The Girl Who Lived

Chapter 5 - The True Behind the Scar

"I think I made a new friend," Clara said happily as she ate her chocolate and raspberry with chopped nuts ice cream Hagrid had bought her. Hagrid laughed, "Did ya now? That's good."

They stopped to buy parchment and quills. Clara was delighted when she found a bottle of ink that changed color as you wrote.

They bought Clara's school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all.

Even Dudley, who never read anything, would have been wild to get his hands on some of these. Hagrid almost had to drag Clara away from Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue- Tying and Much, Much More) by Professor Vindictus Viridian. 

"I was trying to find out how to curse Dudley." 

"I'm not sayin' that's not a good idea, but yer not ter use magic in the Muggle world except in very special circumstances," Hagrid said, "An' anyway, yeh couldn't' work any of them curses yet, yeh'll need a lot more study before yeh get ter that level."

Does this mean Dudley will keep the pig tail for a while? Clara thought and couldn't help but let out a soft chuckle at that amusing thought.

Hagrid wouldn't let the girl buy a solid gold cauldron, either ("It says pewter on yer list"), but they got a nice set of scales for weighing potion ingredients and a collapsible brass telescope. 

Then they visited the Apothecary, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor; jars of herbs, dried roots, and bright powders lined the walls; bundles of feathers, strings of fangs, and snarled claws hung from the ceiling. 

While Hagrid asked the man behind the counter for a supply of some basic potion ingredients for Clara, the girl herself examined silver unicorn horns at twenty-one Galleons each and minuscule, glittery-black beetle eyes (five Knuts a scoop). 

Outside the Apothecary, Clara checked her list again, "I still need... a wand."

"A wand?" Hagrid repeated before pointing to a narrow and shabby store, "Well, you'll want Ollivanders. No place better. Run along there, I just got one more thing I got to do. Won't be long."

Clara nodded and went up to the store. 

Peeling gold letters over the door read Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window. 

A tinkling bell rang somewhere in the depths of the shop as she stepped inside. It was a tiny place, empty except for a single, spindly chair. Clara felt strangely as though she had entered a very strict library; she swallowed and looked up at the thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling.

Clara placed her stuff on the floor quietly and walked to the desk. "Hello?" she asked softly, "Hello?"

Suddenly, a man slid to view on a ladder, looking at the girl from the corner, and she jumped slightly. The man smiled lightly, recognizing her immediately, "I wondered when I'd be seeing you, Miss Potter." He climbed down the ladder and looked between the boxes, "It seems only yesterday that your mother and father were in here buying their first wands. Ah." He pulled out a box, "Here we are." He walked up to Clara as he opened the box, showing her a wand. He handed the wand to her, who then glanced at it before at him. "Well, give it a wave."

"Oh," she whispered before she waved the wand. Suddenly all the shelves came crashing down and she jumped before she quickly put the wand back on the counter.