Chapter 5: The Wand Chooses the Wizard
Conjuring is a pretty difficult art. I think that there's just very few people who can actually make a robe or whatnot appear out of thin air, and there's probably more complicated steps in maintaining it.
Dumbledore is probably one of those people who don't have to spend any money on clothes, though.
How do you know? Other than "he's super powerful"?
Look at what he's wearing. You think people can sell stuff like that normally and still turn a profit?
Well…why did we have to buy so many robes, anyway? I can duplicate candy. Duplicating robes shouldn't be that big of a deal, right? We could have just bought one good one!...
I repeat: Wizards are morons.
"This is the last stop," Professor Dumbledore said, "and it is one I think you will like very much, Tom."
"I think so, too, sir," Tom murmured respectfully. The store they had stopped in front of was named Ollivander's – Quality Wands since 382 B.C.
Was Britain even civilized that long ago?
I have no idea. Do I look like a liberal arts major to you?
The shop was dark and musty, and consisted of an entire wall filled with boxes. An old man with a sharp pointed noise and piercing gray eyes leaned against the counter, and smiled toothily as they walked in. "Hogwarts, hm, Albus?"
"Yes, Garrick," Professor Dumbledore said. "This is Mr. Tom Riddle."
"How do you do," Tom said automatically.
"Just as ever," Ollivander rasped. "But enough of this chit-chat, eh? Let's get you a wand."
He snatched a random box off the shelf and handed it to Tom (cherry and unicorn hair; ten inches), and before either he or Jerry could even touch it for a proper look, it had been snatched away again. Tom couldn't help this one – that jump of shock had been genuine.
"Don't worry, Tom," said Professor Dumbledore. "He's always like this."
"Um…okay?"
"No, no, not at all…try this one! Oak and dragon heartstring, twelve inches." Ollivander grinned, handing Tom a different box.
That one got snatched away as quickly as the first one. And the next one. Ollivander let Tom hold the fourth, only for a window to explode. And then after that, the desk splintered, and floorboards started coming out.
Oddly enough, Ollivander kept smiling, even when Tom stopped profusely apologizing for all the damage done to the shop and settled for wincing instead.
"Tricky customer, eh? I always like a challenge."
Does he even know what he's doing? Or is he just using your Gobosort algorithm?
It's Bogosort.
Whatever.
"Am I just a really bad wizard?" Tom asked meekly.
"Not at all. You're just a very…complicated personality," Ollivander explained. "The wand chooses the wizard, not the other way around, and no two wands are alike. I wonder…" his grey eyes shifted slowly over to Professor Dumbledore. "…here." He produced another box. "Try this. Yew and phoenix feather, thirteen and a half inches."
Tom touched it resignedly, and was surprised to find that instead of the normal violent reaction, there was a warm feeling in his arm. Some bright silver sparks erupted out of the end, bathing the inside of the shop in a bright glow.
Tom stared at it contemplatively. "…Is that a good thing?"
"Well, of course. Any match is a good one. But how curious. How very, very curious." At this, Ollivander looked between him and Professor Dumbledore.
Dumbledore was quiet for a moment, before asking, "Was it one of the two, Garrick?"
Ollivander smiled. "Oh, yes it was, as a matter of fact."
"Excuse me?" Tom asked. "Is there some trouble?"
"Oh, no, not at all. You see, it just so happens that the phoenix feather that makes up the core of your wand was donated by Fawkes – my familiar," Professor Dumbledore told him kindly. (What was it with this man and being kindly?) "Fawkes has only given two feathers in his lifetime, and now one of them is yours."
"And the other one, not sold yet," Ollivander shrugged. "Still, it is interesting. Very interesting."
"Oh. Okay, then," Tom said.
"That will be five Galleons," said Ollivander, and Tom paid him accordingly.
There wasn't much else to do, now that the shopping had finished, and Dumbledore had to get back to the school to start preparing more lesson plans, anyway.
So with that, he returned Tom to the orphanage, and after some more obligatory exchanging of pleasantries and instructions on how to get to Platform 9 ¾ (because apparently, while most conservative wizards were against the idea of Muggle technology, they had no problem in boarding a massive red steam engine), Tom was alone with Jerry again.
I'd say that was an informative day, Tom mentioned, opening up the lawbook and starting to read. It was highly boring, like all law books were, but it was not as complicated as Muggle laws, simply because wizards hadn't figured out what earmarks were yet, even thousands of years after the first civilizations had sprung up.
Anyway, he had plenty of fun every time he came across one of the more ridiculous, wizard-level eccentric sorts of laws ("Turning one's neighbor into a hippopotamous on Tuesdays is illegal") that prompted the question of the background context of the law.
Does that mean it's legal on Wednesdays? Jerry wondered.
Too bad you're not allowed to use magic underage.
We should test our boundaries. I notice Dumbledore forgot to tell us it was illegal to practice magic outside of Hogwarts before graduation.
How far do you think my boundaries will be, before someone else gets mistaken for my magic, anyway? There's got to be more wizard kids in London, right?
We'll see. For now, let's finish that book. Thank Zoroaster you've got an eidetic memory.
Zoroaster?
I'm atheist.
Oh for the love of Pete…
In fact, as the lawbook went on, the less and less it seemed to make sense. Half of the laws Tom didn't think anyone even remembered well enough to apply.
However, the few important rules scattered about in there were worth the idiocy. And when Tom and Jerry said important, they meant the loopholes that could be exploited from those rules, not the actual rules themselves.
For example, the description of underage magical restrictions, through the wording, implied that it could only be detected within the building where said child was residing.
If there were multiple children within a building, the Ministry depended on the presence of responsible adults for discipline.
Obviously, this gives the children with less scrupulous magical parents a distinct advantage.
Well, of course. It's not really about forbidding underage magic; it's about preventing stupid little kids from accidentally poking someone's eyes out and causing months of bureaucratic backlog.
They probably figured that if a parent let their kid cheat, it would be fine because the parent would be there to prevent the worst of the damage.
Or they could just be to incompetent to bother with fixing a flawed system.
That, too.
Though Tom was a fast reader, and Jerry was experienced enough to help Tom through some of the more technical legal jargon so that he wouldn't have to waste five minutes staring at the same line, it still took the rest of the day and a little over an hour of reading under the sheets with a glowing ball of magic for light to finish the rest of the book.
But at least all that was the worst of it. The cumulative legal portfolio of the past few centuries' worth of Wizarding legislation, including the useless and overly complicated ones, was easily thicker than any other three of the rest of the textbooks combined – possibly longer than all of them, if all the font was the same size (all the first year textbooks had HUGE print, while the law book was almost completely written in fine print).
The next day, Tom woke up early, swore as he realized he could no longer use magic to finish his chores, and then decided that since he was never told explicitly that he couldn't, anyway, decided to wandlessly try it.
When nothing happened for a few hours, Tom shrugged, and decided that until they sent him some sort of warning or deposited some wizard policemen at his doorstep, he continued to work as normal.
He burned through all of the coursework like mad. There was nothing that he couldn't memorize at first reading, no spell that he couldn't perform perfectly on the first try.
Of course, he still left his room at regular intervals so that people wouldn't be suspicious, and gave the excuse that he had been "randomly" selected by the government for a special program when questioned about that mysterious school that he was going to be attending in the fall.
The last book he picked up was Hogwarts, a History. He had deliberately procrastinated on reading that particular one because of previously poor experiences with other history textbooks (including the standard first-year text).
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