The last week of August always carried the same rhythm. Trunks scraped along the new settlements. Parents walked too close to their children, as if a hand on a shoulder could stop fate. First years kept glancing at their letters, then at the shops, then back at their letters again, checking the ink like it might change its mind.
Ollivanders, other than moving to the largest settlement, did not change. The sign stayed. The narrow windows stayed. The same old promise hung in the air, that a wand would choose and the world would tilt.
What changed was the man behind the counter.
Two boys in new robes stopped in front of the window, noses close to the glass. One of them squinted.
"That is not Ollivander." The sentence came out as a complaint, not a question.
A girl beside them leaned on her toes to see. "My cousin swears he saw Ministry men inside yesterday. Not Aurors. They wore those grey collars. The ones from Records." She checked her mother, then lowered her voice anyway. "Father says the old wandmaker got summoned. Proper summons. Not a polite letter."
The mother pinched the bridge of her nose. "Stop gossiping outside a shop like bored housewives." She steered the girl away, still watching the counter as if the stranger might step out and name her sins.
Inside, the young man worked with the tired patience of someone repeating the same reassurance for the seventieth time.
"Uncle Ollivander will return," he told a witch who had come in to replace a broken wand. "You are not abandoned. He is only busy."
Busy. That was the word the Ministry used when it wanted silence.
-
Garrick Ollivander sat beneath the Ministry lights without fidgeting. His hands stayed folded. His spine stayed straight. The other wandmakers around him made enough nervous movements for the whole room.
Over fifty of them. Some from Britain, most from the continent. A few spoke in low tones, introducing with titles and bloodlines as if that could anchor them. Others stayed quiet, watching the doors.
The doors opened without flourish. The room still shifted like a creature sensing a blade. They stood to greet the Minister for Magic.
Arcturus Black entered first. He moved at a pace that forced the room to match him. Not fast, not slow, certain and tired.
Corvus followed on his right. The difference was deliberate. The heir made the room feel the rule, then the future.
Arcturus took the central chair without asking. Corvus stayed standing. He let the room settle itself.
Murmurs died by degrees. A wandmaker from Vienna started to rise, then thought better of it and sat down again.
Corvus placed a leather folio on the table and opened it with two fingers.
"You were invited because you are the best your country could name," he began. No greeting or warmth. Only purpose. "If you believe you are here to be praised, you have wasted your own time."
That landed. A Frenchman tightened his jaw. A German woman pressed a thumb against a ring, once, twice.
Corvus turned a page. A set of moving images flared to life above the table, suspended like a photograph that refused to be still.
A child in front of a row of sealed containers. Woods and core materials were each labelled in neat script.
"We have used wands since the Middle Ages," Corvus continued. "Before that, we used rituals, runes, staffs, charm work, and whatever our ancestors could hold without being dragged to a pyre. A wand became our symbol. It also became our most convenient leash." He watched the room for the first flinch. "Take the wand, take the wizard. That has been true long enough that Muggles wrote fairy tales about it."
Arcturus rested his hands on the table. The old man did not interrupt. Corvus had become the leader he was looking forward to listening to and more.
Corvus lifted a second image.
The same child, palm pressed to a piece of yew. The yew trembled. The container brightened, as if pleased.
"Selection has never been the problem," Corvus said. "You have spent centuries refining resonance. Wood, core, temperament, intent. Yet progress is chasing perfection. Your craft is not above that. It is incomplete, like all other crafts."
A murmuring swell rose, then stopped when Corvus lifted his gaze.
"A team I lead has been working on a solution to the weakness of separation with a wand. Allow me to walk you through the process of what we reached so far."
He took out a new set of pictures.
"Once we identify compatible materials," he continued, "we do not carve them into a wand." He let the word hang. "We implant them."
Silence took the room. Even the ones who had been whispering went still.
Corvus turned a page.
The moving image shifted to a ritual table. Not an ornate one. A clinical metal table. A circle of runes carved into metal. A healer in plain robes and a wandmaker were next to a sleeping child, chest rising steadily.
"The core material and the wood are reduced to a harmonical matrix," Corvus said. "Then, seated at the centre of the magical core. Not on the skin. Not in the bone. In the place where the magical core forms and develops throughout the life of the child."
A Scottish wandmaker made a small, sharp sound in the back of his throat. The sort of sound a man made when he wanted to object but knew it would cost him.
"Your first thought," Corvus went on, "is that this is impossible. Your second thought is that this ends your livelihood." He allowed himself a thin hint of amusement. "You are half right."
Arcturus shifted in his chair. The chain on his chest clicked once.
"We ran long-term observations," Corvus continued. "The children who received harmonical matrices showed stable regulation, amplification, and accelerated maturation of magical veins. Their cores did not plateau at the same point as their peers' did. They kept growing." He tapped the folio. "We have the data and the outcomes. We have a working procedure."
A wandmaker from Prague leaned forward. "You are turning children into living wands." The sentence sounded like an accusation.
Corvus met the man's eyes. "No. I am removing the easiest method to disarm them." He paused. "If you want a moral argument, you came to the wrong room. If you want to discuss whether it works, I can keep you busy until you forget your own name."
A few of them looked at Arcturus, as if the Minister might soften the edge.
Arcturus gave them nothing. A patient stare. A warning built into stillness.
Corvus moved the image again.
A boy, older now. Wandless. His fingers flicked. A training dummy shattered. Another flick. The pieces reassembled. No wand or borrowed authority.
"This is the next generation," Corvus said. "Their magic is bound to their own cores. Their channels are reinforced. Their weakness is reduced."
He closed the folio.
"Now, let us discuss why you are here." He leaned his palms on the table. The room felt the weight anyway. "Your governments offered your names as their best. Not your kindest. Not your most loyal. The best."
He glanced at a young wandmaker who still looked like he expected a handshake. The boy dropped his eyes.
"You have a choice," Corvus continued. "Join the programme and learn the new procedure. Your craft becomes part of the foundation of the Alliance. Or refuse and be recorded as the last generation of wandmakers on this continent." He spread his hands slightly, as if this were a generous offer. "The freedom of choice is yours."
The murmurs came back. Faster now, angrier. Fear sat beneath the words.
A Portuguese wandmaker stood. "If we refuse, will we be imprisoned?"
Corvus turned his head. The movement was small. It carried.
"If you refuse, you will be escorted to the portkey office," he replied. "You will return home. You will keep making wands for the customers you still have. You will also sign a contract that ensures you do not talk about what you have seen or heard."
Someone laughed once. It sounded like panic.
Arcturus finally spoke. "You were summoned because your work has always mattered. It will matter more now." The Minister's voice held a cold courtesy. "Do not mistake this for negotiation. It is an invitation to survive relevance."
That ended the argument before it began.
Corvus let the room stew in it. Then his gaze slid, precisely, to the far end.
Garrick Ollivander had not moved. Not even once.
Corvus stepped around the table and stopped by him.
"Master Ollivander." The address carried respect without softness. "I would like to have a word in my office if you are available."
Ollivander's eyes blinked once. "Your office, Master Black?"
"Yes, Master Ollivander, I do have an office here in the ministry."
Corvus acknowledged the title with a slight dip of his chin. Arcturus stood. The room rose with him, too late to make it look voluntary.
"You will be given quarters," Arcturus told the wandmakers. "Food, security, and privacy. Choose quickly. The programme does not wait for anyone's pride."
Corvus left with Ollivander at his side.
-
The corridor outside the room felt quieter. The Ministry had learned, in recent years, that noise invited consequences.
Ollivander walked without hurry. He did not look around as if he might get lost. He had been inside these walls for decades. He simply had not been summoned like this.
Corvus opened his office door. There was no assistant or a secretary. He wanted this clean.
Ollivander stepped inside and stopped at the threshold. His gaze went over the shelves, to the parchments and wards set into the stone. Then it fixed on Corvus.
Corvus closed the door.
"Sit, please," he offered.
Ollivander sat.
Corvus took the chair across from him, not behind a desk. The choice was deliberate. A meeting, not a lecture.
"You understand what I offered in that room," Corvus said.
Ollivander's fingers shifted, then stilled again. "I understand you intend to remove the most visible weakness the mundane world has over us." His eyes narrowed slightly. "And you intend to do it with my profession." He let the smallest edge of humour enter his voice. "One could call that theft."
"One might, Master Ollivander. If you were not a firm supporter of the Dark Wizard named Dumbledore. I believe you still remember his name."
Ollivander shook his head. There was no point in fighting for what was already gone.
The wandmaker studied him. The old man's gift ran in his blood, old enough to be its own curse. House Ollivander was one of the oldest and best Wandmakers of the continent because of this gift. Magical sight, he and some of his house members were able to see the resonance harmony. The way the magic of a witch or a wizard leaned toward an element.
Most people appeared as two or three tones to him. A dominant note, a secondary one, then the faint drift of whatever life had done to them.
Corvus looked like a storm trapped in glass.
Ollivander's gaze held. His throat tightened once, then he mastered it.
"You are not asking for my endorsement," he said.
Corvus nodded. "I am asking for supervision." He took his regular wand out of its holster and gave it to Ollivander. Next, he stood and went to his desk. Opened a drawer and withdrew a narrow case. The case stayed closed. "I want the procedure conducted under the eyes of the best wandmaker in Britain."
Ollivander examined the wand in his hands. Yew, thirteen inches, the core was a strange one. Thestral hair braided over a basilisk scale. A unique wand for a unique wizard. His gaze went to the case afterwards. He exhaled.
"You are the one who introduced the method, Master Black. I doubt you require an old man such as myself." Ollivander's tone did not question; it measured.
Corvus did not deny it. "Knowing and doing are not the same." He leaned forward slightly. "I am asking for your supervision, not because of your knowledge, Master Ollivander. I am asking for your supervision specifically because of your talent."
Ollivander's lips twitched. "You are well informed, and that is a politician's answer, Master black."
"A leader's answer," Corvus corrected.
Ollivander rested his hands on the arms of the chair. "You want me present when you place your own core materials?"
Corvus nodded once. "Yes."
Ollivander's gaze flicked to the case, then back to Corvus. "You did not purchase your first wand from me. It always bothered me." The old man's voice took on a rare sincerity. "It still does."
Corvus allowed himself a brief, sharp smile. Not friendly. Simply an acknowledgement.
"Then consider this my apology," Corvus replied. "And my offer." He paused. "Supervise the operation. In return, I will let you witness something you have spent your whole life circling without touching."
Ollivander did not ask what. He already knew. Albus had it before his fall. Corvus Black was not a naive man to pass up the opportunity.
Corvus stood, walked to the desk, and set his hand flat on the polished surface.
"I will immortalise this moment," Corvus murmured.
He opened the case and withdrew a wand.
He set it down between them.
Ollivander's breath caught despite himself.
The Death Stick.
The Elder Wand.
Ollivander's eyes did all the reacting; the rest of him refused to show. Wide, focused, hungry in the way only a craftsman could be when faced with the source of a lifetime of myths.
Corvus watched him watch it and kept his voice calm.
"Now," he said, "tell me what you see and if it is repeatable."