Chapter Fifty One
When Luna had first been captured the Death Eaters had taken everything she possessed, save for the clothes she had been wearing at the time. These were some of her limited muggle attire, worn only for journeys across London on her way to school, and the Death Eaters hadn't searched the pockets of her denim jacket.
Luna had grown used to the cellar of Malfoy Manner over the last few weeks. She had enough, just, to eat and drink, a chamber pot that was emptied daily and the company of Mr. Ollivander the wand-maker. He was, she had quickly discovered, a fascinating man. His wandlore, and his knowledge of magic in general, was lesser only than that of Albus Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and her father. She thought often of her father, and how upset he must have been when she failed to return for Christmas, but she didn't allow herself to focus on this.
Instead Luna put all of her not inconsiderable understanding and focus into one task only; finding a way out of the dark room that had become her home. After several days of discussion with Mr. Ollivander she knew that the only way out was the door. She also knew that she, without her wand, could overpower neither Wormtail nor Draco Malfoy, the only two persons who ever opened the route to freedom. The old wandmaker was too disheartened and physically frail to be of any use, but Luna had other ideas.
Luna had considered some kind of a trick, but put this thought aside in favour of what she considered to be a better option. She slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and closed her fingers around the cold metal of a coin. The textbooks she had read several months previously had suggested that it was impossible to change a Protean charm once it had been performed; the Master would remain the Master and the Mimics would remain Mimics. The books, she suspected, had been wrong.
There were two books that Luna had read, the Standard Book of Spells used by all seventh year students but also available in the library as a reference to anyone else, and the ancient Charms Most Obscure. The first had been written for for incompletely trained witches or wizards, the second was well outdated. Mr. Ollivander, who occasionally used the Protean charm to ensure that the essence of a wand always matched its owner, told her that he thought otherwise. "The wand is the Master," he had told her several weeks before. "It chooses the wizard. But if the wizard, or witch, changes significantly in their personality, they may not be well matched with the wand. In this case the wand must become the Mimic, the wizard the Master."
"Is it something like that," Luna had asked, "If a wand passes from one wizard to another?"
"Yes, exactly," Ollivander then replied. "Again the wand, which was created as a Master, must become the Mimic. Not that this is strictly the Protean charm, you know. That is simply the best way I can describe it to one not learned in the art."
"But if you had a real Mimic," Luna had almost heard the smile in Ollivander's voice; hers was less strong. "Could you do the same? Change it into a Master?"
"With my wand, without a doubt," Ollivander said. "Alas, it is a theory we shall never test."
Luna had not mentioned the conversation, nor brought up the topic of the Protean charm, since that moment. Instead she waited each night until Ollivander's breathing deepened into sleep, then pulled her Galleon out of her pocket. During the day she questioned Ollivander on all aspects of wandlore, and during the night she lay on the stone floor, the charmed coin in her hand. Slowly she learned more about the art of making wands, until at last she felt comfortable starting to experiment.
The biggest difficulty was that Luna had no wand. Still, as she had proved on her first night in the cellar, she could use some magic without channelling it through an instrument. A flame flickered in her palm without difficulty, and after some practice she had mastered the ability to heat the cold stone that was her bed. What she intended now was far more difficult.
It was Christmas day, although Luna didn't know it, when she first made the attempt to change her coin from a Mimic to a Master. As she expected, nothing happened. She simply gave herself a little light, taking care not to wake the sleeping Ollivander, and tried again.
From that day Luna made ten attempts each night, after the wandmaker had fallen asleep. She kept to this self-imposed limit, occasionally feeling a tingling in her palm or a slight warmth in the usually chill metal of the coin, but there was never the flow of energy, the sense that something in the world around her had changed. Luna refused to try more often than this, because she knew she would quickly begin to go insane or to lose hope if the coin became her only focus.
Luna behaved well, obeying instructions during Wormtongue and Draco's visits, but she didn't stop wondering how she could trick one of the pair into allowing her to escape, willingly or not. When Mr. Ollivander began to become more reticent in sharing his knowledge she asked questions relating to anything except wandlore, and found that she quite enjoyed these conversations. She kept what she was doing secret, because she knew he would not believe she could do what she intended.
It was somewhere around the middle of January when Luna first tried something different in her attempts to change the charmed coin. She didn't need to make it a Master permanently, but just the once, to send one message. Some of the phrases that Mr. Ollivander had inadvertently taught her, then, might need a little adjustment.
Luna made her first attempt of the night, leading to the now-familiar feeling of tingling in her fingertips. It wasn't enough, but it was as good as anything she had done before. Twice more she tried, using minor alterations to the incantation, with the same result.
On the fourth time, the tingling exploded into a feeling of warmth that radiated down her arm into the golden Galleon with a faint silver glow.
