Absit Omen RPG

An American wizard - Tamzin was not expecting that. The rest though, the drama of it all, seemed typical of a vampire from what she'd heard from friends' rare accounts.

"We all have something to answer for," she replied, keeping her voice steady. He wasn't too close, giving her space. A gentleman.

She was eager to end this encounter, nonetheless, so pressed to their purpose.

"I've brought them," Tamzin said and from her robes withdrew a long velvet bag tied with a drawstring. She held them out and Lazarus took them to look inside.

"They're all there. One is a little worse-for-wear, the oak. It was rescued from a fire. The others have been kept safe in my grandfather's vault. There's a providence statement as well there, for the maple."

She wanted the vampire to know that she'd held nothing back, that she'd kept up her end of the bargain, that she wanted as much as he did, perhaps, to unburden herself.

13 Aug 2012
11pm on a Monday
The outside the old church in Godric's Hollow

A woman in witch's clothes stood in the kirkyard in the darkness of a waning crescent moon. She wore black robes tonight and mirrored spectacles. The brightest part of her was her platinum white hair, kept in a short bob. Tamzin Ollivander of the great Ollivander clan was waiting for a vampire.

She sensed him before she heard him, indeed it was not possible to hear the vampire at all for his footfalls were supernaturally silent as if he had no mass. Her enchantment, however, informed her of his strange presence.[1] The vampire's presence was faint and hazy, nearly indistinguishable from the sleeping lonely ghosts. This one, though, was like embers.

Tamzin tightened her grip on her olive wood wand, not ashamed of the shiver of fear that made her hand shake. In all her years, she'd never met a vampire and she was grateful for it. What compelled her here was something greater than horror.

1.	Aura Perciperium

I am so happy to receive an invitation from two of my favorite people. I accept with enthusiasm. Expect me between two and three. It will be a perfect opportunity to deliver what parcel you've been waiting on.

Tamzin

Niobe made a disarming gesture taking the Minister of Magic's reminder of the nature of the inquiry to be aimed at her.

Tamzin as well acknowledged the reminder. "Of course, Minister."

She moved her wand and her materials did a bit of choreography to set themselves in a new order.

"Once we established a working estimate of the werewolf population, we pursued an accounting of all safehouses. Safe house records are spread out over two offices and there are four classifications, if you'll allow me."

The white-haired witch in violet explained that some safe houses are run by the Ministry and some were personal safehouse mere permitted and overseen by the Ministry, and that the Werewolf Wing inherited this work from the Beast Division once it separated. The Werewolf Capture Unit is currently, Tamzin explained, responsible for routine inspections of the personal safehouses, but Magical Accidents and Catastrophes assists with initial permitting. Azkaban has its own facilities which are run separately.

Tamzin also went over the capacity of the Ministry's safe houses, their locations, and their traffic. She couldn't avoid a hitch in her rhythm when she arrived at the one in Dumpriesshire and its two staff and fourteen rooms. She also had numbers for the personal safe-houses. Most of those were single-occupant, but there was one in Ottery St. Catchpole that was a sort of coop between a few nearby families.

"At this point I can say that capacity is not an issue," she said in summation. "There is enough room for everyone on a full moon night."

Tamzin smiled ruefully. "No, quite not. It was..."

Tamzin Ollivander hesitated a moment, showing a rare moment of being unsure. She began again. "It is a very flexible number. There are things we just couldn't quantify from the data. For example, it's hard to tell why werewolves do not register, or why they wait several years to do so. We can't rely too heavily on unattributed werewolf attacks, either of course. They are extremely rare, thank Merlin."

It had been a very strange few weeks. Tamzin Ollivander had not been an expert on werewolves before, and had little experience with official research. But as with anything she did, she'd taken learning the task very seriously, accepting as much help as she could in order to get fluently up to speed. She and the ministry archivist were now good chums, and while her old friend Athena Marrowbone at St. Mungo's had been careful to say very little, she'd been immensely informative about process and rhetoricals.

It was all very sudden and grim. Tamzin had struggled nights with having a door in her mind thrown open and her house, her heart, suddenly assaulted with a cold wind she didn't even know was there - the complexities and challenges of life as a werewolf.

"We've struggled to make inroads at Azkaban where I think we could gain more insight into that hidden demographic. Either their record-keeping is worm-eaten or there is some hidden fear on their part of sharing all they know. We've also yet to address another source of insight: the underground community. As I'm sure you're aware, someone has to be making all that extra Wolfsbane. And a safe house is not an easy thing to make properly."

She folded her hands in front of her purply robes. "And of course, we'll need to talk to as many werewolves, both known and unknown, as possible."

"By your leave, Minister," Tamzin said.

"We must begin with the current state of things, sirs. Who are affected by werewolf safe house policies, how many of them there, and where they find themselves. We have consulted several sources to gather this information including the Werewolf Registry, incident reports from both the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes and the Werewolf Capture unit, as well, St. Mungo's Hospital, Azkaban prison, and back issues of the Daily Prophet - their previous accounting of the numbers. Several dozen interviews have also been collected. We have cross-referenced this information with werewolf safehouse ledgers. Allow me to present this data."

She located the first scroll and at her command unfurled itself for the benefit of the sighted, she knew the figures by heart.

"Minister, by our count, there are approximately four thousand known werewolves in Britain and Ireland. This includes those known to the Ministry either by their presence in the Werewolf Registry and those known to be unregistered. We estimate this figure to be eighty percent reliable as information from St. Mungo's is largely anonymous, and accounting for record-keeping errors."

The scratching of quills gave her pause. After a moment or two, she pushed her violet glasses back up her nose and continued.

"Not among this figure are the estimated three hundred unregistered werewolves. We arrived at this number in a variety of ways, sirs. Our primary method was the rate at which the Werewolf Registry added individuals who had been werewolves for quite some time before coming forward. Another method was the rate of capture by the Werewolf Capture of unregistered individuals. Cross referencing with anonymous records from St. Mungo's and muggle reports of werewolf attacks that did not have a corresponding Ministry incident provided additional context."

Tamzin again paused, then prompted a response from the room. "Questions so far?"

30 March 2012
9:00 am
The Offices of the Minister of Magic
Millicent Bagnold Inquiry Room

Tamzin Ollivander was set up at the head of a long cherrywood table, which was adorned with an intricate inlay of ebony. Heavy scrolls were laid out on the table, others hovered at the ready to read themselves allowed to the blind witch. Tamzin herself wore robes of purple and silver, her long sleeves bound up out of the way showing off jangling bangles up her arms.

Perhaps anyone else would be nervous to be making a presentation to the Minister of Magic on a matter of such terrific import, but Tamzin didn't find nerves useful. She was an Ollivander, after all. She was the daughter of a long line of prestigious witches and wizards. She was the chair of the inquiry and had almost unbridled authority and access so she could be utterly confident in what information she'd acquired.

"Shall we begin?" she asked those gathered, the Minister, his ever-present entourage, Ministry spokeswitch, and a reporter from the Daily Prophet, Niobe Thursby. "I have a lot to cover."

For the young wizard's youth, Tamzin expected a fascination with weapons to be a boyish obsession with violence, how so many measure themselves, others and the world in terms of personal power, even when no threats yet exist. So Tamzin was surprised enough to pause in her step when Mr. Snow claimed quite the contrary.

She found herself re-searching her memory for his family name among the magical families in her expanded circles. Who was this person? She turned her head slightly as if to hear him better, but he'd already finished speaking. She continued onward through the shelves to the front as she replied.

"The sky falls only for you," she remarked. "Perhaps you should seek a cursebreaker."

Unsolicited advice from Tamzin Ollivander was a common offering, so typical of her to react to such a dire circumstance with a terse solution.

At the front now, she dictated the parameters of the job to a ledger, a thin quill scribbled away on its nib. She patted the counter where he out to deposit the pieces. Then she began working the till.

"There's a deposit. One hundred galleons. Once I've got my wand on it, I'll owl the full estimate which would be due when it's done. Try not to die before then. Would be a shame in more than one way."

She smiled gently and awaited the sound of gold moving in a purse.

"Well."

Tamzin smiled towards Mr. Snow and patted her workbench with some finality. She moved around and back towards the front. But as she did, she had to entertain her own curiosity.

"You're a bit young to have enemies worthy of enchanted swords and wands for both hands," she said, assuming much. "What's following you in the dark, Mr. Snow?"

It was one of those questions people asked without considering there could come a grim response.

Mr. Snow's musings about the benefits of simultaneous casting couldn't be denied, and Tamzin had to acknowledge that much magic today would have been considered impossible before it was achieved. The taboo of it, though, the feeling of disrespect of even owning more than one wand, it was difficult for her to ignore.

"Glass has been used. Crystal balls, talismens," Tamzin answered laying her hands on the surface of the workbench, feelings it's grain on her fingers. "And in Japan, there is a tradition of enchanting swords by way of folding in some active item, but I do not believe it can cast spells in the way our people are accustomed."

"As for metalworking, you'll have to speak to the goblins, if they'd tolerate you." Tamzin smirked. "They are close with their craft and I cannot imagine they'd be keen to arm the like of us."

"My skill in worrying is matched only by your skill in wandmaking."

Charming and self-deprecating. Tamzin laughed a little. Sasha Snow was not short on things to say. He seemed to Tamzin curious, and somehow fresh, easily questioning after long-held Knowns of wandcraft. All the more opportunity for Tamzin to explain, for she was never short on things to say either.

"Oh, many have tried I'm sure," she said. "Despite a certain ostentatiously vulgar redundancy of wielding a wand in each hand, there are impracticalities. How would you scratch your nose, hm? The wand is a focus for the singular will of the wix. A second wand does not create a second mind, unless it would..."

Tamzin actually paused at the haunting notion of a witch gone mad from too many wands. Then she shrugged. It hadn't happened that way before...

With that, she ended the spell and let the object lower back to the velvet. She began the same procedure on the other two examples.

"The ebony is dense," she began. "(Ah - rosewood, yes.) I imagine it would need to be so for a dagger. But that same density could cause you some resistance in magical focus, so it would need a sensitive core. A unicorn's tail hair, perhaps, but silver and unicorns don't typically agree... feather of a phoenix then, if you're the sort..."

It felt backwards to do it this way, putting wizard before the wand - or hinky silver wooden dagger as the case might be - but now Tamzin was intrigued.

My dear child,

You write very prettily but a cloud of something has muddied your good sense. I, Tamzin Ollivander, shall carry on in the inimitable tradition of my uncle and master wandmaker Garrick Ollivander and will keep to the superior supreme cores.  And just so you know, and since you are young I'll tell you, it's an obscene thing to have more than one wand. If the one my uncle made for you is somehow lacking, I imagine the dissatisfaction is in the hand not the handle.

Stay in school,

Tamzin Ollivander

Dictated not read.

Tamzin sniffed at the little boy's expositional backtalk. A moth in her gut was telling her that this would be no ordinary match.

"Yes, I'll be able to help you," she parroted not a little impatiently. He must not know who she was, that the Ollivander's tradition was being kept alive, thriving, and safe in her hands.

"I can match you. Aura perciperium."

With her olive-branch wand, Tamzin had cast an aura-sensing charm. Among the sounds, textures, and smells, another layer of art and information was added to the space. Every wand in every box hummed like a bee in a honeycomb cell, and the three wix in the room radiated with a unique character.

The boy's aura was like a fireworks sparkler, and his father's was magnetic and heavy somehow. And true enough, the boy had a wand and his father did not. There were several reasons a grown wizard would have neither a wand nor its pieces, and one in particular gave that moth in her gut cause to turn.

"I'm Tamzin Ollivander. And who am I speaking with?"

"Only that she wasn't the Auror type," Tamzin replied honestly. Then she got to her feet.

"I'll tell you who I remember," she said, eyes glinting with gossip. "Leo Gamp."

Tamzin went to the door and flipped the sign to tell any visitors to come back 'later'. Then she gestured for Iona to follow her to the back.

"Never thought he'd end up an Auror," Tamzin said leading the way past the shelves. Lights lit along the way for the benefit of the sighted. "But then, perhaps that was the point. Maybe it was fate that caught him out, ending him up in Azkaban."

Among the rooms in the back of the shop was a homey spot with a pot-belly stove and kettle which Tamzin got to working.

"He came here for a new wand," she revealed.

Tamzin beamed. That wand was one of hers. The aged silver limewood featured a moon motif in the handle and a tail hair given by a stunning young unicorn mare encased inside.

She slid her glasses off up into her hair, and gathered up the other boxes Virgil has so kindly tidied. They'd all be returned to the shelves to patiently await their own matches some day.

"That's a very good one. Congratulations."

Then she opened the large ledger, a closely kept heirloom, a secret and safely enchanted tome, generations old. A long lovely black quill stood at the ready.

"Virgil Carstairs, 10 inch, silver limewood, unicorn tail hair. Number seven oh seven sixty-four, two thousand eight."

Then she said to Virgil as she moved to the massive old till, "tell everyone where you got it. It's a Tamzin Ollivander, Diagon Alley."

As if it could be any other. She keyed in the price and the great machine clanged and whirred in response. "That's seven galleons. How are you on polish? We have stands as well."