July 6th, 1961
Golde Fierstein kissed her fingers and pressed them to the mezuzah on her way out the door. So did Eli, but when his mother did it, it was like she was extracting a promise from it that they would return. They didn't have a fireplace, so they walked three blocks to the Underground station, and rode past two stops, changed trains, and finally exited at the fourth stop. His mother's hand clutched his so tightly that both had gone white.
Once they were back above ground, in the hot summer sun, her grip relaxed. She let go, and turned to face him, adjusting his collar, and smoothing out the wrinkles in his shirt. She tsked and sighed. "I don't know how you do it when I ironed it this morning, but it is good enough, I think, very handsome."
She bent down and kissed his forehead, leaving a blotch of red lipstick, which she hastily wiped away with her hankerchief. Then, she offered her hand, and he took it.
The streets hummed with activity in the early afternoon, men on their lunch breaks, old men and teenagers out of school for the summer, but mostly women, like his mother in her favorite blue and white checked dress, a little old, a little worn, but clean and pressed, hand clasping his, the two of them a picture of secure English respectability.
"You must always know how to blend in, Eli," his mum would say, drawing out the vowels of his name, Eh-lee, she would call him, when it was just him, her, and Dad, the way her brother, may his memory be a blessing, had said it back in Vilna. "You never know when you will need to."
The Leaky Cauldron stood tucked in between, and half behind, the other more impressive stores, windows filled to the brim with gleaming new electronic irons and mixers on one side, and tables and wardrobes on the other. His mother opened the door, and they stepped inside together, into the sudden quiet, dark, and cool. At a table next to the door, a pair of wizened old men were playing chess. one of them called out his move, (bishop to G6) and the piece spun into place, bashing the unfortunate rook previously occupying the square to the board, before the rook slunk off the board.
"One of these days, a Muggle will walk in here and see such things, and then where will we be, hmmm, Eli?" she said, voice soft, too soft for anybody but him to hear. But still she used the crisp English vowels, Eeee-lye.
"Wouldn't they just Obliviate them?" Eli asked.
"I am sure they do, and often. It is careless." She grimaced. "Sloppy."
Her quick, long legged strides crossed the floor in moments as Eli scrambled to keep up. At the back wall, she tapped a series of bricks in quick succession. "You must pay attention. After today you will have a wand, and you will need to be able to do this for yourself."
Eli tried to memorize the bricks she touched, but she went so fast with it.
The wall opened, bricks shuffling themselves aside, and lining up to make a broad doorway, sending light and air pouring into the dingy little pub. He took his mother's hand again, and walked out onto the cobbled street. Behind them, the bricks tumbled over each other to reassemble themselves back into a wall. His mother glanced down at his hand holding hers. She dropped it. "You are a big boy, hmmm? You can go get your robes and your books, while I get your cauldron and your potion things?"
"Yes, Mum."
She smiled, and handed him his list. And then, once the list was safely in his pocket, she opened her handbag and counted out a small pile of sickles and knuts. "There should be a little extra. Get yourself a book, not for class, just for fun."
And with that, she winked at him and walked away, heels click clacking against the cobblestones. Eli contemplated what to do with the sudden and utterly foreign freedom he suddenly had. She always kept him so close, so afraid something would happen. She would walk to school to pick him up and walk home with him every day, but right now...
It took a lot to walk down the street reading the signs until he came to Madam Beaumonde's Robes for all Occasions, instead of running off to peer in every window, and dive into every corner. When he opened the door, a bell rang, and a tiny woman with enormously sculpted blonde hair turned around from where she was pinning robes on a haughty looking teenage girl. "Hogwarts dear?" the woman with the hair asked.
Eli nodded.
She pointed to a stool. "Over there then, I'll be with you as soon as I'm done here."
Clambering onto the stool, Eli watched the sewing machine on the tables against the back wall busily sewing away with no one tending them.
True to her word, Madam Beaumonde came over just as soon as the teenage girl hopped down from her own stool, and measured and pinned him within minutes, flicks of her wand sending the pins and measuring tape this way and that. When it was all over, he handed the money over, she handed him a slip and told him to be back in a couple of hours, and called him a smart lad for coming in early and beating the rush. He left the shop feeling less like a smart lad or a big boy than he did like a doll, pushed, prodded, and dressed up.
He ran to Flourish and Blotts fast as his short legs would carry him. He was hoping they would grow soon, but they showed no signs of it. As soon as he opened the door, hand wrapped right around his book list, Eli felt calmer. The smell of books, of paper and ink wafted over him.
"You here for Hogwarts?" a mousy looking young man asked from behind the counter."
"Er," Eli said. "Yes, yes I am."
"What year?"
"First."
The man grinned and let out a peel of laughter. "You hear that, Henry, I got the first first year, pay up."
Someone from the back room grunted sullenly. The man scrambled out from behind the counter and snatched Eli's list out of his hand. He was off like a shot, pulling books off the shelf and piling them on the table. Meanwhile, Eli browsed the stacks, looking for that not-for-school book he planned to buy. He thought about One Hundred and One Jinxes, Hexes, and Curses, but somehow he thought his mother would take that away as soon as she saw it. Same with Deadly Poisons from Around the World. As the clerk rang each book up, his pile of coins dwindled down, too few to buy the glossy Encyclopedia of Dragons, or much of anything else. With a sigh, he pocketed the rest of his coins and left the store, with only his school books.
His mother was waiting outside. She greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and a wipe of her handkerchief, before holding his new cauldron out for him to pile his school books into. "They tried to sell me a potions kit," she told him. "All set up for first years, they told me. Hah. I had them measure up everything separately, and it costs half as much. Cheats."
"Does anybody fall for that?" he asked.
"They do it to the Muggle parents," she said with a shake of her head. "I am not wearing my robes to day, so they try it on me. Shameful to take advantage that way, of people who don't know any better. Did you pick out a book?'
Eli shook his head, and held out his hand with what was left, a sickle and two knuts.
"Hmmm," she sighed. "We'll get ice cream floats when we are done."
o0O0o
The wand shop was dusty and dim, and seemed to suck up any sound that accidentally wandered inside. Eli squinted his eyes to see. A tall, stooping man, with faint flecks of grey in his hair squinted back. "Ahhhh, hello there. Here for your first wand?"
Eli nodded.
"Good, good."
"Are you Mr. Ollivander?" his mother asked.
"Yes indeed," the man, Ollivander, said, eyes falling on the wand peaking out of her handbag.
"Do you mind letting me see your wand, Madam?" he said, voice soft. "I never forget the homes my wands go to, but I don't remember you."
"You did not make it," his mother told Ollivander defensively, voice clipped, but she held the wand out to him. Once the wand was in his hand, she stood stiffly, hands in her pockets, like she didn't know what else to do with them.
"Olive wood and phoenix feather, fourteen and a sixth of an inch-"
"Thirty-six centimeters," she cut in.
"Ah, of course." He examined the wand again. "Mendelsohn and Schechter's workshop. Mendelsohn's own work, I believe-"
"No," his mother interrupted again. "It was Schechter."
"Ah." Ollivander shot her a sharp look. "If you say so. Such a shame what happened. Great wandmakers, even if their wood choice is beyond what I-"
"Yes," his mother cut him off curtly, reaching for her wand. "A shame what happened."
Ollivander's eyes flicked up to her face, before hurriedly handing the wand over.
For the second time that day, Eli found himself being measured within an inch of his life, as Ollivander clapped his now empty hands, and a measuring tape leapt to life. It measured parts of his body that Madam Beaumonde would never have dreamed of measuring, such as between his nostrils. It was measuring the length of his fingers when Ollivander brought over the first box. "Laurel and phoenix feather, nine and a half inches, stout."
Eli heard the unspoken like you, at the end, and he deliberately ignored it, taking the wand with a smile. "Do I just, uh..."
"Just give it a wave."
Eli did. Nothing happened. The wand was inert in his hand. He gave Ollivander a cheerful smile. "Not this one."
"No indeed," Ollivander said, taking it away and replacing it with another. "Apple and unicorn hair, nine and three quarters inches, very springy."
This time when he waved the wand, a thin fizzling line of sparks followed the path, winking and dying almost instantly in the air.
"Closer." Ollivander turned to one of the rows of shelves, eyes scanning the labels on the boxes, until: "Ah yes, try this one."
It was warm under Eli's fingers, and deep in his bones, he could feel it purring. He picked it up and waved, and a cloud of sweet jasmine scented steam and gold sparks poured from the wand.
Ollivander smiled broadly, stretching his face in ways that seemed uncommon for it. "Pear and Dragon Heartstrings, Fourteen Inches, Supple. The core came from a Korean Gye Lyong, a canny old beast, who survived countless fights with its fellows, only to succumb to old age. Truly a rare fate for a dragon."
With great reluctance, Eli handed the wand back to be boxed up and tucked into the cauldron as his mother paid. Leaving the shop for the sunny street felt strange, like coming out of a cave, or a dream, or someplace that was, but also wasn't quite real. They walked together to the ice cream parlor, and Eli ordered the ice cream floats for them both with the last remnants of their shopping money, feeling both very grown up, and just a bit silly for feeling so. The plump little witch behind the counter, Mrs. Fortescue, of Mrs. Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, probably, winked at him and added an extra scoop to his cherry cola float. His mother's vanilla ice cream in chocolate soda always seemed just that little bit too boring to him, but it was her favorite.
She whisked the floats out of his hands and carried them out to the tables on the porch. Picking a table under the awning, she took a seat and sipped from her straw, before setting Eli's float in front of him.
"Pear is a good wood," she told him. "It is good that such a wand would like you."
"Why didn't you tell him your mother was a wandmaker?"
"He could not recognize her work when it was under his nose. He didn't deserve to know."
"Oh," Eli said, even though he didn't really understand.
"I hope you never need to understand why." She closed her eyes and fortified herself with a long drink of her float. "Eli, love, I need to talk to you before you go to school."
She said his name the way she only did at home, and Eli felt his eyes go wide. "Okay, Mum," he said nervously.
"I was at school, you know, during the war. My family were so happy my French was good enough for Beauxbatons." She tried to smile, but her face wouldn't make the expression. "So that is where I was when they all died, not with them."
Eli sat frozen in his chair, ice cream float forgotten.
"Your father was in France too. He fled there, with his first wife Elisheva, but then the Nazis came to France too, and they were put on the train to Buchenwald. Elisheva and your sister went straight to the gas chamber."
"Mum, I know," Eli told her urgently, the irrepressible urge to make her stop, making his lips move. If forced, he never would have been able to point to a time anybody had told him what happened, when neither of his parents talked about it at all, but he knew.
"We never told you." She shook as she spoke. "The Nazis, they did things to your father, so that he could never have another child. When we married, he told me, it is better, because after your sister, he did not think he could do it again, to have a child, and know he could lose them. But then, you came to us, and we both love you so much."
"I know," he said, voice small. "I love you too."
She closed her eyes. "Some of the teachers wanted to turn me over to the Nazis, but no one could think of a way to do it that would not expose the school. That was the only reason they didn't. I had friends at school, from Spain and Portugal. They told me if the school tried, they would smuggle me across the border. I could stay with them. You need friends like that."
"Mum," he said soothingly, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. "The Nazis are gone, we won the war."
She shook her head, eyes snapping open. "Promise me, Eli, that you will make the kind of friends who would do that for you, promise me you will be that kind of friend."
Eli didn't know what else to do. "I will, Mum, I promise."