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The Dining Hall looked exactly like it had in all the pictures that Sam had ever seen of it -- the sometimes static ink and paper or the flitting movements of magic across parchment -- and yet none of them came any where even close to encompassing it.
The even plane of the ceiling lay two stories above him, grand and tall, the edges lined with ornate crown molding, its beveled edging painted white in elegant contrast to the deep tan yellow walls. The original gas lamps glowed from where they jutted out of the wall and in between them were old portraits, the subjects moving around in an ambling fashion, staring out from the canvas and into the world. Many of them wore colonial style dress, though there were more modern individuals, and a few of the very old ones were static, figures painted in oil and on canvas and no magic to them at all.
The original wood floors of the room creaked underfoot as the first years filed in, Sam amongst their ranks. The boards were sanded and even save for at the threshold of the door, where the passage of thousands of feet over the centuries had worn a groove.
Every carving, every inch of the room was proudly late colonial in style, looking polished and well kept even three hundred years on. The room spoke of a kind of history that Sam rarely had the chance to encounter. The kind of history he longed to look at, to run his hands over.
The other first years were behind him though, shuffling in and all as wide eyed, and Sam didn’t have the opportunity to sit around and gawk. Besides, the older students were all sitting at their tables, chatting and watching, and Sam could see the humor in their faces -- some good natured teasing, others a little bit meaner -- at the awkward and naive new kids.
Sam had been a new kid enough times to know better.
He fixed his eyes forward and began to walk down the corridor formed by the tables, past the many rows of expectant or curious faces, flanked by kids the same age as him as they made their way to the empty table at the front, just before the dais. The headmistress and other teachers were waiting there, standing around patiently, though their tall figures seemed more ominous than they probably intended. There was a chair in the front center of the room, and a table before it. An old, scraggly looking black cat sat on the table, tail twitching absently, its blood red eyes watching them, too sharp to be animal, too unreadable to be human.
Sam swallowed and made his way around the tables, past those eyes that seemed to follow him, and lowered himself to his seat at the first years table. For those who did not yet have a wing. At first he tried to ignore the impulse but he couldn’t help it -- for just a moment his gaze flicked about the room, searching, lost in the myriad of black robes and faces. But if Dean was in a room, Sam knew he’d always find him.
When he saw the familiar freckled features he stopped, let out a breath, and Dean looked up from the girl he was talking to, his red and yellow tie loose and rumpled around his neck, and resting on top of it, the tiny bronze dot of his amulet. Dean’s green eyes fastened to Sam’s and he grinned slowly, lopsidedly, one side of his mouth stretching further than the other and he waggled his eyebrows for no reason at all.
Sam felt some of the tension in him break and he laughed, ignoring the strange looks the other first years gave him. He merely shook his head and turned back to the table, his back to his brother, but still feeling Dean’s gaze on his shoulderblades, firm and protective.
Sam didn’t itch or chafe under the weight of it.
He never did.
-----
Sam didn’t remember anything about her at all and Dean only remembered her in flashes, snippets of sound and light, and he’d told Sam about her voice, about the color of her hair, and the way she sang her lullabies. They’d never met any of her family, growing up on the highways and interstates of America, always moving from here to there and never stopping. Sam had never even questioned if his mother had a family outside of them, not at such a young age, and because of that, they’d never been told who they were or where they came from. They’d never known that Mary Campbell had been a witch.
Sam and Dean hadn’t known until they’d come back together from school one day to see their father holding a yellowing letter in his hands, staring at it like it was a judgment he’d been waiting to have handed down to him.
“I didn’t know,” he’d explained, as best he could, and Sam had eaten it up -- any moment where his father was looking him in the eyes. Any moment when his father said anything to him at all. “When I married her, I didn’t know.”
“But--... How?” Dean had asked, sounding betrayed, and at first Sam thought his brother had felt betrayed by their father, by his silence. It was only years later that Sam realized it was their mother Dean blamed. That Dean blamed her for bringing this strangeness, this otherness, into their family, and infecting him and Sam with it.
“She kept it secret,” John had shrugged, like it was easy to brush off. “I think she liked being normal.”
“Is it-- Did you--” Dean had swallowed, and silence had surrounded them for a moment. “...hunt her...?”
“No.” Their father had looked shocked, reeled back, his eyes wide, and he’d shaken his head. “No, Dean. It...wasn’t like that. This isn’t like that. She kept it a secret, but she-- they aren’t evil. I’ve been doing my research since her death.”
“It wasn’t a monster?”
“It was a monster. It was just a man as well.”
The last thing that Sam had expected, beyond John telling them that they were going to settle down and live an apple pie life, was that Dean was going to attend a school for magic. That he’d inherited Mary’s genes was one thing -- that he planned to have Dean learn to use them was another. John Winchester hated the supernatural, made no secret of it, and the idea of him embracing his son being a wizard was baffling.
“I know this much -- it’ll happen whether you go to school or not,” John had said while they’d packed up the only things they considered worth owning.
“I can just ignore it, Dad,” Dean had objected, fighting this more than John was. “I’m not--...I’m not like that. I’m a hunter, like you.”
“And you can hunt things better if you know how to control all the crazy that’s going to start happening around you.” Their dad had sighed and straightened, turning to look at his eldest and Sam crouched down, six years old and tucked into the edge of the door frame, peering into the room. “Your mother didn’t tell me about all of this. She didn’t prepare me for this. But I’ve been hunting monsters for the last six years, Dean, and some of the best resources out there have been witches and wizards, and I know there’s more than they’re letting on. I’ve been wanting to get closer to them for awhile now, and this is a good opportunity. And whether you go to that school of theirs or not, this is happening to you. The only difference is that if you don’t go, you won’t know how to control it.”
Sam had seen his brother’s fists clench, hands tighten and knuckles lock. They were hunters -- Sam knew that much. They hunted the things in the night, and their family was a bastion of humanity against the things that weren’t, and Dean was going to fight this to the end. He’d never want to be anything less than human -- anything less than their father. Their mother may have secretly been a witch, but John was as human as they came.
“I’ll control it,” Dean had hissed, voice like sandpaper, like a coil wound too tight. “We can stay here. We don’t have to go. I don’t want to...use magic. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”
John had sighed then, hands unfolding, and he’d shook his head. He’d walked across the dingy carpet, across the space between them, and laid one broad palm over Dean’s shoulder.
“Your brother is your mother’s son too. Maybe he won’t have this... But maybe he will. What if we get another letter in four years, Dean? He needs you. He needs you to show him. And I know you can do it first.” Their father’s eyes had flicked over, looking straight at Sam, who scurried out of the door even though he knew he’d already been spotted.
But he still heard his brother’s voice, heard him reply without that bunch tight feel, heard him say:
“...yeah, Dad. I can do that,” and sound something like relieved, like that had suddenly made it all okay.
-----
Sam saw the kids on the other side of the table from him perk up, looking over at the front of the room, and Sam turned in his seat, looking up at the front. He rubbed his sweaty palms against the sides of his robes.
“Welcome everyone,” Whitcomb announced, her high voice carrying through the long space. “To another year at the Salem Witches’ Institute. I’m happy to see everyone safely back from their summer break, as well as seeing all our new young faces. I hope everyone enjoyed their time away from school and are ready to settle back down into another year of learning.”
Sam heard some moaning and groaning from the tables of the older kids and he rolled his eyes a little. What could be so torturous about spending time learning magic? Honest to god magic. Most kids he knew would give their right arm to go to a school for witchcraft and wizardry. Sam had gone to regular school since he was about seven, learning all the basics like most kids, but he’d gotten the impression that kids from wizarding families mostly learned writing and math at home before they came to the Institute.
They had no idea what regular school was like. Muggle school.
Not that Sam hadn’t enjoyed school anyways. He just liked the process of learning. The measurability of it. The dependability of it. That the world could make sense through explanation and exploration. He could vaguely hear his big brother’s voice in his head though, calling him a geek.
The only thing he hadn’t liked was that he rarely got to see Dean. His brother spent his year living at the Institute while Sam and John spent it out in the human world -- non-magical world, Sam had to remind himself. Having been raised by a Muggle, by a hunter, it was normal for both Sam and Dean to see the rest of the world as regular, normal, human, but Sam suspected that the witches and wizards would be somewhat offended by the implication that they weren’t human, regardless of the magic they used.
Especially with that insinuation coming from a Winchester.
Sam didn’t need to look around to know that there were eyes on him, given his father’s reputation.
“Now, before we start dinner,” the headmistress’s voice caught his attention again. “As always, we start the new year by Sorting our new students into their respective houses. The Salem Witches’ Institute was founded three hundred years ago by Daphne Grimgower, a professor at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, who had heard of the oppression our people were suffering and came to intervene. It was with her efforts that witches and wizards of the New World came to have a place to call their own in the wake of the trials, and, eventually, a school to send their children. Much has changed in three hundred years and so much for the better, but our institution stands as it always has: an example of progress and restitution; a picture of success rising from the ashes of conflict. Now...”
Whitmarsh smiled, her expression softening and going less formal. Her angular face held it well, a look of kindness there that Sam hadn’t expected given how serious she was before.
“As most of you know, our school was modeled on our sister school in England. Our four wings are based on the four houses of that great and ancient establishment, the houses of their four founders. Our founder was herself a graduate and professor of Hogwart's and when she established the Institute, she went with what she knew. Every year we initiate our new students to these distinguished wings, names with deep and proud histories that you should all feel honored to join. So, starting alphabetically, I would like our first years to come to the front of the room to be Sorted into your wing.”
Not for the first time in his life, Sam cursed his last name. It always assured that he was last to go for anything, and while that was very occasionally an advantage, it was almost always unfortunate. Like now, when he’d have to wait for probably the better part of an hour, nervous and with his stomach flip flopping around in his belly, waiting and wondering what would happen to him.
Dean was in Gryffindor, had been Sorted there five years previously, and Sam would give almost anything to be in the same wing as his brother.
The two of them had been thick as thieves before the letter, before Dean had been sent off to spent nine months of the year away from Sam and their father, and sure, he’d come back to them on the holidays and breaks, but it wasn’t the same. Dean had all these new friends, these new ideas and new abilities, and suddenly Sam was on the outside. Their dad had no magic, of course, but that didn’t matter to Sam. It had always, always been him and Dean, and now suddenly it wasn’t. Now Dean had this whole other world, this whole other life that Sam wasn’t part of, and he’d been looking forward to this year, to being part of this, to finally, finally being back with his brother, that he’d never even considered the idea that they wouldn’t be in the same wing together.
And after what had happened at Warwick’s, his determination had a different flavor.
Sam reached down into the pocket of his robes, feeling out the smooth line of his wand, not a mark or mar on it, no knob or handle -- just smooth, unblemished yew, polished to a dark shine. It didn’t reassure him.
-----
Sam might have only just gotten his letter, but he was more than just familiar with the Grotto, the underground city that the wizarding community of Salem had created in the wake of the trials. Sam remembered his first time taking the old elevator down from the street level, down into the huge, arching cave beneath it, wide mouth opening to the sea, tucked into the elbow of Palmer Cove. It was hidden from Muggles, of course, spells protecting it from detection, and boats passed by outside, oblivious.
The buildings and shops of the Grotto were built into the wall, built into each other and climbing the rock walls of the cave, jutting out of the stone like telluric formations -- as if some grand coincidence had formed them, built by dripping architects. Great, heavy chains hung from the ceiling, bolts drilled into the earth, dangling giant lanterns at different heights, their powerful orange glow lit by magic, and their light amplified, spread out over the oddly angled rooftops like an artificial sun. Water flowed in from the ocean, a thick river cutting through the center of the cave and dipping deeper into the earth. Several bridges had been constructed over it, the long stretch of the hidden city needing many, though it was common enough to just go from place to place by broomstick.
The Grotto’s ceiling was several hundred feet up, more than enough space for flight.
Sam remembered standing at the exit of the gilded elevator doors, blocking traffic as he came to a stop, unable to move as he stared out at the Grotto for the first time, taking it all in. His jaw had dropped, and he’d seen plenty of incredible things in his seven years of being the son of a hunter, but it was nothing like this. Nothing like a whole civilization built in the shadows of another. Nothing like an entire world that he’d been mostly unaware of.
His father had tugged him along and Sam had realized how he’d just frozen there. He felt a little better though, when he saw his eleven year old brother in much the same state.
That was the first time.
Since then, Sam had been four other times with Dean, just before the beginning of the school year, and several other times besides that with his father, while Dean was away. Their dad had become a registered hunter with the Department of Magical Affairs, and that commonly brought them to the Grotto on business. He still hunted the average ghost or demon, but now he was licensed to hunt down rogue witches and wizards on Department orders and bring them in.
He might have been a Muggle, might have not had a drop of magic in him, but that didn’t make a difference. He was good at his job, always had been, and Sam had watched him incapacitate more than one witch or wizard who’d gone dark or lost control, seen him capture or kill a magical beast, even ones that magic users had failed to quell. And being that good meant some notoriety.
Every time they came to the Grotto, people avoided them, steered clear of John Winchester and his heavy boots, his heavy coat and all the tools and weapons he had hidden under it, and the badge he wore over it -- the image of a Roc, the symbol of the Department, engraved into the golden metal.
They all knew the name Winchester.
And everyone knew just whose son Sam was. Sam didn’t fit in well with human world, not with all the weirdness, the moving around, the occasional flairs of magic that he couldn’t help -- but he didn’t fit into the magic world either. There was no place that he fit, not really.
When the elevator doors opened, Dean ended up running off right away, sending a wave back to them and half a yell about going to find his classmates. Four years at the Institute and Dean didn’t have any trouble fitting in. Sure, he carried the Winchester name as much as Sam did, but he’d always been better at making friends than Sam. Dean had a way of rolling with the punches, taking the teasing with a good natured smirk on his face and joking along, until people didn’t know why they’d been making fun of him at all.
Sam always just went quiet.
“C’mon,” their dad said, shaking his head as Dean ran off, moving in the opposite direction, down the steep cobblestone street that led down into the shopping district. Sam looked up at the cave ceiling, several stories above him, and it didn’t matter how many times he’d seen it before -- men and women zipping around on broomstick, owls and gulls flying through the air along with little balls of light, magical messages and creatures bustling about -- it was still amazing. It still seemed sort of like a fairy tale come to life.
Even for a boy who’d grown up with ancient Enochian symbols, sawed off shotguns and ghosts.
Maybe even especially for that boy.
Sam half jogged along after his father, shorter legs taking two or three steps for every long stride that John took, making their way down the twisty windy streets and through the alleyways that snaked between buildings. The Grotto felt less designed and more organic, as if the city had grown there on the walls of the cave, like lichen, each building a new arm of one living organism, its cobblestone streets running like veins, higgledy piggledy and with no real rhyme or reason. Of course, Sam’s father walked them with such purpose that it felt like he could grind the magic out of them, like he could make a map when the roads were never the same way twice, and Sam spent more time chasing John’s coat tails than he did looking around.
The buildings, some carved from stone and others built by driftwood and shingles, towered over the slim streets like a canopy of trees, their spines of their rooves dipping over and casting funny shadows. Men and women bustled by, only a few stumbling when they noticed the hunter’s presence, slipping by him like sheep in the presence of sated lion -- no hunt today, but the threat there like smoke before a fire.
Down at the edge of the inlet, walking along what was typically referred to as the canal, Sam looked over the stone wall, coming up to his father’s waist but up to nearly Sam’s shoulders, and he could see the sea flowing in. The cave descended in the back, dipping deeper into the earth and pulling the water in with it, instead of letting out, and the surface was troubled and dark, water rushing swiftly but unbroken. A few undines congregated under one of the bridges, and Sam knew there were more below the water’s dark mirror -- could occasionally glimpse their colorful forms flashing just under the surface before winking away.
“This way, Sammy,” his father’s voice broke through his thoughts, and Sam looked up from his distraction to see a broad palm offered. It was something rarely given and Sam reached out immediately, slinking his smaller hand inside, feeling the dry, rough warmth of his father’s fingers wrap around him, tugging him along as they turned away from the canal into a darkened street, barely wide enough for them to walk astride.
They went up some uneven stairs and turned left, to where the shadow of the cave fell over them -- right next to the entrance where the light streamed in, but Warwick’s Wands had been set up against the same wall as the entrance, keeping it eternally in the dark. Sam had only been there once, four years earlier, hiding behind his father’s legs as Dean tried out wand after wand, before settling on a sort of stubby one with a metal band around the handle. By itself it always looked a little silly, less like a wand and more like an overly thick pencil, but when it was in Dean’s hands it looked just right, and Sam couldn’t imagine his brother having anything else.
Of course, at that time, Atticus Warwick had still been running the shop. His ancestors had founded it, back when the Grotto had been established centuries ago, and like his parents and their parents before them, he was a wand maker. He had retired two years ago, though, and the official news was that his sight had been going and that his hands just weren’t as steady as they were, but Sam knew the truth -- that he’d gone mad. That he’d started making strange wands from strange materials, and it had been John that had brought him to the Department on orders. It had been an easy hunt and Sam remembered his father handing the wandmaker over to the wizarding authorities, the old man’s eyes turning to look directly at Sam, flashing strange and dark. He’d smiled toothily at Sam and Sam had shuddered and turned away.
The last Sam had heard, the crazy old coot was off in some remote seaside cottage, living out the rest of his days in peace. And hopefully without further incident.
The wandmaker had never had any children, so he’d instead taken on Circelia Belbane as apprentice, and she made herself known the minute that Sam and his father walked into the shop.
“Hello, hello~” she trilled, a skinny woman with great orange curls all around her face, combed into some organized chaos and dangling over her shoulders. She wore slender reading glasses down on the end of her pointy nose, making her look older than her relatively few years. She was wearing jeans with tangled ends and a tie-dyed t-shirt, and, bizarrely, three different belts.
The pleasant smile on her face froze for a second when she saw John, took him in and recognized him immediately. Sam could see her sky blue eyes dart to the golden badge on John’s lapel before returning to his face, and she became animate once more -- though her expression was slightly strained this time.
“Welcome to Warwick’s Wands,” she greeted, stepping forward and expertly dodging the edge of the counter top that separated the rest of the store from the front. “I assume we’re getting this little one his wand?” She leaned down slightly to look Sam in the face, putting her hands on her knees like he was a little kid. The speckled straps that ran from her glasses to around her neck fell forward, dangling down and sparkling a little in the wan, dusty light. “And what’s your name?”
“Sam,” he replied, knowing better than to be rude but hating when adults treated him like a toddler. He was eleven for chrissake, and he’d shot a werewolf at point blank range before, not to mention his pretty good understanding of Sumerian and his impeccable Latin. Even the Pastor thought he was quite good.
Still, just because it bothered him wasn’t any excuse to not be polite, and he just drew himself up to look her in her eyes.
“Well, my name is Circelia -- let’s see about getting you a wand.” She straightened then, looking over at John. “First year away from home, I take it...”
Sam could see the way her fingers nervously flexed and he had to remind himself that it might not even be her. She might have been different if the Department’s personal hunter wasn’t standing in her store. Sam had seen it before -- people acting extra chipper, extra nice, like that was going to make any kind of difference. If they weren’t avoiding John, they were sucking up to him, but Sam knew that his dad didn’t care either way.
The only thing that mattered to his dad was if that person were practicing the Dark Arts. So long as they weren’t, he didn’t give a crap how they treated him.
Still, it seemed like Belbane was of the latter category, standing awkwardly to John’s side and trying to engage him in conversation about how fast kids grow up or something like that, and John responded as much as polite conversation dictated. Sam wandered off into the wand aisles, looking around at all the many boxes, all neatly organized. It was a strange juxtaposition to the shop’s leaning, skewed walls and uneven roof, the crooked set of stairs and skewiff floorboards. The shelves were all careful numbered and cataloged, a label maker having been used to post little stickers with uniform black letters describing each shelf’s contents, and Sam couldn’t see a speck of dusk on any of them. Given the musty quality of the air, he thought that maybe Belbane had just finished dusting them.
She was certainly more organized that Warwick had been and Sam could appreciate that. He’d been too young, back when Dean came in here, to really take note of things, but even then he’d been a little compulsive about order. A place for every thing and every thing in its place. It was a philosophy that he cleaved to, even at just eleven.
Every so often he’d reach up and pull out a box from the stacks, opening their stiff lids gently, not wanting too much force to send the wand inside flying. He was no wand expert, certainly no wand maker, but even as just a casual viewer he could see the beauty of their craftsmanship. Each one was polished and intricately carved -- some more ornate than others, designs curving up the wood, dragons spitting fire or ancient runes intricately wound with ivy vines around the handle, while others prescribed to a simpler aesthetic, a few lines here or there, or bands of metal wound around the base -- but all of them were beautiful in their own way. Sam had heard that the wand chose the owner and that he’d know which wand was for him when he found it, but given that it was impossible to experience that sensation until one had experienced it, Sam had no idea what it was he was supposed to be looking for.
He opened one box that said it had a unicorn hair core and willow branch wood, which had a copper handle and a twisted branch that he found breathtaking, loved the way the copper warmed in his hand, loved the way it balanced so perfectly in his palm. But then he found a darker, cherry wand, not too fancy, thicker than the others and with a dragon’s heartstring core, and Sam couldn’t say he wasn’t a little bit biased towards that particular core. After all, it was the one in his brother’s wand, and Sam would never in a million years admit it out loud, but some of the hero worship of his childhood hadn’t quite bled away yet(and, he thought in the back of his head, he sort of hoped never would), and the idea of having a wand that was twin to Dean’s, or at least similar, filled him with a quiet kind of warmth.
Both of them felt like they could be his wand, but he wasn’t sure if that was how it was meant to feel. He’d heard that he’d just know, but what did ‘just knowing’ feel like? Sam was used to pragmatism -- he might be a magic user, might have had more than one instance of accidentally(or less-than-accidentally) moving things around while his dad gave him an arch look, or might have had a small problem with inexplicably starting fires, but he was still someone who enjoyed the real, the firm, the understandable.
He liked books and tests and essays, liked his thick school texts and the order of a world defined by math and natural laws. He was shopping for wands, but Sam was still down-to-earth in the way that he considered the world, and ‘you’ll just know’ was something far too touchy-feely, far too ephemeral and untestable for his tastes.
‘New age,’ his dad would call it, with a dry drawl.
He worked his way through the aisles, several of them standing side to side. The store was wider than it was deep, which meant several short aisles, as opposed to a few longer aisles, and it took Sam awhile to weave his way through them, looking up and down at all the shelves. There were several that were far above him, and he didn’t see a step ladder. He didn’t need Dean’s teasing voice in his ear to remind him how short he was -- how he still looked more like eight or nine, instead of his actual eleven.
Maybe his wand was up there, on one of the higher shelves. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t having any luck.
So he wandered back to the front of the store, jogging down the two or three creaky steps that separated the front from the back, and then paused.
Over behind the counter, visible from this angle, were several boxes, all stacked up against each other and bound shut with packing tape. In any other store they wouldn’t have stuck out at all, the usual in-and-out of merchandise being shipped, but all the wands here were crafted here, so what could they possibly be getting shipped in?
Sam had to remind himself that America didn’t exactly have a thriving dragon population. They’d have to get the heartstrings shipped in from eastern Europe, he thought, although cardboard boxes weren’t appropriate packing material for something as valuable and delicate as an uncontained heartstring. Not to mention the fact that Belbane seemed to be as concerned with organization as Sam, and wouldn’t just leave boxes sitting around the front, even tucked up against the base of the counter top like that.
Curiosity piqued, Sam moved over to inspect, too used to playing researcher with his dad when they were on a hunt. He knew enough to know that it wasn’t polite to go snooping about, but after spending the last four years snooping around people’s houses or offices with his dad, he was too used to prioritizing information over privacy. He crouched down in front of the boxes and reached out to steady himself, resting his palm against the corner of a box.
And the minute he touched it, when his skin made contact with the surface of the thick, corrugated paper, he felt his breath still in his chest, nothing conscious, nothing voluntary, and his heart skipped a beat.
Logic told him that maybe he’d just crouched down too fast. They’d skipped breakfast that morning, and maybe his blood sugar was too low to go throwing himself around, but crouching down in front of some boxes in a store hardly seemed like the kind of exercise he was used to, running through fields in the dead of night or climbing over fences.
Maybe this was the ‘just knowing’ they talked about. It didn’t feel that grand, that overpowering, and this was the problem with ill-defined thing like ‘just knowing.’ Without a clear, measurable definition, it was hard to know when you were experiencing it or not. Still, it was the closest thing he’d felt to it in the last several minutes, moving errantly about the aisles, and without even thinking about it, he found himself pulling the tape up, the thick stuff dragging pieces of cardboard with it and making a none too quiet sound in the still of the store.
He was opening the flaps of the box when Belbane’s voice broke through, her short heels clipping against the floor.
“Oh!” she said, surprised and still a little awkward. “There’s nothing in there you’ll like. Those are being sent for storage.”
He’d already glimpsed the lacquered boxes inside, darker and polished to a greater shine than most of the boxes over on the shelves, no engravings or emblems burned into their surface. The tops seemed so smooth, unblemished, and Sam’s hand came up to glide over them, filled with the compulsion, fingertips leaving warm trails of vanishing condensation in their wake.
And then his hand stopped.
“I’ll just put these away,” Belbane said, reaching for the box. “And then we can go into the back and look for your wand, alright?”
Her voice was chipper, certain, and Sam heard the words, he just didn’t process them. Even with her hands reaching for him, he pulled the dark box out from the neatly stacked container(must have been packed up by Belbane, sometime recently, some hidden part of his brain murmured to him) and his other hand came up to open it. There were no hinges on the side of the top, like there were with all the wand boxes in the back. Instead, this one opened completely, the top coming off, and Sam set it aside.
Belbane was frozen, leaned over and watching him.
In the box was a long, slender wand, so dark it seemed almost black, so thin he thought that it would snap under even the pressure of his fingers. There were no marks, no decorations. No metal bands or embellishments. It was just a stick, straight as an arrow and so unassuming.
Sam touched it with only the lightest brush of his fingertips.
And he just knew.
“What are these?” he asked, turning his head to look up at the wandmaker, the touch seeming to have shattered whatever spell he’d walked under, and his curiosity overcame him. A need to know.
“They are--” she started, looking uncomfortable. “Warwick. They were the wands he made in the last few days. They... Most of them don’t even work. There’s no magic in them. And the ones that do--”
“The ones that do?” he queried, but she just shook her head.
“Their magic is weak and strange. Twisted. Useless to any witch or wizard.”
Except Sam knew he was holding his wand. He just knew it. He looked back down at the object, sitting so unassuming in the box. Belbane said that they had no magic, but Sam was certain that he’d felt it. But what the hell did that mean? Warwick had gone mad, had started making wands out of things like ectoplasm and human hair -- had he really found a wand amongst that mess? A wand made by a man who’d lost his mind?
“...what...what is it made of?” he asked, half not wanting to know.
Belbane gestured to the top of the box, and Sam handed it to her. The way her throat clenched and swallowed, the way her skin went slowly paler, did nothing to reassure him.
“Yew,” she said, and Sam’s heart fell. “Thestral hair.”
And Sam’s heart almost stopped.
Bad enough that he’d picked a wand made of yew, a wood famous for ending up in the hands of Dark Wizards. Just the thought made him want to glance over to his father, on the other side of the store and glancing out one of the small windows. He looked like he was too far away to hear, and his face gave nothing away, not looking at them, but it was impossible to tell with John Winchester.
But while yew had a bad reputation, it wasn’t like every yew wand had a bad owner. There were plenty of other witches and wizards around that could prove differently.
But the thestral was another matter entirely.
It wasn’t even that it was a indicator of darkness, because it couldn’t be an indicator of anything. Sam had never heard of a wand made with a thestral hair core -- just the notion was insane. No one would be able to use the wand, not unless it was someone who’d looked into the eyes of death itself.
On the backs of his eyelids Sam saw a flash of fire, something hazy and unclear, a memory built more from vague sense than true understanding, and he shook his head.
He didn’t know what the hell this meant, why the hell this had happened to him, and it set up something thick and oily in his stomach. A death omen hair wrapped in the wood of death and rebirth, and Sam’s mouth slowly went dry, fear beating tympanic in his heart. He didn’t know why this happened to him, but he knew this much: his father could never know.
If he didn’t know already, that was.
Sam looked up at Belbane, eyes pleading.
“You can’t tell my father,” he said, knowing enough to know that that was a bad way to open the subject -- he just made himself look suspicious, and he should be better at this. His dad had taught him how to lie.
But Belbane just shook her head. She looked haunted, and Sam had seen the expression dozens of times before. Some family member or friend in the wake of loss, in the wake of having their basic preconceptions of the world altered, and Sam wondered what had happened here. What had happened between her and her mentor and just how bad things had gotten, just how far around the bend he’d gone.
However far it was seemed to be far enough for Belbane though, because she had that far away look, thinking of something that Sam had no knowledge of. Normally he’d be curious, wanting to know what had happened, what had caused the famous wandmaker to change, to snap, wanting to know in what ways it manifested, to know what it was that he had done, what it was she had seen that left Belbane staring out like Sam wasn’t even there.
But he had his own worries now, and more than enough of his plate, with a wand like this resting in his hands and on his soul.
“...I don’t want to talk to anyone about it,” was all she said, finally, voice willowy and weak, and a second later she was striding around him, walking back behind the counter, and she raised her voice. “It looks like you boy has found himself a wand,” she said, and to her credit, her voice only shook a little.
More than enough for John to notice, Sam was sure, but he hoped his dad would just chalk it up to the usual nerves.
Sam quickly shoved the top on the wand box and walked over to the other side of the counter, palms feeling sweaty as he placed it down on the surface, hoping his father’s general disinterest in these kind of proceedings would keep him from asking any questions. Even so, Sam was more aware of his heartbeat than he was the words exchanged between his father and the wandmaker. All he could do was watch and wait, eyes flicking between the dark box on the counter top and his father’s eyes, but John just reached into the inner pockets of his coat, pulling out the money to pay for it.
On the way out the door, Sam looked over his shoulder just once and caught Circelia Belbane’s grey speckled eyes following them, one hand rubbing the wrist of the other. The first chance he got, Sam shoved the wand into his pocket, tossing the box away into a trash can.
Much later, when Dean, more eager to know than their dad, asked Sam later what kind of wand Sam had gotten, Sam mumbled out a lie, telling him that it was dragon heartstring, and Dean’s arm swung around Sam’s shoulders, tugging him closer as they swayed down the streets in their father’s wake.
“Nice, dude,” Dean said, a big, proud grin on his features, and Sam felt his stomach sink down into his shoes. “Just like your big brother, huh?”
“Yeah,” Sam had responded, trying for a smile but worry edging in on his voice. “Just like you.”
-----
He was staring down at the table cloth, still absently running the tip of his finger over his wand when the person next to him rose, shifting to get in the queue that stretched down the side of the dining hall. Sam started at the sudden motion before admonishing himself: Jumpy much, Winchester?
He put his hands on the edge of the table, pushing himself to his feet and stepping out over the bench seats. The person in front of him shuffled forward a few steps and Sam fell in line, trying to ignore the way his stomach was slowly, torturously, tying itself in knots. He couldn’t help but think of what would happen when he got to the front of the room -- as he’d been thinking about ever since they’d gotten home from the Grotto a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully his introspection hadn’t been too noticed. His dad had given him the occasional stray look, but Dean was so busy making a giant fuss about his O.W.L.s that Sam’s silence and furrowed brow had fallen under the radar.
He’d been so excited about finally getting his letter, finally getting to go to the institute. His magic had been firing up for years beforehand, so it wasn’t like Sam hadn’t known it was coming, but it felt like it had taken so long to finally get there -- to finally be able to go off to school with Dean in the beginning of the fall, instead of standing behind, next to his dad, waving his brother off for another few months. He was finally here, finally going to get to see Dean all year round instead of just on the holidays, and instead of excitement he felt like there was a stone in his belly.
All because of some stupid, messed up wand that wasn’t meant to have any magic in it at all.
He let out a long puff of air, shuffling forward with the line, and couldn’t help but wonder how this, too, could go horribly wrong. If instead of getting Sorted the kneazle would just take one look at him and run away, or keel over or attack him, like it could see whatever it was in him that was wrong. Or, almost as bad, he wouldn’t get Sorted into Gryffindor.
“Sam Winchester,” the headmistress called out, and Sam looked up, the kid just in front of him jumping down from the chair. Sam glanced up at Whitmarsh, who smiled at him in a kind manner, her bony hand coming up to his back, in between his shoulderblades and ushering him forward. For just a second, he was tempted to dig his heels in.
There was no avoiding it, though, not without making a big scene, and Sam found himself walking over the chair, feeling all eyes in the room on him. He knew, logically, that they’d been watching the others just as much -- that he was no one special, no one important, just the first year that happened to be in the chair at this moment, but it still felt like judgment. Like everyone was waiting for the fall.
He’d never really liked being the center of attention.
When he sat down, though, he caught a flash of green to his left and he looked over to see his brother, leaning against the Gryffindor table, head casually propped against the butt of his palm. When he met Sam’s eyes he grinned, wide and reckless, all teeth and uneven, cocksure. He lifted his head so that he could give Sam a double thumbs up and Sam felt himself smile automatically. He wasn’t sure if the dread in his chest lessened or doubled, but he finally managed to sit down, hands clutching at the broad knobs at the end of the chair’s arms, taking a deep breath.
In front of him, sitting calm as anything on a table, was a cat with long black fur and an elegant face, nose sloping down and too-intelligent, too-knowing red eyes focused solely on him.
He’d read about her, of course. Ruby, the kneazle that had supposedly belonged to Anne Glover, had been there three hundred years ago during the trials and had seen her mistress hanged. Glover’s cat, she was called, and every year, at the beginning of the school term, she would look at each student and select which wing they were to belong to for the next seven years.
No one really knew how she made her decisions, or what criteria she used -- she was a cat after all. But she was a witch’s cat, and a familiar, over time, learned a kind of magic all their own. They said that she was never wrong.
And Sam feared what she’d see in him.
He glanced to the side of the table where there was an opulent dagger, short and perfectly polished, silvery blade gleaming and golden hilt studded with green gems. The symbol of Slytherin. Not that it was supposed to be any different from the other wings, but Sam was the son of a hunter -- a greater ratio of the dark witches and wizards his dad brought in were Slytherin in background, and Sam knew his dad had an instinctive distrust of the name.
Sam wasn’t sure exactly what it would mean if he was placed in Slytherin. Before the wandshop, before Circelia Belbane’s pale expression, Sam was fairly certain all he would have felt was disappointment at being separated from Dean. Now, though, with a dark yew wand in his pocket, the significance of his Sorting seemed so much higher.
At the end of the day, he just wanted to be placed with his brother.
On the table, Ruby was staring at him. Her eyes were bright, blood red, and Sam could tell where she’d gotten her name. Cats in general had a way of looking at a person like they knew something, but kneazles were even more so. Their intelligence was higher, and while the power of speech was beyond them, Sam had always gotten the impression that if they just had slightly more dexterous lips, they’d be having conversations. Ruby was even more than that.
She was the longest living kneazle on record and the only one to be considered a historical artifact by the Department.
The black cat began to casually stroll along the length of the table, one paw placed in front of the other, tail twitching back and forth in lazy s-curves, like she was putting on a show, aware of the hundred or so eyes focused on her. She blinked slowly, looking overly pleased with herself and stopped to lick the long fur on the center of her chest, just below her chin.
Sam kind of wanted to reach out and wring her neck and tell her to get on with it.
His irritation faded though, when she looked up, as if she’d heard his thoughts, and looked right at him. Maybe right through him, and his breathing went stiff and shallow.
She didn’t blink, had that unending stare, irises contracting and pupil becoming an elongated slit of darkness, the reflection of her retinas just behind it. Sam swallowed dryly and his fingers pressed into the dark wood of the chair. He felt chained by her gaze, held still for her inspection, and she was just a cat for heaven’s sake, but Sam couldn’t look away.
Then, as if nothing had happened, the black kneazle turned her head, walking over the table towards the left side. Sam felt hope hammer in his chest -- the burning red candle, set into the dark iron candelabrum of Gryffindor waited at the very end of the table, the image of four great lion heads sculpted in the old metal, supporting the thick wax of the candle.
Ruby paused though, Sam’s heart skipping a beat, and she turned before she got to the end of the table, stopping instead at the delicate silver chalice that lay between the candelabrum and the stone pentacle.
It was tall and slender, with a thin stem and narrow basin, its metal old but carefully polished, leaving it shining and perfect. A delicate line of silver ivy crawled up from the base, around the stem, and curled perfectly against the outside of the cup. At the rim, Sam could just make out the Latin carved into it, the letters long and sweeping: multitudo sapientium sanitas orbis.
‘A multitude of the wise is the health of the world’ -- the motto of Ravenclaw wing.
Ruby lifted a paw, placing it with almost human pomp against the rim of the cup, and Sam just barely heard Achillea Whitmarsh tell him ‘congratulations’ as she urged him up from the chair, clearing it for the next student. Sam got up mechanically, looking over at the kneazle, her crimson eyes following him as he walked away. She blinked in a self-satisfactory fashion, and Sam stumbled slightly as he almost missed the step down from the head of the room, having been looking over his shoulder instead of where he was going.
He followed the other first years ahead of him, walking around the room and back to their table, his head down, not wanting to make eye contact with Dean. He didn’t want to see whatever expression would be on his face.
Over the summer, they’d talked about how great it would be to hang out in their wing, to actually get to spend time together instead of be apart -- Dean calling him a geek the whole time of course, but Sam could see the warmth in his eyes, knew by the intensity of Dean’s embrace at the end of every school year, when he came home, that Dean missed him just as much as he missed Dean.
The disappointment was strong enough that he felt like crying, felt like just sitting down and crying like some little kid.
He’d so been looking forward to this, to everything. To finally getting his wand, to finally getting to come here, to finally being part of this world that was his, meant to be his, but had been kept out of his reach for the last four years with waiting. Now it seemed like everything was a disappointment.
The rest of the induction and evening meal passed without incident, Sam leaning his head on one hand and mostly just pushing the food on his plate around with his fork, the fine china and sculpted silverware passing under his radar. The other first years talked around him excitedly and a couple of girls even tried to throw a couple of questions his way, their kind faces saying they’d noticed his self-imposed repose, but his short and dull answers gave them little to work with.
Eventually the meal ended, the headmistress giving another flowery speech of welcome to close out the evening, and then everyone was getting up and filing out, the older students first while the first years waited to be guided to their new homes.
Sam waited until the guide for Ravenclaw wing, the seventh year student who was in charge of introducing them, called for them to come before getting up. There were about twenty other first years that came with him, all of them filing away while the others went to their guides of wing. The guide was a pleasant looking guy, all smiles and crinkled eyes, talking animatedly about how much they were going to love it over at Ravenclaw wing, but Sam didn’t listen.
He didn’t pay attention to much until someone called out his name, big and boisterous and irreverent in the hallowed halls.
“Sammy!!” Dean yelled and Sam’s head jerked up, looking to the side to see his brother jogged down the hallway, robes fluttering, and he was grinning, which Sam hadn’t expected at all.
“Winchester,” the Ravenclaw guide said with a frown. “I have to get these students to our wing, we’re on a schedule--”
“Ah, stuff your schedule. I need a second with my little bro -- which, ladies.” Dean paused, nodding to the younger girls with a put on charm. “This is the dude to watch right here.” He slipped his arm around Sam’s shoulder, and Sam felt his cheeks heat up.
“Dean,” he hissed, but his brother took no notice of him.
“He looks a little geeky now, I know, but trust me, he’s a Winchester -- our genes never go wrong,” Dean declared proudly, and the girls were all giggling to themselves at his antics.
“Dean--” Sam started again.
“Hey, so,” Dean interrupted, bossy hands steering Sam away from the group a few paces before landing on Sam’s shoulders. “Ravenclaw, huh?”
“Yeah, I--” Sam started, then didn’t know what to say. The weight of his wand seemed to be so conspicuous in his robes, and he knew he should tell Dean what happened, the strange nature of his wand, but what felt worse right now, felt heavier, was his Sorting. Which was stupid, because having a crazy, dark magic wand was a much bigger problem, but all Sam could think about was that all their plans, all their certainty, and all of Sam’s desire to follow in his big brother’s footsteps was going down the drain, vanished right away the instant that Ruby put her paw on that chalice and Sam didn’t even know what to say--
“So freaking proud of you, Sammy,” Dean said suddenly, unexpectedly. Sam blinked at that and his chin jerked up, looking into his brother’s lively eyes, and his gaze was so warm, so undeniably proud, like Sam had just done something amazing, something bigger and grander than just getting Sorted like every other wizarding student did.
“What?” Sam asked, sounding like an idiot.
“You’re so fucking smart, kid,” Dean continued, like Sam was clued into what was happening, then Dean hauled him in, and if Sam wasn’t expecting his brother’s words, he certainly wasn’t expecting this. He stumbled, right into Dean’s chest, but Dean caught him like always, held him up, held him close, and Sam felt strong arms come around him. “My stupid genius kid brother...”
“Dean...” Sam murmured, and Dean’s robes smelled like their cheap detergent and gun oil from the trunk. They didn’t smell anything like magic or history, didn’t smell like all the decorum and circumstance of their surroundings, nothing like magic. They smelled like endless summers passed over the tarmac, like the heat and sweat from a long day’s work and the sulfur chalk scent of gunpowder.
They smelled like Winchester. Like Dean. Like home.
And Sam shut his eyes and burrowed in, his scrawny arms coming up and around his brother’s waist.
“You’re going to be amazing, Sammy,” Dean mumbled into his hair, and Sam felt the warm breath of the words against his scalp. “Gonna blow ‘em all out of the water.”
Sam laughed then, a watery chuckle, not bothering to point out to Dean that that wasn’t how school worked, that it wasn’t a competition. It didn’t matter. It was just enough to know that Dean thought he’d win if it were.
“So freakin’ proud,” Dean repeated, Sam pressing himself closer, not caring if anyone thought they were strange so long as Dean was holding him.
So long as Dean believed in him.
And just like that, the world was right again.