Amber Dreams

Amber Dreams

Chapter I

Low in the blue sky above the Chilterns, which ran like a chalk backbone across the south of England, a bee fluttered her wings in the wind and gazed down at the little village that nestled in the side of the green downs. About her were the sounds of birdsong - skylarks and swifts, a threat to most insects in the sky, but not this one. This bee had certain defences woven around her, spells of protection that grew up like a thorn bush encircling a fox's den. She gently hovered on the wind for a few minutes more, savouring the scents and the feel of the warm and gentle air around her, before returning to the window of the house from where she had first alighted.

Inside, she transformed back into her normal figure, which bore a slight resemblance to her previous form, in that her round figure and frizzy hair gave not only a bee-like appearance but the impression of someone unflustered, calm and nurturing, with a healthy, cheerful face. She had much to be happy about; the air was clean and fresh, the house in good order, as she had always kept it since she came here, and her husband... well, that was the only blemish on an otherwise pleasant day. How he had changed since their early romance on the Downs, when he had regained something of the vigour of youth, though not his own youth, for he had never been anything but a sickly, colic child, pestered by doctors intent on healing him at the bidding of his parents. When he finished his schooling, he remained in the house, running his father's estates, his quick mind and aptitude for numbers turning the fortunes of the family around until they owned much more than just the old demesne lands that traditionally belonged to the family. After his father died, his mother had left to rejoin her family in Hertfordshire, and he had locked himself away in the house with only a maid for company - the maids did not last long, most leaving his service mere months or even weeks after they first took up a place. But then he had grown ill, first with a fever and then with a worrisome blight of the lungs, which caused him to cough up blood. Scorning aid from doctors, who had failed him in his childhood, he had taken up the suggestion of a maid to send for the wise-woman who lived up on the hillside.

Beatrice had responded to the call for aid quickly, and had brought potions and herbs with her that staved off the fever, before turning her attention to the weakness of his chest. Over the long week that it took to nurse him back to a semblance of health, they shared their thoughts and then their secrets, and each of them realised, as he regained his strength, that they did not want to leave. So he feigned weakness, and she didn't try to disabuse him of the notion.

The house took back some of its previous warmth as the sickness died away, and by the height of summer he dared to leave the house. They wandered down to the village, and he wondered at the sky and the early spring sun that warmed the crisp air and his skin, and at the beauty of the woman beside him, who had cured him of his ailments so perfectly and without all the terror that doctors inflicted upon him. That night, as they dined together at the table for the first time, he took his father's wedding ring and asked of her the honour of her hand in marriage.

The banns were read out in the church that Sunday, and within four weeks they were married, connubially pinned to the house and each other. None of the villagers commented, and the priest found her to have the unusual devoutness found in many cunning-folk. He did mention, however, how strange some of the rites she remembered were, but she explained that she had been raised as a Catholic, and nothing further was said. One night in early November, with the bonfires burning on the hills and effigies of Guy Fawkes burning upon them, which distressed her somewhat, she mentioned to her beloved husband that he would soon have an heir. She did not tell him of what that child might be, what she hoped that child might be.

The tone of the marriage changed from then on. It wasn't noticeable, not at first, but he seemed to draw back into himself, sitting at his writing desk for a little longer each day, whilst Beatrice strolled alone across the Downs. Sometimes he would accompany her, but he felt uneasy in the open spaces, and as winter drew in and her belly grew rounder, first he protested on his part that he could not tempt winter to strike at his weak chest, and then that he could not risk her or his unborn son to the cold. He was always most certain that it would be a son. The eighth day of Christmas proved him right, for that night, on the eve before the New Year, a son was born to the couple.

At that time in a home high above a hidden street in deepest London, another child was born, also a boy, and thus a certain prophecy was fulfilled. Beneath the home was a shop protected by wards and by terrible spells of power, for the family that lived there were the guardians of a stern and subtle duty that demanded the very finest of defences. Their lineage went back past the long years of Christianity and even past the colonial gods of the Romans, back to a time when the warriors of the land were proud, brave, and cruel, and when the druids performed sacrifices to call down their terrible and wondrous gods to bless the land and its inhabitants. The doorway of the shop below proclaimed the family's ancestry to date back to those times, when even then the need for wood and blood and bone to focus the druid's magic was needed. They had adapted and changed, grown with the times, implemented strange and foreign materials, and materials that were simply too rare or too dangerous to collect in times past. And now, with the shelves piled high to the roof with old wands, new wands, wands in states of disrepair that needed new bindings or an aging core in need of perking up and restoration, and an heir just born that morning, they could rest assured that times were safe enough to begin the great experimentations, a family affair that would take decades and result in great advances in the making of wands. These times of investigation took place every few centuries, though there were times when new creatures had been discovered that prompted new techniques, and other times when a lack of an heir and dangerous events had focused the family on survival, and then the great experimentations would be delayed further.

The first stage of the great experimentations was the collection of material, and this would take several years in itself, sending forth groups of seasoned wizards to the furthest mountains and the deepest deserts in search of new and rare creatures that might prove particularly apt to wand-making. Ollivander's mainly restricted themselves to what was known in the trade as "the Big Three" - unicorn's mane, dragon's heartstring, and phoenix tails - and let the overseas trade provide for the more unusual designs, but that was not the point of being a wand-maker. Ollivander's supplied wands for the masses of Britain, but this, though a necessary part of their role, was but the source of their livelihood. Their intelligence and curiosity drove the family of Ollivander beyond merely tweaking the length here, the combination of yew and unicorn's hair there, and the sigils and wards that line the interior beyond previous recognition. No, Ollivander's was respected for its traditionalism, but driven by its experimentations outside of business. And every now and again, somebody would come in to the shop and find that none of the stock suited them, and they would be taken to the rear of the shop and shown a little door, just the right height for an eleven-year-old, and they would walk through it and then, after a few minutes, return with a box and a pleased smile on their face, and the parents would beam happily and know that their precious son or daughter was certainly destined for greatness. Ollivander's had a policy of never explaining that these children were little more than a guinea pig for the new experimentations of the family. That was not the point, of course; the wand chose the wizard, and the child was obviously not destined to live inside normal society for long.

Of course, that was not to say that to be chosen by a wand with a core of one of "the Big Three" was a sign of mediocrity, for, after all, the core was not the only measurement of the wand; the wood, the length and the flexibility were equally important, and that was just the common modifiers alone; beyond that were the wards, and the sigils that kept core and wood separate, or else the magic would react in unpredictable ways, and then there were the bindings, gold, silver, sinews or other fastenings. And each member of the family brought in their own new innovations, some of which became standard procedures in the creation of wands, such as the smoothing of the shaft with shark-skin, and others which only existed in a single wand, and would never appear again, such as the use of bowtruckle hide to bind wand-wood, which created terrible cuts and grazes when used near forests. When the great experimentations came, however, new techniques came not every few decades but each and every year, sometimes even mere months apart, and these breakthroughs were listed in the book of the family, that is in the possession of each member. In the front is a family tree that traced back until the tips of the trees bore leaves that could not be read, even under the most powerful lenses.

Most of the old wizarding families have books like these. Some don't contain anything past the front cover, and are intended as diaries for the next generation, the words leaching away into the greater book that only the head of the family can find, a testament to the generations. Other families keep the histories and rules of the family, and when new laws and events are written in the greater book they bleed into the diaries of the rest of the family, a constant reminder of their duties and of their lineage. And the Ollivanders, who are above all artisans, manufacturers, no matter how ancient and prestigious their line, keep the instructions on wand-making in their books, from the first wands that are made by the youths when they first come of age, to the appendices on the specific wards of each wood and each core and each length, subtle diagrams of magic scattered throughout. These were the secrets of the family, and the great book was hidden in the back room of the shop, behind the door just tall enough for an 11-year-old. This is so that the head of the family is forced to humble himself to the ancient secrets of the family, showing his obeisance by entering this sanctum sanctorum on his knees, an act of mystical ritual so far from the cold mechanics of their art that those not of the family would be puzzled by it if they knew what went on.

Into these books went the little notes and the diagrams they drew in the times of the great experimentations, to be found written neatly in the latest chapter of the family book. This chapter would begin with a birth, as several before had done, and nobody yet knew where it would end.

Two sons, then, one born to a line as pure as could be, the other to a Muggle noble and his hedge-witch paramour, one a long-awaited heir, the other a by-product of an unlikely love. One born in the city, high above the snow-swept streets, and another in the heart of the green Downs.

After the birth of their child, Beatrice found her husband grow colder towards her, and he retreated into his study, and barred the doors. After the first time she unlocked the door with magic, she found him sitting at his desk, not doing anything at all, but he scowled, and told her not to bother him now, he was busy. And with the child to look after, and not wanting to give him reason to turn her out, she did not try to enter again. They still ate together for meals at breakfast, lunch and noon, but his distaste for the child grew obvious, though his longing for her stayed strong. They called the child Albus, after the white chalk of the Downs, Percival for his father, Brian for his grandfather, and finally Wulfric, after her own father. As Albus grew up, the estates flourished under Percival's keen and ruthless management, they could afford a nurse to look after the child in its own room. With the child gone, Percival Dumbledore no longer slept in his room alone, but returned to sleep with his wife. When Albus occasionally escaped from the nurse and crept in the early hours of the morning into his parents' bed, though, he would leave the child to sleep with his mother, and disappear off to his room to work.

By the age of six, the nurse left the household, and Percival Dumbledore hired a tutor to come in and give the boy lessons in basic arithmetic and literacy. The tutor was harsh, and was particularly fond of the cane. When he first used it on Albus's palm, though, he found to his surprise that it broke, quite cleanly, without using any mark on the proffered palm. He promised the boy that the next day he would have two slaps from the cane, and when he returned the day after, cane in hand, he found that that too broke. The boy had no idea why it happened, and protested quite loudly that he was telling the truth, he wasn't a liar, he didn't know how it broke, until Percival came down from his study and asked them, very politely, to stop their infernal shouting or he'd have the boy outside mucking out the stables, and the tutor on his way back to Avebury without his cane, broken or otherwise.

At roughly the same time, in a small street hidden away from London, a little boy was sweeping the floor of the shop, being careful not to knock down the precarious stacks of boxes that piled high up to the ceiling, whilst attempting to get every last spot of dust away from the edges of the shelves. His name was Geoffrey, for no particular reason except that his mother liked the name. Providing the heir was an Ollivander, the family had no preference or tradition in naming their heirs.

Sweeping the floor wasn't of much use, of course, particularly not in the early spring, when few customers came in. The summer was the busy period, with new first-years coming in for their first wand, as well as a few, more bashful-looking older students who had somehow broken their wand in the exams or the post-exam revels, and needed a new one before a new term started or they set off in to the world. For the rest of the year, the family made new wands, took stock of what was left, and, as these were the times of great experimentations, the creation of new charms, techniques and wands took up most of their waking hours, up in the workshops above the shop. Geoffrey tended the shop most of the time, and he had a broom to keep him busy. When a customer entered the shop, he would run up to the counter, climb up the stool and press the little bell that would sound upstairs in the workshop, and then sit there grinning amiably at the customer. Sometimes this gained him a few sweets, if the customer was not in a hurry, and was young or possessed a sweet tooth, and every now and again genial, elderly women would pinch his cheeks and grin, and their greying husband would slip him a knut. That was how he spent his days, until the shop closed and he would run out and play in the streets with the other shop-children, such as little Annie Eeylop from the Owl Emporium, or the Flourish twins who fought dirty and knew all the words to the latest Magical Music Hall tunes.

Once, in a particularly enthusiastic game of Find The Muggle, he had hidden in the dark little street that led off Diagon Alley, and an old woman had shuffled up to him and asked if he wanted a sweet, there were lots of sweets at her little house down the alleyway, wouldn't he like to see? But he had sensed, somehow, that this was not a kindly woman like the ones who visited the shop, and that the man in the ragged top hat who lurked a bit behind her wouldn't give him any money, quite the opposite in fact. The next moment, he found himself with his back to the wall of Gringotts Bank, staring down in to the strange, murky alleyway, and the old woman simply looked at him in surprise. Then she drew her long, grimy finger across her neck at him, and shuffled back away down the alley. His mother had stern words with him that night.

That was how they grew up, then, one in the country, one in the town, and they learnt how to read and how to write, and then, on New Year's Eve when they had turned eleven, they each received a letter, of thick parchment, with their names written in green ink and sealed with a thick red seal.