#40 - Hermione's doubts
When Cedric left, he reserved the wood shavings produced by carving magical trees with Mune.
Although he didn't know what the other party wanted to do, Mune readily agreed.
This warm-hearted senior had put in a lot of effort in taking care of the three big trees, and besides, it was just wood shavings, which were not of much value to Mune.
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The practice of splitting wood continued, and when Mune prepared to return to Shirin on Sunday night, more than twenty clusters of flames had been added to the fireplace one after another.
And at this time, he was already able to smoothly and accurately split the wooden sticks to the finest wand tip part.
......
Back in Shirin, Mune also prepared a large bundle of hazel wood, and he wanted to complete the final split sprint in these seven days.
At the same time, Mune did not forget to look for wand core materials, which required him to find his only friend in Shirin.
The stable servant of the monastery: Brad Foster.
The Foster family was a very famous horse breeder during the rule of the Melani Empire.
They not only understood the various habits of horses and were good at treating horse diseases, but their most famous skill was mating mares.
As long as the employer handed over the mare at home to them, and then took a walk on the grassland.
Soon after returning, the employer's mare would give birth to a strong little warhorse.
Everyone wanted to know the secret of the Foster family, but at that time there was a baron to protect them, and no one wanted to provoke them.
Later, the Federation was established, and their family lost protection and could only choose to join the monastery.
Mune learned the family's century-old secret from Brad, who was grazing horses, when he was seven years old.
......
When he found Brad feeding the horses for the monks, this boy, who was a head taller than Mune, had matured a lot.
After the two exchanged greetings, Mune directly stated his intention.
"It won't work, Snow Eagle Mountain has become a front-line garrison for the army, it's too dangerous there."
Brad rolled up his gray coarse cloth clothes, cleaned the trough, and then poured in new feed.
"I know it's dangerous there, but, Brad." Mune looked at the other party with firm eyes.
"I really need to find something, or you can draw me a rough map range, and I can go find it myself."
Brad stopped the action of taking the shovel to clean the stable, turned his head and looked at Mune suspiciously.
"You've changed?"
Mune was confused by this nonsensical sentence.
Seeing the puzzled expression on Mune's face, Brad continued: "You never used to say words asking for help."
Mune also unconsciously recalled that he found that since entering Hogwarts, his smiles had indeed increased.
The little boy who used to worry about being ridiculed every day had been gone from his body for a long time.
"Although I don't know what you've experienced, since you said so, then I will definitely help you, but you have to give me time to find it, after all, that was my grandfather's time."
After getting Brad's guarantee, Mune happily helped the other party clean the stable together.
......
When returning to the farmhouse cabin, Mune bought two pots of pitcher plants on the street by the way.
These are plants that some local families in Shirin put in their kitchens to catch insects.
Because winter is approaching, the price of this plant has also dropped, two pots for one federal silver coin.
This price is acceptable to Mune. After the farm harvest was completed last week, he received a year's salary: ten silver coins.
A new conscription notice was posted in the center of the crossroads, which shows that the war is still in preparation.
But Mune found that life didn't seem to have changed much.
His salary has not plummeted, and the price of two pots of flowers is the same as in previous years.
When he threw this question to Neil, who is often responsible for purchasing supplies for the farm, he got an answer.
"The preparation time for the war will be very long, this is just the beginning......"
This week, Mune locked himself in the wooden cabin in the forest, and after wasting nearly a hundred pieces of wood, he finally perfectly split a model wand out of hazel wood.
This was also the happiest thing for Mune before returning to Hogwarts.
That night, he took two pots of pitcher plants and returned to Hogwarts.
After placing the flower pots neatly on the windowsill and greeting Bouncy, Mune had a good night's sleep for the first time in ten days.
After getting up in the morning, Mune couldn't wait to take out a willow branch and experiment with the technique.
In order to save time, Mune used hazel wood that he could easily obtain for carving in Shirin.
Compared to the straight grain of hazel wood, willow wood is relatively soft, and most of the internal texture is diagonal grain, which makes perfect splitting more difficult.
Fortunately, the experience of a lot of practice has made Mune's touch become delicate, and the sharp blade in his hand is both a cutting tool and his eyes to explore the texture.
The third willow wood in the morning was finally perfectly split.
The texture is clearly visible, without any interrupted places, and not even a bit of wood shavings appeared.
Huff ~
Mune exhaled a long breath, and then split two small wooden sticks in succession.
He is now accumulating experimental materials for the next step.
Embed the wand core.
This step is not simpler than splitting wood, and is even more difficult because the wood needs to perfectly adapt to the size of the wand core.
Carefully bundle the three split wooden sticks together, and then slowly put them into the wand box.
Mune just breathed a sigh of relief when Hermione's voice came from the stairs of the girls' dormitory.
"You split it so quickly?"
Hermione should be the person among the students who can best understand the difficulty of wand making, because she has also finished reading "Wand Making and Maintenance".
The method of splitting wands recorded in the book has long been iterated from pure tools to being used together with spells.
Even two hundred years ago (the time when "Wand Making and Maintenance" was written), the Ollivander family had already mastered the use of splitting magic to quickly and conveniently complete this step.
And Mune chose the most primitive method from the beginning, which seems to Hermione to be a very irrational behavior.
She is very clear about the degree of difficulty in mastering this method.
The Ollivander family even stipulated that mastering this ancient splitting method is a skill that must be mastered in order to take over the wand shop.
"That's right, three."
A little pride appeared on Mune's face.
"How is that possible? The book says that it takes more than three years for people from the Ollivander family to master this skill."
"Hermione, you may have forgotten that I have been carving wood carvings for three years."
Seeing the suspicious expression on Hermione's face, Mune also said his advantage, which is not an advantage.
Although wood carving and wand making are two different things, they both require the maker to know the wood in their hands very well.
Of course, Mune was able to complete this step so quickly also because he had time to do a lot of uninterrupted practice in Shirin.
This short-term sprint has made his sense of touch to the texture of the wood more sensitive.
"Okay, congratulations, but I have always been curious why you don't use a wand to split the wood?"
【Why, of course, it's because I didn't even have a wand in Shirin. 】
Mune slandered in his heart, and then explained with some dodge in his eyes.
"I just wanted to study what it felt like when the first wand was made."
After saying this, Mune hurried away from the common room.
Hermione muttered in place.
"What a strange person."
