Gideon hesitated. "A lot of things could happen," he began, and thought about leaving it at that. He didn't want to scare her into assuming the worst would happen or ruin her enthusiasm over going to Hogwarts in the first place. In an ideal world, he wouldn't have had to mention any of this at all, and she could have just... been a kid, for her last summer before going to school. That being said, if he was going to ask her to make this decision with him, she needed to know what the stakes actually were, which meant there were some unpleasant realities that they were going to have to discuss.

Was asking her to make it with him even the right way to go about it? He didn't know. Maybe he ought to have just figured out what was best and made the decision and not burdened her with the different possibilities, but since he had so little confidence in his own ability to make the right decision, he thought involving her in the conversation was the least he could do. Hopefully it didn't backfire.

After a moment of quiet, he sighed and continued. "If they find out you've been lying to them, they'd probably expel you from Hogwarts. And if it came to light at any point that you were a girl sleeping in a room full of boys... well," he said awkwardly. "People would make up all sorts of stories about what might've happened. Not very nice stories. And that's just... that's not even thinking about the other students," he said. As frightful was it would be to have to weather a sea of rumors about what might have happened, the much worse scenario in Gideon's mind was that something might really happen. Living in such close proximity to a bunch of teenage boys, he had a hard time believing that one of them wouldn't find out, sooner or later. At that point they'd be able to demand whatever they wanted from her in order to keep her secret — and he could guess what sorts of things they might want. He'd been a teenage boy once, himself, after all. But how could he possibly explain any of that to Billie? How could he do so, at least, without instilling in her a belief that every boy she met was secretly a monster who was just waiting for a chance to destroy her?

"I don't want anyone to be able to take advantage of you," he said eventually, with some difficulty. "And if you had a big secret like this, and someone found out about it, they might try to. I'm not trying to... I won't make you wear dresses and tell people that you're a girl," he continued. "But we need to talk about it. About all of the options and all of the things that might happen."

  

If Gideon had left it at 'a lot of things could happen,' Billie was sure she would have had to do the sensible thing and kicked him in the shins. Well, or at least thrown a fuss. She had a bit more respect for Gideon than that, no matter how much she disliked the course their conversation seemed to be taking.

"Expelled," she whispered, disbelieving. Before she stumbled into the magical work and met Gideon, any mention of schooling would have had her scoffing. Education was meant for fancy-pants, privileged snobs who didn't have to worry about where their next meal came from. Her aspirations had only been as high as her social status. In truth, Billie had just hoped to survive into adulthood.

Now that she'd warmed to the idea and saw the possibility of a better life, she viewed school as the exact avenue in which she could accomplish such goals. She knew she'd likely still be behind since she'd only just learned to read and write competently, but, perhaps, she'd be able to catch up more quickly in practical matters and spellwork. If she was even any good. If she didn't just end up expelled.

"Oh. They'd think I was some sort of dollymop*." She concluded, unapologetic for the colorful term she used. At least she knew his meaning. She'd met plenty of women who the world frowned upon either for their actual or supposed activities. She'd seen a girl from her village ruined all because a boy had accused her of something unsavory. She'd merely refused his advances, and he'd sought revenge. If she was to be outed as a girl, she didn't want things to end that way.

Billie didn't fully realize what else Gideon implied, though she likely would have connected the dots if he had been a bit more explicit. It had been one of the reasons she chose to be a boy, after all. It was safer to appear as a young boy than as a young girl. Especially when one was off on their own. She'd heard enough stories.

"I...I don't want that to happen either." She was a bit more calm, but exceptionally more troubled. Why couldn't it be simple? If someone tried to take advantage, she'd have to find a way to blackmail them back. While she was probably capable of such things, she wouldn't be happy. Despite the way she treated her "nemesis," Billie wasn't a particularly malicious child.

"Is there some kind of magic or something that will make sure nobody finds out?" She blurted out, desperate for some sort of solution. She wasn't learned enough in magic to realize that was an even more complicated option. Not to mention, some folks might realize.



*Part-Time, Amateur Prostitute, apparently. ahahaha

  

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MJ, yet again working her magic.  <3 <3 Thank you

Gideon frowned at the word dollymop, but didn't comment on it. That was what he was getting at, after all, in his roundabout way, and he supposed he ought to be glad that she'd picked up on it and put the pieces together, even though in an ideal world he would have preferred she not know about such things at all. The fact that she'd been living on the streets for Merlin knew how long before he'd even known she existed, however, was far from ideal in terms of raising a child. She'd been exposed both directly and indirectly to all sorts of things that he wouldn't have chosen for her, if he'd been an involved father from day one.

He sighed in response to her last question. How he wished there was! Wouldn't that have simplified things, if all they needed was a certain spell or a potion in order to ensure that nothing they decided in the next two months would come back to haunt the both of them in a matter of a few years? Unfortunately, things were never that simple. "Magic can't solve everything," he pointed out. "As a matter of fact, a lot of what you'll learn in Hogwarts is what it can't do, or what it shouldn't. If there's some magic that might help us out of this, I don't know it."

Gideon paused, running his tongue over one canine while he considered what to say next. "The way I see it, we've got three choices. You can go to Hogwarts as a girl — a girl who likes adventures and Quidditch and interesting things," he amended with a half-smile. "Or as a boy — but that means we have to be careful the entire time you're there, to make sure no one finds out and nothing bad happens. Or..." he hesitated slightly, sure that she would not be particularly fond of the last option but feeling obliged to mention it all the same. "You don't have to go. If you'd rather stay here and keep on the way things are, we could find a teacher to do magic lessons."

  

Billie appeared just a tad let down that magic wouldn't be able to solve their problems. Of course, her view on magic was skewed since she hadn't exactly grown up with it. To her, it certainly seemed like it could do everything. "Maybe we just have to look around...um...research! Maybe someone knows how." Though, even just trying to ask other people for that sort of research was risky in and of itself.

While listening to Gideon's three options, Billie anxiously scratched at the hair near the back of her neck. None of those choices were ideal. They all had their downsides. How on Earth were they going to decide which would be best?

"They're all kinda rubbish choices," she commented, blandly, not one to mince words.

With a rather defeated sort of sigh, she scrunched her hands into her pockets. It seemed she would have to come to a decision one way or another, and it was already nearly July.

"Do we have to decide today?"

  

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MJ, yet again working her magic.  <3 <3 Thank you

"They are," Gideon admitted. Which was the whole reason they were having this conversation in the first place. If there was one choice that was obviously the best, he would have just made it and explained to her afterwards why it was in her best interest. As it was, the route she would probably be most inclined towards — going to Hogwarts and introducing herself as a boy — was the one that seemed to contain the greatest amount of risk to him. Going as a girl would at least ensure that she could keep on at Hogwarts from year to year, if she wanted to, and that she wouldn't find herself in any particularly compromising situations — but it was also the option that offered them the least flexibility in the future. He could foresee a scenario where she started Hogwarts as a boy, for instance, and decided after five or seven years that she'd rather live as the sex she'd been born with, and if that happened he might be able to change her name and introduce her as a distant cousin, or something. It wouldn't be ideal, but it would be easier to introduce a mysterious young woman to society (he thought) than to try and get a job as a boy if she had no social connections and no OWL or NEWT scores in her name to lean on.

"We don't have to decide today," he said with a slight nod. "But soon. Probably before your letter comes." If they were going to try and pass her off as a boy, he'd have to respond to the Hogwarts letter which 'incorrectly' listed her as Wilhelmina right away, or else they'd have no hopes of convincing anyone. Hopefully the Hogwarts staff would be inclined to take him at his word, if they went that route — he couldn't imagine that any of the professors would be inclined to actually check, but he didn't know that.

"No, before that," he said as he connected some dots in his head. "We'd need to go see a solicitor and get something official that has a name on it, if we wanted to tell Hogwarts you were a boy. Because their records would have the name your mother gave you, you know. A girl's name."

  

"How would they know my name isn't really Billie? I didn't tell it to them." She questioned, not really understanding how Hogwarts could know such a thing. It wasn't as if her mother would have told anyone; she despised magic. Billie also wasn't sure her birth had even been registered the muggle way.

Her eyes widened, that two month period she though she likely had to made a decision had narrowed. Gideon had said end of July is when letters came out. Which was also incredibly vague. That could mean a wide variety of dates. Then, add a visit to a solicitor and all the legal proceedings that likely followed, and that window shrunk even further. She was fairly certain legal types generally took their dear, sweet time.

"Can't we just say my Mum was drunk or something, and then realized later she meant to call me William?" Which wasn't really a simple solution either. It would be Gideon and her word against whatever written records Hogwarts had. "What if they don't believe us?"

"I hate this. I just want to be me," she suddenly admitted, her gaze drifting from Gideon to her boots. About a million possibilities pertaining to the three scenarios swirled about chaotically in her mind. One thing was for certain, the identity she'd grown comfortable in would never feel the same again. If it remained the same at all. She either had to give up boyhood and live as her genetics dictated or dwell in constant fear that someone would contest her gender and make an even bigger mess of things.

  

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MJ, yet again working her magic.  <3 <3 Thank you

Gideon frowned heavily at her last comment. "I know," he said softly, wishing he had something more comforting to add. He wished he could have taken all of this away from her, but that wasn't going to happen. Putting it off any longer wouldn't have helped anything — and now that he was thinking about the logistics of a solicitor's visit, if it came to that, he thought maybe he'd already put it off too long. He crossed to the nearby counter and leaned heavily against it. "I don't know exactly how it works, at Hogwarts," he admitted, "But they've got a list of everyone who ought to get a letter this year, even the ones who don't know about magic at all, and your name will be on the list. And we could say you were meant to be William," he continued, "But I don't know if they'll just take us at our word or whether they'd want some proof. If we had something from a solicitor that said your name, that would help. But it still might not be enough."

If they were caught in the lie that early on, would they still let her attend Hogwarts as a girl? Gideon wasn't sure; there was some sort of policy in place, he thought, within the Department of Education that ensured magical children were able to attend at least a year of Hogwarts if they wanted it, which was why the scholarships existed for those who needed them. That being said, he didn't know if outright lying to the administration would be grounds for her to forfeit her right to education. And if she wasn't allowed to go to Hogwarts because she'd tried to lie about her gender, it would probably come out in some public fashion and come back to haunt the two of them later, when they were trying to decide how to move forward without a Hogwarts education.

"We don't have to decide today," he repeated. "We could talk about it again in... a week, probably. To decide." A week would give him enough time to get things sorted out one way or another before the Hogwarts letters were issued at the end of July. "But you'll still be you, whatever we decide."

  

"If they've got a magical list, what if they've got a magic thing that knows if you're lying?" She questioned, her shoulders drooping. And what if Hogwarts was convinced their list method was foolproof? Or the solicitor started asking nosy questions and wanted proof themselves? They didn't have that sort of proof. They were really in a bind. The more she stared at Gideon's idea of how to fix it, the further and further away an achievable solution felt. There were too many what ifs.

It seemed like her only option was to choose between going to Hogwarts and continuing on as she always had. It wasn't fair that she couldn't have both. Regular boys were allowed to have both. Stupid Jimmy Fletcher was allowed to have both. What would that mean for her future? Would she just have to settle for just doing odd jobs for the rest of her life? No nifflers. Or dragons. Or quidditch. Or friends, really, since they'd all have gone off to school.

Looking defeated, which was a rather foreign expression for one Billie Farrow, she bobbed her head up and down twice. "Yeah, okay, a week." A week was a blink of an eye.

And she wasn't so sure Gideon was right. Would she really be her still?

The following 1 user Likes Billie Farrow's post:1 user Likes Billie Farrow's post
   Gideon Ollivander

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MJ, yet again working her magic.  <3 <3 Thank you

There were magical methods to detect when someone was lying, but he didn't think sharing that particular information with her was likely to help anything. It seemed rather far-fetched that anyone would use veritaserum or one of its alternatives on a child that talking about this would only scare her unnecessarily, he thought. It wasn't as though it would be terribly common to lie to the Hogwarts faculty when enrolling a child, he thought, and so no one would be looking for lies. But if they did get suspicious for one reason or another, it wouldn't take a magical truth-serum to get to the bottom of things. They could just ask for some piece of documentation that they didn't have, or, simpler still, ask her to prove her anatomy, which she wouldn't be able to do. Not, at any rate, without some complicated and potentially uncomfortable bit of transfiguration magic — but if they were at the point where anyone was asking, they'd probably end up calling the whole thing off, he figured. They couldn't keep a ruse up for seven years if those around her were that suspicious from the outset.

Billie had agreed to a week, but rather than showing any relief at being able to put it off, she looked quite miserable. Was the weight of this going to drag her down for the whole week? He regretted again that it had come up at such an opportune moment, because they'd only just started looking for her wand and now he was worried that the occasion would be ruined by her (quite justified) sulking.

"Do you want to try another wand?" he asked tentatively. "It's okay if you're not in the mood anymore. I shouldn't've... well, I should have talked to you about this earlier," he clarified. "But I kept hoping something would happen and I'd find a way to fix it all, I suppose."

  

Unfortunately for Gideon, Billie was likely to be a bit moody in the coming week, a weird preview to a few years down the line. However, unlike puberty, her feelings wouldn't be inflated.

"Y...yeah, I do," she replied, softly, trying to tear herself away from all the what-ifs. Maybe searching for a wand would offer a suitable distraction, at least.

"It's okay. I'm the one who got us into this mess in the first place, anyways." If she'd just done the sensible thing and remained a girl, that is. Though, she wasn't so sure she'd be the same person, or they would have even met.

  

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MJ, yet again working her magic.  <3 <3 Thank you

"You didn't 'get us into' anything," Gideon disagreed gently. "You did something that made sense at the time. And we'll figure it out. It's not the end of the world, no matter what happens," he continued. There was the potential for things to get a little hairy, of course. They could even go catastrophically badly, if they tried to send her to school as a boy and had their efforts foiled by some unexpected circumstances. Whatever happened, though, they would get through it. He had spent the last two years trying to figure out how to play catch-up as a father, and he wasn't done with the role yet. Whatever happened, they were in it together, and he'd find a way to get them through it. He just hoped he could shield poor Billie from some of the worst possibilities.

"Let's try an English oak next," he decided, navigating to the section which contained them. "My wand's an English oak, and they say Merlin's was, too. We used to have a few wands that were from the same tree as mine, but they were both destroyed in the fire," he explained a bit wistfully. It would have been a neat sort of symmetry if his daughter had ended up with a wand from the same source as his own, he thought. He mused over the section of English oaks and eventually retrieved a box labeled English oak and unicorn hair, eleven inches even.

"When we find your wand, do you want a handle on it?" he offered as he passed the box to her. "It doesn't add anything to the wand, magically speaking... but some people like them. And you can put words or initials on them. Most people don't, since it's an extra cost, but —" he shrugged in an animated fashion (trying, it was true, to lighten the mood once more after their earlier conversation). "— there are some perks to working in a wand shop."

  

It certainly felt like the end of the world, and Billie didn't feel as if she were dramatic in thinking so. Not this time. Especially, if something terrible happened, it wouldn't just affect her. Gideon would be caught in the middle, too. She'd learned rather quickly in her short life that people could be cruel, and they often didn't hesitate to take others out in the process. Would people stop buying wands from him? Would they end friendships? Quin would probably stick around, but would he be affected, too, just by association?

The most difficult part was there weren't any fixed truths. It was possible she could go to school as a boy, fool Hogwarts, and come out unscathed. It was also possible it could be worse than they ever imagined. Or being forced to be a girl could suck the life out of her. Not to mention, she'd already made connections with others. They'd already be finding out she lied. That could be a catastrophe in itself.

"You have the same wand as Merlin?" She asked, suddenly tuning back in to the wand search. Now that was something! Wasn't Merlin supposed to have been one of the greatest wizards who had ever existed? She wasn't sure Gideon was on that level, although she thought he was pretty great. Unless he too let some sort of double life.

She frowned when it seemed wands from the same tree had been lost, but she'd still appreciate the similarity if an English Oak worked out.

"Does it make it easier to hold?"

  

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MJ, yet again working her magic.  <3 <3 Thank you

"The same wand wood," he corrected with a smile. "And it's just a legend. No one actually knows what Merlin's wand was." That was one of the reason the idea of finding Avalon was so tantalizing still, to the point where an entire expedition had been launched to go looking for it. Everyone assumed that Merlin had been buried with his wand, as was the custom of the day. If they could find Merlin's grave, they would find his wand — and some believed that it was one of the most powerful wands ever created. Second only to the Elder Wand of lore — but that was just a children's story. Some would argue that Merlin was, too, at least as he was commonly portrayed. Tales of his exploits might have been more fiction than fact at this point, but it was at least vaguely verifiable that there had been a Merlin.

"Some people think so. It depends on what you're used to," he explained, regarding the handle question. "People who get them always want one for their second wand, if they have to get a replacement. But if you're well matched to your wand, I think you sort of... grow together," he said with a shrug. "With or without a handle, it'll feel like an extension of your hand sooner or later."

He fished the wand out of the box and handed it to Billie, but took it back before she'd had a chance to so much as wiggle it. "Oh, no. I don't know what I was thinking. Not that at all," he said, replacing it in the case. He'd been thinking sentimentally, of course, which was what had lead him astray — that, and he was admittedly thrown off his game by the discomfort of the conversation they'd just had. He was quite certain at this point that her wand was not English oak, and he'd taken it back from her before she could do any unintentional damage with it, so that was a bit of progress, he supposed.

Turning back to the wall of wands behind him, he took a moment to consider. "Hmm," he mused aloud after a moment. "Now that's a possibility..."

  

"Oh," she commented in reaction to Merlin's wand wood only being stuff of legends. She was still learning about him, and, to her, he seemed like that Jesus guy her mother loved to talk about so much. If they were supposed to be real guys, she really didn't understand why people made up stories about them instead of just telling the truth. Though, was she any different?

Billie gave Gideon a thoughtful look and tilted her head to the side. She figured she'd soon learn what he meant about a want becoming an extension of her hand. "Maybe I can see how it feels first? A handle can be added after, can't it?" Maybe she'd like it without.

Eager to find her wand and allow the excitement to distract her from other pressing matters, Billie readily accepted the next wand. However, it was plucked from her fingers before she could even will them to move. How did Gideon know so quickly that it wouldn't be suited to her? She hadn't even attempted to wave it! Wandmaking was certainly a mystery.

"What's a possibility?" She questioned, using a nearby table to help lift herself off the ground a bit so she could see where Gideon was searching better. "How do you know?" The second question was a remnant from an earlier thought. It likely sounded out of place, but it was often how her brain and endless stream of curious questions seemed to work.

  

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MJ, yet again working her magic.  <3 <3 Thank you

"The wands tell you," he answered with a small grin. It was not the first time he'd been asked how he went about selecting wands for customers to try out, but that was more or less the best answer he could come up with. It was a difficult thing to explain, and he thought he'd learned it more through years of working in the shop and watching his father and brother assist customers with their wands than anything else. Maybe it had something to do, too, with how much he knew about wand creation. Even for the wands in the shop that he'd had no personal hand in, he could get a feeling of sorts for what they'd been through, and a bit of their personality. For Gideon, telling whether or not a wand was suited for the witch or wizard who held it was as easy as telling whether two people engaged in conversation liked each other or not. The tells were different for every wand, just as they would be different for every person, but they were always there. Actually, come to think of it, he was probably a lot better at reading wands than he was at reading people.

He hadn't done much in the way of passing this skill along to Billie. She may have been working in the shop ostensibly to earn her room, but that was more of a facade than anything else; he'd only ever given her small tasks and errands to accomplish and not brought her in to the art or science of wandmaking. She still felt too young — neither he nor Gervaise had begun learning the craft until after their OWL exams. Besides, he wasn't sure if she even wanted to learn, when there was a whole other world of possibilities available to her. It might be fun, though, to bring her into the process a little bit for the moment, since they were choosing her wand.

"Come over here and I'll show you," he said, moving towards the section of the wall for ebony wands. Eying the wall, he selected four boxes and removed them from the shelf, setting them on a nearby surface and removing the lids. "You might think these are all the same, since they're all black," he explained. "But ebony is special, even among all the other magical woods. Ebony wands always know just who they are. Take a look, and see if they'll tell you."

  

Gideon's answer had her pulling a face. That was vague! It wasn't as if wands could speak. It was likely clear to him that she had about a million other questions threatening to spill out her ears. Her curiosity, for once, was a blessing in the form of distraction.

When he invited her over, Billie beamed and quickly wandered closer. The balloon of thoughts in her head began to deflate, eager to get some sort of answer. Even though the Florida Man incident had blessed her with quite a few inches of growth overnight, she still found herself rising up on her toes and using her forearms to help ensure she could more closely examine the wands that had been placed upon the counter.

"Yeah, they do kinda look the same," she replied with a squint. Aside from small differences in the way they'd been carved, they all seemed like black sticks upon first glance. Her eyebrows furrowed, "But how do they know? Are all trees magic?"

She tried to recollect if any of the trees in the park seemed magical. Some she inherently liked more than others, but she could wave that off as the tree's climability or good shade.

Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she surveyed the four boxes, not exactly sure what she was looking for. Was she supposed to feel something? The one on the farthest right she frowned at, but she wasn't quite sure why. "Am I supposed to touch them?"

  

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MJ, yet again working her magic.  <3 <3 Thank you