The Spectrum of Magic
Liam and Sadie were hard at work on their project for Professor Sauergrass. They had received from Sauergrass’ colleague the name of a book describing how Stilgrevsen wands were constructed. One of the wands the book highlighted was the Mafdet Cheetah wand, which, like the Dragon Wand, was made from Lebanese cedar and contained a ring. They hoped the descriptions of how the Mafdet Wand was constructed would give them some clues about the creation of the Dragon Wand.
Sadie requested a copy of the book from the University library in London. After a week, she received a notice that the book was available to pick up from Madam Pince in the Hogwarts library. Liam and Sadie went together to the library to study the book.
Pauline met them there. “I brought your book to a study room, so you could review it in private,” she told them. She led them to the study room she had selected, a medium-sized room with a wide table and comfortable chairs. Sitting at the head of the table with her hand on the book was Morwena.
“I apologize for the interruption,” said Morwena, “but I would like to speak with Wren for a moment.”
Sadie and Liam exchanged looks, and Liam nodded. “Why don’t I run to the loo,” said Sadie.
Liam came into the room and sat down in a chair beside Morwena. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to speak with you for weeks, but I didn’t want to risk another confrontation with Roycester.”
“I don’t have much free time these days,” said Liam, “with my NEWT classes, my tutoring in Potions, and Quidditch practice. Gillian takes up the rest of it.”
“We noticed that she no longer comes with you and Sadie when you’re working on this project. We decided it was as good a time as any to come and speak with you.”
Gazing at her, he saw that look of longing in her eyes once more. He now knew something of the churning lusts that lay beneath her calm exterior. “Look, Wen,” he said, “you were upset that night. We had both tried hard to keep the peace, and still, that punk attacked Pauline and nearly killed her. You were right to be upset.”
“Yes, but I shouldn’t have burdened you with it,” said Morwena. “I should have held it together until I reached my common room. I’ve only complicated your relationship with Roycester.”
“Leave Jill to me,” said Liam firmly. “You were a friend in need, and I helped you the best that I could.”
She touched his hand. “It has complicated my feelings for you.”
Liam nodded. “Yes. That night changed the way I think about you, too, but it doesn’t really change our situations. You have a boy waiting for you . . ..”
“He’s not exactly waiting,” interjected Morwena. “I’m his ‘home girlfriend.’”
“Yeah, but Kane knows what he’s got in you. There’re girls you fool around with, and there’s the girl you take home to the parents. The one you marry. You’re the keeper and he knows it.”
“Is that how it is with you and Roycester?” asked Morwena. “Is she the one you’ll take home to meet the family, or is she the girl you fool around with?”
“There’s a girl waiting for me, too,” said Liam.
She gave his hand a squeeze. “I guess we’ll always have that moment on the stairwell, when I threw myself at you and you caught me.”
“Just helping a friend in need, Wen,” he said.
Sadie popped her head in the door. “Hi! I’m sorry to interrupt, but I really want to get my hands on that book.”
“It’s me who owes you an apology, Sadie,” said Morwena. “Wren and I were just wrapping up. I’ll be on my way.”
After Morwena was gone, Sadie asked, “Do I need to mention this to Gillian?”
“No,” said Liam. “Wen and I just talked for a minute. We needed to settle a few things. It’s done now. Let’s get to work.”
They reviewed the table of contents together and selected the chapter they wanted to focus on – the reconstruction of the Mafdet Wand. Liam read the chapter aloud while Sadie took notes and interjected ideas on how the new information related to their thesis.
Mafdet Cheetahs are magical creatures found in the Middle East, mainly in Egypt. Egyptian apothecaries use ground Mafdet claws in their elixirs. Stilgrevsen made a series of wands utilizing Mafdet claws for the wand core’s base magical ingredient. This was the series that immediately followed the Madagascan Dragon series. He used the same stock of Lebanese cedar for the wood, and he incorporated silver rings in the wands. The rings on the Mafdet bore a sharp barb that extended from it. Too short to be used as a weapon, unless the target was very close to the wand-bearer, the book’s author assumed it was decorative in nature. The barb was a symbol of the claw bound inside the shaft of cedar.
The author constructed a wand containing these elements. He compared it with the original Stilgrevsen and noted several differences beyond the use of a secret key, a feature unique to the wands of Stilgrevsen. The Stilgrevsen wand was able to project “the essence of the Mafdet, as if the cat were alive and in my very presence. The projection grows stronger when I am agitated or afraid.”
“The Dragon Wand does that, too,” said Liam.
“I remember,” said Sadie. “You drew it on me once. I thought the thing was going to eat me. What does it say? How did Stilgrevsen make that projection?”
“He doesn’t know.” Liam searched for the line in the text, but Sadie, impatient, leaned over the book, scanning through the lines quickly with her finger.
“Here it is!” she said. “He thinks the projection is necromantic in nature. That’s Dark Magic, for sure.”
“So, my wand is made with Dark Magic.”
“Well, maybe. Probably. The thing about real research, Liam, is that there isn’t always a definite answer. Stilgrevsen never took on apprentices or shared his methodology with anyone. In the end, we’ll need to give it our best guess, based on what we’ve read.”
She bent over the book and took some additional notes. “What about my stinging curse?” asked Liam.
Sadie looked up and gazed tenderly at him. She knew he had a good heart, and that the killing of the acromantula troubled him. “I think it comes down to intent. Yes, you intended to hurt the spider, but you only cursed it because it was going to eat you.”
“I hit it twice. The first time stopped it, but it didn’t turn around until I hit it a second time.”
“And by the time it got to the shadow of the trees, the dragon venom had done its damage, and it died,” said Sadie. “But you hadn’t intended to kill it. You didn’t even intend for the curse to contain dragon venom. That was an enhancement provided by the wand.”
“I had no idea it was going to do that.”
“My guess is, the wand has special enhancements that make Dark Magic curses stronger. Even a spell that you don’t intend to be evil will veer that way when you use this wand. But don’t think of magic as being either one thing or another. It’s a spectrum. There are gradations. It comes down to how you use it, what you are trying to accomplish.
“I don’t think magic is inherently one thing or another,” continued Sadie. “In the end, I think, we’re the ones who come along and place spells on a spectrum of Light and Dark, Good and Evil.”
She closed the book and leaned back in her chair. “We could research this forever and maybe not find all the answers to our questions. But I think we have enough information here to do our report to Sauergrass.”
“How do you want to split it up?” asked Liam. “We both have to talk to get credit for the assignment.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” said Sadie. “We’ve gathered a ton of information. We just need to organize it and divide it between the two of us.”
The following Wednesday afternoon, as soon as he had finished taking the roll, Sauergrass yielded the podium to Sadie and Liam. When Sadie started off, her voice gave off a few high-pitched squeaks. She gave a nervous look at Liam, who gazed calmly back at her. She pulled in a deep breath and started again.
“I’ve been curious about wandmaking since I was a little girl. You may recall that, unlike most of you, I don’t have an Ollivander wand. Mine was made in Santa Cruz, California, by a shaman. It’s made of redwood and it contains magical ingredients from that part of the world.
“I was reading how some wandmakers use Dark Magic to make their wands, and I wanted to know how that was done. This assignment gave me free reign to do the research that I was already interested in doing. Instead of waiting for a University assignment, I was able to do it now, at Hogwarts.
“The most well-known of the exotic wandmakers is Lars Stilgrevsen, and it so happens that Liam’s wand was made by Stilgrevsen. I helped him when the wand first started to interact with him. If you’ve ever dueled against Liam, you know how scary it is to be across from a wand like that. I wanted to know if Stilgrevsen had used Dark Magic to make Liam’s wand.”
Here, Liam stepped forward and said, “As you know, the wand chooses the wizard. This wand chose me right at the end of my first year here. I was in a bit of a scrape, and I needed a wand that could get me out of it.”
“Namely, he was nearly eaten by a wounded and starving acromantula,” added Sadie.
“Right,” said Liam. “I called for help and that wand flew to my side. It was ready for a fight. Prior to that moment, I was trying to fight off the acromantula with one of my own custom spells, a stinging curse that I have used to great effect on a couple of occasions.” He did not elaborate, but the Gryffindors giggled and smirked. They remembered eleven-year-old Liam getting the better of Cyrus Kane during a fight that year.
“I drove the spider back to the tree line. Mr. Grawp checked on it afterwards and reported that it died. Professor Gregor ordered an autopsy, which found that the spider was full of Madagascan Dragon venom. My wand contains a heartstring of that type of dragon.
“Sadie and I speculate that the wand transformed my stinging curse, which was painful but not deadly, into something strong enough to kill the giant spider. It strengthened the curse by adding the extremely deadly venom that this type of dragon is known for.
“When I was given this assignment, I asked Sauergrass if I could research my stinging curse and see if it was Dark Magic or not. Sadie and I chased down several books on the subject, but since my stinging curse is my own unique spell, it’s not mentioned in any book.”
Sadie stepped forward again and held up a galleon. “We think of magic being like a coin,” she said. “Good magic, or Light Magic, on one side and Evil or Dark Magic on the other. What we started to discover, though, is that magic is more like a spectrum.” She walked to one side of the classroom. “Lara’s healing spells are over here, on the very good side.”
Liam moved to the opposite side of the classroom. “Unforgiveables like the Killing Curse or Cruciatus, for example, are on the very dark side.”
Sadie: “Remember our First Year assignment, to lift a feather off of a pillow using ‘Wingardium Leviosa?’ That would be considered good magic, right?”
Liam: “But what if you lifted a desk in the air and dropped it on someone’s head? You meant to hurt them, but you used a common spell to do it.”
Sadie: “It comes down to intent. How much harm did you intend to cause? A little, or a lot? And why? Are you just being mean, or are you trying to save someone’s life?”
Liam: “We started asking these questions about my stinging curses – the one that hurt my rival and the one that killed the spider. The second curse was stronger and it was deadly, whereas the first one was only painful. The victim recovered pretty quickly. Yet, with the second curse, I was trying to save my own life, and the lives of my friends. With the first curse, I just wanted to hurt him because he embarrassed me.”
Sadie: “We decided, on the spectrum between good and evil, both curses were on the evil side, but the stronger curse was not as dark, simply because of Liam’s intentions at that moment. The weaker curse was actually darker, more evil, because of his intent, because it was cast in anger.”
Liam: “Now, we turned back to the questions about my wand. It had transformed my spell dramatically, from a painful curse into a deadly one. Was that evidence that the wand was made with Dark Magic?”
Sadie: “Wandmakers are notoriously opaque about their methods, and Stilgrevsen is extremely secretive about what he does and how he does it. Researchers have tried to recreate Stilgrevsen’s wands with all the stated ingredients, and yet the imitation wands don’t behave like the originals. There are techniques that Stilgrevsen has held back that keep imitators from duplicating his methods.
“If you’ve ever faced off against Liam in a duel, you know how scary his wand can be. When he’s angry or upset, it casts this aura. It’s like the dragon is alive again and right there in the room with you. We looked it up, and it’s called a necromantic projection. It’s something like summoning the ghost of the dragon to your side. That’s definitely Dark Magic.”
Liam: “That doesn’t mean that everything I cast with my wand becomes Dark Magic. My wand wants to overdo everything. It amplifies the simplest spells and makes them humongous. But I’ve learned to control it. It definitely follows my lead, my commands. Nobody gets hurt unless I want it to happen.”
The two looked to Sauergrass. “Are there any questions?” asked Sadie. “Is there anything you wanted us to elaborate on?”
“I very much hope that you do build on what you have done here,” said Sauergrass. “You have the foundations of an area of study that could consume the rest of your lives. At the very least, I hope you will continue down these paths next year, to see where they lead you.
“The concept that magic has a spectrum, that it is not simply binary, is relatively new. It’s great to see the two of you embracing it so wholeheartedly. As for the assignment, you have fulfilled my most outrageous ambitions for it. Truly Outstanding work.”
At the end of class, Paul and the other Gryffindors shook Liam’s hand. “Great presentation, today, Wren. Learned a ton.”
“Yeah,” said Gillian. “Though, it took you long enough to be done with it.”
“That was some real research we had going on,” said Liam.
“I remember the day,” said Paul, “when you cursed Kane with that stinging spell. Had him crying like a stuck pig!”
The others laughed, but Liam gazed ahead, stoically. “Kane turned out alright. Buried the hatchet, we did, a couple years back. He has a Stilgrevsen wand now, too. No one at Durmstrang will duel him, now. His wand is too strong.”
Paul laughed again. “You’re a good man, Wren,” he said. “Loyal to a fault. Even when you don’t need to be. I won’t be dueling you anytime soon, though. Not after today!”
They laughed together. Gillian clutched Liam’s arm, but she did not push any thoughts into his head. He gazed at her, but she gave him only a brief glance before looking away.
He touched her cheek so she would look at him again. What’s wrong?
Who are you being loyal to? she asked. Him? Or Her?
I reserve the right to say nice things about someone, even if he’s a Slytherin. Of course, if Kane were still at Hogwarts, I’m sure he would still get on my nerves. We get along fine now that he goes to a different school.
This got a smirk out of her, but her eyes stayed distant, and her mind remained closed to him.