章 7: chapter 7

Grassland stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, broken up by the occasional mountain. There was zero cover and anyone within fifty miles would be able to see him. On the other hand, there were so few people here, and the country so vast, the chance of being happened upon by someone who cared, was tiny.

Several hours of kip later and Harry moved on.

After another few hours of apparating southwest, he finally arrived at his destination, the Ongiin Khiid Monastery complex, the centre of the Mongolian magical community. When the communists took over the country in the 1920s, they'd destroyed most of the Buddhist temples throughout the country, and now most of them were little more than ruins.

While the muggle population of Ongiin Khiid had been slaughtered or forced to serve in the communist army, the magical community had hunkered down behind their powerful wards. After the initial destruction, they'd gradually taken back the complex, rebuilding and warding it until the entire area was bristling with muggle repelling and illusion wards. To any muggle walking by, it now looked just like any other ruined temple complex.

Harry walked through the gates and beheld the grandeur of the Tibetan architecture — row after row of houses and temples, all with the same distinctive white stone wall and square, curved, sloping roofs. While Diagon alley looked like a stroll down a history timeline, Ongiin Khiid looked like a uniform shopping street designed by an architect with a fetish for old-green copper and spruce.

With the exception of one building of course.

Harry ambled down the street and turned to face a building that looked like a melting roman temple. Gringotts.

Knowing the goblins would react unfavourably to disguises, Harry unwound his make-shift shirt-mask from his head, slipped it back over his chest, and walked past the guards, up into the bank.

Ten minutes later, Harry exited the bank with five galleons exchanged from 250 pounds — the results of his morning and afternoon of summoning training on the London underground.

The goblin serving him had certainly raised his eyebrows at serving a lone, clearly western, English accented child, but hadn't asked questions. Merlin he loved goblins.

Harry continued to walk down the street until he found what he was looking for — a small shop with a thestral tied up outside, eating noisily from a bucket of unidentified meats.

The shop contained everything thestral. Cured thestral meat hung along the rafters, thestral bones aligned the walls, bottles of thestral glue stood next to bars of thestral soap. The floor along the wall was lined with thestral shell cordovan boots.

And next to the counter, pride of place was given to a wooden mannequin wearing a black, full-length, duster style thestral shell cordovan coat with a robe style hood. It looked amazing and Harry knew he wanted it. It truly was a coat deserving of being worn by Death's champion. He sauntered up to the work of art, and nonchalantly flipped the price tag. Two hundred galleons (£10,000). Ouch.

"Би эрхэм тусалж чадах уу?" a voice said.

Harry turned to see an old man standing in the doorway.

"Sorry?"

The man looked a little surprised at Harry's western features, but quickly rallied. "Can I help, Sir?"

"Yes, I'm looking for thestral tail hair."

The man smiled. "You cannot see it?"

Harry gave him a look. "I cannot see it because it is not on display."

"Ah, well done, Sir. But I am surprised to see one so young who has seen death."

Harry shrugged. If old man only knew.

"How much you want?"

"Ten strands — in a wand core braid."

The shopkeeper suddenly looked cautious. "You want for wand core."

"Is that a problem?"

"Where you go after here?"

"Back home to Europe."

The man was silent few a few moments.

"Okay. But you did not buy from here, right?"

"Sure, I understand."

Five minutes and two galleons later, Harry pocketed a long wrap of thestral hair cord and a small bottle of thestral glue (£100).

"And for another two galleons, I'd like to reserve that coat for a year," Harry said, pointing at the breathtaking black duster on the mannequin."

The shopkeeper grinned. "You like it."

"Yes, but I cannot buy it just now."

"Okay. I can do that, Mister…?"

Harry scrabbled for an appropriate name. "Death." Dammit!

The man raised a single eyebrow. "Okay then, Mister Death. I hope to see you again for your purchase… but only for that, of course."

Harry left, berating himself for his dumbass name choice, and decided to get a room to rest his core before the long-as-hell apparition trip back home.

And now, after three whole weeks back in the past, here it was.

Harry reverently opened the wooden box, which the muggle war-veteran carpenter and wood carver had made to go with the wand, and, eyes shining, gazed upon a thing of beauty.

The handle was ornate and featured many little discrete motifs of Harry's own design along the hilt, which curved down in a graceful arc to the wand proper, before spiralling all the way down to the wand's point, like a wrought iron twisted fence.

Harry spied, among the hilt motifs facing him, a tiny lighting bolt killing a snake, and another striking a goat. The handle itself was textured in an interlocking lightning bolt pattern and the pommel was perfectly round and used the wood's swirling grain to suggest a smoke filled orb.

It was perfect.

"Yep, some of my best work that," the craftsman said, noting the look of extreme delight on Harry's face. "Still say it's a mighty weird request, and some of the materials you wanted… well, I've never seen anything like that glue ever. I'd swear there wasn't even a visible join between the middle and the tip. And that cord… my friend insisted he couldn't even see it! But in the end, I figured you certainly knew what you wanted and was willing to pay for it, eh, Young Man?"

"Yes…" Harry said, only half listening, distracted by his own internal musings. "It is strange like that."

He reached for the wand and felt the connection before his digits even touched it. As his finger tips wrapped around the handle, warmth shot through him, quickly building into a crescendo, pulsing power down his arm and through the wand, sending emerald green sparks up and all over the wood shop counter.

"Bloody hell!" The man shouted. "What was that?"

"Magic."

The man stared. "Huh. Whad'ja know. And my wife's always going on about horoscopes and psychic readings, and all that. Figures there would be something to it all."

"Yes. You've really done an excellent job. This has got to be the only muggle made wand in the country, if not the world. And it looks and feels better than any I've seen or felt."

"Err… Thank you, I think?"

Harry casually fingered the wand's tip before pointing it at the master craftsman.

"Obliviate."

Harry stepped outside the woodwork shop and spent a good twenty minutes throwing up a casual detection ward to alert him if any other wizards gained entry. There wasn't much magic around, so it wouldn't last long, but it would do the job for now. He felt he owed a tiny bit of protection to the man for such good work, and who knows, he may have need of him in the future. That, and it would give him early warning if someone managed to somehow trace his wand's origins.

Wow it felt good. His old holly and phoenix feather wand hadn't felt half as natural, or as powerful, as this one did. And there he'd been, thinking this wand was just going to be a rough and ready stopgap measure. Hah! All that, 'wand chooses the wizard,' dragon crap… turns out the wizard just needs to really know himself.

And now that he had a wand, he could attack his next greatest vulnerability, his rather empty and nonexistent vaults.