The train rattled onward, a rhythmic percussion marking their steady progress away from the mundane world. The simple act of sharing food had created a comfortable intimacy in the compartment, a small pocket of peace amidst the train's underlying excitement.
Harry, having finished his sandwich, was looking at Ariana with an open, unshielded curiosity. He was a boy starved not just for food, but for answers, for a sense of belonging, and she seemed to be a wellspring of both.
"So, you never got your wand in Diagon Alley," he stated, less a question and more a confirmation of the strange events in Ollivanders. "Did he… did he send it to you?"
A small, knowing smile touched Ariana's lips. "He did," she confirmed. "It arrived two days ago. By owl. An experience that caused Mrs. Gable to require a cup of very sweet tea and a long sit-down."
The memory was a pleasant one. A magnificent horned owl, a species native to the Americas and clearly a favourite of Ollivander's for special deliveries, had arrived at her window with a long, slender package. The box was unremarkable, but it had been sealed with a complex knot and a drop of wax that she knew, instinctively, only her touch could melt. Inside, resting on a bed of deep violet velvet, was her wand.
There was also a note, written in Ollivander's spidery script: Miss Dumbledore, a wand of destiny for a hand that weaves it. It has accepted you. I trust you will know what to do with this as well. Tucked beside the wand had been the gift he mentioned—the holster.
"Would you like to see it?" she asked Harry.
His eyes lit up. "Yeah!"
Ariana shifted slightly on the plush seat. She extended her left arm, pushing back the sleeve of her blouse. At first, Harry saw nothing but her pale skin. But as she angled her wrist, the light caught the edge of something. It was a bangle, so thin and fine it was almost invisible, made of a silverywhite metal that didn't seem to reflect light so much as absorb it. It was elegant, understated, and looked more like a delicate piece of jewelry than anything functional.
"It's a gift from Mr. Ollivander," she explained. "For the… unusual circumstances."
Then, she performed a small, fluid motion, a deliberate and graceful flick of her wrist. It was not a violent snap, but an act of pure Intentio. The silvery bangle glowed for a fraction of a second with a soft, internal light. From it, with a sound like a gentle sigh of wind, the wand shot into her waiting hand. It was not a crude, spring-loaded mechanism; it was a pure, silent act of magic, the wand flowing from its housing into her grasp as if it were a natural extension of her arm.
She held it for Harry to see.
It was beautiful, but in a severe, powerful way. It was thirteen inches long, perfectly straight, and fashioned from a single, seamless piece of Elder wood. The wood was not black, but a deep, complex grey-brown, the colour of ancient driftwood polished by a storm-tossed sea. The grain was subtle, almost imperceptible, and the entire wand seemed to hum with a quiet, contained energy. There were no adornments, no carvings, no handle—just the stark, elegant simplicity of the wood itself. As she held it, Harry caught a faint, clean scent in the air, like the ozone-rich atmosphere just after a lightning strike. The wand didn't feel like an object. It felt like a piece of a storm, tamed and bound into a physical form.
"Wow," Harry breathed, his eyes fixed on it. It was so different from his own warm, holly wand. This one was formidable, ancient.
Ariana gave the wand a small, familiar turn in her fingers. The balance was perfect. It felt not like a tool, but like a part of her own body, a focusing lens for the vast sea of magic within her. Her gaze then fell upon Harry, and her analytical mind, the part that always saw the flaws in a design, took over. She looked at the pathetic, taped-together glasses perched on his nose. A symbol of his neglect, a constant, irritating imperfection.
"Hold still," she said, her voice soft.
She lifted the Elder wand. She didn't jab it at him or make a grand gesture. She held it with the steady, poised grace of a conductor holding a baton, ready to guide an orchestra. She focused her Intentio, not on a spell word like 'Reparo', but on the fundamental concept of 'wholeness'. She pictured his glasses not as broken, but as they were meant to be: a perfect, unbroken circle of wire, two flawless lenses.
A single thread of silver-white light, thin as a spider's silk, flowed from the tip of her wand and touched the bridge of his glasses. There was no flash, no bang. Instead, the two halves of the wire frame seemed to flow like warm honey, melding together seamlessly until the break was gone. The sticky tape, its purpose now obsolete, simply turned to a fine grey dust and vanished.
Harry gasped, reaching up to touch his face. He carefully took the glasses off, holding them up to the light. They were perfect. More than perfect—the lenses were spotlessly clean, the frames gleamed as if brand new. He put them back on, and the world snapped into a clearer focus than he could ever remember.
"How… how did you do that?" he stammered, utterly bewildered.
"The world prefers order to chaos," Ariana replied, the explanation coming from the philosophical texts she had devoured. "Sometimes, it just needs a little encouragement to remember its proper shape."
Her gaze then travelled down from his mended glasses to his clothes. The oversized, faded shirt and the baggy jeans that pooled around his ankles. They were another form of brokenness, another manifestation of the neglect he had endured. They were a statement that he was an afterthought, a boy who didn't deserve things that were his own.
A flicker of something cool and decisive passed through her eyes. Kindness could be an act of artifice.
"That's not all that needs fixing," she murmured, more to herself than to him. She raised her wand again.
This was a far more complex piece of weaving. It required two stages. First, resizing. She focused on the blueprint of Harry himself—his height, the width of his shoulders, the length of his arms. She then projected that blueprint onto the clothes, her Intentio a command for the Materia of the fabric to conform.
The effect was subtle, but astonishing. The baggy fabric of Harry's shirt seemed to retract, the seams shifting and tightening. The shoulders pulled in to fit him perfectly. The sleeves shortened to the correct length at his wrists. His jeans did the same, the excess fabric around his ankles drawing up, the waist fitting snugly. It happened in a smooth, silent wave that passed over his entire body. He was no longer a boy drowning in his cousin's cast-offs. He was just… Harry. A boy who fit in his own skin.
He looked down at himself, his mouth agape. "They… they fit."
"That's the first step," Ariana said. Now for the second. This wasn't just repair; this was creation. Or rather, recreation. She drew on the principles from The Art of Artifice. She wasn't going to turn his clothes into something gaudy or ostentatious. That wasn't her style, and it wouldn't suit him. She envisioned a new design: simple, classic, and dignified.
Her focus sharpened. She held the image in her mind: the faded grey of his shirt deepening into a rich, dark charcoal. The thin, worn cotton thickening into a soft, high-quality knit. The shapeless collar refining itself into a neat, button-down. For the jeans, she envisioned the washed-out blue darkening to a deep indigo, the frayed cuffs becoming clean and sharp.
The silver-white light from her wand flowed out again, this time enveloping him in a soft, shimmering aura. He felt a strange, tingling sensation all over his body, as if he were standing in a gentle, warm rain. The very threads of his clothes were being re-woven on some invisible, magical loom. The colours deepened, the textures changed, the worn patches smoothed over into flawless fabric.
The shimmering light faded. Harry looked down again, and this time, he was speechless. He was wearing a handsome, dark charcoal jumper over a crisp collared shirt, and a pair of perfectly fitting, dark-wash jeans. They looked and felt brand new, and they were a style he would never have dared to even imagine for himself. They made him look… older. More confident.
He scrambled to his feet and looked at his faint reflection in the dark glass of the window. He barely recognized himself. The skinny, forgotten boy was gone. In his place was a boy who looked like he belonged. He turned to Ariana, his brilliant green eyes shining with an emotion so profound he couldn't put a name to it. It was gratitude, but it was more than that. It was the shock of being seen, truly seen, for the first time in his life.
"I… I don't know what to say," he finally managed, his voice thick.
"Say nothing," Ariana said, her expression as placid as ever. There was no pride in her face, no sense of showing off. It was the simple, profound satisfaction of an architect looking at a design that was now perfectly balanced. "It's better, that's all."
With another flick of her wrist, the formidable Elder wand dissolved back into the silvery bangle, vanishing from sight as if it had never been there. The act was so smooth, so final, it seemed to put a punctuation mark on the entire event.
Harry sat back down, slowly, running a hand over the soft fabric of his new jumper. He felt a warmth spreading through him that had nothing to do with the wool. It was the warmth of a genuine, selfless act of kindness. Hagrid had bought him his owl, a wonderful, joyous gift. But Ariana had given him something else entirely. She had given him dignity.
He looked at her, at the beautiful, calm girl with the ancient eyes, and he knew, with an unshakeable certainty, that he had just found his first true friend. Outside, the English countryside continued to rush by, a blur of green fields and grazing sheep, utterly oblivious to the quiet, profound acts of magic and friendship unfolding within the scarlet train hurtling towards the future.