Disclaimer is in chapter 1.

With the horror of Valentine's day past them, and classes settling down to the normal routine, Xander finally found time to do some work with Ron's old wand. The Ash wand was held together by the spello tape still, and he had to carefully unstick that and peel it slowly off to reveal the damage. The wood had been totally shattered, but the unicorn tail hair was still intact and held the two ends together.

Xander supposed that was what allowed the wand to still work, though it obviously became unreliable after the break. Probably because proper wand movements would be next to impossible with the tip of the wand wobbling slightly, though it was possible that the magic simply didn't jump across the break in the wood properly.

"What ARE you doing, Harris?"

Xander glanced up as Draco approached, "Just pulling apart an old wand."

"That's Weasley's isn't it?" Draco sneered, as he usually did. "I noticed he had a new one. Why'd he give you that?"

"I asked." Xander shrugged, "Wanted to see what these things were like on the inside."

"Why ever would you want that?"

"Funny," Xander drawled in an imitation of Draco's tone, "You sounded exactly like Ronald there for a moment."

Draco reddened, his hand wrapping around his wand, "Are you calling me a Weasley!?"

Xander considered it, not reaching for his own wand, "Well, I don't know how far the inbreeding actually goes..."

The Malfoy scion shook, wand out in his hand now, "How DARE you?"

"Draco," Xander sighed, "Think about it. Why would anyone want to see how wands are made?"

Draco rolled his eyes, "That's what I asked!"

"And I'm asking you to answer it."

Draco cooled down a little, then shrugged, "I suppose if you wanted to be a wand maker it would be important."

"One good answer." Xander agreed, "Any others?"

Draco just shrugged.

"Did you know that the current wands haven't really changed in over eleven hundred years?" Xander asked, "Before that it was mostly Staves, and only a handful of wizards could use them."

"Everyone knows that, Harris."

"I didn't," Xander shrugged, "And I suspect that most muggle borns don't know it either."

"Why would I care what they know?"

"You wouldn't, but the point is that not everyone knows it." Xander said, turning his focus back to the wand. "This little stick changed the world, it's probably the single most important item in the entire wizarding world, and no one cares how it works?"

"Why should we?" Draco asked with that permanent sneer he maintained, "Tools are there to be used."

Xander shrugged again, "No reason, I guess."

Draco smirked at him, confident at having won the argument, and pranced off with his nose in the air. Xander watched him go for a moment before returning his attention to the wand. He noted that the unicorn hair had been pulled just slightly out of the wood, which meant that the two pieces could no longer be fit together properly without bending the hair.

Another point of failure, probably.

There were no books on basic wand making in the library, Xander had discovered, so he knew too well that most of this was just guess work at best. As near as he could tell, the secrets of wandmaking were controlled by certain pureblood families.

The Ollivander's in Britain, The Marceau family in France, and the Gregorovitch family in Eastern Europe had a rather tight grip on the construction of those little pieces of irreplaceable wood and magic. Wands in the states were mostly imported, Xander had learned after a discussion with Professor Hardy, though there were some wand crafters who had setup shop in various places in the American Wizarding World.

Crafters were different than the Three Families of Wands, according to Hardy. They custom designed wands for their users, which roughly approximated the same quality as a matched Ollivander wand, however it took several weeks to craft each wand, where as Ollivander and the others of the Three Families could make a wand with their technique in as little as an hour.

Of course there was no guarantee that said wand would match with a given wizard, but the sheer number of wands they could make, combined with the huge backlog each of the Three Families had from generations of wand makers, nearly guaranteed a good match for any wizard or witch who came in the door.

For that reason, the cheaper yet equally effective wands from the Three Families basically owned the market in Europe, most of Africa, and much of Asia. Only in the Americas, Australia, and a few oddball places did crafters survive due to import tariffs and other local restrictions. If he had bought his wand in the States, Xander found out, he would have paid closer to a hundred galleons for it and would have had to wait several weeks at a minimum if he commissioned it from a crafter.

Xander couldn't put his finger on it, but there were whole aspects of the wizarding world that just seemed off somehow, and this was one of them.

He kept trying to compare them to stuff in his comic books, but really couldn't get the reality to match up with the fantasy. It kinda disappointed him, really, he had been seeing the magical world as an extension of his comic book fantasies, but something was just... wrong.

He sighed, scratching down some notes in the Coven Grimoire and settled back into the chair to think.

"Interesting pen."

He opened his eyes and flicked over to see Daphne sitting across from him.

"Thanks, it was a gift."

"I don't believe I've seen one like it before, is it a muggle pen?"

He nodded, "A fountain pen, invented a long time ago. Marks just like a quill, but you don't need an ink pot, it holds the ink inside."

Daphne nodded, leaning forward to get a closer look. "And you use it for class?"

Xander smirked, "Not Professor Snape's, but I do use it for his homework. Have all year, he's never noticed a difference."

She smiled slightly, tipping her head slightly as she leaned back. "I couldn't help overhearing your conversation with Draco."

"Translation," Xander said with a grin, "my Slytherin side made me listen in, along with everyone else in the common room."

Daphne smirked tightly, glancing around as several other students suddenly found very interesting things in their own books to focus on. "Precisely."

"So what of it?"

"I'm just curious, really," She admitted, "What do you hope to learn?"

Xander shrugged, "Don't know. Just seems wrong, somehow, to wave these around and not have some idea how they work. You know, in my school back home, I took 'muggle' classes, including some science courses. They always tried to explain HOW something works, even if it's just a really simple explanation that leaves out the details. I guess I'm used to that."

She nodded slowly, eyes hooded slightly as she considered his words.

Xander knew she was smart enough to have noted that he admitted to taking normal classes, but he was banking on her being smart enough to read more into what he'd said than he meant. He'd learned that Slytherins tended to do that, and if she did than he expected she would draw conclusions that would lead her away from the truth of his family situation. The last thing he needed was for the house to figure out that his parents were squibs, as that was really only slightly better than their being muggles.

"I guess that makes sense." She said after a moment, "Is schooling that different in the States?"

Xander considered for a moment, thinking about the classes he had to take now. "Well, I'm taking classes in physics and chemistry even now, as well as biology."

"You are? Wait... what are those?"

Xander raised an eyebrow, he'd known that the wizard world didn't put much stock in 'muggle' sciences, and with some good cause really. Magic really did violate many of the rules of science so utterly that it made the courses seem stupid. Hardy had been adamant there, though, that the 'laws' in the books were in fact accurate despite the appearances.

Magic didn't follow Newton's laws of motion, for example, or really any of the common 'laws' of the world. Apparently magic fell into a category Hardy called 'High Energy Physics' for the most part, where the laws of nature were markedly different. Xander hadn't understood a word of it, though, and Hardy had told him that he wasn't expected to unless he went to a Doctorate program and beyond in certain specialties.

At any rate, what surprised him here was that Daphne didn't even know the words. She wasn't a stupid girl, and you'd think that one some level or another she'd have at least heard the basics about them. He had, after all, probably before he could say the words. They were the sort of thing you were bombarded with in what Xander was rapidly thinking of as 'the real world'. Biology? Spiderman, Frankenstein, almost every monster flick he'd ever watched were based on some screwed up version of biology. Chemistry was the basis for all kinds of stuff in horror movies and comics, from the acid blood in Aliens... which, now that he thought about it, was also a weird kind of biology... to the Joker's maniac persona in Batman. Physics, well that was the basis of every sci-fi flick he'd ever watched, of course.

And she'd never heard of any of them?

"Uh, well, Chemistry is sort of a 'muggle' version of potions," Xander answered, "it's the basis for, well a LOT of stuff they make. Physics is how the world works, you know... if I push you I have to brace myself or I'll also push myself *away* from you? Stuff like that. And, well, biology is just how livings things work. Sort of like Care of Magical Creatures, I guess."

Daphne frowned, but nodded. "Those muggles, they can be kinda cute with their playing around, can't they?"

Xander blinked, "Uh... I guess..."

The Gryffindor/Hufflepuff game was on them shortly after that, and Xander joined most of the school outside to watch it. He wasn't really into sports, but he had to admit that as far as sports went, Quidditch was probably one of the more fun to watch.

As they were getting ready to get the game underway, however, they all saw professor McGonagall stride out onto the field with a megaphone and the crowd hushed.

"Quidditch is canceled!" She called out, then ignored the protests as she told them to make their way back to their dorms.

Xander watched as he got up and started to move with the group, eyes on the professor as he spotted Harry chasing after her. On a hunch he broke from the pack and followed at a distance. Harry and Ron went with their head of house to the infirmary, and Xander moved in quietly just close enough to see through the door.

Inside he could hear their gasps of shock as he spotted Hermione on the bed, arms sticking up in an awkward position, her eyes open and unmoving.

"She's been petrified, I'm afraid." McGonagall said from inside the room.

Xander's knuckles turned white as his face rapidly paled to match, and he fell back from his position and retreated towards the Slytherin common room.