The Ollivanders Secret

— Andy POV —

„So, you ready Clara?" I asked here, before whisking us away from her front door. Whisking is my advanced form of apparating, as I studied the kind of accidentally new created spell from the Diagon Alley disaster. The outcome is a way better teleporting spell, though it is way harder than apparating, as there are a lot more variables at play. It is basically a very advanced use of apparating and not a newly discovered spell, but still not something easily done. It took me close to two and a half years of near constant studying to get to my current mastery, but there is still a lot of potential to uncover, though I will need to appease my passion, before I sink any more time into it.

Today I was a glorified taxi though, as I volunteered to transport Clara to Andy and back, just for some clothing I know nothing about, but it will probably be as weird as everything else from this girl, Mrs. Celine will probably regret ever sending that coupon at the end of it. I just got a glimpse of an oath Clara wants Mrs. Celine to swear, which is so much more advanced than my own oath, that it is not even funny. While you would think a secrecy oath is more than enough and will always be the same in the end, this one goes to a whole other degree. It starts normal, with secrecy, followed by a moral clause to not worry about the aftereffects of it, with additional creation requirements which will need to be put in place and also a complete documentation about the creation process, with any documentation and residue of the crafting given to Clara, while also wiping the memories of Mrs. Celine about everything to do with the product she made in that time. And another 20 more specifically weird and odd clauses. It was also no longer a worded oath, but a magical contract to be signed with blood and magic. There was even a clause to forget about the parts of the contract detailing the requirements of the craft. It was overkill, if you ask me, but I also don't know what Clara wants to get crafted, though it will probably be quite a weakness for Clara, from what I saw in that oath. Apart from that she already had a heavily warded folder prepared for the current and future contract, which was quite common for any Ollivanders and most head of houses to have, just not that strongly enchanted, though I have seen scarier, it can always be upgraded.

Welp enough thinking, we arrived at the door of Mrs Celine Ollivanders workshop, where Clara stopped me and said: „I will go in and will come out after the negotiations are over. I will also stay to watch, if in any way possible, so it could be just a short informative talk instead of a ride back home, I hope you don't mind bringing me back, if I stay here for a time."

— Clara POV —

„No, just inform me, I am free for the near future." Answered Andy to my last inquiry, before I stepped through the already opened door. What awaited me behind that door, was a small cozy room, with two armchairs, a table in the middle and a smiling old lady. Now for an Ollivander to look that old, it takes a few hunreds of thousands of years, so she is basically a living antique, who I greeted, as per customs, with a short bow and a: „Greetings Mrs. Celine. It is nice seeing you today." She answered with a wave of her hand saying: „Do away with the pleasantries, especially if you don't mean them. I couldn't care less, it was nice the first few thousand times, but you get tired of it pretty quickly and I imagine the rest of this confirmation will be anything but respectful, if I go from Andys shoot. I expected your parents, if I am being honest. Why are they not here?" She ended her short rant with an inquiry. „Because they shouldn't know about anything which happens in this room, well nobody should, that is why i drafted this binding magical contract, which Andy got a peek at, as I wanted him to know… Well never mind that, how about you fire up those wards and read the contract." I shot back. After a very long silence, where Celine read through the contract again and again. Unexpectedly, she took down the wards and spoke: „You can leave now Andy, I will send you a date for retrieval of this little one, after which she fired up the wards to an even higher intensity. „And, did he leave?" I asked, to which I just got a nod and a short: „More like fled", followed by: „I am surprised, this contract is near perfect, but I will ask you, why did you include a return of favor for me? You had that coupon…" she left the last statement trailing, to which I answered: „I am pretty sure my favor will be a good one to have, especially if you look at my current progress and I was afraid you wouldn't agree to these conditions…"

At that point Mrs. Celine stopped me and said: „You are certainly right, though through that you also introduced three mistakes in this contract. The first being a missing moral clause, that the favor cannot go against your values and most importantly, your passions, as I could easily kill you through that oversight. There is also a missing time limit, as I could just make you my lifelong slave. The last one being not disassociating the favor with the memories, as with the current contract I will remember everything, until I request that one favor." After which she paused, probably to let it sink in before continuing: „Though I must say this contract is very impressive for your age nonetheless, it is just not my first rodeo like this. I myself have hundreds of contracts like these, stashed away in a similar folder, while others also have theirs in their respective folders. My current total should be around 3 million of these kinds of trades, though 99% are already fulfilled, void or left ownerless, as the other party died. In many of these there are way more mistakes and loopholes than in yours, so these mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of. Now I would say you change it, with a time limit of 10 years and the other two stated corrections. Also, before you go into a rant about 10 years being way to long I owe and get owed some contracts with time limits in the thousands of years, so that is respectively little, though those have an additional clause, that they need to be allowed to follow their passion from time to time, as they would die if they don't, well for any of the Ollivanders that is."

She clapped her hands two times, after which a previous invisible door opened and she said: „A similar mistake happened to my current elf, though it also made her the last living member of her species, as she is my lifelong slave and even the ritual which eradicated them from this universe cannot break a magical binding oath or contract. Now why would I tell you?" she asked and without letting me answer she said: „To let you know that things like these are not black and white or good and bad, as while restricting for her, it is way better than the alternative." Without turning to the elf, she addressed the elf: „You will leave for your home for the next few months, don't come back or spy before I call you, I got another contract to fulfill, after which the elf just faded out of view. „Well, let us get started with this now shall we?" After which she signed the contract without any hesitation, followed by my own signature.

After that she just stood up, motioned for me to follow her and left through the still open door into what would most crafters would call paradise. A crafting room tailored to her needs, with the volume of several moons, mostly used for storage though. I wanted to ask, where she got something like this, but before I could verbalize it, she preemptively said: „This is my personal talent, which exists in the family's magic, though it is seldom seen, as the requirements are ridiculous. No more questions please, except if you get it in the future, I am more than happy to help you start out, though it will cost you a few favors." Following this, she cleared out a drawing table and said: „So, what do you have for me?" After which I gave her a stack of 100 Din-A4 pages, which she speed read, followed by a short whistle. „Damn, that is beyond impressive, though there are multiple mistakes in these calculations, which don't affect the end result. I will still patch them out for you, but don't look so down, these calculations are on a mastery niveau. Even i make mistakes sometimes, that is why the most important calculations always get checked by someone better than me, though that coot never taught me anything."she started ranting, while furiously transcribing and correcting all my work.

„Do you already have the material?" she asked, to which I just gave her the prepared buckypaper, after which she just scoffed and started a rant about the importance of quality, after which she straight up vanished the brought material and with another wave of her wand materialized another stack of material. And I must concur, even I could see the qualitative difference between the two and made it another priority to read up on quality ingredients and how to appraise them. After waving her wand a few more times and muttering something about some flexibility ratios, she said: „Are you sure you want it to be semi conscious and symbiotic in the end? It poses many risks, even with your restrictions placed on it. You should also stop referring it as an item, as it will know and could be a bit miffed about it. You are basically creating a very rudimentary companion, bonded with you on every level of your existence." To which I just answered, as I knew this question would come: „Yes, I know most of them, I still want it as my plan is to make it completely conscious in the future through the use of mind arts, as I am considered a grandmaster knowledge wise and have already multiple ideas in that regard." After which she started whistling again, afterwards saying: „Damn, that is an impressive mind and I thought you couldn't surprise me anymore. You are weird kid, you know that? Most would already see you as an accomplished master if that is anything to go by. Who taught you?" „Henry", I started, but got interrupted by a hearty laughter and another rant about his impossible ridiculous and still unbelievable standards. Sharp tongue she got. After she caught herself, she asked: „How is Henry at the moment? Having headaches about you I guess? I know him from the past, made a similar deal to you, just without that coupon." This was followed by another bout of laughter, more like cackling really, to which I reacted: „He is well and I do probably bring him headaches, though it got better over time. But what difference does the coupon make? You still got the favor in the end, no?" After a few weird seconds of silence, Mrs. Celine broke it: „Because I will only use that favor under the most dire circumstances, which basically means pretty much never. I am a man, well madam, of my word. While you were mostly right that I wouldn't have signed a contract without it, that is just a part of my personality, to have as much assurances as possible for things which will never come to pass. I am kind of paranoid, but it seems to be doing wonders, as I am still alive. A sparse few can brag about living as long and undisturbed as I did. But a piece of free advice for you little one, there are many lurking monsters out there, some even stronger and not nearly as mellow as us. That is one of the reasons we as a group life mostly in hiding, as we could all to easily destroy the earth and some of the old codgers even a galaxy if not the whole universe."

After that we only talked about the process and questions I had about it, though not many were answered, which she explained with: „Our passions are a curious thing, and while you don't have yours yet, it is just a point in time. If you get too much knowledge too soon in your journey, espacially if you don't understand it yet, your passion will just kill you that much faster. That is the reason behind us old fogies keeping knowledge behind a tight lock, if it is any harder than the rudimentary stuff you need to get started. Even just letting you spectate could prove to be disastrous, though I highly doubt it, with how weird you are." I asked no more questions afterwards, though she explained some small tidbits and the errors I did in between, if we needed to wait for some time.

The next two and a half months passed like that. The crafting looked something like this. She started with interrogating me about every little detail, until she was satisfied, followed by the treatment of buckypaper, which was first soaked in my blood, magic and mental energy, blood being the most annoying. Meanwhile she prepared a few potions for the following treatment, one adjusting its feeling, another for flexibility and another for its color, making it transparent. After that we had a ton of treated material, which she compressed through spatial layering, powered by my magic, into a small round ball, which she then linked to my magical and inner cores, adjusting its resonance so it would not obstruct them, followed by syncing and connecting it to my heart, which I had no idea how she did that, as it felt fucking weird and that feeling persistent until I equipped it for the first time. Then she just went on to enchant it, so densely that not a nanometer of space on that small ball left. She even went full 3D and changed the whole ball into a kind of overengineered array, which went off script of my calculations to which my inquiry about it was: „It was an epiphany, a spure of the moment thing, even I don't know what exactly it does, though it will be mostly harmless", which worried me a little bit, ok a large bit but still, I decided to trust her on that one. After that, she connected it another time to my two cores and heart three cores now that I think about it, which brought me to an enlightenment at that point, through which I missed the rest of the crafting, though she outlined it for me, describing it as: „An annoying looped process of making sure everything works perfectly and enhancing it to the best of her skill, while also making sure, that it still had the potential to grow as much as it wanted." Especially that last part made my heart thump in happiness. Two weeks before my birthday, we started the one week of bonding it permanently to my soul, as that was the only and fourth missing link to me, which basically meant we tied our „life" together. After I came out of my meditation of this week, she just told me to gulp that still a bit to large for that ball down, which I did after she swore to curse me if I didn't. After that, I lost control over my body due to complete sensory overload, as the second skin needed to calibrate by going through my memories, which took a few moments. After that it settled at a level near to the previous one, just amplifying the incoming sensations, while it also instantly started with another sensation, which was a constant soft pressure, which was kind of disorienting, as literally every atom in my body got that sensation, instead of just applying it outside of my body.

That was also the effect of Mrs. Celines epiphany, which basically changed it from coating surfaces of my body to it integrating with my very atoms, though even she was surprised to know, that this function was that „good". After a short discussion over the outcome, she handed me everything she documented, while warning me not to read it, unless extremely necessary. After a short thank you and goodbye, I left through the front door, whisking away with Andy, while I saw her slumping down into an armchair as the memory clause hit, but I could swear I heard her murmuring just before that: „What a weird, but nice girl!"