Chapter 11
Saturday marked a later start for the department and also the first time Paige could remember not having a wand at hand. She went through her morning routine slowly and manually like a muggle. Her slow start was interrupted by the post, bringing a reply from Lawrence who wanted to confirm details for attending the Halloween party at the ministry that was happening that evening.
She hastily replied and was just putting her bag together for the day when there was a curt knock on her door.
Puzzled, Paige approached the threshold, feeling acutely vulnerable now without a wand to call on, she contemplated simply pretending to not be home.
Opening the door, cautiously given her recent encounters, Paige was startled to see her mentor leaned causally against the doorframe waiting on her. There were heavy bags under his eyes and his spiky hair seemed more dishevelled than usual.
"What are you doing here Magus?" She cried in surprise. He was always late getting into the office, for him to be awake this early was unheard of as far as she knew.
"I was downstairs grabbing a beer or two." He started casually but she cut him off.
"Wait! How do you know where I live?" Paige demanded suddenly, clutching at where her wand would usually be out of habit.
"Lucky guess?" Her mentor replied with a smirk on his lightly lopsided face.
"Bullshit!" She snorted disbelievingly.
"Hey I'm your mentor, I have to know these things." He shrugged indifferently, like it was just part of the job.
"Let's go back to the what are you doing here part then." Paige suspiciously asked again.
"Came to help you get a new wand, you aren't much use to me without one today. I figured we'd go before work and get you one." Magus explained patiently, like he was talking to a child, all the while his eyes darting down the hallway.
Conspiratorially, he gestured for her to lean closer so he could whisper in her ear.
"Word on the street is that getting a wand might become exceptionally harder in the not too distant future." He hissed secretively and tapped his nose knowingly. Paige shuddered at his hot breath cascading on her neck as he whispered and the sickly sweet scent of liquor it carried.
Paige had been meaning to go and order one that day by post anyway, but now her mentor seemed to think going in person was a better idea. Besides waiting for delivery could be several more wandless days to endure, in which as her mentor Magus pointed out, she wouldn't be much use at work.
So conceding to his sometimes better judgement and mysterious street knowledge, she snatched her purse from the table and went outside to meet him.
Magus apparated them to the Leaky Cauldron from the top of her stairs. The dingy bar was about the same as she remembered it, as she walked through the downtrodden establishment with Magus, who clearly had spent a fair bit of time there.
Tom the barman greeted Magus with a light scowl, but grudgingly started pouring a well-worn flagon of mead for the young man. The flagon appeared to have had his name scratched in it with something sharp. Magus as a surprise to everyone present waved him off.
"Maybe later, Tom; just passing through at the moment." He explained dismissively.
"Maybe you can settle up your tab then too?" The grizzled bartender growled at his departing form. Magus seemed not to hear him or simply ignored him.
As they passed, several other customers exchanged greetings and insults with Magus.
"Who'sh the bird? You lost the other one already, McIntyre?" One scruffy drunk slurred at him, eyeing Paige with undue interest.
"Dawn's at home today Mickey, this is Paige my new intern. We got some stuff to grab for work ourselves actually." Magus clipped back in testy reply.
As they passed the drunk called Mickey, Magus's wand swished out from his side with a crack and clipped the man's sneakily outstretching hand that had almost reached Paige.
"Keep those hands to yourself Mickey, or I'll snap them off remember?" He warned the drunk and chambered his wand again at his side with another neat circular swing.
Magus is extra grumpy this morning it would seem, Paige thought to herself.
"Sorry Mac, keep forgetting. Short memory, ya know?" The drunk hurriedly apologised, clutching his stinging wrist. He had grey, waist length hair and an equally long filthy beard, his half-starved frame seemed to shrink from the blow.
Paige fast stepped it to keep up with her mentor as he pushed outside to enter the Diagon Alley. She stayed close to him this time, having learned another lesson.
"Don't mind Mickey, he is harmless. Mostly." Magus assured Paige as he surreptitiously tapped the bricks with his stout wand and they entered the wizarding street. As it was a Saturday, the streets were thrumming with activity, the coming and going of witches and wizards of all ages.
The usually social McIntyre hastily and rudely made his way through the crowds with Paige close beside him until the finally entered Ollivander's. It appeared the aging wizard had just turned the sign around and was setting up for the day.
"Mr McIntyre, Cedar, dragon heartstring; 14 inches and rigid. Extremely sturdy, yet temperamental." He slowly greeted the wizard in a voice dulled with age.
"That's me. Oh wait you were talking about my wand again?" Magus joked deadpan with a wink to Paige and the old wandmaker shook his head disapprovingly, Paige poked out her tongue in disgust.
"That joke is less funny every time you make it." The elderly man wheezed.
"Please don't tell me you have broken another one?" He further begged in exasperation.
"Mr Ollivander please! I've been taking real great care of this one." Magus insisted in apparent grave offence.
"So you haven't been hitting other people with this wand then?" The shrewd craftsman demanded.
"Of course not!" Magus denied, hiding the battered wand further behind his body.
"Well not often." He amended under the doubtful gaze of the wandmaker.
"But what have you done to that wand?!" Ollivander exclaimed, moving with an uncanny speed to snatch the wand Magus had tried to conceal. Paige noticed though he took it from his grasp, the wand still didn't leave her mentors reach. A short strip of dragonhide cord ran from the back of the thick wand and effectively tethered it to his forearm.
Paige had never seen such an odd wand fixture and was perplexed not to have noticed it before, it was perhaps a new feature he had added.
Magus shrugged the loop off his wrist where it had anchored the wand.
"I made a lanyard after our scrape the other day, might stop me losing the bloody thing if I drop it or am disarmed." He briskly explained. Paige had to admit that made sense and she was surprised that no one else had thought to do the same.
The wand maker studied the small hole in the base in amazement as if it was sacrilege to have made a hole in ones wand.
"How did you make this hole?" He asked at last in barely concealed anger.
"Muggle power drill." Magus admitted lightly, retaking his wand and slipping the loop over his wrist once more.
"You are a most unusual wizard, Mr McIntyre. I hadn't made weapon-like wands such as yours for centuries until you came along." Ollivander muttered in what sounded a lot like disapproval.
His eyes now caught on the nervous looking Paige who had been left out of the exchange.
"Ah young Ms Calamisi, it has been a long time. Elm, 15 inches with a bit of spring to it and the tail of a particularly large unicorn if I recall correctly." He recounted with loving detail.
"That is right, Sir." Paige smiled warmly, although feeling a little guilty because she had lost the wand in question.
"And it has served you well my dear? I have heard plenty about your achievements at Hogwarts, but what do you do with it now?" The old man enquired in an odd manner as if it was the wand that had a profession now, not the girl.
"It has Sir, I work with Magus in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes as a Junior Reverser." She informed him almost proudly.
Ollivander seemed somewhat perturbed by this and he cast a disapproving eye over her mentor once more.
"Well I hope this brigand is minding his manners and looking out for your wellbeing."
"The second surely, the first not so much." Magus assured him rudely cutting off Paige from answering.
"The Kid here lost her wand on a job and we need a new one right away." Magus cut to the chase.
"Please!" Paige added imploringly at the doubtful look that was being cast their way.
"Of course." Ollivander slowly said, as if they were painful words for him to spit out.
"Really?" Paige enquired, sincerely surprised that the man would help her and the rude wizard she had arrived with.
"As much as I may disapprove of your Irish friend here, I also owe him indefinitely for services rendered in the past." The old wandmaker begrudgingly mumbled.
The mentor in question, sat on the corner of the table and whistled while he cleaned under his fingernails with his well-worn wand.
"I am pretty awesome." He quietly and immodestly agreed to everyone's irritation.
Ollivander disappeared out back in frustration and returned with two long narrow boxes.
One was reverently passed across the table to Paige and the other callously slid across to Magus, as if it was a disdained object that the old wizard no longer wanted in his possession.
"It is the very last one I will make you, Mr McIntyre." Ollivander informed Magus with a cold weary expression, as if just to make the wand had taken something from him.
Paige swished her new wand experimentally, producing a happy shower of sparks.
"That should be every bit as good as your old one, my dear." The wandmaker assured Paige in a much warmer tone.
"Thank you so much." She gushed in appreciation.
"No trouble at all for you, I assure you. Just be careful out there please." He implored her with a sideways glance at her crass mentor.
Magus snatched up his own wand box, without inspecting the contents and stuffed it unceremoniously into his satchel with no more than a curt nod of thanks.
"You might want to disappear for a while, old man. I hear bad things rising that might end up crossing your path." He quietly warned Ollivander with a sombre expression and a rare seriousness.
"I have seen much darkness young man and I fear it as much as I do those who supposedly walk in the light. I will stay; for where else will young wizards get their wands?" Ollivander snapped back at him cryptically.
"I'll check in from time to time then." Magus eventually promised quietly and the old man nodded gratefully, the tension breaking from his face at the gesture. He adamantly waved away Paige dismissively as she tried to pay for her new wand.
"Be safe!" He cautioned the pair as they slowly departed the shop.
"Batty old coot." Magus muttered under his voice as soon as they stepped out into the cool morning air.
"Rude! He is a bit creepy, but he just gave us new wands, no ordering or waiting and free of charge too!" Paige defended the old man.
Magus shrugged indifferently and looked around the packed streets.
"Any other errands to run while we are out?" He wearily asked her, changing the subject before she decided to ask why the wandmaker was in his debt.
"Nope, I've got my costume all sorted for tonight." Paige smugly told him, fully aware that not knowing what it was would bug him.
"I'm not going to bite.." Magus informed her, pointedly not looking at her and wise to what she was doing.
Paige waited for the other shoe to drop as he pretended to look in the window of a nearby shop.
"Come on, tell me what you are going as?!" He whined, finally breaking in the silence.
Paige cracked a smirk at the needy tone and held her tongue.
"Is it a couples costume with whats-his-face?" He curiously bugged her, picking at her in an annoying manner.
"Lawrence. And no I don't know what he is planning to come as." Paige corrected him patiently, she too had been wondering what her boyfriend was going to come as.
"Whatever." Magus brushed off the superfluous information.
"What are you dressing up as for it?" Paige turned it back on him.
"Top secret; Dawn has sworn me into secrecy with the threat of terrible, terrible things.." He informed her in a shell-shocked voice, his eyes took on a momentarily hollow stare.
"Aww cute so you two are doing a couples costume?" Paige prodded for a reaction.
Magus appeared to have lost interest already though, he was distracted by a commotion down the street ahead of them.
"Stop, thief!" Someone yelled and one of the nearby shopkeepers ran out with his wand raised. He was quite old but he still fired off a couple of spells with a passion belying his age.
Through the crowd someone was roughly pushing people out of the way to escape.
A rough looking skinhead finally broke through the crowd and sprinted past the dismayed pair of Reversers. In one hand he clutched his wand and in the other a ripped satchel which jingled and scattered Galleons and Sickles as he ran.
With a shove the robber knocked hard into both the Reversers, almost knocking them from their feet.
"Rude!" Magus muttered disapprovingly and threw a hand out to stabilise his student, without warning he had deployed his wand with an angry flick of the wrist. The perpetrator had moved quickly out his immediate strike range though and he relaxed his chambered wand down once more.
"We should stop him!" Paige cried in disgust and indignation, her own wand out at the interruption too.
"Knock yourself out Kid." Magus encouraged her with waning interest as he picked up a discarded sickle and stuffed it in his jeans pocket.
"Stupefy!" Paige yelled enthusiastically and fired a red jet of light after the fleeing thief.
A discount apothecary supplies table was the only thing thoroughly stupefied and it exploded in a shower of glass.
Swing and a miss..
Slightly put off, Paige tried again and this time a random trash can wore her misplaced wrath.
"Nice shooting, Tex." Magus quipped sarcastically.
"I'd like to see you do better!" Paige bit back downhearted as the thief ran out of what was clearly her range. He had escaped the crowds now and was gaining some distance.
Magus sighed theatrically and lifted his wand, bracing it off his other horizontal raised forearm. He poked his tongue out in concentration and closed one eye to aim.
"You have to give them lead to account for their movement." He whispered in tutorage, not looking up from his rapidly disappearing target.
"Diffindo." He spoke as a bare bitter whisper.
A green light erupted from the end of his wand and rocketed off after the running robber. It was a long shot…
With a rending scream the spell caught the runner in the leg with a short spray of blood and the man stumbled to a painful collapse.
Magus gave a cocky wink that embodied all the things about him that Paige hated.
Raising his wand he blew away imaginary smoke coolly.
"That is how it is done, Rookie.." He told her and began to strut towards the ailing wizard, who was clutching his leg in agony.
Paige just despised him when he was right.
The crowd had cleared enough around them now for the villain to fire a hex back at the approaching pair. Magus quickly snatched a book off a nearby discount rack and held it in front of him to block the vicious looking spell.
"Yikes!" He commented at the smoking hole that it had created in the thick copy of 'Potions for Dummies'.
"Take the wand off him will ya, Kid, before he thinks up something creative to throw at us."
Paige copied the way her mentor had held his wand earlier and tried again.
"Expelliarmus." She yelled this time.
It was much easier to hit a stationary target, especially one that was now closer and lying on the ground. So now it only took Paige three tries before she got a hit.
"Got there in the end didn't we?" Her mentor remarked in amusement.
Paige's retort died in her throat when they reached the injured thief for two reasons.
Firstly his left foot hung at a hideous angle a horrible open wound to his Achilles, it had only bled a small amount but was horrible and grotesque in appearance none-the-less. It appeared Magus had sliced the wizards Achilles tendon with his severing charm, a creative use for the spell no doubt.
Secondly, Paige recognised the petty thief.
"Wow! I got you good sucker, bet that stings!" Magus chuckled arrogantly at his own shooting.
Noel Nazarine tried his best to sneer through his grimace of pain, it lost a lot of its threatening impression. He usually made for quite the intimidating figure with his fully shaven head, prison muscles and the large number of terrifying, moving tattoos.
"Owww fucking law enforcement pricks!" The rough young wizard swore and thrashed on the ground in frustration without his wand.
"We're not magical law enforcement, genius." Paige groaned impatiently, she had never had much time for the on and off, dropkick boyfriend of her older sister.
"Just two passing people that like dropping dirtbags." Magus quipped before catching a vehemently head shaking from Paige.
"Okay, just one person who likes hurting dirtbags." He amended.
"Hey, you are that whore Maggie's prude sister." Noel exclaimed in disgusted realisation as he finally recognised one of the figures standing over him.
"I'm no prude and I don't have sister!" Magus replied coldly and yet mockingly, pretending that the comment was meant for him.
"Not you, dumbass. I'm referring to that bitch." The downed skinhead hissed in irritation and pain.
"Bold words for a man with his foot half hanging off." Magus noted disapprovingly giving the aforementioned foot a nudge with his own for good measure.
The wounded wizard bucked and swore in agony.
"Ah look here comes one of the boys from Law Enforcement now." Magus smugly noted and recognised Tiny Tim's awkward gait from a distance.
He was accompanied by the elderly shopkeeper and taking rapid, messy notes in a small battered notebook.
"Hey Paige, Magus. Nice shot back there, I was out picking up more quills and heard the commotion." He explained his timely appearance.
"How convenient, you sure you aren't following us?" Magus scrutinised the young wizard.
"Ignore him, he is paranoid in the mornings if he doesn't get his coffee." Paige hastily explained.
"Who told you that?" Magus suspiciously enquired.
"Can you arrest this no good thief already?" The elderly shopkeeper wheezed.
Tim who was already looking confounded, looked more flustered.
"I'll book him for you, Tiny Tim." Magus offered helpfully. Without waiting for a response he smashed Noel in the face with the damaged hardback book that had been used as a shield. The man's nose exploded in a gout of blood and he sunk back onto the cobbled footpath.
"Stupefy, bitch." Magus smarmily crowed a one-liner, throwing the bloody and burnt book down on the unresponsive felon and looked back up at the others with his trademark crooked smirk. This was clearly a young man who had watched too many action movies.
"That was excessive." Paige mumbled disapprovingly as she traced the Achilles back with her wand as best she could and realigned the foot under it.
"Fuck him! Who cares, guy was a waster anyway. Don't do the crime if you can't stand to be pummelled with books I always say." Magus defended his actions bitterly sarcastic and with a blithe shrug.
"I have heard him say that before." Tim muttered incredulously.
Paige looked at him sharply for support.
"These things happen when people resist arrest." Tim shrugged awkwardly and refused to meet her gaze as he rolled the still swearing Nazarine over and placed an enchanted pair of shackles on his wrists.
"Well they shouldn't." Paige snapped at the pair of them, maybe she didn't like Noel at all, but she thought he at least deserved fair treatment.
"Call it a crime deterrent then." Magus suggested, helping Tim stand the steadily blood dripping criminal back up onto unsteady feet.
"Fuck you!" Noel cursed back at him rudely, his tone nasally through his swelling nose.
"See? Consider him deterred." Magus gestured as if proving a point and roughly shoving the prisoner against Tiny Tim.
Paige simply shook her head in disgust at her mentor, who still had a sneered lip until Tim removed the unpleasant man with a pop of apparation.
Magus brusquely brushed aside the thanks from the shop owner who had been reunited with his wizarding cash and started to walk back to the Leaky Cauldron without waiting to see if Paige was following.
She bounded after her temperamental mentor and by the time she caught up to him at the bar he was half way through a pint of mead.
"Can we go now?" Paige pleaded, hearing nearby patrons recounting the near robbery that had just been foiled.
When he studiously ignored her, she sighed and reached for an old copy of the Quibbler on a nearby table. She flicked through idly until Magus finally broke the silence.
"Let me finish my pint and then we can go. I needed something extra this morning." He explained quietly in a tone so unlike his.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Paige asked slowly as his change in sorts finally seemed to catch her.
"Nope. Can you just let me brood mysteriously into my drink for a bit?" He requested mildly, taking another long swig of his drink. Several minutes passed and Magus finally stood up and slapped a couple of sickles down on the counter.
They donned their jackets once more in silence.
Magus didn't speak again until they had stepped out once more ready to apparate.
"It's an anniversary today of sorts, for something not so pleasant. It's got me in a bit of a bad mood ya know?" He finally informed her in an unreadable tone.
"I mighta got a bit carried away because of it." Magus reluctantly admitted with his same brooding expression.
His gaze suddenly flashed up a flutter of movement outside by one of the fountains.
"Donny, you little bastard!" He cursed under his breath and strode off towards the fountain in a huff.
"Where the hell have you been, duck?" He hollered at the water feature which was inhabited by several of the common water birds.
One duck in particular caught Paige's eye, tied to one of its legs were a small stack of letters. At their presence it turned stubby tail and tried to make for the other side of the pond.
"Get back here you ungrateful, bread-billed bitch!" Magus yelled at the retreating water fowl without any consideration to how crazy he must have seemed to bystanders. With the same oblivious nature, he dived head first into the fountain after the duck in question. A loud quacking erupted at his upsetting move and water splashed everywhere, Paige quickly stepped back to avoid the small tidal wave her mentor had created in the still pond.
"Gotcha!" Magus called triumphantly, holding aloft the laden unhappily protesting duck.
"Why does that duck have mail attached to it?" Paige asked more to herself than anyone else and not for the first time doubting her mentor's sanity.
"This little prick, is Donny; my messenger." Magus explained, dripping from head to toe and fighting the furious snapping beak to retrieve his saturated mail.
"You have a duck, not an owl? Go figure.." She rolled her eyes at the ridiculous man as he roughly threw the duck back in the pond, having relieved it of his letters as well as several feathers.
Donny the duck however did not immediately fly off, instead he seemed to float impatiently as if waiting on something from Magus.
"No!" He refused the duck angrily. Donny quacked back at him impatiently.
"Once again, you didn't bring the damn messages to me, so why should I pay you?" Magus argued with the water bird and looking like a complete nutter in the process. The duck quacked at him once again, impetuously.
"Fine, jerk. But next time; no delivery, no bread." Magus relented, reaching into a pocket of his ever present dragon hide vest he pulled out a few crusts of wholemeal.
Donny started quacking again loudly in protest.
"Because too much whitebread makes you fat, Featherbrain." McIntyre lectured the animal and carelessly tossed the bread to it.
Donny eagerly snapped up the bread, which it sucked down it's gullet in record time.
He then turned to quack insistently at Paige in turn.
"She's my new intern, leave her alone Donny. She hasn't got any bread." Magus growled gratingly.
"And if you fuck up the delivery one more time I'm taking you to the Chinese Restaurant behind my flat." He warned the duck, who squawked back ungratefully.
Donny gave several long quacks that sounded a lot like laughter to Paige.
"Yeah, well this time I mean it, Peking Duck." He shot back, but the fat duck was already paddling away indifferently.
"His names Donny?" Paige skeptically raised her eyebrows at her mentor as he perused through some soaked mail.
"Coupon, junk mail, make your wand 4 inches longer, yeah right…" Magus mumbled to himself as he sorted the mail, tossing large quantities in a nearby rubbish bin.
"Short for Donatello. What did you think it was short for?" He responded looking up from his long overdue post.
"Renew subscription for 'Witches Without Robes?" Paige loudly read out over his shoulder.
"Why did that get sent to me?" Magus loudly purported unconvincingly and made to conceal the rest of his mail.
Paige gave her best disgusted and disapproving look while Magus tried for innocent and failed abysmally. As soon as Paige looked away, he swiftly lifted the subscription reminder back up, folded a sickle inside the paper and tapped it with his wand. The newly formed paperplane zoomed away merrily under its own accord, to renew his sleazy subscription.
"If you wanted your porno mag subscriptions to arrive on time, why don't you just own an owl?" Paige wearily enquired, as she waited for him to finish.
"Owls don't like me." Magus muttered darkly as he tried to dry a ministry stamped letter with his wand. It ended up catching fire instead and he promptly dropped the envelope and was forced to stomp out the flames.
Paige was curious to know more, but didn't want to press her mentor who had become sullen once more as his mail ran out. He tossed the final sodden letter and withdrew his wand in resignation.
"I guess we better start the day." He reluctantly decided.
Finally! A little voice in Paige's head cried in relief.
