Chapter 6: The Phantom Unicorn and the Fading Necromancy
Contrary to Anthony's expectations, the process of selecting a wand was lackluster.
Ollivander chatted with Professor Burbage about her wand, then stared at Anthony with silver-white eyes for a while, measured his size without saying a word, and let him begin a seemingly endless process of trial and error.
Anthony stood in the shop, waving the wands one by one according to the wandmaker's instructions.
Sometimes sparks crackle at the tip of the wand, like a light bulb about to short-circuit. Ollivander would grab the wand before he could make the figure eight with the sparkle, and give him another one: "No, maybe this one!"
Other times, the wand in the box would tremble before he even reached for it. "Of course, of course not! How could I not have thought of it!" Ollivander immediately closed the lid and shouted.
Other wands looked like polished sticks in his hands. In the words of the wandmaker, "They're dead."
Just when Anthony was thinking about whether he really needed a wand - honestly, he wouldn't blow himself up without a wand - Ollivander pulled out the next wand from the shelf and stuffed it into his hand: "Try, Try this one. Silver basswood, unicorn tail hair. Ten and three-quarter inches, average elasticity."
Anthony held it.
He held his breath.
"This is it," he whispered.
Ollivander looked at him with wide light-colored eyes: "Wave, Mr. Anthony, do whatever you want."
Anthony shook his wand slightly.
The mottled light and shadow wandered on the wall of the store, forming a winged Pegasus. The Pegasus had a formidable horn on its head.
"Wow," said Professor Burbage.
"Wow," Anthony exclaimed. This feeling was very strange. He no longer felt that what he was holding was a wooden stick or a fireworks stick——
He felt complete.
As if it was a part of him, his wand stayed securely in his hand, and every arc fit perfectly against his palm. Magic that he had never experienced flowed in his body, some magic that was different from that of skeleton cats and wraith chickens.
"It's wonderful. I say this every time a wand chooses its owner. It's wonderful," Ollivander said. "Your wand loves you very much, Mr. Anthony. Don't let it down. Don't hurt it."
Anthony squeezed the silver wand: "I like it very much too, thank you, Mr. Ollivander."
"Great." After the purchase, Ollivander sent them to the door. "By the way, if you don't mind, what were you thinking about when you waved the wand? We don't usually see such concrete things."
"I was thinking..." Anthony recalled blankly, "Unicorn. You said it was made of unicorn hair, so I was thinking about unicorn." He smiled apologetically at Ollivander, "I Guess that doesn't help much."
"No, that helps. Unicorns don't look like that," Ollivander said softly.
Anthony: "..."
Professor Burbage suppressed a smile: "Let's go, Professor Anthony. We really need to buy some books."
…
According to the book list kindly provided by Professor Burbage, he found the textbooks for the required courses for grades one to five at Hogwarts.
When he picked up the History of Magic textbook, he took a deep breath at its thickness and weight. He really needed this, but this hardcover tome cost two gold galleons. If you add in the textbooks he found so far, it would mean spending all the money he had left, leaving him with only three knuts.
"Sir, there's a second-hand section inside, and most of the textbooks are there!" the clerk at Flourish Blossom Bookstore shouted through the stacks of bookshelves, "If you don't mind, you can go in and have a look!"
Professor Burbage also asked him: "Are you going to buy all new books?"
"Of course not," Anthony said, "I just didn't know they sold second-hand stuff here."
He carefully walked around the overflowing bookshelf and squeezed through the narrow gap. The bookshelves gave off a smell of wood, ink, bread, and dust that always made his nose itch and make him sneeze. Some books suddenly opened their eyes on their spines as he passed by, startling him.
The second-hand bookshelf was placed at the very back, so full that it almost overflowed.
Anthony struggled to pull out the corresponding textbooks and selected a few whose covers had not yet fallen off—some second-hand textbooks were so tattered that they looked as if the clerk had snatched them back from the mouth of a fire dragon.
In addition to textbooks, many books on the second-hand bookshelf interested him. He had to go back to Gringotts to exchange some more currency.
After getting his own wand, he couldn't wait to learn more about it. To this end, he bought a lot of additional wand science-related books ("Wand Care Guide", "Reading Your Wand" and "The Story of the Wand").
Professor Burbage watched him stack the books on the counter and sighed tolerantly: "Look at you, you look like a little boy who just bought a broom."
She shrank the books for him and made them lighter so that he could easily carry them back to the Leaky Cauldron.
"I guess you're not in the mood to go shopping anymore. But now that you have your own wand, you can come on your own at any time." She smiled and said, "That's it for today. I look forward to seeing you at Hogwarts, Professor Anthony— —By the way, you are responsible for the third and fourth years this year. You are free to choose the teaching materials, as long as you write a letter to Minerva, but I highly recommend the book "The Life and Social Habits of Muggle Households in Britain"."
Only then did Anthony suddenly realize a problem: there were only two months until the start of school, and he needed to prepare lessons! And he doesn't know anything!
After saying goodbye to Professor Burbage, he hurried back to the Leaky Cauldron and plunged into a book. His cat tried to cause trouble, but he held him in his arms and solemnly explained his situation, soon it huddled under the bed to sleep without interest.
If Tom hadn't come to him with champagne, I'm afraid he would have completely lost track of time. When he went to open the door, he stood up from his chair. Suddenly, his vision went dark and his legs became weak. Only then did he realize that he had missed lunch and dinner.
"Congratulations!" said the owner of the Leaky Cauldron. "The new position as a professor at Hogwarts is worth celebrating! This is new, as new as you, the new professor." He laughed at his witticism.
Anthony took the cup and drank it in one gulp: "Thank you, are there any more sandwiches?"
"Champagne and a Sickle, thank you for your patronage." Tom said, "Only beef sandwiches. Five Silver Sickles, would you like?"
"Here comes one, this profiteer who takes advantage of the situation," Anthony said bluntly, counting out six silver coins.
After eating his sandwich, he opened "Standard Spells" again.
Thanks to his old life as a student, Anthony is very good at literature reading. The textbook for the eleven-year-old wizard was written in easy-to-understand terms and clearly laid out. The second-hand book he bought even contained the notes of that student. In just half a day, he dared to say that he could already fight with ordinary first-year students... provided that he didn't use undead magic.
Out of curiosity about necromancers, he also read information on the history of magic.
Due to their excessive preference for gathering near cemeteries, necromancers almost disappeared during the witch hunts in the Middle Ages - secret reports of hostile wizards were indispensable - and were subsequently annihilated by the international magic community. They were finally declared extinct in the late 19th century and became A profession passed down in poetry.
"A Concise History of Magic" contains an excerpt from an ancient poem. In the story, a necromancer summons an army of the undead, and people have to fight with the corpses of their relatives and friends. A witch saw her dead daughter appearing in front of her. When she was forced to destroy the child's body, she was so angry that she cursed the necromancer with her daughter's bones and her own flesh.
"I curse you with my pure bones, I curse you with my angry flesh," she shouted. "I want death to torture you in the same way! I want to drink your blood with death! I want it so much!"
In the poem, the mother's curse succeeds. When her enemy died, blood flowed out like a spring. She sipped: "Bitter blood! Sweet blood!"
The book points out that this passage can correspond to the vampire legend in parts of southern England. At the same time, another poem circulating in northern Finland has a similar plot, but it turns into revenge for his son. The mother also becomes a necromancer at the end of the poem, transforming the bones of her enemies into her lowest slaves.
"We have reason to believe that these similarities are not accidental coincidences, but a glimpse of historical facts. Death and revenge, as primitive manic forces, are embodied in black magic and continue to appear in the process of magic civilization. The undead in literature The images of wizards are different, but their deaths are surprisingly unified: the ancient black magic is passed along the chain of hatred from the perpetrators to the avengers, and ultimately leads all stories to the God of Death. In any case, this team has the deepest entanglement with the God of Death. The magic has been lost in time."
Anthony closed the book.
This author seems to have a peculiar view of the history of magic, believing that magic originated from people's confrontation with death, and black magic is the weapon of death. The author repeatedly emphasizes that when a person is addicted to black magic, death has followed the person. Interestingly, when death is mentioned in the book, the terms are quite neutral.
He looked at the author's name on the cover: Pandora Lovegood.
"The answer is written like a riddle," Anthony murmured.
In order to get rid of the history of necromancers in his mind, he decided to practice the spell again before going to bed.
He filled the empty sandwich plate with a spring of water, let it float ("Wingardim Leviosa," he recited aloud), then removed the spell and let it fall. on the ground. He successfully restored the plate to its original state by repairing it, but no matter how much he pointed at the floor and wanted to clean it up, the puddle of water still swayed unbridled with a warm yellow reflection in the candlelight.
Anthony sighed, stood up and got a towel.
"The simpler the method, the less likely it is to make mistakes." Anthony murmured, "Learn from Muggle wisdom, wizards."
He decided to look through the Muggle Studies textbook tomorrow to see how wizards viewed ordinary people who didn't know magic.
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