Of all the kids in town, Ollie was the most likely to be pushed over. Scrawny, short, and painfully thin, Ollie was distant from the other children. Most of them got to play in the meadows on the south side of town, but Ollie had to work for Abiram the breadmaker. Ollie’s mother was rather ill, and was cared for by her cousin, Mala, and Ollie’s father had died when he was very young, in a great battle. Ollie had often wished his father would come home, somehow wandering in the wilderness these many years after the battle, and scoop up his son. This would mean he could stop pounding dough every day, which was Ollie’s fondest desire. By the time he had turned ten and his father had never come home, Ollie had abandoned that dream and with all of his free time, pursued a new one: He was going to become a wizard.
Many of the kids in town didn’t believe in wizards. In fact, practically none of the kids in town believed in wizards. The only children to ever talk about wizards were Ollie and his friend Ilia, the breadmaker’s daughter. Ollie suspected that Ilia only talked about wizards because she was sweet on him (incidentally, she was), but that didn’t stop him from talking. What the townspeople didn’t know, what Ilia didn’t even know, was that Ollie had a very good reason for believing in wizards. When he was nine and a half years old, Ollie had met one.
It was a dusty day when Malazed came to town. He was a large man, clearly a great warrior, and it was rumored at the market that he had been the sole survivor of a great battle, and was journeying home to see his family. He stayed in town for several weeks, taking lodgings in a farmer’s stables, keeping quietly to himself. None of the villagers wanted to talk to him, for fear he’d strike them down in a warrior’s rage. Children soon took to staging elaborate war games, with the biggest and loudest among them being Malazed the Great, but even they cowed to a whisper if the man himself came by on his way to the well.
Ollie began to idolize this man who was so similarly isolated in town, and told Ilia one morning that he intended to ask Malazed to adopt him.
“Adopt you? Why would he adopt you? Ollie, that’s crazy!” Ilia dropped her bushel of wheat, flustered. Ollie immediately got defensive.
“But he’s all alone out here, and he might need some company!”
“Ollie, you already have a family!”
Ollie turned away, mumbling something about the dough drying out. He didn’t like talking about it, but Ollie secretly hated his family. His aunt Mala was over-protective and strict, but she cared more about gossiping with the neighbors than taking care of his mother. And his mother… Ollie loved her, deep down, but she made him so mad! Why did she have to get so sick? She barely got out of bed anymore, and was all thin and pale. Ollie had to do the cooking, the cleaning, fetch the water, go to work “ it was all simply unfair. To Ollie, going away somewhere with a great warrior was about the best life he could imagine.
That is how it happened that, on a hot, humid day, Ollie followed Malazed to the well and asked, “Why don’t you carry a sword?”
Malazed stopped in his tracks, turning to face Ollie, his long, black hair matted against his hulking frame.
“I have no need for a sword.” When Ollie had first spoken, a handful of people were walking about, but after this, they had disappeared. If a child was to be murdered this day, the townspeople wanted no blame in the matter.
Undaunted, Ollie pressed further. “What sort of warrior doesn’t carry a sword or an axe, or at least a spear?”
To his surprise, Malazed smiled. The hulking frame bent to one knee, and leaned over Ollie, gripping his shoulder with his right arm. “Can you keep a secret, my friend?”
Ollie stuck out his chest and put his arms to his side, giving his best show of strength. “Unless it will hurt my family or friends.”
The warrior grinned. “A wise answer, boy. I sense a great power in you, a connection. I believe you sense it too. We are alike, you and I.” He was not talking so much as breathing the words, barely even a whisper. “You ask why I do not need a sword, and the answer is simple. I am the sword.”
Without warning or explanation, a sprout appeared in the ground between them. As if years were passing like seconds, the sprout grew into a plant, which grew further into a sapling, and soon a large tree was above them, with beautiful green leaves giving them shade. Ollie looked up in awe, his eyes meeting Malazed’s after several moments.
In another instant, the tree crumbled and turned to ash, and disappeared at their feet. Malazed pushed away some soot and knelt next to Ollie.
“We are wizards, my young friend. I had sensed another was in this town, and so I came here, waiting for him or her to reveal themselves to me. And you have. But you are too young yet, and you must grow before I can teach you.” Malazed stood up, dusting himself off.
“Wait! You’re going? But I’m nine years old! I am old enough, I swear! Teach me how to make the magic tree!”
Malazed laughed loudly, startling Ollie. “You have spirit, my young friend, but you must still grow up. How about this:” He picked up a twig off the ground, “I shall return in two years, and see if you are ready. If you can make magic with this simple stick, then I shall teach you the secret of the short-lived tree. Do we have an understanding?” Ollie nodded, fighting back tears, fighting back the urge to grab his new friend’s leg and never let go.
“What is your name, young wizard?”
“I… I’m called Ollie.” The name had never seemed so scrawny, short, or painfully thin as it did in that moment, on the trail to the well near the edge of town, with Ollie’s mighty warrior wizard walking further and further away.
“Do you like that name?”
“No “ not really!” Ollie was almost shouting, as the man was several paces away.
“Then create a new one! You’re a wizard, Ollie “ you can do whatever you want!”
With a loud crack, the wizard Malazed disappeared.
The next few months were especially difficult for Ollie, and Ilia was his only comfort. No one else had believed him when he said he was a wizard, and he had to admit, he could not perform any magical deeds to prove it. Ollie kept poking the stick, prodding it, but to no avail. Eventually, his aunt Mala stepped on it, and Ollie was forced to find a new stick to work with. He had been secretly hoping that Malazed had given the twig magical powers, and blamed his lack of progress with other sticks on this reason.
Ollie had managed to do one thing on his road to wizardry “ he crafted a wizard’s name for himself. He kept it to himself for a few days to try it out, but on his eleventh birthday, when Ilia came by with another bushel, he told her.
“Hi, Ollie! You’re eleven years old today, right! I can’t wait until I turn eleven!” Ilia was nine years old.
“Ollivander.” He spoke it quietly, as if the word itself contained magic.
“What?” Ilia looked at him, genuinely confused.
“My wizard’s name. It’s going to be Ollivander.”
“Umm… that’s nice!” Ilia quickly turned away, and started to unload wheat.
“You don’t like the name? What’s wrong with it?!” Ollie was angry and insulted, and he wasn’t afraid to show it.
Ilia turned toward him, her face red, tears welling up in her eyes. “It’s not that, Ollivander… I just like Ollie, that’s all.”
Ollie sighed, and gave Ilia a hug. He knew she didn’t like the name, but she was still sweet on him. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he was starting to get sweet on her, too.
As he walked home that afternoon, a sheet of crusty bread under his arm, a familiar voice called out to him.
“Have you decided on a name?”
Ollie turned, and nearly dropped his bread. Malazed was back, with his thick gloves and boots, his long black hair, and his huge, hulking physique.
“I was thinking about ‘Ollivander’, sir, unless it’s taken.”
Malazed laughed, and Ollie was transported back to the day when he saw the aging tree, the happiest day of his life.
“No, I have not met any other wizards called Ollivander. It’s a fine name, my friend.” Ollie bowed gratefully, but kept his head down, fearing what was coming next.
“Have you made any progress with the stick yet?”
Ollie panicked. He had three sticks he had been using, which were approximately the same length and width as the one that had broken, and he usually carried at least one with him for practice. Today, he was so excited for his birthday that had forgotten the sticks at home.
“Yes, I have! Quite a lot of progress, really!” Malazed raised his brow, giving Ollie a look that said he distinctly didn’t believe him. Ollie gestured over to a few saplings that were growing in the shade of the potter’s house. “I grew those two myself!”
“Is that a fact?”
“Well… actually I just watered them. Once.” Ollie felt three inches tall.
He picked up a twig off the ground, and began his defense, “It’s just that Mala broke the stick you gave me and none of the other sticks I use seem to do anything at all!” Ollie started swinging the twig wildly as he talked, “I can’t make it bigger, I can’t make it grow leaves, I can’t even make it wiggle!” As he finished his thought, a faint yellow light shot out of the end of the twig and lit the corner of the potter’s roof on fire. Malazed’s eyes widened. For a moment, the two stood in silence, staring at the flames. Ollie turned to his would-be mentor, nervously.
“That counts, right?”
Standing across the road from the house, Malazed reached his hand toward the flame and made a fist “ as he clenched his fingers together, the flame extinguished, as if he had snuffed out a candle.
“That certainly does count, Ollivander.”
In that moment, Ollie decided that he would only answer to Ollivander from now on. He also decided that his eleventh birthday was definitely the new happiest day of his life.
True to his word, Malazed stayed in town and began to teach Ollivander. He taught the boy wizard how to move objects with his mind, how to transform something from one thing to another, and how charm a carpet so you could fly with it. Malazed would often take him places, too, disappearing with a loud ‘crack’ and appearing somewhere else entirely. Ollivander got to see some truly amazing creatures, such as a great red dragon, a beautiful woman called a Veela, and a terrifying troll that nearly had them both killed. Each time, Malazed safely snapped them back to town, and continued their training for another day. Malazed provided food and conjured supplies for Ollivander’s family, so he stopped working at Abiram’s shop, but as the years progressed, he still continued to see Ilia, who had transformed into a beautiful young woman.
One night, when he was thirteen, Ollivander returned home to find a shocking thing had happened: his mother had died. Ollivander had seen less and less of her over the last two years, but he was surprised to see how much this affected him. For an entire day, he was overwhelmed with tears, and shouted angrily at Malazed when he suggested they practice magic to get his mind off of it.
“Bring her back!” he shouted at his mentor.
“I cannot.” Malazed looked back at him, solemnly.
“You said you can do anything, you can bring her back!”
“Ollivander, there are some things magic just can’t do. I’m sorry.” He reached out to comfort his pupil, but Ollivander turned and ran off. While they had been practicing magic during the day with their minds, Ollivander had secretly been practicing something else at night. He went to his room, a small dirty corner of their hut, and pulled back his blanket to reveal six cleaned, whittled twigs of different shades. Ever since his eleventh birthday, Ollivander had been working on a secret project: he wanted to make a magic stick.
While he had done many impressive things as a wizard-in-training, Ollivander had found that his mind simply wasn’t as focused as Malazed’s. At night, in bed, he practiced stickwork, as he called it, using the wood to amplify his power. He forced all of his magic through his fingers into the stick, and he found his magic to be stronger and more directed than his mind could ever manage on its own. Hearing tales from Malazed as they worked, Ollivander realized that many of the great wizards in history carried staffs or rods, and Ollivander believed that he had stumbled onto a great secret of magic “ that a wizard was powerful, but when combined with other forces, could be far more powerful still.
The night after his mother had died, Ollivander grabbed his best stick, a stubby piece of oak with a smoothed handle, and went out to where his mother’s body lay. Malazed followed him out of the hut, shouting after him, but Ollivander heard nothing except his own heartbeat. Pointing the stick at her body, which was to be buried the next morning, Ollivander concentrated with all of his might.
“No, Ollie!” Ilia’s shout startled him, and he accidentally smacked himself in the cheek with the stick. Ilia, the breadmaker’s daughter, had come with Malazed. Over the past two years, their relationship had changed. Ollivander was eager to show Ilia the magic he had learned, but found to his surprise that it frightened her. For all of their childish talk of wizards and fires and causing great rains from the sky, these two had remarkably different viewpoints when confronted with the real thing. Ilia continued working for her father (doubly so now that Ollivander was gone), and while she spent many fun evenings with him, at the start of every night together, she asked him the same thing: “No magic tonight, Ollie. Please?”
He swung his stick wildly, wanting desperately to fix his mother, wondering why he never thought of it before, when she was still alive. For all of his anger, for all of his sadness, he couldn’t get himself to point it at his mother. Sweat running down his face, his cheek still stinging from where he poked himself, and his mother’s body laying before him, he got down to his knees and cried. Ilia and Malazed took him home, and they huddled together on the floor until Ollivander fell asleep.
His mother’s death changed magic for Ollivander. His lessons with Malazed each day progressed rapidly, but his nightly work with wooden sticks, or wands, as he now called them, progressed even further. Ollivander believed that the night with his mother’s body wasn’t his fault “ he couldn’t raise her back from the dead because his wand simply wasn’t cooperating. The wand wanted him to stop, so it would not obey his magic. He was determined now to create a better wand, a perfect wand “ a wand that would understand him completely, obey his every command. With a wand like that, not only would he become the greatest wizard in the world, but he would never have to worry about anyone dying ever again.
Malazed advised him against this, that using a wand was a weakness, but Ollivander was convinced that he just didn’t understand. He was old and set in his ways “ Ollivander knew where the true power of magic lay. Eventually, after many objections, Malazed allowed Ollivander to use his favorite wand, currently a supple olive branch, during lessons. Ollivander was able to accomplish many feats of magic, but whenever he tried for something large “ something monumental “ the wand would inevitably fail him. So every night, he went back to his home (now vacant as Mala had left with a new husband) and continued studying wands.
After months and months of work with little progress, a particularly nasty lesson with a sea troll gave Ollivander a new avenue to pursue. He and Malazed were trying to prevent it from attacking some sailors at port, and the scuffle got a little too close for comfort. Once they’d returned to their village and cleaned up, they began practicing summon spells, and to his surprise, Ollivander’s wand spewed forth a great torrent of water. Examining the wand, he found a slimy hair from the sea troll’s head had gotten wrapped around it. While Malazed rebuked him for using the wrong spell, again blaming the lazy wand usage, Ollivander kept secret the hair of the sea troll. He had, by accident, discovered his greatest trick yet “ wandwood works best when boosted by magic.
This changed everything for Ollivander. He had been going about it all wrong! Using his excursions with Malazed as an excuse, he soon obtained samples from unicorns, vampires, mermaids, and horrific beasts called thestrals. He found that the magical substances work best when actually inside the wand, so he managed a complicated spell to merge the two objects together. His wands were more powerful than ever, though some substances worked better than others. Ollivander felt confident that, given enough time, he could indeed make the perfect wand.
Time was, however, in short supply. Ilia, now fifteen, worked long hours in her father’s bakery, for he had fallen ill and was unable to do much to help. Ollivander saw her when he could, but he was consumed more than ever with his wand work. He was also beginning to resent Malazed. With each passing day, it seemed to Ollivander that Malazed was growing more and more out of touch with the wonderful world that Ollivander had discovered. He began falling asleep during lessons, then started to make excuses and feign illness so he could spend more time in his study, working with wands. By this point, the scrawny young boy had grown into a wiry young man, master of his own house. The townspeople never talked to him anymore, except Ilia, all of them thinking that young Ollie had gone queer in the head. He had gotten to spending nearly every day with his wands, and taking only one or two lessons per week with Malazed, when the elder wizard brought surprising news.
“I must leave, Ollivander.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Ollivander tried his best to feign sadness, but deep down he was terribly excited that he might be on his own for a while.
“There is war brewing in the East. A call has gone out to the wizards of the world, to stop a mad army.” He paused, lowering his voice, “I was hoping you would come with me.”
Ollivander stared at Malazed, his eyes seeming so much wearier than when they first met. When he was ten, going on an adventure with a great wizard would’ve been heaven. But he wasn’t ready, he hadn’t found the perfect wand yet. And Ollivander, for all of his skills and strength, couldn’t bear to face the wizards of the world without it.
“I must stay, Malazed. I have work to do.”
Malazed grunted, “ ’Tis a fool’s work.”
“Perhaps it is.”
Without another word, Malazed disappeared with a loud crack. Ollivander knew that he lost a friend that day. He went to work on a particularly finicky unicorn hair, but did not shed a tear.
With Malazed gone, Ollivander immersed himself in work. He would not leave his hut for days. He grew tired of the knocks from concerned neighbors, so he threw spells on his hut so they would forget it existed. He solved the problem of food by enchanting a basin so that he could pluck out any food from the Persian King’s storeroom simply by reaching his hand in it. He went out mostly at night, to cut down trees and seek out magical creatures.
Returning to his home late one evening, he was startled to hear a familiar voice.
“Ollie? Is that you?” He turned, and to his surprise, Ilia stood behind him, in a long gray robe.
“Oh, Ilia, it’s simply wonderful! I’ve found that combining yew, that’s a tree in the North, and Unicorn Hair, I get the most delightful response-”
Ollivander stopped short, as Ilia was crying.
“Still working on your magic twigs, Ollie? Where have you been? I thought you were gone “ I thought you were dead!”
Ollivander dropped his supply of unicorn hair without even realizing it, so taken aback was the wizard. “What do you mean? I only saw you last week!”
“Last week? Ollie, no one has seen you for six months! Six months, Ollie! What have you become?”
“I’ve become something great, Ilia “ I will become the greatest wizard of all time. I just need a little more work…” He collected his unicorn hairs, and hurried toward his hut.
“Well, goodbye, then, Ollie.”
He turned. She hadn’t moved. “What do you mean, ‘goodbye’?”
“I have the sickness. The one that took your mother and my father. I’m dying, Ollie.” He looked at her again, and realized her robes were gray to mark her “ those with the sickness were not allowed around town during the day. He couldn’t believe it “ his Ilia, his best friend in the world. Not her. Impossible.
“But “ what “ how “ what about the bakery?”
“Closed, last month. No one will buy bread from… someone like me. No one will even sell me wheat to make it.”
“And your father?” Ollivander felt like vomiting. This couldn’t be happening.
“Ollie, my father’s gone. Nearly half the town is gone.”
He was finding it hard to stand. He raised a shaking fist in the air, trembling. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know, I’m sorry. I can fix this, Ilia. I can fix this.” He went to his hut and grabbed his best wand. Returning, he aimed the wand at her.
“Ollie, don’t you dare!” Her face was red with tears, contrasting her unnaturally pale skin.
“I can fix you, Ilia!” He pointed the wand, and summoning all of the healing magic he could think of, he tried to heal her. Ilia shrieked and gripped her head. In the air above her, a clump of her long, lovely black hair was floating down.
“What did you do to me?” She was screaming at him while clutching her head, a crooked scar visible where the hair was missing. “What did you do?”
Her hairs landed in his hand, one end of the clump still scorched from where his spell had severed them. The wand still wasn’t good enough. The spell must’ve backfired. His mind was a blur as he headed back to his hut; Ilia’s screams a distant echo. He needed a better wand. He needed more time. More time! That was it! Excited, remembered a spell that Malazed had taught him: there was a spell that could stop time. Useful if one needed to make an escape without interference, they had tried it more than once. Ollivander enacted the spell over his hut with his best wand, and returned to work.
He never left the hut now, for what seemed like weeks of research. He knew it would only be a moment for Ilia, and he could return and fix her and her hair, which he kept in a glass on his desk, and heal her of this tragic illness. He would heal the entire town, and become a hero “ he could join Malazed and the others in their war as the greatest wizard of the age.
Finally he had made a wand, of strong birch and a phoenix feather, which he was reasonably happy with. It responded well to him, and had great conjuring power. It might indeed be the Perfect Wand. Once he was completely satisfied, he left his hut to find Ilia. He was startled that it was daylight “ a realization that quickly horrified him. The time-stop was to have made it so only a moment had passed outside his hut. Something was wrong.
He wandered around town, for the first time realizing how much the people had moved on without him “ the town was significantly larger than when he was a child, and his little hut was almost buried by the buildings surrounding it. Even with this illness, it seemed the town was faring well. He asked after Ilia to dozens of passersby, but none had heard of her. At last, he grabbed an elderly man, who seemed to recognize the name.
“Ilia? The breadmaker?”
“Yes, where is she? I must find her!”
“Did you know her? Of course not, what am I saying! Were you a relative, then?”
Ollivander pointed his birch wand at the man, but it merely confused him, as it seemed as if the young man was trying to attack him with a twig. “What are you talking about, old man? Tell me where I may find her!”
“Calm down, my boy! She’s been dead these twenty years! Died when the plague hit town a while back. Only a handful of us left from those days. Dark times, I tell you…” The man continued to talk, but Ollivander was no longer listening. Rushing to his hut, he saw that while it was the same on the inside, the outside had seen years of weather. The spell of ignoring it was obviously working, but the time spell… Malazed. Malazed’s spell was wrong, and now Ilia was dead. Summoning all his energies, he disappeared from his hut with a loud crack.
It was cold and snowy where he reappeared. He could not see any buildings. A few feet away, beating against the wind, sat a small lean-to with a tarp, housing a faint glow underneath. Ollivander raised his wand, and sent a violent curse toward the glow. The tarp was blasted away and up rose a large, hulking figure, with long gray hair and a long gray beard, both covered in snow. The figure broke a large smile upon seeing his assailant.
“Ollivander! You’re alive! I can’t believe it! I tried looking for you so many times, but I’d given up hope! What happened to you, my friend?” Ollivander responded with another curse, which Malazed instinctively caught, and dissolved.
“Ollivander?”
“SHE’S DEAD!” He hurled another curse, which Malazed deflected.
“What?”
“Ilia is dead! You killed her, you and your lousy, incompetent magic!” Ollivander hurled another curse at Malazed, who pushed out with his hands, rebounding the curse. It hit the birch wand, which flew out of Ollivander’s hand and landed in the snow.
“Ollivander, you will talk civilly to me, or I will cut out your tongue.” There was anger in Malazed’s eyes, and his cold voice told Ollivander that he was not exaggerating.
“The time-stop “ it didn’t work! I needed time to make a better wand, but she’s already dead because of you!”
Malazed’s jaw dropped. “You didn’t “ Ollivander, the time-stop only affects a small area, such as a house, or field. You didn’t think “ you can’t simply stop time for the entire world.”
“Why not? You were the one who told me that wizards can do anything!” The snow was flying furiously, and Ollivander suspected he was subconsciously responsible. His heart ached so bad that it didn’t matter.
“Within reason, Ollivander! Within reason! There are some things you cannot change! I wish you would understand that!”
Ollivander was furious. Malazed the great, Malazed the warrior, Malazed, who mentored him for so many years “ how had he not seen what a fool he was? Now he was trying to blame Ollivander for his own faulty spell. He grabbed the birch wand, and with a crack, he was back in his hut, never to see Malazed again.
Something was wrong. Returning home, his stomach felt twisted, as if the travelling hadn’t worked quite right. He stared at the birch wand, his greatest creation, as it tumbled out of his hand. Somehow, Malazed had jinxed it. It wasn’t perfect anymore “ it wasn’t his anymore. His study, his work “ all wasted in a pointless argument.
Angrily, he threw a fistful of wands across the room, sending streaks of light out as they cracked, knocking over his basin and breaking a jar. He turned to grab another wand, when he saw which jar had broken. The glass on his desk containing Ilia’s hair lay shattered, her hairs tangled in the pieces. Instinctively, he pulled the hair out of the wreckage, carefully and quietly cleaning them: Ilia’s hair, which he had cursed right off her head. He had ignored her for so long that he had missed their chance to be together. He never forgave his father for dying, his mother for the illness, or Malazed for being unable to save her. It was his fault; Malazed was right, he had been blinded by his quest.
Defeated, his hands let the hairs fall to the ground. One of the strands touched a wand that lay there, and for a moment, the wand glowed with a bright golden hue. Ollivander picked up the wand and the hair, smiling. There was an idea, yes. Ilia may have even liked this one. Gripping the doorframe, Ollivander and his hut disappeared from town with a very loud crack.
Appearing in an agora at the bottom of rocky hill, Ollivander set to work. Reapplying his effective time-stop spell and forgetting spell, he tweaked it this time to only have the desired effect on non-wizards. Shortly thereafter, he placed up a sign outside reading “OLLIVANDER’S WAND SHOP: TOOLS FOR THE DISTINGUISHED WITCH OR WIZARD.” He would still search for the perfect wand. It could be found, he was certain of it. His mistake wasn’t the quest, no; it was how he handled it. Instead of cutting himself off from the world, he would use his wands to aid it. This city he had found himself in was often spoken of by Malazed, and was a place Ollivander often wanted to visit. Time passed, and Ollivander resumed his studies, determined just as ever that he would find the perfect wand.
He relocated twice more, finding his wands were too often in peril on the Grecian hills and after that, the Roman shores. Eventually, he found a well-fortified town along a river in the Kingdom of England. He liked it there quite a bit, for witches and wizards were plentiful there, with many living in small villages together. While he still kept to himself, he allowed more frequent excursions to meet his fellow wizards; many of whom, he was surprised to learn, regarded him as a legend. Ollivander’s shop in London soon became a destination for the wizarding community; by now, wands had become an accepted standard of wizarding, and few wizards could conjure up the simplest spells without one. The town grew around him, and before he realized what had happened, he was helping little boys and girls pick out wands before they went to a formal wizarding school “ at age eleven, no less!
One sleepy summer afternoon, as he had spent countless others, Ollivander was experimenting with cores and woods. As it happened this day, it was whether the heartstring of a Romanian Longhorn was best paired with hawthorn or rosewood. Into his shop walked a young man who, Ollivander guessed by his large shoes, had probably broken his wand and needed a new one. Ollivander hated the task; second wands never worked quite the same as the first, and he could never ascertain exactly why. He suspected that the new wand sensed the allegiance to the old in the wizard’s heart. After all, as he knew all too well, wands can choose a wizard, and they can just as easily deny them.
“Excuse me, Mister Ollivander,” the boy spoke, and the old wandmaker lifted his head, startled. In front of him stood a young man with reddish-brown hair, dressed formally in his school robes, though the next term couldn’t be starting for two months… or three months? Ollivander never cared much for dates. His surprise was though; of all Hogwarts students, he would not have expected this one to return to his shop needing replacement.
“What can I do for you, Albus?” The boy smiled brightly at him, pulling out his wand, still mercifully intact. Ollivander returned the smile, giving him his full attention.
“Mister Ollivander, I have been reading some books over the summer, and I simply must know.”
Ollivander peered at the boy carefully, his curiosity piqued. “Must know what, my boy?”
“I’ve read of something called the Deathstick, sir. The Wand of Destiny. That wand which is greater than all others, which can make one a master of all things,” the boy paused, trying to contain his excitement. “…Even a master of death. I was wondering, Mister Ollivander…is it real? Could such a thing exist?”
Ollivander was silent for a moment, twirling the Longhorn string in his hands, as he stared at the broken strands of dark hair that he mounted above the door. Of course, he had heard rumors of such an object, and even spent three years outside the time-stop once, pursuing this Deathstick in the off chance it could bring Ilia back to him. He had heard about Albus’s younger sister, Ariana, and knew all too well what the boy must be feeling. He stared intently at young Albus, and saw little Ollie, those many years ago, pleading with Malazed for his mother, for Ilia. When he spoke, it was slowly and softly, a sign of both his age and the sadness in his words.
“There are many powerful wands in the world, Albus, some far more powerful than the ones I’ve made. Whether the Wand of Destiny exists, I cannot say for certain, but know this: I have lived for many long years, and I have tested wands as few others have. No wand, no matter how powerful, will make one a master of death. No wand can bring back the dead; no wand can return us our loved ones,” he sighed, “There are some things in life that magic simply can’t undo.”
Albus started to walk out, but hesitated, turning back to Ollivander. “Then why do you continue to study them so?”
Ollivander pulled the heartstring tightly, tearing it in two. “To prove myself wrong, Albus. To prove myself wrong.”
Fin
Deathsticks by Daniel Crogan
Chapter Endnotes: This was a spurious attempt to answer some questions I had about the audacious sign "Ollivanders, since 382 BC" appearing in London in Diagon Alley while rereading the Philosopher's Stone. I sought to create an in-continuity story that doesn't outright contradict any principles in the Harry Potter series, but through the story explains not only the sign, but aspects of wandlore and magical history that were teased but left untouched by Rowling. I have never written fan fiction before - if inspiration strikes me, I may write another someday.
(one other note: i wanted it to be vague in the story, but I believe this 'time stop' spell means that Ollivander doesn't age while in the hut/wand shop, but does age normally when outside it)