Chapter 132: Dumbledore's Assurance

"Your attentiveness surprises me, Mr. Ollivander."

Hogwarts, the Great Hall.

Dumbledore looked at Silven before him and said with a smile, "So far, the magic I placed on the bathroom door shows no signs of being broken, so it is still quite safe.

"As for the deflection of the magical traces you mentioned, I believe it has something to do with Miss Warren."

The Miss Warren Dumbledore referred to was none other than Moaning Myrtle; Warren was her original surname.

"Could a ghost really affect the magic on the door?" Silven asked, puzzled.

"It is indeed possible," Dumbledore said. "A ghost is a very special kind of being — the magical imprint left behind after a wizard's death — and of course it can affect magic.

"Only, that kind of influence is utterly negligible; it can only cause the magical traces to shift ever so slightly."

"Understood, Headmaster," Silven nodded.

He did not care what relationship ghosts had with magic — as long as the magic Dumbledore had left on the bathroom door remained, Riddle could not get in, and the basilisk could not get out. That was enough.

Silven returned to the Gryffindor table and sat down.

After that, Silven observed for several more days. Lockhart had returned to his usual self and made no further attempts to approach the second-floor bathroom where Myrtle was.

At the same time, Malfoy had also come back.

Although Dumbledore knew what he had done, he did not expel him and still allowed him to return to the school.

After all, this was Dumbledore — such an outcome was only to be expected.

Only, Malfoy himself had become taciturn, and wherever he went, he stuck with the others, never acting alone again.

Surely not to guard against himself… Silven thought.

Fortunately, the other students knew nothing of these matters; they were looking forward to the upcoming Quidditch match.

Saturday, Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff. If they could win the match while racking up two hundred points, the Quidditch Cup would be as good as in their hands.

As the match day drew closer, Oliver Wood once again dragged everyone into high-intensity training, and every evening the common room echoed with his fervent voice.

"The opponents are Hufflepuff — what's the difference between that and having the championship handed to us!"

"Don't let them touch the ball!"

"If we don't win this, we might as well snap our wands and go be house-elves!"

……

The pressure on the other players was mounting, Harry especially…

The Hufflepuff team was indeed weak, but that clearly did not include their Seeker Cedric — he had given Harry quite a bit of trouble last year.

Worse still, he had grown taller again this year; his reach outstretched Harry's by a good stretch, an advantage that let him snatch the Golden Snitch faster.

By Saturday morning, Harry was sitting in the Great Hall, picking at his bread.

Silven beside him ate even less. The milk he could normally finish in a few sips, he forced himself to drink for a full ten minutes before setting down his utensils.

"Silven, why do I get the feeling you're more nervous than I am?" Harry could not help asking. "But I seem to remember you saying you don't really care for Quidditch?"

"It's not that I dislike Quidditch — let's just say I prefer making wands," Silven corrected him.

Hogwarts had far too many Quidditch fanatics. If he said he didn't like Quidditch, a whole crowd would surely come over and tirelessly tell him how wonderful the sport was.

Oliver, Fred and George lately, for instance.

So Silven no longer said he disliked Quidditch; if asked, he would simply say he was too busy and had no time to watch the matches.

"But how can you tell I'm nervous?" Silven asked.

"Because you only had one glass of milk this morning," Harry said. "And last night too — you only had a small half-bowl of porridge."

"That, ah… can't be helped," Silven pressed his lips together. "Just take it that I can't really eat much."

Silven was suffering inwardly too. It was the full moon again, and with a mouthful of Mandrake leaves he did not dare eat much. Milk, pumpkin juice, thick corn soup and the like had become the staples of every meal.

For that reason, when he had been interrupted the previous two times, a strange sense of relief had even welled up in him.

But if he wanted to learn to be an Animagus, this process was unavoidable.

So Silven now only hoped to succeed in one go — please, no more repeats.

At eleven in the morning, everyone had gone off to the pitch. Lockhart went too; he had applied to referee the match, but was promptly refused by Madam Hooch.

Hogwarts had now been in session for half a school year. Although a small number of students were still taken in by Lockhart's glib tongue, the professors had long since seen through his flashy but hollow nature.

In plain words, he was an empty-headed pretty boy.

Add to that his glorious record of having drawn the bones out of Malfoy's legs, and of course Madam Hooch would not allow him anywhere near the players.

She had no desire to see every player turn into a boneless, flesh-colored sack of skin after the match.

Snape had also gone to watch the match, so Silven stayed in the dormitory at ease, focusing wholeheartedly on improving his ball-shaped wand.

This time it was not the toy Fred and George had made — that thing held no challenge for Silven anymore; he could knock one off in a snap, so it was hard to stay fully focused on it.

So Silven strictly followed the wand-body standards and crafted an oak ball the size of a Golden Snitch, formally beginning work on the ball-shaped wand.

It had to be said, this was even more troublesome than Silven had imagined. A wand was not a toy — it had to be able to Cast magic.

Because of that, Silven had to face one problem after another: chaotic magic power, sluggish spell formation, uncontrollable direction…

After all, it was a sphere — unlike a wand, it had no defined tip. A spell could emerge from anywhere, including the side facing the wizard.

Later, Silven used magical script to construct a spell channel, which solved the problem. But the added script upset the original balance, causing the Spell succeeded rate to drop by a full twenty percent.

That was precisely the problem Silven was now working to solve.

Such intricate procedures soon made Silven forget the Mandrake in his mouth, and he threw himself into it wholeheartedly.

He did not even notice that the spectators had already returned, nor did he know when they left again.

It was not until evening that a fierce pang of hunger finally forced Silven out of the dormitory and into the Great Hall.

At the tables, everyone was still discussing the afternoon's match.

"You really shouldn't have clashed with Slytherin," Hermione said to Ron. "Today Professor McGonagall was the referee, and in the stands there was only Professor Snape — of course he'd favor Slytherin."

"It's not our fault, is it? The Slytherins were the ones who spoke rudely first. Marcus even tried to interfere with Harry catching the Golden Snitch."

"The result was that Snape only docked us twenty points, as if Slytherin had done nothing wrong at all," Ron said. "Professor McGonagall really shouldn't have agreed to referee."

"I'm used to it by now," Harry said. "It doesn't matter—as long as we can win this year's Quidditch Cup, we can earn all those points back."

"Let's hope so," Ron said.

"We're definitely going to win," Harry said, brimming with confidence. "Right now we're in first place, and Slytherin in second—both of us only have one match left.

"But their next opponent is Hufflepuff. Malfoy is no match for Diggory."

There was one more thing Harry was too embarrassed to say: their own next opponent was Ravenclaw, the team at the very bottom of the standings. They'd definitely win that match, and might even rack up a few extra points while they were at it.

Silven listened to them chatting nearby, and only now learned that there had been another clash on the pitch.

But if the two sides were Slytherin and Gryffindor, then it was hardly surprising—if those two houses had no friction at all, that would be the real miracle.

Silven sometimes even suspected that when Voldemort cursed the Dark Magic spell Defense class, he must have set aside a little something for Gryffindor and Slytherin as well.

Just as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor had to be replaced every year, Gryffindor and Slytherin had never known peace either—clashes erupted between them several times a year, and most of the time it was Gryffindor that came off worse.

After all, Professor McGonagall was a woman who cared about her dignity; the other professors weren't necessarily the same.

Silven slowly sipped his pumpkin juice and porridge, listening to Harry and the others chatting beside him.

Their topic shifted from the clash to the match, and when he heard Harry say the Golden Snitch was too agile, a sudden idea struck Silven.

The Golden Snitch is also a ball—it can't fly on its own—so someone gave it a pair of wings…

Right—why couldn't he give his own ball-shaped wand a pair of "wings"?

Silven sprang to his feet and dashed back toward the dormitory.

He'd figured it out—as long as the spell channel was moved from the inside to the outside, there was no need to worry about upsetting the balance of the wand's body!

He loved Quidditch!

……

(End of chapter)