11 Chapter Ten

I stared, with a look that held a thousand-mile stare, at the straw mannequin in front of me. Other students enjoyed their weekends catching up to the homework they had yet to do. I spent my weekends trying to become an absolute min-maxing Wizard bastard. Silent spell-casting, wandless spell-casting, anything that the cesspools of fanfiction had stuck into the brains of countless readers, sometimes including myself, I tried.

The end result was that I spent quite a few weekends staring very angrily at the straw mannequin, earning nothing more than a dull throb in the back of my head on the best days, and a headache on the worst ones.

Honestly, I actually got better at throwing Flipendo so fast, I could make the mannequin half-spin right and left so quickly it eventually broke off its spinning base.

The Protego spell was yet beyond me, and rather than waste time with a fruitless endeavor, I moved on to the next spell in the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum. The Verdimillious spell, or as the Ministry of Magic probably called it, the one spell that was so much of a mouthful, by the time you sent it the enemy had the time to find cover.

"Verdimillious!" the forward slash of my wand had me hope for something more than a few sparks, but that was what I was rewarded with. A few sparks, and not at all like the ones from the spell. Sure, they were meant to be sparks, but they also were anything but a jet. At most, they were a sparkler.

"Is magic a muscle?" I mused after an hour spent on it. "Do I need to build up before moving on to the top-tier spells?" No. It made no sense. The only one stopping me was myself. Still, rather than attempt by trial and fail miserably, I picked my way out of the Room of Requirements and straight into the library.

If I had asked the librarian, she would have probably scoffed at me. I needed to learn more about wandless magic if I wanted to become the overpowered Gary Stu protagonist I knew I could become. Thus, what better way than to seek out an area where older Hogwarts student operated within the library, and then look at the books in that general direction?

My plan was flawless, my instincts true, honed and ready to bring me to new heights.

Hence, I found a very promising book entitled Wandless? Worthless! and another No Wand, No Bang. Ironically, I was starting to see a pattern. The wand was an European invention, that much I still vaguely remembered. The Room of Requirements couldn't help me, since no one had ever lost books on the argument. Perhaps because they had never been brought to England to begin with.

I'd need to owl-order them, but in order to do that, I needed to subscribe to a magazine.

I stopped, half-tempted to just leave, as my eyes zeroed in on a wizardry book that seemed to have been left in a corner. I had nearly missed it, and that was a grievous sin.

Wizardious Musicking, a Guide by Hummington Bardletone

I plopped down on a nearby table, book in hand, and began to read. It wasn't that I had a fascination with playing music, but I so did enjoy listening to it. With magic, perhaps I wouldn't need my own skills to do so, and I could recreate the famous pieces. It was something I actually, really wanted to learn. How to make music, how to play music, how to make the basses and the drums, the guitars and the violins.

The piano keys could be played by swinging the wand in a rhythm, "Symphonia Cantatio," was the incantation to begin the spell, and "Symphonia Conclusio," the one to finish it. Once cast, moving the wand would result in different patterns, which would all be error-free. This was the beauty of the wizardry magic when concerning music. There wouldn't be mistakes.

However, just because the chords and the tunes would come out flawlessly, it didn't mean they'd make sense. There was a need to compose. There was a need to have wand-movements, like dance-steps, in order to produce a desired result.

"I have to try this," I whispered to myself, glancing right and left. Madam Pince wasn't going to let me bring the book outside, and I couldn't steal it. The only solution was to copy it.

"You have to try what?" a voice startled me, making me turn and then quickly exhale in relief. It was fizzy-hair, coming over to study. She was holding on to a copy of History of Hogwarts, and looked ready to deal with it at her leisure.

"Music," I answered amiably, lifting up my book for her to see the title. "Magical music. Maybe even someone like me can play if it's magic doing the job," I grinned as I said that, honestly excited. Who needed to sweat his ass off and break his fingers practicing, when a swish of the wand would grant one the music of Mozart?

"You already did the history of magic homework?" fizzy-hair asked.

I blinked. "He gave homework?" I mouthed. She huffed, and then nodded. "Well," I sighed, and closed my music book. "So long, orchestra, we'll meet again." I pushed the book away and pulled out a clean parchment. If I went back up to grab my book, I'd waste years. Thus, I swiftly turned my eyes towards the books resting on the shelves. "History of Magic," I whispered, making psst-psst sounds at a flying book, "Come down here boy!"

The book fluttered, a bit confused, and then dive-bombed down right in front of me. "Who's a good boy?" I mumbled, half in disbelief, and half in shock, as I scratched the leathery back of the book in question. "You are, you silly flying book."

I pried it open, and moved on to the pages dealing with Emeric the Evil, and the main differences with Uric the Oddball were soon compiled. By the time I was done, my wrist felt a bit cranky. Since Fizzy-hair was curiously looking at my parchment, I gently pushed it forward in her direction. She did the same for hers, and I quickly scanned through the childish writing half-expecting to find a thousand and two mistakes. I found surprisingly little. A couple of words could have also been poorly written, but it was mostly fine.

"I forgot that Emeric the Evil was put inside the tales of Beedle the Bard," fizzy-hair said in a whisper, "I'll have to add it in." She scribbled the note down on her parchment, having I returned it.

I grabbed hold of the musical book once more, and returned to the page I had been prior to the interruption. The library's book on History of Magic fluttered away, and fizzy-hair instead stuck around.

She moved to the shelf briefly, and then returned with a book on charms.

She sat down, opened it, and began to peer over the pages as if there was no other purpose in her life but to become one with the pages themselves.

Such a serious little girl, she must have been the pride of her parents. I, on the other hand, had to seriously start thinking about what to do. Since I didn't learn spells as easily as air, I highly doubted I'd get the Obliviate spell ready to insert myself in a muggle family, much less manipulate the minds of people.

I'd need to have a discussion with the Deputy-Headmistress, who was probably in charge of the entire 'Orphan-Management-Fund'.

Thus, since I knew where I could find Professor McGonagall, I went straight ahead to knock at her office's door on a Saturday afternoon.

What awaited me on the other end...

...was a traumatic experience with tea and scones.