#810 - Slytherin's wand

Just as Hogwarts was experiencing a panic-inducing wave due to the Chamber of Secrets, Anduin was on the other side of the world, in the United States.

His appearance here wasn't to deliberately leave the school, but because he had received information about Slytherin.

To be honest, Anduin hadn't expected that his casual bounty posted to Silver Flash Trading Company branches and black markets would yield results so quickly.

And the source of this information was the bounty hunters David and Lister.

These two guys had made a fortune from him before, practically treating him like a money tree, so they were very active after Anduin posted the bounty.

However, these two were indeed resourceful, providing him with very detailed information, but this information related to Slytherin wasn't about his whereabouts immediately after leaving Hogwarts, but news about his descendants.

And this descendant was also related to the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in America.

In the early seventeenth century, a direct descendant of Slytherin named Gormlaith Gaunt inherited a wand from her ancestor. She had attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was a Parselmouth, and a pure-blood supremacist.

Like other pure-blood supremacists, Gormlaith Gaunt was eccentric, arrogant, and conservative, believing from the bottom of her heart that pure-blood wizards were superior to everything else.

To this end, she even personally set fire to and killed her younger sister's family, who had married a Muggle, and kidnapped her five-year-old niece, Isolt Sayre.

For the next twelve years, Gormlaith isolated Isolt from the outside world, cutting off all contact with it.

When Muggles or animals got too close to their cottage, the cruel Gormlaith would cast curses on them and force Isolt to watch.

When Isolt turned eleven, Gormlaith refused to let her attend Hogwarts, because she found it unacceptable that the school accepted Muggle-borns.

Gormlaith's actions made Isolt feel very lonely and thought her aunt was insane.

For many years, Gormlaith had been forcing Isolt to obey with powerful dark magic, but Isolt finally stole Gormlaith's wand and fled, relying on her own abilities and courage.

And the stolen wand was the one inherited from Slytherin.

In the following years, Gormlaith had been tracking Isolt's whereabouts. Finally, after Isolt escaped for the second time, she took the Mayflower to the New World.

Later, Isolt arrived in America and married a Muggle named James Steward, or as Americans call them, a No-Maj.

And these two were the founders of the famous magic school—Ilvermorny.

That's right, one of the two founders of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was actually a No-Maj, which made Ilvermorny the most inclusive and egalitarian magic school in the wizarding world since its establishment.

But Gormlaith didn't plan to let her niece go so easily. She later followed the clues to America and found Isolt.

However, Gormlaith's appearance still brought danger to Isolt and Ilvermorny.

Because Slytherin's wand had a characteristic, which was that it could be put into a dormant state by issuing specific instructions through Parseltongue!

And Isolt didn't know Parseltongue, so when Gormlaith invaded Ilvermorny, Isolt lost almost all her combat power and could only rely on her two adopted sons to fight her, but they were no match for Gormlaith.

Fortunately, Isolt's Pukwudgie companion, William, arrived in time and killed Gormlaith with a poisoned arrow, which resolved the crisis.

The so-called Pukwudgie is a magical creature from North America, related to European goblins. Their personalities are similar to goblins, and they are good at using bows and arrows and poison.

After dealing with Gormlaith, because Isolt couldn't speak Parseltongue, she couldn't reactivate her wand.

Therefore, she and her husband James buried it in the school, and within a year, a snakewood tree grew where the wand was buried, and no amount of cutting or pruning could stop it.

Years later, people discovered that the leaves of this tree had powerful healing effects.

And Anduin's trip to America was for this snakewood tree transformed from Slytherin's wand.

Anduin, who was proficient in Charms, knew very well that a wand that could inherit the will of its user wouldn't be easily destroyed, so even if this wand had now transformed into a tree, it didn't mean there was no possibility of restoring it.

As long as it could be restored, or a bridge could be built to communicate with the wand's will, perhaps some information belonging to the previous user could be learned from it.

But to communicate directly with the wand, it was necessary to first gain the wand's will's approval and affirmation.

At the same time, because the wand was only most loyal to its initial owner, the closer the wizard was to the initial owner, the more likely they were to gain its approval.

Therefore, those who could achieve this goal were usually not the direct descendants of the wand's owner, but people with similar traits, personalities, or thoughts.

Therefore, Anduin judged that to reach a consensus with Slytherin's wand, one had to possess or understand Slytherin's philosophy and master Parseltongue.

In terms of philosophy, since he had the other party's diary, Anduin considered himself to understand Slytherin fairly well.

As for Parseltongue, after a period of study, he had mastered a lot, although not very proficient, basic conversation was no problem.

So after learning about the snakewood, he wanted to try whether he could reactivate Slytherin's wand and get some useful information from it.

But now there was still a very troublesome problem in front of Anduin, which was what identity and face to use to contact the snakewood.

It was currently located within Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which was the largest magic school in America today. Trespassing would be very risky. Once discovered, he would definitely be treated as an intruder and might be attacked by the crowd.

And it was very unwise to fight a magic school with one's own strength.

But if Anduin visited Ilvermorny with an overt identity, it would be difficult to find a legitimate reason.

Although Silver Flash Trading Company was developing well in the Americas, and he and Ilvermorny had cooperation in training students.

But this didn't mean that people were willing to let you contact the founder's relics in the name of research. The significance of that snakewood to Ilvermorny was probably even more important than the Whomping Willow's position to Hogwarts.

If it was damaged, causing the school's resentment would be a minor matter, and it might even cause a diplomatic dispute.

So after thinking about it, Anduin couldn't think of a particularly proper way to handle it.

In the end, Anduin decided to sneak in secretly first. If it really didn't work, he would contact Ilvermorny School in an official capacity. At that time, he might have to ask Nicolas Flamel to coordinate, after all, this was also helping to track Herpo the Foul, he wouldn't just stand by, would he.

Late at night, on the summit of Mount Greylock in Massachusetts, amidst a mist and dense forest, a castle complex no smaller than Hogwarts loomed.

As they gradually approached the main gate of the castle, they could see a marble statue on each side of the gate, which were full-body statues of the founders of Ilvermorny College, Isolt Sayre and James Steward.

And from a distance, they could see several fully armed Pukwudgies lazily patrolling around the castle.

Due to the close relationship between the earliest Pukwudgie named William and the school's founders, many Pukwudgies were later hired by the school to provide security and maintenance services.

These Pukwudgies were probably on routine patrol now. As the largest magic school in the Americas, Ilvermorny had a much larger staff than Hogwarts, so there were many service personnel such as faculty and staff.

But similar to Hogwarts, places like magic schools are usually not as sensitive to security as Gringotts, which is why Anduin chose to sneak in.

However, in a place like a school, the most feared thing is not being discovered by the faculty and staff, after all, people won't run to the square on the edge of the campus late at night, there's nothing special there except that broken tree.

What's really troublesome are the students, especially those naughty kids, their movements are too erratic.

In case some naughty underage wizards run out for a night tour, or couples want to hide in a remote corner to whisper sweet nothings, it would be a disaster.

To this end, Anduin specially prepared a large number of shielding jammers to avoid being disturbed when studying the snakewood.

But before entering Ilvermorny, he had to first investigate the school's magical defenses.

These long-established magic schools have one characteristic, which is that their magic storage is amazing, so even the most ordinary alarm spell, with the blessing of a huge amount of magic, will become unusually powerful.

"Huh?"

Anduin, who stretched out his mental perception with the idea of probing, suddenly raised his eyebrows, almost unable to help but laugh.

"When did Ilvermorny switch to Silver Flash Trading Company's security plan? By the way, Kiki seemed to mention to me a while ago that several official institutions in the Americas were preparing to strengthen cooperation with Silver Flash and purchase protective equipment..."

"I didn't expect that Ilvermorny was also included." Anduin didn't expect such a pleasant surprise. The series of protective magic covering the school was actually his own.

As a multinational company, Silver Flash Trading Company was originally in the business of equipment supply, so in addition to some civilian goods, it also provides security products, and even complete security protection systems, for certain institutions.

Like Gringotts in many countries, they are all long-term partners of Silver Flash Trading Company, and also because of their promotion, Silver Flash Trading Company's security products have been well received among official institutions in various countries, and orders have been continuous in the past year.

It's just that Anduin really didn't expect that Ilvermorny was actually his customer, and looking at the operating state of this magic protection system, it seemed that it had only been equipped for less than two months.

Faced with his own products, Anduin was much more at ease, but after a while he became troubled.

"Logically speaking, what I'm doing now is no different from being a thief, but I'm actually attacking my own customers, which seems a bit unethical..."

Anduin smacked his lips with some hesitation, "In case people find out, not only will I be in danger, but the credibility of the security products may also be affected, and if people know that the person who sneaked into the school is me, wouldn't I be given the title of stealing from myself?"

Originally, Anduin didn't have any psychological burden about sneaking into Ilvermorny, but now that he knew that the other party was actually his big customer, he would be somewhat embarrassed.

It's like a person who sells doors going to steal things, but finding that the target's home happens to use his own anti-theft door. If he doesn't go in, he will definitely be unwilling, but if he really sneaks in, wouldn't he be smashing the signboard of his own anti-theft door?

After hesitating for a while, Anduin decisively gritted his teeth. Anyway, no one can say for sure whether that snakewood is actually Slytherin's wand, or whether it will react to Parseltongue.

In that case, it's better to go in and investigate the situation first.

After making up his mind, he put layers of concealment spells on himself, covering his figure, voice, and smell tightly, and then quietly touched Ilvermorny.

And facing a magic school using Silver Flash Trading Company's protection system, Anduin can be said to be walking on flat ground, it's too easy to pass through his own protective magic.

After successfully sneaking into Ilvermorny Castle, Anduin looked through the school map that David gave him.

Soon, he locked on to the location of the snakewood, but when Anduin came to the square where the snakewood was planted, he encountered new troubles.

In the square far from Ilvermorny's main castle, there is a slightly dilapidated granite hut, and next to the hut stands a tree with wavy patterns, which is the target of Anduin's trip—the snakewood.

But embarrassingly, at this time, a wizard couple embracing on the stone bench next to the snakewood were pouring out their hearts to each other.

"Oh, my dear Liz, as long as I'm with you, all the starlight in the sky will fall, because your eyes are the brightest light in my life."

The male wizard looked at the witch in front of him with infatuation, "Let the snakewood planted by Webber and Chadwick witness our love."

"Hum..." The witch twisted her body shyly, "Wally, your history of magic is still so bad, the snakewood was clearly planted by Ms. Isolt and Mr. James, don't you know that this is the original site of the school?"

"Really? Liz, you're so smart, I thought this stone house was specially for couples like us to date..." The male wizard scratched his head awkwardly, then he pulled the other party up, "But that's not important, let's go, let's go into the house, I have so much more to say to you!"

Watching the young wizards hugging and drilling into the stone house, a row of black lines couldn't help but appear on Anduin's head who was hiding next door.

Damn it, these two lovebirds are not sleeping at night and are talking about love here, which is already annoying enough, are they planning to openly book a room?