FATHER
Chapter 12 - Elodie
Elodie practiced. She practiced until there were blisters on her finger and her voice was hoarse. She practiced even when Hermione had told her to stop, and when her voice truly did give out, she read under the covers way beyond midnight by the light of her wand tip.
Hermione sighed and told her to take it slow, but Elodie could see a gleaming pride in her eyes anyway. It did the exact opposite of dampening her enthusiasm.
After a week of having the wand, Hermione rapped on her bedroom door where she was practicing the movements for an unlocking charm.
"Harry and Ginny have invited us round for lunch tomorrow. What do you say?"
"Can I bring my wand?" Elodie asked, continuing though the motions and adjusting her feet into a spell casting stance. Her concentration faltered though when Hermione didn't reply. Dropping her arm she looked up and furrowed her eyebrows.
"I won't do any magic with it".
Hermione's lips pursed and Elodie watched as her gaze shifted to the wand in her hand.
"It's an… unusual wand, isn't it", Hermione said after a pause.
"So?"
"It's just quite noticeable. The way the light catches it, it's rather beautiful".
Elodie glanced down. It really was beautiful. Already the wand felt like an extension of her own arm and Hermione had more than once caught her sitting on the window ledge it her bedroom, turning it over and over in her hands and watching as the colours shimmered like oil across the markings.
Her eyes met with Hermione's.
The wand had swiftly claimed the spot of her most prized possession, and so she was immediately suspicious at the expression on her mum's face. Like it was some rogue pet that Elodie had bought home that, in her own gentle way, her mum was trying to shoo from the house.
Elodie gave a stiff nod, her fingers closing more tightly around the handle.
"I've been thinking, and I wanted to ask you how you'd feel about transfiguring it".
"What?", Elodie said, her voice rising and her feet unconsciously taking her a step back from the doorway. Her mind swiftly ran through her spell books. Transfiguration was said to be hard and sometimes dangerous. Most importantly, nearly every book had gone into great detail about the importance of getting the spell right or risking potential destruction of the object being charmed.
"You want to change my wand?" she spluttered, glaring at Hermione.
"It's entirely reversible", Hermione began, raising her palms in an attempt reassurance. "And there's no chance of anything going wrong with it because it's not a transfiguration which can fail. It either works or it doesn't. Nothing like transfiguring a goblet into a rat and giving it a tail anyway".
Her mum laughed softly and then clucked her tongue at the look on Elodie's face.
"Come on, it's hardly like I'm telling you to cast a Melofors Jinx on your Head of House".
"A what jinx?"
"It gives someone a pumpkin head", Hermione said quickly and then waved her hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter. I'm just saying that nothing bad will happen to you or your wand. I promise".
Elodie glanced down at the length of sable in her hand. The dark wood was stark against her pale fingers and as had become something of a habit, she absently rubbed the smooth handle with the pad of her thumb. There was something comforting knowing that once upon a time, her dad might have done the same.
She inhaled deeply and met Hermione's eyes again.
"I don't understand why. Yours isn't transfigured and none of my books say anything about changing wands".
Hermione's eyes searched the ceiling for a moment and then she sighed and stepped into the room. Elodie's eyes followed her as she crossed it and perched at the end of her bed.
"Come sit here with me", she said, patting the spot next to her.
Apprehensively, Elodie made her way over, her wand clutched protectively in her fist. She'd been afraid that Hermione might try to pull it from her grasp but instead her mum knotted her fingers together in her lap and bowed her head so that lose strands of hair obscured her face from Elodie's view.
"Did I ever tell you about how Harry and I became friends?"
Elodie frowned at the change in topic.
"Harry said that you'd met on the train. He told me about the boy losing his toad and how you'd been helping him to look for it. He said that was the first time you spoke".
Hermione glanced at Elodie in surprise and smiled. "I hadn't realised he'd told you that. That bloody toad, I swear to Merlin", she muttered and then laughed. "That is how we met, you're right, but it's not how we became friends".
"Really?"
Hermione nodded and looked back to her hands.
"Yep. We only really got to know one another after the Halloween Feast".
Elodie shuffled back on the bed, turning to face Hermione and drawing her leg up underneath her.
She'd read about the annual Halloween Feast in Hogwarts: A History and had then pried whatever details about it she could about it from Hermione. Other than Christmas, she could think of nothing as magical as Hogwarts at Halloween. She'd spent hours on the floor of her bedroom drawing floating pumpkins and dreaming up every flavour of sweets she could think of.
And because of that, she knew that the Halloween Feast was held two months after the school term started.
She leaned forward.
"But… I just thought because you'd met on the train that you'd been friends from then. From the beginning. So, if Harry wasn't your friend when you first went to Hogwarts then who was?"
Hermione inhaled deeply and gave her a sad smile.
"When I was younger my mum and I used to read a book series called Malory Towers. It was all about a girl called Darrell who went to boarding school in Cornwall. The picture on the front cover was of this old school perched on a cliff face looking out over the sea and I used to stare at it, wondering what it'd be like to go there. I used to actually dream about the castle and the rock pools and the beach and then be sad when I woke up and realised I was still tucked in my bed in Surrey.
Your grandpa used to make fun of me for wanting to go so badly. It's only a book, he'd say and then poke me, or mess up my hair. The reality was that we passed the local secondary school every day and there was no doubting that I'd be going anywhere else but there.
And then I got my letter to Hogwarts, and it was like everything I'd ever dreamed about and wanted was coming true. We went to Diagon Alley and got my books and my robes, and then we drove to the local charity shop and donated my brand new local school blazer. Me and my mum laughed the whole way home we were so excited.
I devoured every single one of my textbooks that summer. I wanted to be just like Darrell in the books. She was so brave and clever and she made friends so easily". She smiled at Elodie. "I thought that it would be easy, that everyone would love magic just as much as me and that'd be enough".
"And… it wasn't?" Elodie asked quietly, knowing from the sinking sensation in her gut that it couldn't have been. Hermione shook her head.
"The truth was, everyone did love magic, but no one seemed to like learning about it as much as me. It meant I was ahead in all my classes because I'd already read the textbooks. The other students thought I was showing off. They used to laugh at me when I answered questions or got a spell right first time. After a few weeks, I started to dread being asked anything by the professors".
"So what did you do?"
"I tried to do what Darrell did. I tried to help people. I thought that if they understood the spells and the wand movements like I did, then they'd do the spells just as well and see that I wasn't someone special after all". Hermione inhaled deeply and then sighed out one long breath. "It did the opposite though. It made the teasing even worse".
"That doesn't sound very nice", Elodie said, a tight knot forming in the base in her stomach. It was a sadness for her mum's story, and an oppressive thought that seemed to grow with every heartbeat.
What if they don't like me either?
"They were just children", Hermione replied, unaware that Elodie's own nerves about joining the school year late, about making friends, had now exploded in the wake of Hermione's confession.
"They didn't really mean anything by it. It's just… sometimes we're afraid of things that are different, and everyone deals with that fear in different ways. Does that make sense?"
Elodie nodded, trying to push down the rising panic.
She'd read the textbooks too. She'd practiced the spells and she knew the wand movements. She'd tried hard because she hadn't wanted people to think she was stupid. Now… would they hate her not because she couldn't do magic, but because she could?
"I guess you're wondering what all this has to do with your wand".
In truth, for the first time since she'd been given it, Elodie had forgotten all about her wand. She glanced down at it.
"Here", Hermione said, holding out her palm without waiting for a response.
Elodie placed the wand into it, watching as Hermione turned it in the light.
"Do you know what this is?" she asked, pointing to the streaks of colour inlaid into the surface.
Elodie shook her head.
"It's opal. It's said to favour extremely powerful witches and wizards. Wars have been fought in the past for wands like these. People from magical backgrounds, they get taught this stuff growing up. They'll know what a wand like this means".
Hermione shook her head as though she were trying to clear away her thoughts and handed the wand back to Elodie.
"Do you understand now?"
She didn't understand. Not at all. She didn't get any of it and right now, all she could think about was that she'd be alone at Hogwarts, without any friends and without even her mum to turn to. She felt sick at the thought.
Hermione read her confusion in the silence.
"Darling, the other students will know from this wand that you're powerful. I just don't want them to make judgements about you like they did to me. I don't want them to see this wand and make assumptions based on it and not truly who you are, which is a wonderful, loving, amazing person". She was silent and then placed her palm against Elodie's cheek. "There's no need to look nervous, Elodie, I promise nothing will happen to it".
Elodie's paleness had nothing to do with nerves for her wand. Her palm was a clammy around the wood and her throat felt tight like she's just run the whole way down the street. She glanced down at the wand. Minutes ago she'd been so proud of it. Now all she could see was a friendless future where she'd be nothing but alone.
Biting hard on her lip to stem the tears that were threatening, she gave a quick nod.
"Okay, we can transfigure it?"
"Yes", Elodie said softly, not daring to look at her mum or the wand.
"Excellent! Oh Elodie, I'm so pleased. I really do think this is for the best. And it means I can teach you a new spell as well so you can do it yourself as school".
"Can't Mr Ollivander just make me a new one", Elodie blurted out. "Can't he just, I don't know, give me one for school. And we'll keep this one here for when I come home".
Hermione gave her a sad smile and cupped her cheek with her hand. "It doesn't work like that, darling". She sighed and let her hand fall, and then drew her own wand out of her pocket. Gracefully she balanced it against the tip of her index finger.
"Your wand is a part of you now. Its magic is bonded to the signature of your own magical core and it's a bond which can only be broken by either the destruction of a wand, or the destruction of ones magical core"
"You mean, like dying?"
"That, or temporarily through depletion. It's why some witches, even after they have regained the energy of their core, find that they need a new wand. Anyway. Its such a powerful bond that there's only space for one like it. That doesn't mean you can't use other wands of course. Just that none will quite work for you like this one.
It wouldn't make any sense for you to go through your entire magical education with a wand you hadn't bonded with, darling. You'd be at a disadvantage the whole time".
Hermione twisted her wrist so that the wand flipped gracefully in the air. She caught it back into her hand and studied it for a moment, the corners of her lips twitching.
"You asked me last week how your father saved me".
Her voice was soft and quiet, her eyes still on her own wand. "Well, I lost this once. It was like someone had stollen one of my own hands. I think in any situation it would have felt horrible but at this particular time, not having a wand could have been disastrous. So he gave me that one. Yours. So I could protect myself".
Amongst the tendrils of doubt and panic that had wrapped themselves around her chest, Elodie felt a moment of warmth at the thought of her father. He sounded like a good man. She frowned as she realised something.
"But you still have yours though? That's the one you said you for when you were my age".
"I found it again, thank Merlin".
Elodie nodded absently and glanced down at her own wand. If what her mum said was correct, then it had been unbounded for at least the last thirteen years. She wondered it it had been sad, if wands even felt sad, to have gone so long without a witch or wizard to bond with.
"Why didn't you ever give it back? To my dad? If you found your own I mean".
"In truth, by the time I'd found my own your father was gone".
"Back to England?"
Hermione gave her a sad smile in return. "That's right. So you see I didn't really have a chance to give it back because I wouldn't have even known where to return it to if I could".
Elodie chewed at her bottom lip, caught in the realisation that Hermione had never even tried to return the wand.
How would she have felt, if one day Hermione wasn't here and one of her most prized possessions was out there in the hands of a stranger? It wouldn't be right. She'd do anything she could to get it back.
She grasped the wand harder, feeling her stomach tumbling and her heart in her throat, forcing up the words which she knew were right but which she wished so much that she didn't have to say.
"We're back in England now, Mum. We should try and give it back, shouldn't we? If it was his mum's then it's right that he has it, not me. I - I don't think I should have it any more".
"Darling -" Hermione began and then stopped. She cleared her throat and then touched Elodie's hair again. "I love you for suggesting it but, I'm not sure we can. You see I don't know where he lives or even how to contact him. We've spoken about this before, when you asked me about him. I can't write to him because I wouldn't know who or where to write to".
Next to her, Hermione looked nervous. Elodie supposed she didn't really like to talk all that much about her dad and she immediately felt bad for bringing him up. It made her feel bad to think it too, but something inside of her unclenched at the relief of knowing she could keep the wand. That she wouldn't be made to give it up.
"You okay? You look very pensive?"
"Just thinking".
"About what type of pizza you want tonight, hopefully".
Elodie smiled. "We can have pizza!"
"Sure, so long as you give the practice a rest and come and sit with me and eat it. It won't be long until you're heading off to Hogwarts and I we have a good few movies to watch before that", Hermione said, smiling as she stood. "Come on now, let's go choose. I say pepperoni".
"Nu uh", Elodie returned, jumping up. As Hermione left the room, she glanced down at the wand one more time, hugged in momentarily to her chest, and then shoved it into the pocket of her jeans, just like Hermione did to her own.
A/N: Thanks to those of you who have left such kind reviews! It fuel to a fire for getting words out on to paper :)