Chapter Two

Gramps always knows. I could tell from the minute I walked into his office three hours later than usual that he knew I’d been hanging out with people who weren’t supposed to know of my existence. He didn’t say anything, though—at this point he probably thought there was no point in worrying about me telling people things anymore—I was attending school in the fall, anyway.

After I bid Fred and George adieu on the Hogwarts Express (without having anyone see me, of course) I eagerly awaited the day I’d start school, dodging cleaning crews to brush up on my Charms. September 1st. 

But after a week, I found out that Hagrid bailed on me, saying that Gramps wanted him to take someone else to Diagon Alley on the same day that he’d planned to take me there. 

“I’m mighty sorry, Carina, Dumbledore jus’ gave me some tasks to do,” Hagrid had said, hanging his head. “I’ll hafta take someone very importan’ to Diagon Alley that same day, then I’ve got important Hogwarts meetin’s that whole week. D’you reckon another day’ll do?”

“Am I not very important?” I pouted, crossing my arms in disappointment. August 1st happened to be my eleventh birthday, and it was supposed to be the wonderful, magical first day of my life as a witch. 

“‘Course ye are, Carina, otherwise Dumbledore wouldn’ta taken ye in all those years ago,” Hagrid said kindly. I could tell he felt guilty, though—I considered us pretty good friends. I was closer to him than any of the staff, anyway. 

I huffed a bit, then said, “Well, that’s my birthday, and I want to celebrate it by going to Diagon Alley.”

“Mighty sorry fer that, Carina. I’m sure your old man knows someone who’d be happy ter take ye.”

I huffed away.

On the first of August, it ended up being that Gramps told me to meet Leah Shacklebolt and her dad Kingsley at Diagon Alley, but there was no way that was happening. That day was MY day, and while Leah was nice and all, I decided I’d rather roam the place by myself, with no one to drag me places or yell at me for wandering off too far.

Credits: Harry Potter Fandom Wiki

Going there alone was slightly scary for me. I’d been to Diagon Alley exactly one and a half times in my life before, and the half-time was that one instance when I mispronounced my Floo powder destination, ended up somewhere in Greenland, and had to have Gramps come get me. Still, I was seven when that happened, and I wanted to prove to my old man that I could actually do things myself, other than accidentally produce gigantic Hungarian Horntails out of teapots. 

Gramps, along with a few of the Hogwarts professors who didn’t think I was a complete nuisance, plus a bunch of my friends left some nice gifts for me when I woke up on the morning of my birthday. Hagrid sent me a wizard cracker kit; I got cupcakes from Leah (that quickly turned into a sugary breakfast.) Professor McGonagall, in her immaculate taste, left me a warm, woolly sweater with a phoenix—my favorite animal—on the top corner, with a card that read “If you prove half as capable this year as you did in my classroom last week, you’ll be turning things to phoenixes instead!” 

And Gramps gave me, strangely enough, a necklace with a single pearl as the ornament. I loved pearl necklaces, but this one was a little different than the ones I saw the witches in London wear to work. This one had just a regular pearl in the middle, and the rest was just a gold chain, which was weird. Still, it was eerily beautiful, and I clasped the accessory around my neck. 

As I got myself dressed and noticed that Gramps had left 30 Galleons on the table for me. He always knows. I shoved the money into my pocket and readied myself for the first day of my new life, which I was venturing into alone.

I took a deep breath. No one could stop me.

***

Once I used my Floo powder correctly, making sure to enunciate it as well as I possibly could so as not to repeat the mistake I made last time, I opened my eyes and saw in relief and  delight that I had ended up at the right place: the main street of Diagon Alley. The entire place was flooded with witches and wizards and their parents, who were all presumably there to buy their school supplies. I took a look at my school supplies list, which was handed to me just a week prior by Professor McGonagall. Three sets of plain work robes.

I knew exactly where to go for that—Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions—but the difficult part was that I had no idea where that was. After spending what felt like an eternity trying not to step on robes, I let out a sigh of relief when I finally saw the gold cursive sign for the robe shop.

I’d been there once before with Gramps, and the shop hadn’t changed much. Except this time, it was crawling with Hogwarts students trying to buy robes. Shop attendants scurried about, taking the measurements of kids who couldn’t have been any older than me, and parents tried to calm down their littlest ones. It all made me smile a little. 

“A wonderful sight, isn’t it?” I turned around to see who was talking to me, and it was none other than Madam Malkin herself, bending down and smiling at me with her adorable half-moon glasses. She was clutching at least five robes—for students, no doubt.

Credits: Harry Potter Fandom Wiki

“Madam Malkin!” I gave her a big hug. I had met her once before—she and Gramps knew each other, and she had taken such good care of me the last time we were there.

“Welcome back, my dear,” she said. “Are you lost, Carina? Where is your grandfather?”

“Oh, he’s right outside, Madam Malkin,” I lied. I decided that no adults could know that I was here alone.

“Good, dear. It would be dangerous for a child as young as yourself to be roaming around Diagon Alley alone!” She wagged her finger at me, then looked over at all the people she needed to serve. “I’ve got to get going, now. That’s a beautiful necklace you’re wearing!”

Madam Malkin scurried off to take some measurements for another student. I touched my necklace and looked down at it. The singular pearl seemed to glint in the light.

After securing my robes from Madam Malkin’s, I joined the line, which seemed miles long, with my required clothes for the year. I was feeling quite proud of myself, though I did have a small conundrum: if I kept getting lost like I had on my way to Madam Malkin’s, I would surely end up in a dangerous place eventually.

After paying for all my stuff with the money Gramps gave me, I walked up to a woman standing by the exit door with her son. “Um, excuse me?”

She turned around, a little startled and slightly annoyed, and instantly I regretted my decision to walk up to her. Her eyes were piercing black, and she had a scarily aristocratic expression. When she opened her thin lips, I thought she was going to yell at me, but instead she said, “Are you looking for something, child?”

I gulped. “Um… yes. Do you know where… um… Ollivander’s is?”

“Oh! Yes, Draco and I were planning to head there now,” she said with a pleasant smile. I looked over at who I could only assume was Draco, a boy with a pointed face and pale skin, and the same platinum blonde hair. “Lucius! Come over now, would you? There’s a little girl that we’ll be escorting to Ollivander’s.”

Lucius—who was probably her husband—walked over to us, scowling a little bit. He had the same color hair as Draco, but it was very long, probably up to his shoulders. “Narcissa, I was in the middle of a very important discussion with—”

As soon as he saw me, his eyes widened a little, and he knelt down to talk to me. “What is your name, little girl?”

The two adults were being so kind to me, but I was terrified. “Gramps says… I shouldn’t tell my name to strangers.”

“Well… I’m Lucius Malfoy, and this is Narcissa. My son, Draco”—he put his arm around his son—“is with us today to shop for his Hogwarts supplies. Not strangers anymore now, are we?”

His expression relaxed from stern to kind. 

“Okay, my name is Carina,” I said to him. He offered his hand to shake, and I took it.

I followed the Malfoys to Ollivander’s, and I held Mrs. Malfoy’s hand on the way there. She held it like she was concerned I would run off, but I figured that if they were going to kidnap me, it would be stupid to do it in a place as crowded as this. Plus, I could fend for myself—I made sure to take the wand I had been using to practice since I was seven (it was really Gramps’ wand) on me at all times. It was concealed up my sleeve.

As we walked, Draco turned to me and asked, “Going to Hogwarts?”

“Mhmm,” I said absentmindedly.

“First year?”

“Yep. And you?”

“Yeah. Apparently we’re not allowed our own brooms,” he said, looking slightly annoyed. “Kind of stupid, don’t you think? I plan on getting Father to smuggle one in for me.”

“I’ve never been the best on brooms.” I thought of the first (and only) time I had tried to go on one as a child. My curiosity had gotten the best of me and I was soon fighting for my life on what felt like a great bucking bull. I ended up with black eyes and a broken wrist, though Gramps told me it could’ve been way worse. I never wanted to fly again.

“I can’t wait to play Quidditch. If I don’t get on the house team, I might as well leave the school.”

“Couldn’t be me. I don’t think I could fly to save my life.”

Draco snickered a little bit. “By the way, you mentioned your grandfather before. Who’s your grandfather?”

Finally, something I could answer! Proudly, I said, “My parents passed away right after I was born, but I’ve been raised by Albus Dumbledore at Hogwarts Castle since.”

Draco’s eyes widened. For the entire time we had been talking until now, he had been speaking in a bored, drawling way, but now, he seemed genuinely interested. “Whoa! You’re lying!”

“Nope,” I said smugly.

“Okay, then what’s it like?”

And so Draco and I told each other stories about our childhoods while we waited for Ollivander to see us. I noticed that as I told him more and more stories, the more excited and relaxed he seemed to get around me. On my side, I felt more and more at ease with every tale I told him about being the granddaughter of the greatest wizard in the world and my personal favorite professors, and how I snuck into every class for three years. But we couldn’t help but clash on some things.

“It’s a bit of a nuisance for them to let in the Muggle-borns, don’t you think?” Draco asked, yawning. We had been waiting on the line for quite some time—apparently, Ollivander himself spent time with every Hogwarts student-to-be, picking out a wand for each one personally—and I was taken aback by the remark. Gramps had always taught me that Muggles were no lesser beings than us Wizards, and that their ingeniousness to create complex societies and technology without magic should be applauded. “Father says the Muggles could never understand our ways.”

“Well, Gramps always told me that—” But before I could finish my sentence, Draco and I found ourselves at the front of the line, gazing up at an expectant Ollivander.

He was an old man with unkempt white hair, whose pale eyes seemed to pierce straight through my soul. “Good afternoon, Carina and Draco.”

I swallowed really hard. His soft voice sent an eerie chill down my spine. I knew he was strange, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he knew both of our names.

My new friend must have felt the creepiness in the air, too, and he said, “We’re here for our wands, Mr. Ollivander.”

“If you’d follow me, please.” I watched as Ollivander gave us a crooked smile, leading Draco away into a sea of shelves filled to the brim with small rectangular boxes, stacked up as high as the ceiling of the tiny shop. I twiddled my thumbs until Draco returned—there was something about this shop, about receiving my very own wand for the first time, that made me unreasonably anxious.

Finally, Draco did return, and he paid for his own wand—we had been on that line for so long that his parents had gone out to buy books for us in the meantime—which meant it was now my turn. Draco and I agreed to meet at Florish and Blotts, where his parents were.

I drew in a sharp breath as I followed Ollivander through the seemingly endless shelves of wand boxes.

“Anxious, are we, Ms. Aberforth?” Ollivander chortled as he scanned the boxes for something that might suit me. Of course he read me like a book, I thought, laughing nervously.

“Try this one. Ten inches, mahogany. Dragon heartstring core. I’ve heard of your recent escapades at Hogwarts. This one is quite good for Transfiguration,” he said. I blushed a little as I held the wand and swirled it around a little. Was something supposed to happen?

“No… here.” He put that one in a box and pulled out another. “Thirteen inches, ebony. Much heftier, though well-suited for the adventurous witch or wizard.”

Again, I felt nothing.

“A tricky customer!” Ollivander remarked, again rummaging through the piles. I could tell there were eighty-million incomprehensible things running through his brain at the same time. After what seemed like an eternity, after countless iterations of Ollivander asking me to try a wand and placing the box back, my heart started to sink. Gramps always told me that the wand chooses the wizard, not the other way around—was it that no wands had chosen me?

Plus, looking back at the line, the poor people waiting seemed impatient.

“Mr. Ollivander, I would be happy to take whatever wand works,” I said sheepishly. “I’ve done tons of magic with one of my grandfather’s old wands, and I can just keep using that one, sir—”

“Nonsense,” he said. He didn’t even look back at me, waving me away. He continued searching the shelves as if giving up wasn’t even an option. “Not to worry. You’re not the only tricky one I’ve had here today.”

After a little more searching, Ollivander stopped all of a sudden—it was so out of the blue it startled me a little. He started stroking his white beard and said, “Curious… would you mind coming with me to the restricted wands section, Carina?”

Nervous, I stood behind Ollivander as he touched his own wand to one of the shelves in a less conspicuous part of the shop, and I gasped as it began to rotate, revealing a secret doorway. It slid into place with a click.

“After you,” he said with a ghostly smile. 

It was a small, dimly lit room, populated with just a small fraction of the number of wands I had seen outside the room. Where there were possibly thousands in the regular Ollivander’s shop, this room—or perhaps it’d be better described as a vault?—housed what looked like no more than a dozen wands. And they weren’t in regular cardboard boxes, either. These wands lived in glass boxes, secured by what seemed like magical barriers and locks.

Everything seemed aglow with a soft blue hue, and the power of the magic in here seemed to seep into my skin as the hair on the back of my head stood up.

“What is this place?” I inquired with wonder, looking around at each of the intricately-carved, beautiful wands like they were museum exhibits. There was one that seemed to be from Ancient Egypt, carved with interesting hieroglyphic messages and made from a white type of wood that I didn’t recognize. There was another that seemed entirely made from obsidian, and at the hilt (where a wizard would typically hold it), there were multiple cracks that glowed red, as though lava were flowing through them. And there was a third that seemed to be made from regular wood, with a glowing white gem at its hilt.

“From the beginning, I knew you were an extraordinary wizard, Ms. Aberforth,” Ollivander replied, studying each wand like he reading the description card at each exhibit. “I had a hunch that only an extraordinary wand would suit you.”

I continued staring at the wands, which looked too good to be real. There was one that looked overgrown, with moss covering its hilt and small branches coming from its tip, and the moss glowed fabulous green. When I looked over at Ollivander, who was at the other side of the room, I noticed that he had stopped in front of a specific wand, studying it intently. “I’d like you to try this one. Eleven inches, sakura wood and kitsune tail hair core.”

He unlocked the wand’s safe and carefully handed it to me.

Compared to the mind-blowing nature of the other wands in the collection, I had to admit that it did not look very fancy at all. It was a much lighter-colored wood than I was used to seeing with most other wands, sure. And like most other wands, it had a curved hilt where my hand was supposed to hold it. I looked closer and saw some carvings on the hilt depicting stalks of bamboo, but all things considered, it didn’t look terribly unique.

“Mr. Ollivander, don’t you think this one looks a little…” I trailed off, not wanting to insult his wandmaking.

“Plain? Compared to the other wands in this collection, yes, perhaps,” he said. “But I think you’ll notice that this wand’s functionality surpasses all others in here.”

I held it in my hand and swished it around—it felt like air in my fingers, but warm. I laughed as it glowed a soft pink and stepped backwards in surprise as I watched a single cherry blossom erupt from the end. I had a feeling that if this wand wasn’t mine, there were no others.

“Wonderful!” Ollivander clapped in enjoyment. “Though this is an interesting set of events.”

“Why, Mr. Ollivander?” I asked, swishing the wand around and watching in wonder because it left a pink hue in the air.

“To tell you the truth, Ms. Aberforth, I did not make this wand,” he said. I gave it back to him so that he could wrap it in a box. “It is curious, because my family was gifted it generations ago. I remember every wand I’ve ever sold, Ms. Aberforth, but more than that: I remember every wand I’ve ever gotten.” 

Ollivander paused, as if he didn’t want to tell me. He took a deep breath, then continued:

“And this particular wand… I remember its story. It was told to me when the wand first came into my hands. It was first gifted to my family from a centaur. He rushed to the door of my family’s home with it and said that it belonged to a great and terrible wizard, though he wouldn’t explain who or how he came into possession of the item. But he said that it had unbelievable power, and he had divined the stars and discovered that one day that the terrible wizard would rise again. And that the one who would rise to stop him would need to wield its power to do so. He made us swear to keep it safe, and for centuries, it has been sitting in this vault.”

Alarmed, I looked at Ollivander, fear and wonder welling up in my chest. “You mean to say that I’m meant to save the world or something?”

Ollivander stroked his beard, thinking. “It’s possible that the centaur was lying. But I can tell you that this wand is potent. Its core is unconventional, to say the least—it is a single hair from one of the tails of a kitsune, a Japanese nine-tailed fox. Kitsune tail hair is rarely ever used in wands because it is so volatile, so powerful, so difficult to master. You may find that this one acts on its own occasionally… now, shall we finalize this?”

Taking all this information in, I stared at the wand. It almost felt like I had been handed some kind of impossible prophecy. Wordlessly, I followed Ollivander to the register, where I paid him his seven Galleons. 

I decided it would probably be wiser to sit down at a bench somewhere and collect my thoughts before seeing Draco and his family at Flourish and Blotts. Was this wand truly a marker for something so large-scale as the savior of the world? And why did it choose me? My head spun and spun. I looked down at the cherry blossom in my hand from earlier, then looked closer at the bamboo carving on the wand. What a horrible and exciting prospect this all was. My head filled with fantasies of who this terrible wizard might be: of slaying dragons and vampires and other evil creatures. What did it all mean? And the question that kept repeating over and over in my head like some deranged clock tower that never stopped chiming: why me? Why me? Why me?

I sighed and got up from my bench, walking into Flourish and Blotts. There was no use dwelling on it too much—the only next action I could think of was to come clean to Gramps later and ask for advice. 

After I found Draco, he let out a sigh of relief. “There you are. We’ve been here for almost an hour—Mother’s just bought our books.”

“Your mum’s bought both of our books? That’s horribly kind of her.”

“Why do you look like you’ve just seen a ghost? Your skin is pale white.”

I hardly had time to sputter an answer before Draco’s father came over to us. “Did you have a good visit to Ollivander’s? You were there for a long time.”

“Yep,” I muttered, trying my best to hide how rattled I was. “Sorry, Mr. Malfoy.”

Draco’s mom joined, completing the family, before I could be interrogated about why I had been there for so long. “I was worried for you, Carina! I was afraid you’d be lost—let’s take a move on, shall we? At this rate, the shops will close before we’re done.”

I didn’t object. Thankfully, there wasn’t much shopping left to do—just some school supplies to get at various places, like the Apothecary and Amanuensis Quills and finally, Eeylops Owl Emporium (Draco mentioned that while his family was so well-connected that they owned at least four owls already by necessity, they wanted him to get his own.) The shop was rather dark—the perfect place for owls, I suppose—and wide, bright eyes peered at me and Draco from their cages. 

“That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” I said, smitten with one of the baby snowy owls who was hanging near its mother. I reached my hand into the cage to ask the mother for permission, and after a light nip on my finger, she lifted her wing to reveal not just one, but four owlets on the perch. “Draco, there’s four of them!”

“They look like they like you a lot,” he remarked, going on his tippy-toes to get a good look at some of them.

“Their feathers are so smooth,” I said, lightly petting the head of each baby before giving a good pat to their mother. She cooed. Withdrawing my hand, I continued looking at all the owls.

Draco and I looked around the shop almost until its closing—the attendant gave us annoyed looks, since we were the only ones left, too—and left with our own respective owls in hand. I had picked out a fabulously large eagle owl that I named Patchy, and Draco also chose an eagle owl, Athena.

“Awfully creative name, Athena,” I joked, poking him on the arm. 

“If Father approves, then I approve,” he said, pouting a little.

The Malfoys ended up paying for that, too, because it was my birthday. I felt myself starting to be endlessly grateful—it almost felt too much to ask, for their understanding and lack of questions when I spent forever at Ollivander’s, for accompanying me places, for paying for all my things—and choosing, I could notice, the finest ones, too. I spouted my thanks like a broken Muggle record machine.

“It’s your birthday, dear,” Draco’s mother told me again. “Looks like we’re done shopping. Carina, dear, where will you be going after this? Will you need us to accompany you?”

“Oh, I’m just spending the next month at Mr. Shacklebolt’s place with my… friend, Leah,” I said. I immediately felt bad for pausing there. Leah was so nice, but I just didn’t find her very much fun at all. “Gramps wants me to take the Hogwarts train on September 1st. Says it’s a mandatory experience if I’ll be student there.”

Draco’s mom was about to start saying something again, but his dad interrupted her. He kneeled down to face me, like he did when we first met a hours ago. “Why don’t you come over for dinner just for tonight? You must be starving.” I noticed Draco’s mother flash him a look of slight bewilderment, as if the invitation had come out of nowhere.

With how much I liked Draco’s friendship and all that they had done for me, it was a tempting offer, but then I remembered that I had already ditched Leah and her family, and suddenly I felt really bad. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Malfoy, but I already agreed to meet with Leah and her father here—”

“Oh, but we insist,” he said, looking slightly more agitated now. I was starting to feel slightly pressured. “It’s your birthday!”

“Mr. Malfoy, uh—”

“Carina, is that you?” shouted a voice from afar. I instantly recognized it as belonging to Mr. Shacklebolt, who dashed over to us as quickly as he could with Leah in tow.

Draco’s dad stood up quickly, and dusted himself off. “Fancy meeting you here, Kingsley.”

Mr. Shacklebolt’s expression quickly turned to one of clear disdain once he saw Draco’s dad standing next to me. 

“Lucius.” He looked stiff. “Looks like you and Carina have met.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Malfoy retorted with a scarily cold sneer. “I was just extending a dinner invitation for tonight.”

“That’s mighty kind of you, but she’s already got plans,” Mr. Shacklebolt said with the same amount of coldness. I saw Leah poke her head out from behind her father. She waved at me, though she looked  a little scared of the tense atmosphere the two men had created.

“Enjoy your summer,” Mr. Malfoy said with a strained smile at me. He walked off with Draco, who mouthed a hurried “Bye!”, and his mother.

“Did that man hurt you?” Mr. Shacklebolt questioned, worried. 

“No, the opposite, really,” I said. “He was really nice the whole time.”

“Whew.” He let out a sigh of relief. “You know who he is, don’t you?”

“Is he anyone special?”

“He’s head of the Malfoy family. They’re a very wealthy pure-blood family.” I thought of Draco remarking that his family had four owls, and I did not feel very surprised. “He’s not a nice chap, and they’re one of the ones with some bad, bad beliefs about Muggles and Muggleborns and all that. You don’t want to be mingling with that sort.”

That reminded me of what Draco said on the Ollivander’s line, and I thought that also made sense. Except Mr. Malfoy was a pretty nice chap to me, and I was pretty sure I could find the right sort for myself, thanks very much.

I didn’t say it out loud, though. And thankfully, neither Mr. Shacklebolt and Leah questioned my ditching them—maybe they were just thankful I hadn’t been kidnapped.

All in all? Perhaps the most fun birthday I’d had in my life.