Chapter 37: The Wand’s Second Mutation
Lupin and Howard's survey was complete. 83% of the students stated that the current Defense Against the Dark Arts was useless, while 17% found the course boring.
This was good news.
The Christmas holiday quickly arrived. Gary returned to Godric's Hollow, and his daily routine was to pester Mr. Shafiq with questions about the characteristics of Dark Arts creatures and how to deal with them.
As an Auror for the British Ministry of Magic, Mr. Shafiq naturally had his own tricks for dealing with these Dark Arts creatures. Mr. Shafiq answered all of Gary's questions in detail, which greatly benefited Gary.
After dinner, the Shafeek Couple relaxed on the sofa watching TV. Gary felt bored, so he went upstairs to organize the information he had collected that day.
The room was pitch black. Gary reached behind the door and pulled the light switch.
"Click," the room became bright again.
Gary felt that something was amiss in the room. His wand had somehow moved from its box to the table.
He approached to examine the wand and noticed that its color had changed from its original dark gray to blood red.
As if by a ghost, an inner voice urged him to place his hand on it.
"Put it on, quick, put it on," the inner voice whispered.
Gary seemed to be in a trance. The blood-red glow of the wand reflected in his eyes, like flowing blood. Gary's mouth suddenly twisted into a strange angle. He turned off the light he had just switched on, and the entire room was lit only by the blood-red glow of the wand.
He walked over and grabbed the Vine Wood Wand with his right hand.
The blood-red light of the wand traveled up Gary's arm, spreading from his shoulder to his heart, completely covering it. The mass of green energy that was previously in his heart suddenly appeared, intertwining with the blood-red light.
Gary clutched his chest and fell to the ground, his limbs weak and unable to move. The wand remained firmly stuck to his hand.
The two energies devoured each other, but the green one still had the upper hand. Gary could see the blood-red energy continuously flowing from the wand up his arm and into his chest, battling the green energy within his body. But it was unexpectedly powerful, wrapping the blood-red energy into its own body bite by bite.
The Shafeek Couple downstairs seemed to have heard Gary fall. Footsteps approached from outside the room.
Gary's consciousness returned to normal. He struggled to get up. The Shafeek Couple pushed open the door and walked in. "Gary, what are you doing?" They saw Gary sitting on the ground, holding his wand.
"Ah…" Gary hesitated for a moment, not telling them about everything that had just happened. "I'm practicing spells, so the wand's color changed a bit…"
He lowered his head and, in the darkness, saw that his wand had returned to its previous dark gray, indistinguishable from an ordinary wand.
"Click," Mr. Shafiq turned on the light. His attention wasn't on the wand, but rather he vigilantly scanned the room, though he found nothing amiss.
"Gary…" He put his arm around his wife. "You must be careful when practicing spells at home… Remember what I told you before, if anything happens, come to us immediately."
Gary quickly agreed with a smile, and the Shafeek Couple went downstairs, relieved.
"What's going on?" Gary repeatedly examined the Vine Wood Wand. Everything that had happened after he entered the room seemed like an illusion. The blood-red light and the green energy in his body were also gone.
He still remembered the inner whisper, telling him to put his hand on the wand, as if tempting him. When he regained consciousness, his hand was already gripping the wand.
Gary flipped the wand over. "Lumos," he whispered.
Magic flowed smoothly into the wand, and a dazzling white light emanated from its tip.
"Phew," he sighed in relief. At least the wand could still be used normally…
"No!" He rubbed the end of the wand. It should have been a smooth, slightly curved structure, making the Wizard's grip more comfortable.
Now there was a groove there.
Gary held the wand upside down, trying to see more clearly in the light.
The groove was hexagonal, about the size of his pinky fingernail, and about half a knuckle deep.
What was going on? Gary couldn't quite understand the situation. When did this groove appear? Why did he suddenly lose consciousness for a while? What exactly was that red light?
He bit his lip, at a loss.
He had only just solved his unstable magic problem, and had only enjoyed a few comfortable days before a new change occurred.
The wand was a minor issue; the crucial part was the blood-red glowing energy that had entered his body.
He didn't want anything else to go wrong with his body. His parents had just started living a normal life, and if he had health problems, the family's financial situation would once again fall into hardship.
He moved around the room as quietly as possible, then continuously cast magic, using the Lumos spell over a hundred times. He worked until the early hours of the morning, finally concluding that his body was temporarily fine.
All normal spells could be used, he could still inject magic into the wand, and his bodily functions were perfectly normal, no different from before the mutation.
Gary let out a long sigh of relief. He lay down on the bed, his mind relaxed. The fatigue from the magic and physical exertion quickly pulled him into a deep sleep.
The next day, Gary woke up early and found an empty space in Godric's Hollow to practice spells and run for exercise.
Two hours later, Gary was drenched in sweat in the cold winter, his magic again depleted. He lay on his back on the grass, clutching his wand tightly, finally feeling at ease.
…
"Severus, can I borrow some ink?" Kona shook her self-inking quill. She hadn't brought any ink, and Snape had a bottle in front of him.
"…Hmm." Snape hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
Kona happily dipped her self-inking quill into the ink bottle.
Today was Saturday, and the Library wasn't very crowded in the morning. Many students chose to sleep in and wake up at noon. Kona was there because she hadn't finished the task Alfrina had given her: the necessity of reforming the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum needed to include "meeting the needs of future Wizard wars," which Alfrina had thought of on the fly. Snape was dragged along by Kona to accompany her; he had recently kept his distance from the Pure-blood ideologues in Slytherin and had nothing else to do.
Gary was also there. He hadn't slept well the night before and met Kona, who was also up early, in the common room, and she dragged him to the Library.
In front of him was a Muggle romance novel, which Howard had lent him to help him sleep. At this moment, he was idly flipping through the book.
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