Chapter 453 - 4: The Wand

Chapter 453: Chapter 4: The Wand

That inferior creature had eaten part of his memories and damaged his soul! What kind of person opened their mouth and bit a notebook? And what kind of person could damage his Horcrux with their teeth?

Tom was furious, yet he could do nothing about it. As only a fragment of soul and memory, there were very few things he could accomplish. He had to wait for the other person to voluntarily open their heart to him. That was precisely why he had lowered himself to carrying on something like an online romance with an eleven-year-old girl.

Fortunately, after damaging him once, Yimi did not immediately try again.

The notebook tasted even worse than it smelled. It was so old that it no longer had even the pleasant scent of a book. On top of that, the taste of being a special item was not good either. Her verdict: not even as tasty as the old geezer’s remains.

Besides, her sense of taste told her that the first bite had already contained the tastiest part. Yimi had no interest in trying a second one.

Naturally, the tastiest part was the knowledge Yimi wanted. A large number of magical spells flooded into her head, mixed with a small handful of memories from Tom Riddle’s youth.

One showed Tom scolding a large student about something, saying things like, "I can’t keep covering for you anymore." Another showed Tom sneaking into some place, where an enormous snake whose mouth could swallow Yimi whole coiled in front of him.

A giant spicy snack. Now she was craving one.

"Stupefy." Yimi stretched out a hand and cast a spell at the empty air in front of her. A flash of light shot out and knocked a distant chair sideways.

"Congratulations, Host, for unlocking the achievement [Magic Kitty—Nailed It!]! Reward: +1 gacha draw."

"Mm."

Completing one achievement had already given her the same reward as a side quest.

"Who is using magic in the library?!" Madam Pince shouted angrily.

Yimi hugged the notebook to her chest and scampered away on her short legs.

Witches and wizards normally needed wands to cast spells. That basic fact had been included among the knowledge Yimi had just eaten. Yimi did not seem to be bound by the rule quite as strictly, but because the knowledge came from Tom, who was a wizard, casting without a wand still felt awkward for her.

She needed to find a way to get one.

She threaded through groups of students who were all taller than her. Even while she was in human form, one restless girl still tried to reach over and pat her on the head.

Ignoring that for now, Yimi ran back to McGonagall’s office and sat down. She grabbed the quill on the desk and clumsily held it in her hand.

She had never used this kind of pen before, but the "Tom and Jerry" horror movies Grandma had shown her had at least taught Yimi that hairy pens existed.

She took out her exercise book, intending to write down the knowledge she had just acquired, only to discover that she had no idea how to spell the incantation for the Stunning Spell.

The task ahead was even more troublesome than she had imagined. And when she tried to write down the spell, she also saw the homework already in her notebook and suddenly realized that what she wanted to write looked suspiciously like homework too.

Better draw the prize first.

The System’s gacha program had not changed after its reconstruction. It was still the same capsule machine. Yimi pressed the draw button.

"Congratulations, Host, you have obtained [12-Inch Rebar]."

[12-Inch Rebar]: Perhaps you can use it as a substitute for certain things. At least it will not break very easily, right?

"..."

Yimi took out the heavy object and did not like it very much. Aside from her enduring love of leopard print, after all this time she had developed at least some of the aesthetic preferences of an ordinary little girl.

Holding the rebar, she pointed it at the quill. "Engorgio."

The quill instantly enlarged by more than twenty times. The effect was much better than she expected. This thing could actually work as a wand. But she still did not like it. The metal left an unpleasant smell on her hands.

Smell...

Only then did Yimi remember that when she left the office earlier, she had been trying to find McGonagall. The strange smell had simply distracted her.

She had no choice but to go back outside. Her absurdly high luck did not make McGonagall appear the moment she walked through the door, but she did see a group of two boys and one girl trudging past with gloomy expressions.

"I hate his class." The red-haired boy wrapped tape around his damaged wand. "He actually locked us in there and made us clean up his mess!"

"Oh, come on, Ron. He just wanted to give me a chance to get some practical experience. You’re only unhappy with the practice because your wand is broken," the girl said, clearly displeased that he was insulting her favorite teacher.

"Practical experience! Listen to the rubbish she’s saying, Harry. I think she’s fallen in love with that Lockhart. You both saw how panicked he looked when he ran out." Ron pointed at his own ear.

Their Defence Against the Dark Arts professor for this term had just released a large swarm of pixies, claimed the creatures were extremely dangerous, and then left the three of them to catch the pixies when he himself failed to do so.

The greatest danger they had encountered was Ron getting bitten on the ear. It hurt quite a bit.

As they talked, the three of them stopped in front of Yimi. "Hey, which professor brought their kid to school? Professor McGonagall?"

Yimi pointed at the wand in Ron’s hand. "Do you still want, that wand?"

"It only looks a bit pathetic. It isn’t rubbish." Ron stiffened his neck and tucked the wand back at his waist.

For certain reasons, he and Harry had failed to pass through the wall while trying to catch the train, so he had driven the car his father secretly enchanted and flown it to school instead, crashing straight into the Whomping Willow and taking a severe beating.

They were fine, but Ron’s wand had snapped. His father, who worked at the Ministry of Magic, was also investigated for illegally turning a Muggle object into a magical item. His mother was furious, and Ron probably had no hope of getting a new wand before the end of the school year.

"I’ll trade this for it." Yimi held up the piece of rebar with open disdain.

"What is that?" The moment Ron asked the question, he vaguely heard both of his friends laugh. He was not sure whether he had said something especially ridiculous.

"A wand," Yimi answered seriously.

Ron took it and examined it repeatedly. "This looks much sturdier than mine. You didn’t steal it from someone, did you? Why isn’t it made of wood?"

"Don’t be ridiculous, Ron. That’s rebar. Muggles use it to build houses. You can find it at practically any construction site," Hermione, who was Muggle-born, explained.

"You’re having me on. I think it is a wand." Ron was not especially fond of Hermione at the moment because of the Lockhart argument. He aimed the rebar at her legs to test it. "Locomotor Mortis!"

"You actually cast the Leg-Locker Curse on me!" Hermione stared at him in disbelief.

A good part of that disbelief came from the fact that he had actually succeeded in casting magic.

"And you tried to tell me this is something Muggles have lying around everywhere!" Ron happily hefted the rebar.

Hermione freed herself from the Leg-Locker Curse. "Fine. You think a little kid suddenly appeared carrying a perfectly intact wand and wants to trade it for your broken one? Tomorrow Gryffindor will lose fifty points because you stole something!"

"Hermione isn’t lying to you, Ron," Harry said.

"It isn’t a broken wand. It just looks a little pathetic!"

"It isn’t stolen."

Ron and Yimi’s indignant voices rang out at the same time.

"I want to see, how wands are made." Unhappy, Yimi used psychokinesis to yank the rebar out of Ron’s hand. If he did not want the trade, forget it.

"A Summoning Charm? Or nonverbal casting?" Hermione seemed to misunderstand what she had seen and stared wide-eyed at the tiny child.

...

Apparently, that one display of psychokinesis was enough to fool the three of them, and Yimi successfully obtained the broken wand.

When Ron heard that she wanted to study the wand, he reluctantly asked her to return it after she finished. Even though it was broken, he still wanted to take it home someday and leave it in his family’s old storage cupboard.

Unlike most students, Ron had not bought his wand when he entered school. It was an old wand handed down from his older brother Charlie. With five older brothers and one younger sister, Ron’s pure-blood wizarding family was very poor.

The surface of the wand was already peeling in places, and the unicorn hair that formed its core was sticking out from the end.

It did not look especially remarkable.

This was a wand.

"Did you do this?" McGonagall, who had returned at some point, gently hooked her hands under Yimi’s arms and lifted her aside, then pointed at the enormous quill.

"Reducio." Yimi pointed Ron’s wand at the quill and shrank it back to normal.

Because Ron had warned her that the wand did not work properly, Yimi had proactively used Love Train to transfer away the bad luck of the spell failing.

"You know how to use other spells as well?" McGonagall asked in surprise as she picked up the quill.