Chapter 15

After five months, I had managed to create a wand that was, 'decent enough' if you believed Garrick. It still didn't look as good as the old man's creations though, which as mentioned previously did not evoke any feelings of jealousy within me, at all.

"I must have a great variety of wands so that I can match them to my customers, making custom wands would be impossible since it would take a few weeks to get to know the magic of the buyer."

I looked at him urging him to go on. He smiled and said exactly what I had hoped he would say.

"Naturally, because you yourself are the most familiar with your own connection to magic, the wand created by you, for you, will trump mostly anything made by others." Grinning, I patted myself on the back, learning wandmaking had been a great idea, not that I had learned it in its entirety yet.

"Now find a wood that you feel would be most conductive to channeling magic."

I sat up from the stool I usually used for carving, and went around brushing my hand against different woods, letting of a small stream of magic from my fingertips.

Ash, maple, redwood, cherry, PINE.

The wood from the pine tree sucked in my magic slowly, my magic sense skill of level 28 was quite helpful.

I left some of my magic in it, too much to devour in less than a minute while I checked the other woods, receiving no reaction from any of them.

I walked to the other side of the room and stretched out my right hand towards the pine branch.

"accio"

It was more of a thought buried deep in my mind than an actual incantation.

The light brown branch slowly rose up and started floating towards me.

When I grasped it in my hand I felt my soul quiver with excitement.

"Well you seem to have found your preferred wood, quite an amazing reaction if I do say so myself." Garrick's voice shocked me out of my trance.

"Pinewood, interesting you don't see that very often." He commented, looking rather deep in thought.

"How do I determine the best shape and length?" My question broke him out of his stupor, he blinked a few times and answered.

"Well this is quite a long process when you are doing custom wands, you will have to slowly chip away at the wood feeling with your magic for what is right. But before that, let's go look for the wand core."

He led me to another workshop one I hadn't been allowed to enter before. The first thing I noticed was that the walls were filled with shelves, upon them were jars filled with a variety of cores. I only recognized dragon heartstring and phoenix feather, though they were the most numerically represented.

The walls shimmered with unicorn hair. My eyes widened, that stuff was literally worth a fortune. I glanced at the Garrick in my peripheral vision. This might just be the richest man in England.

Originally I had thought that I would simply be picked by a phoenix feather, they represented immortality and rebirth, quite fitting.

But it was not to be.

Maybe Pine already fulfilled that role.

As I stretched out my magical sense and walked around the room (the range was only 2 meters), I felt a tugging and as I followed, I found a trunk.

I tried to open it, but it was locked. It suddenly clicked open and I saw Garrick lowering his wand out of the corner of my eye.

Inside were a lot of weird cores, fangs, bones and feathers of animals I didn't recognize. I couldn't help but ask.

"Why do you only use phoenix feathers, unicorn hairs and dragon heartstrings?" I asked and watched him shrug.

"Those are some of the most powerful magical creatures and with the most general coverage of adaptability towards wizards. If I didn't I would have to spend a much longer time matching wands to people." That didn't directly answer the question. Whatever, if he didn't want to say he didn't have to.

My hand touched something round and smooth, I felt a smooth burn run through my body.

I took out the object.

It was a glass orb with with what looked like muscle inside. Dragon heartstring.

I looked at my teacher questioningly.

"I didn't put it with the rest of the dragon heartstrings because the dragon this was removed from was a tad, weird..."

"Well, it looks like you found your wand core. The pine wood is suited for transfiguration and while dragon heartstring is usually known for its combat magic, I think this one might be more inclined towards the mind arts." He looked at me, "What are you waiting for, get to work."

The first thing I had to do was a small ritual that would turn the pinewood incorporeal so I could insert the heartstring inside it without cutting a hole in the wood.

That was easy enough.

The second step was to cut away pieces of pinewood around the wand core until I found the right size and shape.

The catch was, you had to chip away wood the size of a grain of sand or you could quickly find yourself starting over.

After making miniscule progress, I went home.

Bill was in Egypt and would come back in a few weeks.

I sat on my bed looking at the potion bottles before me.

Aging potion.

Me and Bill lived in the muggle world so it would be necessary for me to look older if I wanted anything done.

He had probably meant it for me to go shopping or maybe actually being able to cook without standing on a chair.

I was going to use it to get laid.