Hermione was annoyed to note that the Hogwarts Library, one of the largest collections of magical lore and knowledge in the world, if not the largest, had only twenty-seven books on wands. And most of those were about their histories and legends surrounding them. How they were made, why parts were chosen to go together, or how a wand chose its wielder were all mysteries to the writers of the books.
Oh they knew ABOUT the construction of wands. They could tell you things like how Grindlewald's original wand had been made of ivory, rather than wood, and the core had been from a dark creature from German history she didn't even know how to pronounce the name of. It even listed legendary wands like the Elder Wand as having a core made of thestral hair, something that shouldn't have been possible given those creatures weren't 'alive' in the technical sense of the term apparently, at least as defined by magic.
Still, each bit told her about famous wands and their users, but nothing about how those wands were made. It was frustrating, and were she not a patron of books and knowledge, she might have taken that frustration out on the tomes directly. Instead, she placed each onto her shelf, using a spell to sort them, and then left them there as she took in knowledge of other esoteric subjects instead.
She knew, mostly because it HAD to be so, that more on wands existed. Some of the books here even referenced things, like one that had detailed how to make a staff, a precursor to the modern wand, had advised her to seek out another tome with a similar name. That Hogwarts would have one and not the other was simply an untenable idea. Which meant there were two places she might find more wand lore.
The first was the Headmaster's office. Where the libraries in the dorms were linked directly to the main one by magic, and most shelves in the classrooms as well for that matter, the Headmaster had a private collection of books under his protection. They would hold untold secrets, things she could only guess at, and that alone was enough to have her planning a daring moonlight raid on his shelves to pilfer the knowledge therein.
She wasn't going to do that…not yet anyway. It was only her first year, after all. She had time for pilfering and pickpocketing the information from the Headmaster later. Better, it was just as likely she'd find what she wanted in the Restricted Section, which had been under lock and key for most of the early year, since some idiot had gotten in during the Christmas Hols and simply opened a book, not realizing that one of the security measures on the place was that the books would actively scream if someone unauthorized opened them, which meant there was no way to simply grab them.
However, she was almost certain, around sixty-percent or so, that her reading spell would bypass such protections. Her plan had been, once she was mostly finished with her subjects here, she would sneak inside and tap some books in there. That plan was simply not possible thanks to the simpleton's raid causing them to lock the Restricted Section with spells even more devious than the Third Floor Corridor that they were told not to go to.
With all those defenses she had two options. One was to somehow trick the staff into giving her a pass for the Restricted Section, which was normally only for NEWT students or the like, as the stuff in there was dangerous in the extreme. There was a reason books in the Restricted Section weren't normally allowed to leave the library except under very specific conditions.
The more mundane option was simply to allow the year to play out, and grab stuff next year. After all, most of the defenses were temporary at best, and the Castle itself would balk at being constrained with foreign spells all the time. They would likely simply keep a slightly better eye on it, especially if there were no repeated attempts at gaining the knowledge inside, and she'd thus be able to attempt a stealthy approach, and if it failed, she could simply go back to the first plan.
Settling for the safer option this time, she instead began to change the direction of her research. Thus did Hermione spend the rest of February and most of March perfecting her potion brews, testing them for viability, and even branching out, just a little. After all, her healing brew merely fixed breaks in the skin and the like, but there were far more afflictions than that in the world, and wizards, it seemed, had a cure for almost all of them.
A cure for the common cold, a cure for various kinds of skin disease, or organ for reinforcement. Even blood potions that could prevent one dying of bloodloss, perhaps useful during surgery too, though she would have to consult medical books from the muggle world before she looked too far into that particular use. She was actually halfway through the list of potions to make when she made heresy in her own handwriting.
Her parents would kill her…not literally but they certainly wouldn't like all the teeth focused potions she'd written down. From things that would act like a kind of super toothpaste, fixing cavities and even regrowing lost teeth, to alterations to modify them in a variety of ways, from larger and smaller, to the far more interesting colors. One of the potions even promised to allow her to 'ping' every time she smiled, which was almost enough for her to actually try the blasphemy.
Still, she found ones that might work against heart conditions, some that cured asthma completely, and even some that promised to boost her body, making her faster, stronger, and smarter. Though only in short bursts, as modifications to the body always were temporary, otherwise wizards would be doing it all the time. It did give her a basis to work from, however, and so as March gave way to April, she had a dozen and more sorts of potions, hundreds and hundreds of vials, filling her trunk.
It was in mid April when she finally got a chance to go into the Restricted Section in a most unexpected form. She hadn't realized the spells on the door were so…restrictive when it came to those going in and out, forcing the Teachers to be present whenever a student requested a book from the room beyond the door. While that was fine in the first three months of the year, as many put off even thinking about the tests the end of school would bring. By April, the looming dates of the NEWT tests pressed on the minds of every Seventh Year.
She had, once the various locking and monitoring spells were removed, begun to plan a daring raid on the room, expecting she would have to sneak in during the middle of the night, using her vast knowledge of spellcraft and guile to slip into the library. Then, under the cover of moonlight she'd slip inside, and greedily devour as much as she could from the knowledge within.
Instead one of the older students, a seventh year, had propped the door open to allow her to go in and out to her table where she had a dozen tomes on magic spread out, trying to solve an equation for her Arithmancy. That Hermione not only recognized the work she was doing, but knew some of the steps involved showed that muggles were still ahead of magicals when it came to maths. The fact that she also knew that this would be easier with a calculator was another strike against the magical world.
Regardless, she didn't even try to hide herself going into the room, and was openly browsing the shelves of forbidden knowledge, most of which were unhelpfully titless on their spines. Even those with titles were not quite as useful as they might have been, given they were written in languages she could now recognize thanks to her reading spell, but not read by heart, so she only had a vague idea of what might be contained within.
Still, she was aware this might be her only chance, so she took her time slowly going through the shelves, finally seeing at least a few books marked with symbols she recognized from her wandlore books. Taking in each one, she was able to drain them of their secrets, and was even thanked as she held the door open for the distracted Seventh Year, before she proceeded to return to her sanctuary within the school, and pulled a table from the floor.
Myrtle wondered what she was doing as she quickly began to scribble things down, and she told the ghost, not for the first time as a ghost's memory was notoriously bad, that she was making sure she recalled everything she needed. Her spell, after all, inserted the information directly into her brain, rather than reading it and comprehending it one line at a time, and while for some spells and simple formulas that was good enough, for the making of a wand of her own, she was sure more would be required.
Luckily, she was able to write everything out she needed to know, ingraining the information in her own mind as she went, slowly processing it all. Wandlore was, as it turned out, one of the most complex of things magicals had ever devised in their history, and she was beginning to realize how the invention of the stick which everyone carried had transformed the lives of so many of their kind.
She had thought of the wand as a kind of focus, like an amulet or something of that sort in fantasy fiction. But it was more than that. A wand was a living creature, in a way, the wood and bits of things having to be taken from their subjects while they were alive. Even dragon heartstrings had to be gotten from a living dragon, though how that was done none of her books mentioned, merely pointing her to dragon lore books she'd look for later.
Just as importantly, the wand was far more than a simple focus, something that allowed a witch or wizard to more easily shape the magic. No, it was that, but also a capacitor, something that would keep the spell going if the wizard ran out of magic. A resonance chamber too, as it enhanced what you put into it, making the spells cast through it stronger, significantly so in the case of some wands.
The construction of a wand was a mixture of disciplines as well. From care of magical creatures in the gathering of the core, to herbology in how the wood and other components that made up the main body were to be treated and raised. You also had Ancient Runes, as those had to be precise and legible along the wand's sides. Even Divination, a course she had all but dismissed as useless, as the wand's 'destiny' needed to be accounted for in its making.
So, another path to power closed to her. Spellcraft could work, but she would be weak until she was an adult, and even then, she might be smarter, but she wouldn't be stronger than any other witch out there. She could possibly create spells that were usable in combat, but she would never make anything better than what veterans made, at least until she had experience of her own to draw from.
Guns were useful, but she was untrained in them, and all the plans involving them were too violent. Weapons like them had no way to disable easily, after all. They were built and designed to end lives, which meant she saw them as last resorts, resorts she herself would hopefully never need, but even if she did eventually take up their use, it wouldn't be for a long time, and was outside what she could do in school.
Her potions were good, and her methods were sound. She could even modify the ingredients to get better results than were common. But their effects were too temporary. The effects she might want had usage times listed in seconds, and those even the longest lasting were measured in hours only. No, potions were a route to healing, but for what she wanted, they were simply one more dead end.
Hermione sighed to herself. She had thought, with the fools she'd met, read about, and otherwise experienced in wizarding society, that she might be the first to think of some trick, some twist to how magic or its outgrowths worked. But it seemed that despite their seeming lack of common sense, Wizards and Witches had thought of every avenue that occurred to her, leaving her with little she could think to use, except maybe some esoteric bit of muggle technology, but that seemed to not work right around magic.
…Muggle technology…didn't work…around magic?
Why would that be? Her thoughts suddenly turned that over in her head, and she compared what she was thinking to the things she'd taken in through the many books and tomes she'd absorbed. Oddly, while some, especially Muggleborn journals, referred to muggle tech, none of them wondered why. After all, why bother learning that, when magic and spells did everything technology could do, but better?
Suddenly, Hermione looked at her wand, then at her hand, and started to laugh. The sound was silvery, but dark, enough of a contradiction that Myrtle emerged from her stall for a moment, to find the young lady who'd been her roommate for a while laughing with just a bit of hysterics to her. The ghost, in a display of self preservation that MIGHT have saved her life back when she'd been alive, decided not to say anything, and instead retreated back into her sanctuary, away from the girl who was going to reshape the world.