Hogwarts: I am Snape

Chapter 95 Ollivander Strategic Partners (Thanks to Timo from Under the Tower for the donation)
“It’s time to buy a new wand,” Snape said, looking at the parchment in his hand and placing a gleaming silver badge that had fallen from the envelope on the table. “Professor Dumbledore is quite trustworthy…”

Ten minutes ago, the school's owl delivered his seventh-grade reading list and a small badge with "HB" written on it.

"What's this?" Eileen wiped her hands on her apron, walked over, and curiously picked up the badge on the table. "Oh, the male student council president! That's awesome, Severus!"

“Yes, yes,” Snape drawled, slowly standing up, giving an exaggerated bow, and then grabbing Eileen’s hand. “My dear mother, it makes me so happy to see you.”

“Alright,” Eileen smiled, her eyes narrowing into slits, as she tried to pin the badge to Snape’s black robe. “Why don’t we wear it and take a trip to the Burrow?”

“No way!” Snape jumped back quickly. “I don’t need to parade around wearing a badge that says ‘huge head’.”

Lily, who was sitting to the side with an envelope in her hand, suddenly burst out laughing.

When she opened the envelope, a badge for the female student council president, engraved with "HG," fell out.

“Oh my!” Eileen’s eyes lit up. “Lily, you have one too! That’s wonderful! You’re the student council presidents for the boy and girl respectively. Here, let me put it on you…”

Lily could no longer laugh.

"But are you going to Diagon Alley so early?" Eileen asked, finishing putting the badge on Lily's finger and turning to Snape. "Shall we go together?"

“No need, I can go by myself.” Snape pulled the wand that once belonged to the old Albanian witch from his robes. “This wand is really not very handy, and I want to replace it as soon as possible.”

"Won't it affect your Apparition?" Lily asked, trying to remove the badge from her chest without Eileen noticing.

“Yes,” Snape said, “so I’m going to take the Knight Bus there; the Daily Prophet said it resumed operation last month.”

He walked to the cupboard and took out several brightly colored toys—extra toys he had bought specifically for Percy when he bought him a gift last time.

"See you later," Snape said, pushing open the front door.

With a loud bang and a screeching sound of brakes, the bright purple Knight Bus appeared out of nowhere on the country road of Saint Cachipol village.

Snape waited quite a while before the car door slowly opened.

The driver, Ernst Pran, jumped out of the car in a panic. His gray hair was plastered to his forehead, and his thick glasses were fogged up.

"Welcome aboard the Knight Bus... I'm Ern Pran, your driver and conductor—"

“Ern,” Snape interrupted him, “long time no see. How are you? Alone?”

“Oh, it’s you.” Ern pushed up his glasses that had slipped down to the tip of his nose. “Nobody wants to do this, it’s just me… I have to work, right… Where are you going?”

“Diagon Alley,” Snape counted eleven scours, “and the same price?”

“Yes.” Ern nodded, but did not take the coin. Instead, he nervously looked back at the empty carriage.

During the day, the Knight Bus is not filled with brass bunk beds; instead, it has all sorts of mismatched chairs, with a very inconsistent appearance.

"Oh, you're the only passenger, there shouldn't be any problems," he muttered to himself before stepping aside to let Snape into the car.

“Ern,” Snape said, boarding the bus and pulling the children’s toys from his robes, “these are for little Stan.”

A blush appeared on Ern's grayish-brown face, and his rough hands nervously rubbed the hem of his uniform.

“That’s not how it is…” he said in a low voice, “I didn’t mean to blame you… If you hadn’t been there last time, things might have been even worse…”

“It’s alright,” Snape said, finding an empty seat. “I understand. That kind of thing would leave a lasting scar on anyone.”

Ern nodded, walked to the driver's seat and sat down, then suddenly seemed to remember something and jumped up.

He ran to the back of the carriage and took out a large piece of chocolate from a storage box.

“It’s free,” he said awkwardly, shoving the chocolate at Snape. “Do you want some?”

Snape took the chocolate: "Thank you, Ern."

With a roar, the Knight Bus started moving abruptly. The buildings, trash cans, phone booths, and trees outside the window seemed startled, jumping aside to make way.

After a period of high-speed driving, Ern slammed on the brakes, and the Knight Bus came to a wobbly stop in front of the Leaky Cauldron.

“We’re here,” Ern said, jumping out of the driver’s seat and running breathlessly to open the door. “Diagon Alley.”

“Goodbye, Ern,” Snape said as he stepped down the stairs.

Pushing open the door, Snape stepped into the dirty, cramped bar.

There weren't many people inside at noon. Only a few old women sat in the corner, drinking sherry from small cups, smoking long pipes, and playing a kind of card game that could bite; a fat man was chatting with the bar owner, who was almost bald and looked like a shriveled walnut.

"Would you like something to drink?" Tom asked, wiping the glass with a gray cloth as Snape entered. "Beer? Brandy? Or perhaps a stronger Dragon's Blood whiskey?"

“Alright,” said Snape, “I’ll have a pot of tea and a plate of bread.”

He had originally planned to go straight to Ollivander's Wand Shop, but he wouldn't mind having a drink. Of course, alcohol was out of the question; it wasn't exactly a good drink.

After a while, Tom walked up to Snape with a tray in his hand, on which were tea and toast.

“Tom,” Snape called to the bartender as he prepared to return to the counter, “how long have you been working here?”

“This bar has belonged to me since the 1920s,” Tom said with pride. “What’s up, sir? Do you want to buy the Leaky Cauldron?”

“No,” Snape took a sip of tea, “I just thought your name was nice and suddenly wondered if you’d met any other people named Tom here.”

“There are too many people named 'Tom',” Tom blinked. “But if you would like to buy old Tom a jug of rum, I could take a good look back.”

“Well then, bring me a pot of rum,” Snape said.

“A jug of rum,” Tom said, sitting down without actually reaching for the rum. “Speaking of my name, I did meet a kid with the same name as me many years ago.”

"Tom is a common Muggle name, but it's not so common in wizarding families," he said. "So I have some recollection of that little wizard."

"Especially considering that he's a young wizard born into a Muggle family, he came here alone, without any Hogwarts teachers accompanying him. I wonder which professor was so inconsiderate." "Haha." Snape couldn't help but chuckle, wondering what Dumbledore would think after learning of Tom's assessment of him.

“A handsome young man, just like I was when I was young.” Tom grinned, revealing a few uneven yellow teeth. “He didn’t even have a wand, but he stood politely at the bar and asked me if I could open the entrance to Diagon Alley for him.”

Snape's fingertips tapped unconsciously on the teacup.

"And then? Did you see him again?" he asked, while mentally reviewing the known locations of Horcruxes.

As Riddle's gateway to the wizarding world, the Leaky Cauldron, with its constant flow of people, is unlikely to be the place where he hid Horcruxes. So, where else might he have hidden them before Voldemort gave them the "reward the Lestranges could never have dreamed of"?

“Let me think…” Tom took a piece of toast without ceremony and spread some butter on it. “He must have come a few more times… but I can’t remember exactly when. You know, there are so many people.”

"Alright, young sir, we have a guest." Tom spread out his palms. "Including the rum, it'll be two Galleons. I'll round it down for you."

After paying, Snape got up, walked across the bar, and went to the small courtyard surrounded by walls. He tapped the bricks with his wand and opened the passage to Diagon Alley.

A winding, seemingly endless cobblestone street appeared before him.

Snape made his way through the bustling crowd to a small, shabby shop.

The gold lettering on the shop door had peeled off, and it read: Ollivander, dedicated to wand making, from BC 382; inside the shop window, a thick layer of dust had accumulated, and a wand sat alone on a faded purple cushion.

Amidst a series of tinkling bells, an old man appeared before Snape.

"Good afternoon," said Mr. Ollivander. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

“I need a new wand, sir,” said Snape. “The old one… uh… is broken.”

“A new wand?” Mr. Ollivander complained. “Lately, it seems like everyone keeps coming to me for the same reason to buy a new wand.”

"A lot of people?" Snape thought of the wands that had broken in his hands; he had inadvertently become Ollivander's strategic partner.

“Yes.” Mr. Ollivander stared directly at Snape with his large, silvery eyes. “I remember you, Severus Snape, the heart and nerves of ebony and dragon, quite a powerful combination.”

“Hmm,” Mr. Ollivander said, giving Snape a sharp look. “You should cherish your companions; wands are not consumables. Alright, Mr. Snape, come on. Let me see.”

He pulled a long measuring tape with silver markings from his pocket: "You're right-handed..."

The measuring tape automatically took Snape's measurements, first from his shoulder to his fingertips, then from his wrist to his elbow, from his shoulder to the floor, from his knee to his armpit, and finally his head circumference.

Snape couldn't understand why Mr. Ollivander would measure them all if the young wizards would grow up. Besides, as far as he knew, the length and size of each wand the young wizards tried were not the same.

In the end, he could only attribute this behavior to the strange ritualistic tradition of the Ollivander family's two-thousand-year-old staff-making.

As Mr. Ollivander moved among the shelves, he repeated the same phrase every young wizard had heard: "Every Ollivander wand contains a super-powerful magical substance..."

“Alright,” he said. “Then, Mr. Snape, try this one. It’s the same material as yours, only a bit longer, fourteen and a half inches. Generally speaking, a wizard’s preference for the material of his wand doesn’t change. Here, give it a swing.”

Snape took the wand, swung it once, and a faint light emanated from the tip of the wand.

Mr. Ollivander immediately snatched the wand back from his hand.

“Strange, very strange…” he said, puzzled. “Although it can be considered passable, it is far worse than the performance of the one you had when you first came. Back then, it was much more impressive than this.”

“Perhaps we could try a different material?” Snape suggested with a helpless shrug.

“No, no,” Mr. Ollivander shook his head stubbornly, “it must be due to subtle differences in materials. Let’s try other wands made of the same material.”

For the next half hour, Snape tried out all the ebony wands in the shop.

Ollivander finally admitted, albeit reluctantly, that perhaps other types of wood should be considered.

“Take this one,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Beechwood and unicorn hair, fifteen feet long.”

“Perhaps we can skip the beechwood,” Snape said, taking the wand.

Before he could even wave it, Mr. Ollivander snatched the wand away again.

Next, none of the dozen or so common material combinations worked as expected in Snape's hands.

“A picky old customer!” Mr. Ollivander grumbled. “The next combination, let me think—oh, I’ve got it—acacia wood, phoenix feathers, thirteen inches long—an exceptionally rare combination.”

The moment Snape took the wand, he felt a warmth on his fingertips. With a flick of his wrist, a small silver bird flew from the tip of the wand, flitting merrily among the shelves and scattering shimmering light along its path.

He felt the wonderful resonance between the wand and his own magic, and an unprecedented sense of smoothness flowed through his body.

“Oh, that’s perfect!” Mr. Ollivander breathed a sigh of relief. “Finally, a wand that suits you.”

"Wands made of acacia wood are very wary. They usually refuse to let anyone other than their master use them to cast spells, and they are only willing to exert their greatest effect on the most talented people. Once they have chosen a master, they can adapt to any school of magic, from the most delicate transfiguration to the most powerful combat magic."

“Congratulations, Mr. Snape,” he said. “I think you’re going to achieve great things!”

“Thank you, this is the second time I’ve heard that,” Snape said, taking seven Galleons from his purse. “Here you go.”

“Not that many,” Mr. Ollivander waved his wand as he tidied the wand boxes piled on the counter. “Seventy Galleons.”

“Seven Galleons is a special price for junior wizards,” he said, “after subsidies from the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts.”

"Is that so?" Snape suddenly felt a pang of heartache. Even though he wasn't short of money, he had still destroyed wands worth thousands of Galleons. "Sir, could you give me a discount?"

“No,” Mr. Ollivander said firmly, “Ollivander has never offered discounts in over two thousand years.”

　Thank you to Timo under the tower for the 5000 Qidian coins.

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　　Thanks to OJ_OZ and book friend 20240324163441368 for the monthly tickets.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)