The Wandmaker's Granddaughter

The Wandmaker's Granddaughter in Her Natural Habitat

For several hundred years now, ever since winning a bet about a dragon race, the Pomgrass family had been the caretakers off Flourish and Blots. Managers had been hired and fired, some even died, but the sole care and overtaking had always been the hands of this wizarding family. The current iteration of patrons was a family of two parents and two daughters. Both daughters had entered and graduated from Hogwarts but while the elder of the two had found the book store tedious and unfavorable, the younger of the two, now being in her early twenties, had fallen in love with books from a very young age.

The fiery haired and tempered Pomona Pomgrass was about fourteen years old when Amelia had first come into town. Understanding what it means to be a shop keepers daughter, Pomona was quick to befriend the little girl often left alone in her grandfather's store for hours.

The book shop was also one of the only places Amelia could go without her grandfather. Being a Ravenclaw, Mr. Ollivander was always one to encourage his young granddaughter to expand her mind through books, of course only books with substance, not novels or anything frivolous like that. That is why it was not uncommon for Pomona to find Amelia hidden amongst the stacks of towering books reading without being aware of the outside world.

One day in the midst of summer, upon finding Amelia's hidden cove, Pomona joined her with two cups of tea
in hand.

"What're you reading?" She asked taking a sip of her own tea.

"Hogwarts: a History," Amelia said without looking up from the book in her hands.

"Are you excited to go off to school?"

"I don't know," Amelia sighed setting down the book and taking the second cup of tea.

"What'd ya mean?  I couldn't sleep for a month before going to my first year," Pomona said sinking to the floor across from Amelia.

"I just want to stay and help grandfather at the shop."

"You know, he can take care of the shop on his own."

"But what's the use of school? Everything I need to know I can just learn in books."

"Don't you wanna make friends? Experience new things?"

"I have friends."

"Friends your age?"

Amelia sipped her tea.  It's true that she was never allowed to play with the other children on the street and it wasn't like Amelia's grandfather had any friends either.  Every day Amelia would sit, wishing to go outside and play with the other kids on the street but grandfather never let her go.  "Other children are just distractions," he'd say whenever Amelia asked about it.

"Amy Lee you need to get out of that stuffy little shop and into the real world."

"What do you mean? I'm out of the shop now and this is the real world."

"Firstly, your still in a shop. Secondly, do you really want to run the wand shop all you life?"

"Grandfather wants me to," Amelia said staring intently at her tea, watching as it lapped at the edges of cup.

"But do you?"

"I don't know. It's interesting and I'm good at it."

"Ok. But what do you like more, wands or music?"

"Wands." Amelia said without hesitation.  Grandfather didn't really let her listen to any music, it was too distracting to the craft.

"Which do you like more, wands or books?"

Alright, she had a point here.  Books had been her constant companions all her life.

"That's like choosing between water or air," Amelia complained.

"Okay, wands or candy floss?"

"Candy floss," Amelia said without hesitation.  Her grandfather would never buy her sweets, but she had fallen in love with candy floss when Pomona shared some with her a few years ago.  Ever since then she'd been sneaking it passed her grandfather whenever she could get her hands on it. 

"Then why don't you run a candy floss store instead?"

"Can you make money doing that?"

"Maybe. What I'm saying is that you need to go out in the world and find what you want to do. You shouldn't just run the wand shop because your grandfather wants you to."

"But you're gonna run your father's book shop," Amelia argued.

"That's different. I went to school. I left Diagon Alley and tried different things. I made friends, flew on a broomstick, drove a car. You need to go find what you want to do. Maybe you want to run a book store too. Or write a book. I heard about some wizards who invent new spells. You could do something like that. There's even plenty of down time at the wand shop, you could sell wands and do something else when you have the time."

"But grandfather says you need to be completely devoted to your craft or it will never be great."

"Just because I like kickboxing in my free time doesn't mean I'm bad at selling books.  I'm honestly pretty good at it."

"What's kickboxing?"

"That's beside the point, ever since you were little you haven't left this street other than random trips to the forest with your grandfather. You need to go to Hogwarts and make a bunch of friends, make mistakes, break the rules. You need to learn who you are, not who your grandfather wants you to be. And when you come back next summer, I'll buy you a giant bag of candy floss."

"Sour apple pop candy floss"

"Sour apple pop candy floss."

"Fine." Amelia agreed.  But even the bribe of candy floss didn't relent her anxiety about going out in to a world she barely knew, being surrounded by people she didn't know, and learning things in books she could read on her own.