Hermione lead the other two as they made their way into Diagon alley, Alice was looking at everything with starts in her eyes, asking what everything was every once in a while.

  "So, where are we going first?" Alice asked quite curious. "Well," Hermione answered without looking back, "first we're going to buy you your first wand, afterwards we're going to buy you the school supplies you'll need for the preparatory school, anything you might need in Hogwarts is provided by the school itself so there's no need to get anything."

  Alice was still looking around easily distracted by everything around her, though she heard what Hermione said, before she could formulate her next question, Mrs. Gray beat her to it with a question of her own.

  "How will we pay for the supplies? I remember you said the wizarding currency is different, so is there a bank where we could exchange currency?" As Mrs. Gray asked Alice felt bad for something she hasn't thought of before, she knew the government sent money to Mrs. Gray for taking care of the children, she also knew that part of the same money was supposed to be used to put her in school as long as she stayed with Mrs. Gray however she doubted that the government budget accounted for the costs of attending magical schools, and she really couldn't ask Mrs. Gray to pay for it in good conscience, even if she could pay for it no problem.

  Just as Alice was about to say something, this time Hermione interrupted her. "Oh, you don't have to worry about that, Hogwarts has a scholarship program for muggle born children that supports their attendance through the three years of general study and four years of specialized education, though if you want further education you'll have to pay for it."

  Just as she finished talking, her steps slowed to a stop, turning around she gestured to the shop behind her. "Here we are, this is were you'll get your first wand."

  Behind her was a medium sized shop with a sign above the shop that said "Olivander's" in big letters but then smaller letters underneath were "selling wands since 956 A.D."

  "Wow, they've been selling wands for that long?" Alice asked amazed, even Mrs. Gray looked impressed with the shop's legacy. Hermione smiled at their impressed cases saying, "Actually when I came the first time to get my own wand, it said selling wands from, I think it was around 300 B.C. but some years ago evidence was found that even though the Olivanders have been Marchants since that long ago, and have dabbled in wandcraft however they've only been selling wands since around a thousand years ago."

  "That's still pretty impressive," Mrs. Gray said as the three walked to the shop.

  The door to the shop opened with a soft bell sound, but no matter how hard the two looked, no bell could actually be seen.

  The shop looked normal except everything inside was made of wood, with shelves full of different oils, cloths and what looked like gun holsters except for something narrow and long. At the counter stood a young man of maybe nineteen or twenty years old.

  "Hello, welcome to Olivander's, how can I help you this fine morning?" Said the young man as if scripted, unlike what his words may imply he didn't seem to like his job much.

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  "Henry, how are you?" Asked Hermione apparently recognizing the young man. Turning to Alice, she continued, "Alice, this is Henry, he works here as a part timer."

  "Hi, Henry." Alice said asking with a slight waving of her hand. "So? You're here for another wand, how many times does that make it for this year?" Henry asked, he didn't seem to actually be curious about the number, but rather complaining about the annoyance.

  "Well, you're cranky today," Hermione said with a flat tone, implying her disapproval of his behavior. "Sorry," Henry said after a sigh, "you want a beginner general wand, correct?" He asked already fetching a long black box from under the counter. "Same as always." Hermione said opening the box and holding out for Alice to see.

  Inside was straight wand roughly eleven inches long, it was a burnt brown color, with nothing outstanding about it. With sparks of excitement in her eyes, Alice reached for the wand before hesitating. "Can I actually pick it up?" She asked, looking at Hermione hopefully.

  "Yes," Hermione smiled, "it's yours now. Come on, pick it up." With her confirmation, Alice excitedly took the wand in her hand, she felt the smooth wood but before she could wave the wand around, Hermione stopped her.

  "I know you're excited, but it's quite dangerous to wave a new wand indoors." Looking at Henry, "We're going out back, for a test."

  Hermione informed the part timer, leading the other two to another door that neither has previously noticed.

  Outside the door was, what could only be described as a shooting range, with brick walls and targets and dummy's to complete the look.

  Hermione looked at Alice and starred explaining, "You see, the way wands, or various foci in general are designed is that by certain actions, the focus in this case the wand, will automatically pull in your magic to ready it for the casting of magic, for the wand the action is by waving, when you're more experienced you can consciously allow your wand to pull on your magic or not but before then, it's best not to wave your wand around unless you want to cast magic. Though if you don't like this feature you can change it when you make your personal focus."

  Alice, now nervously holding her wand careful not to wave it around accidentally, heard something that peaked her interest.

  "Make my own personal focus? I thought I would have to buy a new wand when I grew out of this beginner one." She asked, looking at her wand.

  "Ah, I can see why you would think that." Hermione said, "Actually, when I was a child, it wasn't like this, then we would be brought here and professor Olivander, who was then not yet a processor, would comb through hundreds of different wands to find us one that was special to us, he would always say a wizard doesn't choose the wand, but it's the wand that chooses the wizard."

  "Oh," Alice said even more intrigued, "why was it changed?" "Well," Hermione answered, "the wand is a focus that specializes in intricacy of cast, it's not quite as specialized in magic as the orb, that basically only works for one type magic but each type of wand is generally good at one or two types of magic at the cost of being bad at a couple of others. You're supposed to learn this in your wand-lore class, but I guess there is no harm in telling you now, when a wand is choosing it's wielder, it basically connects to your magic, a wizard's magic is primarily scented for lack of a better term by their personality, likes, dislikes and sometimes their ancestry, except, people's likes and dislikes change, for your age rapidly even, besides you don't even know what types of magic there are, so if you were to get a perfect wand now, the wand wouldn't consider your likes in terms of magic, and due to performing worse, you might come to dislike a type of magic that you would have otherwise loved and excelled at."

  Alice was now looking at her wand with complicated feelings, that even she, herself couldn't explain, but before she could ask another question, Hermione stopped her. "Ok that's enough, you'll learn all of this in school, you'll just have to be patient, we still need to go to a couple other places, so let's test your wand and be on our way."