Chapter 42: Christmas

Harry had always felt that he already knew enough about magic and wizards.

From the owls that could deliver mail, to Hagrid appearing at the seaside cottage, to Diagon Alley, Platform Nine and three-quarters, Hogwarts… Harry had grown increasingly calm, and he believed he was gradually becoming familiar with everything in the Wizarding World.

But now he suddenly felt he knew nothing about magic at all — he couldn't even recognize a wand anymore.

"That was clearly a baseball bat, right?" After Silven left the common room, Harry stared blankly at Ron.

In a daze, he recalled the words Silven had said to him yesterday afternoon… "There's still one wand, two and a half feet, that hasn't been finished, but I can take a reservation."

So that was it?

Harry felt Silven wouldn't joke with him about something like this, and he had tried to link the words "feet" and "wand" together, but he couldn't manage it.

"I bet Silven was just having us on a moment ago," Ron said.

Unlike Harry, he knew more about magic — many of his understandings had long since solidified into fixed common sense.

In his view, a wand should look exactly like the ones they used now, at most differing in length. Because everyone around him was like that, without a single exception.

So Ron had never believed from the start that that two-foot-long bat was any kind of wand — he took it as Silven amusing himself at their expense.

"Want to play Wizard's Chess?" Ron asked, finishing his last bite of roasted mushroom.

"Ah, sure," Harry said; his head felt all muddled, and he needed to do something else to take his mind off things.

"But Ron, I've never played that Wizard's Chess before."

"No worries, I can teach you — it's very simple." Ron took out a battered old chessboard and showed Harry how to make the pieces move on it.

Just like Muggle chess, but the pieces were all alive, and they had their own thoughts — that was the fun part, giving you the feeling of commanding an army into battle.

Harry was soon hooked on the game, but his skills were poor; every time he lost to Ron, and in the end even his own queen couldn't stand it any longer — she grabbed her walking stick and gave Harry's fingers a vicious whack.

"Ouch…"

Harry's fingers immediately turned bright red, so painful that tears welled up in his eyes, but the queen beside him kept on cursing in furious exasperation.

"Fool, idiot, empty-headed mountain troll!"

This was probably the drawback of Wizard's Chess — the pieces really did have terrible tempers.

At the same time, Silven had also arrived at Hagrid's wooden hut.

He knocked on the door, but didn't hear Hagrid's familiar booming voice.

"No one home?" Silven waited a while longer, but there was still no sound from inside the hut; only then did he confirm that Hagrid really wasn't home.

Probably gone to Hogsmeade for a drink.

Hagrid did indeed have the habit of popping over to Hogsmeade for a couple of drinks in his daily life — many of the professors were the same. Today was the first day of the school holiday, and it was snowing; it counted as a rare fine day, so naturally Hagrid wouldn't miss it.

Only Silven would be making a wasted trip — trudging through the snow to get here, then trudging through the snow back to the castle.

He had originally planned to finish making the wand today, but now he could only wait until tomorrow.

Silven didn't choose to go straight in with an Unlocking Spell — even though for him it was only a trivial matter solved with a lift of the hand, and even though Hagrid wouldn't mind if he found out — he still didn't do it.

The Christmas holiday had only just begun; he wasn't in any rush.

By the afternoon.

"Of course I'm in a rush!" Harry paced back and forth in Silven's dormitory, glancing out the window every few seconds.

"Tomorrow's Christmas, and I haven't prepared anything. If Hedwig doesn't come back, all I can give Ron is a box of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavor Beans."

"That'd be fine too," Silven said. "But where did you buy the Every-Flavor Beans — had an upper-year student bring them back from Hogsmeade?"

"No, I bought them on the train," Harry said.

"The train?" Silven said, surprised. "The Hogwarts Express?"

"Mm," Harry nodded.

"You bought sweets at the start of term and still haven't finished them?"

"Because I didn't like the shoe-polish-flavored one, so I just never ate any more after that."

"You're really too kind to Ron, then," Silven clicked his tongue.

"Of course… oh, no." Harry nodded instinctively, then corrected himself in a panic. "I wasn't planning to give him Every-Flavor Beans as a Christmas present — what I wanted to give him was a wand!"

"I know, you don't need to explain it to me." Silven waved a hand. "But if Hedwig doesn't come back, there's nothing I can do either. You know it yourself — apart from the first few days of term, the wand shop doesn't really have any business the rest of the time.

"You can't expect my grandfather to sit around in an empty shop all day doing nothing, can you?"

"No, of course that's not what I meant." Harry shook his head hurriedly. "I'm just a bit anxious — Ron really wants a wand of his own."

"Don't worry," Silven said. "Tomorrow's Christmas — there's still time. You should have faith in Hedwig."

Now it seemed the only option was to have faith in Hedwig.

Harry waited up until very late, tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. All he wanted now was for Hedwig to come back before tomorrow morning, bring Ron a surprise, then have a big feast and a happy time playing around.

Harry waited until the small hours of the morning; Hedwig still hadn't returned. He was too tired, his consciousness began to blur, and he sank into sleep.

The next day, Christmas arrived as promised.

Silven didn't get up too early — he only dragged himself out of bed at nine o'clock and began unwrapping the pile of parcels at the foot of his bed.

There were quite a lot of presents; Silven counted roughly — more than ten in all, double last year's number.

He first turned his gaze to the largest paper-wrapped parcel.

Thick kraft paper, rough wrapping, and a flamboyant scrawl of handwriting — without even needing to look at the name, Silven knew it was from Hagrid.

There was a lot inside, but what drew the eye most was a small handful of long, silver unicorn tail hairs, each more than fifteen inches in length — the very top grade of unicorn tail hair.

Silven reckoned that even his grandfather, Garrick Ollivander, might never have seen so many top-grade hairs all at once.

He had no idea how long Hagrid had spent combing the Forbidden Forest to gather this handful.

Besides that, the kraft paper parcel was stuffed with two pitch-black legs.

Hagrid had brought this sort of thing to Silven before — they were Acromantula legs — but these were clearly longer than the previous ones; fully stretched out, each was at least ten feet.

No wonder the packaging was so big… if it were smaller, they wouldn't fit.

Still, a single leg ten feet long — it was hard to imagine just how huge the creature must have been when it was alive.

Silven continued rummaging through the things below, but suddenly heard Ron's incoherent screaming from not far in the next compartment.

"Oh my God! A wand! Harry, you actually gave me a new wand... I'm so happy... is it really for me... this is the best Christmas present I've ever received!"

(End of chapter)