THE CHOSEN ONES | hp universe {one}

chapter three

— CHAPTER THREE —

THE WAND CEREMONY

"Hello? Hello?" Harry muttered quietly, as we entered the dark store. I closed the door behind me and took in the store. The front of the store was pretty small and empty but there was plenty of room to walk about. But past the counter, there were shelves upon shelves of long, thin boxes.

"Those must be the wands," I whispered to Harry, pointing to the shelves. Harry's eyes darted in that direction and glistened with joy. Some shelves were dusty, some were impeccably clean. The one shelf that caught my eye, however, was the extremely dusty one with only two wands on the shelf. In fact, is was so dusty that the boxes themselves looked grey.

My eyes were pulled away with a thud, coming from the man on a ladder, "I wondered when I'd be seeing you, Harry and Elizabeth Potter. It seems only yesterday that your mother and father were in here buying their first wands. Let's start with Mr Potter, shall we?" The man scrambled off of his ladder and hurried to a shelf, pulling a wand from it. He scuttled over to the counter, took the wand out of its boxes and handed it to Harry. I looked to Harry, to see him holding the wand as a foreign object.

"Well, give it a wave," the man egged on. Harry swished his wand ever so slightly, but caused a lot more trouble than we expected. All of the shelves and their wands went crashing to the ground. Harry and I jumped back at the loud bangs and Harry cautiously placed the wand on the counter, out of his grip. I stared mindlessly at Harry, thinking of what he had just managed to do.

"Apparently not!" the old man said, disappearing to another shelf of wands and pulling one out, "perhaps this." Harry carefully took the wand from the man's hand and swished it, even gentler than the time before. However, this time, he managed to smash a vase causing glass shards to fly in all directions. The shopkeeper managed to duck in time before any shards hit him but I wasn't so lucky. One shard fly right by Harry and slashed me across the cheek. There was a quick burning of pain but it soon dulled and not much blood was coming from the cut.

"No! No, definitely not! No matter," the man chuckled, walking away once again. He stopped by the dustiest shelf and pulled both of the wands from the shelf. He stared at the wands for a couple seconds before darting his beady eyes towards Harry and I. I shuffled nervously under his glare, stepping closer to Harry for safety.

"I wonder," the man muttered before slowly making his way back over to the counter. He took both wands out of their cases and handed either one to Harry and I. As soon as we held them in our grip, a golden light surrounded us and wind pushed our hair back. I stared at Harry with mixed delight and shock. It was a magnificent thing to witness and even the shopkeeper seemed enchanted by the effect.