August 1993
Augusta Longbottom came in two days later, formidable in a hat that appeared to have an entire stuffed vulture perched on it, trailing a round-faced boy who hovered a full step behind her with the practiced diffidence of someone used to being overshadowed by his own grandmother.
“You’re the shopkeeper Filius Flitwick’s been recommending,” she said, without preamble, in a voice that made it sound less like a compliment and more like a fact she intended to verify personally.
“Augusta Longbottom.
This is my grandson, Neville.”
“Marcus Hale.
Good to meet you both.”
Neville offered a small, careful smile and said nothing, hovering near the door in a way that reminded me, uncomfortably, of Harry’s first visit — the same instinct to take up as little space as possible.
“He’s after a new wand holster,” Augusta said, entirely undeterred by her grandson’s obvious discomfort at being discussed in the third person.
“Though I’ll say plainly, while we’re here, that the holster isn’t the thing that actually needs fixing.” She fixed Neville with a look that carried more weight than heat.
“I asked him back in June, after I saw his first-year practical marks, to have his wand properly checked for compatibility.
He’s had every opportunity since.
He still hasn’t gone.”
Neville’s flush deepened, and he stared very hard at a spot on the floor.
“I don’t need to.
It works fine.”
“It works,” Augusta said, not unkindly, “which is not the same thing, and you know it isn’t, because I’ve told you as much a dozen times now.”
I glanced between them, reading the shape of it before either of them said the rest out loud — the particular, stubborn quiet of a boy defending something that had nothing to do with the wand itself.
“Whose was it, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“My son’s,” Augusta said, when Neville didn’t answer.
“Frank’s.
Neville’s had it since he started at Hogwarts.
I offered him a proper fitting before he ever set foot on the train, and he wouldn’t hear of it then either.”
“It’s his,” Neville said, quiet and a little fierce, finally looking up.
“I don’t — I know it’s not exactly right for me.
I’ve known since first year, probably.
But it’s the one thing of his I actually get to use every day.
Carry, and hold, and — I don’t know.
It feels like the closest I get to him actually being proud of something I do, using the same wand he did.
Stupid, probably.”
Something in that landed harder than I think he meant it to, and I chose my next words carefully, unwilling to dismiss it the way I suspected several adults already had.
“It’s not stupid.
It makes a lot of sense, actually — wanting to carry something of his, wanting him to feel present in what you’re doing, even secondhand.” I let that sit a moment before continuing.
“But I don’t think a wand that only tolerates you is actually the way to get there.
If you want your dad to be proud of you — and I think that’s worth wanting, for what it’s worth — the surest way isn’t carrying his wand.
It’s becoming the best wizard you’re capable of being.
And that’s a great deal easier to do with a wand that’s actually yours, suited to you the way his was suited to him.”
Neville was quiet for a moment, turning that over with the same careful seriousness he’d brought to the moonstone weeks before.
“You think a proper wand would actually make that much difference?”
“I know it would.
A mismatched wand doesn’t fail dramatically, usually — it just makes everything slightly harder than it needs to be, spell after spell, day after day, in a way that’s easy to blame on yourself instead of the wood in your hand.” I nodded toward the door.
“Doesn’t mean you have to give his up.
Get your own first — the one that’s actually yours — and keep his as a second, for the days you want to carry it anyway.
You don’t lose him by finding a wand that works properly.
You’d just stop making everything harder than it has to be while you’re at it.”
He sat with that for a long moment, and I watched something shift behind his eyes — not quite relief, but the particular loosening of a boy realizing a choice he’d been treating as a betrayal might not have to be one at all.
“Would you actually get it fixed, if I asked?” he said, glancing at his grandmother.
“I’ve been waiting three months for you to ask properly,” Augusta said, and though her voice stayed brisk, there was real warmth underneath it.
“Ollivander’s, today, before the holster.
That’s not negotiable.”
“Ollivander would know far better than I would — that’s properly his trade, not mine.
But it’s worth asking him directly rather than assuming.
Wands aren’t one-size-fits-all, whatever a secondhand shop might imply.” I glanced at Augusta.
“Might be worth doing before the holster itself — no sense fitting a holster to a wand that isn’t the right one to begin with.”
Augusta considered that with the air of someone recalibrating an opinion mid-sentence, and I got the distinct sense she respected being agreed with more than she’d have respected flattery.
“Sound advice. This story is hosted at g.com.
We’ll go directly.”
“Before you go — for the holster itself, once the wand’s sorted,” I said, “did you have particular features in mind?
Some people want speed above everything.
Others want it worn where nobody would think to look.”
Augusta considered that with more seriousness than I’d expected.
“Discretion, mostly.
He’s not the type to win a duel on quick reflexes alone, and I’d rather nobody assume otherwise from the outside.
Something that doesn’t advertise itself.”
“That’s doable — a stabilizing charm woven under a false-seam pocket instead of a visible strap, keyed to release only for him.” I ran the actual numbers in my head as I spoke, quietly, without letting either of them see the shape of what I was doing — I didn’t even need to consult the ledger as I already knew outright how to apply these enchantments.
All I had to do was a more mundane tally of the leather, the clasp, I’d need to source.
“I’ll want to confirm exact costs before I promise a number — the enchantment itself, and the materials on top of it — but I’ll have a fair price to you by owl within the week, and I won’t start the work until you’ve agreed to it.
Discreet holsters might be worth keeping on as a proper line, if today’s any indication of demand.”
“Sensible,” Augusta said, with the particular approval of a woman who distrusted anyone who quoted a price before doing the arithmetic properly.
“See that it stays that way.” She glanced at Neville, something almost gentle underneath the brisk exterior now.
“Go on, then.
Ollivander’s, and don’t dawdle.”
Neville lingered a moment after his grandmother turned toward the door, and asked, a little too quickly, like he’d been building up to it the whole visit, “Is there — I don’t know if this is something you’d even sell.
Is there anything that could help with memory?
I’m hopeless with it.
Herbology sticks, because I actually enjoy it, but everything else just — slides right back out.
Gran says I take after my dad, which isn’t really—” He stopped himself there, and I didn’t push.
“There’s a fair bit worth knowing, actually,” I said, keeping my tone easy, giving nothing away about exactly where any of it would come from.
“There’s real technique to it — old, well-documented stuff from outside the wizarding world that most people here have never been taught, since it doesn’t need a wand at all.
And there’s Occlumency, further down the road, if you’re ever properly interested — that’s more about organizing and protecting the mind than simply remembering better, but the discipline of it does wonders for retention as a side effect.
Not something to rush into.
Needs patience, and a proper foundation first.”
“Could you — I mean, would you have something written down?
I’m rubbish at just being told things once.”
“I can have two books ready for you,” I said, the idea arriving fully formed almost as I said it.
“One on Occlumency basics — just the foundational theory, nothing you’d try alone without more guidance later.
One on memory technique from outside the wizarding world entirely — properly practical, the kind of thing you could actually use starting the first week of term.
Come back with your grandmother when you collect the holster, and I’ll have both ready for you then.”
Something in Neville’s posture eased, the same quiet, grateful loosening I’d seen in Harry more than once already that summer.
“I’d like that.
Thank you.”
He left with his grandmother a few minutes later, already deep in a rather more animated conversation about Ollivander than I suspected she was used to getting out of him.
I did two things that evening, once the shop was closed and quiet.
The first was practical: I went to the ledger and paid, carefully, for a proper grounding in both subjects — Occlumency’s actual foundational theory, not just the popular half-understood version most wizards seemed to carry around, and a solid survey of Muggle memory technique, memory palaces and spaced repetition and the rest of it, adapted for someone who’d never need to sit an ordinary school exam in his life.
I copied the material out longhand into two separate notebooks, plain and unmarked, one for Neville and one, I decided, for myself — no reason a man running a business shouldn’t sharpen his own recall while he was at it.
I started that same night, five slow minutes of the first exercise before bed, feeling faintly ridiculous and rather hopeful in equal measure.
The second thing I did more carefully, and told no one about at all.
I sat a long while before I let myself ask it, turning the shape of the question over more than once, because I suspected, rightly as it turned out, that this one would cost more than curiosity alone should justify.
Is there any known potion, ritual, or treatment — however rare, however difficult — capable of restoring the mind of someone left catatonic by prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus Curse?
I hadn’t said Frank and Alice Longbottom’s names to the ledger.
I hadn’t needed to.
The price that came back told me plainly enough that the question had landed exactly where I meant it to, and when I paid it — more than I’d spent on anything since the printing press purchase, more than I quite let myself feel comfortable with — the answer that arrived wasn’t the clean nothing I’d braced for.
It was worse, in its way, because it was real.
An old ritual, largely forgotten outside a narrow, guarded circle of Healers who specialized in cursed-damage restoration, the kind of thing that never made it into any textbook because the components alone put it permanently out of reach for all but the wealthier families, and even then only the ones willing to gamble a fortune on a result that wasn’t guaranteed.
Rare ingredients, most of them, and difficult to source quietly.
A significant risk if performed incorrectly.
But real.
Documented successes, however few.
Not a fragment of half-tested theory this time — an actual, working method, simply priced and gatekept into obscurity by circumstances rather than impossibility. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
I sat with the knowledge a long while that night, turning it over from every angle I could think of, because knowing something was possible was a very different weight to carry than knowing it wasn’t.
The ritual itself would cost a genuinely large sum to actually perform properly — the ingredients alone ran into the thousands of Galleons, and I had no intention of cutting corners on something this delicate.
I had the money.
That wasn’t the difficult part.
The difficult part was what to do with knowing it, and how to hand it to anyone without handing over, in the same breath, the far larger and far more dangerous truth of how I’d come to know it at all.
I decided, sitting there with the ritual’s details laid out in front of me on parchment I’d have to burn once I was finished copying them properly, that Augusta Longbottom would receive this anonymously, or not at all.
Not from Neville — a boy that age didn’t need to carry the weight of a maybe this large, not on top of everything else he was already carrying.
Not with my name attached, not with any thread a careful person could follow back to a shopkeeper who’d met the family exactly once.
Augusta struck me, in our single brief conversation, as precisely the sort of person who’d act on a real chance without needing to know where it came from, provided the information itself held up to her own scrutiny — which, given what I was about to hand her, it would.
The next morning, before the shop opened, I walked to Gringotts and opened a second vault under conditions considerably more careful than the one I already held — a numbered account, accessible by key alone, tied to no name Gringotts would ever volunteer to anyone asking.
The goblin who processed it barely looked up from the paperwork, entirely uninterested in my reasons, which suited me perfectly.
I funded it lightly, just enough to exist properly, and left with the vault number memorized and the key sitting heavy in my pocket the rest of the day.
The letter took longer to get right than the vault had.
I wrote it and rewrote it three times before I was satisfied, careful to strip anything that might identify me — no shop references, no turn of phrase I recognized as my own, plain, unremarkable handwriting I deliberately slowed and altered as I wrote.
Mrs.
Longbottom,
I am aware of your son’s circumstances, and of your family’s, and I have come into knowledge of an old ritual capable — under the right conditions, performed correctly, at real but bounded risk — of restoring the minds of those damaged as your grandson’s parents were.
I will not tell you how I came by this knowledge, and I would ask you not to spend time trying to find out.
What matters is whether it is real, and I believe, as certainly as I am able to believe anything of this kind, that it is.
I am trusting you with this because you struck me, however briefly we have met in the past, as a woman who would use it carefully and well, and because your grandson deserves better than the quiet nothing his family has been given so far.
Enclosed you will find the ritual in full — the method, the required components, and the risks, honestly stated, so that you and whichever Healer you trust most can judge it properly before attempting anything.
I ask only this in return, and I ask it plainly: if it works, and only if it works, deposit whatever sum you judge fair into the Gringotts vault numbered below.
No sum is required.
No sum is owed if it fails.
This is not a transaction I am willing to make conditional on your family’s grief.
But if your family is made whole again because of it, I would rather that generosity find its way somewhere it might do further good than sit unacknowledged.
I wish you and your family well.
I didn’t sign it with my name.
But I didn’t leave it entirely blank, either — a signature of nothing at all felt, the more I sat with it, like its own kind of carelessness, the sort of gap a sufficiently determined mind might worry at simply because it was empty.
Better to give it something.
A mark, not a name.
Something that could be recognized again later without ever being traced backward to now.
The stamp itself had been something I was working on since I opened my shop, far longer than I’d expected when I’d first sat down with a scrap of soapstone and a carving knife meaning to knock out something simple in an evening.
Simple hadn’t lasted past the first attempt.
Once I’d started, I found I didn’t want a single clean line — I wanted something that looked like it had always existed somewhere, waiting to be found rather than invented, and that kind of design didn’t come quickly no matter how badly I wanted it to.
What I ended up with, after more ruined blocks of stone than I cared to count, was an eye at the center of something considerably larger than an eye — a wide, watchful iris ringed with a fine spiral of interlocking detail, like a great unblinking sun with a coiled center instead of a pupil, the coil turning inward the way a thought does when you’re chasing it toward the one piece that actually matters.
On either side, sweeping outward like a bird caught mid-flight, a pair of wings worked through with knotwork so dense it took me three attempts just to carve without a single break in the line — old patterns, the kind that felt less designed than remembered, circles folding into circles the way old protective work so often did in the theory I’d absorbed but never properly practiced by hand.
Tucked into the corners, small and easy to miss unless a person already knew to look, a pair of tiny sunbursts, each holding a single rune at its center — nothing dangerous, nothing that meant anything on its own, just enough presence to make the whole mark feel deliberate rather than decorative.
It was a tribute to Odin, who gave sacrificed his one eye for wisdom and foresight.
I pressed it into a disc of plain dark wax at the letter’s fold, the whole intricate weight of it sitting stark and unmistakable against the seal, and signed the bottom of the page the only way I intended to sign anything of this kind from now on.
— Seeker of Knowledge
Not a name so much as a shape to leave behind.
Something a person could come to trust the second or third time they saw it, without ever needing to know the shape had a face behind it, or that it had cost its maker two weeks of ruined stone to get right.
I sealed the ritual’s details inside, the vault number written on a separate slip so the letter itself would give away nothing if it were ever intercepted, and sent it by a public owl from the Leaky Cauldron, three days after Neville and Augusta had first walked out of my shop.
I kept the little soapstone stamp afterward, cleaned and wrapped in cloth at the back of a workbench drawer, already fairly certain — and glad, given how long it had taken to carve — that it wouldn’t be the last envelope or page that watchful, winged eye ever marked.
I closed the ledger that night with nothing solved and a great deal more to think about than I’d had that morning, and made two notes in my book, side by side, in the section I was starting to think of as the one that mattered most.
Neville Longbottom — memory struggles, wants to improve.
Books ready for pickup with the holster.
Started my own notebook too — no reason not to.
Frank & Alice Longbottom.
Real ritual found, obscure and costly but genuine.
Sent anonymously to Augusta, with a numbered vault attached — payment only if it works, only if she chooses.
Said nothing to Neville.
Now I wait.
Comment it and let me know.