[HPforGrownups] Re: Fleur and Wands (was: 50 Questions..)

[imhotep1]

No: HPFGUIDX 54969

On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 09:56, Katy Cartee wrote:

>     SS pg. 81 US
>     "Just Ollivanders left now - only place fer wands, 
>     Ollivanders, and yeh gotta have the best wand."
> 
> Well that makes it sound as though Olivanders is the *only* place to buy wands. But obviously Durmstrang students don't travel to London to buy their school supplies. This is further proven by the following quote:
> 
>     SS pg. 84 US
>     "Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical 
>     substance, Mr. Potter. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail 
>     feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons."
> 
> So Ollivander only uses those three items as wand cores. But apparently other people/shops use other ingredients - such as the Veela hair in Fleur's wand. Apparently Hagrid was just sharing his biased opinion that Ollivanders is the BEST wand shop. But i do wonder why Hagrid said "yeh gotta have the best wand"...as if there are different degrees of good, better and best wands. If it were me walking into the shop, i guess i'd be praying that a cheap wand "chose" me ;)

I had been thinking about this myself, and I think you can probably buy
imported (from other Wizarding countries) wands in smaller shops in
Diagon Alley, and maybe even ones with specialty cores different than
Ollivander's.  Maybe there are even dark-art oriented wands that you can
pick up down on Knockturn Alley.

-Jeremy