Chapter 43 — The Missing Core

Ollivanders looked much as it had the previous year. The narrow window, faded cloth and single wand on display appeared untouched. I had recently acquired considerable respect for managers who knew when to leave things alone, though this seemed an ambitious interpretation of the principle. The bell rang when I entered, and Ollivander addressed me from between two high shelves.

I had not seen him arrive there. I decided to stop expecting him to use doorways like everybody else and wished him good morning. His eyes moved towards my pouch before he asked how the wand had served me. I took out the brush and laid it on the counter.

‘Better than I expected,’ I said. ‘I owe you an apology for some of the things I said about it.’

‘Only some?’ he asked. When I pointed out that it still looked like a brush, one corner of his mouth moved. He brought a stool from behind the counter and invited me to explain what I wanted to know. The shop was empty, giving us more time than I had expected.

I told him about Dumbledore’s office and the possibility of older ways of preparing magic. I described how the paper accepted an inscription, and how my friends had tried and failed to activate the work afterwards. He listened without interrupting. When I finished, he held out a hand and asked to examine a prepared piece.

I gave him a water strip. He turned it over, studied the marks and held it beside the brush-wand before placing it carefully on the counter. He made no attempt to use it himself. Instead, he set out an empty bowl and asked me to demonstrate.

I took the strip back, made a small throw towards the bowl and spoke the water charm. The stored spell released in a stream, splashing against the bottom. The last of the paper disappeared before reaching the rim. Ollivander leaned closer, his attention shifting between the water and my empty hand.

‘Extraordinary,’ he murmured. I told him this was the version which did not damage the shop, but he seemed too interested to acknowledge the improvement. He moved the bowl aside and reached for the brush-wand again.

‘An old family volume mentions practitioners using instruments rather different from ours,’ he said. ‘I have wondered whether those accounts encouraged some of my grandfather’s experiments.’

I asked whether this had been one of them. He touched the wood and said it was possible, though the records were incomplete. When I asked whether they described talismans like mine, he shook his head. He had never seen this particular method used before that morning.

I sat back. There was something near enough to an answer to make me hopeful, followed by the empty space where the answer should have been. I said we were still guessing. Ollivander agreed about the history, then put the brush back into my hand and asked what I had felt when I first worked with it.

I remembered the desk at home and the tip touching the prepared surface. There had been a difference between trying to force magic into an unsuitable tool and feeling it go where I wanted. I could describe the change more easily than its cause. Eventually I told him it had fitted what I was doing, rather than merely fitting my hand.

‘And an ordinary wand?’ he asked. I reminded him he had been there while we exhausted his stock. He corrected that to a substantial portion, making me smile before I ran my thumb along the wood.

‘You told me it had no core.’ I turned it over, finding no sign that anything had changed since then. ‘What does that part of the work?’

‘It has no conventional core. That remains true.’ He looked at me across the counter. ‘I suspect you provide the relationship it lacks.’

I waited for him to put that in terms which did not require me to fit inside the handle. He drew the empty bowl nearer and looked once more at the place the paper had vanished.

‘Your magic may complete a partnership the wood could not form with the materials my grandfather tried,’ he said. ‘It responds to you. The preparations you make with it continue responding to you. In another person’s hands, something necessary to that arrangement is missing.’

‘You’re saying I’m its core,’ I said. He agreed that it was one way of describing the partnership, then clarified that he did not mean a piece of me was hidden in the wood. I told him I would have wanted that mentioned on the receipt.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from NovelPhoenix. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

His smile was faint, but I was no longer entirely joking. The explanation fitted what we had observed. It did not tell me why the partnership existed or why my magic managed this and failed at an ordinary light charm. I wanted to accept it because it sounded less like being broken. Wanting that did not prove his theory.

‘What would you test?’ I asked. Ollivander looked pleased, as though that interested him more than being agreed with.

‘The places where it fails to explain what happens. You have tried another user. Continue recording what changes with the material and the prepared structure.’ He nodded towards the empty bowl. ‘If the results disagree with me, believe the results.’

I considered the failed arrangements in my notebook. There were plenty of opportunities to follow that advice. I asked how far the method could go, and he replied that it depended on what I learned to do with it. A formula would not supply understanding I lacked, and a clever instrument would not remove the need to control the magic passing through it.

I remembered the shield breaking in front of Quirrell. ‘I’ve noticed,’ I said. Ollivander told me he had heard the stories from Hogwarts, but did not ask me to describe the chamber. I was grateful for that while putting the brush away.

‘An unusual gift can offer choices,’ he said. ‘It does not make every choice wise.’

‘You make being ordinary sound safer.’ I fastened the pouch, and he answered that believing consequences were only for ordinary people would be more dangerous. Voldemort came to mind, having apparently decided that even needing a body was a problem for somebody else. I thanked Ollivander, with rather more to consider than when I had arrived.

He asked me to return, preferably with observations as well as questions. Outside, I stood near the window while shoppers passed. Being the missing core was a useful image, provided I remembered he had offered an explanation to examine, not a proclamation about my future. I had spent enough time wondering what was supposed to happen to me; for the moment, there were things I could choose to do.

I bought a cold drink and finished it where I could watch the street. Then I headed towards Knockturn Alley. At school I had heard enough about the place to know it was more than another row of shops. Neville had also mentioned his gran going there for something she could not obtain elsewhere. That had interested me more than the stories about cursed doorways.

Some materials on my list had proved difficult to find through ordinary suppliers. Difficult was not impossible, but I wanted to see what was available before spending another term working round the gaps. I pulled my cap lower and turned up my collar. Neither measure did much to stop me looking twelve, and I knew it as I entered the narrower alley.

Bright windows gave way to dusty glass. Water stood between the paving stones although the main street had been dry, and a woman in a long coat watched me pass without turning her head. I kept my hands away from the displays and looked for the shop name I had been given. Borgin and Burkes stood above a window containing objects which did not encourage closer inspection.

A man behind the counter smoothed his hair and smiled when I entered. I said I had been told he might stock some materials I wanted. He replied that they had a great many things difficult to find elsewhere, looking me over as though the most unusual arrival that morning might be the customer. I put my list on the counter before he could ask what had brought somebody my age there.

He read it once, then more slowly. ‘Nothing more interesting?’ he asked. I told him I was finding the list interesting enough, and his smile widened. He named a price for supplying it and waited to see whether I would argue.

I did not. I wanted to obtain the materials and leave, preferably before anything in the window developed an interest in keeping me. He brought the items out separately and wrapped them where I could watch. I checked labels, quantities and closures against what we had agreed before he covered each one. Whatever else the shop sold, I had no intention of taking an unidentified leaking package home to Emma.

While he tied the last bundle, I glanced around. A dried hand lay on a cushion, and a glass eye followed my movement. Masks covered part of a wall. A pack of stained playing cards rested in a case I chose to observe from a distance, having enough difficulties with my own paper without acquiring somebody else’s.

‘Something catch your interest?’ Borgin asked. I answered that the exit had, then regretted saying it aloud. His smile did not change, which left me unsure whether he appreciated the joke or had simply heard better ones.

I counted out the agreed payment. He checked it more quickly than I had and slid the parcels across, complimenting my decisiveness before offering to discuss his more unusual stock. I told him I would remember where he was. That, at least, was a promise I felt confident of keeping without another reminder.

The materials went into separate spaces in my pouch, clear of the protected bottle and wrapped horn. I checked the fastening before leaving. Back in Diagon Alley, someone was arguing cheerfully about the price of a cauldron while a child inspected an ice cream that had reached the paving. An owl on a sign tried to eat the string holding an advertisement in place.

I stood in the ordinary noise and took a breath. There were still errands on my list, and I would have to find the others without a telephone in my pocket. For once, the prospect of waiting among the shops seemed quite welcome. I went to look for something to eat before meeting them.