Two new Companions
After finishing the more annoying part, Julius was now ready for the exciting part of his visit; his wand, and he already arrived at the shop.
Ollivander's shop was almost unchanged from the movies, with the iconic inscription; „Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 BC".
The only difference was an obviously newer wooden sign which read;
"Only dragon heart string, unicorn hair and phoenix feather cores, no exceptions!"
‚Apparently even Garrick Ollivander gets annoyed if enough people ask him for different wand cores.'
At some point in time Julius had done a bit of research on wands and very specifically the only wand shop in the whole magical Britain, Ollivanders.
When Diagon Alley received many more customers and shops at first no one tried to take over the wand market, as this was usually a pointless undertaking due to the strong trust people had in their usually only local wand maker, but when foreign families flooded Diagon Alley for the first time to get their kids whatever they needed for Hogwarts, many suddenly noticed something they thought was a gap in the market; Ollivander only sold wands with three kinds of cores; Phoenix feathers, unicorn hair and dragon heart string.
In the beginning, even though grumpily, Ollivander sold the wands he still had in stock from his father and grandfather, apparently even one or two from his great-grandfather, a world famous wand maker, but due to the large demand, those soon ran out and contrary to most people's expectations he did not make any new wands with other cores than the three he viewed as superior cores.
Seeing this opportunity, immediately many wand shops popped up in Diagon Alley and the foreign investors could already smell the money the expected to make, after all they now had a pretext to sell their wands for more than the rediculously low seven galleons Ollivander sold his for, but things didn't go as they expected.
In the beginning Ollivander just ignored the other shops, after all he still had his loyal British customers and he wasn't doing this for profit anyways, that was until people who bought wands from these other shops came to him for help after receiving extremely low quality wands for far more money than he charged.
At this time Ollivander made use of an extremely old law, one of the few the ministry had not yet had the time to revise; since wands had been the tool enabling wizards to stand against all kinds of magical creatures and even win against the goblins in their regular uprisings they had a very high importance and so back in the early medieval times a law was created, permitting any wand maker to challenge another who's work he considered inferior to the point of endangering the source of power for all wizardkind or insulting the profession.
This kind of challenge would entail both wand makers creating a new wand and then comparing those in two in many different competitions.
After receiving this challenge the wand makers those other shops had hired immediately tried to appease Ollivander since the only wand makers capable of rivalling someone like him were other master rank wand makers which would have never left their loyal customer bases to compete with another one of their rank.
But Ollivander refused to back down and forced all of them to compete with him under threat of calling the aurors to enforce the law.
Unsurprisingly Ollivander beat every single one of those other wand makers which resulted in them getting banned from selling wands in magical Britain ever again, which also resulted in many foreign families getting convinced to just go to him for their children's wands.
Entering the shop Julius noticed that apparently Ollivander also didn't give up on the tradition of scaring new customers, seeing as he was nowhere to be seen.
Well, until he popped up from behind a shelf full of boxes that is.
„Welcome to my humble shop, it seems to me as if you're here for your first wand?"
"Actually I already use another focus, is that important?"
Despite Julius being unable to find anything whilst searching for answers himself besides the reports about earlier family heads acquiring the grimoire while already possessing a wand, that did not mean there couldn't be any problems.
The art of wand making was a very complicated one, shrouded in mystery and the secrets of it's craftsmen, after all.
"A peculiar case indeed, but it is not the worst thing that could happen, without knowing more about your other focus I can only assume it's your family's grimoire Mister Abraxus, in which case only wands with phoenix feathers should refuse bonding with you, if it is some kind of dark artefact though, you will also have problems with unicorn hair cores and depending on the nature of the artefact even with the dragon heart string cores in which case it would indeed be problematic."
"You guessed right Mister Ollivander but can you maybe explain to my why these problems would occur? While I think I might have a good guess for unicorn hair, I am not quite sure about phoenix feathers and have no idea about the dragon heartstring one."
Julius didn't even question the reason Ollivander knew so much about him, any master wand maker should be able to see through weak enchantments like that and based on his age, Ollivander probably knew the last owner of the grimoire personally.
While already picking a few wand cases of the shelves around him Ollivander decided to humour his newest customer, after all he didn't see someone this young and already interested in wandlore every day.
"You see, while you might have guessed that the hair of a light aligned creature symbolising purity such as the unicorn would not be ready to have anything to do with dark artefacts, you have forgotten about the strong pride of the dragons, if they think the use of said hypothetical artefact is cowardly they would never want to be associated with it's owner. And as you might have also guessed, a mixture of pride and the love for freedom a phoenix has doesn't fare well with it's partner having another focus. Now let's try this one first."
With those words Ollivander gave Julius the first of the 28 wand cases he brought.
As soon as Julius saw the first wand, he already knew this was not his, it felt like it wanted nothing more than to get away from him.
After talking to Ollivander about it the wand maker came to the conclusion the unicorn hair had to be disgusted by the blood curse of the Greengrass family Julius suffered from, leaving only the dragon heartstring wands as options.
Despite this, after Ollivander removed all of the affected wands, there were still 21 remaining.
A few wands, some fires and a small tornado inside the shop later, Julius finally found his wand; when he looked at it it looked beautiful and when he only just touched it a bright red firestorm raged through the room, following the movement of his wand but not burning anything.
„Quite the interesting reaction you got there, it seems even this troublemaker of a dragon will finally accept somebody as his partner. 13 and a half inches, made from ebony and obviously with a dragon heartstring core, also quite brittle. A great wand for both combat and transfiguration congratulations."
After getting the flames to stop and paying for his new wand as well as a wand holster, Julius left the shop almost ready to go back home with George, almost.
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Well this conversation took longer than I thought so there will be a „Two new Companions II" soon if you have any idea what his second one will be feel free to comment them and if I think they're better than my own, I will change it as long as I haven't written the whole chapter yet.