Chapter 1. Pure Blood

"Blood Status?" I stared at the man across the shop counter. "Are- are you a Healer?"

He had introduced himself as a Ministry Official from some registration committee or other – the Ministry often has such short-lived stunts for magical businesses – and we had been through what my name was, and exactly how you spell Thaklia Coburg-Drury, and my date of birth, and whether I was the proprietor, and what I was doing here since I wasn't – I'm his daughter, I run the shop end of our wand making business – but this?

"Are you from St. Mungo's?" I queried. It was eleven months since I'd been discharged from St. Mungo's after a three week stay with a nasty case of blood poisoning, and the Healers had said on their follow-up house call that I was definitely cured and they wouldn't need to check on me any more.

"Blood status has nothing to do with your health," the man snapped, unreasonably as far as I could see. How was I to know? I'd never heard the term before – St. Mungo's seemed a pretty valid guess. "The latest developments in research from the Department of Mysteries," he ploughed on as if reciting a set text, "has proved that the level of valid magical ability in any witch or wizard is directly related to their lineage. Your Blood Status is either pure, if you are descended purely from magical ancestors in the last five generations, or half-blood, if it has been- diluted – by non-magical blood in that time-span. All other magical ability is invalid."

Invalid? My mind stalled, but the man pointed the tip of his quill at me again. "So you are...?"

"Er-"

I am a Coburg-Drury. And Coburg-Drurys are wand makers, members of an odd sector of the wizarding population who tend to marry only their own relations engaged in the same occupation, and never their rivals. Ollivanders marry Ollivanders, or their distant connections the Fartreggs of Orkney, who've long since given up making wands. A similar alliance exists between McDougal's of Edinburgh and Dunlonan's of Dublin. On the continent, the Gregorovichs were once such a large tribe they only married each other, and Joder's of Bavaria marry Joders and their side-branch the Coburgs. At this point we, the Coburg-Drurys, are connected to them, and so three surnames feature on our family tree: Joder, Coburg, and Coburg-Drury. They're all wizards – they're all wand makers, actually. I supposed that made me–

"Pure blood." I smiled at his scowl, in an attempt to be appeasing. "From Slytherin."

He grunted, and I felt my usual prickle of annoyance. Just because we weren't Ollivanders, just because the sign on the shop front only says 'Established 1094 AD' - there was no need to be so bloody snobbish. The Sorting Hat said I had every quality necessary for Slytherin and put me there, and the entire of my extended, apparently 'pure blood,' family says that I take after the Drurys, who are as Norman English as any of the other stuck-up 'old-familied' Slytherins. Like the Malfoys.

We just happen to run a business. And to have had to preserve the name by marrying out into Germany.

I favoured him with the smile that I usually use for snobbish Ministry idiots – the little, pompous, just-out-of-Hogwarts ones. "Anything else?"

"Who else is on the premises?"

The accompanying glare was really quite threatening – I switched back to the appeasing smile.

"My younger brother. He's an apprentice wand maker. Do you need to see him?"

The man looked at me for a minute as if I was the idiot. "Yes..." he hissed.

I didn't quite like to turn my back – Ministry official or not – so I shuffled backwards from the counter to the workshop door. "There's a gentleman to see you," I called hastily over one shoulder, and stepped back to the counter again. "He might be a minute if he's in the middle of something."

Another grunt, and the man folded his arms and gazed about the shop in an appraising manner I didn't much like – rather the way my great-great-aunts check for cobwebs in every corner when they come to visit. There weren't cobwebs – I'd swept this morning – and it's a nice shop, a big square shop with two bay windows and a tiled floor, and shelves with wand boxes covering both side walls. I leaned on my side of the big teak counter that spans the back of the shop, and tried to look imposing. Hurry up, little brother.

He glanced at me scornfully. "Do you do a lot of business, with a shop this big?"

Merlin's beard. If our shop reflected the size of our average annual turnover I'd be presiding over a kitchen cupboard. Coburg-Drury's sells wands to witches and wizards whose families buy Coburg-Drury wands, because they buy Coburg-Drury wands, because that's just what they do. There aren't that many of them. The other reason for our limited clientèle is that we're not on Diagon. We're in Kentish Town.

I know, you've never heard of Kentish Town. Most of the muggle-borns haven't, either – their 'guides' from Hogwarts just take them to Diagon and plonk them at Ollivanders, and that's the end of the matter. Which is perfectly sufficient – if you want anything magical, you can probably get it on Diagon Alley, and if you want anything dodgy, you can go round to Knockturn.

Kentish Town is – different. When I'm preserving a proper degree of wizarding pride, I say it's specialist, more exclusive; but frankly, it's just – different. You get in from the muggle Kentish Town, just like Diagon off Tottenham Court Road, via the shabby little newsagents behind the big brick Victorian monstrosity that is, apparently, a muggle public baths – why ever muggles want to take baths in public.

To a muggle, Coultt's is a newsagents, that sells a few tatty tabloid papers and has ancient adverts for glass-bottled Coca-Cola in its windows. They somehow miss the quills, parchment, ink, blank books – and sets of mildly hexed stationary that turn your hands green or give you hiccups, for those so childishly inclined, like my little brother. They somehow miss Mr Coultt's cat Marmaduke – although I wouldn't mind sharing that with them: I don't like cats or kneazles at the best of times, and huge ginger ones that are too big, too clever, and can probably talk are really not my thing. And above all, the muggles somehow miss the big, green-curtained archway at the back of the shop which, if brushed with your wand, opens.

Opens onto The Court, Kentish Town.

It's not as long as Diagon – a narrow cobbled street of Elizabethan half-timbered shops down to Coburg-Drury's Wand-makers at Number 17, where it opens out into a small square with the largest surviving elm tree in London at the centre. The muggle Dutch Elm Disease didn't stand much chance against a good beetle repelling charm, although I do wonder why anybody bothered, when I'm sweeping slushy rotting leaves off the shop floor incessantly each autumn. Most of the names over the shops date from the 15th century founders, but if they meant to rival Diagon, they failed.

Our magical backwater has been most popular with successive generations of refugees from continental wizarding wars, most recently Grindelwald. This is why the Lenoir family make 'Fine Robes for Wizarding Gentry' at Buckleton & Prenn, Stradivaria Corbellini runs the magical equipment suppliers Tailby & Bowes, Colly & Grout's second-hand bookshop belongs to the Van Dykes, and Mr & Mrs Nydowski still shout at each other in Polish behind the bar of the 'Four Slugs' pub at the very back of the square.

Perhaps the phrase is 'cosmopolitan' – and I realised I had quite forgotten my visiting Ministry Official in my mental ramblings.

Perhaps he thought I was mentally totting up our entire sales figures for the past six months. The year before last, I could have done that. In about five seconds flat. But I wasn't going to reveal our private financial affairs to some pompous twit from the Ministry – I do have some proper wizarding pride. If you are from a Kentish Town family, you are from a Kentish Town family, and we all keep the side up.

I looked at him disdainfully. "We have been a little busier since Ollivanders closed."

A little busier? We'd never actually seen anything like it. Ollivanders are, after all, the wand-makers. There – I'm a Coburg-Drury and I've said it. But it's a fact: almost everybody uses their wands. As I discovered aged fifteen – up until then I'd only vaguely noticed that all my classmates hadn't chosen their wands in our shop – when a couple of our Joder cousins came for Christmas, and took me out to several 'smart parties'. Their party trick (in lieu of any even mildly intelligent conversation) at home in Bavaria was to reel off what wands people had. It's quite easy to guess, really, based on height and build and the things people say – wand woods and cores tend to match distinctive characteristics.

But it depends on knowing the style of the predominant wand-maker...

The best you can say of that occasion is that my cousins weren't quitters: they guessed everybody, one at a time, wrong, while I stood there and died of Slytherin shame. That's the problem with smart parties – they don't even give you any chairs. Neither to hide under, nor to get the pleasure of playing Magical Chairs and seeing your evening's partner sit down in the seat that's just about to be vanished.

At any rate, when Mr Ollivander vanished, we got more customers than I had ever seen, had continued to get a stream of adult witches and wizards needing repairs and replacement wands throughout the year, and – although it was only the start of August and shops in general were agreed to be struggling with the nasty 'security situation' – we were doing pretty good business again this summer.

Officialdom did not sound impressed. He grunted. "Those big window are a security risk."

Now he sounded exactly like the great-great-aunts with the cobwebs. When they can't find anything wrong, they tell you something you're doing is going to lead to it. You know the sort of comment: "A rug on a polished floor? You'll slip!" – regardless of the sticking charms holding it down. But even great-great-aunt Elisaveta could have been more imaginative than our windows being a security risk. The things have more generations of anti-shatter charms on them than a Gringotts vault...

He swung his gaze back to me when I didn't bother to reply. "Do you live here?"

Merlin's-! I hastily reminded myself he probably didn't know that was insulting. Perhaps due to the history of refugee status of most new arrivals, the aim of anyone running a business in Kentish Town is to make enough to money to move elsewhere. We keep running our shops here, of course – but only the roughest, toughest and poorest actually live in Kentish Town. Coburg-Drury's 'made it' generations ago – while we were still the original name of Drury's, in fact, and have a very nice Family House with all proper muggle excluding charms, in Kingston.

I looked at him sourly. "No." Where the heck was my wretched brother?

"Then how does your father run this place if he doesn't live here?"

"My father," I snapped with offended dignity, "is in his nineties and consequently semi-retired. The majority of the wand-making is now the responsibility of-"

"Me," said the surly, juvenile and ungrammatical voice behind me.

If only Meck would occasionally manage not to look quite so sixteen years younger than myself. He came of age four years ago. You can do the calculations. This morning, that particular set of pale blue robes were making him look a very immature sixteen at the most. Which made the – Ministry official's – glare even more suspicious. "Age?"

Meck blinked. It used to be cute when he was little. "Twenty one," he said, in an innocent but puzzled tone. "Why–"

The official scribbled it down. "And your name?"

"Mecklenburg Adolphus Jorgmann Coburg-Drury."

Meck got every traditional name that had to be carried on in the family. It just sounds as if it was made up to be awkward – particularly reeled off like that – and there wasn't really any need to give the whole thing. I mean, I'm Thaklia Alexandrina Lucretia Coburg-Drury – but I hadn't smacked the poor official over the head with the whole thing. I glared at Meck as well – which was probably why he waited just long enough for it to be rude before enquiring: "D'you want it spelled?"

The official quill paused, considered, and apparently deciding to overlook the delay and any meaning therein, asked coldly: "One 'n' or two?"

"Three!" There was an awful pause. "One in 'Mecklenburg' and two in 'Jorgmann,'" Meck elaborated in an slightly over-done air of innocence.

The quill scratched fiercely. "Blood status?"

"Blood?" Definitely the bewildered schoolboy now. "It was Lia who had the blood poisoning last year."

Officialdom scowled with sudden suspicion. "Leah?" he demanded.

"Meaning me," I interrupted hastily, with my most appeasing smile. "Short for Thak-li-a..."

I got a nasty glare for my pains, before he turned back to Meck. I attempted to catch my brother's eye, but he was either transfixed by the official, or just plain refusing to look at me. Meck is very good at saying he didn't see me trying to look a message at him. Really, at this rate the chap was going to permanently suspect us of having hundreds of under-age muggle borns hidden in the premises...

"She was bitten by a fanged geranium, you see," Meck added unhelpfully.

Great. Make that a houseful of under-age muggle borns with made up names who made ridiculous excuses.

I mean, who gets blood poisoning from a fanged geranium? That was what the reception witch at 's had said when I'd gone in with it, but as I was turning a nastier shade of orange every minute, she'd been obliged to admit that I did have a problem. The healers had said it was a highly unusual case – one of the trainee healers had written me up as special case study.

"Blood status...?" the official repeated, fortunately with the air of a man trying to finish interviewing a hopeless imbecile rather than a suspicious criminal.

"Whether you're descended from a magical family or not, Meck," I prompted. Please, oh please...

"Why?"

"It was in the Prophet this morning," the man snapped. "Pure blood, half blood, or mud blood?"

Mud blood? I blinked. That was a dreadful way to put it.

"Pure blood," said Meck slowly. "if you count Coburg-Drury for eight generations and Joder's for twenty since we started counting as being pure..."

"Right." The official rolled his parchment shut with a snap – obviously the new registration committee didn't believe in saying 'thank you' – and fixed us both with a fierce glare. "New regulations regarding the control of wands. It is illegal to sell wands to anybody without proven Blood Status. Or to any part-humans: werewolves, metamorphmagi, giants, veela... You understand?"

"Yes," I said quickly before Meck could say anything. I didn't understand Blood Status, really – but we were never likely to be selling wands to werewolves, legal or not. Our parents had been in uproar when it had got out about a werewolf teaching at Hogwarts. The fact that I had been at school with the werewolf didn't bother anybody – it was that if Meck had gone to Hogwarts and if he had studied NEWT Defence and if he had had to re-take a year, he, the son-and-heir, could have been taught by a werewolf... In our parents' eyes, that was about the same as being savaged by one.

"And you must record the name, address and Blood Status of anyone purchasing a wand, for the Ministry to inspect – you're on the front line of eliminating this thef– invalid use of magic. Understand?"

"Yes!" I nodded and smiled desperately at the fierce glare, for out of the corner of my eye I could see Meck's most argumentative expression developing. "We'll get a book and start recording, this afternoon, most certainly–"

I was cut off by his abrupt turn on one heel. At the door, he looked back: "If there are further measures, you'll be informed! And monitored!" And the door slammed.

I started at the beginning: "What took you so long?!"

Meck's Very Argumentative Expression hadn't lifted. "I was listening."

"You were listening to the wireless while I'm waiting for you with a Ministry Official!" I exploded. "You are meant to keep one ear out for me calling! For all you knew it could have been a customer! I really-"

"I was listening to you and him," said Meck with suspicious simplicity.

"You were what?"

"Listening to you and the Ministry Official. So I knew what to say."

As if that explained anything! "Well, you didn't need to be so bloody unhelpful!" I shouted.

"I answered his questions," said the persistent picture of innocence

"Giving all your names, and telling him about my blood poisoning, and all! He'll suspect us of something for evermore!"

"Well, that's not my fault," Meck objected, switching from innocence to his other talent of devastating counter-attack. "You sounded far more suspicious than me – nodding and smiling and coo-ing all over him, like you either fancied him or wanted to get him out of the shop 'cause you were up to something."

"I- I- rubbish!"

Meck is the same height as me, so we glared at each other eye to eye. I wondered exactly how many million times we had done this since Meck learned to glare.

You may think I do not appreciate my little brother. I do. I always have done. His arrival very neatly put out of joint the noses of several of our Bavarian cousins, who had taken it for granted that they would have to come to England, marry me and carry on the business. I had never particularly liked Willem or Schlewing, the two rival candidates, and as for putting up with them as a permanency... well, a little brother had seemed easier.

It had been fun – the owl, the announcement in the Prophet, even Professor Slughorn taking note of me for the first and only occasion in my academic career, jovially giving me permission to go home and see my new brother, and going so far as to give me the "homework" of bringing a photograph of the "little chap" back to show him.

Nobody else was impressed. At the age of sixteen, all the other witches I knew had big brothers and sisters, all engaged in getting engaged, and married, and rendering people aunts and uncles – simple sisterhood had long since lost any social appeal. I retired back into the woodwork.

Meck was cute up to the age of two. After that, less so. He points out that this was the age at which I, having finished Hogwarts, became an influence in his life.

The son-and-heir, of course, could not be risked on the certainty of fatal fwooping cough, potions poisoning and broomstick accidents that make up daily life at Hogwarts. Which is why I, not having anything else to do, got to teach him. The primary stuff was fun, because he learned fast and read anything, which meant I could set him off in a book and then read myself without the slightest pang of conscience – Slytherins don't have much of that anyway. Teaching him magic, with the vision of Slughorn and McGonagall and Flitwick all peering over my shoulder, was more nerve-racking, but I soldiered on until we got to fourth-year Transfiguration.

I had produced a guinea pig – Meck was meant to be producing a guinea fowl. We spent all morning on it, by which time I knew that either he was stupid – he's not – or I was an incompetent teacher – pride hurting.

We still had our guinea pig.

I suppose I lost my temper. I turned the wretched animal into a budgie, and said, in a voice dripping with sarcasm: "Do you think you could possibly reduce that to a black beetle, or might that be too taxing...?"

Moral: never use sarcasm when teaching little brothers.

Meck raised his wand and with a fine taxing of his magical powers produced not one but two creatures – a budgidor and a labraderiar.

The budgidor wasn't too much of a problem – a black, hairy flightless bird that barks is startling but at least restricted to ground travel. The labraderiar, on the other hand, cheeped alarmingly, and had a massive set of green and yellow wings it was apparently created knowing how to use – it took off at great speed round the house.

Meck wanted to give it a name, and have it as a pet. We gave it away, and got him a tutor instead. Unfortunately, this still meant I had provided him with half his magical education, and about 70% of his total – enough for it always to be all my fault.

That was what his tutors thought, too. Plural. One per year. Nobody ever said I'd done well for having managed three and half years of angelic curls and devilish ability. They just said I hadn't disciplined him early enough – that was the fifth year woman for whom Meck would never sit still. He was just trying it on, of course – he could sit still perfectly well, he was fifteen, for Merlin's sake. He sat perfectly still at the shabby little offices of the Wizarding Examination Authority, under the augustly forbidding eye of Griselda Marchbanks herself – who doesn't approve of home-tutoring people because they 'are over indulged and under perform', as she was kind enough to tell me – and got ten straight 'O's for OWL and four straight 'O's for NEWT.

It was, of course, the cleverest thing ever achieved and also entirely to be expected. And, as far as I could see, entirely irrelevant. He was the son-and-heir. That made him apprentice by default – under performing or not.

He was certainly performing well as an apprentice – he'd learned quickly enough in four years for our father to be able to turn most of the work over to him, and just 'supervise Meck's studies' from the comfort of his own reading-room at home. And I have to admit it is probably just as well, because father, now ninety-one, would never have coped with the sheer volume of work last summer, and would certainly have been very unhappy with extra Ministry regulations. With Meck in the shop, things move faster.

You are probably wondering what I am doing here – and it is not actually just keeping an eye on Meck. When I quit teaching him, I didn't want to just hang around our house, avoiding Meck and the latest tutor. In 'Old Families' like ours, daughters are expected to either marry young, or if they're daring, 'have a career.' Meck had saved me from the first of those, so I exerted my Slytherin cunning, and persuaded father to let me join him in the shop. I wouldn't have minded training as a wand-maker, but professional consensus and family tradition states that wand-makers are only men. Besides, Meck was born to do it, and we certainly don't have enough business for two of us making wands. So I'm manager – which is, frankly, a whole lot more fun than being apprentice because I never have to study. I just manage, everything from the ordering of supplies to the cleaning – the Control of Wand Use Regulations forbid the presence of non-wand-bearers in a wand-makers shop. I bet Amos Diggory's never had to scrub a floor...

But the fact remains: I know a lot more about running this place than any cocky apprentice. I said so.

Meck snorted. "But do they know about running the country?" He turned.

"If you could just try and remember they have the power to close us down," I urged desperately.

Meck opened the door to the inner sanctum of the workshop. "Then they shouldn't have," he flung back without looking round.

A door slammed for the second time that day. And only then did I remember that Meck's 'girlfriend' was – muggleborn.