Meanwhile, while Aurora was busy calming the situation, Ian had already apparated under Dumbledore's lead into the familiar Headmaster's office.
It looked the same as always: silver instruments spun and puffed out smoke; Fawkes the phoenix dozed on his perch; and the portraits of past headmasters either snored, read, or muttered to themselves.
When Ian arrived, every portrait stirred to life, its eyes turning toward Ian. Some gasped in awe; others voiced admiration.
"Merlin's beard!" cried Headmistress Dilys Derwent's portrait, the first to notice him. "Is this the boy they say will be remembered as the youngest legend in history?"
"The moment I saw him, I knew he was extraordinary!" Dilys added quickly. Perhaps it was a bit boastful, but her praise for Ian seemed genuine enough.
Of course, that depended on whether a portrait could truly have a heart.
"Frankly, I never thought Hogwarts would be so blessed as to produce a legendary wizard at such a young age!" Another former Headmaster exclaimed, his face lit with admiration.
"And Dumbledore, too! He has also become a legendary wizard! This will be the most glorious age since the Founders!" Armando Dippet's portrait beamed with joy.
As a decisive and responsible Headmaster, he had always longed to see Hogwarts rise again. While some Headmasters were overjoyed, others were seething.
"That blasted Sorting Hat! It should have been thrown away long ago and replaced with a proper Sorting method. How could an exceptional student like this possibly not be in Slytherin House?" One portrait nearly leapt from its frame it spoke.
"Nonsense! He's a natural-born Ravenclaw!" Another portrait immediately retorted.
"A genius like him belongs in Slytherin! He's pure-blood, after all!"
There was no need to guess who said that; Phineas Nigellus was nearly frothing with rage as he spoke.
Whenever that particular headmaster spoke up, the others inevitably mocked him. Ian, however, simply bowed slightly and kept out of the "wars" raging among the portraits.
No matter how fiercely they argued, the Headmasters were unanimous on one point: compared to most wizards, Ian no longer needed to take pride in attending Hogwarts.
Instead, Hogwarts would take pride in him for producing such a legend.
That was precisely why Phineas Nigellus insisted that Ian should have been a Slytherin.
Those who bring glory belong to Slytherin.
That had been the house's true standard of selection long before the ideology of "pure-blood supremacy" became fashionable. Phineas himself had never really upheld it, but that didn't stop him from applying double standards now.
"Professor."
Ian finally spoke. He watched Dumbledore pause before a bookshelf and linger there without taking action. He couldn't hold back any longer. "Do you know what's happening with my magic?"
At that, Dumbledore turned to face the nervous young wizard. His expression remained as calm as ever.
"First, I would like to know what has happened to you. If I recall correctly, there was no such disturbance when you demonstrated magic in Charms this morning..."
Clearly, Dumbledore had been keeping a close eye on Ian all along.
"Uh..."
Ian nodded.
It was difficult to speak of.
But under Dumbledore's steady gaze, he finally sighed and decided to be honest. He told the headmaster that during his lunch break, he had tried to negotiate a loan with his wand.
"You know, sir, I once met Merlin. He told me that the power inside my wand core is so strong that even he couldn't help but call it...well, utterly awesome."
"So, during lunch, I thought I'd try bargaining with my wand. I asked it to lend me some of that special power, the kind that seems to belong to the gods themselves."
"I never expected my wand to be so straightforward about it."
Because of what had happened earlier in the common room, Ian could only attribute Merlin's warning to the "crossover" time-space he had visited.
Of course, when it came to embellishing, the young wizard was never stingy. He didn't hide the fact that he'd borrowed power. However, he asked his next question with some concern.
"Professor, you don't think my wand will hit me with something like a nine-for-twenty-eight interest rate, do you?"
He was genuinely worried about that. After all, if there was one thing Ian excelled at, it was judging others by his own standards.
"..."
Dumbledore already had his own suspicions. He had even wondered if Ian had received some kind of blessing in that other time-space. But the boy's explanation made his eyelids twitch violently.
Every word made sense.
But strung together, it was absurd. Negotiating with your wand for a loan of power? What kind of mind thinks of something like that?
And the most outrageous part was that it had actually worked.
'Could the nature of the wizard and the wand really be so perfectly matched?' Dumbledore couldn't help but glance at Ian's wand several times.
He examined it closely, but he found no trace of the mysterious power Ian had described. Still, the core was indeed unusual. Everyone had believed it to be unicorn hair, but now it seemed... Perhaps Mr. Ollivander had been mistaken. But the reason no longer mattered.
"Perhaps your wand truly is special, Ian, just as you are." Dumbledore sighed with admiration, then suddenly changed the subject.
"But I must tell you this: a wand alone could never allow you to summon a legendary creature. A wand is merely an extension of a wizard's body, a portable key."
This was the Headmaster's belief and was consistent with mainstream magical theory.
Yet it conflicted with what Merlin had once told him. Normally, Merlin's words would carry more weight. But Ian felt that this wasn't the time for ordinary thinking.
A spark of realization struck him.
He thought of the raven's corpse he had used to complete his Animagus transformation.
Perhaps that was the real key.
Was the wand truly just a key?
An astonishing idea slammed into Ian. What if the raven's corpse contained the gods' true authority? Then the wand would be nothing more than the instrument that unlocked it.
Merlin surely couldn't have been wrong.
But that didn't mean Merlin couldn't have been deceived.
If it had been him, Ian thought, he would have seized the opportunity to trick Merlin. Merlin's own teacher would be the most capable of deceiving him.
The thought made Ian feel as though the clouds had parted.
Still, he had one more doubt.
"Professor, even if you're right and I've opened some kind of door, shouldn't my magic be affected in ways beyond just casting 'Serpensortia' once?" Ian asked carefully.
At this, Dumbledore raised an eyebrow.
"Did you use any other magic just now?" He looked straight at Ianj as he asked this question.
"Mm." The boy answered calmly.
"I experimented with the Killing Curse a bit, and I also used a variant of the Lumos Charm for color-based concealment. But neither of those spells produced anything unusual."
Ian had long since lost any habit of secrecy when it came to the use of the three Unforgivable Curses.
Hearing that the boy had casually used that spell in class made Dumbledore's eye twitch again. He drew in a long breath as though to steady himself.
"I think I may know the reason."
Worthy of the title of the most intelligent man of the century, Dumbledore seemed to have caught a thread of truth after only a brief moment of thought. He returned to stand before his private bookcase.
"The Serpensortia spell is exceedingly ancient," Dumbledore said, his voice ringing clearly in the quiet office. "Serpens" is Latin for "serpent," and in many grimoires, serpents are tied to demons.
His finger halted on a thick, black-bound volume. With a light tug, he drew it out. The gold-stamped letters on the cover gleamed faintly in the sunlight: The Dark Forces: Spell Transfigurations."
When Dumbledore turned back around, Ian noticed a flicker of complicated emotion in the old wizard's eyes.
"Some variations of this charm could be used to summon demons, or so the legends claim." Behind his crescent-moon glasses, his blue eyes glimmered with curiosity. "Still, I believe what you experienced may be connected to the spell's link with such beings."
"Perhaps if you were to cast your other magics in a different form, we might uncover the true source of the problem." Dumbledore's gaze remained fixed on the book in his hands.
His eyes held even more intensity now than they had when facing a legendary creature.
At length, He finally held the book out to Ian.
"All right, Professor."
Ian accepted it. The moment his fingertips brushed the cover, a strange sensation coursed up through his hand. When his gaze fell upon the letters written on the title page, his pupils contracted sharply.
There it was, Beneath the title, in small print:
The Dark Forces: Spell Transfigurations, by Tom Riddle
(End of Chapter)
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