212 Summers end

Luna was quite clever however and quickly seemed to realize this as she purposefully went to grab a wand that was on the counter behind her after sneakily moving to stand in front of it only to be stopped. Her ability only worked if she had an unobstructed view of the magical energy and if someone stood in front of the source of the energy she was after they covered it up stopping her and this rule clearly did not apply to Nick. While she may seem ditsy and crazy most of the time her mind was incredibly sharp.-

Both Olivander and Xeno watched this interaction quietly as it was fairly clear to them what was going on. Eventually though Nick tricked Luna into grabbing the wand that had been trying to get her attention this entire time finishing the match much to the girls clear irritation. If it had to be described what sort of face she made then it was like a child that had a fascinating toy taken from them. "You can settle the bill with Mr. Olivander and get on your way to the rest of your shopping." Nick said with a chuckle.-

"I'll win next time." Luna swore with a determined expression. "You are free to try as I am not a very hard to find person normally." Nick said alluding to the fact he is normally in his workshop when not in class. Luna then proceeded to angrily drag her father out of the shop after paying for the wand. "Full of secrets aren't you?" Olivander says with a wide smile. Nick shrugged but didn't say anything since he simply didn't need to. At this point even a blind man could see that Nick was very much a different sort of wizard.-

Still despite how antagonistic that whole interaction was it was fairly clear to Nick that he enjoyed teasing the blonde. 'Her reactions are simply too good not to.' he thought with a smirk. Luna had obviously never learned how to control her own emotions very well as she was practically an open book once you ignored any strange words or actions she may say or do. Unfortunately Nick missed the perfect opportunity to snatch the diary away due to working during the Weasleys confrontation with the Malfoys. It was a little strange how Lucius Malfoy was still willing to go through with his plan after the whole event with Nick freeing Sirius while simultaneously taking Peter out of the picture.-

It was possible that he simply never thought that his plan would ever be connected to him since his role in the whole thing was basically ditching the diary and hoping for the best. Unfortunately he failed to take into consideration just how badly his house elf hated him. It was shown pretty clearly in the books that despite the loyalty that house elves are forced to show their masters they very much can indirectly attack those same masters.-

Dobby repeated did this in the second book and Sirius's house elf Kreacher basically manipulated the fact that Bellatrix was part of the black household to feed her information just to spite Sirius. Moral of the story is that if they want to house elves can and will ruin any plan you have so treat them well so they don't want to. Nick lived by this idea when it came to Dotty who got good food and was never punished for anything not his fault. Hell Nick even went so far as to pay Dotty ten galleons every two weeks to be used however he wished.-

Admittedly this took a lot of convincing and no small amount of assurances that the house elf could put the money back into the household if he wished , which is basically every single time he was paid. Using said money Dotty had restocked the pantry at Ravenclaw manor and was slowly adding small magical decorations all over the place that frankly livened the place up greatly. Nick didn't know how but the house elf had even somehow gotten his hands on an ore and magical timber supplier and was slowly filling one of the empty rooms with both though in tiny quantities.-

Things slowed down business wise in the second week of the month so Nick was back to practicing his wand crafting from scratch under Olivander's stern watch. Another town being sacrificed came and went with any real fuss and Nick was improving by leaps and bounds in the art of wand crafting now that he had gotten out of the rough novice stage of it. The only gripe he had was that he wasn't allowed to experiment with the runes he carved into the core of the wand to try an improve the power of his creations as summer break slowly drew to a close.

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