I knocked on the black door of the black house once more. It was bright daylight outside, and I was keen to get out of it. I do most of my work at night, due to the nature of my most of my clients and contacts, and I'm not especially keen on the shining noonday sun. It was also fairly early, but I was eager to get this appointment completed before I began my day's chores.
The house, made of organically shaped black concrete as if Gaudi had been a wizard, had windows that tinted black in the daylight, a black-varnish wooden front door and black cast-iron railings around the front, and over most of the now-tinted windows. The door knocker was that same cast-iron black. Even the house's name was spelt out in black ceramic lettering over the arch of the front door.
I knocked again and Hoppy the house-elf opened the door. She smiled up at me,
"Ah, mistress! So good to see you again! And so often these days!" she enthused as I strode in and handed her my cloak – it turns out a deep-hooded travelling cloak is an unnecessary article of clothing during the day. It made me stand out in a crowd, which I was never comfortable with.
"Good to see you too, Hoppy. I trust everything is well. How's your knee?"
"Much better, thank you mistress. The master got me a leg brace," she said, displaying the elasticised wrapping on her leg.
"And that's made it better?" I asked, nonplussed.
"Oh yes. It's one of the muggle medicines that are becoming so popular. He had to go into a muggle pharmacy to get it, bless him."
"How come?"
"St Mungo's still doesn't hold with it," sniffed the house-elf derisively. "Anyway, yeah, he's up in the workshop. Shall I show you the way?"
"No, thank you, I know the way. Would you judge me if I asked for a glass of wine?"
"It's barely midday, mistress," she observed.
"Is this you judging me?"
"I have some very lovely, very tasty beer, Mistress Baker." I couldn't help but laugh at her tone, and I nodded. The elf disappeared and I started striding upstairs.
Like the rest of Josh Grey's house, the walls were covered in doodles and sketches, if not stacks of books, sprouting bookmarks and gathering dust like a miniature eco-system. Bric-a-brac had been enchanted and charmed – there was a snow globe bouncing near the ceiling of the stairway, and a toy car sped down the stairs through my feet, dangerously. I swore in surprise.
His workshop was on the third storey on tall townhouse. It dominated the whole floor – I went past his bedroom door, climbing amongst stacks of books and the occasional small pile of litter, the bathroom with bubbles floating out of it even now, up to the red door marked with a black 'X'. I had never been through this door before – both Josh and Hoppy had warned me never to go near it. With some hesitation I reached out and tried the handle. It didn't scream, it didn't explode, it didn't electrocute me, it didn't burst into flame and I didn't find myself in the middle of a desert or a sea. Instead, it opened.
In front of me was a long, dark staircase, stretching straight up into a dark space with a tiny light far above it. Feeling excited despite myself, I strode up the creaking stairways and my eyes widened with wonder. I had often wondered what sort of things lurked in Josh's workshop, having peddled his trinkets, inventions, enchantments and services. I had seen the site of his most recent project – a gargantuan machine out in the countryside, completely invisible to muggle traffic. It had been so powerful that it had projected a magical rainbow all the way to the moon, carrying a golden pod of space-faring wizards. I had spoken highly of the things he had devised; time-turners, magical carpets, enchanted abstract pictures that didn't scream in pain and confusion. But I had never seen the place where he made these things.
It was a lot bigger than I had expected. It was also a lot darker. The ceiling was tall, and shelves stood against every single wall. From the high ceiling a strange lamp made of rotating spheres of coloured glass, each with holes in, cast a very strange, shifting light across the room. Red, blue, yellow and white light danced with the darkness – resulting in green, purple, orange, and all manner of other shades and shapes. There were deep shadows in the shelves, covered in cardboard boxes, hat boxes, steel boxes, wooden crates, racks of glass phials and test tubes with various fluids and feathers and hairs, some of them corked, some of them glowing, some of them steaming. There were also books, mostly bound in red leather, clearly his own designs and schematics. There were jars, some ceramic and labelled, some glass with of unusual liquids, some with strange pickled things. One or two of them were still twitching and moving, I'd have sworn. Animal skulls sat next to statues of gods. Hanging from hooks were bundles of herbs, snake skins, loops of rope, net bags of what looked like dried meats. At the bottom of the shelves, far below the ceiling, there were tables, each of them covered with blueprints and quills and detritus. Dirty plates, old glasses and a messy landscape of discarded shirts also covered the various desks, workbenches and stools.
Josh himself was sitting at one of the workbenches. He was bathed in a halo of light from an enchanted bulb that was clamped to the shelf above him. He wasn't wearing his eye patch, but with his good eye he was squinting through a jeweller's eye, staring intently down at a fiddly operation he was performing with a thread. On the bench next to him was his wand, several empty glass phials, some scattered feathers. As I walked across the floor, it crunched – the whole room was carpeted with wood-shavings and chips, from all manner of woods. I noticed a lathe in the corner, also covered in drifts and piles of curled wood shavings. Josh looked up immediately, leaping to his feet, bellowing,
"What! Who! Hm? Who let you in? Do you-" he paused, removed the jewellers eye from his sight and looked at me again. As a red/orange/yellow light combination drifted slowly over his face, but even in the strange coloured glow I could see his empty eye socket, ugly and scarred, a deep dark hole in his skull. His expression changed, softened, "Oh! Lucinda! Welcome!" he said, gesturing widely, his open shirtsleeves sweeping through the air. He pulled his narrow black tie from where it was tucked into his shirtfront. "I hope you like it. I've never let anyone in here before. I tidied up especially," he told me, proudly.
I looked around me, noting plates of food that were days old. There was a sandwich crust in the far corner that I could have sworn was listening to our conversation. He brushed some paper and a leather apron off a stool and patted the dust off it, inviting me to sit. I did so. Out of the pocket of his straight black trousers he pulled his eye patch, replacing it on his head, fiddling with his long hair in the strap until it was comfortable.
"Now, it's fine to be nervous," he said, "I'm nervous too. Most people have ever only been to Ollivander for their wands. Since he's retired, the monopoly has been broken. It's quite sad really."
"How so?" I said, sitting on the stool delicately, trying somehow to lean away from everything around me at once.
"Well, the Ollivanders have been making wands since like, four hundred years before Christianity! That's over two millennia! It's one of the oldest enterprises in the world."
"I've never believed that," I said, poking at a shirt on the floor with the toe of my boot.
"What, you think they're not that old?"
"Exactly."
"Well, I've been doing my research. Making a wand isn't an easy thing, you know."
"Not even for you?" I said, sarcastically.
"Well, I mean, comparatively. Relatively."
"Yeah but it's your fault I lost mine in the first place."
"I know, I know."
"And I did say you could just pay me back for one that I bought," I continued, "You just insisted on making one personally."
"Even then I knew a little about wand-lore," Josh said, ignoring my objections, "I knew that Ollivander could only keep his prices so low because all his wands are pre-made, for example. A true wand-crafter makes each one custom to the personality of the user. I reckon we're in for a bit of a renaissance now, you know? A return to the old ways of the friendly neighbourhood wand-shop."
"You're rambling again," I pointed out to him. He had the good grace to look abashed.
"Well, anyway, I wasn't just being sweet when I said I'd make you one. It's really the only way to get you the best wand for you, personally, you know? A custom made one, from someone who know you really well."
"I guess you fit the bill there," I said in a begrudging tone, but Josh smiled at me anyway, reading the emotion behind my voice.
"Anyway, yeah, there are a couple of generations of Ollivander who have written about wand-crafting. They've been really useful. Outdated, obviously, since it was about four or five hundred years ago when the last volume was published. But useful, nonetheless. So I've practised and I think I've got a couple of wands that'll be absolutely perfect for you."
"A couple?" I asked, surprised.
"Yes. We'll have to see which one is best for you, obviously. Now, your old one, that was… ash, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," I replied, thinking fondly of the wand I had lost. "I've had it since I was a little girl. Ash with a dual core. Dragon heartstrings and demiguise hair."
"I can see that suiting you," he said, stroking his short beard and gazing at me contemplatively, almost unfocussed.
"How do you mean?"
"Well, dragon heartstring is a common ingredient in a dual core. And demiguise hair for subtlety. Very you, no?" he said, and I smiled at his flamboyance.
He picked up one of the wands that I hadn't noticed, lying beneath a sheath of papers. It was a pale wood, the grain still visible, carved like a roman column – grooves running lengthwise down the shaft. "Try this one," Josh told me. I picked it up and gave it an experimental flick, the way old Ollivander had always told us to. A spark flew up as I flicked it, flying into the air and fizzling out near a jar. I could have sworn that something inside the jar turned to look at it with one big, diseased-looking eyeball. I looked back again, eager not to think about the things Josh kept in his workshop.
"Oh my god," said Josh, staring at me. I looked down at myself, puzzled, and let out a shriek of astonishment and embarrassment. I was naked! "I'm so sorry," Josh was saying, scrambling amongst the accumulated layers of objects around him for some clothing. I clamped my arms around myself firmly – Josh had seen me naked before but I hadn't expected him to see be ogling me right this minute!
He picked up a shirt, but it was covered in what looked like cranberry sauce, so he tossed it over his shoulder and took off his own. "Here, this is clean," he said, giving it to me. I looked at his naked torso as I took it, his suspender-braces loose around his waist, his cursed scars livid and strangely textured in the slowly dancing light. I put the shirt around my shoulders, buttoning it up, and rolling up the sleeves. It came down to my thighs. Now I felt a lot more comfortable. Reasonably sexy, even.
"How do you know when it's the right one?" I asked him, "What will it do?"
"Well, if I tell you, it might not go right," he said, looking at me carefully, taking the wand out of my hand delicately.
"What do you mean might not go right?"
"Um… try this one," he said, handing me a thick rod of dark wood that looked disturbingly veined, and rounded smoothly at the top. I looked at it with a raised eyebrow, and then regarded him with a withering expression. He looked back evenly, watching me patiently. "Well, give it a go," he urged, and I gave it a swish as several other ideas occurred to me. It was very thick, solid and organic feeling. A significant part of me had the sensation that it felt… correct in my hand.
Sadly, when I flicked it in the air, a massive fireball erupted out of it and flew into the rooftop, smashing the delicate glass lamp that shone so many varying colours and shapes. With a quick move and a muttered incantation, Josh caught the broken glass with a spell and repaired the beautiful lantern. I was glad it wasn't lost forever. Josh put his own wand away and then snatched the big heavy black wand from me. I resisted for a fraction of a second, and in my imagination we struggled with it for several minutes until I muttered a spell to summon some slime. As he put the wand back on the desk, I couldn't help giggling reasonably loudly.
"Last one," said Josh, giving me what appeared to be a balance between the two. It was straight, slim and delicate but carved in a curl, like a unicorn's horn. It was made of rich-coloured wood with a dark grain. It felt even more right than the last one had, and much healthier. I gave it a flick and almost nothing happened, just the noise of a whisk in the air, maybe the suggestion of a thin whining. I looked at Josh expectantly, and he was smiling widely,
"Good! I think that's the one. What do you think?"
"I think it's the one," I agreed. "What's in it?"
"Well, it's olive wood. Difficult to get in this country. And as we both know, it's not easy to keep a secret from you, eh?" he joked, "It's another dual-core. Unicorn hair and a hippogriff feather."
"Unicorn hair for…?" I asked, suspecting correctly that there'd be a deeper meaning.
"Well, it's very complicated. There's all sorts of magical… flavours, you might say. But yeah, unicorn is the base. It's subtler than dragon, obviously. And hippogriff feather, which isn't easy to get in any country, I can tell you that! It's a proud thing. This wand will command respect from its owner just like the owner will command it from others. This is a very subtle wand, strong-willed and versatile nonetheless."
"Now, let's talk colours. I've got some tins of varnish around somewhere. What I don't have, I can mix up quickly. I'm thinking a matt black. Utilitarian, sensible, doesn't show dirt. What do you reckon?"
I looked at the shape of the thing in my hand. The handle of the wand had a good grip to it, and the shaft itself was elegant and swirling.
"What about shiny black and some very tiny pink highlights?"
"Really?"
"Yeah! This is an amazing wand. It deserves to be a little bit funky," I said, feeling flamboyant, swishing the wand around eagerly, dressed only in a man's shirt in the middle of a top-secret room full of junk and trinkets and treasure.
"Cool, I can do that right now if you want. It'll take about an hour to dry, though."
"Ooh, what could we possibly do for an hour?" I said softly, pointing the wand at him cheekily. A thought occurred to me,
"What's in the other wands?"
"That's… not important. And reasonably illegal," he said, spinning his wand and saying a charm to make several pots of what looked like paint float down from one of the high shelves across the room.
"Illegal?"
"Well, the black one was dragon heartstrings and… chimera scale…" he muttered softly, almost ashamed. I could see they were pots of varnish now. He was also summoning down a tiny, slim paintbrush from a shelf much lower down in the room.
"What! From an actual basilisk?"
"Yeah, from an actual basilisk."
"That must have cost a fucking bomb," I exclaimed, astonished, "You really shouldn't have gone to so much trouble."
"It wasn't any trouble. I had a couple of scales lying around is all," he said as the pots of varnish arrived next to him. He flipped the lids off with his wand, suspending them in the air.
"Lying around?"
"Well, they can be quite useful. Very reactive."
"I can tell," I said, looking up at the light that had shattered. I could still see the odd scorch mark on the glass as it revolved around. "So this one is olive wood, unicorn hair and hippogriff?"
"Yeah."
"How did you get the cores in?"
"Oh, it's fairly simple once you get the hang of it," he said, putting down his paintbrush on a sheet of paper, leaving a long stain of varnish on what was probably a highly involved and valuable diagram. He looked proud, reaching for the needle and thread on the workbench.
"Can you take them out again?" I asked.
"Well, we thread the wand with the needle," he said, demonstrating, "Then we basically tug the hairs, feathers and other materials into them softly. The tip of the wand and the handle are both glued into place with a very special, very difficult to make magical glue. So, it's difficult but it's not impossible. Why?" he asked, suddenly puzzled.
"Well, could you take the magic out of that big, dark wand you showed me? Then you can… varnish something?" I said, very suggestively, my hands stroking my bare thighs, creeping up to the bottom of the shirt slowly.