The next morning saw breakfast as usual when Harry put down a pretty big book in front of me.
"I will be busy grading student essays for this week. I have kids owl them to me, or use muggle post for the muggleborns and muggle-raised, so I can grade them before school starts next week. I want to know that they didn't do them on the Express on the way to school. While I do that, I want you to read the first couple chapters, as well as chapter 21 of this book. The first 2 will give you a sense of the nature of soul magic, and chapter 21 will tell you about the darker side of the art that you will find in the likes of the veil. This is the stuff you need to understand before I can start teaching you spells. On that subject, we will be going to get your wand whenever Ollivander owls."
"Can't wait. I'll be waiting by the window for that owl," I say.
"Don't forget to read the book," Harry says after a chuckle.
I didn't read any of that book this morning. I did a lot to not actually have to read the book. I started the day in Lily's room, playing with her dolls, where I tried to keep a forced smile on my face. Then she took out the "Tales of Beedle the Bard" and asked me to read her the story of the Three Brothers. I started acting out the characters, much to the amusement of both Lily and Sky.
After that, I got up, walked into my room, and took a nap with no shame in my mind. I woke up with water splashed in my face, coming from the end of a smirking Ginny's wand. After a nice warm towel for my face, and much laughter from all three kids, lunch was served.
After Lily kept trying to eat my sandwiches, I went to my room to catch up on the YouTube channels that I subscribed to. After watching random videos for about an hour and a half, I saw a majestic brown owl tapping at my window. I took off my headphones, and walked over to the window to let the owl in. The owl flew around the room before dropping the letter it was holding on my bed. It then flew back out the open window.
Picking up the letter, I saw a wax seal with the word "Ollivanders" on it. Quickly breaking the seal, I read the letter, telling me that my wand was ready for me, and raced out of my room and to the study where I knew Harry was working on the summer assignments. I politely knocked on the door, and entered when given an affirmative.
"Harry! My wand is done!" I say, acting Lily's age.
"Alright then, we'll go and pick it up right away," was the response that got my smile to widen even further-if that was even possible.
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After a quick (painful) floo trip to the Leaky Cauldron that had me shot out of the floo and I hit my head on the leg of a nearby table, Harry and I walked into Ollivander's wand shop hearing the signature bell tinkle as the door opened.
Ollivander came out of the shelves of wand boxes and turned right back around when he saw us. He came back out seconds later carrying a white wand box.
"Hello Mr. Davis, Professor, I assume you came for this?" he says motioning forward the white box in his hands.
"YES!" I said excitedly, so happy to finally get my very own wand.
Ollivander opens the box, and I see a wand that is wrapped in some sort of plastic. Ollivander takes the wand, still in the plastic substance, and hands it to me.
"As with the uniqueness of the wand and your situation, any other wizard should not be allowed to touch the wand directly. Because of the properties of the core you are aware of."
I take the wand from him, unwrapping the wrapping, and I finally get to hold my wand, and…
I feel nothing. No humming, gold sparks, or magic flowing around me like I had imagined, nothing. Before I could ask why this was, Ollivander was one step ahead of me.
"The reason that nothing happened is because you don't have any magic inside of you. All of the magic will come from the leylines and other natural magics, so there is no bonding happening between you and the wand. Do not doubt that it is your wand though. Try casting a spell, how about Lumos?"
I say the incantation, with a slight flick of my wand, and it lights up, but again there is no tingling feeling inside of my chest like Albus has been telling me about. After a round of thank yous and goodbyes, we left the shop, with a stop at Floreans for some pick-me-up ice cream before we headed home.
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Albus has been kind of disappointed that my wand didn't make me feel all tingly like he felt, and there were no gold sparks and other bravado.
The first thing that happened when we got home was to make sure that all of the kids knew to not touch my wand. We kind of oversold what would happen if they did telling them fake stories about blood bonding and the pain that one would feel if they picked up my wand to scare them more than a little bit so they wouldn't start getting curious. This was really a serious situation.
I then took a shower and watched more Youtube until there was nothing exciting to watch, which took a good couple of hours. As I was starting to get bored, I started to read the Soul Magic book because it was the only thing to do at the moment. I was a little curious about why I needed to learn about soul magic if Director Croaker said that the Veil didn't work by severing the connection to the soul, but severing the connection with the Magical Core.
I learned through the first chapter that the term Soul Magic is a broad term that relates to any magic that affects a wizard's soul or magical core, or as the book explained it, the term Soul Magic pertains to anything that differentiates a wizard and a muggle. The word Soul was chosen a while ago because Magical Core is a mouthful to keep saying.
As I finished the first chapter, I heard a tapping on my window, and turning around I saw an owl with a letter. I rushed to open the window, and the owl flew in and dropped a nice pink letter on my bed.
Looking at the letter, it had my name written on it in fancy letters. Opening the letter, and glancing at the bottom first, I saw it was from Victoire, and I started reading the letter:
Hello Michael,
It was so nice to meet you during dinner yesterday. I'm writing to see what things you like to do. I know you said that you were raised in the muggle world, so I might not know all of what you were saying, even if Grandpa will try and help me figure it out. I like reading, especially about charms, it has been my favorite subject in school forever. I am also the head girl this year, and I am sooo excited! Please write back and tell me about what you like to do!
Yours,
Victoire Weasley.
As I finished reading the Letter, I found it being snatched away from me by Lily, who had somehow entered the room as I was reading it.
Lily ran out of the door, and apparently tripped over herself, and I found that Sky had raced after my letter after it had fallen out of Lily's hand. I picked up Lily and put her back down on my bed as Sky put the letter on my bedside table.
"I'm sorry," Lily said
I then asked, "Can you explain to me why you took something that was not yours without permission?" sounding very parental if I do say so myself.
"I was just curious who the letter was from."
"It was from your cousin Victoire, now what could you have done that would have been more polite?"
"Asked nicely?"
"Exactly, if you aren't polite, the people at Hogwarts won't like you so much, and you don't want that do you?"
At this, she shook her head and as I didn't like to see her so sad, I said, "Why don't we go downstairs and get some food?"
At my suggestion, I was practically dragged out of my room, downstairs, and into the kitchen where I made both of us some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
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During the evening, I sat to write back to Victoire. Since I hadn't really had a chance to talk to her during dinner last night, it was nice to be able to finally get to know her. Before I started writing, I realized that I wasn't 100% sure what I was able to talk about, specifically about the department. I had the idea of letting Harry read over the letter before I sent it. I wasn't too happy about Harry reading my letters, but I really didn't want to get fired and get sent back home before I even got started with my job.
I started to write,
Dear Victoire,
I was so glad to receive your letter, I can't tell you how much I already miss having friends that are my age, so reading your letter and writing back to you is very refreshing. I love kids as much as anybody else, and Lily has done her best at keeping me occupied (actually, it's probably the other way around haha), but it is nice to talk with someone my age. First of all, congratulations on making Head Girl! I know how much of an honor it is and that alone tells me a lot of good things about you. I also have a passion for reading, although I like to read fiction instead of school books, I hope you do too (or at least that wizarding school books are more interesting than the muggle ones). The Harry Potter series was one of my absolute favorites growing up and being here seems like I'm in a dream. Speaking of that, was all the information about your generation inaccurate? The books were published before you guys grew up. Hopefully I kept this letter clean of muggle terminology, but if you need clarification, I would hope you would ask me before you ask your grandpa.
I had a hard time figuring out how to close the letter. "Love" sounded like I was desperate, and "Sincerely" sounded more like talking to an acquaintance not a future friend and maybe more. In the end I went with,
Hopefully your future friend,
Michael
I thought that it conveyed exactly what I wanted it to with no other troubles. Rereading the letter, I realized that it had no information about the Department of Mysteries, which meant that I didn't have to have Harry pre-read it. I sent the letter off with an owl, before falling asleep, thinking of a gorgeous witch that genuinely seemed to want to get to know me.
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Victoire's POV
Waking up in the morning, and heading downstairs for breakfast, I see my dad sitting at the table, and when he sees me, he smiles and holds up a letter.
"This little thing was sitting on the table this morning when I came down."
"For me?" I said, running through the list of people who could have written to me. I hoped that it was from Michael, but I had also written to my friend from school Leo. Leo was in Ravenclaw like me, and also likes guys which makes him immune to my veela powers. Thinking about how Leo's reactions to my powers were kind of similar to Michael's, as when I talked to Michael at the Burrow he seemed to not be affected by me, the thought crossed my mind that Michael was gay, and a feeling of displeasure at that thought which seemed more amplified than it should came next.
"It's from Michael, Harry's new apprentice." Dad said handing me the letter
"I know who he is, I did write him yesterday."
"Oh? Do I need to invite him over here for dinner?" my dad's smile seemingly increasing with every word spoken.
"Merlin, Dad," I said as I ran back upstairs with the letter to save my dignity as well as to hide the blush on my face. What was this boy doing to me? Over the years, Teddy was the only person that made me feel anything close to this, but he had kept telling me that our age difference, only 2 years, was too much for us to be together. I have a hunch that he just saw me as a cousin, and was just making excuses.
Putting all thoughts of Teddy out of my mind, I opened the letter from Michael.
Reading his letter made me feel really happy. It felt really nice that I had made a good first impression with my letter. I have never really been the type of person who goes out of their way to please people, but getting recognized for my achievements is really nice. Uncle Harry and I had a talk last year about dealing with my veela charm, and he related it to his own experiences.
He was lauded since he was a baby for something he had no control over. He had told me that his first defeat of Voldemort didn't hold any significance to him and he really didn't like it when people congratulated him for it. What he told me that he really loved being congratulated on was his quidditch career when he was at school. His reasoning being that those accomplishments came on their own, and were not dictated by some prophecy. He said that my veela charm is like the prophecy, something that is hanging over my head and that I can't do much about it, and that I'd have to find my quidditch, something that I liked to do, and had control over which made me proud to receive compliments on.
Michael complimenting me on making Head Girl first made me feel warm inside. I had asked a couple of guys to write to me over some past summers. Oliver Harris wrote to me before 4th year. He was a year older than me in Hufflepuff and he filled his letters with compliments on my appearance, not even trying to get to know things about me. Halfway throughout the summer I wrote him back that it was never going to happen and it took a couple of Aunt Ginny's signature Bat-Bogey hexes when we got back to school to get him off my back. During the summer before 5th year, I asked Harry Martin, a muggle born Ravenclaw in my year to write. I had a really big thing for Teddy back then and that probably didn't help anything. Harry's letters kept trying to get me over to his house alone during that summer and even though I am part veela, there were a lot of red flags.
Michael's letter was nothing like how those experiences had been. Ok, so I did write him first, which gave him things to talk about, but the other boys could have written first letters more similar to what I wrote. To this day the only thing I know about Oliver Harris is that he played chaser for Hufflepuff and everyone knew that.
Michael complimented my academics, and then talked about his interest in reading. And he was able to joke with the information that I had given about reading academic books. Rereading the letter, I noticed that there was nothing written about my physical appearance. This made me feel really good. The only pause was he closed the letter with the suggestion about being friends. I interpreted it along the muggle quote that Aunt Hermione told me, along the lines of "the person that you marry should be your lover and your best friend."
Marry? Why was my brain going there, although I couldn't say that the idea was totally uncomfortable to me.