I Love This. I Just Love It.
I love the details. Especially these:
• The handkerchief sleeves of her lavender robe. • The apprentice taking over the name 'Ollivander' on the master's retirement (it's so very Dread Pirate Roberts-like). • Molly not being able to bully her way into taking over the kitchen. Even Muriel's house-elf is formidable! *snickers* • Muriel's taste in home furnishings and pragmatism. I love that you made her a Slytherin with a Slytherin's sense of self-preservation and loyalty to family. • Muriel being a chess shark. • The tiara backstory and Muriel's comment of the goblins having to wait until she's dead to have it back. • Muriel's taste in coffee, not to mention her improved appreciation of it after her divorce. • Her son, the accountant. • Muriel's reason for disapproving of Hermione, which is so spot-on the way I see both of them. • That first kiss on his cheek. • Ollivander's insistence that he won't run the risk of making a woman uncomfortable in her own home. • Ollivander's feel for wood despite his magic being buried. And the way he thinks while he carves. • The way other canon characters are seen through their eyes, including Wilhelmina, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, even Percy, and the way Muriel finds Rita 'vastly amusing' because of her audacity. • The rich character of her scent, 'something spicy and oriental, rich and strong-willed, very definitely her'. Then the way it affects him, 'it twists him up along with her fingers and her mouth and he is absolutely helpless.'
(continued because I exceeded the word count and needed to break this up)