After one of our lessons, which often devolved into political chatter, my grandfather bade me to follow him into one of the areas of the manor I was not allowed inside of.

Unsurprisingly the occasion was getting me a wand, although the sheer amount of wands present in the artefact room I was led into baffled me. There were dozens of them lining the walls in their cabinets, each lying upon a red velvety cushion.

I raised a brow at my grandfather, who looked slightly sheepish at the sheer opulence of the room. "I told a house-elf to display the wands for you, he seemed to have taken it overboard."

Probably Dobby, I had no issue interacting with house-elves in a respectable manner, although I focused on that particular elf because I knew him to be fanatic enough about his devotion to jump to his death in protection of those he considered worthy.

I went over to the nearest wand, a light brown one that was quite short, and picked it up.

Ah, so that's what wands were. They were resonators, the magical aura of their beastly component held in check by the wood surrounding it and trying to vibrate in tact with the connection wizards had for magic to allow for an amplification of the resulting spellwork.

The effect should also create a more harmonious and willing to subject itself to structure magic. A beautifully effective instrument, although this particular one was not for me. Its drum was unable to correctly provide a beat for my guitar, metaphorically speaking.

I waved it anyway, interested in what would result from the action.

Nothing apparently, the two wavelengths cancelling each other out in a, to my magical sense, jarring cacophony of noise. I cringed, waved of my grandfather who appeared worried at my instinctual response and went over to the next wand.

After picking it up, I determined that it was an even worse match than the last. And so it continued onwards, I found some that fit me well enough and some that didn't, being a perfectionist, I naturally wanted to try out all of them. The best one so far had been a yew wand with what I suspected to be a dragon heartstring or phoenix feather core, the resonation having wanted me to burn stuff down.

Of course I found my wand to be the last one in the row. Typical. It had quite a pleasing melody to it, weaving itself almost seamlessly into mine. I released the magic that wanted to spring forth at the ceiling. It was a rather unstructured mess that I did not quite know how to direct yet, but suffice to say I was quite impressed with the fact that our wooden ceiling suddenly started growing branches with needles on them. Then it erupted into blinding flames that reminded me more of a magnesium flare than fire, the ashes that feel down from the ceiling then started the process of branch growing all over again, this time on the floor. Then they erupted into flames again.

You get the idea.

The core couldn't have been anything but something from a phoenix, although I did not know what, the wand being of a more dubious origin meant it was possible for it to be a more illegal and fatal to the animal ingredient than the usual feather.

The wood was pine, I'd had a escritoire made out of the wood in my last life. Many days had been spent sitting behind it, enough for me it to be burned into my memory how the wood felt.

"Well, I have a wand now, although in hindsight, couldn't we have just gone to an overseas wandmaker under polyjuice?" I asked Abraxas and tore him away from the theatre of the repetitively reincarnating, in fire, branchwork on the floor.

"Better to leave no chances, you found a wand this way as well, it simply took longer." He said and shook his head.

"Do we know the origin of this wand, and should I take the second best fitting wand for secondary use?" Secondary wands were a thing right?

Abraxas smiled at me amused, "better not, wands are like lovers, you wouldn't want to sour the relationship by getting a mistress quite so openly. The wand I bought in an auction along with many others, a family from eastern Europe pawning off the possessions of a deceased relative who happened to be a wandmaker. Pine and phoenix ashes."

So my guesses had been correct, good to know. I glanced at the cyclic combustion happening out of the corner of my eyes. It didn't feel like it was running out of power anytime soon.

"What do we do about that thing?" I asked.

"No idea Draco, no idea."

-/-

We never did manage to dispel the reincarnating branch cursed flame phoenix thingy, but as shown before one could move the ashes and have the entire theatre move with them. So we simply locked the entire thing up in a glass aquarium and put it on display in the ball room of our manor.

It wasn't dark so we could afford to flaunt the undoubtedly interesting piece of magic, maybe it would even be something useful to study once I understood more of magic.