Makeshift Chemistry | Nell

[rhys alexander greyback]

Tag: eleanor gwendolen ollivander                    Words: 562               Notes Rhys paused as he straightened his button up shirt trying to rid it of its wrinkles and so he would not look so disheveled. Werewolf he might be, but messy he was not. A habit from living at the orphanage where they tried at times in vain to instill some discipline in the children there and he took to it as it was the only sense of order he had and that helped him feel grounded. Hogwarts had been much the same, the routine and the lifestyle had helped him feel grounded which in turn helped him feel focus. There had been so many kindred spirits in his house and even in the Ravenclaw house as well and while it took some time for acceptance to come to him he felt less alone that he had in a very long time. Some of that had to do with individuals who gave him a chance early on and really, they held a special place in whatever he had for a heart.   Nell had been one of those children on that very first day after the nerve-wracking sorting ceremony. Rhys had sat himself a few empty seats down from the rest of the Slytherin students as he could feel their glares and stares and she sat next to him and introduced herself. Rhys could remember those friendly brown eyes looking so innocently at him. Ollivander. No, this had to be some mistake, surely, she knew who Fenrir Greyback was. And after a short, reserved pause he took the hand that was extended to him and introduced himself. Rhys was not someone who easily forgot anything, whether it was a snub or comment at his expense nor a simple act of kindness.   Horizon Alley was regretfully not somewhere he visited often but when he was in the area he made it a habit to stop by and visit an old friend. Graduation was a wonderful event but also devastating in how drastically one’s life changed from the routine of the school year. Rhys had gone off to Curse Breaker training and while they communicated via Owl, it wasn’t quite the same. The thought left a strange feeling in his chest, he wasn’t sure what it was but he had certainly noticed how the loss of such a presence in his life affected him.   Satisfied with his appearance he pushed the door open to the familiar wand shop, careful not to make too much noise and startle her if she was working. How often did he find her with those glasses on, so focused on her work. Finally, he saw her appear from around the corner and with a smirk he announced his presence. Hey Nell. Truthfully it had been some time since his last visit, the world had become a chaotic place and while he was hardly an Auror or an Investigator it certainly had put a strain on whatever work-life balance he’d tried to maintain. How've you been? It was nice to have a breather, he was exhausted. Not only from working but from a chronic lack of sleep, he almost would have preferred to be a hated werewolf entirely than to go through the nightmares he still had often since he was a boy and the insomnia that followed. Regardless, he had a small grin on his face, it was nice to see her.

credit to Laura of Adox

[eleanor gwendolen ollivander]

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It had been a week from hell. Even when she had been apprenticing under her sister at Ollivander’s, they had never received this many orders for wand repairs and replacements for first year students. What were they teaching kids at Hogwarts these days if wands were snapping left and right? Nell could understand the fact that the student body was effectively doubled with the Ilvermorny students still there, but this hadn’t been an issue last year! And here she thought having to make and supply all of those students with wands was bad. Apparently the American school had some archaic rule where the underage students left their wands at the school during the summer months, to keep them from practicing magic before they became of age. The fact that all those wands had been destroyed or lost in the ensuing problem there…she had been horrified, to say the least. But this year’s batch of first years, Hogwarts and Ilvermorny students alike, took the cake for sure.

She hadn’t even sold all that many starter wands, and while thankfully most of the ones she was repairing and replacing weren’t hers, a few that were had come through. One looked like it found its way into a cauldron of acid as a stirring mechanism - probably an overly eager Ravenclaw that thought they could mimic mummy’s magic. The rest were her sister’s models, and a few from smaller, lesser British wandmakers that were solely in it for the money. Those ones made sense. They were poorly made and haphazardly put together. While Nell disagreed with her sister on a lot when it came to wandmaking, at least Veronica had an apt hand for the skill. Ollivander’s was still the best damn wand shop in all of England and would remain that way.

Stationed near the front of her workshop (right behind the curtain that opened up into the shop), Nell was sat, with a set of extra-thick bottle glass spectacles on, and was currently performing what she called ‘surgery’ on a rosewood wand that had come in the day before. It had been snapped in half, but luckily the core was still intact. With the glasses on, she could still see the thin unicorn hairs nestled in the wood, right where they belonged. It was as simple as repairing the wood, which was easy enough.

She was so laser-focused on the wand being repaired that she hadn’t heard the door to the shop opening. A few sparks later and it seemed like everything was back to normal on the wand and she lifted her glasses onto the top of her head and turned through the curtain and back into the shop side of the building. She almost dropped the newly repaired wand onto the ground (it would have been fine!) when she was met with a voice saying hello to her, and asking how she had been. Her eyes were still trying to focus back to normal after having the glasses on, and she hadn’t even seen the person standing there. “Rhys! Hey!” she responded, knowing the voice well enough that she really didn’t need to see yet. “Give me like, one second.”

Rummaging blindly through the underside of the counter, she found what she figured was the return box for the wand. Once everything was un-fuzzy, she’d know for sure, but it would work for the time being. She slapped it down onto the counter and dropped the wand in it. “I’m well. Super busy. Lots of first years breaking their wands for some reason,” she answered his second question, unable to hide the frantic tone in her voice. It was one wand after the next, and they had to be turned around in a day or less. “Did you just get back from a trip?” Nell followed up, as she ducked below the counter again to grab a repair note to put into the box with the wand. The student had to know what had been repaired, after all.

rhys alexander greyback ● 669 ● Georgia by Phoebe Bridgers

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[rhys alexander greyback]

Tag: eleanor gwendolen ollivander                    Words: 620               Notes Rhys felt like he’d caught her at a bad time as she was rummaging around with a wand in hand that was not hers. She didn’t quite look at him but he remembered how those special glasses she wore required some adjustment after a prolonged period of time. He himself had tried them on once for fun and regretted it soon after due to the headache he’d gotten. While he waited for her to gather herself, he looked around the shot, it looked the same as he’d last left it save some additional boxes on the shelves which he hoped was a good sign. Rhys stifled a yawn that came on suddenly, he was exhausted but he hadn’t felt like going home quite yet. Honestly, had she not been here or been busy he’d probably gone to grab a drink or two. ”Sorry, don’t want to disturb you if you’re busy.” From what she’d shown him and little he understood the craft of wand making was as much a science as it was an art, not something to be rushed and in need of great precision. Her knack for detail was astounding, certain surpassing his own.   ”Yea, thinks have been picking up but not sure if that means anything. And we’re all on a bit of a high alert all things considered.” Rhys answered with a shrug. The events of last winter despite being almost a year ago were still fresh in so many ways. He wasn’t sure what progress had been made on all that chaos caused by the prison break and he didn’t have that many friends in the Ministry to ask. Rhys chuckled, first years breaking their wands reminded him of a memory of his school years. ”I don’t suppose there’s a student having their dear friends testing wands built in the common room, is there?” Not that it had happened often, but it was a fond memory and really the Nurse had grown back his eyebrows rather quickly afterwards.   Rhys stuck his hands in his pockets and looked around again at all the boxes that lines the shelves, it did remind him of Ollivander’s shop in Diagon Alley but he didn’t care to mention that as he knew Nell’s feelings on that subject. Truthfully, he’d been home almost a week and had just tried to rest but sleep hadn’t come easy but despite that his long trips away left him longing for contact with his friends and his siblings. The moon had just passed so everyone was probably recovering still, and he still felt sore despite the potion, though it did help some.   Rhys paused for a second, he didn’t want to bother her if she was busy—he knew she took that very seriously. ”Wanted to see if you fancied a drink, but if you’re busy….” He did actually have another purpose for being here, an old errand he’d never gotten around to doing due to work and really it hadn’t been that urgent. The last time he’d transformed without a potion he managed to destroy many items in his home office, they weren’t in urgent need of replacement but since he was here. ”Oh, I was also looking for a new chair and desk.” He moved closer to the counter where she stood behind but didn’t really look at her when he spoke. ”I uh, ahem seem to have destroyed my last ones.” It wasn’t a secret that he was a werewolf exactly, most people were under the assumption he was due to his name but people like Nell knew. After this many years having known one another it certainly came up, and he’d wanted her to know if only for her safety as well.

credit to Laura of Adox

[eleanor gwendolen ollivander]

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The way she had stated that she was busy didn’t really come out the way she had intended it to – she was definitely overworked right now and had a lot to finish up in a short amount of time, but it was far from taking over every waking moment. If she really needed the free up time, she could easily close the store for half a day to knock out most of the repairs that had been sent in. The part that took forever was trying to make the tiny repairs and discussing what charms were used on self-rocking rocking chairs with interested customers at the same time. Questions and concentration, unsurprisingly, did not go hand in hand with a lot things. Repairing wands was not one of them.

Before she could correct herself, Rhys had continued, answering her question pretty quickly. It made sense that Gringotts was trying to reel in the cursebreakers a little bit right now. There were a lot of unknowns out there right now, and the goblins would surely start being fiscally conservative pretty soon here. The amount of times they tried to tell her that they didn’t see the value in some of her rarer wands when she tried to store them in her vault was too high to count at this point. One a fundamental level, she didn’t really see eye to eye with them, but that was usually because they were too busy looking down their noses at her. The argument that had ensued when she was trying to take money out to by the shop had been grand in scale.

“My nephew might be. He’s next in line for Ollivander’s,” Nell commented as she finally found the repair invoice that she had been looking for under the counter. Scribbling down what had been completed quickly, she stuffed the wand gently into the box and placed the note on top before sealing it up. It was then added to the large stack of repaired wand boxes sitting on one end of the counter. At least a dozen had been fixed today. All that was left was delivering them to the post office.

Rhys explained that if she wasn’t busy, he had wanted to see if she would grab a drink with him, and then quickly added that he needed a new desk and chair. She laughed at how funny following the first up with the second worked out. “It’s like you don’t want to see me outside of the shop,” she laughed again, shaking her head. “Both of those are easy enough. I can probably have them done by the end of the week if you can get me measurements. Literally anything is better than fixing wands right now.” Nell ripped another piece of paper from the notepad and scribbled onto it a reminder for the furniture. She was probably going to forget about it with the way things were currently going in the workshop. Plenty of chicken-scratch notes and work orders were laying around. Getting lost in them (and losing them) was bound to happen any moment here.

Checking her watch, she was surprised to see how late it actually was. “Yeah, I could do a drink now.” She slipped her work smock off and tossed it over the counter before flicking her wand at all of the lights in the shop. “But if you could help me bring these to the post office down the street first, that’d be great. Then you’ve got me for the rest of the night.” Nell grabbed a good amount of them, but if she had been on her own this would have easily been two or three trips. The last thing she wanted to do was drop newly repaired wands all over Horizon Alley. That would be unbelievably unprofessional.

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[rhys alexander greyback]

Tag: eleanor gwendolen ollivander                                  Notes The Quarantine and the attacks this year had created a sort of chaotic situation in the UK at the moment and Rhys had been home a lot more this year than he usually was, it was odd. But there were benefits to that, he could visit with good friends and more importantly his siblings especially the ones still in school. Nell mentioned her nephew and he could imagine the boy at his young age probably already knew a lot about wands and wand-making but he was fully aware that there was no love lost between Nell and her older sister. The family dynamics were rough to say the least and he himself did not get along with all of Nell's siblings either but he never spoke much on the topic unless she asked. He watched her write a note to place with a wand he'd assumed she had repaired and placed it on top of a rather large stack of wands. Rhys laughed, that certainly hadn't been his intention to only visit Nell for furniture and her work but since he was here he had asked. But she happily agreed to help him in his request. "Of course I do, just figured since I was here." Though soon he would need some other additional items but he would request them over time. "I'll send you the information tomorrow." The chair and the desk had been mangled during a full moon but other items had been damaged in other fashions, his mind wandered to his clandestine relationship and how it had weighed on him since the summer but he couldn't let it go. Nobody knew, and he preferred it that way so nobody could be witness to his constant lapse into decadence. Rhys knew what people would say, what Nell would say and it wasn't anything new. He'd experienced that sort of talk when had been in school and people got close to him, when he'd made best friends or found love. He smiled slightly when she agreed to a drink, he was glad because he was able to spend time with her but also because it would help keep him out of his head and then lastly because, well, alcohol. Although her agreement came with a condition, but he was happy to help as well. "Sure, no problem." Rhys walked over to the counter and began grabbing the boxes she hadn't grabbed. One thing that came with his height was a larger arm span and he stacked them carefully so he could still follow her and not trip over anything. Rhys had been allowed to travel recently which had been a nice breather from being at home but he'd grown so accustomed to it that it had felt disruptive, no matter. Seeing an old friend helped him feel grounded.

credit to Laura of Adox

[eleanor gwendolen ollivander]

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“Shouldn’t take long, regardless,” Nell stated, realizing that she was only repeating herself at this point. It was the truth though. Her furniture sales were taking a lot more precedent these days (the recent influx for wands being the only different work she’d done in months), and she was actually itching to get back to it. Woodworking scratched all of the places that wandmaking couldn’t get to anymore. Years of finely tuning magical sticks had started to become mind numbingly boring. While wands were still her most profitable stock, she also couldn’t compete with Ollivander’s. So having people request furniture only meant that she was doing something else right.

“If I had anything built right now, I’d show you. Sort of been wrapped up in all of this,” she added, motioning at the rest of the boxes as she took the few she could hold. Thinking about it, she realized that having a floor model would probably help a lot when it came to decision making on the customer’s end. Dropping the boxes she had just picked up back onto the counter, Nell scribbled out another note and stuck it on top of the pile of other notes. So many of them were ‘to-dos’ that should have been done a week ago already. But they were going to have to wait.

Content, she took her boxes once again and headed towards the door, fumbling for her wand at the same time so that she could lock the door behind them. Really, any wand that she had to mail out would do. They had all been put through a litany of tests to make sure they were functioning correctly and were no longer leaking magic out of miniscule cracks, or had unicorn hairs protruding through the tip. That was more than she needed to do, but if she wanted to make more of a name for herself, it had to be this way. “Where’ve you got in mind?” Nell asked, in reference to the drinking, as she waited for Rhys to exit the shop. She had managed to get all of her boxes stacked on top of each other, balancing them with one arm and her face as she twirled her wand around in the other. Her sister would have had a heart-attack if she saw Nell doing that with customer property. At this point in the day, she was probably a bottle and a half deep into whatever Italian wine had been imported earlier in the week. It was a great way to piss through the family money quickly. Nell, thankfully, had the mind to do that at a pub, where she’d probably pass out before getting too far.

rhys alexander greyback ● 449 ● Sing For The Wind by Roo Panes

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[rhys alexander greyback]

Tag: eleanor gwendolen ollivander                    Words: 556               Notes Rhys watched as she picked up a handful of wand boxes but then paused as soon as she had finished speaking. There was that familiar look in her eyes of an idea suddenly popping in her head and she dropped the boxes that she had been holding to write down said thought. Perhaps someone that hadn't known her well would have wondered what in the world she was doing but it was familiar to Rhys since their school days and it was just part of the details he remembered in those he cared about or was close to. "It's fine, really--not anything urgent." He commented, and it was the truth. But, he preferred his friend have his business than whoever else made furniture in Magical London plus Nell did good work in his opinion. When her note had been finished and she picked up the wand boxes again, Rhys had his own arms full of the remaining boxes and he followed her and waited patiently as she locked the door. He looked around, scanning the area out of habit mainly and then his eyes settled on the pub that was nearby. The Violet Hound Pub. Although Rhys didn't frequent this establishment, it did hold some fond memories for him. "There's that pub right around the corner." It wasn't terribly late so the crowd would be light, and really Rhys was hardly picky as long as some kind of whiskey was available. He remembered when he had first tried firewhiskey at Hogwarts when some of the 5th year boys had snuck some into the boys dormitory. Since the boys were not allowed in the girls' dormitory they could be found at times in the boys rooms for such clandestine activities such as underage drinking. Rhys couldn't remember if Nell had been there that time, but then again he and his friends had gotten a bit carried away and since then he hadn't been able to turn down a glass. Nell masterfully balanced wand boxes while handing her wand in her other hand, which meant it probably wasn't the first time she'd had to multi-task in this fashion. While someone else might have been worried she might drop the boxes, Rhys knew she knew what she was doing though he did still keep an eye out. "Unless you had a preference?" Rhys shifted his weight from one foot to the other, truthfully he was a bit sore. The full moon had just passed and even with his sister's potion it was still a few days to recover. It was the same every month, the few days before were just energetic and even chaotic while he always dealt with the eventuality of the physical healing process and the readjustment of his senses. While he waited Rhys felt a yawn creep up on him, he was still tired but that seemed a normal and persistent state for him but nothing something alcoholic and good company couldn't fix. It was something he missed from his school days, his friends and a sense of acceptance among them and despite the looks and whispers he'd felt at home. Graduation had been difficult, everybody went to live their lives and he went to travel. He just wanted that grounded feeling again especially when there was so many different thoughts going through his mind lately.

credit to Laura of Adox

[eleanor gwendolen ollivander]

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The pub that Rhys was referring had to be the Violet Hound, which had opened recently. Nell, unfortunately, didn’t make it out all too often these days, and it wasn’t a wonder why she was virtually left alone by her old schoolmates and the other shopkeepers around Horizont. In her defense, there were so many things she had to do at the shop and the majority of her friends were just as busy, but with work schedules that allowed them to go out on the weekends. It made sense though; everyone else had semi-normal jobs, the multitude of cursebreakers included, and she had to maintain a shop. Finding the time to set aside to go out for anything other than a family function was difficult, and even when she had to do Ollivander stuff during the workday, she disliked being away from the shop for more than a few hours. For her, doing this was a rare experience these days. Everything was always business, all the time. Even thinking of taking a break when she had so much to do made her feel uncomfortable. At the same time, she knew a brief respite from it all was necessary to avoid burnout. That was the last thing she wanted to happen right now. Magic furniture was one thing, but the second she lost the ability to create new wands, that was it.

“That’s fine. It’s the new one, right?” she asked, hoping to confirm that the pub was indeed the Violet Hound. She was so out of the loop that she didn’t even know what the clientele there was typically like. Were they locals, or people coming into the shopping district to unwind? There wasn’t much else to do in Horizont after hours unless you were going to the casino, so putting a pub here was certainly an interesting idea. The owner was probably sold on the location the same way Nell had been, ‘up and coming’, as the real estate wizard had pitched it to her, and since then quite a few more shops had popped around hers. The next step into cultivating a more inviting community and shopping experience had to be a pub, right?

With Rhys following her out of the shop, she flicked her wand at the door and it audibly locked behind them, curtains behind the windows drawing themselves as the store was closed for the day. She liked the openness of her storefront and the semi-emptiness inside, as opposed to Ollivanders centuries of clutter. Somehow that hadn’t driven Veronica mad yet, and it had left Nell perplexed for years. Apparently she was fine with that because it was part of the shop’s charm, or something.

“They’re going to kill me for bringing these by so late,” Nell commented as she started their walk towards the post office. In her defense, it was the only time that she could leave the store, and the post workers needed to understand that. Especially with these being students’ wands. “Have you ever thought about if what you’re doing is the right thing for you?” she asked suddenly, trying to look at Rhys around her tower of boxes but only managing to barely see him. “I like wandmaking, but I’m starting to understand why my sister is always pissed off. Its soul draining work, even though it’s worth it at the end.” What she really needed was a vacation. And a drink or two. The trip to the bar after this was starting to grow on her the closer she was to being done for the day.

rhys alexander greyback ● 597 ● Moon Song by Phoebe Bridgers

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[rhys alexander greyback]

Tag: eleanor gwendolen ollivander                    Words:                Notes Rhys was familiar with the pub. He went there more often than not compared to other pubs that Wizards typically frequented, but it really just depended on where he was or who he was meeting. For example, with his friends that were teaching at the school he usually met them in Hogsmeade at the Three Broomsticks or the Hog’s Head, but the Violet Hound was closer to home, so it made it easy to just pop in for a drink and even some food. Since he’d gone back before his birthday, he’d found himself stopping by a bit more often, there was something about good homemade food that drew him in more than even the whiskey did. Perhaps it was the comfort of it, it reminded him of good times with good friends during his school days though now they were all older and busier and didn’t see one another as much. He did find some comfort in how he felt like things just continued easily despite long absences. And plus, he knew how much Nell worked, he was someone that pushed himself just as much in his own career, but a break was needed from time to time. ”New-ish.” He commented, it wasn’t as old as other places such as the Leaky Cauldron but still was popular. ”They have good pie too.” He added, almost absent-mindedly. Knowing the hours, she worked, she might not have eaten as well. The shop was closed with a flick of her wand and the began walking. The shops and establishments here were relatively newer than in Diagon Alley but it was a nice addition, but still changing. With Rhys’ work he was often gone for stretches at a time and always found something different when he returned. They walked and then she asked him a question, but it had felt a bit random to him but still he paused to think as he followed her. ”With Curse Breaking, not really. I enjoy it. Though the only times I find myself second guessing it is whenever I have a close call.” The one trait that always distinguished Curse Breakers from others was how casually they often found themselves talking about “close calls” and “incidents” as if they were talking about the weather. Rhys tried not to, especially to his sisters as they would fret over him. Nell spoke about wand making and how it didn’t exactly spark joy and he frowned a bit. ”I’m sure she has other reasons to be pissed off.” Rhys had never gotten along well with Nell’s siblings, they had vastly different ideas about things than his friend did. ”Maybe you just need a break?” At this point, Rhys had been home for more than six months which is the longest stretch of time he’d ever spent home from work and considering how he had worked continuously the previous year with only breaks to come home to meet and spend time with Elias, after that hadn’t even come home for the holidays. The back-to-back work had physically and mentally drained him, but it was his own attempt to avoid the emotional emptiness he had been feeling. ”I’ve found even if you have knack for something, its still possible to work yourself to exhaustion.” That was his thoughts on the matter, but also his own experience. This time home this year had been refreshing in that way.

credit to Laura of Adox

[eleanor gwendolen ollivander]

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So maybe they weren’t going to the Violet Hound? Nell realized at that point that she really had no idea if there were multiple pubs in the Alley now, or if they were going to go somewhere completely different. The main problem she had was that she lived above the shop. Other than going out for groceries, she was essentially a shut-in. Frankie had chastised her about this exact problem months ago, and she still hadn’t remedied it. At this point, she didn’t even really know how to interact with others outside of a business interaction. That had to be bad, right? “I’ll take any recommendations you have. It’s been a while since I’ve gone out…” Literal months, maybe longer than that. The lockdown didn’t exactly help with that, though it hadn’t exactly stopped people from doing what they needed to do. She wished it had, since her parents wouldn’t have gotten sick from it. But that was the unfortunate reality of it all, and now she had to actually buckle down because she had real work to take care of. And the holiday season was just around the corner too.

She stopped briefly to look at Rhys as he explained that he only thought about his choice in career when he had ‘close calls’. Nell gave him a funny look, eyebrows furrowed. “You make it sound like that happens a lot more than it should.” She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be concerned or disappointed at how easily he made that sound. There were too many of her old classmates and friends that were roped up in Curse Breaking over the last few years. They were all mostly fine, but this was the first time she had heard one of them be so frank about it. Obviously the job was dangerous, but was it really worth it when close calls could be talked about so casually.

“Well, yeah, obviously,” Nell groaned. “She’s had a wand stuck up her backside since we were kids. It’s my parents fault for letting it get as bad as it did.” They could have squished Veronica’s superiority complex out of existence in a matter of seconds if they had chosen to do so. But they wanted a fierce successor to take over the store, and they certainly got one. In regards to having a break, that had certainly never happened under her sister’s tutelage. “I mean, I haven’t had a real vacation since right after graduation,” she pointed out. “But I think my work trips to check up on wood sellers should count, right?” That usually gave her a day or two every couple of months to relax, or at least that was how it had been whilst she was still at Ollivanders. Since then, it had only happened twice for wand wood, since she really didn’t have the demand for wands that required more radical purchasing of supplies.

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[rhys alexander greyback]

Tag: eleanor gwendolen ollivander                    Words:                Notes There was one other pub here that Rhys had popped into a few times at most, the past few months he’d found himself at the Violent Hound by sheer habit and also—food. Being a werewolf effected his appetite as much as all the physical activity of his work, so if a place had good food and whiskey well then that was where you would find him. He knew that she worked quite a bit, working with wands wasn’t a typical nine to five day at the Ministry or one that possibly gave very many days off. ”They have whiskey, which is really what I look for in a place.” Rhys admitted, though it wouldn’t have been a surprise to Nell. Even if they didn’t see each other nearly as often as they had during their school days or before he had gone off to training his close friends knew he liked to drink. He never saw it as a dependency, but comments had been made. He brushed them off, he didn’t drink that much, and his job was a stressful one so what did it matter he liked to drink? There was a pause in her step, and she looked at him, he looked at her with the most innocent face he could muster, which probably wasn’t that convincing after fourteen years anymore. His face more or less was the same except he had the beard now. Nell had been one of his first friends at school, if there was ever someone, he wouldn’t be able to lie to—well it was probably her. ”I wouldn’t say it happens a lot, I’ve only almost bought it maybe twice.” Rhys stopped himself before he dug that hole any deeper. The last thing he wanted was anyone fretting over him, but it only told him how long it had been since he’d been home for this long. Talk like this among his peers was normal, but to non-Curse Breakers he must have sounded almost insane. ”But its rare you get into that situation. I promise I’m careful.” He tried to make his tone as assuring as possible, shifting the boxes in his hands a bit more comfortably. They were not in danger of falling by any means, but the sooner they dropped them off the better. The relationship between the Ollivander children was interesting, Rhys had met the oldest once or twice and both times had not been very pleasant experiences and he wasn’t looking forward to repeating them. Her brother seemed to tolerate him though they didn’t speak much, but Rhys couldn’t imagine not getting along with his own siblings and they were only partly related. ”She’s certainly….confident.” He struggled to find a word that wasn’t too harsh—it wasn’t his sister but hers they were talking about. Still, he’d known plenty of kids with personalities such as that growing up and the parents were always the enablers in that situation. ”They kind of do, but I think an actual vacation would do you some good.” Rhys knew he was a hypocrite in that sense. When was the last time that he had ever taken a vacation, traveling the world and running through dangerous tombs seemed to count in his mind. ”You could visit your wood sellers and also visit other places while you’re there. Sometimes when I finish a job early I’ll linger a few days before coming back to the bank.”

credit to Laura of Adox

[eleanor gwendolen ollivander]

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“It’s the…Violent Dog, right?” she asked, even though she knew what the real name of the pub was. Despite being completely absorbed in her work at the shop for the last few months, she had still payed attention to what was going on around her. It was hard not to when she lived and worked in Horizont Alley. Prior to this, the last thing she wanted to do after being locked away in Ollivander’s all day was to go elsewhere in the shopping district to relax. Now all she wanted to do was escape her building, because she could literally roll out of bed and be to work. The convenience was great, but it did feel like she was cooped up all day sometimes. Depending on how this went, she was already contemplating setting a night aside once a week to get out and relax. She had the ability to actually stay out late now, with Veronica not requiring her to be in the store at the literal crack of dawn to receive customers.

The response from Rhys was exactly the kind that she expected to hear from him. She knew that he took his job seriously, otherwise he wouldn’t be here right now, but the casualness of how he joked about his close calls wasn’t reassuring in the slightest. Even the way he followed up by stating he made sure he was careful didn’t convince her completely. In the end, there really wasn’t much she could do on her end. He knew the ins and outs of his career more than she did. If almost getting seriously injured twice was a thing to joke about, he knew better than she ever would. “Right…if you say so,” she shrugged, letting out a long sigh as well. Making wands was nice and comfy. Nell had never really understood the interest people had with going into tombs to hunt for treasures, but they did break or lose their wands enough to become repeat customers. Curse Breakers were in a close second to students when it came to that.

Veronica was confident? Rhys was being too nice. She couldn’t contain the snort that escaped from her as she shook her head at his comment. “She’s a narcissist. You don’t have to hold back around me.” And she also cared a lot less about who heard her speak her mind about her sister. Veronica had treated her like crap her entire life, and now that she was free from her reign, there was no reason for her to play niceties anymore.

“Yeah, that’s not a bad idea,” she mused. It had been difficult this year because of the lockdown, but it wasn’t like that had restricted her from calling up her sellers and ordering more wood. Personally, she liked traveling there and picking out exactly the cuts she wanted. Doing what she had to do for the summer wasn’t a huge let down, but it definitely made her crave a vacation. Or at the very least, an escape from London. “What’s a good place to go? I have sellers pretty much everywhere, so all I really need is an idea of what’s worth it.”

rhys alexander greyback ● 530 ● A Gunshot To The Head Of Trepidation by Trivium

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[rhys alexander greyback]

Tag: eleanor gwendolen ollivander                    Words:                Notes Rhys shook his head. The name wasn't too far off but was far from correct. "Violet Hound." He corrected, and Merlin knew he'd spent enough time there this past year and especially the last couple of months to know the name well enough by now. "It's usually where I end up these days." He admitted absent-mindedly. Seeing Rhys at a bar was not uncommon by any means, and in fact, if he wasn't in one with a neat glass of whiskey in his hand, his friends might have thought he was under some enchantment or perhaps picked up some curse while working. Despite her shop being so close, he knew that her work kept her rather busy and whether that meant time to have a drink or a meal now and then--well, he wasn't sure. Nell didn't seem convinced by his answer but appreciated that she didn't push the subject. It was enough to have his sisters concerned for him. Even Dahlia expressed concerned, in her own way, though typically she didn't mind being right next to him in some new Egyptian tomb fraught with some danger. If anything, he found himself nagging the latest addition to the family on being careful since he knew exactly what could happen to one of them. "It's not as bad as it sounds. Plus, I have a sister I can work with and keep me out of trouble." Nobody ever seemed surprised anymore when Rhys would announce he had found a new sibling, almost as much as they weren't surprised when he showed up with some minor injury from work. Rhys shrugged. It wasn't his sister despite his opinions on the times he'd met her. In total, it was probably less than five times, but it also had made him incredibly difficult that none of his siblings were terribly difficult to deal with. "Was trying to be polite." He only hoped he wasn't that bad with his own younger siblings. That wasn't the reputation that he wanted, and he certainly hoped he treated them better than Nell was treated by her own. Nell seemed to take his suggestion of a vacation seriously, even if it was one piece of advice he hardly heeded on his own. The lockdown had prevented him from working and traveling, but he was looking forward to being an option again, and at least he would be in a different mindset than he had been the year before. She asked him what a good place would be, and he pondered for a moment. "I like Central and South America this time of year." Typically, the weather was either summer or spring, which really only mattered in how much rain came down. "Asia too, though I'm not familiar with wand woods from there."

credit to Laura of Adox

[eleanor gwendolen ollivander]

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He corrected her ‘mistake’ with the name of the pub, and added that he went there quite a bit as of late. So if it was a Rhys hangout, it meant the other Cursebreakers weren’t far behind him. Or it was the complete opposite, and one of the bars he went to for the quietness. If it was Horizont, she sort of doubted it was the latter. There was too much foot traffic through the alley, and with new shops and places to eat popping up every couple of months, it was quickly becoming more populated at all hours than she had ever seen Diagon like. Personally she didn’t see anything wrong with it, in fact, it was better for her business. The more people were driven to Horizont, the more faces she saw peering through her shop window. Especially after students went back. This in-between season was always a little weird for wandmakers anyways, and outside of repairs, there was never a surge in wand interest. Now she had furniture and a growing reputation for fixing students’ wands. “I guess I should probably show my face there since I’m technically a local now,” Nell mused. It was a good thing that they were going there then.

Right. The mysterious other half-sister that appeared the summer prior. Families were so strange, and trying to drag herself through the Greyback family tree was, at times, tiresome. She knew more about the younger siblings, the ones that had attended Hogwarts, but the French girl that had shown up out of nowhere was still strange to her. But if Rhys said she was helpful, that probably meant she had her head on better than he did. “Is she still in training? I know a lot of jobs had to push things off because of Hag’s Fever…” Her own parents had come down with the illness and been stuck in St. Mungo’s for months, thankfully pulling through it in the end. It had made a lot of her work difficult because of supply chains being cut-off for the entirety of the summer, but at least she still had the furniture side of her business to deal with.

“What about Egypt? You seem to like it there,” she teased, only because it seemed like he was always running off there whenever he felt like it. It was almost strange hearing about other places that he liked going to, only because Egypt typically took precedence. “I’ve been meaning to travel to Japan, actually. A guy came in with a pretty old wand made there, and I realized that I really don’t know much about how they maintain their wands for centuries. And if I can get my hands on some of their cherry wood?” Nell made a sound of satisfaction just thinking about it, because it was easily some of the best wand wood in the world that she had ever laid eyes on. The Japanese wandmakers probably wouldn’t let her abscond with any, but it didn’t hurt to ask either.

Turning the last corner, the door to the post office was immediately on their left, and Nell pushed it open with her shoulder, making sure none of the boxes in her hands toppled over as she did so. “Got another load to Hogwarts,” she called from behind her stack of boxes at the postal worker, who muttered a bored response back at her. “Just put them wherever. They have all the correct postage on them, so we’re all set,” she said quietly to Rhys, before quickly leaving the building. She didn’t want to hear the postmaster yelling at her again about dropping off large deliveries at the end of the work day, but it wasn’t her fault that students liked breaking their wands and she had to do the repairs.

rhys alexander greyback ● 635 ● Arson by Amon Amarth

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[rhys alexander greyback]

i need you to hear

I need you to see

October 2025
eleanor gwendolen ollivander

Rhys never liked to be called predictable, but he was the type that didn’t stray too far from what he knew he liked. If he recommended a place, it was an easy conclusion that he had gone there many times and wasn’t just suggesting offhand. It was a habit of traveling. Other Curse Breakers would recommend places they had visited in terms of bars or places to eat near job sites. When he’d traveled for work, he started doing the same or taking his trainees to local dives in certain areas. It reminded him of a specific bar in Egypt that every Curse Breaker visited, and it had become a hub. Always crowded with magical folk and the majority working for the bank. The Violet Hound had become one of those places for Rhys, and since he’d made himself a regular, his experience had been very positive so far. Nell brought up that she should probably visit at some point as her shop was in the vicinity, and he supposed he hadn’t thought about it before. Maybe all the business owners knew one another here.

But the thought popped into his head, and he always wondered why he always forgot this simple fact. Ilija. Nell would remember him from school. ”You should. It’s under new ownership. Do you remember Ilija from school?” Rhys asked. ”His sister runs the place now.” It wasn’t that he had forgotten on purpose. He supposed he just didn’t think of her as Ilija’s little sister and more like just his friend Vasilia. Though he tended to do his best when it came to things like that, he always appreciated people acknowledging him as ‘Rhys’ and not Fenrir’s son. But that could be true of all of his siblings, including the latest addition, Dahlia, to whom people were still growing accustomed to being part of the family. ”Yes, Renfri took over her training when I got stuck here, and she’s in France now, I think.” If there was a sibling that could match Rhys’ stubbornness, it was Dahlia. He’d given Renfri only a brief warning that he had a sister that was more like him than any other sibling she had met so far.

Rhys gave Nell a slightly annoyed look. Egypt was where every Curse Breaker went when in training and then many times afterward. He could understand Dahlia’s desire to go there, but he personally wasn’t a fan, plus his last bit job there hadn’t ended so well. ”I always end up injured or maimed in Egypt.” He commented lazily. It wasn’t that It happened all the time but enough. Though some of the minor injuries had been due to trainee mistakes, at least Dahlia was competent enough to watch where she stepped and not activate traps like moving walls conveniently next to where Rhys was standing. Nell spoke about Japan, and Rhys listened intently. It was a beautiful country, even if he didn’t typically travel East. ”It’s nice there.” He responded, remembering his brief visit some time ago. ”I’ve only been a couple of times.” Rhys tried to remember if anyone he knew might be able to easily get ahold of cherry wood, he’d have to write since he couldn’t travel just yet but something to look into. His knowledge of wand wood was limited, but he figured it would be valuable by Nell's response.

Rhys followed her into the shop, looking just over the boxes he held for a clear space on the counter, and he gently placed them and slowly backed away to make sure they didn’t fall over. He followed Nell out of the post office quickly, they were probably used to this from her, but he supposed having to handle that much postage could be a pain. ”Right, ready for that drink?” He asked with a friendly expression, beginning to walk in the direction of the pub.

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