Fondness. The feeling, the projection of caring and concern, genuine like and approval, washed over Tom in a way which made his skin crawl and his stomach churn. Unfamiliarity, uncertainty, the bile-raising sickness of a foreign and unwanted sensation; it was all he could do to keep from curling his lips familiarly downward in order to deflect the pleasantry and recognition in her voice. When he’d taken up the mantle of Silas Blishwick, he’d not known that it would come with the stipulation of friendship, at which he had never cared to be adept, nor had he known that he would be pulled so solidly into the circle of trust of one of his most beloved targets. Every cloud had a silver lining, he supposed. Even those which rained disgust upon the people below.
A strange thing, to learn friendship in the name of emulating the man who lay crumpled in a lifeless heap in a steamer trunk in Carrow Manor; all the history that dear Millicent believed to be witnessing before her lay rotting behind a flimsy lock. It was enough to make the ruse all the more thrilling to fall into. And while it was not his duty to chase thrill - quite the opposite, really - Tom could not deny its worth.
“Ah - good,” he offered a smile, something he’d practiced in the mirror hours before, “I’d hate to disappoint you. Always been somewhat of a priority not to.” And perhaps this was truth, in a certain morbid sense. She had her expectations concerning Silas and Tom both; he’d defy them all.
He kept his eyes locked upon the photograph with the keen eye of someone genuinely curious in debunking a mystery. Of course, he knew this handiwork. Sloppy, untrained, panicked - the hand of someone looking to earn favor with the one man who’d take note of such a carnal offering. His interest had been piqued, of course, when he’d heard of the murder hours before, but for it to arrive so swiftly and with such question upon the desk of Millicent Bagnold meant nothing more than that it was a worthless offering, and one to be made an example of.
Tom nodded along thoughtfully as she spoke, lips curling in well-masked disapproval at the mention of Rodolphus; in another skin, he might have defended the credibility of one of his very best lieutenants, but here he was meant to see his inadequacies, and not his strengths. And here, he was meant to act as if he’t not, himself, had a hand in inspiring the vast majority of the spells of which she spoke, in the young and macabre minds of his growing following. He was quite proud to hear her speak of such a breadth of violence, much of his own creation. But Silas could not be - he shook his head, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses and tutting quietly.
“Terribly fucking naive indeed,” he agreed grimly, “It’s medieval to assume that these people can’t be more creative than three curses. Hell - with what the world is today, I can only assume it’ll be more so as time goes on. Lestrange is either naive or lazy. Or perhaps both. Lucky for us all that you’re not.” This was, perhaps, the greatest compliment he’d ever given. He wanted to wretch.
Tom straightened his glasses once more - a habit, perhaps, that he could adopt - and nodded graciously at the offer of tea. “I’ve been on a bit of a cocoa bender of late, but you’ve made me miss tea. Almost drowned in it at Ollivander’s didn’t we?” Fiddling with the button on his jacket, he perched into the seat opposite her desk, playing the role of studious and attentive guest to a tee. “But for the record, you never bore. I’m always curious as to what goes on up in these high towers - terribly important thing, I’d assume.”
At her question, lastly, as almost an afterthought, he pulled a small vial from his pocket, held it to the light, and set it down upon her desk with a proud smile. “Nicked you a bottle of wand polish. Not to say yours is dull or anything, but -” a practiced grin, “- figured you’d appreciate a bit of flash.”
An offering of goodwill. The ruse continued.
She is always learning. She is 12 when she first apprenticed with Garrick Ollivander, but even after Hogwarts she finds time to help around the shop as she climbs the ladder of the ministry. She’s 25 and it’s the year before she meets Silas. A tangerine harvest moon hangs low in the sky and behind the golden windows of Ollivander’s, Garrick shows her how to repair the cores of damaged wands. Millicent holds out her own to start with. She’s damaged it during one of the Dunstable duels.
“‘Dragon heartstring, unicorn hair, and phoenix feather. To witches and wizards, there can be no other cores so universally beneficial. My father used kelpie hair and kneazle whisker, but they don’t hold a candle to the supreme cores. Before, you could walk into any wand store and provide any magical substance you wanted as your wand core - regardless of how stable it was.”
He angles her fractured wand and examines it.
“And that was the most dangerous of all. Do you know why?”
“Because,” Mr. Ollivander says and he draws out a phoenix feather from an ivory box. “The core of your wand - and all of magic - is a door, Millie. And doors work both ways. When we open a door, there’s no saying just what will slip out. The supreme cores are the most reliable ones. Remember that.”
She nods and tries to listen to what else her mentor has to to say, but all she can think about is that one thing:
Millie looks down at her Aspen wand that is on the mend and thinks about how one day she is going to crack that door wide open.
Silas took the seat across from her. With Aberforth and Alastor, conversations like these always became soapboxes for the two to voice their pride for their little vigilante organization. Millicent would express her equal distaste for “The Order” and then eventually the three would drown any festering quarrels with alcohol. It was nice to talk to someone who actually enjoyed neutral discourse.
“Silas, between you and me, I hate Rodolphus Lestrange. And believe me, I know hate is a strong word -- which is why I’m absolutely using it here. But as much as I want to believe Lestrange is naive or lazy, you don’t become Chief Warlock by being either of those things. It makes me think…”
She sighed and shook her head. What did it make her think? Something more sinister? What did that even mean? She was jumping to conclusions. Causation was not correlation and she would do well to remember that.
Millicent waved her hand at his statement about the goings on of the Ministry.
“Anyway, as much as I want to say it’s all excitement all the time, the International Department is basically just convincing other wizards we have no intention to go to war with them or use their resources and Wizengamot is just convincing the jury their fellow witches and wizards should have the same rights they’d want. It’s little more than basic game theory at the end of the day.”
Millicent found all of this interesting enough, but she still said this sort of sadly, as if she wished she lived a life a little more on the frontlines. Almost immediately she shook herself out of it. She’d have to get better at that. Quelling that sadness. Gellert had capitalized on too much of that before he’d escaped.
All that said - if there was one person she was going to be vulnerable around, she supposed it would be Silas.
“So you’re half muggle, huh?”
The young man who says this is dark haired with wire-rimmed glasses and an american accent. The two of them are in Ollivander’s on a slow and steady afternoon. He sits next to her as she fiddles with a broken record player she’s found at a London thrift store. He’s never seen a record player before, much less touched one. He’s a wizard from the United States - been places and seen more things than she ever has - but he’s never touched a record player. A true blue isolated wizard. She tells him this when he reaches out to help her fix it and she slaps his hand away.
“Maybe it could be,” He scoots closer to her. “Just have to find the right door.”
He handed her a vial of wand polish as an answer to why he was here and with it comes the flood of memories. Wand polish. She hadn’t polished her wand in so long. Dear Merlin, what would Garrick say if he saw the current state of it? She’d defend her position of course. Millicent had her reasons. A dull wand meant it was less likely to catch a gleam of light while she was waving it. Less likely to be seen, less likely to alert her opponent that the attack was coming.
“A bit of flash? And what? Allow my enemies to see the wave of my wand coming from a mile away?”
It was an old habit from her dueling days. She was -
“Kidding, of course.” She took the vial from the wizard. The same fondness with which she’d spoken with earlier seeped into the gesture. “I’m not getting into very many fights these days. This is lovely.”
She pulled out her aspen wand and gave it a small twirl. When she’d first bought it, the polished white wood had gleamed like bone.
They’re drinking tea. Almost drowning in it. Their legs swing freely from their perch on the counter. They’ve long since closed shop and the fire has died to embers. It doesn’t matter; a familiar harvest moon hangs in the sky. Its glow washes the whole store in orange. Millicent holds Silas’ cracked wand between them. The core peeks out from the polished wood. How the wheel turns.
“Thunderbird? How American.” Millicent says and even the slightest of touches sends a small shock through her. She almost drops it but fascination makes her hold tight. He takes it from her.
“It’s supposed to terrible difficult to master,” She says.
“I don’t think Garrick has any Thunderbird tail feathers though. He’s a bit of a purist like that.”
Silas shrugs. “I’ve come to terms with it. We’ll just meld it with something else.
He pulls out a well known ivory box and plucks a phoenix feather from it.
He gives her a smile like a jack-o-lantern.
“The brother of yours? Yeah.”
They’ve found their door.
They drink even more tea as they get to fixing Silas’ wand. They’re close and Millicent tries not think about how his eyelashes brush against his cheeks like brambles. Silas’ attention is fixated on his wand. He tells her a story.
“My father used to always say -- “
The memory falls short. The door, only half opened. The reminiscent smile, only half formed. She stood by the tea now, having tucked the small vial into a little drawer on the shelf for safe keeping. The enchanted kettle had poured them both a cuppa and the equally enchanted cups had kept the earl grey warm. Millicent let out a small chuckle as Silas began to reminisce as well.
“We did. I remember when we drank all of Mr. Ollivander’s rare darjeeling tea. He was so irate. Made us dust all the wand boxes by hand.”
She handed him his cup before taking her own seat.
“What was that thing your father used to say?”
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