To Replace A Wand

Marie-Laure ground her teeth in frustration as she stood in the one shop she never thought she'd ever need to re-enter since the age of eleven. It was beyond annoying to lose her wand in the way it happened. Broken by a dark wizard she'd been tailing. If she hadn't had a partner with her she was sure she would have not gotten out of the fix she'd found herself in. Now she needed to go through the painful process of finding a new wand all over again.

The only comfort in being here was the fact that it wasn't yet summer and thus no new eleven year olds asking why a grown-up needed a wand. She tapped her fingers impatiently on the counter as she waited for the shop keeper to return with various wands to try. He apparently was having trouble locating any close to what she had before. How long would she have to wait? And then finally out he came with a variety of boxes. Ten in total. How long did he think this would take?

As it turned out longer than he'd guessed as they went through all ten boxes with a combination of the same woods, lengths, cores and flexibilities as her old broken 10 inch hard larchwood dragon core wand. Now they had to start all over again with the suggestion by the shop keeper that they try something completely different.

She waited again as he returned to the back with the discarded wands and returned with exactly two boxes. "Yellowheart wood," he declared as he lifted the lid of the first box. "This was an experiment with a wood I've never attempted before. 12 and three quarter inches, suptle with a phoenix tail feather core. You can't get more different than that." Well technically he could with the hundreds of different combinations which were available but Marie-Laure didn't bother to correct him. Instead she took the wand he held out and gasped as she felt the remembered warmth of her very first wand. "You needn't bother with the other box."