Garrick Ollivander smiled with contentment. Potter had been a tricky customer, and picking a wand for him had taken longer and been more messy than usual. Still, Ollivander felt he had experienced the start of something extraordinary.

Looking at the mess in his shop, Ollivander waved his wand in complicated loops, his face a mask of concentration. Fallen shelves and wands flew back into their proper places, while broken vases and glassware reassembled themselves, good as new.

His tidying done, and with no more customers at the moment, Ollivander put a kettle on the stove and opened up that morning's Daily Prophet. Several pages in, overshadowed by speculation about the Boy-Who-Lived's upcoming first year of magical education, was another article.

"Hogwarts to Accept Foreign Exchange Students."

To call the article sparse would have been an understatement. Beyond the title, and a quote from Dumbledore extolling the virtues of "the enriching experience of experiencing in person other methods of performing magic," it was a series of vague statements from different ministry officials, former and current Hogwarts teachers, and uninformed nobodies who clearly knew no more about the program than Ollivander himself did.

The ring of the bell over Ollivander's door interrupted his reading. He had a customer.

Ollivander saw the back of a small old man with pure white hair, clad in a formal set of blue robes and an ornate pointed hat decorated with stars. The customer was looking around the shop, not seeing, or maybe not caring to notice, Ollivander himself. Oddly, the slight draft that accompanied his entry into the store did not stop once the door closed. Eddies of dust swirled around the shop floor.

"May I help you, sir?" asked Ollivander.

The customer whirled around. "Ah, yes. Ollivander, is it? It seems I need a wand."

Ollivander shook himself in surprise. Staring at him was a fresh-faced child with blue eyes that seemed to glow faintly.

"What's your name, young one?" asked Ollivander, regaining his bearings.

"Klaus Sollman," answered the boy, breaking eye contact to gaze at the rows of wands.

Ollivander tried to call to mind the family of the boy in front of him. Wizarding Britain was small enough, and his memory good enough, that it should have been a simple task. His mind went back to the article he'd been reading.

"Exchange student?" he asked.

"You could say that," replied the child as he stared avidly around the shop. "How do wands work?"

Ollivander blinked. "That is… a simple question with an unbelievably complex answer."

"I am willing to listen," replied the child, finally directing his attention to Ollivander himself.

"... Let's get you your wand first," Ollivander said.

The child pouted in disappointment, but nodded.

Ollivander pulled out a tape measure with silver markings, placing it on the counter.

"Extend your wand arm," he instructed, and after a moment Klaus complied.

As Ollivander pulled several boxes from the stacks of wands piled high in every direction, the tape measure flew about as though it had a life of its own. It took the child's measurements, from his height, to his arm length, to the distance between his nostrils.

"Wow," exclaimed the child, watching the tape measure flit around. "Can it think? Does it feel pain? Is it alive?"

"Er…. No," answered Ollivander. As the tape measure finished its job and returned to the counter, Ollivander gingerly removed a wand from its box.

"Why do you need to measure me like you are fitting me for robes? Do bigger people need bigger wands?" asked the boy.

"Generally yes, but it is not the only factor. There are many -"

"Will I need a bigger wand when I grow up, then?" the boy interrupted, immediately looking guilty for doing so.

"No. Wands are typically used for a witch or wizard's entire life."

"That doesn't make sense. Adults are bigger than children."

Ollivander sighed. The boy clearly had a curious mind, but how could one explain the details of wandlore to a child in a simple conversation?

"It is complex. The size of the wizard matters, but it is not the only thing to consider." Before the child could speak again, Ollivander handed him a wand.

"Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible," he said.

Klaus reached out for the wand, grasped it, and immediately threw it onto the counter between them.

"No, that's wrong. Too Ghur," he said.

Ollivander looked at him in confusion.

"Beasty," said the boy, in an attempt to clarify.

Ollivander did not understand what the boy was talking about, but he agreed that the wand was unsuitable. He pulled out another one.

"Willow and unicorn hair. Eight inches, bendy"

Again, the child threw it back. "Same. Beasty."

Ollivander pulled out a third wand.

"Maple and phoenix feather. Seven inches. Quite whippy."

"Too fiery," responded the child.

And so it went, the pile of used wands growing higher and higher. Ollivander's job dealt mainly with matching picky wands with an enthusiastic witch or wizard. Picky customers were a comparative rarity.

The oddest thing was that the child was consistent. Even after Ollivander stopped telling him the wand cores, he still rejected unicorn hair and dragon heartstring wands as "too beasty" and phoenix feather wands as "too fiery."

Ollivander looked thoughtfully at the tall pile of discarded wands. Perhaps the wands were picking up on the child's imminent rejection. As Klaus rejected yet another wand, he remarked, voice tinged with annoyance:

"You know, typically it is the wand that chooses the wizard."

"Wands are alive?" asked the child, eyes wide with excitement.

"In a sense," replied Ollivander.

"But the tape measure wasn't? How does that make sense?"

"The tape measure is animated by a wizard's will. Wands have personalities distinct from those that make them."

"Like the difference between possession and making a child, then?" asked Klaus.

"I suppose," Ollivander replied.

"Is matching a wand to a wizard mere trial and error?"

Ollivander bristled, but reminded himself not to get angry at this wide-eyed child.

"No. But it is more akin to painting than to making a potion. There are techniques that work, but it is not following a recipe or set of instructions, either. It is an art."

Ollivander expected more questions from the child, but he instead seemed lost in thought. In the silence, Ollivander stared at the pile of wands. It was extremely rare, but not unheard of, for a wizard to require a wand not made with one of the three supreme cores.

"None of these cores seem to agree with you. We may have to try something different," said Ollivander, as he began to dig around in a seldom-accessed trunk.

"The point is to find something compatible with me and my magic, right?" asked the child.

"Essentially, yes."

"Well, my, uh, caretakers have always been connected to the heavens," said the child "They debate philosophy, tell riddles, and study fate."

Ollivander considered this information. After a few seconds, his eyes lit up.

"Sphinx hair!" he exclaimed.

"Sphinxes exist? Live ones?" asked Klaus, brimming with excitement

Ollivander ignored the boy and continued digging through the trunk. He had one particular wand on his mind, one he had made before he settled on the three supreme cores, for a very promising seer. The wand had rejected her and had been gathering dust for decades…

"Here!" he exclaimed. "Silver lime and sphinx hair. Fourteen inches. Unyielding."

The child reached out and grasped the wand. Reflexively, Ollivander waited for him to reject it. Instead, the child stared at it with fascinated eyes. Suddenly, his robes billowed as if being blown upwards by a draft, and his eyes glowed pure blue. Images of stars, comets and planets shot out of the wand to orbit the child's head. They looked familiar, yet somehow off. Ollivander saw a comet with two tails, a warped copy of Earth, and a sickly green moon.

Eventually, the images faded.

The child lunged forward, hugging Ollivander.

"Thank you!" he said.

"Thank you, young one," came Ollivander's response. "It seems the wands still have much to teach me."

The child counted out seven galleons from a small pouch and handed them to Ollivander. As he turned to leave, he asked one final question.

"May I write to you, sir? To talk about wandlore?"

Ollivander smiled. "Of course. Best of luck, Klaus."

As the child left, Ollivander pulled out a quill and some parchment to record his observations of the day. He was only halfway through when the bell rang once more.

Ollivander turned to the door and yelped in shock. Standing in the doorway was a young girl in black robes, like those of a Death Eater. Long black hair framed a pale, sunken face and dead eyes.

"I need a wand," a dull voice intoned, as its owner stared right through him.

"...Right." said Ollivander, recovering quickly. "What's your name?"

"Morticia Marsner," came her reply.

"Not from here, then?"

The girl shook her head.

"Very well... " Ollivander brought the tape measure back out and left it to its work. Unlike Klaus, the girl stood entirely still and silent.

Ollivander offered the girl a dozen different wands, their woods compatible with those of a more melancholic and tranquil character. Each time, the girl held the wand to no effect until Ollivander reached forward to reclaim it.

"You know," said Ollivander, "I had another tricky customer just before you. It helped when I learned how he was raised and what he valued. What influenced your upbringing?"

"Death," answered the girl.

Ollivander swallowed. "The dark arts, then?" he asked, considering calling for an auror.

In a single moment, the girl's entire demeanor changed.

"How dare you? No!" she yelled. "Dark Magisters and Necromancers make mockery of death, turning it to their evil ends. We understand death's place in the natural order, and fight them with all our might."

The two of them fell silent.

"My mother died fighting dark wizards," the girl said, returning to her usual voice.

"I'm sorry," said Ollivander. In truth, he was disturbed by the child in front of him, but he saw no reason to deny her a wand. Earlier that day, he'd sold wands to the scions of the Malfoy and Goyle families. He suspected they were much more likely to be used for evil than anything he could give to the child in front of him.

Thinking of a possible wand, Ollivander cringed. There was one that fit the bill. He'd made it during one summer when he was a young lad, still studying at Hogwarts. He was moodier then, and in fact had been wallowing in a bit of a macabre phase. In a fit of pique he had made a wand from the wood of a tree from a graveyard, with a core from a creature steeped in death. The wand had rejected him, and as he matured he'd come to see it as an embarrassing part of his youth.

He didn't even keep it in the shop. It was buried in a box with the rest of his teenage things. He excused himself to fetch it from his home above the store, and returned to find the young woman unmoved.

"Hawthorn and thestral tail hair, eleven inches, brittle."

The girl looked at him, skeptical.

"Thestrals are noble creatures connected intimately with death, and hawthorn smells of death but heals the world. It seemed appropriate," said Ollivander.

The girl reached forward and grasped the wand. Amethyst light swirled around her, and Ollivander thought he heard haunting whispers. Ethereal figures, not exactly ghosts, but perhaps echoes of them, appeared around the shop. The one by his workbench seemed to have the features of his father, but before he could be sure, they disappeared.

A small smile appeared on the girl's face. "Thank you," she said, and handed Ollivander seven Galleons.

Still stunned by the glimpse of his father, Ollivander nodded absentmindedly. The girl left. The closing door broke his trance, and he looked at his potted plant. It was dead.

At least his afternoon tea was ready. Thinking about it for a moment, he took a bottle out of one of the drawers of his workbench and added a finger of firewhisky to his cup.

Just as he was enjoying his first sip, the bell rang once more.