The Progeny Law of 1998
Harry Potter Fanfiction
Hermione/Mult.
Antonin Dolohov, Thorfinn Rowle, Sirius Black, Malcom Baddock (Finished 6th year – 16, Slytherin), Charlie Weasley, Alexander Poliakoff
Chapter 18
Claiborne let them use his personal Floo in his offices and assured that they would be able to Floo directly back to it tomorrow for her appointment with the Unspeakables.
So, within ten minutes, they'd emptied out into Diagon Alley and beelined toward Ollivander's before they could be spotted. In such a large group and with a tower of a wizard like Rowle, they were bound to draw attention quickly.
Luckily, it was after the lunch rush on a quiet Thursday afternoon, so they made it without any issues. The entirety of the reporters in Wizarding Britain must've all been back at the Ministry, waiting for the latest development on the Progeny Law.
A charm went off when they opened the door, alerting Ollivander in the back room.
"I'll be there in a minute," he called in his weathered voice. It still sounded weak from being held hostage in the Malfoy dungeons throughout the war. Indeed, when the rickety old man tottered out from the back, he'd never looked so frail, relying heavily on a cane to move about.
With a mind as sharp as a whip, his age had only been a number, but his haggard expression and dimmed eyes spoke of deep horror from experiencing too much of the darkness in this world.
A whiff of freshly cut wood followed him as he stepped up behind the counter and took in his customers. His scraggly brows lowered into a frown. "Well, I must say that I'm confused. I remember every witch and wizard to pass through my shop, so I know you all have wands." He paused on Hermione, some understanding shining in his gaze. "Borrowed or otherwise. Let me guess. Bellatrix's wand is giving you a difficult time?"
Hermione thought about explaining but instead settled on a succinct nod.
"Well, that's odd. I seem to recall that it suited your needs when you three broke into Gringotts."
"Really?" Charlie blurted. "Does everyone know the Gringotts story but Sirius and me?"
"Wait, the break in at Gringotts? That was you?" Rowle questioned with an incredulous tone.
"Yes, and Mr. Ollivander only knew because he was there with us in hiding while we planned it," Hermione answered. She turned to the wandmaker before they could get too far off topic. "Do you think you could help me?"
He scratched his chin. "Hmm. Yes, I suppose we can get you fitted for a new wand. It's the least I could do considering you and your friends are the reason I'm here today."
Hermione cleared her throat. "I'm hardly the hero you make me out to be. Harry and Ron did all the rescuing that day, I'm afraid."
"From what I recall, it was your quick-thinking that made Harry unrecognizable and gave them the chance to pave our way out."
"Well, a lot of things went right that day," she replied, as much as a concession as he'd get out of her without going into detail.
His eyes gained a little bit of sparkle to them. "Well, then, let's get started." He nodded down at the wand in her hand. "Bellatrix's wand was walnut with a dragon heartstring core. Twelve and three quarters. And, if I'm not mistaken, your old wand also had a dragon heartstring core." He didn't wait for a response. He was already moving among the stacks of boxes. "Though if I recall, yours was made of vinewood—more flexible and forgiving. However, if both wands worked, I think we'll start with the commonality between the cores."
Rowle had to shuffle to get out of the old man's way as he marched back to the counter with a sampling of dusty boxes. He plopped them down at the till with a cloud of dust and selected the one off the top, pulling it out with reverence as he did every wand. "Yew, nine inches, dragon heartstring core. Yew is known for its springy feel and quick response. Give it a whirl."
Hermione reached out with caution, closing her palm around the wood when nothing overt happened. "Here goes," she replied with a shrug. She flicked the tip, and the entire ceiling blew into the air four inches. Boxes toppled, and woodworking tools rattled on their hooks.
"No! I should think not," Ollivander responded quickly, taking the wand from her hand while she still stared in shock at the damaged roof. He couldn't box the wand back up fast enough. Once it was settled back into its felt, he tilted his head as he evaluated her for a moment. "Perhaps you've outgrown the dragon heartstring. It's not common, but not unheard of entirely."
She cleared her throat, hoping her face looked as apologetic as she felt for blowing the top off his shop. "My core might've changed after the ritual I used to summon Sirius back from the Veil."
Ollivander snapped his fingers. "That would do it. I'll be right back."
"Is he not going to..." Malcom nodded up at the ceiling with a questioning look.
Sirius scratched his head and laughed. "I guess not." He brandished his wand and went about straightening and reattaching the rafters to the roof.
Charlie joined him, and they had things set to order by the time Ollivander tottered back out with a levitated trail of boxes dutifully following behind him. With a circular wave, the boxes stacked themselves on the counter. "I've grabbed a sampling of our most common cores." He paused, glancing up at the roof. "We'll start with the less exotic ones and work our way up, shall we?"
"Hippogriff feather, my dear."
Hermione, still embarrassed from her earlier mishap, hesitated to take it from his gnarled hand. "And the wood?"
"Ah, you see, the wood is nonmagical, made from pine. I use this set to get a better gauge a person's magic when I run across a particularly difficult case. At most, we should see the tip glow when a core agrees with you. The brighter the glow, the stronger the connection. Don't worry, dear. You'll be just fine."
She nodded with a tentative smile, grasping the wand.
Sensing she needed one more bout of encouragement, he nodded. "Go ahead. Give it a whirl."
She'd helped defeat a dark lord. The least she could do was accomplish a task that every witch or wizard completed at the tender age of twelve.
Squaring her shoulders, she held up the wand and gave it a precise flick.
At first, nothing happened.
"Ah, the feather must not agree with-"
Before Ollivander could finish, the stick began to vibrate, letting out a shrill whistle as the tip glowed whitish blue. The sound grew piercing.
"Is that supposed to happen?" She had to shout just to be heard.
The tip continued to grow dangerously bright—bright enough to resemble the purified magnesium she lit one bored summer day to catch up on her Muggle science classes.
"Let's release that now, shall we," Ollivander said, a professional at keeping a calm façade for young students, but even his words seemed rattled by the turn of events.
Hermione needed no further prodding. She placed the wand down carefully on the counter in case dropping it would cause some sort of implosion. However, even released, the isolated core didn't slow. It headed for some sort of crescendo, the deafening whistle continuing to grow louder and the tip beginning to spark and crack like a transponder receiving a jolt of lightning.
"Are you doing this, Miss Granger?"
"I don't think so!" she cried, but her worried eyes stayed riveted on the scene, unable to look away.
When it began to vibrate, Ollivander lost all pretense of his collected demeanor and yelled, "Hit the floor!"
"What?" Malcom blurted, but the rest of them were pretty fast at dropping to the ground—Sirius likely used to experimental magics from his Marauding days, Charlie from working with temperamental dragons, and Rowle and Hermione from fighting in the war.
Her reflexes were still honed to a sharp edge. She snagged Malcom's hand and pulled him down with her, wrapping around him and closing her eyes just as the world exploded above them.
Things crashed to the floor and burst of heat buffeted them. Luckily, the shield charm was one she'd mastered in Dumbledore's Army. She didn't need a wand nor the whispered protego for it to spring into existence over their vulnerable bodies, a cool, shimmery white that saved them from the same fate as Sirius, who'd been a bit too slow with his casting and got a face full of ash and dust before his own protection glowed to life.
Subsequent booms followed, as if triggered by the first one, each louder than the last, and she squeezed closer to Malcom's form as they clung to each other.
The shield won't hold, she thought to herself as the world still imploded in a blindingly brilliant shower of magic and destruction chaotic enough to do the Weasley twins proud.
Fred, if you're out there, I hope you've got a front row seat.
"Protego maxima," she cried, reinforcing the flimsy barrier until it dampened some of the sounds from above.
Bits of rubble and other items hit the shield, making it look like the surface of boiling water. Eventually, things slowed down and stopped crashing into it.
Instead of just cancelling the charm, she used her nondominant hand to send a quick depulso to the barrier to clear it off. When on the run, there'd been multiple mishaps where Harry or Ron had ended the spell without the extra step, only to end up covered in whatever they'd been trying to avoid in the first place.
Once free of debris, she carefully cancelled the spell.
The place resembled a battlefield, something would be a reliable authority on.
The disarray from her first attempt had nothing on the destruction around the shop now. Daylight shone through the roof. Shelves had been upended, and several boxes of wands smoldered with hot ash.
Across from her, Charlie and Sirius moved.
Sirius's aristocratic hair looked unusually unkempt as he got to his feet, rubble shifting off of him.
Charlie, who'd been beside him, pointed at his mustache. "Ah, you've got a bit of fire right there, mate."
Sirius rushed to pat it out, grumbling and complaining about being too old for this when he hadn't even hit his forties yet.
Hermione tuned him out, glancing at where Malcom curled against her chest, looking for all the world like a frightened child. They were a year apart at Hogwarts, but it felt like much more in this moment. His reaction felt so young and innocent. She knew then that he'd been in the Slytherins sent to the dungeons. Freezing as he'd done, if he'd fought in the Final Battle, he'd have been killed.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
Malcom pushed his head up, flushing slightly when he realized where his face had been. He scrambled to get up, recalling his propriety as he cleared his throat and tugged at his wizard's robes. "Ah, yes. Well, uh. Here, let me help you up."
"Thank you, Malcom," she said, dusting herself off though the shield had gone up in time to prevent them from looking like Sirius. "Mr. Ollivander?"
"I'm fine, Miss Granger." He popped up from behind the counter like a spright daisy. "Woo! That was some excitement there, am I right, Lord Black?"
Sirius scowled at the store owner. "Why did you single me out, Garrick?"
Rowle clambered to his feet behind us, his movements shaking the ground from his massive form. He burst into loud guffaws when he caught sight of Sirius. "Getting a little slow on the draw there, eh old man?"
"Want a go at the old Black family madness there, baby Rowle?" Sirius barked back.
They bantered back and forth, but it seemed harmless for the most part. Hermione watched Malcom straighten down his hair. While they'd avoided looking like they lost a round with a powdered Danish like Sirius, Malcom's position, burying his face in her chest, had messed his hairdo.
She had to bite her lip and glance away to keep from smiling at his ruffled owl appearance.
The ruined mess on the counter made for a good distraction.
The wooden slab held up fairly well, all things considering, likely due to its near petrified state from old age and whatever protective measurements Ollivander had layered on.
That was what made it so easy to see what'd happened.
The spread of magical cores he'd brought out to help assess a match for her, lay in smoking black scorch marks with only trace amounts of the nonmagical pine carriers. Apparently, a chain reaction hadn't been that far off the mark. Like a set of firecrackers linked by the same fuse, they'd detonated one right after the other.
Hermione didn't know what to say. Sorry fell short of what she owed Ollivander by a longshot.
Things still fell to the floor, either on fire, or glowing with the red, orange rings of ember from something that had been recently.
"Mr. Ollivander," she started, "I-"
He held up his hand to stop her, and she quieted instantly. His eyes scanned over the boxes lining the walls. Despite the quite extensive charring on a large portion of them, none of the boxed product seemed inclined to set off like the trial ones he'd laid on the counter. "Huh," he said at length, lowering his guard. A beaming smile stretched his face. "Good show, Miss Granger. It's nice to know my father's protections got put to good use after all. I thought he was a little over the top with the runes on the shelving, but it came in handy today."
"I'll say," Charlie exclaimed, inspecting one of the shelves. Even from here, Hermione could see the symbols glow and fade as their functions were put to the test. "Bill would have a heyday in here studying these. I'm no expert, but there's at least fourteen different runes on here apart from the ones for protection and endurance."
Ollivander gave a smug grin. "Part of the reason my shop wasn't raided when Death Eaters attacked Diagon Alley. Surplus wands are always a hot commodity in times of strife."
"Mr. Ollivander," Hermione started. "I don't even know how to begin apologizing for-"
"Nonsense, Miss Granger. I've already told you that I owe you more than I can say. This is nothing that some simple wand waving won't fix right up."
"At least allow me to help pay for the damages, or, if not, let me help set things back to order."
But Ollivander wouldn't hear anything of it. "I'm quite capable of handling things, and from what I hear, you've got a lot on your plate as is. Let us old timers outside of this new Progeny Law pick up some of the slack so that your lot can bear the brunt of rebuilding our world."
Her mouth opened and closed, but Sirius cut in, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. "Come on, kitten. Don't coddle the man, here. He wants to take care of it." Before she could analyze whether or not he'd accidentally or intentionally ordered her to do something—it could go either way since that was just how he talked—Sirius carried on. "At least allow us to pay for the cores that were destroyed and the cost of materials and time to replace them. It's the least we could do since they're no longer usable. And if you find any other items that are beyond repair, you bill them to the Black account."
Ollivander begrudgingly gave a nod.
"There, see, kitten? All settled."
She bit her lip, unwilling to scold him in front of such mixed company, even if only one of them wasn't her bonded. They still didn't know how much Rowle or Malcom knew about the alpha commands and her needing to obey them. That was one aspect of this that she didn't intend to bring up any sooner than possible. They might've suspected something was up after the fiasco leaving the house this morning with Sirius telling her to give them "proper greetings," but no one had mentioned it since.
Perhaps it slipped their minds.
It certainly seemed to for Sirius.
"Miss Granger," Ollivander started, interrupting her thoughts. He studied her curiously. "When you said the ceremony might have altered your core, which one were you referring to."
How sharp of him to pick up on that.
"The one that brought Sirius back from the Veil. My..." she hesitated for a moment, embarrassed and only feeling like half a witch—something she wasn't comfortable with considering how her arm burned with the reminder that people considered her to be just that, less than them. Still, if they couldn't figure this out, these people would find out eventually. She couldn't even scourgify spilt tea without vanishing something more than intended. "I haven't been able to use a wand since then."
"But that's...it's been almost a month since then. You've managed a month without magic?" Charlie asked for the group. Like any Pureblood, the idea of doing anything without magic flummoxed him.
She tilted her head back and forth. "Well, for the most part. I can still perform some tasks, just like when I apparated the five of us inside the Ministry. But it's risky and overpowered."
Sirius cleared his throat. "She cast a lumos that lit my mother's drapes on fire in the study. Hideous things, those. Really, you did us a favor, kitten."
Hermione huffed at him, but otherwise didn't rise to his teasing.
"Overpowered, you say?" Ollivander asked.
"Yes, as far as I can tell. I haven't exactly been eager to experiment up to this point. It seemed dangerous to attempt by myself. However, now that the Minister is involved, they want to send me to the Unspeakables for some tests."
"Hm." Ollivander scratched his chin. "Give me a bit of time to pull some old tomes from my grandfather's collection. I'll see if I can't find something similar to your case. When will you be going to the Department of Mysteries?"
"First thing tomorrow."
"Well, all the better. After what we just witnessed, it'll be a good idea for them to start exploring this issue without a wand in your hands. Stop by the shop afterwards, and I should have something else for you to try."
He didn't wait for more than a nod before he headed for the back room, already muttering to himself.