What a thoughtful, compelling story! I really love the way you've taken these two characters and their brief moment in canon and let their dynamic play out until its reverberations echo to the edges of the HP universe. Ollivander's kidnapping is one of those plot points so peripheral to the main flow events that you don't even realize it doesn't really make sense--I mean, I understand the need to control the production of wands, but why kidnap an artisan and ask him to work his magic away from his materials and tools? It's one of these ridiculous slights of hand that you have to skim over as someone reading for Harry's story and as someone with an eye on the impending Harry/Voldemort endgame. But here you take this plot point at face value think about how it would work, and what it might mean. Can Ollivander be forced to make new wands? How would he do it, exactly? Why does Peter even need one? And you don't try to answer everything, but the possibility of a universe where minor characters have their own histories and motivations is always there in the background, lurking.
For me, Peter's always been one of the most interesting characters in the books--an ordinary person who completely lacks the larger-than-life quality of many of the adults in Harry's life. I like the way you've sketched out his character--lacking confidence and a sense of his own self-worth ("Do I even deserve a wand?"), attracted to power, just waiting for someone to tell him what to do, unable to even keep up the act of Voldemort's right-hand man.
I love the way that Peter's lack of courage contrasts with the kind of professional neutrality that Ollivander has, because Ollivander's not a hero either, is he? He has this particular, valuable set of skills, perhaps even his own kind of magic and insight, but it's used impartially on the part of everyone who comes to his door--wizards show up, and he matches them with a wand, regardless of who they are. It's the leadership of priest rather than a warrior, if that makes sense. And while he resists Voldemort's demands for more information later on, here he's in awe of Voldemort, not unlike Peter.
In any case, their shared inability and unwillingness to change things makes them this odd, sad pairing whose interactions say so much about everyone else in the wizarding world, all those people who *aren't* in Dumbledore's Army or the Order of the Phoenix. It's a really lovely interlude, very Beholder in its willingness to see value outside the moral universe that JKR set up. I loved that, thank you.
Thanks too for all the thoughtful, telling details--the tradition of parents being buried with the wands of their dead children, Ollivander's method of dragon heartstring extraction, Peter's fleeting thought that perhaps Ollivander had been a Quidditch player when he was younger. They gave this story a lovely sense of depth.
In short, such a thought-provoking fic. Thank you so much, Mystery Author! Maggie