The shop was narrow and smelled of old wood and dried herbs. Draconia stood in the doorway, her velvet cloak slightly too heavy for her frame, watching the light catch on the dust motes. She did not move from the threshold, knowing her presence was a silent command for attention. Her father had told her that a girl of her standing did not wait for things to happen, she simply expected them to arrive. She watched the old man behind the counter, a man whose skin looked like crumpled parchment, as he leaned over the counter toward the boy. The boy looked small and ragged in his oversized jumper, standing there with a look of bewildered reverence.
A single wand lay on the velvet cushion between them. The boy reached out with a hand that was stained with dirt, his fingers trembling as they hovered over the wood. He did not grab it; he seemed to wait for permission that might never come. Draconia felt a prickle of irritation at his hesitation. To her, the idea of waiting for an object to approve of a person was a ridiculous concept. She had always been given what she wanted because she was a person of consequence.
"Try it, lad," the old man murmured, his voice a low rasp that filled the small space.
The boy gripped the wand, and the air in the shop seemed to vibrate. A sudden flash of light illuminated the cluttered shelves, casting long shadows behind the jars of dragon liver and phoenix feathers. The boy gasped, his eyes wide and bright with a sudden, fierce joy. It was the look of someone who had finally found a piece of himself in a world that had previously offered him nothing. Draconia watched his face, noting how the exhaustion seemed to lift from his brow. He looked as though the wand were a lifeline, a tether to a reality he had finally earned.
"It is a perfect match," the old man said, leaning back to admire the display.
He looked at the boy with a kind of solemn reverence, as if he were witnessing a sacred ritual. Draconia stepped further into the room, her boots clicking sharply on the floorboards. The sound broke the trance of the moment, drawing the boy's eyes toward her. He looked startled, as if he had forgotten anyone else existed in the world. He did not look like a boy who had just gained power; he looked like a boy who was terrified of losing it.
"Does it have to be a match?" Draconia asked, her voice clear and bored.
The old man turned his gaze to her, his eyes twinkling with a strange, ancient intelligence. He did not seem intimidated by her sharp tone or the way she held her chin high. He simply smiled, a slow movement that creased his cheeks.
"It is not a matter of choice, Miss," the old man replied.
"Everything is a matter of choice," she insisted, walking toward the counter to inspect the various boxes stacked nearby. "One simply decides what one wants, and then one takes it."
The boy was still clutching the wand, his knuckles white against the dark wood. He looked at her with a mixture of awe and suspicion, as if she were a creature from a different world. He was a boy of nothing, and she was a girl of everything. The distinction felt as wide as the ocean, yet they stood in the same narrow shop, breathing the same air. She reached out to touch a nearby box, her fingers brushing the textured surface of the wood, but she pulled back before she could leave a mark.
"The wand chooses the wizard," says the old man. She decides, at eleven, that this is nonsense.
She watched the boy's face as he stared down at the wand in his hand. He looked as though he were holding a miracle, while she felt as though he were merely holding a tool. To her, the wand was an instrument, a piece of equipment meant to serve the hand that held it. The idea that an object could possess a will of its own felt like a lie told to make the world seem more magical than it actually was. She watched the boy’s eyes go soft with a sudden, intense devotion to the wood and the core within. He looked like a devotee at an altar, and it made her want to roll her eyes.
"It is just a stick, is it not?" she asked, her voice cutting through the reverent silence.
The old man chuckled, a dry, rattling sound that made the glass jars on the shelves hum. He did not look offended by her pragmatism. He seemed to find her skepticism amusing, as if she were a child trying to solve a riddle she could not yet grasp.
"It is more than a stick to him," the old man said, gesturing vaguely at the boy.
"It is a tool for a wizard," she corrected him, turning her attention to a display of silver-tipped wands. "And a wizard should be the one in control of the tool."
The boy finally spoke, his voice a mere whisper that seemed to carry the weight of a thousand unspoken dreams. "It feels... it feels like it knows me."
Draconia felt a pang of something she could not name, a flicker of annoyance at his sentimentality. She did not want to be known by her things; she wanted to own them. She wanted to command them without a second thought. The boy looked as though he would spend a lifetime learning how to speak to his wand, while she expected her wand to obey her before she even finished a thought.
"You are very lucky," she said to him, though it sounded more like a command than a compliment.
The boy did not smile, but he did not look away from her. There was a grit in his expression, a stubbornness that she found unexpected. He was not just a boy who had been given a gift; he was a boy who had survived to receive it. She looked back at the old man, who was watching her with a knowing look. He saw the way she held herself, the way she refused to acknowledge the magic as something divine.
"You will have your turn, Miss," the old man said.
"I will have my turn when I am ready," she replied, her voice firm.
She turned her gaze toward the window, where the light of the street was fading into the dusk. She felt a strange sense of impatience, a desire to be finished with this ritual of discovery so she could move on to the reality of being a witch. She wanted the power to be a given, not a gift. She wanted the world to bend to her, not to wait for her to find the right match. As she stood there, she felt the weight of the moment, a sense that her entire life was about to change, but she refused to let it change her. She would be the one to decide who she was, regardless of what any wand had to say about it.