Fitting wand

Ollivander's, the next day

Gaude went right into the wand shop. It was as dusty as always, even though it was Gaude's first time to witness the fact.

As soon as Gaude had taken five steps into the room, an old voice, as dusty as the room itself spoke: "Welcome, young Gaude Vywin. It's quite unusual for a child to come looking for a wand this late into the year."

The voice had been so sudden that Gaude had instinctively raised a wandless shielding charm around himself and done a quick roll across the floor before he noticed a harmless-looking old man standing a step behind where Gaude had been just a moment ago.

"That's some quick reflexes you have there, young man. Not to mention, able to use a shielding charm without a wand. Troublesome, troublesome indeed."

Gaude made sure that his Occlumency remained unbreached, then asked: "How do you do that? How did you know my name without meeting me first?"

"That's a wandmaker's secret, I'm afraid.", the old man, Ollivander said.

"Can't be Legilimency, I would've noticed it. That only leaves Divination.", Gaude spoke.

"Hmm, not just quick on your feet and ready to act any moment, but with a mind to match it. I suppose I have a few ideas."

Ollivander then took out a step-ladder and climbed up next to the shelf, pulled out a few different boxes and stacked them on his arm.

"Try these out for size.", he said, once he had made it down safely.

Gaude opened the topmost box, revealing a black wand with a simple handle.

"Go on, give it a good wave."

Gaude did exactly that, trying to channel magic through the wand, but found it harder than casting without one. He put that wand back into the box and picked the next one, made from a red-colored wood with an eye-catching texture. That one felt like nothing special to Gaude, not better and not worse that going wandless.

Then, Gaude decided to just release a strand of magic from his body and sweep through all the boxes that were placed on the table. As he did that, he felt that one of the wands, in the middle of the stack felt a lot more comfortable than others to him, so he piled all the other wand boxes onto one end of the table and took that wand out.

The wand that he pulled out seemed to be quite flexible even when he was taking it out. Gaude waved the wand and some faint multi-colored sparks manifested.

"Not that one either.", Ollivander commented. Then he went to the other room and returned with just three boxes.

Gaude swept through them with a strand of his magic as well. He discovered that two of them were even better than the one he had tried last, but the third one seemed to instantly suck the strand of magic into itself like a vacuum.

"Looks like it's this one.", Gaude said, without even trying the wand out.

Ollivander had been mumbling something each time Gaude had picked up a wand, but this was the first time he managed to make out what it was: "Elderwood with Dragon heartstring for a core. Ten inches. Curious. Very curious indeed."

Of course, if Ollivander had seen Gaude's eyes, he might be less curious, or perhaps even more so. The fact was, however, that Laly had concealed Gaude's eyes under a layer of illusion. He wasn't about to announce to everyone that he wasn't a pure-blooded human anymore.

"Are you sure? You haven't even tried it yet!", Ollivander protested.

Gaude simply took the wand in hand. Immediately, a light breeze picked up in the shop, blowing the dust within it into the air.

"It seems you're right. That'll be five Galleons.", Ollivander croaked while coughing his lungs out.

Gaude ran a few errands, checked on the potions shop and bought a small bag of Jelly Babies. The Jelly Babies Gaude bought, however, were quite a bit different from the ones you could get in the Muggle part of the world – they were anatomically accurate, wriggled around and wailed when you chewed them. Gaude found something deeply satisfying about the last one.

Finally, Gaude returned to his house. Once he was there, he naturally had to test out the wand.

Since Gaude hadn't bothered with it before, he looked up the wand movement necessary for a few spells, then went to the terrace and, like any aspiring wand user shouted: "Bombarda!", while aiming the wand at a distant rock. Unfortunately, all he got for his efforts was a small puff of smoke from the tip of his wand.

Gaude wasn't sure why he was expecting to get it on the first try, but the failure didn't bother him at all. Instead, he tried again. And again. And again. After a few dozen persistent failures, he sat down and thought about the reason of his constant failures. Instead of suspecting the wand of being faulty, Gaude tried to first find a fault in himself.

He had chanted the spell, done the wand movement and even provided the magic for it. There didn't seem to be a single error in the process. Suddenly, however, Gaude realized something: there was no way that regular wizarding children, such as Ron Weasley would know anything about mobilizing their inner magic, not to mention directing it into their wand.

As soon as he reached that conclusion, Gaude tried again a few times and surprise, surprise, instead of just a cloud of smoke, small-scale explosions occasionally erupted where he was pointing. At the very least, it was better than the first attempts he had made.

Gaude then observed the flow of magic within him while he was casting the spell and discovered that it was much different from what he usually did – so far, he had simply laced his magic with his will and the intent to produce a certain effect as well as visualized the exact result, then let the magic do its thing, but now it seemed that was something to be avoided.

With a wand, all he had to do was send a tiny sliver of magic into it with the intent to produce the result and a single instant later, the wand pulled what it needed from his reserves and even supplemented it with ambient magic. Gaude finally understood why wandless magic wasn't widespread – it took a lot more effort and bigger internal reserves as wandless magic didn't benefit from the ambient magic.

It was like having an exo-suit with fuel elements that used oxygen to power itself and complement the wearer's physical strength vs using only your own muscle strength to perform a strenuous task. It was only natural that the one with the exo-suit would be able to get the job done faster and work longer. The same held true for a wizard with a wand and one without.

Once Gaude had figured out the trick to using a wand, he tried out the spells that he had already learned. He quickly found out one disturbing aspect about them – the spells cast with a wand were quite inflexible, difficult to modify.

However, there were also a few positive aspects when it came to spells that were cast with a wand – charms done with a wand lasted much longer, not to mention that one didn't have to actively concentrate on keeping the charm active. Gaude suddenly felt a very strong temptation to use the supersensory charm during the dueling practice. He ended up learning it, just in case.

Gaude finished up the interviews for the managerial positions in his conglomerate and arranged a social event for all the new employees so that they could mingle and get to know each other a bit better. Naturally, he ordered up plenty of booze to oil the gears of social unity.

Then, as usual, he returned to Linda, to get some more training in. This time, however, Gaude started by casting the Supersensory charm onto himself.

That was when something strange happened, at least in Linda's perspective. Gaude wasn't able to dodge the faster spells that he had managed just fine the day before.

"Gaude, did something happen?", Linda questioned with worry. She only hoped that whatever it was, would pass quickly.

"Oh, nothing bad, I was just trying out the Supersensory charm. How do people even use it? I can see every move you make, but it's so different from the usual way of seeing!"

"Oho? You've bought your wand and learned to cast a charm in a single day? What an excellent student you are! You know, using the Supersensory charm during training is cheating unless I tell you to use it.

However, since you brought it up, using the Supersensory charm in combat needs a lot of focus and very good spatial awareness.

It's the same as looking at a duel from all angles at once and trying to predict where an attack will land. Now, dispel the charm, we'll start with half the practice time without it and then you can try it again."

Like that, days passed once again, except now, Gaude spent half of the dueling practice learning to interpret what the information the charm was feeding into his mind. After some experimentation, Gaude found out that it was so much easier to use the charm on large and relatively slow-moving bodies, such as speeding vehicles.

Spells, instead, were extremely fast, the seemingly slow light was actually akin to a trail that formed when a spell had already connected to its target. In the end the only reliable way to predict a spell being cast at you was to observe the body language of the caster and the direction of their wand.

Nevertheless, Gaude kept improving, until one evening, Linda's magic core was wrung completely dry and it seemed that Gaude still had some fight left in him.

After recovering a for a few minutes, she spoke: "I believe now that you know how to avoid being hit by spells, it's time you learn how to block them. I taught you avoiding spells first because not everything can be blocked and also to improve your reaction speed as well as ability to think fast."

Next, Linda showed Gaude the proper wand movement for 'Protego', the shielding charm. Gaude was already familiar with it, but he wasn't going to reveal it to her. Gaude wasn't sure where the line between a genius and a monster was, and he didn't want Linda running away in sheer terror, for Gaude was very possessive of his belongings.

That was why Gaude spent an entire hour polishing his skills of faking the learning process required to cast a charm until Linda said: "That's good enough, let's get back to practicing. I'll be casting two types of spells, the bombardment hex and the stinging hex. Make sure you get out of the way of the bombardment hexes. For the first few times, I'll chant the spells, after that, you'll have to figure them out by yourself."

That was exactly what happened, with Gaude now blocking and dodging. He could've blocked the bombardments as well, but then he would've had to show that he had been holding back in displaying his proficiency with the shielding charm. Instead of a three-foot radius circle, he would need one that was at least twice as large to make sure that none of the shrapnel from the bombardment hit him.

A few hours later, Linda looked at Gaude with a very serious face and asked: "Just what are you? No normal wizard should be able to take a bombardment hex directly and only get bruised!"

���Ah, must be the family bloodline. Can't ask my parents what else it has in store for me, unfortunately. They're already in the next world.", Gaude gave a non-reply. However, internally, he was thinking 'Drinking that Dragon blood potion? So fucking worth it!'

Linda decided to not pry any further. Sure, she had decreased the power of the bombardments, but they were still enough to rend flesh and break bones, yet the child proved to be more mysterious by the day. Gaude having an extremely sturdy constitution was very much acceptable to her, it gave her one less thing to worry about.

That was the final day of training, as it was Saturday. Sunday was a supposed rest day for Linda and as for Gaude, he had a party to supervise and people to socialize with. He had made a rather strong impression during the interview, and some of the people were likely to faintly remember being unable to lie to him for an unknown reason.

At least his eyes had been covered by a proper illusion, otherwise all sorts of reptilian and other kinds of conspiracy theories might've started circulating in his company. Who knows, he might've ended up not waking up due to missing one of his vitals or woken up to a bedful of people of all genders and ages with strange attire or no clothing at all.

For some reason, Gaude felt like he should inform his elves to keep a constant watch on his bedroom and take any would-be-assailant with a weapon into one of the empty vaults. Anyone else that didn't look like they were about to attack him would be allowed through, however.

He also decided to get a bigger and sturdier bed. Who knows, he might make a bunch of people very happy with themselves by allowing them to have an orgy around him. As he was still a child, he wouldn't get much out of it, but at times, he got the sudden urge to be generous to commoners.