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By the time Dudley reached the second floor, the wand expert had already arrived, along with several judges.
Dudley and Harry had gone upstairs, and naturally Viktor and Fleur could not remain below either. They followed as well.
"Allow me to introduce Mr. Ollivander."
Beside Dumbledore stood an elderly man Dudley and the others had met once before: Ollivander, the famous wandmaker from Diagon Alley.
"He will examine your wands and ensure they are in good condition before the tournament."
The wandmaker stepped forward. He first looked at Fleur and said politely, "Miss Delacour, you first, if you please."
Fleur walked lightly toward Ollivander and handed him her wand.
The so-called wand weighing was, in practice, the wandmaker running his fingers along each wand, tapping and waving it, and casting a few small spells.
"Mm."
He placed the wand close to his ear, as if listening to its whisper. Then he spun it between his long fingers like a conductor's baton. The wand released many pink and gold sparks.
"Very good."
At last, Ollivander returned the wand to Fleur. "Nine and a half inches. Inflexible. Rosewood, containing... oh, a Veela hair."
"My grandmother's hair," Fleur admitted without hesitation. The silver-haired girl smiled, her white teeth gleaming in the light. She did not deny her Veela ancestry. On the contrary, she seemed quite proud of it.
Hybrids of magical creatures and wizards were still discriminated against in the wizarding world, sometimes even more than Muggle-born wizards. At least Muggle-born wizards were numerous. Insulting one could mean insulting a large group.
Hybrids, especially those with Veela ancestry, faced a different kind of hostility. Some male wizards looked at them in an unpleasant way, while many witches treated them warily or dismissed them unfairly.
For example, Dudley noticed Bagman's gaze drift involuntarily toward Fleur when he heard that she had Veela blood.
"A very fine design. It suits you well, Miss Delacour."
He returned the wand to Fleur with a perfectly normal expression. At his age, what had he not seen? Let alone a young witch with one-quarter Veela blood, he had seen witches with half or even three-quarters Veela blood before.
"Mr. Krum, your turn."
Ollivander turned his gaze to Viktor.
Viktor walked forward with his slightly duck-footed stride and handed Ollivander his dark, heavy wand.
The moment the wand was placed in Ollivander's hand, his body visibly dipped. Viktor's wand had considerable weight.
After tapping and examining the wand for a while, Ollivander said, "A Gregorovitch product. He is an excellent wandmaker, though his style is not entirely..."
"Still, it is very healthy."
It was difficult to imagine someone using healthy to describe a wand, but that was Ollivander's habit. In his eyes, wands and people were not so different.
"Next, Mr. Potter."
The old wandmaker turned his gaze to Harry. Excited light flashed in his pale eyes. "Everything feels as if it happened yesterday. I remember it very clearly. Quickly, let me see how it is now."
Harry handed over the wand hidden in his sleeve. The wand was glossy and reflected the light with a distinctive sheen.
"Very well maintained. Oh, almost like new."
Ollivander handled Harry's wand with careful reverence, even placing it beneath his nose and taking a deep breath.
To outsiders, it looked slightly eccentric.
"It seems you maintain it often. Did you oil it yesterday?"
"Ah, yes."
Harry was a little dazed by Ollivander's question and answered reflexively.
He did maintain his wand often, but he had not applied any oil yesterday.
Strictly speaking, if one wanted to call it oil, that was not entirely wrong. It was simply oil from his hands. In other words, Harry had handled the wand so often that it had become glossy.
He returned the wand to Harry. Seeing one of his works find a good master clearly put him in a fine mood.
"Last, Mr. Dursley."
Ollivander paused and turned his gaze to the final champion.
"If I remember correctly, your wand should be iron birch, Thestral tail hair, nine inches."
Of course he remembered it clearly. The wand he had sold Dudley was the work he had been least satisfied with. Yet now Dudley had become a Hogwarts champion with it. Naturally, he was even more curious about its current state.
Dudley did not hesitate. He handed the wand to him.
"You modified it?"
Ollivander stared blankly at the wand in his hand, whose appearance had changed drastically. If he could not confirm that this was the very wand he had once given Dudley, he might have wondered whether he had made it at all.
"Oh, what a brilliant idea..."
Ollivander was, after all, a master wandmaker famous throughout Europe. Although the manufacturing technique was different from his own, he still saw some of the principle behind it.
"The story of its creation is interesting as well. You know, many works are born from a sudden spark of inspiration. This one came from such a spark."
Ollivander normally would never use iron birch, an extremely hard wood, as the body of a wand. Its flexibility was poor, and so was its elasticity. Nor would he use Thestral tail hair as a wand core. Thestral tail hair was a highly unstable material.
So far, only one legendary wand was known to use Thestral tail hair as a core.
Under normal circumstances, he would not even have considered these two completely mismatched materials.
Then one day, as if struck by a strange impulse, he used the two materials to make a wand.
"I originally thought it was the greatest failure among all my works."
"I did not expect it to be a half-finished piece, waiting for the person who could take it away."
Ollivander returned the wand to Dudley. "And you completed it."
"Although I personally do not favor modifying a wand in this way."
He was referring to the method of embedding a magic crystal into the wand.
"But it is happy, and I am happy as well."
Ollivander's attitude toward wands was not much different from his attitude toward children. It was not the wizard who chose the wand, but the wand that chose the wizard. That was his favorite saying.
"I wish you an excellent result in the tournament."
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