London had woken into a cool, bright sort of day. Not proud about it; just awake and ready to work.
Rowan and Professor McGonagall turned onto a narrower lane where the shopfronts pressed closer together as if sharing secrets. A bell chimed somewhere that hadn't been hung. The air felt clean in the way it does when the weather has decided to be fair for at least an afternoon.
The window was small and clouded. A single wand lay on faded purple velvet like a sentence with no punctuation yet. The letters on the glass said Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. and looked exactly old enough.
McGonagall pushed the door with two fingers, and the bell above it made a polite sound, the sort bells make when they know the room is listening.
It was all wood and dust and careful quiet. Narrow shelves climbed high, their boxes stacked to the ceiling in neat disagreement. The air smelled like old shavings, beeswax, and a thin river of something green—sap, maybe, trapped in the grain.
No one appeared at once. That felt right.
Rowan let the door close behind him. The second movement in him—yesterday's lesson in how to breathe a little differently—settled to the pace of the room. Threads were light here, finer than hair, drifting, not catching. Not yet.
A man spoke from between the stacks, voice amused, dusty as the air: "Professor McGonagall. The bell still finds you before I do."
She turned a fraction. "Mr. Ollivander."
He came into view the way an idea steps out of a book at the moment you need it. Pale eyes. Pale hair that had once been a firmer color, now the shade of a moth's wing. A suit that remembered better days and had decided that was enough.
"And the boy," he said softly, as though Rowan were something delicate on loan. "Good morning."
"Good morning," Rowan said.
"Rowan Von Vey," McGonagall supplied, crisp, capitalized.
Ollivander's eyebrows ticked up, almost-not. "A name that fits in the mouth," he murmured. "Not always the case. Welcome, Mr. Von Vey." He looked at Rowan's hands. "Right-handed?"
"Yes."
"Good. Though wands have been known to disagree about handedness when they feel like an argument." He tipped his head toward a slim counter that had the patient shine of wood rubbed by generations of fingers. "We'll begin."
He drew out a narrow tape from a drawer. The tape snaked politely around Rowan's head, wrist, elbow. It measured from shoulder to fingertip, then, without being told, measured his heart to the end of his thumb. It tickled his knee. It considered his spine.
Ollivander watched, saying nothing, while the tape made up its mind. "Mm," he said at last, and the tape went limp with satisfaction.
"Mr. Von Vey," he went on, "the wand chooses the wizard, as I have had occasion to say more times than the century deserves. But we do try to be helpful." He stepped into the aisles and tilted his head like a man listening for birds. Boxes shuffled almost imperceptibly. Some leaned toward him, some did nothing. He selected one three shelves up without looking and brought it back as easily as a thought retrieved.
"Willow. Unicorn hair. Ten inches. Slightly springy." He slid the lid back with a sound like a whisper. He placed the wand in Rowan's hand as if handing him a quill he expected to be returned.
Rowan held it. The wood lay on his palm like polite company—present, waiting, not calling him by his first name yet.
"Give it a wave," Ollivander said, mild.
Rowan lifted his wrist and moved his hand the way one writes a curve cleanly. A soft breath of air stirred a few motes. The shelf to his left sighed and settled again. Nothing else.
Ollivander took the wand back, approval and dismissal both in the nod. "Not it," he said cheerfully. "Willow likes to mend, and you do not need mending that way."
Rowan said nothing. The threads in the room made a faint sound at the edge of his hearing—less a music than a promise they could hum if asked properly.
The next box was ash with a dragon heartstring, eleven inches, not quite rigid. It put a prickle into his fingers, a static at the knuckle, and then lost interest like a cat invited onto a lap it didn't care for. He sent a line of dust along the counter; the dust returned to the same place as if embarrassed.
"Mm," said Ollivander, and that mm contained the entire biography of ash as it relates to stubborn boys and dragon parts. He replaced it carefully.
Vine with phoenix feather. Cedar with unicorn hair. Elder—"no, not for today," Ollivander said, voice turning from curiosity to history with a glance. Rowan tried each with the attention he gave to taps and hinges: quiet, honest, unhurried. A few liked him enough to be pleasant. None leaned forward the way the room seemed to be waiting for.
"Tell me," Ollivander said lightly, handing him a cherry with a dragon heartstring that hummed and then fell asleep in Rowan's grip, "what is it that magic feels like to you? Students say all sorts of things and think I am collecting metaphors." He smiled, a moth-flit. "I am."
Rowan turned the wand between his fingers and handed it back. "Another movement," he said, "under the first."
Ollivander looked directly at him then, pleased, as if the answer had wandered in wearing its thinking cap. "Yes," he said softly. "Second movement. Very good. And what does finding the right wand feel like, do you think?"
"Recognition," Rowan said.
"By which you mean?"
"When you stop squaring the picture frame with your fingers," Rowan said, "because it already sits right."
Ollivander's eyes warmed. "We might get along," he said, and his voice carried the hush reserved for boys who have not been asked clever questions often enough. "Try this—beech and unicorn hair. Eleven, rather crisp."
Rowan took it. Crisp was right. It wanted him to be the sort of boy who stood straighter while reciting answers on a Tuesday, which he was not and would not become.
He lowered the wand. "No," he said, not apologizing.
"Right," Ollivander said, sounding nothing if not satisfied. He replaced beech.
McGonagall, who had been watching with the calm of a cat by a hearth, said nothing at all. When Rowan glanced, she tipped her chin a degree, the way she did when a student was about to meet something and she had decided not to stand between them and it.
Ollivander went higher on the ladder, his thin shoes making almost no sound. He pulled three boxes. Then one more from a place he had to reach for. He returned with a stack and set them down like a card trick where everyone wins slowly.
"Maple. Sycamore. Hornbeam. Hazel."
Maple woke in Rowan's hand like a bright morning and then decided it was someone else's morning. Sycamore liked change too much. Hornbeam had opinions. Hazel nearly sneezed, which was impressive.
Ollivander rested his fingertips on the lids and thought with his hands. "Curious," he said quietly. "You are very clear with them."
Rowan didn't know if that was praise. He let the room answer for him.
He became aware, then, of a thread.
Not the thin drifting filaments that had been idling around the edges of the boxes. A different line—brighter, steady as held breath—running up into the higher dark of the shelves where dust had chosen a permanent address.
Rowan didn't look up at once. He listened the way he had learned to listen for the right place to stop turning a screw. The line hummed without show. It did not invite him. It existed, which was enough.
"Another?" Ollivander said, already reaching for walnut.
Rowan's eyes tracked the line. It disappeared in the vertical maze of compartments, then reappeared further back, a faint seam in the air you could almost miss if you enjoyed missing things.
"May I…?" Rowan asked, dipping his chin toward the ladder.
Ollivander's head tilted, moth again. "By all means. Carefully."
Rowan climbed. The wood was old but sturdy, the rungs polished by more boys than he could count. He didn't hurry. Halfway up, the thread brightened—not in color, exactly, but in certainty. It cut across the space between him and a bay of boxes that did not show off. The lid edges there were a little more worn. A rougher string tied around one of them had undone itself and been tied again, badly and well, years apart.
Rowan stopped on a rung and reached without the greedy slide hands make when they want. His fingers closed on the box with the retied string. The thread sang once, quiet as a struck glass.
He descended, holding the box with two hands the way one carries a question.
McGonagall watched with no visible change except in her eyes, which made room for interest. Ollivander's face had become very still.
Rowan set the box down and did not open it.
"Go on," Ollivander said, and there was more air in his voice, as if something in him had stood up.
Rowan slipped the lid. The velvet inside had faded to a careful dusk. The wand lay along it, dark as ink that took its time drying. The wood had a fine grain that looked almost braided if you were tempted to say something poetic and then thought better of yourself.
He lifted it. It fit his hand as if the hand had remembered it, not the other way round.
The second movement in him changed key—no louder, only proper. He didn't raise the wand. He didn't need to. A small warmth traveled from his palm to his wrist and sat there like a kept promise.
Ollivander exhaled once. "Blackthorn," he said, the word both a name and an introduction. "And in the core—" He stopped, pupils finding their size and then changing it. "Thestral tail hair."
McGonagall's breath was audible and then wasn't. "Rare," she said, which was like her saying nearly unheard of.
"Not my only one," Ollivander said, almost gently. "But a pairing I have made very seldom. And never for a boy who—" He did not finish that sentence because sometimes finishing sentences makes them smaller. He turned instead to Rowan. "Well?"
Rowan didn't make it wave. He let the wand be held. The threads in the room drew in toward the wand the way small birds come toward a quiet hand with seed. Not flocking—aligning. A few filaments ran from the wand to the shelves themselves as if remembering cousins. One line, faint and silver, ran somewhere else entirely, into the part of the shop that was older than wood.
"It's this," Rowan said, because there was no other honest word.
Ollivander's smile was not the sort adults give when a boy pleases them. It was the sort men make privately in their workrooms when a piece finally sits square. "Yes," he said. "It is."
McGonagall's eyes came to Rowan's hand and rested there as if that hand were a story she intended to read twice. "Blackthorn," she said, thinking aloud just enough for him to hear, "suited to those who find their strength under weather. And thestral—" She let the thought stand and did not lean on it.
"Length?" Rowan asked, after a small quiet you could have wrapped bread in.
"Eleven and three-quarters," Ollivander said. "Supple." He rolled the word as if seeing how far it would go in the room. "It will ask precision of you. It will not enjoy bluster. It will tolerate power, but it is not impressed by it."
Rowan closed his fingers and the wand answered by existing a fraction more. He felt the edges of the grip pass into memory. The second movement ran its simple scale and decided to stay.
"Try it," Ollivander said softly. He cleared his throat, as if dismissing the formality it insisted on and inviting the boy to be a boy.
Rowan lifted his hand. "Lumos," he said, not pushing the light, only naming the space, exactly. The wand's tip opened like an eye in a dark room that already knew where the furniture was. The glow was not harsh. It took the color of old wax and honest pages and made a gentle circle on the counter.
"Nox," Rowan said, and it went, an obedient door closing when you are not leaving the house but wish the room to change.
Dust settled without complaint. A box two rows up sighed as if the wood within it had decided to go back to sleep.
"Again," Ollivander said, and his pleasure was in the way he stepped back to give the boy room.
Rowan did not repeat the same trick. He turned his wrist a fraction, considered the blackthorn's balance, and the wand told him where it felt most itself. He said "Reparo" to a hairline crack along the counter's edge that no one else had seen first, and the line pulled closed as if deciding to quit the job early.
Ollivander's exhale became a laugh, one step removed from startled. "It is not only the wood or the core," he said to the air, to McGonagall, to the ledger that lived in his head. "It is the way a boy speaks to a thing that makes it show what it can be."
McGonagall's mouth did a very small upward thing and then refused to be caught doing it. "We'll take it," she said.
"Of course," Ollivander replied, but he did not move to write at once. He looked at Rowan the way one looks into water to see how deep it is before putting a foot in. "Mr. Von Vey," he asked mildly, "how did you find that box?"
Rowan considered how much of the answer belonged to him and how much belonged to the room. "It was the only one that was already listening," he said.
Ollivander nodded, as if someone had just told him the next line of a poem he'd forgotten he knew. "Then we won't quarrel with that."
He wrapped the wand in paper that had been born to hold wands. The twine that tied it had more practice than the string on the old box; it made a small, decisive knot. He set it in a narrow bag that would not pretend to be stronger than it was.
"Care," he said, a word he could have meant five ways. "Blackthorn responds well to truth. Thestral hair asks you to know your reasons before you give them orders."
Rowan nodded once. The Vey Sight hovered at the edges, not intruding. He did not test the room again. He did not look for more lines. He had found enough for one hour.
Ollivander scribbled on a receipt with an old, patient pen. "Professor," he said, "you do bring me interesting children."
"I do not bring you the boring ones," McGonagall said, which was close to humor.
Ollivander slid the receipt across the counter. McGonagall signed in a hand that made other hands try harder. Coins clinked. The room approved of the sound.
"May I?" Rowan asked, lifting the lid of one of the near-empty drawers on the counter. He had seen a sliver of velvet caught underneath.
"Mm?" Ollivander said, and then saw it too. "Ah. Please."
Rowan freed the corner and lay it flat with the sort of attention some people reserve for grand gestures. The faintest thread between cloth and counter unknotted in his mind and went slack, and something in the room loosened its shoulders.
Ollivander watched with that pale interest that had nothing to prove. "You'll do," he said softly, not to be heard and impossible to miss.
McGonagall's eyes found Rowan's again as they turned for the door. She did not say well done. She said, "Remember the bag," and he did, and that was better.
The bell made its modest sound when they left. The day received them. London's light had gone warmer at the edges. A bus groaned—impatient, forgiving. Somewhere a dog insisted the street belong to it and then laughed at itself for insisting.
Rowan walked with the bag held in one hand and the new weight along his spine that comes from owning a tool that will change your hands. He did not feel larger. He felt contained—like a line drawn around a shape that always existed, now visible.
"Blackthorn," McGonagall said, tasting the word as if it might tell her how it would behave in September. "Thestral hair."
Rowan nodded. "It already knows where to rest," he said.
"And do you?" she asked.
"Yes." He did not add for now. He didn't need to.
They turned onto the broader street where the air was a touch dirtier and the sound wore thicker shoes. Rowan glanced back once, not superstitious—grateful. The small window had resumed being a reflection of a boy and a woman and the word Ollivanders written backwards like a charm that keeps its meaning when you carry it inside you instead of on glass.
"Tea," McGonagall said, which was her way of ending chapters without closing the book. "And then home."
He nodded. The second movement kept easy time. The threads around the bag were quiet, not dormant—polite, as if they knew the wand had already chosen its first silence with him and no one should interrupt.
On the train, he took the parcel out only once. He didn't open it. He held it in both hands and watched the city slide by, brick and sky and a line of laundry three stories up that had decided to be brave in a breeze. The paper warmed a little. The knot in the twine remembered being tied and approved of itself.
"Rowan," McGonagall said after a long while.
He looked up.
"You handled yourself very well." She kept her eyes on the window as she said it, as if talking to the glass so it would pass the compliment along.
"Thank you," he said.
She nodded once, and the nod included cupfuls of things that didn't need names. They let the carriage take them where it was going. The day folded itself into late afternoon without a single sharp crease.
Back at the orphanage door, the familiar hinge made the sound it always made and then, as if remembering that yesterday a woman had asked it for manners, chose to be quiet.
He took the parcel upstairs. He set it on the bed. He untied the twine without breaking it and coiled it into a circle because circles are better at being found again. He opened the paper and let his hand rest on the wand one more time.
Blackthorn. Thestral hair. Eleven and three-quarters.
He listened for any sound the Vey Sight might make when a thing finally sits right.
Nothing loud. Only the smallest click in the chest—like a picture on a wall that has found its true level and intends to keep it.
He closed the lid—not to hide, only to keep. He slid the parcel under the pillow for the comfort it offered boys who are not yet men and want something to anchor their sleep.
Downstairs, Mrs. Whittaker tapped a spoon twice against a pot, then once, then decided not to again. From the street outside came laughter that had no business being any particular age. Wind tested the window and gave up.
Rowan lay on his back and let the room grow dim. In the not-quite-dark, he saw the faintest strand run from the bed to the wand to the space above his chest, steady and unshowy, not claiming to be anything more than it was.
He turned his head and watched until it sank into whatever threads do when they are at rest.
Tomorrow would make its own questions.
For tonight, the answer in his hand had a name that fit in the mouth and a temper that preferred truth.
He slept.