Wand Works

It was finally her birthday.  

Not like Malaika had been hanging out for it or anything.  Her parents were so dismissive of the English magical world that she was half-sure they were planning to pack her off to Beauxbatons or somewhere even further away.

But no, her mother had taken the day off work and now they walked through Diagon Alley toward the tiny shop that Malaika had never had cause to go anywhere near before.

As Malaika's mother pushed the door open, revealing the surprisingly sunny shop interior, a bell on the counter picked itself up and rang for the attention of the shopkeeper.

"Hello, how can I help you?" Columbia asked cheerfully as she appeared from the back of the shop.

She took in the appearance of her customers - one tall, one small - and supposed they were here for someone's first wand.  Still, it was always safer to ask, because not even Columbia was always right.

Malaika felt her mother's hand on the small of her back and took it as a cue to speak.  It was her wand they were here for, after all.

"I need a wand," she blurted.

Ugh.  That didn't sound right at all.

"I mean, I'd like a wand, please," she corrected herself.  "I'm going to Hogwarts next term..."

"Of course," Columbia smiled.

The tape measure she retrieved from beneath the counter was, contrary to popular opinion, completely ordinary.  With a discreet flick of her own wand, it levitated beside the girl.

"I just need to take a few measurements, if that's all right?  Which is your dominant hand?"

Malaika shrugged.  A few measurements hardly mattered if she owned a wand at the end of it.

"This one," she answered, raising her right hand to show.

"Stand up straight," Columbia ordered, as she pulled the girl's wand arm out to full extension.  

The tape measure whisked about them both, measuring the child's proportions, even down to the length of her hair and width of her fingernails.

Columbia noted these down and made a few quick calculations before walking all around the shop, levitating several wand boxes from their shelves.

"Try this one first," she said, opening one. "It's pine and dragon heartstring."

Malaika waved the wand in an imitation of the complex movements she'd seen her parents use at home, but nothing happened.  She didn't even feel anything like the pins-and-needles sensation that usually happened on those rare occasions when she had to touch (or deliberately "borrowed") either of her parents' wands.

Eying the shopgirl suspiciously (she wasn't Ollivander, did she even know what she was doing?), she handed the wand back.  It felt dead.

"Hmm," Columbia said. "Clearly not that one."

She shifted a couple of wand boxes aside to bring out a black one, from which she drew a dark wooded wand.

"This might be a better match. Ebony and Phoenix Feather."


((This is your wand!))

Phoenix feather?  That sounded more like it.

Malaika took up the wand and waved it in the air, which immediately filled with sand as it scattered from the tip of her wand.

"Oops!" she squealed, and then started coughing because, well, sand.

"Shi... vers."

Columbia still wasn't yet used to the more unexpected types of side effects that came along with the wand fitting process. Sand was something she'd never seen yet.

"Evanesco," she vanished the sand to clear the air.

"Are you all right?" she asked the girl. "On the upside, that wand appears perfectly matched to you. Conjuring on a very first try is very impressive."

Maybe she needed to hire someone to standby in case of extreme spell effects. Or to construct barricades.