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Ratty Apartment, Ratty Apartment Building, London
–Damian Hawthorne–
"What the.." He softly exclaimed to himself, watching in more than a little confusion as he swished the wand and did magic in the same way that he did when he was not using a wand. There was no resistance or amplification, and he did not know why, but it was driving him mad as he tried to figure out just what the deal with this wand was.
It could not possibly be made of something special, because the wood itself felt dead to his senses. All the other wands had something in them, and even the Elder Wand, he presumed at least, must have something inside it to be as strong as it was.
He had gone over the entire thing with a fine-tooth comb, using everything he had in the apartment, which was admittedly, not much. Just him, his magic, and his sensitivity to magic, more so his own magic, but alas, all of that yielded nothing.
The only thing of note that came from this experiment was him figuring out that all wood, to an extent, is magically conductive. It kind of made sense since magic could travel through every living being, be it humans, animals, plants, or even trees.
Living trees gave a ton of feedback when he infused them with his magic, so did any wood he harvested from any branches, but this piece of wood? It was nothing, as if it was invisible to his magic flowing through it.
That told him that it was something worth the 7 Galleons he paid Ollivander and was not swindled by that ancient wandmaker. He was also not forthcoming about the wand, its composition, when it was made, who made it, or anything like that. Just demanded his payment and shooed him out of the store, as if he had an entire line of wizard children just waiting for their wands and he was somehow keeping the line blocked.
Shaking his head, he waved his hand, as the wand was safely dropped in a….pen holder.
As he leaned on the bed, staring at the ceiling, which had certainly seen better days, his mind went back to William's behavior after he came out of Ollivander's. It was clearly evident that the time he spent inside the shop had given William enough time to process his words back at Gringotts, as William curtly informed him that he had some important work to do and Damian could make his way back home on his own, clearly.
There was no anger there. Just resignation, as if something he had clearly known had just hit him in the face, leaving him no opportunity to deny its existence. William had almost certainly gone back to his family, to warn them about him.
He would have to prepare for a family visit, soon enough.
He resisted the urge to just burrow into his man cave, which was very cool, tinker with his magic, his enchantments that had kind of taken a back seat because of this Hogwarts thing, and he expected the trend to continue as long as he was in those Stone walls, and spend years preparing for any and all conflicts.
The fantasy of him coming out of his isolation a decade later, with reality defying weaponry capable of one-shotting Thanos and Celestials was nice, if he was the delusional kind.
Meeting just William had him acting all kinds of wonky, to be honest. It was…hard, to reconcile the fact that he still had blood relatives alive in this world. Not just parents, but siblings, both younger and older ones.
The youngest was still only 4 years old. Daisy Hawthorne.
Sighing, he got up, swiped the wand from the penholder on the small desk that he would even hesitate to put half his weight on, and after checking the wards, turned around and teleported back to his base.
He had a lot of thoughts that were dancing around in his mind. That was doing him no good, just making him think in circles. Analysing the wand and running tests on it was a far better use of his time and mental headspace. Plus, he still had a lot of stuff to do that was on a time limit, like learning the original enchantments he had on the clothes that the ROB gave him.
Of course, their origins became a lot more obscured when he realised that he was not just dropped here. This body already lived a short life here before his mind was put into it.
Twirling the wand in his fingers, he walked into his lab, sparing a glance at the shirt and pants that were almost halfway there to their disintegration, before letting his magic flow into the table in front of him.
IT was a giant, wooden table, made of materials harvested from a very old, non magical tree he found in the Amazon. A very old tree with a root system spanning miles, with hundreds of other trees that seemed separate but were just a part of this ancient and giant tree. He infused his magic in the tree, and as if sensing it, the tree passed along a bunch of information that seemed gibberish at first but it soon became clear what it was saying.
A tree fall orchestrated by Nature's dam builders, Beavers.
The little fellow fled at the first sighting, right into the small lake where half the tree was buried, as he took half of the medium sized tree and came back home. It was a fantastic base to build enchantments on, especially since he wanted it to be a table, look really normal but have these crazy magical features he could activate with a magical equivalent of flicking a switch.
Which was just him infusing his magic into it.
He carefully threw the wand at the table, only for it to halt and get suspended mid air as the edges of the tabletop lit up a cool blue, before shifting to a warm orange, as the wand was subjected to magic that was designed to scan the deepest part of an object. The entire wand glowed orange, as tiny runes were projected on top of it.
The tiny squiggles lit up a bright orange, simulating hundreds of different flow patterns of magic, his own magic stored in a container at the bottom of the table, but even with all of that.
"No change, huh?" He muttered to himself, grabbing the stabby, uncomfortable wand and waved it in the air, the point vibrating as it glowed a steady white, a silent Lumos already cast in his mind.
Not finding any answer to the wand conundrum, he let it go and focused on what to do ahead of the quite expected reunion of the Hawthorne family.
He still had two months left while Hogwarts began its term. The train departed on the 1st of Sept, and it was the end of June now. It left him two months to prepare. The apartment in London had the lease for six months, in Corden's name obviously, but it was not like he had to live there.
With a shot of tea(he brought the bottle of milk with him back to the base), he got into the lab, to see if he could shorten the list of things he had to do before he reached Hogwarts this year. He was going in with the assumption that everything that happened in that castle was monitored by either Hogwarts itself or by Dumbledore.
Either way, it meant that his privacy was compromised and he would not be able to tinker to his heart's content in that place. Which meant that he had to either get out of there, and come back here to work, or not work at all.
A middle compromise would be to get some space in Hogsmeade, but even that was a limited time thing that first years did not get access to. It was also a small place with a high magical population, and he was doubtful of his ability to remain hidden and isolated, working on his magic, when the entire place would be flooded with wizard children, who would just pounce at the slightest hint of gossip.
Add to that clusterfuck, his identity of being the missing Hawthorne, for whom the head of the Hawthorne family had issued a 500k Galleon reward for, and it quickly became clear to him that once in Hogwarts, he had to get his NEWTs and OWLs in order, so that he could regain his freedom.
It was quickly becoming clear as to why the Ancient One insisted on him entering the magical world, finishing his education before coming to learn Sorcery at Kamar Taj, and that was because without doing so, it would have had led to widespread repercussions, most of which would have put him in extended contact with someone like Albus Dumbledore.
He knew himself. He did not have the mental fortitude to play the game of chess with an old wizard like Dumbledore. Not when he had a ton of cool stuff to learn and build. Which is why his goal remained the same.
Get into Hogwarts, learn what you can through the library, enroll for the exams at the earliest, and get out.
Clean and Simple.
Alas, things would rarely go that well in real life, but that was for later Damian to worry about. For now, he had work to do and later, after an early dinner, a book to read.
The Complete Guide to a Doomsayer's Fantasy Bunker.
A bit on the nose, but apparently, it was excellently written and really went into the philosophies on how to internally structure a Bunker. Along with that, he had a Defensive Structures for Dummies, a book he had Corven borrow from Kamar Taj's library, and give to him.
The Sanctum Master had really mellowed out over the years. A request like this would have had him kicked out of the London Sanctum a scant few years ago. Now? A Sanctum MAster was breaking Kamar Taj's official library policy, just to get him magical books.
__xx__
Later on in the day
He grinned as he noted down some very interesting aspects of the guide he was reading, one written by someone who presumably had no connection to magic whatsoever. His core philosophy involved making sure that no one got into the bunker, that the bunker itself was completely sealed and protected from any outsiders, and if someone did get in, they would quickly find themselves wishing they didn't.
But his research into dozens of Doomsday bunkers built at the backdrop of WWI, WWII, and even the Cold War gave him insights as to what mistakes the builders made. They made the mistake of presuming that their structures were unbreakable.
It was marketed for the ultra rich who feared for their lives so the creators of these places must have embellished a little to get the money from the rich nobility, so it was somewhat understandable.
But what they failed to account for, was the fringe case of an intruder getting in, a sole person or a small company, not a large squad.
Now, in the case of non magicals? Where entry into such fortified locations did not come without explosive entrances? It could be overlooked.
But in the case of magic? Where single wizards can just teleport in and out of your bunkers, or around them, and then break through the wards or use some truly bullshit artifact like Death's cloak to skirt around wards as if they did not exist?
Then, it became clear as to why magical systems targeting the inside of the bunker were necessary.
The end goal of this was to make anyone entering his bunker experience something so horrible, that they would die from a heart attack before he could use any of his truly lethal ward functions.
As the scenarios played out in his mind, along with what ward scheme and elemental attack to attach to every area, his mouth automatically quirked a grin.
He couldn't wait!
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