Christmas

Harry had always thought he knew enough about magic and wizards.

From owls that could deliver mail, to Hagrid appearing at the seaside hut, then Diagon Alley, Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and Hogwarts... Harry had become increasingly calm about it all. He thought he was gradually getting used to everything in the Wizarding World.

But now, he suddenly felt he knew nothing about magic. He didn't even recognize a wand anymore.

"That's clearly a baseball bat, isn't it?" After Silvan left the common room, Harry looked at Ron in a daze.

In a haze, he recalled what Silvan had told him yesterday afternoon... "There's still a two-and-a-half-foot wand I haven't finished, but you can place an order for it."

So was that it?

Harry didn't think Silvan would joke with him about something like this. He had also tried to connect the words "feet" and "wand," but he couldn't.

"I bet Silvan was just joking with us," Ron said.

Unlike Harry, he knew more about magic, and many of his ideas had long since become fixed assumptions.

In his mind, wands were supposed to look like the ones they used, just varying in length at most. Everyone around him had wands like that. There had never been an exception.

So Ron had never believed that the two-foot-long baseball bat was a wand. He had assumed Silvan was just messing with them.

"Want to play Wizard's Chess?" Ron asked after eating the last of his roasted mushrooms.

"Sure." Harry felt like his head was in a muddle and needed something else to take his mind off it.

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

"That's all right. I can teach you. It's easy." Ron took out a battered old chessboard and showed Harry how to make the pieces move.

It was just like Muggle chess, except the pieces were alive and had minds of their own. It was very interesting, like commanding an army in battle.

Harry quickly became hooked on the game, but he wasn't any good at it. He lost to Ron every time, until even his own queen couldn't stand it anymore. She raised her staff and gave Harry's finger a hard whack.

"Ow..."

Harry's finger turned bright red at once, and tears sprang to his eyes. Meanwhile, the queen kept scolding him furiously.

"Fool! Idiot! Empty-headed Mountain Troll!"

That was probably the downside of Wizard's Chess. The pieces had far too much attitude.

Meanwhile, Silvan had also arrived at Hagrid's hut.

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

"Is nobody home?" Silvan waited a while longer, but there was still no sound from inside the hut. Only then did he decide that Hagrid really wasn't home.

He had probably gone to Hogsmeade for a drink.

Hagrid did have a habit of going to Hogsmeade for a couple of drinks, as did many of the professors. It was the first day of the school holidays, and it was snowing—a rare, lovely day. Hagrid naturally wouldn't want to miss it.

That meant Silvan had made the trip for nothing. He had braved the snow to get there, and now he would have to brave it again on the way back to the castle.

He had wanted to make the wand today, but now he would have to wait until tomorrow.

Silvan didn't choose to use Alohomora and go inside. Even though it would have been as easy as raising a hand, and even though Hagrid wouldn't have minded if he found out, he still didn't do it.

The Christmas holidays had only just begun. He wasn't in a hurry.

By the afternoon...

"I am in a hurry!" Harry paced back and forth in Silvan's dormitory, looking 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 bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans."

"That would be pretty good, too," Silvan said. "But where did you get Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans? Did you ask an older student to bring them from Hogsmeade?"

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

"The train?" Silvan asked in surprise. "The Hogwarts Express?"

"Yeah." Harry nodded.

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

"I don't like the shoe-polish-flavoured ones, so I haven't eaten any more."

"You're really good to Ron," Silvan said, smacking his lips.

"Of course... Oh, no." Harry nodded instinctively, then hurriedly corrected himself. "I wasn't planning to give him Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans for Christmas. I want to give him a wand!"

"I know. You don't have to explain," Silvan said, waving a hand. "But there's nothing I can do if Hedwig doesn't come back. You know the wand shop doesn't get much business outside the first few days of term.

"You can't expect my grandfather to sit in an empty shop all day without doing anything, can you?"

"No, of course I don't mean that." Harry quickly shook his head. "I'm just a little worried. Ron really wants a wand of his own."

"Don't worry," Silvan said. "Christmas isn't until tomorrow. There's still time. You should trust Hedwig."

It seemed that trusting Hedwig was all Harry could do now.

Harry waited until late, then lay in bed tossing and turning, unable to sleep. All he wanted was for Hedwig to come back before morning, so he could surprise Ron, then have a huge feast and enjoy the day.

Harry waited until the early hours of the morning, but Hedwig still hadn't returned. He was so tired that his thoughts began to blur, and he drifted off to sleep.

The next day, Christmas arrived as expected.

Silvan didn't get up very early. It was nine o'clock by the time he climbed out of bed and started opening the pile of packages at the foot of it.

There were quite a few presents. Silvan counted them roughly; there were more than a dozen, twice as many as last year.

His eyes fell first on the biggest parcel.

Thick brown paper, rough wrapping, and large, sweeping handwriting. Silvan didn't even need to read the name to know it was from Hagrid.

There were all sorts of things inside, but the most striking was a small handful of long, silvery Unicorn Tail Hairs. Each was over fifteen inches long, the very finest quality.

Silvan guessed that even his grandfather, Garrick Ollivander, had probably never seen so many high-quality hairs all at once.

He wondered how long Hagrid had searched the Forbidden Forest to gather this handful.

Besides that, the parcel contained two pitch-black legs.

Hagrid had brought Silvan some before. They were Acromantula legs, but these were clearly longer than the previous ones. Fully stretched out, each was at least ten feet long.

No wonder the package was so big... A smaller one wouldn't have fit them.

But if a single leg was ten feet long, it was hard to imagine how big the creature must have been when it was alive.

Silvan continued looking through the things below, when he suddenly heard Ron shrieking incoherently from not far away next door.

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