Rue Magique, by itself, was worth the trouble of getting to Paris. It was at least as old and crooked as Diagon Alley in London, but it felt a little different, a bit lighter, a bit more whimsical, a bit more dangerous in the corners. It was all of stone, not a hint of wood visible anywhere, like it had grown up as a forest of sturdy boulders - and the human vendors had just hung signs and moved in their wares.
Sirius gave Harry time to gawk, then showed Harry where the event space was, then showed Harry to the wand shop.
"I have a wand," Harry said.
"You have an inferior match. You need something a lot closer."
Harry felt like arguing, but didn't. He had never bonded with his replacement well and it was as close as Ollivander had gotten. But there were some reasons, probably. Harry got the new wand when he was still under the effects of the cursed knife because his severed finger had been attached at the time.
Maybe it was best to make a clean break of things. A new wand it was.
The business was nowhere near as old as Ollivander's judging by the dust levels. The old woman at the desk looked at Harry as if he were a likely thief and didn't spare the suspicion for Sirius, either.
She let loose a torrent of French. Sirius responded. Harry decided he needed to become multilingual at some point. His hodge-podge of Latin wasn't worth much while on a trip.
"Well, child, tell me about your first wand, then this new one," the old woman said, finally regarding Harry as a customer and not a likely hoodlum.
Harry was a bit slow to respond to her. Her English was good. Her attitude was not.
Still, he provided the details she'd requested.
The woman made several wild, inflammatory claims about Ollivander wands (kindling, not worth a petrified shit, as beautiful as a dirt-stained cobblestone) before she disappeared on a hunt for Harry's new wand.
Harry had kept his frown in check since the pain-in-the-ass had let loose a scowl at the notion of a phoenix feather in holly. Was there something wrong with Harry's first wand? There were about zero books concerning wandlore. That subject was apparently passed only from master to apprentice.
The first wands she suggested were disastrous. The next group saw the floor of the shop take on an extra three inches of water. Didn't all wand shops need a well-wetted floor in case of fire? The third batch... They got closer.
The correct wand was in the sixth batch. It was five minutes to nine before Harry left with a griffin claw and holly wand. It was already a better fit than his second Ollivander wand, which was now in a wand box.
"She was open late," Harry said, politely. He'd been trying to find something, anything, nice to say about her. That was what he arrived at without falling into either a minor or major lie.
"She's a bitch. She's open not out of kindness, but because of the dueling. She'll have a few more customers tonight."
"They'll break their wands?"
"It's possible."
Harry found it strange how keyed up he was to see all this.
The dueling hall or concert venue or whatever Delacours really was – it was crammed full when Harry paid for he and his godfather. It felt nice to spend the money he was earning on the job for something fun, first on a wand he didn't know he needed, then an hour or two of seeing duelists prove their worth.
Harry and Sirius didn't find seats, but found spots along the wall that gave a good view of two of the four dueling 'pits.' The matches began at ten after the hour. These weren't the drawn-out demonstration matches Harry had seen once before. These were quick, almost lawless and brutal. It was only Sirius commenting that kept Harry engaged in what was happening rather than cringing.
"The two using the right pit are much better than the other pair. Watch them, Harry."
Harry focused. He couldn't tell a difference, but he was willing to take advice.
"Look at the movement, the efficiency. It's hard to believe I was that good once, if not better. Now, I might last half a minute. I really need to get into fighting shape again."
"Sirius..."
"It's fine. And if it weren't, this isn't the place for that talk. Look at the grace of casting. Think of how many hours it took for them both to be wordless, using non-standard postures, using custom spells. These two are as good of amateurs as I've seen. Better than some veteran Aurors I knew."
"Were you an Auror?"
"Again, a topic for elsewhere, but no. I got the same type of training, from people who had once trained Aurors, but I didn't work for the Ministry."
And that was the most Sirius had ever said about the first war with the Death Eaters. Harry didn't push any further that night, just as Sirius rarely pushed Harry to talk about a dark, stormy night when Harry ended the life of a Death Eater named Rookwood. They each had their traumas and each kept them private.
Harry cast a glance at the rest of the room. A dueling stage on the other side of the room held one of the cursebreakers from the Black Mansion. Harry didn't know him except by sight.
Sirius tapped on Harry's shoulder. Back to the commentating. "Okay, watch, they're not tiring. They're speeding up. They've assessed each other. There. No, I saw it wrong. There..." One of the duelists had collapsed on the elevated stage.
"When it was time, it was like a snake pounced and a little mouse died."
"I don't understand any of it," Harry said. There were no words, no pauses, no explanations. It was a lot faster and less comprehensible than the mock duel that had taken place in the Gryffindor family room.
"Well, keep watching. I'll explain. I'm not good enough to do these things right now, but I could be."
"I'm not saying I want to leave."
Saying the word instantly made Harry dislike the idea. He was here, he was seeing things he'd never seen before, including Guillaume Castar in dueling robes about to walk onto a dueling stage.
It was overwhelming right now, but Harry could feel his interest growing. In the face of all that waited him back at Hogwarts, this looked like hope to him. Being strong, fast, skilled. This was a goal he could adopt for himself. He always felt better when he was working toward an answer to a problem, not ignoring the outside world.
"Okay, let's see who is up next," Sirius said. He eventually settled on commenting the Guillaume Castar match. He won it. (But he lost his second.)