Disclaimer: Thanks to J.K. Rowling for allowing me to take her characters for a lengthy stroll through my imagination.
Seventeen
In Voldemort’s Shadow
The timid February sunshine caressed the rustic windowsill as Penelope gauged the effect of months of hard work. Visitors would stand at the very spot where poor, doomed Merope Gaunt had likely prepared the love potion she would later administer to Tom Riddle, Senior. The trees in the surrounding woods had been artfully trimmed to allow a gabled corner of the roofline to be glimpsed in the distance, serving to contrast the grand Riddle house with the rustic Gaunt cabin. From there, visitors would be led past the hole in the floorboards where Tom Marvolo Riddle had hidden Salazar Slytherin’s ring, a despicable trophy of young Lord Voldemort’s burgeoning skill at murder and deception.
The trail through the woods was left dark and foreboding, trees encroaching from both sides as if to grab visitors with wooden tentacles. It was particularly eerie on a wintery day such as this; but even in full summer foliage, the high canopy kept sunlight from penetrating this deeply and the branches retained their sinister look. The public would have to traverse in single-file, only to burst out onto the wide country lane bordering the high wall of the Riddle estate.
It had been Penny’s inspiration to refurbish the grand house from this side only so visitors could visualize the splendid façade that had lured young Merope. A short walk down the lane stood the small caretaker’s cottage with the main portion of the house looming behind it. From this angle, the once stately structure retained the derelict look from the time of Lord Voldemort’s residence.
Again, it was the contrasts that made a lasting impression: the sparkling outer appearance of the far side of the house belied the disdain with which Tom Riddle, Senior, would reject the young witch who had attempted to magically ensnare his love.
The track from the caretaker’s bleak cottage to the main house had been fashioned to wind sinuously through the overgrown grass in an unspoken tribute to Voldemort’s monstrous serpent. Once atop the slight rise, the rickety steps to the main house were left with gaping holes that had been invisibly reinforced from beneath but which allowed visitors to witness Voldemort’s festering psyche. Sanitizing the area without losing the abandoned look had been more difficult than Penny had originally supposed, but her budget allowed her to hire experts in the field who had preserved every discolored stain and feathery cobweb for posterity.
The true challenge had been the graveyard. The historic site would be open to visitors during daylight hours only, so she could not hope to capitalize on its spooky atmosphere in the fading twilight. In the stark light of day, it was merely a scraggly spot with tumbled gravestones and overwrought baroque statuary. A testament to bad taste, perhaps; but hardly indicative of the true horrors Harry had witnessed the night of Voldemort’s resurrection. Penny knew that, somehow, she would have to make the graveyard appear menacing.
Here’s where her extensive conversations with Harry had paid off. Although hesitant to revisit those painful memories, Penny’s gentle persistence had finally convinced him that she had every intention of treating matters just as sensitively as Luna had.
“I want to get it right,” she’d attested fervently. “I’d be positively thrilled if you reviewed my efforts and made any necessary adjustments.”
As Penny recalled the details of Harry’s truncated duel with Voldemort, a small grassy knoll bordering the property drew her like a magnet. It would be ideal to recreate the Priori Incantatem phenomenon, but that proved to be a more daunting task than anyone had envisioned. Obtaining wands with a similar core had been a simple matter; getting them to react with one another was nigh impossible, Penny decided in despair. Although the literature indicated it was a rare phenomenon, that should not preclude her from recreating it under controlled laboratory conditions, as it were.
In frustration, she sought out her counterpart in the War Museum, one Ravenclaw to another. She knew Luna had researched related issues in order to notate a photograph of Voldemort’s wand broken in two upon a spreading pool of blood. True, the blood had been mostly Harry’s, but it had not changed the startling impact of the photo taken by Ministry officials in the wake of the final battle.
As the focal point of the gruesome exhibit, the silvery lumps that remained of Voldemort’s serpent ring were encased in an impenetrable glass vial. Set atop a small turnstile, the strange crystal eyes blinked at visitors in a most unsettling fashion. The curator in her couldn’t help but be disappointed that the broken pieces of Voldemort’s wand had been burned in the hearth at Godric’s Hollow that very night. But as Hestia Jones described how she had fed all the Death Eater wands into the strangely smoking fire, the necessity of such drastic precautions was all too clear.
Luna’s eyes lit up at the new challenge. “Research is all find and good,” she began, “but nothing can compare to practical knowledge. I found Mr. Ollivander to be an invaluable resource. I’d be glad to introduce you to him.”
“You’d do that for me, Luna?” Penny pleaded.
“Of course, Mr. Ollivander can seem a bit off-putting at first,” Luna admitted. “But his stories are ever so entertaining once you get him to open up.”
Penelope thought the description was rather apt for Luna herself, even though she had since revised her opinion of the reclusive second year she’d known at Hogwarts.
Once past the jangly bell on the door, Owen Ollivander was just as Penny remembered him from so many years before. His penetrating eyes seemed to bore into hers as he nodded emphatically. “Yes, indeed, I remember: beech wood, ten inches long, mermaid hair core.”
Warned of his peculiar recognition ritual, Penny smiled broadly and patted her wand pocket with assurance. “Hasn’t let me down yet.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t recall your name, though,” Ollivander remarked with the slightest air of chagrin. “But any friend of Luna’s…”
“Penelope Clearwater,” she supplied. “I don’t really use my married name of Olin very much anymore.”
“Luna said you needed some information about wands,” Ollivander supplied. “I just might know a thing about them.” With a quick flick of his wand, the curtain to the back room drew open to reveal a gangly young man atop an exceptionally tall ladder. “Milo, could you cover the shop? I’m taking these nice young ladies to Florean’s for some cocoa.”
“Right-o, Mr. O!” Milo flashed a ready smile. Then in the next heartbeat, he slid down the ladder using only his hands for guidance. “I’ll be sure to wave out the window if I get swamped.”
“I didn’t know you’d taken on an assistant,” Luna commented as Ollivander ushered them past the merry awning of the ice cream parlor in the facing row of shops. Despite the nippy temperature, there were a number of folks enjoying elaborate concoctions inside the glass-fronted shop.
“Business had been booming,” Ollivander volunteered as he pointed to one of the metal tables which had been brought inside for the winter. “Seems back-up wands are all the rage since it became known that the intrepid Harry Potter used such a subterfuge to defeat the Dark Lord himself.”
“I couldn’t very well omit such an important detail,” Luna confided.
No one mentioned that Harry had never retrieved his auxiliary wand from Voldemort’s corpse. It had remained as a solitary sentinel imbedded in his nemesis’ ribcage as the remains smoldered atop a pyre in the Ministry courtyard. Officials estimated that most of wizarding Britain had filed by in silent witness until the carcass had been reduced to ashes. Fighting the ignobility of death to the very end, Voldemort’s body had smoked for three days and nights, the repugnant creosote smell attributed to a nearby Muggle demolition site. As if on cue, a fierce summer thunderstorm had doused the lingering stench and scattered the last stubborn remnants to anonymous corners of the planet.
Ollivander gave her a self-satisfied smile. “I couldn’t pay for such a recommendation. I really should offer you some sort of recompense.”
“Please, Mr. O,” Luna demurred. “We established that the last time. Any sort of kick-back makes me look unprofessional. Besides, Harry’s auxiliary wand was fashioned by Gregorovich; he didn’t want to risk it bearing any similarity to Voldemort’s.”
Penny noted how Luna artfully avoided mentioning that Harry had been so shaken by the Priori Incantatem phenomenon, he’d begun to wonder about Mr. Ollivander’s true loyalties in the process. With total dispassion, Harry allowed how easy it would have been to maneuver him, a total rube when it came to all things magical, into accepting a wand which could not be used against Voldemort. It was just another example of how Harry’s determination to face his demons head-on had strengthened his position in the end.
“I won’t complain if Mr. Gregorovich is getting extra business these days,” Ollivander offered magnanimously. “But I assure you, he doesn’t have such an alluring supply of wands in tropical woods such as teak, tamarind, and gumbo-limbo.”
At Luna’s urging, Penny ordered a lava flow sundae, the sharp cinnamon syrup warming her insides as it smoldered over a field of white chocolate ‘snow’. It was a fit accompaniment to Ollivander’s engrossing recount of the two years he’d spent in exile as the wizarding war heated up throughout Britain. He assured them that while he was certain good would eventually prevail, he had used his enforced vacation to create a whole new product line.
“Granted, the accounts I received in exotic ports of call were so full of rumor; the Daily Prophet often weeks late and so incomplete that I often wondered whether I was just trying to keep my fingers busy. I had no idea a new fashion would come about at the direct result of Harry’s cleverness.”
“What made you decide to leave?” Penny ventured. “It was so disheartening when I made a trip home over Christmas and Diagon Alley seemed such a pale imitation of itself.”
“I understand completely,” Ollivander empathized. “It was not by choice, I assure you. There has been an Ollivander’s in this very spot for centuries.”
“It looked like your shop had been ransacked,” Penny added.
“It had,” Ollivander confessed in a low tone. “But I did the handiwork. What better way to keep the vandals away than if it looked as if someone had already absconded with the choicest items?”
“But you must have had to leave so much behind,” Luna considered.
Ollivander shrugged. “It was unavoidable. I could always make more. But if these hands were destroyed…” He held his graceful fingers up to the light and examined them reverently. “Well, think of the legacy that would have been lost.”
“Weren’t you afraid someone would track you?” Penny posed.
“Absolutely. That’s why I had to make certain the echoes of magic left behind could not be traced to me.”
“But if you did the deed...?” Luna countered.
“Ah, yes, but think of all the wands I had at my disposal. Some the likes of which had not been used in hundreds of years. If a truly clever wizard tried to read my clues, he would have been totally stumped.”
“Who would have been up to the task?” Penny pondered.
“Certainly Albus Dumbledore,” Ollivander claimed. “He could stick his finger in the wind and taste the very air. Seen him do it on countless occasions.”
“Anyone else?” Luna wondered.
Ollivander just shrugged in reply. “Doesn’t do to underestimate the enemy, if you take my meaning. Those goons from the Wand Parity Division didn’t need to come to my back door more than once for me to know that the climate had gone sour.”
“Wand Parity Division? Never heard of it,” Penny confirmed.
“Neither had I,” Ollivander continued. “Undoubtedly a trumped up name that rattled off their tongues after Apparating amid a cloud of blackest smoke. But someone had certainly tipped them off about my contracts with the Ministry. Aurors and other magical law enforcements units can go through a lot of wands in short order, but I was to make sure I supplied an equal number of wands to the private citizenry before I could fill my next order for the Ministry.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Penny protested. “What did they hope to gain?”
“Other than intimidation,” Luna added breathlessly.
“I suspect they had a whole army of private citizens waiting to snap up wands. Wands that would then be supplied to those who were not permitted to buy them outright. Trolls, giants, elves.”
“Goblins aren’t allowed to carry wands, either,” Luna mused. “They’ve been contentious about it for centuries.”
“Did you fear Gringott’s would dissolve into anarchy?” Penny asked.
“Not deep down,” Ollivander considered. “The goblins would be giving up a lot of power by abdicating control of the wizarding banks. But it made me nervous that someone would be trying to tempt them away from the little fiefdom they had rightfully carved out for themselves. It was not the way I wanted the Ollivander name to be remembered for centuries to come.”
Mr. Ollivander tasted his newly replenished cocoa as he idly watched a mother with a young child enter his shop. “Looks like Milo might get a chance to demonstrate his Muggle magic tricks for a willing audience. The Weasley twins have been teaching him in their free moments.”
“Just no fireworks inside,” Luna reminded him with a small giggle.
“Set off the wands for sure.” Ollivander laughed at their private joke. “Luna suggested I try that if I ever needed to escape while the world thought my shop was under attack. Could have used a mind like hers during the war.”
Penny waved away the offer of cocoa in order to savor the cinnamon still tingling pleasantly on her tongue. Taking the opportunity, she explained the problems she’d experienced with the Priori Incantatem recreation for her historical site.
“They don’t teach much about wandlore these days, do they?” Ollivander noted with a tiny frown. “Much more interesting than History of Magic, if you ask me. As a matter of fact, you can outline the fall of Rome and all the great upstart civilizations by tracing the path of certain influential wands. Think of them as barometers of enlightenment and culture. But you won’t be able to duplicate the Priori Incantatem effect. Not unless you’re extremely lucky “ or unlucky, as it were.”
“If you map out the stumbling blocks, perhaps we can figure out how to circumvent them,” Penny proposed as she flipped open a notepad.
Ollivander nodded with a grim set to his lips. “Brother wands. Must share a certain similarity in the core. Not just both unicorn hair, mind you, but from the same animal. Unless the wandmaker harvested the cores himself, you have no way to know. Even I can only tell unicorn hair apart by color, nothing else.”
“How did the other brother wands come to be?” Penny questioned.
“They were a rare gift to me from Dumbledore. His phoenix had just been a baby “ the first time around “ and with the mindlessness of youth had flown carelessly into one of those magical contraptions in his office just as the ruddy thing came to life. Yanked two feathers from its glorious tail. Must have been painful, too. Dumbledore said how the bird had struggled to twist his body to use his own tears on the wound. Needless to say, the bird was never that clumsy again.”
“But you fashioned the wands to look different on the outside,” Penny prodded.
“Of course, no two people are alike. Each a unique combination. I suppose I could deliberately create the two wands for you. Do you have a source for any possible core materials? Something unique to your enterprise would be ideal.”
“We’ll put that issue aside for now,” Penny decided as her quill flowed over the page. “What else?”
“What about the accuracy of the duelists?” Luna suggested.
Ollivander nodded encouragingly. “Also an essential component. The spells must intersect one another in mid-stream. There is no magnetic pull to attract one to the other; remember the brother wands are actually trying to resist one another.”
“Accuracy,” Penny mouthed as she added to her checklist. “What about the type of spell? Does it have to be particularly virulent in nature?”
Ollivander shrugged with sad eyes. “I'm not completely certain. Clearly, Voldemort had no moral constraints about using one of the Unforgivables. What about Harry?”
“Can’t say about the final battle as those spells were both issued non-verbally,” Luna spoke up. “But at the Riddle graveyard, Voldemort voiced the Killing Curse while in the same breath, Harry attested to calling forth, ‘Expelliarmus.’ It was as if the maniac made a point of announcing the spell in order to savor the fear in Harry’s eyes at the recognition that doom was upon him.”
“Arrogant git!” disparaged Ollivander as he shook his head. “Gave advance warning so even an untrained duelist could neatly bisect his spell.”
“So all we can say, for certain, is that one of the spells must be non-defensive in nature,” Penny summarized.
“Yes, but let’s not forget the underlying animosity existing between the two participants,” Ollivander clarified. “In magic, intent is often the most important thing of all. What’s more, there has to be a tie between the persons or the brother wands won’t consent to their acquisition in the first place.”
Penny gulped noticeably as it occurred to her that Ollivander was equating Harry’s potential with Voldemort’s. With a tongue like sandpaper, she issued, “What linked Harry to Voldemort?”
“Why his scar, of course,” Ollivander responded immediately. “Not that a tie existed at the time the boy-who-would-become-the-Dark-Lord bought his wand from my father. Which is why the brother wand sat collecting dust for so many years in the back of my shop.”
“What about the fact that Voldemort killed Harry’s parents? Would that have been a tie as well?” Luna prodded.
Ollivander took a long sip of his cocoa, looking between the two women with glittering eyes. Satisfied that their open expressions conveyed just how fascinated they had become with the subject, he proposed, “I take it neither of you are familiar with the history of the Priori Incantatem. Wizard scholars had long theorized that such a thing was potentially possible. It was a pronouncement met with the same awe and indifference that often accompanies a prophecy. They would believe it, when and if, it ever came to pass. And for many hundreds of years, it didn’t. It was just an arcane theory that fascinated magical scholars but left laymen unmoved. Then came the tale of the two brothers, an all too familiar situation as their childhood closeness exploded into rivalry when they both fell in love with the same woman.”
“Hamlet,” Penelope breathed. “A tale of one brother who murders the other just so he can marry the Queen himself and secure the throne. Throws the son/nephew into a huge identity crisis.”
“Can’t say I’m familiar with that one. A Muggle tale?” At Penelope’s acknowledgement of her Muggle parentage, Ollivander consented, “Countless examples exist in all cultures. It’s the dark side of love which leads to obsession and despair. The fact that it’s such a universal theme is what made scholars ponder why the Priori Incantatem was, inversely, such a rare occurrence.
“As to the two brothers immortalized in wandlore, they had been close all their lives. Their father gained renown by capturing some sort of magical beast and he presented the local wandmaker with matching cores so brother wands could be fashioned for his sons. The resemblance between the two brothers was remarkable and they were often taken for twins once they grew into adulthood and the age difference was not so noticeable. It was a major source of confusion until one brother, the younger, consented to grow a moustache so they could be told apart with ease.”
Penny suppressed a smile as she thought of Fred and George who would have then alternated whose turn it was to sport the moustache and made the whole contrivance irrelevant.
“A young soldier and his wife settled nearby and both brothers, still unmarried, became smitten with the young woman. While her husband was away on prolonged campaign, the brothers did not hesitate to offer her assistance in a neighborly fashion, especially once it was discovered she was with child. Then the day came when the husband’s body was borne home on a litter by his men and the brothers both converged on the young widow to offer their condolences. Society being less civilized in those days, the young mother-to-be was urged to take a new husband so she’d have a ready protector by the time her child was born. The account does not say what part the woman played at this point; whether she encouraged them, or even pitted one against the other. The fact was that the acrimony between the brothers increased to the boiling point until they faced each other down in a duel.
“Forced to duel against their will, the brother wands resisted with the Priori Incantatem phenomenon, taking their own measure of the brothers. Much to the young widow’s surprise, her husband’s wraith emerged from the wand of the brother deemed to be less worthy by the magic. She married the other brother and was rewarded with the birth of a son not too much later, a son who bore an uncanny likeness to her new husband.”
“Which brother was the true father?” Luna considered. “Did she even know, considering the resemblance?”
Ollivander shook his head regretfully. “Such a pertinent fact, but the answer has been lost. To wandmakers, it would have been irrelevant. All that was handed down was that the murderous brother escaped in the night and was never seen in those parts again. As for the Priori Incantatem effect, it did not recur until many hundreds of years later when Harry Potter faced off against Tom Marvolo Riddle.”
“Begging your pardon, Mr. Ollivander,” Penny put forth, “but that tale is hardly illuminating. Other than the presence of the brother wands, the two situations are totally dissimilar!”
“Are they though?” Ollivander drawled in a manner which seemed almost predatory. “It’s true that one set of facts may not be a blueprint for the other, but think of the underlying emotions. Betrayal, murder, retribution. The unfathomable power of love twisted into hatred in the first instance; in Harry’s case, his mother’s loving sacrifice repelling death.”
“I would suggest good versus evil, but we don’t really know whether the victorious brother was an adulterer or whether that crime should also be laid at his brother’s feet,” Luna presented as she looked expectantly from one face to the other.
“Does it really matter?” Penny considered. “A child conceived of love, illicit though it may be, can hardly be compared to murder.”
“And in each case, the universe seeks equilibrium. So the cosmic scales of justice are calibrated,” Ollivander maintained. “Evil versus good, light versus dark. These things are always in flux. But you’d be wrong to conclude that the brother wands act as agents of retribution; that’s just a case of projecting our own feelings onto a magical, but still inanimate, object.”
Perplexed even more than when she started, Penelope stammered, “Then how does the Prior Incantatem work?”
“To this day, no one knows for sure,” attested Ollivander. “With only two examples to study, you see why many questions are unanswerable. But my understanding of wand lore tells me this: it was a foregone conclusion that Harry would be victorious against Voldemort’s wand in each instance.” To the incredulous expressions directed at him, Ollivander amended, “Not that he couldn’t have been killed in another manner. Harry himself instinctively sought a different wand to do the dark deed, if it came to that.
“Wands operate by very simple rules. Once defeated, the wand recognizes the victor as his true owner, regardless of whose hand actually wields it. It is not so noticeable if the wand is used against another, unrelated person. But it will not allow itself to be used against he who it recognizes at its true owner. When the killing curse rebounded from Harry’s forehead as a baby, that wand recognized Harry as the victor. And it would not turn on its master. Add to this the natural resistance of brother wands to be used against one another and you can see how the cards were stacked in Harry’s favor.
“But if Voldemort had bothered to study wandlore, he would have known that the first step to victory demanded that he abandon his wand and seek a replacement. Snapping it in two himself would have ensured another wand would readily agree to serve him. But instead, his ignominious followers found their way back to the invisible mansion at Godric’s Hollow with the express goal of retrieving their master’s wand and preserving it for him.”
“Why didn’t Riddle make wandlore a part of his individual study program?” Penny postulated. “I can’t believe Dumbledore wouldn’t--”
“Dumbledore knew all right,” Luna confirmed. “He was the one who recognized the Priori Incantatem when Harry first described it. Immediately knowing the lad before him had been shaken to the very core by seeing his dead parents emerge from Voldemort’s wand.”
“And Dumbledore wasn’t about to reveal his trump card to Voldemort’s followers,” Ollivander supplied.
“But he didn’t tell Harry either!” Luna protested.
“The better to maintain the secret, my dear,” Ollivander claimed with a mirthless smile.
Penny looked up from her scrawled notes as sudden inspiration struck. “Didn’t Harry hand his wand off to Neville at the last second during the final duel? Yet the Priori Incantatem still took.”
“But Mr. O didn’t sell Neville a wand; Neville used his father’s,” Luna protested. “Still uses it; it’s a family heirloom.” And had been a final testament to Neville’s grandmother that the son was a true reflection of his father, Luna thought proudly.
“But surely you’re not implying….” Penny left her words trailing off as the swirling possibilities threatened to engulf her.
“We will never know, will we?” Ollivander issued in an eerie, ethereal tone.
Penny shook her head to clear it as the words of the prophecy rose unbidden. The mark of the Dark Lord; Neville bore it too. Harry himself had reasoned that his classmate possessed the internal scars of visiting his parents in their vegetative state, alive on the outside but as good as dead inside their injured brains. Would the brother wand have chosen Neville as its owner if he had called on Mr. Ollivander before Harry had?
After deliberate consideration, Penny tabled the idea of recreating the duel. Perhaps once she knew more about the phenomenon. The closest thing to a rivalry she had been able to postulate was the twin brothers who Umbriel had known at school; both destined to play Keeper for rival Quidditch teams. But somehow arguing over the possession of the Quaffle, or who got to wear the Keeper’s mask for Durmstrang during their school years, were exceedingly petty squabbles at best. Even if she circumvented the wand’s propensity to choose its owner by having Ollivander construct custom wands with the singular cores she supplied, she didn’t think it would be enough. Not to mention the number of zeros in the custom price she’d been quoted.
Instead, she would recreate the horror of having an innocent bystander cut down before Harry had time to draw a breath. If Amos Diggory didn’t object to his son’s tragedy being memorialized in this fashion, Penny was fairly certain she knew how to pull it off.