapidly in the air down towards him. Garrick caught the bottle smartly in one hand.

Dumbledore said, “And the firewhisky is for — ?"

“For me.”

“Of course.” Dumbledore smiled. “Would you mind if I joined you?”

Garrick waved distractedly. “Be my guest.” As Dumbledore conjured himself a glass, Garrick took a sip from his own conjured glass, peering at Fawkes. The phoenix pecked and picked up the tape measure, and it bobbed as Garrick reached for it, trying to keep it away. Out of pure habit, Garrick took advantage of the distraction. He set down his glass and, in one swift motion, plucked a feather from Fawkes’ breast so quickly that the phoenix didn’t even flinch. Fawkes looked up at him, tape measure still in his beak, as Garrick examined the feather.

“Adept, as always,” Dumbledore said, and Garrick glanced up with a start. “Will that do for a core?”

“I think it’ll do very nicely, yes,” he murmured. “If memory serves, it’s roughly the same size as the core that... as the previous core. But this is a feather near the heart, while the last one was a tail feather.”

“Ah, interesting. Do you think that will be an important difference?”

Garrick ground his teeth. “We’d better hope so, shouldn’t we?”

Dumbledore hummed noncommittally.

“Albus, I’m surprised that you of all people are so nonchalant about the possibility that I might be replicating the Dark Lord’s wand.”

“I think,” Dumbledore said after a thoughtful sip, “the most important difference is not in the materials themselves, but in the state of mind of the wandmaker.”

“Ah, marvelous — a wand injected with fear, trepidation and doubt.”

“Well, that certainly would be quite different than the Dark Lord’s state of mind, would it not?”

Garrick laughed in incredulous disbelief. He shook his head and picked up the branch of holly and his carving knife. How had he found himself in this situation? Not three hours ago, he’d been discussing Food Freezing Charms with Fortie.

“For the record,” Dumbledore continued, “I would not characterize it as fear. I believe it’s something more akin to humility.”

Garrick took his frustration out on the branch, carving with a blur of quick, deliberate knife strokes. “You are not the first to attempt to bend the business practices of this shop to your will, Albus.”

For a while, the only sound in the workshop was the knife quietly scraping against soft wood, small shavings hitting the table. Finally, Dumbledore spoke.

“If my request is in such direct opposition to what you think is best, Garrick, I will bid you goodnight and be on my way. But I know you have always carried on, doing what is right, regardless of any such attempts to sway you otherwise.”

Garrick cursed as the knife caught harshly on what was now a roughly finished wand. “Well,” he grumbled, “now there’s a flaw in the wood, so what do you propose we do now?”

“You’ve always told me that magic thrives in asymmetry and imperfection. Why else would humans be any suitable vessel for magic?”

Garrick ran his thumb along the wand, then grasped the knife and split the wood down the middle. As he carved a trench in one of the halves, he noticed that the feather had inched closer to the wood as it took shape. “And what poor, pathetic vessels men are for magic,” Garrick said. “Cruel, selfish, destructive. They use magic to attain the same loathsome goals, century after century, generation after generation. And what do the Ollivanders do? Why, we help them focus those desires, don’t we? We make it easier for them to injure, to kill, and to destroy.”

“My dear friend, Fern would have thought it the greatest tragedy in the world to hear you speak of magic so —”

BANG! A great cloud of glittering silver dust filled the room, and Garrick breathed heavily, gripping one half of the coreless wand with a white-knuckled hand as the smoke cleared, revealing Dumbledore calmly clutching his cheek. A thin drop of blood seeped into his beard.

“I knew there was more to that holly that meets the eye,” Dumbledore said.

“You dare mention her name,” Garrick said, “now, of all times? When you’ve strongarmed me into making a wand with a twin core of her murderer’s?”

“Garrick, please. If I am truly forcing you into something against your will, then —”

“And what is my will, Albus?” Garrick demanded. Even he had not expected rudimentary magic to emerge from such an unfinished tool, but his blood was pounding in his ears and he pointed the wand half at Dumbledore like a madman. “I am certain you know, otherwise you would not be so confident in your bluff to walk out the door. You know as well as I do — better than I do — that even now, still, after everything, I would never pass up the opportunity to bring such great magic into the world again. Especially when the phoenix feather is plucked under a Mourning Moon, while the phoenix is seven years out from a Burning Day, precisely. Why, you’ve placed a great tankard of goblin-made ale in front of a drunkard who’s spent his last Sickle!”

“I am trying to remind a great craftsman of something he’s forgotten.”

“Albus, let me forget. I beg you.”

“I know it feels a fitting penance, to give up everything.” For a fleeting instant, Garrick thought he saw a flare of pain in Dumbledore’s eyes. “There is a duality to magic, yes, but —”

“I made and sold the wand that killed her.” Garrick’s voice cracked. “I didn't protect her. I didn’t even know she was there.”

“You can’t blame yourself for —”

“But I can, Albus! You don’t understand, the — the curse, it was... Albus, it was — exquisite. Such great fury, distilled so casually and with such great precision. It was elegant. Superb. I think of it as often as I think of her.”

Fawkes bristled, and Dumbledore watched Garrick sadly. The wandmaker set the carved holly branch on the counter and brought his hand to his face. A steady tick tock, tick tock from a grandfather clock in the corner was the only noise in the shop. He wondered if Dumbledore would take the feather and leave. Garrick wondered if he would let him.

“Garrick,” Dumbledore began, “you are not —” He stopped abruptly, and both men turned as they heard a sound on the staircase. Elspeth Ollivander was standing romrad still, her hand on the bannister as she stared down at Garrick.

His wife didn’t look horrified. She only looked sad.

“Elsie,” he rasped, “how — how long have you been there?”

“The bell always wakes me up.” She descended slowly, her eyes on the phoenix who was staring back at her. As she reached the bottom of the staircase, she held her hand out to her husband. “Give me the wand.”

He blinked. In a daze, he picked up the unfinished wand halves and held them out.

“Not that one. Hers.”

He swallowed and, with a glance at Dumbledore, removed his midnight blue cloak from his shoulders. Elspeth stared as he ripped out the seam with both hands. It had been three years since he’d laid eyes on Fern’s wand, and every groove in the wood, every small chip was exactly as he remembered it. He held his daughter’s wand in his left hand, as she once had.

“I couldn’t bury it with her.” His voice was full of shame. “I couldn’t do it.”

Elspeth reached for it, and Garrick’s thin wrist trembled as he passed it to her. She sighed as she held it with both hands, then grasped the handle. “Prior Incantato,” she said. Rust red sparks flickered suddenly from the tip, the ghost of an Expelliarmus spell. Elspeth smiled sadly. “She was going to try to disarm him.” She looked up. “Do you think you’ll use Fawkes, to help craft the wand? For the pyromancy?”

“Pyromancy?” he croaked, incredulous. The method had been a favorite of Fern’s, but it had always discomfited Garrick. Whether to use it in wandcrafting was often a point of contention among the Ollivanders. “Fawkes’ feather alone will lend the wand too much erratic strength. You want me to craft a wand that’s even more unpredictable?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t.” She twiddled the wand suddenly with the same energy that Fern used to have, and a shower of silver sparks illuminated the lines in her face. Elspeth exhaled, frowning at the ceiling as if she were working to remember something forgotten, and then reached for one of the wand halves on the counter.

Then, in a firm and resonant voice, she began to chant a long, dizzying string of Greek. Garrick felt a sudden pressure in his ears, and the temperature in the room rose sharply. Dumbledore smiled. Garrick breathed in deeply, and closed his eyes.

For the first several minutes, nothing happened as Elspeth spoke, but she kept a steady pace of words and breaths, using Fern’s wand to imbue the holly with magic and prepare it for the fire ritual. The phoenix feather inched closer, closer along the counter until it drifted up toward her hands and nestled itself in the trench that Garrick had carved.

Elspeth slowed the incantation and picked up the other wand half, closing it over the feather as she turned to Fawkes. Smoldering ringlets were swirling around him again, and the phoenix breathed out a thin, soft stream of golden fire that lifted the wand out of her hands and into the air, resealing the wood, smoothing and shining one end of the wand and scorching a charred handle of rough bark onto the other. The flames illuminated the shop and three people in it, who watched the wand form in the space between them.

The fire dissipated, and Garrick took out his wand to levitate the newly finished wand just before it fell onto the counter. He reached for it gingerly. It was warm to the touch, but did not burn his hand. He ran his thumb over the new wand, noting the imperfections with satisfaction. Elspeth’s focus was still on her daughter’s wand.

“A group effort — a much better idea than my own,” Dumbledore said. “I rather think that wand will choose someone good.”

“Someone great, I imagine,” Garrick said, still distractedly examining the wand.

Dumbledore hummed noncommittally.

Elspeth crossed the room, and placed Fern’s wand on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window of the shop. “I think it’s best if she makes the wands we sell, from now on.”

Garrick swallowed. “Of course,” he said hoarsely. Then, he gave an uncertain smile and shook his head. “To think — pyromancy. She always did get her way. Like someone else I know.”

“I can’t imagine who you’re talking about,” Dumbledore said. “I always defer to the experts.”

Garrick began to cast a flurry of charms to test the new wand, once again filling the shop with magic and light.