"Give it a swish."
Nothing.
"Hmm. Strange. And this one?"
Another swish. Nothing.
A bored yawn. "Is anything supposed to happen?"
"As a matter of fact," the old man replied, tone pinched, "yes."
"Like what?"
"You'll know when it happens."
"We can wait a while. Hey, sensei, can I go see the menagerie? Ne? ne? OW."
Sakura gave the shopkeeper an apologetic little smile and shifted her weight off the heel that was currently crushing Naruto's toes. Kakashi gave her a wry nod as thank-you. She smiled back, and elbowed Naruto when he started whining about how unfair it was. The adults returned to Sasuke, who was standing in the middle of a mess of discarded wands and looking more cross by the second.
"... Sasuke," Kakashi sighed. "Stop molding your chakra."
"But--"
"You won't need to dodge anything in a hurry," their teacher added, dropping a heavy hand on Naruto's shoulder and giving him a Look. "But Ollivander-san can't find a pattern matching with it if you're reshaping it at the same time."
After giving Sasuke a long, shrewd look, the old man was already digging through his boxes.
"Here. Serpent scale -- give it a swish..."
Sasuke dutifully gave it a swish. A pile of boxes fell on Naruto's head as he was mimicking Sasuke's "expert wrist-limped action".
"Ow! What the hell, is it Abuse Naruto Day, or what?"
Ollivander snatched the wand out of Sasuke's hand and shoved another at him.
Then another. Then yet another. Sakura's arms were growing tired of holding Naruto in place every time he started to inch toward the exit, or a dark corridor, or a particularly shiny box.
Eventually, there was a flash of light and the old man finally looked pleased.
"Well, isn't that interesting. Ebony wood, with a core of giant fire-breathing bat hair -- what, pray tell, is so amusing?"
Naruto was too busy suffocating to answer.
Kakashi stared at his blond, red-faced student with detached consternation, and nudged Sakura forward. Ollivander went about measuring her, not looking that concerned by the hysterical, choked laughter coming from Naruto's corner. Sakura and Kakashi tried, with varying degrees of success, to pretend that they didn't hear.
Sasuke went to Naruto and used his brand-new wand to stab him in the shoulder.
"OW SON OF A BITCH--"
Annoyed, Sakura swished the wand she was currently trying. The two boys ended up with flowers stuffed in their mouths. Kakashi coughed suspiciously and stared intently at his book. His shoulders were shaking just a bit.
"Sakura..."
"Ah, I'm sorry, Sasuke-kun..."
"You have a daisy behind your ear, Sasuke," Kakashi informed him absently, and turned a page he hadn't even read.
Naruto would have laughed, but he was still coughing up daffodils.
It only took two more tries to find Sakura's wand. It was middle-length, elegant and delicate; "Cherry-wood with a core of Phoenix feather. From the crest," Ollivander added.
Sakura perked up. The cherry thing was a little bit too obvious to bother asking, but she hadn't yet abandoned her efforts to make sense of that strange, strange world. "From its head?" A reference to her intelligence maybe! "Would a feather from anywhere else have different properties?"
Ollivander smiled at her, visibly pleased by her interest. "None at all. Young man, please?"
Naruto ended up taking twice as long to find his match as it took Sasuke. Twice as long, three times as many explosions, and an accidental transformation of Kakashi's book into a trout.
Ollivander changed it back, but the cover insisted on showing a mermaid.
After some consideration, Kakashi didn't appear that saddened. As a rule, mermaids rarely wore more than seashell bras and their own hair.
The one wand that seemed to work was, well... Rather big, judging by the ones they'd seen before. It was also, as Ollivander confided with some pride, "experimental." Sakura was pretty sure that a man as shrewd and observant as the wandmaker had to notice the uncomfortable looks exchanged between her, Sasuke and Kakashi, but he was good at pretending to be oblivious. Naruto was swatting his wand as if it was a nightstick and only reacted to the announcement with a grin.
"Hah! Hear that, Sasuke? My wand is more special than yours."
Sasuke snatched the explanatory paper that was inside the wand's box and read it quickly, sneering. "Yeah, special. Core of nerves from a frog leg. How lame is that?"
Naruto scowled. "You're just jealous cause mine's bigger!"
"And what does it matter, since you don't even know how to use it!"
Sakura groaned.