Title: Wands of Deception

Advisories: mention of torture

Challenge Entry for:

The Houses Competition, Year Two, Round Three.

House: Hufflepuff

Year: 5th

Category: Themed, Deception

Prompt: [Character] Garrick Ollivander, [First Line] "There was always something not quite right about the door."

Wordcount: 2071-(Google Docs)

Betaed by Angel, Aya

There was always something not quite right about the door.

Garrick hated that door. In reality, it wasn't that he truly hated the door. He hated what it stood for. Why it was there. The necessity of its very existence.

But he also hungered for what lay behind it. It was a hunger borne out of pain, something so deep that it moved him when nothing else would.

Even months later, the memories still haunted him, as if it had been yesterday. Each night, he went to bed with a Draught of Dreamless Sleep to chase away the screaming and cursing, and the pain. There was always so much pain. Then, when it ceased to touch him through the long nights, it snuck its way in during the daylight and tore through him when he least expected it.

The Wand Shop had seen terrible damage in the war. It had hurt him, in a different way, to come back to Diagon Alley to see the wreckage and pick through what was left of his inventory. Originally, his shop had not been touched, but in the aftermath, the weeks after the Final Battle, when the remaining Death Eaters were openly fighting the Aurors in the streets to avoid getting captured, that's when his shop had sustained the most damage. Most of the wands in the shop had been destroyed. Garrick was old and tired, and hadn't had much strength left in him to throw them all away. But then he'd gotten an idea. Instead of trashing the semi-damaged wands, he had figured out a way to salvage them. He would not only mend them, but he would make them stronger. This was his first test that his idea was going to work.

Garrick stuffed his memories back into the depths of his mind as the bell went off at the front of his shop. The blonde haired witch almost floated through the door, a pleasant, unhurried expression on her face. The old wandmaker noted that she looked larger than the last time he'd seen her. That time they'd spent together at Shell Cottage when they'd both been at their lowest, Luna had carried with her an inner strength that he'd never encountered before. He'd learned, in their time together, that she had a remarkable way of seeing what no one else chose to see. This was why he had offered to make her a new wand himself. It was his first new wand since that horrible time. It would be his test to himself, to prove that he could really do this. If she was at all suspicious, he would be undone.

He steadied his stance and forced himself to admire the fresh glow of the new hardwood floors, the gleam of the hot sun coming through the unblemished windows, allowing his eyes to wander, even to the many tiny, very empty spaces where his inventory used to lay, stacked so high that it reached the ceiling, anywhere but back at that door. He wouldn't let her know, wouldn't let her have a clue as to what was back there. No, he was going to act as if everything was back to normal in his shop. It was the great Ollivander's Wand Shoppe, 'ye olde', with hundreds of years of tradition behind it. His, and the reputation of his ancestors, were at stake. His livelihood depended on this transaction and every transaction after it. He had to prove to her, and himself, that he was truly back in business once again.

Then they would all come. They would all come, and the next generation would receive their wands. They would all be ready.

Clouded images flickered in and out of his mind again, and he forced them back. He hid the worry from his countenance, attempting to match Luna's serene smile. She had been there with him. She had seen him beg for his life, spill his secrets after he'd endured the Cruciatus Curse, held his hand as he was overcome with the hopeless feeling that he'd never get out of that cellar alive, or worse, that he would live longer and endure more of the same treatment, over and over.

His hands weren't shaking. His palms weren't sweating. He wasn't thinking about that door.

"Here it is, just as promised," he said. He handed her a long, black box while maintaining the smile on his face and hiding the trepidation within his heart.

Couldn't know… shouldn't know…

That very secret part of him stirred as soon as she touched the box. He hadn't lost his instincts. He could practically feel the vibrations of the wand, reaching out for its new master.

The shop's lights flickered when Luna lifted the wand out of its box, and Garrick felt the connection between wand and wielder grow stronger.

"Hawthorne and dragon heartstring," he murmured, as if the words were a magical chant themselves. "Ten and one half inches. Sturdy."

She would wield it well. She would be armed like an army of armed armsmen who aimed to take down an entire armada of arms…

The meaningless words played over and over in his mind, like a broken gramophone, but the intent behind them was clear. Garrick suddenly had an overwhelming urge to see her do something truly powerful with the stick she wielded in her hand, and it almost robbed him of all sensibilities.

Garrick shook his head to clear it. No, not Luna. The Lovegood girl wouldn't be like that. She had the most control of any witch he had ever known.

But did it matter, as long as she reached her full potential?

"It feels heavy," Luna commented.

Garrick nodded freely. "Yes," he said. "It holds a lot of… surprises."

She flicked and swished with the practice of a seasoned soldier. Flick, the overhead lamp went out. Swish, the overhead lamp was relit. Luna aimed her wand at a stack of empty boxes on the floor, and they rose into the air with her wordless command, and then settled into a neat single stack onto his counter. The wand obeyed her movements without hesitation, and he couldn't help but mentally note that she wielded it well.

Her immense control over it was stunning.

Good girl. Good, good girl. There now, everything is fine. She's going to control it. She will handle it. She won't be like the last one…

When the Lovegood girl left with her new weapon, Garrick quickly followed her out the door. He waved enthusiastically, threw out the obligatory words of thanks and gratitude, and so such and bye and bye. He watched as she went on her way down Diagon Alley and disappeared into the Leaky Cauldron. He counted steadily to twenty-three, and then, making sure that she was truly gone, let out a sigh of relief.

Then he closed the door. He locked the door. He flipped the "Open" sign to "Closed" and collapsed against the door, inside of his shop.

He hadn't just sold another wand. He had released a powerful force out into the world.

Now he could relax, secure in his plan, without anyone the wiser.

But he wasn't quite alone, was he?

The door was still there. Garrick flicked his wand around the shop, extinguishing the lights one by one, until the shop lay in darkness, illuminated only by the faint, flickering light coming from under that door. It was only noticeable when the rest of the lights went out. In the evenings, he would shut the window blinds down tight and cast a darkness charm onto the exterior walls, just to be safe.

But on the inside, he could see it. Shaking, Garrick stood up and walked towards the door. There was no sound, no nothing, except for the light. He took a singular key out of his breast pocket and fitted it into the lock, turning three times. After the click, he put the key back into his pocket. Then he did a series of complicated swishes with his wand in front of the door.

It glowed. And then it didn't.

Reaching out, he turned the door knob.

There it was, the 'creak' that haunted him. If that 'creak' had come, if the door had opened during his meeting with Luna Lovegood, or with anyone else, all would be lost.

But as luck and timing would have it, it hadn't. Everything was still exactly as he wanted it to be, and his plans were steadily in motion.

And he needed to make sure that the next wand would be ready in time. The new Minister of Magic was coming for it in the morning.

Slowly and deliberately, he opened the door. The flickering light came from a single candle in the middle of the dank, stone cellar-type room. It looked exactly like the cellar where he had been all those months ago, where he had endured that terrible pain and let go of too many valuable secrets.

In fact, it was exactly that. When he crossed the threshold, he was standing right inside the same cellar underneath Malfoy Manor where he had suffered for so long. The stone walls were the same. The stone steps were the same. The shackles attached to the walls still hung, exactly as he remembered them.

The only difference was that this time, he had entered the cellar under his own will. Someone else was imprisoned in his place.

Deranged eyes looked up at him from the table in the center of the cellar. The person's manacles held him in place, as he held the wand, chanting the spell that Garrick Ollivander had created himself. A single candle illuminated the blank look of the Imperius Curse upon his face.

In the hands of the prisoner, the hawthorne wand was pointed directly at the Dark Mark that writhed in protest on his arm. The tip of the wand shimmered, and the point where it touched skin puckered in, as if it was a straw, soaking up the ink, though no ink had disappeared from the man's tattoo.

He was infusing the wand with power. It was more power than anyone could ever imagine.

Garrick had thought long and hard about the possibilities of a stronger wand during his convalescence. He had thought up all the ways that he could make a new set of wands that would be capable of resisting the dark magic that had plagued their world over the last half-century. Because he had assisted the Dark Lord, in his weakness, with information about the Elder Wand, Garrick Ollivander's heart had been eaten away with the guilt and wanted to somehow make up for his transgressions.

This was his penance. It hadn't taken him any time at all to convince the Malfoys, or what was left of them, to assist him in his collusion. They were just as guilty as he had been, just as riddled with guilt over housing the Dark Lord as he had been to reveal his secrets, that it had taken no time at all for them to connect his shop to their cellar, and also gift him with the person he needed to see his plan to fruition. He gave them all assurances that this would be their saving grace.

Should there be another war, the Wizarding World would be stronger, more prepared for anything that might come their way.

"These wands will be unstoppable," he said, his frail voice oddly magnified by the stone walls. "Isn't that right, Mister Carrow?"

The gloomy, bloodshot eyes of his prisoner remained intent on his task. He hadn't eaten, hadn't stopped to drink. His only purpose was to transfer the power of the Dark Mark into the wand in his hand. Only when the task was done, would he be allowed to rest. Garrick wasn't concerned with the condition of the man. He could get more where this one came from. Azkaban was full of desperate wizards just like him. Amycus's sister had screamed for him to take her, instead of her brother. Garrick was perfectly fine with that; she could be next, for all he cared. She would be next.

The power of the Dark Mark would make those wands invincible. He'd do everything in his power to arm the entire Wizarding World with them. No one would have to bow to the Dark Lord ever again; he would see to that.