Garrick Ollivander is the best wandmaker in the world. He has a shop in Diagon Alley. Pottermore players get their wand from his shop, through the Bespoke Wand Selector. Garrick Ollivander is a curious old man.
Hornbeam and dragon heartstring, twelve and three-quarter inches, slightly bendy
Hogwarts house:
Ravenclaw
Special abilities:
An incomparable understanding of wandcraft
Parentage:
Wizard father, Muggle-born mother
Family:
Married, one son, one daughter (deceased)
Hobbies:
None; his profession is his obsession
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The family of Ollivander has long been associated with the mysterious profession of wandcraft. It is said that the name means 'he who owns the olive wand', which suggests that the original Ollivander arrived in Britain from a Mediterranean country (olive trees not being native to the UK). Mr Ollivander himself believes that his earliest forebears in this country arrived with the Romans, and set up stall (subsequently shop) to sell to ancient British wizards whose wands were crude of construction and unreliable in performance.
Mr Ollivander is arguably the finest maker of wands in the world, and many foreigners travel to London to purchase one of his wands in preference to those on offer in their native lands. Mr Ollivander grew up in the family business, in which he showed precocious talent. He had the ambition of improving upon the cores and wand woods hitherto used and from his earliest days conceived a single-minded, even fanatical, determination in his pursuit of the ideal wand.
Prior to Mr Ollivander's proprietorship of the family business, wizards used a wide variety of wand cores. A customer would often present the wandmaker with a magical substance to which they were attached, or had inherited, or by which their family swore (hinted at by the core of Fleur Delacour's wand). Mr Ollivander, however, was a purist who insisted that the best wands would never be produced merely by encasing the whiskers of a favourite Kneazle (or the stalk of a Dittany plant that once saved a wizard's father from poisoning, or the mane of a kelpie a witch had once met on holiday in Scotland) in the customer's favourite wood. The best wands, he believed, had cores of immensely powerful magical substances, which were expertly enclosed in specially selected and complementary wandwoods, the result to be matched to an owner with whom the wand itself felt the most affinity. While there was initially substantial resistance to this revolutionary way of crafting wands, it swiftly became clear that Ollivander wands were infinitely superior to anything that had come before. His methods of locating wand woods and core substances marrying them together and matching them to ideal owners are all jealously guarded secrets that were coveted by rival wandmakers.
An elderly man with pale, silvery eyes, Ollivander tells Harry he remembers every wand he has ever sold. Harry visits Ollivander’s dark and narrow shop to buy a wand during his first visit to Diagon Alley. When Harry’s holly-and-phoenix-feather wand chooses him, Ollivander reveals the wand’s connection to Lord Voldemort’s.
Mr Ollivander performs the Weighing of the Wands. He handles the wands of the four champions, examining them carefully. From Fleur Delacour's wand, he uses the incantation Orchideous to produce a bunch of flowers. He is more enthusiastic when Cedric hands him his wand, recognising it as one of his own creations. He tells Cedric that the unicorn hair in the wand was from a particularly fine male unicorn, seventeen hands high, who nearly gored Ollivander with his horn after he plucked its tail. He sends a stream of silver smoke rings across the room from Cedric's wand, and pronounces himself satisfied. Ollivander is intrigued by Viktor Krum's wand; he considers Gregorovitch a fine wand-maker but the style of his wands are not what Ollivander would choose. He uses the incantation Avis to produce several birds from Krum's wand, and hands back the wand. Ollivander's eyes gleam as he examines Harry's wand, remembering clearly the day Harry bought the wand. He spends much longer examining the wand than anyone else's, eventually making a fountain of wine shoot out of it and handing it back to Harry.
