A l'improviste Who: Ollivander, Phineas Black, Thaddeus Thurkell, ?? When: Friday evening Where: Picadilly underground Why: Not only dark lords get to do fishy business Rating: PG-13 Status: Open/Incomplete
The modern constructions after his time were fascinatingly obscure, though Ollivander suspected they were never as openly magical in Reality as their Nexus counterparts. The long tunnels and railways branching off Picadilly station were dimly lit by short floating candles, many of which had initials and slogans carved on them by daring passersby.
The wandmaker had stumbled upon in this place quite by chance, following a makeshift path in Knockturn Alley bordered by crates of counterfeit goods and such like. Ollivander had no qualm to wander in dungeons and mazes. The earth was a familiar friend, and he was not one prone to get lost. The stone walls of the paths may look the same to common men, but to Oliver who was granted the gift of recognizing each leaf on a tree, and one blade of grass from another, it was no different than navigating the signed streets with a detailed road map.
Picadilly station however was a milling nest of activity and had nothing sinister about it. Ollivander strode into the central aisle at a leisurely pace while the wildly disparate crowd pressed around him. Here, a young mother in petticoat spoke sharply at a plastic pocket mirror. There, a soberly dressed gentleman in cane and cloak solemnly discussed policies with an elegant woman wearing Muggle pants and sunshades. A gangly boy in toga surveying the apparition point leaned by the far wall, nodding to the rhythm of some tune from his earphone, a metallic blue apparatus that most likely accessed the Wizarding Wireless. Small shops and stands littered the place, and the call of the sellers competing with the thundering wheels of the passing wagons. Ollivander was positively invisible in such a garish crowd, unless one peered close enough to see his eyes. Some people have grey eyes, Ollivander had them liquid silver.
The shifting platforms and moving rails twisted about in a seemingly random pattern as Ollivander adventured deeper in the busy tunnels. He had to retract his steps twice already, once for construction work and another for a dead end. He finally emerged in a much quieter area, where only a few people loitered; half of them carried packs and rolls and slept directly on the ground.
Ollivander wrapped himself in a brown woollen cloak and curled down by a bench, setting himself up for a long wait. There was three hours to midnight, and he couldn't begin to explore the telluric currents before they were properly aligned. To pass the time, he took upon himself to annotate the 2020-2040 anthology of Le Naturaliste, his late uncle's favorite reference.