Author's note: Let's all pretend I didn't abandon this series that I'd hoped would be a drabble series. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights
Hogwarts: Assignment #2, Medicine Task #5: Write about holding onto something.
Content Warnings: References canon prejudice towards the end (Deathly Hallows canon); one line of consensual groping
The Matriarch's Blessing
Lily did her best not to gasp from the bushes where she and Ollivander were crouched. The wandmaker had warned her to stay calm and collected, even and steady for their fieldwork today but Lily hadn't thought that they would be… well, that they would be doing this.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Ollivander asked, smiling at Lily's awe of the unicorn herd they had found.
"They're… they're the most beautiful things I've ever seen," Lily admitted—just because there was no use lying to the old man, was there? He was old as time itself, but he wouldn't be the best wandmaker in Britain if he wasn't still sharp.
Ollivander kept one hand on the top of the staff he'd brought for the hike and raised another hand towards one of the creatures.
"That one is the matriarch of the herd," he said quietly.
"How can you tell?" Lily asked just as quietly.
"Do you see her horn? The spiral around it is so tightly coiled that you can tell she's the oldest in the herd," Ollivander explained. "Unicorns will always have a matriarch, not a patriarch."
Lily nodded along, making a mental note of it. Ollivander didn't let her bring quills and parchments, or even Muggle ballpoint pens, into the field. He said it would distract her from the moments that could be her biggest teachers. She'd tried to poke at him the first time he'd said that, asking him 'well what are you if not my biggest teacher, then?' but the old wandmaker hadn't budged. When they got back to the shop after field work, she usually swept and mopped as quickly as she possibly could before rushing home, locking herself in her room, and writing down every single thing she could remember about the day without even saying hello to anybody else in the household.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked suspiciously. Even now that she was officially his apprentice, that he had taken her under his wing and that the Wandmaker's Guild had allowed her formal training, Ollivander was sparse with his information. He did not give up any more information than he strictly needed her to have at any given time and trusted her to string it all together, like beads on a necklace.
"Because when you collect unicorn hair from a creature, it is always best to ask unless you are willing to run the risk of impalement," Ollivander said casually.
Lily's jaw dropped.
"You—" too loud, too loud, her voice was too loud. And possibly an octave too high too. "You want me to…"
"Have you any experience with unicorns, Miss Potter?"
"No," she said—not sure exactly where the wandmaker expected her to have found such experience in the first place.
"Don't sound so afraid," he said. "If a gnarled old man like me can make friends with unicorns, a young woman like you most definitely can."
"I don't make friends easily," Lily confessed. It was true: her oldest friend was a bowtruckle named Maplebee who had fallen out of a tree in her parents' backyards and bonded with her. He was at the Diagon Alley shop right now; Ollivander had barred him from coming along on trips lest Lily get lazy and let her bowtruckle lead her to wand-quality materials. Maplebee hadn't quite forgiven the old man for it, but Lily was sure he was comfortable in an old wand box she'd filled with polish-stained rags and ribbon bits for him.
"Well, that better change quickly," Ollivander said before using his staff to push her out of the bushes.
Lily swallowed her yelp and looked over her shoulder resentfully, eyes wide as saucers.
A few of the unicorns had looked up from their grazing to look at her. She saw the powerful muscles in their legs stiffen and their ears perked.
She turned back to Ollivander and hissed under her breath.
"What am I supposed to do?"
"Go!" he said. "Go to them. Approach them confidently but nonchalantly so they know you are not a threat to them."
"I don't know what that looks like," Lily hissed back.
"Wandlore is about intention, not final product," Ollivander said.
"That's metaphorical and these are unicorns."
"They're part of it—now go before they decide you're a nervous wreck and bolt," Ollivander said, jabbing his staff in her direction as if to make it clear that he'd used it once and would happily use it again.
Lily reckoned that the stick wasn't as sharp as the horns she was possibly seconds away from getting impaled with, but she'd also grown up with two brothers and been a proud Slytherin. Now that Ollivander had challenged her to go forth, she would.
If this was how she died, her brothers might die of laughter too and then what would her poor mother do?
Lily took a deep breath and relaxed her shoulders. She tried to think back to picking up Maplebee for the first time when she'd been a little girl—what had she done? How had she approached the twiggy little creature that had fallen out of its nest and been abandoned by its brood for being a clumsy climber?
The unicorns looked at her and she looked back at them, at their soulful eyes and hesitant postures.
She supposed she hadn't been thinking. Granted, she had only been six. But still; that had worked hadn't it? She'd found her very best friend in the world and, quite possibly, the seal of approval that had nudged Ollivander into taking on a new apprentice so late in her career.
It was harder now that she was grown, that she had so much that she wanted to know and do and learn and want, but she tried it again: she tried not to think. She let her feet guide her towards the matriarch that Ollivander had pointed to earlier, making eye contact with her the whole time and approaching from the side. He'd been right; her horn was the most intricate, although it seemed to have dulled with time the same way that the tallest mountains were always the youngest.
She cleared her mind as she approached, making herself a blank canvas so the unicorn wouldn't read anything frightening on her. All that Lily was was another presence in these woods, in the unicorns' usual territory.
She was within six feet of the unicorn when she stopped because, well, she very much wanted to do well but she also didn't want to get bucked by a protective mare. The matriarch adjusted, seemingly to look at Lily all the more intently. Lily tried to remember what she'd learned in Care of Magical Creatures, but Hagrid had always leaned towards the more monstrous creatures so she drew a blank. She did remember what he'd told them about Buckbeak though: very prideful creature, liked to be shown respect to. She figured that the unicorns were regal and beautiful enough to be in that same vein too, so she bowed. She made sure to bow her head deeply to show the back of her neck, to make herself vulnerable, as uncomfortable as that was.
She raised her head slowly after holding the pose for some time without any of the unicorns moving. She looked up to see that they had organized themselves around the smallest members of their herd and the colts and fillies, just in case she was a threat. But the matriarch hadn't moved so Lily figured… Well, she figured that she was alright, bold an assumption as that may be.
"I'm going to be a wandmaker one day," she said. She'd said that when she was six too, before she had even set foot in Ollivander's for the first time—when Jamie had gotten his first wand and she'd realized that it was somebody's job to make them. And she was well on her way to being right; she had the right drive for it, and that helped her sound more confident now. "I don't know if you understand, but…"
The idea came to her all at once but she still took her time to reach into her sleeve and pull out her wand. It was a beech wood wand, but the inside had unicorn hair in it. She held it out to the matriarch, wondering if she could sense magic the same way that Maplebee the bowtruckle could.
The mare tilted her head to the side and Lily held her breath. Then, she lowered herself onto her two front legs and bowed her head to Lily. Lily sucked in a shocked breath and had to remind herself to keep breathing after that. Her hands shook as she approached the matriarch and gently ran her hand through the mare's mane. It was so soft Lily was sure she'd never touched something more comfortable, and yet so light that she couldn't be sure she was touching anything at all.
Her fingers brushed the unicorn's skin. Carefully, hoping she didn't hurt the creature, she plucked a strand of hair. The creature didn't move and it didn't seem to hurt her, so Lily plucked two more. Three seemed a lucky number.
"Thank you," she said quietly, stepping back. The matriarch rose once more and neighed to her herd, which trotted off east, deeper into the woods.
With shaky legs, Lily went back to Ollivander, standing in the bushes and leaning on his walking stick, making no effort to hide anymore.
"Oh my gosh," Lily said in one breath.
"There you are, Miss Potter," Ollivander said, sounding so satisfied that Lily instantly forgave him for tossing her into the fray. "Now do you believe what I said about you doing perfectly well on your own?"
"I… I can't believe…" Lily shook her head to clear her thoughts, so the old man didn't see her completely disarmed. "I only took three hairs. I didn't want to take too much."
"That's perfect," Ollivander promised. "Miss Potter, I do mean it. You did quite well."
"I know," Lily said. "Getting a compliment out of you is like pulling teeth, you never give anything for free, Old Man."
"And you will be a better wandmaker for it," Ollivander said. And Lily's stomach gurgled when he did because… well, because that was starting to feel true.
WC: 1716
