Gryffindor's Tigress

Chapter Eight: Olivander's

Ruby POV

My vision began to blur telling me that I was about to begin crying.

Sniffling i quickly wiped my eyes and willed the tears away.

"Mom.  Dad.  I promise that I will strive to be the best that I can be.  I promise that I will try to make a few very good friends.  I promise that I will do all in my ability to make you proud.  I love you."

With those words I began to feel stronger than I ever had before because in this one day I had found out amazing incredible things.

I have learned that my parents did love me and that it wasn't their fault that they weren't there.

I have learned that there are others like me although apparently not a shifter at birth.

Finally, I have learned that they have left behind an incredible shadow to fill.

This letter tells me that my parents were filthy rich, caring, selfless, and incredibly headstrong and talented.

I will do my utmost to be just as caring and selfless as my parents, be humble with the fortune that they have left me,  and become the most talented witch of the age.

With this in my mind I reached down under the podium and grabbed the gifts in it and I put them on.

When I put the robes on they instantly shaped to me and turned a greyish blue with yellow stitching looking like a cross between stripes and lightning.

Gasping at the amazing designs I picked up the bag and I felt something on the inside of my robes.

Checking it I see that there was now a pocket that the bag could fit in perfectly.

I decided to place the book in the bag and was shocked when it disappeared when I put it in.

Thinking of the book I reached in and was amazed when I felt my hand close around it.

Excited now I turn to all of the coins and I grab several handfuls of each type of coin and put them in the bag.

Deciding that I had grabbed enough coin to pay for the rest of my school items I turned to the goblin that accompanied me and told him that I was ready to go back to the surface.

He led me over to the cart that I had seen when I had entered and once I was seated he pushed a lever forward and I felt us shoot up at an incredible speed.

Just as suddenly as we had started moving we stopped and I was grinning like a lunatic.

I looked around to see that we were in the same place where we first entered the cart.

I turned to the goblin beside me and quickly composed myself before I said, "Thank you for taking me to my vault."

As though he didn't hear me he just got out and opened the door to the main room of Gringotts.

I stood up and went out and once I got outside of Gringotts I saw Hagrid coming through the great crowd of people looking like a giant bear in a sea of puppies.

As soon as he reached me he looked at my new robes that my parents left me.

"Would ya look at tha' you're already dressed in real nice an' fancy clothes," he said to me, "You look very beautiful."

I smiled happily and thanked him.

"So what do you need now Ruby?"

"I still need everything except for my robes and books."

Hagrid frowned puzzled, "But we didn' get ya anythin'."

"My robes change into whatever clothing I need and I have a book that can change its content to any book written," I explain.

Hagrid looked shocked for and instant before smiling wider than I thought possible.

"Well then lets go get yer wand for ya," he exclaims happily.

He then proceeded to lead me to a store called Olivander's and said, "Hand me yer list there and go on in.  That way while yer gettin yer wand I can get yer potions stuff for ya."

I smiled and handed him my list and entered the small shop.

I don't see anything other than a counter with many shelves with boxes on them.

All of a sudden a man came from behind one of the shelves and looked at me.

"Ah, yes.  Another student for Hogwarts here for there wand," he said before walking up to me.

"Miss Storm which arm is your wand arm?" he asked me while his strange tape measure sized me.

"My right one, sir," I told him.

He begins muttering to himself as he walked to the shelves and pulled out several different boxes from along the wall.

He opens one of the boxes and hands me the wand, "Give it a wave," he told me.

I did as he said and waved it and instantly a mist filled the entire shop.

"No that's certainly not it.  The tricky ones are always the most satisfying to find," he says mainly to himself.

After fifteen minutes and a mountain of wands later he says, "There is one that I think may be the perfect one but it is also the most tempermental."

He goes to the top of one of the shelves and pulls out a box that looks no different than the others but when he opens it I gasp.

It is the most beautiful wand I had seen in this little shop.

I picked it up and instantly all of the lights became brighter and a gentle breeze blew through the shop.

"Amazing, truly remarkable," Mr. Olivander exclaims, "All of the other times I have tried to sell this wand Ms. Storm are all of the times that this shop has been needed to be rebuilt."

He looked at it, studying it, "Ten inches, birch wood, with a core of a thestral hair coated in basilisk venom.  I believe that we can expect great things from you, Ms. Storm."