30 September 2009
FACT: Mounting nearly 80 years of service as Great Britain's premier wand supplier, Garrick Ollivander is surely the man everyone has met at least once to buy their first school wand. Ollivander is undoubtedly the expert needed for the Wand Weighing ceremony for the TetraWizard Tournament hosted at Hogwarts this year -- a competition that is being correctly administered since the first ever international contest (see
FOUR THIRDS: THE HISTORICAL SNUBBING OF MAHOUTOKORO, JAPAN[1], page 2). As such a famed craftsman one would think that Ollivander would never stoop to sell an inferior product.
BUT DOES HE?New evidence suggests that Ollivander has not been able to craft a wand of his usual superior caliber unaided since the mid 1970s. Being a wandmaker, Ollivander is aware of the kinds of injuries one can sustain during the process of crafting a wand, up to and including rheumatism, arthritis, carpel tunnel, Gargoyle Grip, mummification and Wand Hand Wiggahaddrum, debilitating conditions that limit the use of one's hands. Ollivander has them all.
"It's quite embarrassing for him, he doesn't want anyone to know," says concerned neighbor and Diagon businesswoman Madam Malkin in an interview. "When closing up my shop at night I've sometimes seen him fumbling around, hands locked in a state of rigor worse than an Inferius. I think he needs a Jelly Fingers Jinx just to bend his knuckles."
If the famed hands that have produced hundreds if not thousands of shafts of magical wood have been in a decades long state of Digilock, how come no one has noticed? As any wandmaker will tell you, the maturation of the first wand stock of a wandmaker's prime could conceivably last a century, each wand waiting for their right master. Consider the supposed twin Phoenix cores of the wands of Harry Potter and We-Are-Glad-He-Is-Dead; one was bought shortly after the brother wands were crafted in 1938, the other waited around 50 years before choosing Potter. Ollivander has been lucky to rest on his early wand stock for an indefinite length of time.
But that isn't to say Ollivander hasn't been trying to recreate his glory days. For years now Ollivander has been overseeing a band of apprentices that handle all the inner workings of his shop these days: a group of Goblins defected from Gringotts! Goblins have always wanted to know the secrets of wandlore and for the lucky Marchulck, Breegul, Snotrag, Ruttermus and Brad they have leached apartment space above Ollivander's shop, learned the craft of wandmaking and occasionally cajole with cousin Gronruck Redroots aka 'Darian Morgan' of Libertine Ltd. Ollivander's shop is now filled to the brim with goblin crafted wand prototypes and imported wands from other countries that match the old "Unicorn, Phoenix, and Heartstring Standard" our populace has come to rely on.
However, there has been an unprecedented side effect from the introduction of goblin crafted wands.
The Quibbler staff Arithmancer projects of all the Ollivander's issued wands of the last three decades, up to 45% could be inferior products capable of many startling defects, magical surges and unusual behavior. Upon the discovery Ollivander attempted to sever ties with his goblin pupils and keep a lid on the defective wands but one behavior prevents that. These defective wands exhibit a shared behavior called 'Unexpected Spontaneous Evacuation Displacement.' U.S.E.D. wands without warning can spark and rocket off at such high speeds the effects are like teleporting firecrackers. Instead of waiting to choose the proper master the wands seek action themselves and have saturated the marketplace.
"We had a display of trick wands tricked out with these non-trick ticked out tricky wands," says Weasley Wizard Wheezes proprietor George Weasley, having a laugh at what he thought was a practical joke staged in his own shop. "Try saying that five times fast!"
To cover up the blunder, Ollivander has enlisted the aid of two operatives: the streetwise criminal Vespa Baldrick, charged with burglary, theft, cruelty to small cute fuzzy rodents and illegal charms on a goat (learned from briefly shacking up with former lover and Hog's Head proprietor, Aberforth Dumbledore); and current Hufflepuff Head of House Leopole Sandhusky, known as 'Loophole Leopole' by the Hogwarts Staff, a Father Christmas-looking man with his own zoo of lazy, overweight primates that nobody ever visits. Between the two Ollivander hopes to fleece out the U.S.E.D. wands, used wands, used U.S.E.D. wands and all of his mistakes of the past decades to cover his rear, recalling any wand that is pristine and often times reselling it.
Vespa handles the criminal underworld and the greater magical public, usually turning her victims into stone after taking their wands, such as Seventh Year Ravenclaw Head Girl Blues Hawk, whose wand was stolen last summer
[2] and resold to a first year student.
[3] In fact, Vespa has left such a shortage of wands in her wake that the grassroots organization, Witchcraft Brooders Anonymous, were left with little but potions and magical devices in their protest of recent St. Mungo's corruption, such as Healer-in-Charge Delilah Foley's use of hospital donations to build her own private luxurious spa resort.
[4] When the WBA's protest went out of control
[5] all spell fire was handled by a crack team of Germanic Hitwizard rejects, identified by eyewitness account from long term St. Mungo's patient Primrose Claggin. First administered to the hospital for a bite from an enchanted alarm clock, Claggin has been in the hospital all year from stacking counts of malpractice (her full story,
GROSS HEALER NEGLIGENCE: LIVER TRANSFIGURED INTO LOBALUG, page 13). The protest was eventually broken up by deployment of the Auror Corps. Fayette Clone troops, the Auror offices previously subjected to wand screening for U.S.E.D. wands, from closet cleaning trainees like Britt Abraham
[6] to her lover, Fayette Clone #39 (see
SPONTANEOUS DUPLICATION DISEASE REVISITED! ARMY OF FAYETTE CLONES JOINS THE AUROR RANKS!, page 5). Similarly Auror Jonah Trevelyan, long time crying wolf about a 'magic removing curse from Egypt' was found to be perfectly capable of magic when he did not use a U.S.E.D. wand.
[7]Sandhusky, as Head of a Hogwarts House and Transfiguration instructor, seeks to weed out the scandalous U.S.E.D. wands at Hogwarts. Unlike Vespa his methods have been more discrete, making excuses such as meetings with the members of his House of Hufflepuff or frequently interrupting class to confiscate students' wands for further examination.
[8] In fact, his behavior has prompted wand confiscation from many on the support staff, like Ms. Landis Morgan and Ms. Alistair Grey, who catch any wands Sandhusky may have missed.
[9] This is not always done without struggle, for after the Wand Weighing of the First Task Ollivander had to stay to help Sandhusky pressure a student, the unfortunate Filamentous Chlorophyllisitus Patient Zero, to give up her wand.
[10] What has our educational system come to when innocent first years are subjected to contagious contamination and bureaucratic bullying? (refer to our previous Issue,
WEBBED FEET AND GILLS: AMPHIBIOUS HUFFLEPUFF KEYSTONE TO DECADE LONG HOGWARTS AND MINISTRY CONSPIRACY)
The Quibbler urges that Ollivander and his cronies be held responsible for their actions, although they seem to have had initially good intentions to cover up an embarrassing deterioration of the wand quality standard. Given that Ollivander may not be as effective of a wandmaker anymore, a new one should be brought in for the future Wand Weighings of the TetraWizard Tournament. Our vote is for the legendary Irish whittler Deaglan McDonough, who could not be reached for comment, his last known location showing signs of nothing but a heap of horse dung.
NEXT ISSUE: "WE ALMOST HAD IT!" THE REDISCOVERY AND THE RE-LOSING OF FLOURISH & BLOTT'S PHANTOM INVISIBILITY BOOKS.
“Tracking the Truth, One Wrong Turn at a Time”
[Sept 30] Ollivander at Wit's End!