Chapter 8: Going Got Tough, the Tough Went Shopping

DISCLAIMER: Does Gringotts call itself a bank when literally none of of the services it offers - secure storage rental, gambling and curse-breaking - are core banking services? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Because it's Christmas Eve and you've all been such good boys/girls/others, and because I'm currently working on Chapter 15 which is far more buffer than anyone could reasonably need, here's an ahead-of-schedule chapter by way of a bit of a Brucie Bonus.

Chapter 8

"It turns out that the Leaky Cauldron does a perfectly acceptable - it's a solid seven, a good drink but nowt to write home about - pint of mild, which steadies Vernon down because, well, anyone who brews beer that good can't be all bad no matter how much weird foreign writing there is on the pewter tankard. Amused at how undemanding my host's taste in beer is and his dismissal of anglo-saxon futhorc ale-runes as foreign when they're more English than he is, I steer us out into the alley and push some magic through Vernon's fingers to open the archway.

"Welcome to Diagon Alley," I whisper to myself."

-oOo-

First impression: it doesn't actually look all that magical. Quite a lot of towns that didn't get the full attention of the Luftwaffe's Urban Planning Department have a street or two that dates back to the 17th century or before - York and Chester practically consist of them - and they're invariably full of twee little tearooms and shops full of tourist tat. Diagon Alley is that, but with really convincing CGI ported into the real world.

I knew that it was a bit less impressive than the job the movie set designers did - I have Tom's memories of the place, after all - but apparently his recollections of the place were coloured by glee at having his feeling of being special affirmed, along with the sense of having a place among other special people. Even with all his personality disorders, he had the orphan's deep-rooted want for a sense of belonging. Not having the same hangups - my own hangups are far more socially-acceptable, thank you very much - I don't see it through the same lens and I'm a little underwhelmed.

What is living up to expectations is the amount of magic I can hear. It's like being in a breezy forest with a fast-moving stream through it and every species of bird ever trying to find a mate in the trees. Hopefully one gets used to this sort of thing, because I can't pick out any useful information from the babble and it's apt to be distracting.

Less gawking, more forward momentum, I tell myself, and start walking. Harry's assessment - in the books - of wizarding Britain as being a bit extra in the clothes department is measured against his upbringing as an isolated kid in one of the more painfully upper-middle-class conformist bits of Surrey, which would be a contender for most tight-arsed county in England if Buckinghamshire didn't exist. Most of the shoppers and strollers I see wouldn't attract more than a second glance outside on the Charing Cross Road, and a few streets over in Covent Garden or Soho not even that.

Most of the robes, absent the colour, wouldn't look out of place outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand, at a University graduation ceremony or at the altar of a local parish church. The dress sense on display isn't so much bizarre as a few hundred years out of date: judicial, academic and clerical robes are basically just business dress from centuries ago. And, bluntly, in a city as multicultural as London there are probably neighbourhoods where this sort of thing is someone's regular Sunday Best.

Once I'm no longer hung up on the robed individuals, I notice that they're only about two thirds of the people I see. The rest are in varying states of muggle attire. The ones that wouldn't pass muster in Little Whinging would at least do all right at a Charles Dickens fan convention.

Gringotts is my natural first stop and I step out smartly toward the only big marble edifice I can see. I've managed maybe a dozen paces before I get bumped by a poncy-looking article in a frock-coat. Add 'Samuel Pepys impersonator' to the list of types on display.

"Watch your step, mudblood," he snarls at me.

It's an important principle of life that while he who throws the first punch has lost the argument, he's well on the way to winning the fight. Tom had this trick that he first developed in the orphanage that basically throws a wave of magic into the voice, compelling submission and obedience with a side order of fear. I haven't had chance to practise it - who on? - but I give it a go. "Voetsek, aap!" I'm probably horribly misusing the afrikaner invective, but who cares? I need words with a bit of bite to carry the aggression.

The Pepys impersonator - the mass of hair looks like it's his own, not a full-bottomed wig, poor attention to detail that man - blanches and begs my pardon, backing up. Clearly I'm a natural at this.

"Ag, Well you might apologise," I say, adding another belt of nasty magic voice and getting in his personal space a little as I move on. As I pass him, I have to suppress a twitch of surprise. Malignity. Not nearly as strong as Harry's scar, but definitely the same sensation. I don't break stride - waddle, rather, I'm modelling Vernon Dursley for my adoring public today - but take a moment or two to think as I'm closing on Gringotts. It felt like the scar, but weaker. If that's the signature of the maker rather than the thing then I may just have sensed a Death Eater's Dark Mark. That a flourishing of one of Tom's tricks visibly frightened him is a point in favour of that conclusion, certainly.

(Hopefully I haven't started a rumour. The Dark Lord is back, and this time he's FAT!)

I didn't pick it up until I was within inches of the bugger, but it was quite clear. I'll have to wait until I can make the acquaintance of Snape or Malfoy before I can be sure, of course - they're the two marked Death Eaters I'm pretty sure I can recognise from description alone.

What to do with this information is a tricky question, of course. Of course, I don't buy the 'I was mind-controlled' defence. I'm of the view that it should shortcut the trial straight to incarceration with no possibility of release on license. Someone genuinely susceptible to mind control to the point of joining a mashup of insurgency and criminal conspiracy isn't safe to be let out, any more than the inmates of Broadmoor Hospital are.

The point is, I'm wondering if I'm in the position of a german jew with the ability to detect Gestapo agents? Sure, I could use it for evasion, but since I know what's coming I can get some retaliation in first if I'm sneaky about it.

I'm arrive at the steps of Gringotts and put that line of thinking aside. While I've never been one for a soft approach to crime and punishment, going straight to vigilantism like that might just be a knee-jerk reaction to the vile shit I've had to watch in Tom's memories. Best solution would be to infiltrate the wizarding world, reform it to an acceptable standard of criminal jurisprudence, and hang the whole boiling of the buggers in a professional, organised and properly legal manner.

Whatever.

Gringotts manages the impressive feat of looking more like a bank than most actual banks do, even the overdone neoclassical ones that got built in Victoria's reign. I've no idea if they offer actual banking services, the books only show them offering secure storage and archaeological salvage with a possible option on gambling. Only one of these falls under what I'd understand as banking, even with the fairly generous definition of the term one acquires working in the City of London, where banking also seems to include 'being an insufferable twatbag' and 'doing a shitload of cocaine even when it's a school night.' Maybe I just knew the wrong bankers, or maybe there's a reason that 'merchant banker' became a piece of rhyming slang.

It's quiet, with short queues at the tellers' windows. The innovation of a reception desk hasn't got as far as the goblins yet, so I pick a queue at random.

"Next!" The teller is a goblin: short, surly and ugly, one each, dressed in a pinstripe suit (the movies got that bit right, at least). My understanding of goblins comes entirely from the books, where they get a bad press, and Tom's memories, where they get a worse press. Since all of Tom's acquaintances were racist fuckwits, I'm not taking any of it as good coin. Short and ugly is a given, but then they're a different species, and for all I know a lady goblin would find this chap dreamy as all get-out. Surly I can understand: while I have some prejudices on the subject of bankers regardless of species (there are probably some decent ones, but I've never had more than hearsay as to their existence) I think that if I had to deliver customer service to a lot of racists who hate me I'd probably bin my best sunday manners too.

I drop a wad of twenties on the counter, three hundred quid. "I'd like that changed for Galleons, please, and I have two questions about Gringotts services. I'm new in town, you see."

"Sixty galleons," the goblin says, counting the notes and coins off with commendable quickness, "your questions?" The surliness dials back a notch, I see. Whether it's down to me being brisk and to the point or distancing myself from the general run of gits he has to deal with I have no idea.

"First, can you cash a cheque drawn on a muggle bank?" It'll be a lot more convenient than having to get cash on the way to the Alley, after all. And the answer will tell me if Gringotts is a real bank and not just a storage firm with a pretentious name.

"Yes, up to the limit of your cheque guarantee card and subject to a small fee as you aren't a customer here. For customers we impose a limit of the value of your vault contents, which become security for your cheque until it clears. Unless you're banking with Coutts, in which case we are able to clear your cheque at the counter and waive Gringotts fees. For your general fund of information, Coutts are partly goblin owned and waive their usual wealth requirement for magical customers doing business in the muggle world. Ask for the Special Circumstances Customer Office. Your second question?"

"Does the exchange rate for galleons fluctuate?"

"No. Fixed by treaty with the Ministry of Magic. If that will be all?"

"It is. Thank you and good morning."

"Good morning. Next!"

So, what have we learned, class? First that no, Gringotts isn't necessarily a real bank itself but they do do business with at least one. Possibly more than one if Coutts has become part of a conglomerate: I can't remember when they got bought out in my own timeline. Certainly they were part of the NatWest group by the mid nineties. Also, being able to get a Coutts card will make Petunia come over all vaporous. They're the Royal Family's bankers, to name only the most prestigious, and there's nowt like snobbery for mill-town lasses that think they've made good.

The bit about there being at least one goblin stake in the regular banking world - how they manage that around the Statute of Secrecy is doubtless fascinating - tells me that the goblins are up to something. Coutts was founded around the same time as the Statute, I'd have to look it up to know the precise date, and why would they need a foot in the door of muggle finance if they were wholly respecting magical secrecy? I'm willing to bet there hasn't been a wizarding-goblin conflict since then largely because the goblins are bypassing wizards entirely for their surface-world trading needs, whatever the actual substance of their complaints about not being allowed wands. That teller was quite quick to tell me how to do business on that side of things, and not just in the sense of selling the services of a partner firm.

The important bit, though, is the fixed exchange rate. Unless literally every goblin ever born is a complete idiot the Galleon is fiat money by the back door. If coins that size and heft-in-the-hand are five quid's worth of gold the periodic table is lying to all of us. At 1985 prices a fiver will buy you less than a fortieth of an ounce. (I'd looked it up that morning, it was a bit over £230 at Friday close.) Add a bit, because of magic to make your bit-more-than-a-dust-speck of gold look bigger and feel heavier, layer on enchantments to stop clever buggers like me from melting them for the bullion and discovering the trick, and you've got the world's first fractional reserve specie. Inflation is letting the goblins recover more and more gold from the coinage they make for wizards.

Obviously I don't know this in the sense of having evidence, but any other explanation of them being able to issue gold coins bigger than poppy seeds at a fiver sterling per each requires literally every goblin in a position of responsibility to be thicker than a yard of lard and twice as ignorant. Since we have goblins who can make, and keep quiet, investments in the above-ground financial services industry, we can discount the 'all goblins are idiots' hypothesis.

Conclusion: I need a vault at Gringotts only as a safe deposit box, not a place to keep money. In the event of me becoming real enough to have money of my own, it's going in a proper bank and I'll change what I need when I need it to make purchases from wizards. Should also look into getting the Potter vault similarly shifted to somewhere it can be suitably invested, because a stack of gold coins in a hole in the ground is only slightly better than the same pile of gold stuffed into the mattress.

I'm going to leave the economic insanity you get from putting magic into the mix for another time. The shops, at least, work the regular way for all that they shouldn't in what ought to be a mostly post-scarcity economy.

Outside in the Alley again, I go raid Flourish and Blotts and blow nearly thirty galleons on a reading list I compiled from Tom's later years at Hogwarts and things he found in self-study after leaving. Mostly magical theory in the two big wandwork subjects, but there's arithmancy, runes and even some divination in there. Potions is largely missing, since Tom took the view that apothecaries existed to supply most of his needs leaving him to focus on poisons. I'm going to have to go at that subject from first principles. I also find "Spells At High Noon, the Western Witch's Guide To Magical Gunplay" by I. Garrett, and I'm too amused by the title to resist.

The big one, though, is a three volume encyclopedia of magical metrology called Magic of Measurement, which some absolute god among men - he uses an obvious nom de plume or I'd be adding him to my christmas-card list - compiled in the 1950s from separately-published monographs from the preceding couple of hundred years. He also included material and commentary from everyone he could badger into picking up their quill, there are some heavyweight names from around the wizarding world between these covers.

It contains spells and techniques to measure and analyse spells, enchantments and what have you, all collected in one handy reference set. It's not popular, because if you want to do anything with the information you develop you generally have to have your wizardly skills and drills up to the level where you could have brute-forced your way through the problem without analysing it anyway. This was Tom's approach, much good though it did him. In theory at least this book should let me figure out the spells on Number Four, at least as to the general effect if not the details: if that reveals a need to do anything I can direct my studies accordingly.

I tip the pimply-faced youth at the cash register a couple of galleons to make me up a shrunken parcel of all my purchases except the Garrett book, which I keep out for reading on the train home. It's probably utterly puerile of me, but the idea of having a pair of enchanted six-shooters has an appeal rooted in decades of enjoying cowboy movies. It's High Noon, you death-eatin' varmint.

I mean to pass the rest of the day window-shopping: absent immediate need all I really want is a notion of what there is to be had and where to go for it. The most obviously useful tool, a pensieve, you pretty much can't buy off the shelf. You either make your own or engage an enchanter to do a custom job and it's generally buried with you, since using someone else's is believed to carry the risk of their thoughts infecting yours. Which I'm risking quite enough already, thank you. The Hogwarts pensieve, with its library of memories from Headmasters-emeritus, is famously unique in not doing that. The secret of how the trick is done is regrettably lost to the ages and not obvious to nondestructive examination.

There's one thing that I have to have, though, and I'm really not sure how this interaction is going to go. So I'm getting it out of the way before too many more people have seen Vernon's face in Diagon Alley.

The bell linked to the door of Ollivanders tinkles as I walk in, and the magical racket of the Alley fades. Inside the magical 'noise' is more like a thousands-strong choir all humming together under their breaths. The effect is quite beautiful, ethereal yet strong. I don't see Ollivander himself at first, and wait by the door. I rather mislike being startled at the best of times, and I don't want to have any kind of strong reaction amid this much magic.

"Good morning!" Ollivander himself emerges from the rear of the shop. He looks for all the world like Alan Ford playing Brick Top in Snatch, just with eyes that are actually like that rather than seen through thick spectacles. The mannerisms remind me of the kind of enthusiastic older dons one occasionally meets at Oxford; a soft-spoken mask of cheery joie de vivre hiding a mind like a mighty and intricately-wrought engine that would dismember you if you turned up to a tutorial unprepared. It stands to reason that a magical nation's premier toolmaker would have the same air about him as some of the cleverest people I've ever met, I suppose.

"Good morning," I say, returning the greeting, "Mr. Ollivander, I presume?"

"Indeed, and you appear to have the advantage of me - ?" He trails off the implied question. I figure I'm best off giving my nom de guerre since it's not actually Vernon in here to make a purchase.

"Reynolds, Malcolm Reynolds. As you might imagine, I'm looking for a wand."

"Well, Mr. Reynolds," oh good, he's not one of those over-friendly knobsticks who insists on first-name terms on first acquaintance, "wands are very much my métier, and may I presume from your accent that you're not at all connected to the Gloucestershire Reynoldses?"

"It's likely I'm not, it's a surname with many points of origin after all. My own people are from all over Natal, mostly around Piemburg. So, wands? I'll have to admit I was educated in a tradition that didn't use wands," because magic was fictional where I grew up, "but mean to learn, if it's possible this late in life?"

"Why, it is, certainly, although it's been a long time since I heard of anyone doing so, it's certainly possible, yes - I presume you're past the age where you need reminders as to safety precautions?" His tone turns teasing at the end, there, and I detect a hint of the celtic fringe behind the studied elocution. Cornish, if I'm any judge.

I deploy Vernon's salesman's chuckle. "I hope so, and not yet at the age where there's no fool like an old fool."

Ollivander has a salesman's chuckle of his own. Clearly, we both know what we're about and this is looking like it'll be a smooth transaction. "Well, since you don't have a wand hand yet, which do you write with?" He's fishing his tape measure out of his pocket.

"My right, although I'm accustomed to working spells with both hands, if that makes a difference?"

"Wand-work is considerably different from the African tradition, I'm given to understand - rather a specialist, I must perforce rely on what others tell me about matters outside wandlore - and you will develop a wand hand and use it exclusively. There are supporting gestures with the off hand for advanced spells which you may find either easy to master or false friends, accounts do rather vary. Now, if you would be so good as to hold still with your arms a little away from your body - yes, just so - we may take your measurements." The tape flutters from his hands and starts writhing around me. It's not unlike holding still for the tailor and involves just as little note-taking on Ollivander's part.

"Now," he says as the tape gets on with it and he starts pulling boxes from apparently-random spots on the shelves, "Perhaps a little digression on wandlore?"

I nod my assent. While the prospect of an introduction to the subject from an acknowledged expert isn't to be sniffed at, I don't want to disturb the tape in its work. It might be purest boffo to give Ollivander some thinking time, but if it's not then I want the job done right.

"First, as you're already quite aware, a wand is not necessary to magic, but it is sufficient to almost every task one might encounter. To channel and to focus is the raison d'etre of the wand that chooses you, Mr. Reynolds, but it achieves so much more than that. Magic is worked with many tools, but the wand is able to stand in for the platonic ideal of the tool in rerum natura. Athames, batons, rods and staves, the fly-whisk of ancient Axum, the lamens and amulets and other paraphernalia of ceremonial magic, all are subsumed in the modern wand. My family have made all of these tools over the centuries, but for over a thousand years we have laboured to perfect the wand, itself the perfection of the magical tool. And what is man, if not a user of tools? Why, the natural philosophers accord the status of 'higher animal' to any creature able to use even rudimentary tools. In short, once a wand has chosen you, the limit on how you use it is your imagination alone."

He continues in this vein for a while, bustling about his shop and gathering more wands for the pile of possibilities on his counter, and I am hugely entertained. Ollivander is animated, engaging, and passionate about his subject: for spectacle there's not a lot to touch an expert in the grip of enthusiasm for teaching his subject. Amid the almost-poetry there's a few useful nuggets of wandlore. He doesn't really believe wands are sentient, but they do respond to stimuli and their surroundings in quite spooky ways and imprint on their owner to greater or lesser extents. Some combinations of wood and core are reliable and predictable in their quirks and little 'extras', others very much vary according to who wields them, and none are ever less variable than any item made from organic material. And the wizard a wand will choose is never wholly predictable despite the huge mental library of rules-of-thumb and predictive techniques that the Ollivanders have amassed over the years.

"So, Mr. Reynolds, with that all said, is there a particular field of magic that you have an affinity for? Any hint as to where we should be looking for your match will help."

I consider for a moment. The magic I can do without needing formal spells strikes me as a place to start, and Tom wasn't actually lying when he said that Dumbledore explained it as primitive transfiguration. "My earliest memories of doing magic," I say, meaning last month but it's not like Ollivander knows that, "are of performing what you'd call primitive transfigurations. Psychokinesis and related disciplines. I also have an inborn knack for mental magics, I don't know the name you have for it here - ?"

"Legilimency is the most commonly spoken-of art in that suite of magics." Ollivander's manner is considerably less animated now we're off the subject of wands.

"From legere and mens, one presumes," I say, adopting a musing tone to sell the impression of me as a foreigner a bit harder. "Literally 'to read the mind', as good a way to describe it as any, hotly though my tutor in the matter would deprecate such a description."

"I've also heard it characterised as inaccurate," Ollivander allows, "but beyond the practise of the opposing art of occlumency, largely for the psychic health benefits, I confess myself ignorant as to why that should be so."

"Absent a lengthy seminar in the subject, it's tricky to explain," I tell him, although the main problem is that phrasing 'browsing a badly-organised haphazardly cross-linked mixed-media database while navigating a poorly-designed sui generis graphical user interface unique to each brain you get access to' in a way that a wizard would understand is a non-trivial task, "Which is, I rather suspect, why terms like 'mind-reading' and 'legilimency' aren't more loudly objected to. A word is needed, after all, and as long as everyone understands what the referent is the precise content of the label matters little."

Ollivander gives a little chuckle. "Well, for low-energy applications like the magics of the mind, it pains me to admit that one wand is as good as another. Transfiguration, however, is rather more spectacular as it were. You have advanced your study of the art beyond your childhood affinity?"

"I have," I allow. The water-cooling spell is, if I'm applying my imperfect grasp of magical theory correctly, a transfiguration. As is the light spell: lumos charms light from the caster's wand, while the one I've learned does something transfigurative to the air around my hand to make it give off light. Memo: buy a prism and see what the difference is, and possibly pick up a clue as to what the spell is actually doing. Also, learn more spells.

Ollivander nods. "All of the African schools are noted for it, even here in Britain among those who pay attention to what is going on overseas."

"Indeed," I say, "That and muti, which I believe you call potions here." Not that I know any such thing other than second-hand through Tom's reading and general knowledge, but I'd heard of muti even in my first life albeit in the context of traditional and herbal medicine.

"The arts outwith wand-magic I pay as little attention to as I can get away with, to be frank. To uphold the Ollivander reputation - which has been generations in the building - I find it pays to focus." He shrugs as he says this. Clearly, this is a man who sorts the world into 'wands' and 'everything else,' and for all it makes him a bit of a one-track conversationalist it's very reassuring when you're in his shop looking to make a purchase. He brightens considerably as he opens one of the boxes he's laid out on his counter and offers it to me. "To business, however. This is Acacia, Acacia nilotica specifically, with unicorn hair. Very much a wand for a wizard of the subtler magics like the mind arts, but Acacia is very picky so don't be disheartened if -"

The wand vibrates in my hand, like it's trying to get away. The sound of its magic is like that of a whining dog. "I don't think it likes me," I say, dropping it back in its box.

"A fussy wood, as I say. It is, however, one of the african woods I keep on hand and I have a sense that we might shortcut the search for your wand by starting with those." He smiles at me. "One develops an intuition about such things."

I hope it's intuition and not just the story I've told him, because while I have spent time in Africa - a family full of engineers and builders meant that I spent bits of my childhood in expat communities on three continents including Africa - I have absolutely no roots there and have never even set foot in the nation I'm claiming to be from. Never mind that my claimed hometown is actually fictional.

I try a few more wands of Acacia species - one does actually come close, a longish one cored with the feather of a phoenix from the Deccan plateau - which causes Ollivander to give me an appraising look. Which broadens into a gleeful smile. "It appears that the process of fitting a first wand late in life is more of a professional challenge than I presumed it to be. Oh, we shall have fun, Mr. Reynolds. Fun."

We take a drunkard's-walk tour of Africa and the middle east via a couple of dozen of their tree species, and to my relief I note that the negative reactions are all quite tame - a protest in the sound of their magic and shaking or puffs of smoke or audible squeals and pops. Ollivander doesn't comment, so it would appear to be normal for adults to not have quite the same pyrotechnics as 11-year-olds when trying a wand that doesn't fit.

A pattern starts to emerge: the denser woods come closer, especially if formed into stiffer wands. Longer wands are better than shorter, which puzzles Ollivander and it turns out that wand length is broadly speaking related to physical build. Vernon is average height and fat: the wands, however, are looking for me, and I'm four inches taller than Vernon and rangy with it. The fact that that body is dead and in a different universe doesn't seem to make any odds. I explain that my current frame is the result of a long illness that I'm now over and determined to recover from with all haste. It is, from a certain point of view, true. Don't get much more ill than actually dead, after all.

Returning to the wands - Ollivander clearly knows his stuff and his stock, because we haven't exhausted the stack on the counter - we narrow it down to something dense, long and rigid - I keep a lid on the schoolboy humour, I don't doubt Ollivander has heard it all before - with a non-unicorn core. Unicorn-hair wands all reject me right off the bat where the dragons are generally a little more open to the possibility before they decide I'm not the wizard for them. I hope it's just because I'm not really a horsey sort and long beyond childhood innocence. It'd be a shame if I missed out on a perfect wand just because I was possessing someone and the unicorns wanted no connection to me because of that.

That I've been able to get something out of every phoenix-feather wand Ollivander has offered me is quite gratifying, though. They're potent symbols of goodness just like unicorns are, but they don't have the naivety that the unicorn also symbolises. They embody destruction alongside justice and light, what with all the fire. The sun burns as well as giving life.

We discuss all of this as we go along, trading theories and giving Ollivander chances to expound on his obsession. When I mention what I've noticed about the unicorns and phoenixes, it has him all but hopping from foot to foot: apparently it was the last piece of whatever puzzle he was assembling in his head. "Just you wait, when your wand finds you it will be spectacular! Don't be alarmed if I have to go digging among the older stock, you may be among the rare wizards who actually suit the other core materials that I no longer use. Before I go there, however, try this - African ebony, sometimes called Jackalberry. Thirteen inches even, with a primary feather from the indian phoenix you made acquaintance with earlier. A wand of will over the world, Mr. Reynolds, a wand that will clear the way to any transfiguration."

Oh. Oh my word, yes. YES.

So THAT'S what Phoenix song sounds like. Not just from my wand, but all the phoenix wands in the shop come in with harmonies and descants. Not audibly: it's the song of the magic in what is absolutely, no doubt, beyond all question, MY wand. I bring it up to the salute and relax into the tug on my magic.

Snap-hiss. A blade of humming, actinic light springs from the tip of my wand. The shop fills with the bright and bracing smell of ozone and we both squint against the glare. I know peace, and all is well. The merest effort of will, scarcely more than a formed decision, and the blade vanishes, leaving the shop momentarily silent of both magical and physical noise.

Ollivander is blinking. If the purple blotches in his vision are anything like mine, he'll not be seeing clearly for a bit yet. "Well, I've never seen a reaction like that before, Mr. Reynolds. Quite remarkable."

I think fast. "Actually a fairly simple, or should I say uncomplicated, transfiguration, a contained and sustained change of the air in a bounded space from one state of matter to another. High-energy gas plasma, somewhere between five and six thousand kelvin judging by the colour." I nod like I'm sure of my facts here. Not a bad little line of bullshit for straight off the cuff, though I do say so myself. "Have to admit I've never done it spontaneously before, nor quite so … so…" I let Ollivander give me an adjective.

"Wondrously, Mr. Reynolds, wondrously. One of the great pleasures of my calling, now, is the joy on the faces of children when they get their first wands and the bright and beautiful celebrations of the wands as they choose their witch or wizard. That, however, is one I will never forget. Tell me, do you go to the muggle cinema at all?"

Okay, that came as a bit of a surprise. Not difficult to answer, though: "Ag, Of course," I say, "why do you think I've been working on spells to make my own lightsaber? Not that I'm quite sure what I did just then to get the bleddy thing to work." I'm willing to bet there are a few wizards working the same problem.

We both have a bit of a laugh about it. More elegant magic for a more civilised age, and so forth. Ollivander quite cheerily tells me that if I ever manage to figure out what I just did and how to replicate it, he wants to be first in line for his own.

My wand is thirteen inches, of which four are carved into a grip styled with simple chequering and a sun-disc rondel at the butt. There are stubby, stylised wings forming a sort of understated quillon arrangement, continuing the sun-and-phoenix motif. The business end is a simple taper from about half an inch at the quillons to a bluntish tip a bit under a quarter inch round. The wood is a deep, rich, brown with a slight reddish tint, and a strip of blond grain runs from rondel to tip, twisting slightly clockwise as it goes. Which is good: stripes make things go faster, it is well known. And also symbolise sun-rays: the artistry Ollivander has put into the piece uses the innate character of the wood and is elegant and coherent. I approve.

It's also cored with a phoenix known for being quite profligate with its feathers: Ollivander doesn't mention the brother wand effect when he tells me this, I suspect because it's quite rare. Most wizards and witches never fight, and the odds of doing so against someone whose wand shares a core are pretty low even when they do. I suspect that at some point I'm going to have to take up arms on account of Harry, however, so Note To Self and all that. There's bound to be a monograph somewhere on the priori incantatem effect out there somewhere, so I shall keep an eye out.

While I'm taking the time to get acquainted with my wand and resisting the urge to stroke it and call it my precioussss, Ollivander is tidying away the rejected wands. Oddly, he puts them back with fussily-precise levitation spells - they sort of tinkle at the upper reaches of my magical 'hearing' - despite having got them all out or down by hand. We're interrupted by a tinkle of real sound.

Ollivander finishes his tidying with a final flourish - I really like the sound of his magic, all neat and precise and everything-just-so - and calls out "With you in a moment, Mrs. Weasley."

I take a moment to put my new wand - preciousssss - in its box, which allows me to ensure my face is composed before I turn. "Good timing," I say, "we really did just finish fitting me." I give her Vernon's best sales smile, toned down a bit. I'm pretty sure she's not in the market for anything with indexable tungsten carbide inserts.

Molly Weasley: so I presume, redheaded housewifey-looking witches with the surname Weasley can't be that common. "Well, my commiserations on the loss of your old wand, at any rate. Did you get sorted out?"

"Sorted out, yes, old wand, no. I was taught in a tradition that doesn't use them, and while I'm in this part of the world I decided I'd learn. Never too old, and all that. So this is my first one." I give the box a tap with my forefinger. I think I'm a bit too old to be proudly showing off my new toy to every grown-up I meet, so I leave it in the box.

"Well, fancy that," presumably-Molly says. "Are you staying in England long?" She's accompanied by a nerdy-looking teenager, nearly full-grown and as redheaded as she is. At this date and that age he seems likely to be Bill, and he's clearly got some maturing to do before he's the cool older brother from the books. He also perked up at the mention of a different tradition of magic, and looks like he's dying to ask but daren't speak without permission in front of his mother. Know the feeling, kid.

"No firm plans either way; staying with relatives at the moment, they're muggles as I believe you'd call them in this country?"

"Oh. I'm sure that's nice for you. Family is important, after all, whatever their circumstances." I can see her writing me off as 'foreign weirdo, likes muggles', just from the look on her face. Legilimency is a lot less necessary than you'd think, with most people. I don't mind, it stops her fishing for interesting gossip as women in small communities are much wont to do.

I turn to Ollivander. "How much do I owe you for the wand? And, ah, what accessories and so forth should I get?"

"Seven galleons, and you'll need wand polish - any beeswax and turpentine polish will do in a pinch, but something specifically for wands is always best - and either buy a holster or talk to your tailor about sewing wand pockets in your clothes. I recommend against trouser pockets, by the by. While that is a sturdy wand, you'll quickly find its limits if you sit on it. I don't sell either of those things: I've barely room for the wands as it is."

"Good to know, I mean to explore the alley today so no doubt I'll find what I need. Seven galleons is rather less than I was expecting - ?" I let the question hang as I fish the coins out of my pocket to pay for the precious - I mean, wand.

"I price first wands in service to the arithmancy of the matter, rather than the economics. Price is rather more variable for replacements and second wands: that one would be two hundred and eleven galleons on that basis." Sounds like the pricing follows the arithmancy there, too, because I'm pretty certain that's a prime number.

"Good to know. A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Ollivander, and a good -" I check my watch - "Afternoon to you. And to you ma'am, sir." I address the presumably-Weasleys on my way out of the shop.

I get a round of good-afternoons in return, and as I'm leaving, I hear her say, "Professor McGonagall owled to say that Bill here needs a wand fitted for his NEWTs. He's done very well with his uncle Gideon's wand, but…" and the door closes behind me. It was Molly Weasley, to a high degree of confidence. The slight cooling when I mentioned muggles fits as well: she's got that muggle/squib second cousin that 'we don't talk about' and makes Arthur keep his muggle stuff in the shed. I know the type. Wouldn't dream of being rude to a muggle face-to-face, but deeply xenophobic all the same. Just too well-brought-up to be actually racist. As she gets older she'll either mellow or turn into your classic Racist Grandparent.

I was quite fortunate to not actually have one of those, although the immigrant side of the family had some pithy observations on the subject of the English. If you wanted racism in my family generally you wanted my great grand-aunt with the fascinating fund of stories about that nice Mr. Mosley. Rather soured me on the whole subject of the extreme right that the first example I ever met was slightly senile and smelt of wee.

That aside, and confident that Molly will only note the resemblance if she ever meets the real Vernon Dursley - he won't be a genial South African wizard but will be a lot thinner - I have a bit of a meander and pick up the wand polish as Ollivander recommended. Since I intend to keep the wand under lock and key at home a holster would be a waste. Stopping only for another pint at the Leaky on my way out - Vernon seems to be over his fear, but wants another drink and I rather fancy one myself - I head back to Little Whinging.

I have a bit over an hour on the train ride home to read the Garrett book, and it's slim so I manage to get from cover to cover. Turns out Pat Garrett - yes, that Pat Garrett - had a daughter who faked her death to leave the non-magical world behind partway through her time at Ilvermorny, and went on to become an Auror, following mutatis mutandis in Daddy's footsteps. I learn that while this (probably) isn't the movie continuity, apparently MaCUSA is a thing anyway, although what I deduce about the history of it is very different from what got posted on Pottermore. I'd need a history book to get the actual story, of course. Her book, a slim volume with a fascinating chapter on the use, maintenance and enchantment of black-powder revolvers, is actually more about defences against firearms if you have a wand. They're comprehensive, and Ms. Garrett is quite clear that bringing a pistol to a wand fight isn't sensible.

Long-range rifle fire is highly effective against an unaware wizard target, but "dirty business" by the standards of the more chivalrous age she was writing for. Reading between the lines, I rather suspect that her duties as an Auror involved more than one occasion of such dirty business, on which point I decline to make up my mind. On the one hand, Aurors are tasked with going after the worst of the worst. On the other, the line between law enforcement and political black-bagging isn't as clear as it should be in the wizarding world.

What is interesting is that she's firmly of the view that any undertaking to deal with dangerous magical creatures should involve absolute hails of bullets. Destructive spells are all very well, but pulling a trigger is much much easier and if you've got the preparation time to enchant your ammunition your options become much more numerous. She intersperses her opinions on the subject with some absolutely ripping yarns, my personal favourite being the one where she and her team 'borrowed' a couple of M1895s from the USMC and used them to great effect against a horde of walking dead (she doesn't call them inferi, and it may well be that in animating cadavers as in skinning cats, there's more than one way to do it) in Louisiana in 1910.

As she put it, "Fire spells surely stop them, but if you've chopped them up with machine-guns enchanted the way we done (sic) they get a whole lot less troublesome to burn." There's a touch of polemic in the concluding chapter to the effect that firearms ought to be regarded as a necessity, lawful to trade with the nomaj for, because "to a nomaj, your wand is no more than a stick, but if you have a pistol to pull, it carries authority with them." I suspect I'd've liked Ida Garrett, she's got a practical way about her.

Back once more in Little Whinging, I've arrived in time to take the boys out from under Petunia's feet for a nice long session of working our way through the Ladybird books. This would normally be time for a nice long walk or a trip out somewhere, but Vernon's fitness level isn't up to two excursions in one day. Yet. He's improving, and while I'd like to go digging in the potions books for something that'd help, I've no idea where to even start looking to predict the effects of potions on a muggle. Going to have to do it the hard way, alas.

Between my own efforts, school and (surprisingly) Petunia pitching in when I've been out, Harry is able - with help - to read the first few Peter and Jane books and Green Eggs and Ham. Dudley's improving too: four weeks of not being rewarded for being a little gobshite hasn't quite turned him around but it has taken away a lot of the distractions from learning at school. I think he's feeling a bit more secure in himself, too, now he knows there are limits and where they are, so he's less inclined to kick off in the first place.

Once the boys are educated, fed, allowed their evening telly privileges and put to bed, I lock up the magical paraphernalia - the escritoire-thingy has a secure cabinet in it that should suffice to keep the boys out - but keep the first volume of Magical Measurement out to read.

Petunia sniffs a bit at the sight of the magical text, but lets me get on with it. I could ask for no better sign that she's getting with the program than that.

-oOo-

AUTHOR NOTES:

While I know that the conversion rate of five quid to the galleon is actually down to JKR having less grasp of numbers than a common goldfish, you can build a whole elaborate headcanon around how it comes to be that those big lumps of coined gold cost a fiver a pop. Debasing the coinage has a history going back to classical times - you can track the decline of the Roman Empire by the way the precious metal content of its coins drops over the years - and adding magic to the mix gives currency fraud a whole new range of options.

Gringotts not being a bank: I stand by this. They rent you a vault and unless you come in to check on it yourself they look in on it 'once every ten years or so' as Griphook tells Harry. Everything else we hear of Gringotts or 'the goblins' doing isn't actually banking or financial services (well, the gambling maybe, if you squint a bit and take an uncharitable view of what merchant banks do).

Goblins having a stake in muggle banks: this is pure headcanon on my part. If you live underground and want to trade with the surface you don't want to be doing it through wizards, who are various permutations of idiot, racist, and isolationist even before you try and deal with whatever agenda they have. You don't want to be a primary-industry economy - that way lies poverty, unless you've got shitloads of oil in which case you have a whole different set of problems - but you're culturally hampered in exporting finished goods because you don't like selling anything more than a lease-for-life. (Which isn't a uniquely goblin thing at all, as any lawyer who's learned more than the basics of estate planning will tell you.) That leaves you with financial and other services and as the Statute of Secrecy comes in, the modern banking industry is just getting going. A few investments on the ground floor and they're set. I picked Coutts because it was founded a couple of years after the Statute passed. And I firmly believe they got to invest by telling the founder of the bank they were jews who wanted their involvement kept quiet. Since he was a scot who'd likely never met a jew he just assumed that was what jews looked like and rolled with it. In a world where the good people of Hartlepool mistook a monkey for a Frenchman (and hanged him as a French spy, look it up, they're still being mocked for it to this day) it's not even that embarrassing an error.

Finally, firearms in Harry Potter stories. No, this isn't going to be one of those stories, although we see in Philosopher's Stone that some utter imbecile gave Vernon Dursley a Firearms Certificate so it's a possibility. It's just a worldbuilding detail, nothing to see here, move along.

Speaking of worldbuilding details: this chapter's fanfic recommendation is Potter Who And The Wossname's Thingummy by ForrestUUID, which is on FFN. It's a crossover with Doctor Who only in the most utterly technical sense, you don't need to know anything about Who because neither does the Doctor in this one. He's come over all amnesiac and ends up at Hogwarts with all of the intelligence and curiosity he's famous for anyway. The writing is what I aspire to when I'm all grown up and it's the kind of fic that repays repeated re-readings because you pick up on brilliant details that you missed last time around.