Stay - Mattheo Riddle

Can we talk?

Kirra looked down at her own wand. She could see finger marks all over it. She gathered a fistful of robe from her knee and tried to rub it clean surreptitiously. Several gold sparks shot out of the end of it. 

Fleur Delacour gave her a very patronizing look, and she desisted. Mr. Ollivander sent a stream of silver smoke rings across the room from the tip of Cedric's wand, pronounced himself satisfied, and then said, "Mr. Krum, if you please."

Viktor Krum got up and slouched, round-shouldered and duck-footed, toward Mr. Ollivander. He thrust out his wand and stood scowling, with his hands in the pockets of his robes. "Hmm," said Mr. Ollivander, "this is a Gregorovitch creation unless I'm much mistaken? A fine wand-maker, though the styling is never quite what I . . . however . . ." 

He lifted the wand and examined it minutely, turning it over and over before his eyes. "Yes . . . hornbeam and dragon heartstring?" he shot at Krum, who nodded. "Rather thicker than one usually sees . . . quite rigid . . . ten and a quarter inches . . . Avis!"

The hornbeam wand let off a blast like a gun, and a number of small, twittering birds flew out of the end and through the open window into the watery sunlight. "Good," said Mr. Ollivander, handing Krum back his wand. 

He then repeated the same actions with Harry's wand though he seemed a great deal happier with this wand since it was one of his own. And lastly, it was Kirra's turn. 

"Which leaves . . . Miss. Potter." Kirra got to her feet and walked past Krum to Mr. Ollivander. She made eye contact with the man for a few moments, giving him her usual kind smile (which he was happy to return) before she handed over her wand.

"Aaaah, yes," said Mr. Ollivander, his pale eyes suddenly gleaming. "Yes, yes, yes. How well I remember." Kirra could remember too, it wasn't the wand that she had had in either of her past lives, but it had worked almost as well, though no wand could work as well for her as her first wand.

She wasn't sure where her first wand was, perhaps it was somewhere tucked away in the room of requirement, waiting to be reunited with her. Or maybe Tom had taken it as a keep safe, or it had been found and then just carelessly thrown away, thought to be a useless wand with no owner. 

She could remember it as though it had happened yesterday. . . . Four summers ago, on her eleventh birthday, she and her brother had entered Mr. Ollivander's shop with Hagrid to buy a wand. 

Mr. Ollivander had recognised her as soon as she had walked into the shop. He had taken her measurements and then started handing her wands to try, and he had given her the right one on the first try. She had a funny feeling Rita Skeeter's Quick-Quotes Quill might just explode with excitement if either of them were to say too much about her past and her past wands.

 Mr. Ollivander spent much longer examining Kirra's wand than anyone else's. Eventually, however, he made a fountain of wine shoot out of it, and handed it back to Kirra, announcing that it was still in perfect condition.

"Thank you all," said Dumbledore, standing up at the judge's table. "You may go back to your lessons now — or perhaps it would be quicker just to go down to dinner, as they are about to end —"

Feeling that at last something had gone right today, Kirra got up to leave, but the man with the black camera jumped up and cleared his throat. "Photos, Dumbledore, photos!" cried Bagman excitedly. 

"All the judges and champions, what do you think, Rita?"

"Er — yes, let's do those first," said Rita Skeeter, whose eyes were upon Kirra again. "And then perhaps some individual shots." The photographs took a long time. Madame Maxime cast everyone else into shadow wherever she stood, and the photographer couldn't stand far enough back to get her into the frame; eventually she had to sit while everyone else stood around her.