Wands

[Sicila O'Dair]

"You will all listen very closely to what I am about to say."

Sicila's words were brisk instruction and filled the dining hall the exact amount that was necessary and not one decible more; she knew that she would have everyone's rapt attention even if she was whispering. After all, she was standing beside rows and rows of the exact type of boxes that every young witch or wizard could recognize in a heartbeat: wands.

"A wand is a privilege that many are denied. Some do not have the talent to wield one, some are prohibited by law from carrying one, and the very select few lose their right to carry one by their own folly or actions."

The Warden paused to let this sink in for the slower ones, taking the moment to study the crowd.

It was morning, the time of morning usually dedicated to breakfast but there was no food out and all the tables and chairs had been pushed back to make room for the audience. Every inmate and marshal was in attendance or had better be; Sicila herself was here, so everyone else ought to be as well. She had put out the word several minutes before about the announcement, planned it during a regularly scheduled meal so the lazy fatties would already be on their way, and taken up a spot to stand at the front of the hall.

Light poured in from the windows behind her. The boxes, hundreds and hundreds of slim, sleek black wooden boxes, were stacked in neat rows along two tables and guarded by several Marshals who scowled and glared, their own wands out and in their hands.

Sicila selected one box and opened it. Almost delicately she plucked out the polished wand that sat inside on crisp velvet, gripped it, held it up for all to see.

"A wand," the witch said, "is the most important part of the wizard."

She rapped this new one almost experimentally on the table and it sparked once before she put it away, placing it back with the others before she returned her attention to the crowd and explained crisply.

"Furiae Correctional Facility is participating in an institution-wide experiment to test out a new type of core on behalf of our friends at Spellbinders, Incorporated. Each of these wands," Sicila lifted a hand, "has been cored with a single feather from a griffon. Beyond that they vary in wood type and length as other wands do. I do not need to tell you," the witch added, a brow lifted to indicate she believed the opposite, "That the success of a new core will have wide-reaching effects on wandlore and the wizarding community as a whole.

"Obviously, there are rules." The Warden steepled her fingers here and recited rules she knew - no, expected - to be broken, "No magic in the corridors. No magic in the barracks. No magic outside of instruction or without a Marshal. Report strange wand behavior immediately. Failure to adhere to these rules will result in the confiscation of your new wand and a severe punishment."

Sicila wasn't worried about escape; it was impossible to Apparate into or out of Furiae, and there wasn't a witch or wizard alive who could fly themselves over an ocean.

She stated, "Form lines in front of each marshal, and let a wand select you."

The lines formed. To the unlucky inmates that picked the line in front of Sicila, the witch handed off wands carelessly, eager to be done with the mess. She read off of the back of each box until the wand fit and then ordered the inmate away and the next one forward.

"Birch, eleven inches, griffon feather core obviously - there, was that a spark? Good, go. Maple, seven and a half inches, alright, what are you - oh for the love of Merlin, girl, haven't you held a wand before? Look, just wave it about like - no, put it down. Put. It. Down. Go to the back of the line. Next. Eight and a quarter inches, oak. Nothing. Eight inches exactly, also oak. Hmm. Well, that's fine, take it. Go. Next."

[Neal aDiabhol]

Neal found that a stack of little oblong boxes is very tempting to push over. This though distracted him all the way through the Warden's speech. Like omst speeches, only the last few minutes were actually useful, so Neal spent the early stages of his boss's posturing observing the inmates. In a lot of ways, they were exactly like any other group of children, except with higher capacities for violence. Some were half-paying attention, not wishing to risk the Warden's wrath. Neal couldn't help a lopsided smile creeping onto his face. They were fools if they thought they could trick Sicilia. She was the sharpest person he knew, and also one of the funniest. It wasn't anything she said or even did, it was the way she lived. Pure disregard for anybody other than herself made her incredibly amusing to watch.

The rest of the inmates were either hanging onto her every word with fear glinting in their eyes, or openly showing their boredom. Neal almost laughed aloud when one boy's head slipped off the hand it was resting on and jerked towards the table. Luckily, the kid stopping it from impacting the table, otherwise Sicilia would have surely killed him. But even those who weren't particularly listening to her words were still focusing on her, because of the boxes and boxes of wands piled behind her. Neal, feeling particularly sadistic, quietly slid his own oak wand from its leather sheath and flicked it playfully around of his fingers, making teasing eye contact with the occasional inmate. A few saw what he was doing and glared at him. He gave on of them a cheeky, fluttering wave of his fingers, enjoying the way they hated him.

Neal knew he was one of the least popular marshals, but then he was of the least popular people wherever he went, so he could live with that. Any school friends he may have had were rather disheartened by him breaking another student's neck. Stuff like that does not gain friends, for some reason they're all afraid of you. Sensing that Sicilia was about to wrap her speech, he paid attention long enough to hear "Form lines in front of each marshal, and let a wand select you."


Neal sighed and rose from his food. Not that he'd been enjoying it, but it seemed respectful to act like it was a shame to let it go to waste. For some reason, brave soul were lining up in front of Sicilia. To be fair, they looking like prisoners on death row, but still. Neal felt rather alone, nobody seemed to want his wands, but then a few opportunistic inmates noticed that nobody was in front of him, and wandered over, wanting to get the whole ordeal over with. Neal grinned ferally, showing his teeth. He scooped up a few boxes, all of which were ash. Realising that the boxes were organised by wood, Neal collected a few willow wands in the other hand and called out, "Raise your hand if you had an ash wand before you got arrested? You, at the back?" Having received confirmation, Neal selected an ash wand at random and tossed it in the inmate's general direction. Hearing a shriek as the box hit her on the head, Neal smiled discerningly and said,

"How about willow?"

[Fallon Pollock]

Fallon was very, very fond of her wand – that is, the one she’d been purchased many moons ago, before she began school, and which she’d rarely been without until very recently. It was a juniper wand, she knew. Juniper trees were beautiful. They twisted as they grew upward, developing ridges and creases as they reached toward the sky, branches like the arms of something that was sincerely striving to hold more. Fallon knew a lot about trees because she loved them – she loved all plants, really. She was a star student in herbology and herblore back at school, and had spent quite a bit of time lost in the trees back at her old house in Maine, getting to know nature intimately. Nobody really wondered why she didn’t have that many friends.

Thing was, Fal didn’t really want a new wand. She liked her old wand. She probably should have been excited to get a wand at all, but she just couldn’t. Her mind just kept drifting to her true wand, which was cut from some tortured tree – the extension of the hand of a tortured artist, both of them locked away. She couldn’t help waxing emo – she hadn’t drawn, or used, or read the newspaper, or been outside just to relax in the grass in far too long, and she wasn’t speaking to Harper. She really, really needed to make a friend – ideally with a dealer. She missed her good friends Mary Jane and Lucy, who’d brought her many moments of clarity in the past. Anything was more bearable with drugs.

She dazedly fell in line behind some others, winding up on the Warden’s line. She was a bit miffed with the Warden at the moment, so she extended no friendly greeting once she found herself at the front, only offering the matriarch a pleading glance. “Can I please, please, please have a juniper wand?” she begged desperately, clasping her hands in front of her as though in prayer, like it would make an actual difference if some god was on her side. For all intents and purposes, the Warden was god - and god was a super bitch. Fallon looked so hopeful it was almost adorable.

[Harper Pollock]

Harper missed the Warden’s speech. Now that Fallon wasn’t following her around like shed forgotten how to be a person, she had a little bit more freedom to do what she wanted with herself. She’d gone out to the courtyard in the early morning, intending to get a good jog in before breakfast. She’d pulled her hair into a ponytail for the occasion, which she knew was probably a bad idea – being confused for Fallon typically felt like being confused for a hump backed, semi-retarded walrus with no social skills. When she entered the dining hall she was confused to see the boxes and the queues that suggested she’d missed something.

Without any other clues regarding what to do, she walked up to Fallon, who looked lost despite being on a line. She tugged on her ponytail to get her attention. Oh, she knew Fallon “hated” her and that they currently “weren’t talking,” but hump backed, semi-retarded walruses with no social skills sometimes forgot their own names, let alone their dumb little social battles. “Fal, what’s happening?” she asked, but her sister only turned her head in the other direction and moped. “Seriously? Don’t be a baby, Fallon. You’re always acting like this and then sitting and crying that nobody likes you,” she said, knowing very well that it was going to piss Fallon off even more. Instead, she looked around, walking up to the very, very short line of the head of tisiphone.

“Uh, oak?” she asked, assuming whatever wands they were being issued had something to do with the make of their old wands. “And pretty long, I think. Uh, oh, Merlin, I don’t know, ten inches or so? Or, you know, whatever,” she said with a snicker at her own ignorance. Harper did not know her wand – or her trees – nearly as intimately as Fallon did. “I could always try something new. What the heck?”

[Sicila O'Dair]

The whole process seemed to be moving along fairly smoothly which, to Sicila, was rather a bit of a surprise. With few exceptions, this batch of wands didn't seem to be particularly picky about whose hand they ended up in and she was managing to pass them off within the first few tries. Either that or the Warden had an inexplicable knack for being a wandlore specialist. Perhaps, she wondered very briefly as she passed another wand out to some groveling lout, she'd picked the wrong career.

Sicila O'Dair actually laughed out loud, once, and cruelly, which caused the boy she'd just sent away to jump and scurry. Ha! She couldn't be more perfect for this job if she was a cold-blooded murdering bitch.

Oh, wait.

The witch smirked faintly and glanced away over toward the other marshals and their lines, pausing to study Neal in particular. An inmate-turned-Marshal, a killer with a bad temper, a bit of a traditionalist when it came to inmate-faculty relations, and (most importantly) a pureblood, Sicila had to inwardly admit that she was fairly tolerant of Marshal aDiabhol, which if she were a normal person with a heart made of anything other than dead cold stone would be the same thing as fondness. Almost.

Of course he was also a creature. That put a bit of a damper on Sicila's tolerance.

The next candidate in hers expressed a wish for death just then with the pleading request of "Can I please, please, please have a juniper wand?"

Her eyes narrowed and she whipped her head about to fix the offender with a sharp stare that must have been similar to a butterfly being pinned live and flapping with a needle. She opened her mouth, about to say something very unkind, when the fact that it was Fallon Pollock registered in her mind. The bitter expression froze briefly on her face before it melted away into a short smile.

"Oh, Miss Pollock." The Warden of course used the actual names of those who were part of the faction under her eye. "Juniper, you said?" She scanned the boxes for an appropriate wood match, selecting three and setting them all out for the inmate to try. She remembered something then, "Oh, juniper was your old wand, wasn't it?"

Hmm. Perhaps she did have a future in wandlore after all.

[Fallon Pollock]

Fallon thought for a smidgen of a second that the Warden had decided she hated her. The thought was already stuck in her brain, given that it was the Warden who’d announced level promotions, and therefore the Warden who had left Fallon off of the list and instead rewarded stupid, perfect Harper. She was sure she hadn’t done anything to piss off the Warden specifically (she could be a little slow, but, contrary to popular belief, she wasn’t completely retarded), so she didn’t understand the woman’s sudden change of heart. The woman’s smile, however, eased her fear, and a weight she hadn’t even realized was in the pit of her stomach resolved itself and left her feeling a little better. She definitely didn’t want the Warden as an enemy. She gave the Warden a little grin in return, a pleading look still in her eyes.

Fallon nodded brightly when asked if her old wand was juniper, her smile brightening slightly. “Juniper and eleven inches exactly, including the handle. I love juniper,” she said wistfully, looking over the labeling on the boxes that the Warden had plucked, concentration contorting her features. “It’s great for healing, you know. It’s one of the most pure types of wood there is. And it’s really super light, red cedar especially - though the berries aren’t really that useful for potions,” she explained, rambling as though she’d actually been asked. She had been starved for communication since she’d stopped speaking to her sister, so much so that a one sided conversation with the Warden sounded nice.

She took one and, feeling a little bit foolish, intended to send up a few little sparks – one of the first things they learned when they were young, mostly in case of an emergency. The first wand – a little short, in her opinion, sent up only smoke and she reached down to try the second. With a flick, she sent up the little explosion of sparks she’d been expecting the first time. She clapped excitedly and then looked to the Warden, biting her bottom lip. “This one?” she asked, “Please?”

[Neal aDiabhol]

Neal nodded wisely at Miss Pollock as she explained her dilemma to him. After a brief stint of throwing wand boxes at the inmates and trying to knock them out (a game he will certainly be playing again soon), he had changed tactics. He was now practicing his Ollivander impression. From his peripheral vision, he could see Miss
Pollock's twin sister being favoured by the Warden. Neal then drew the conclusion that the Pollock family were purebloods. Contrary to his boss' opinion, Neal liked to think that Pureblood circles consisted solely of obnosious snobs whose children's necks broke easily. But given that he did not wish to offend Sicilia, he decided to give this girl a second chance.

"Ah, yes," he said, his tone tinted with a smidgen of wizened old man. "Good wood, oak. I have one myself," he twirled said wand between his fingers with the ease of someone who will do anything to distract themselves from paperwork. Neal reached behind him to the oak pile, which was a little further back than he had thought, meaning he nearly toppled over. His robes slipped open a little, and he quickly straightened and pulled them closed, sending a fearful glance at the Warden. If she worked out that he was not wearing a shirt...Oh, he knew he ought to, but they were restrictive. And annoying.

With the box in question in his possession, he tossed it casually from left to right. "I see your sister is very friendly with the Warden," he said, nodding in their direction. The other girl looked very wistful and hopeful, like some sort of fairytale princess. How disgusting. Neal winked almost imperceptibly. "Care to make her jealous?" Contrary to popular opinion, Neal was definitely not above manipulating inmates for his own entertainment. In fact, he found it a great pastime. So, because he had been bored lately, he said. "Of course, Miss Pollock. And may I say, oak is an excellent choice. An excellent choice indeed." Neal had pitched his voice so that it carried, but not ostentatiously. Still, several inmates pricked up their ears when they heard this. Neal smiled at them dangerously, telling them it would not be a good idea to try this themselves. The werewolf spared a glance for Sicilia, hoping he had not made a decision that would get him killed.

Oh well, he thought to himself. Live dangerously, as they say.

[Elijah Inness]

Bonk!

"Ow!"

Elijah was one of the recipients of Marshal aDiabhol's wands, and by recipient here we mean to say throwing target. He rubbed his head ruefully, staring downward at the fallen box with some apprehension; having never had any sort of proper magical schooling whatsoever (here we do not count any education received through Furiae to be "proper"), Elijah had never owned a wand before, never held one except for the loaner wands inmates occasionally used for lessons, and frankly he was sort of leery of the whole idea.

Color him superstitious, but he preferred his own two hands. Plus, he was Catholic, and even if all these godforsaken heathens around him didn't agree, Elijah was still halfway hopeful that some scrap remains of his soul was going to make it through to see the other end of the facility.

By "other end" we mean the graduation doors. Not death.

The label on the back of the box read: Ash. 8 3/4 inches. Griffon feather.

Deciding that acceptance of the policy was in his best interest, the inmate bent and scooped up the wand, sealed it securely in its container, and put it box-and-all inside of a pocket. At this point in time it would really just get in his way; it's not like he knew enough magic to be able to do anything useful in the event of a major catastrophe.

Plus, he was apparently leaving in three months! He hadn't been in the chow hall for the announcement but someone mentioned he was Level Seven now, and that was just swell with Elijah. You'll be able to find him sitting properly on his bunk bed for the remainder of his probationary period, during the times when he was not exactly punctual to lessons. Or groveling.

Elijah rubbed his head where the box had hit again, glared at the offending Marshal, and turned to leave.