Confessions

Confessions

It is a cruel thing sometimes, to know so much and yet so little about things, about people, about knowing.

I remember every wand I've ever sold in my little shop. Every single one, no matter what kind of wood it was crafted from, or what core lay within, or the length or degree of pliability. I remember them all. I can tell you which student I sold them to, and when.

I can also tell you of their fates, and what became of the owners of those wands. I can tell you the precise moment whenever any wand of my making is broken.

It is why I am so restless today, pacing throughout the shop without ceasing. It is why the steak and kidney pie on my plate is cold and barely touched, why I keep reading the same page of Passionate Trousers over and over again without seeing the words or comprehending their meaning. Today, a wand will be broken; and there is nothing I can say or do to influence which one.

One wand is thirteen and a half inches long, made of yew, rather rigid. I remember its owner well. Tall and handsome he was, with dark eyes and even darker ambition. It was that ambition that finally separated us, as he wandered down pathways I never dreamt of treading, going places where I dared not follow.

The other wand is eleven inches, made of holly, nice and supple. Its owner is the light of this old man's current existence. He's only eighteen, younger by too many years for me to want to contemplate. Still, it is his zest for living, the simple intensity with which he lives each experience, great or small, that breathes life into me and makes me new again. It is a gift he doesn't even know he gives.

Both wands have phoenix feather cores, given by the tail of the same creature. Somewhere out there, a duel like none ever seen before in the Wizarding World has begun, and I do not think a battle of this magnitude will ever be seen again in this age. Today, only one will be reborn from the ashes. The other will be broken, irreparably so.

After today, there will either be the one, a ghost from the past returning to haunt me, or there will be the other, a luminous future reflected in a pair of green eyes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Of course I remember the first two times I saw him. He had just turned eleven that very day, the first time we met, small and uncertain, expression much too solemn for one of his tender years. It was his first time among Wizarding folk since the tragic deaths of his parents. I think I frightened him a little at our first meeting. I hope so. Even then I saw the light in him, the immensity of potential; and I didn't wish to see it grow dark and twisted as it had once before with the other boy so long ago, who had shared the same solemnity, the same ability for greatness.

The second time was for the Tri-Wizard tournament, during the Weighing of the Wands. Though still early, he had already begun growing into the man he'd eventually become. He was more guarded, yet still willing to face whatever came his way with that trademark Gryffindor courage. I remember examining his wand for longer than what was really necessary before handing it back to him. It wasn't the wand I looked over so minutely, though. I already knew it would serve him well.

And so far, it has. They both have. Somewhere, the battle rages on.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Past and present collided the summer after his seventh year, when I saw him for the third time. He came to me in June, wanting my knowledge, gleaning every scrap of information he could find in preparation for a battle growing ever more imminent.

"Yew and phoenix feather," he said to me. "What are its strengths and weaknesses?"

I told him, naturally. I told him many things. He continued to drop by as the summer progressed, and the groundwork of a lasting friendship was established as he gradually opened up to me. We spoke of many things, and not all of them were about the War.

"He's a tramp," he told me one day in despair, following the particularly messy end of his latest relationship. "He's slept with anyone and everyone willing to take a tumble with him, and I never knew until it was too late..." He'd taken another swig from the bottle of Ogden's Firewhiskey I'd given him, as I watched the working muscles of his throat in rapt fascination. "I was just another conquest."

"Unsurprising, considering it was Malfoy," I remarked mildly. "Unsurprising, indeed..."

He had looked at me, his brilliant green eyes red-rimmed from grief and drink. "What would you know about conquest?" he'd asked.

"You don't know me half as well as you think you do," I had replied, remembering another young man. Oh yes, I knew all about conquest, and of being conquered. "Not by half."

Something in the tone of my voice had caught his attention. Perhaps it was the unsuccessful attempt to mask my lingering bitterness, my continuing sorrow. His eyes had widened slightly, a nearly comical expression of understanding seeping across his features. I shrugged it off. It had been I who had handed him a nearly full bottle of Firewhiskey, after all.

I still do not know what impulse led me then to extend my hand to him, nor do I understand what led him to take it. I only know that it happened, and I have no regrets.

In my room, in my bed, I gloried in his compact, wiry perfection as I laid him back against the pillows. Pleasuring him gave me an immense pleasure all its own. With hands and lips I helped him forget about the perfidious Malfoy, and the sound of his cry at the moment of culmination will stay with me always.

To be frank, I was surprised when he returned the following day, and the day after, and the day after that. Each time the visit would end with me undressing him with all the haste of a child on Christmas morning, savoring the taste and feel of him as if for the first time every time it happened.

"They're all going to laugh at you," I told him once, afterwards, cradling him to me, my fingers trailing through his messy, sweat-dampened hair. "You're so young, and I'm so...not." I hadn't wanted to say old. I never felt old when I was with him.

"I don't care," he'd murmured drowsily. "Let them."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The peacefulness was short-lived. No matter what the purpose of his visits, whether for business or pleasure, the War would not be ignored, nor would it go away. He became grimmer, more withdrawn, as the weeks passed. The deaths became more violent, the destruction harder to conceal from Muggle eyes.

The challenge was issued. Come stop me, if you can. The past and present came together at last, terrible in its inevitability.

He left this morning. It is late in the afternoon now. I can still feel the wands dueling; one yew, one holly, both with cores from the tail feathers of a single phoenix. I push away the unappetizing plate of cold steak and kidney pie, trying and failing to read my beloved copy of Passionate Trousers.

And then it happens. I feel a wand snap in two, like a bone in my soul, and like that, the past is dead. I close my eyes, allowing a single tear to fall for the fallen. He had been dark and handsome once, with darker ambition, and now he was gone.

A moment later, I hear the small pop of someone Apparating nearby, and he enters the shop, the light of my existence, my future.

Silently, I say farewell to Tom before I turn around, my arms already open in welcome as Harry comes back to me.