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// Chapter 4:  Wand 
// Story: Gift of Divinity 
// by computerneek 
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Garrick Ollivander shivered with excitement as he closed his shop at the end of the day, just three days after he had received the hair from the head of an unknown goddess.  He’d had record low sales for the Hogwarts shopping season these last two days- but he had done it.
He had taken exquisite care in preparing the best quality wood he could find in his entire storeroom, then trimmed it to the exact length that would allow him to make the best wand he could with the materials, and finally crafted the wand.
It had taken two days, to the usual one, but he had ended up with a wand crafted of vine, and exactly ten and three quarters inches long.  As usual, he knew when the wand had been crafted successfully when an ornate carving appeared on the wand, carved by the wand itself to better facilitate the bond between the wood and the core.  This one had been particularly tricky to complete- but he had done it.
The carving had taken nearly an hour to complete itself, far longer than most wands- which indicated to him that even the wand was taking great care to properly craft itself.
Then of course, the ornate carving spanned the entire length of the wand.  That alone meant one of two things:  Either the core was far substandard or damaged, resulting in a very weak to useless wand…  Or the core was extremely powerful, requiring the larger carving to reach its full potential without burning the wood.  Unfortunately, he’d only ever had three full-length carvings before.  They had all been wands with magically damaged cores- and the full-length carving was because it was attempting to make up for the damage.  Despite their efforts, they had been very, very weak, and two of them had burned out during his quality control testing.  The last had been discarded as a failure.
Those three wands had also taken mere seconds for their carvings, in their desperate bids to be strong enough.
But this one…  This one seemed to be an exception.  Even standing two feet away from it, he could feel the tremendous power stored inside the tiny wooden stick, just waiting to be unleashed.
He had already coated it in the special lacquer that protected the wand wood from any sort of outside damage, including from finger oils; he always applied it as quickly as possible after the carving was complete…  while wearing gloves.  The lacquer also helped to bolster the wand’s responsiveness, though not by much.
He reached out…  and, very gently, touched it, at the base.  The area that every wand carved, and where the wielding wizard held it; the carving also served as the link between the wand and the wizard, and a wand could not be used by a wizard that wasn’t touching its carvings.
He shivered as an electric tingle traveled up his arm- and instantly knew that the wand hadn’t accepted him as its master…  But had acknowledged that it needed to cooperate with him for quality control.
He’d never had a wand demonstrate high-level decision making like that.
So he lifted it gently into his hand, and closed his hand around it.  He had his own wand stored safely in his pocket already.
The wand didn’t react.
He tried ‘feeling into’ it as he usually did to measure its absolute power level- and ran into a wall of pure energy inside the wand, almost like it was protecting him from hurting himself with its power.
So he took a deep breath, apparated to his testing grounds, and began his testing routine.
As he went through the routine, he made a few observations.  When he tested its maximum power…  he didn’t get the idea it was emitting its maximum power- because in every single one of the three different tests, it used just barely not enough power to ruin the testing area for the next wand.  When he tested Charms, it worked flawlessly.  Transfiguration, the same.  Everything, it did flawlessly.
Except for the Dark Arts.  When he tried casting the Imperius Curse on a mouse in a cage…  nothing happened.  On the very next spell, it produced the most powerful Patronus he’d ever seen- and his very first corporeal Patronus, both in one go.
When he got back to his shop, he tested its flexibility- it rated a ‘slightly springy’- before he polished it and placed it in a fresh wand box.
If only he knew where to find more goddess hairs.
Though perhaps, he sighed.  Perhaps it wouldn’t be a good thing to have too many Goddess wands out there- it might even be more powerful than the Elder Wand!
…  Probably was, when he thought about it.  The Elder Wand was made with mundane, though extremely rare, materials…  whereas the hair from the head of a goddess wasn’t ‘mundane’ by any stretch of the imagination.





Hermione Granger took a deep breath, and let it out.
It felt like forever ago when Professor McGonagall had shown up on her doorstep with a letter and the news that magic was real.  The Professor had done a little demonstration…  But her father, Dan Granger, had been at work at the time- so her mother had told McGonagall upfront that she would be unwilling to allow any shopping journeys same-day.
Hermione had also declined to pass judgement on whether or not she wanted to go to Hogwarts at all right away- she wanted to talk it over with both her parents, and take some time to properly consider it, before she decided.
So her mother had picked a date three days later, and suggested if McGonagall could come back then, when both parents would be home all day- they were both dentists- she could receive Hermione’s decision and, possibly, guide the family wizard-shopping.  Hermione had accepted the span as ‘plenty long enough to decide’, and McGonagall had promised to return.
Unfortunately, whenever that day had come around, Dan had been absent again; one of the other dentists at the practice- it was some kind of large facility that served quite a few of them- had called off sick, so he’d been called in to cover for them.  They had told McGonagall that Hermione did want to go to Hogwarts…  but had to reschedule the shopping trip once again.
This had happened some two or three times.
Then, on the latest scheduled day, both of her parents got called in to cover for call-offs.
Hermione had taken it upon herself to prepare for McGonagall’s arrival- and when she had come…  She had explained that, once again, they’d been called in to work, and suggested another fresh shopping date on their next joint day off, during the following week.
Unfortunately, as Professor McGonagall told her with a saddened tone, they couldn’t push it off more than just two days- to Friday.  Any further, and they would have to call off her attendance at Hogwarts entirely.
But when she had examined the schedule, both parents worked both days.
“Is…  Do you think it would be possible for them to drop me off on the way to work, and pick me up on the way home?”  She had asked the question with a bit of a hopeless tone, expecting a no- but the answer had surprised her.  Yes, it would be possible.  Tom, the barkeeper in the Leaky Cauldron, could watch over her.
So she had told McGonagall when her parents usually left…  and asked if she could arrive some half an hour or more before that, so her parents could make their decision.  When her parents got home, she’d told them about what happened.  They hadn’t been happy…  but they had taken it.
She had been afraid that they would miss it somehow, and she wouldn’t be able to learn magic.
But she needn’t have been.
She had gotten up especially early that morning, and eaten breakfast with her parents- who had also gotten up early- rather than as they were walking out the door.
Then McGonagall arrived on schedule, her parents made their decision, and the four of them piled into the car.
They had driven to the Leaky Cauldron.  Her parents had accompanied her to Gringotts, exchanged some money for her, made her promise to be certain all of her required supplies were covered- preferably purchased- before she got anything that wasn’t on the list, and had returned to London and driven to work.  Professor McGonagall seemed to be amused that they hadn’t thought that asking her to enforce that promise was necessary.
So now, she and Professor McGonagall were standing just outside the Leaky Cauldron, in Diagon Alley.  Her parents were nowhere to be seen, and her pockets were full of gold.  McGonagall had talked to Tom, so he was lending one of the rooms upstairs in the Leaky Cauldron to her for the day- she wouldn’t be confined to public spaces for the entire day.
“So, ahh,” she muttered, looking around the busy street in front of her.  She glanced down at the shopping list she had in her hand.  The traffic wasn’t so dense she couldn’t see the businesses on the other side of the street- but she didn’t see anywhere that looked like it sold magic wands.  “Where do we get the wand?”
McGonagall raised an eyebrow.  “You want to start with that?”
She shrugged.  “Might as well,” she answered.  “I can see everything else, and a wand is probably lighter than all this gold.”  She chuckled nervously.
Professor McGonagall nodded soberly.  Hermione wasn’t very strong at all, thanks to some disease that inhibited her muscle growth.  Fortunately, it had set in late enough that she wasn’t likely to become disabled from it, but it did put her fairly firmly on the weak side…  for the rest of her life.  According to McGonagall, when her parents had warned her about it before they left the house, even wizards had never found a cure; they could only slow the onset.
“Ollivanders is a little ways down the street.” She pointed.
She winced.  “Well…  No time like the present, I guess.”





One hundred four.  One hundred five.  One hundred six.
Ollivander rushed back to the front of the shop with the three fresh wand boxes- and winced when he saw that the girl that was getting a wand today had evidently grown tired of standing.  She still looked eagerly at each box he brought out to her, and eagerly tried every wand he handed her, but now she was doing it from where she’d sat on the floor.
Still, though, no response.





Four hundred eighteen.  Four hundred nineteen.
He was starting to get desperate.  By now, the girl- Hermione Granger- wasn’t the only one with tired legs; Professor McGonagall had also sat on the floor to wait, since the only available chair had already been buried under a pile of tried wands.  Even he was tired of running back and forth, after over an hour of rushing around his shop, collecting wands.
Something caught his attention, in the corner of his eye, on his way back towards the shelf that held the next set of candidates.
A wand box was glowing gently.  That almost never happened…  and when it did, it was almost always the perfect match.
Only…  He knew this box.  He’d put it on that shelf less than a week before.  In it was a wand of vine, ten and three quarters inches long and slightly springy.  Its core…
It was the Goddess Wand.
He removed it from the shelf, noticing that it stopped glowing the moment he did so, and turned back towards the entrance, where the girl waited, with only the one wand.
Four hundred twenty.
He went down on one knee next to the girl once again, placing the wand box on the floor, then opened it.
“Fancy,” Hermione observed promptly.
“It is,” he agreed, removing it from the box with one hand on either end and turning to offer it.  “Vine, ten and three quarter inches, slightly springy, with a core of-!”
He knew she was listening to him; she had that attentive look to her, even as her hand accepted the wand from him.
The moment her hand closed on it, he felt a sudden warmth in the wood where he was still touching it- and a ripple of pure white energy flowed through the engraving from her hand, quickly filling the whole wand and making it that much fancier.  At the same time, the girl let out a gasp of surprise, and seemed to be stunned into inaction.
Ollivander quickly withdrew his hands- and as soon as the energy finished filling the whole wand, a blast of red and gold sparks shot out the end of it and showered most of the shop in brilliance.  He knew what that meant- the wand had found its master.
And judging by the energy in the bond…  It hadn’t just found its master; they would also be forever inseparable.  The wand would likely refuse to function at all for anyone else, should they ever get their hands on it.
McGonagall leaned forward, from where she’d been leaning against the wall.  “Miss Granger?  Are you okay?”
“No, I’m-!” Hermione began, breathlessly.  “I’m fine,” she continued.  “I’m just…”  She trailed off, then finally took a deep breath and let it out as she lowered the wand from the position she’d accepted it from Ollivander in, to rest in her lap.  “I wasn’t expecting that,” she said, much more normally.
“You’re telling me,” Ollivander told her.  “What happened?”
She looked at him.  “Weird…  tingly feeling, went through my whole body.”  She shivered.  “Caught me by surprise.  I think it’s still there, but I can’t really feel it.”  Then she raised the wand up in front of her, and looked at it.  “Oh my.  Really fancy now.”  She frowned.  “Is it supposed to do that?”
“Who knows,” Ollivander answered, while McGonagall rose to her feet to walk closer.  “That’s the first wand I’ve ever made whose core is a hair from the head of a goddess.”
There was a moment of silence.
“The hair of…  what!?” Hermione asked, staring at him.