Great Lengths for Pokémon PV Maisy Dane Closed

He thought a moment about his father’s side of the family and vacations they had taken, though admittedly it was only twice in his life they went to stay with them after his sister was born. Yvaine was oblivious to most of the tension within his family, but the stiff, stale air was palpable to the young boy. He equated the feeling to all things magic, especially after being exposed to the muggle world so openly and feeling less constrained by it. There were always rules attached to magic. He couldn’t show it off to his friends or even talk about his studies outside of the house. At his grandparents’ house he couldn’t play his 3DS or watch movies. They didn’t even own a television.

Hogwarts suddenly felt much the same. It felt stiff and restrictive, and he stared down the restricted section of the library with a spark of rebellion. He almost didn’t catch Maisy’s final words, but they brought back a bit of perspective. Rules had to be respected. Places they wouldn’t be allowed, much like the restricted section, would be locked.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Yvaine as he turned to his friend with a smile. “Oh, and you can do magic. If you’re bad at it, you won’t get kicked out, I don’t think. I can help you with it, though! The one thing I could practice a lot was how to hold a wand. Did it with sticks back home. Hey, what does your wand look like?”

Maisy followed Yvaine's glance to the restricted section and for a moment, her stomach wiggled with unease. She knew well enough with her siblings that when some people saw a 'keep out' sign, they couldn't resist disobeying it. It was a troubling mentality, but she understood the draw... Being told no wasn't always fun, especially when you had a curious mind.

But luckily it seemed Eevee thought better than her brothers and sisters did and with a breath of relief, Maisy nodded, "I'm still a little scared of it, honestly. The wand and the spells. It's just... it's new, like everything else, and I'm kind of afraid I'll mess it all up if I try, too soon."

Shifting, her arm swung around to her back where her bag hung and pulling it to her front she rifled through it, finally locating what she was looking for. Pulling the wand free, she laid it across her palms and held it out with the tentative air of someone handling a fragile artifact, "The... the man at the shop said it had Dragon Heartstring in it. I'm not really sure what that all means, to be honest. I was a bit confused by everything. But it's pretty, anyway."

Excited to once again share his wealth of knowledge, Yvaine beckoned Maisy to follow him through the library once again. It was a massive room in the castle, especially for those as young as the pair, but Yvaine had already spent a fair amount of time there to the point of familiarity. Or at least familiarity to the subjects in which he found most interesting.

Guiding her closer to the front, he eventually stopped to look more closely at the book titles. “Ollivander’s has been around for ages,” he said. “He can tell you every wand he’s ever handled like he just did it! The core of the wands is just as important as the wood. Complicated magic, that is! But it’s the most important tool a Wizard... or witch, in your case, can have!”

Pulling out a book from the shelf, he flipped through the pages sprawled with text and skillfully rendered drawings of wood grain, wands, and an assortment of creatures and things that would take part in the composition of a wand core.

“Dragon heartstring, you said?” he asked as he pointed to the page. His finger ran under the words as he quickly read through the text. “Wicked! Look! It says here the core of your wand produces the most powerful spells! And it learns fast and is super loyal. That’s really good. What’s the wood? The wood and the core work together.”

There were more books in Hogwarts library than Maisy would likely be able to read in her lifetime, and those were just counting the ones that weren't in the restricted section. There had to be tens of thousands of books, on shelves higher than she could reach and she wanted nothing more than to read each and every one, diving deeper into the fascinating world she had been thrust into.

She paused briefly at the section on creatures and beasts, at the near endless volumes climbing nearly up into the rafters and her heart gave a throb, but Yvaine had already moved on and giving a skip, she hurried over next to him. Glancing down, she studied the page he showed her. She'd had no idea it was all so complex, and yet again, found herself floored by the world around her.

At the shop in Diagon Alley, she remembered seeing boxes upon boxes on the shelves. She had gone through four or five wands herself, before finding the right one. The amount of possibilities seemed endless, and to think that anyone could remember them all... it was astonishing.

Glancing down at her wand, she turned it over in her hand, trying to remember the words spoken to her, "Um... Cherry.

His arm repositioned itself to flip through the pages, elbow up and little thumb releasing the leaves with gravity. The description and characteristicts of the various types of wood were located more in the front. Yvaine whispered the word ‘cherry’ repeatedly as he skimmed through the falling pages for the letter C. It was an awkward endeavor to halt the falling pages and situate the heft of the book on the shelf for a more focused flipping, but eventually he came across the notations for cherry wood.

“It’s a rare wood, it says,” he relayed as his index finger underlined the first paragraph. “And it’s got strange power, but I’m not sure what it means by that. Maybe there’s more explanation.”

As he read further on, his eyes went wide. “Maisy, you’ve got one of the most powerful wands ever made!” he said, and turned the book more to face her as he pointed out the paragraph concerning the wood and its pairings with cores. Most notably, the book states when paired with dragonheart strings, it is the most lethal requiring a strong willed witch or wizard to weild it.

“You should look into joining the dueling club!” Yvain suggested with excitement. “No one would be able to touch you once you learn the spells.”

As he flipped through the book, Maisy continued to let her eyes wander the shelves. She knew there was no chance she'd ever be able to read them all, but each and every book she looked at looked more and more interesting. It would undoubtedly take the remainder of her first year just to figure out what she wanted to study... but somehow that prospect was no less exciting.

But when Yvaine finally stopped flipping, she turned her attention back to him and as she did, her eyes widened slightly at his exclamation. Flickering down to the bit of wood poking out of her back, she shook her head, "I... I thought... I sort of figured they were all the same... and the guy in the shop was just being nice." How wrong she had been. But it wasn't with a sense of joy that she plucked up the wand again, studying it... Instead, there was a quiet sense of trepidation.

"The... the dueling club? But isn't that...?" Looking up at Yvaine, she shook her head, "I don't think I'd like it very much. I don't want to fight anyone. What if I hurt them, on accident? Oh, goodness... I wish I'd just had a plain old normal wand."

Yvaine didn’t quite catch onto Maisy’s hesitancy, nor did he understand her words to their fullest. She didn’t seem pleased by the exciting results, nor did she seem at all interested in an activity that definitely excited him. “We don’t get to choose our wands,” he said. “And if you think about it, there’s really no normal wand.”

Holding up the book he had been referencing, Yvaine held all the pages in his hand and shook the book for emphasis. It was a lot of pages between the boy’s fingers, the dance of which wobbled the hardcovers that clacked against the shelf.

“Loads of possibilities,” he continued. “Just no real way of narrowing it down to normal.”

From under his robe he produced his own wand, sleek and gleaming in white that made it almost look like it wasn’t wood at all. “It’s made from Aspin,” he explained. “I looked up my wand real quick after I got it. Aspin is perfect for duellists and charms, which is perfect for me! The core is unicorn hair, which I suppose you could say is a pretty common core. Unicorn hair is really great for casting magic. Doesn’t get all wobbly or anything, you know? And it’s super loyal so other people can’t steal your wand and use it without resistance. So combined with the wood it’s fantastic for dueling as well!”

Blinking, Maisy looked at the pages again and gave her head another little shake, "It's all sort of... intense, isn't it? For First Years? But I suppose that's what's different about this sort of world, right? Here, you learn about this stuff, cause... cause it's kind of dangerous out there, without it."

Biting the edge of her lip, she shook her head, "Is there... is there any way to tell... How can you see if your wand'll be good at other stuff? Like... what if I wanted to help people? I think I'd like that, much better than fighting them." She laughed softly, shrugging her shoulders, "My brother Charlie would be tickled, right now. He loves Fencing. He probably would've been really good at it, too, if he hadn't hurt his shoulder back a few years ago. But I bet if he were a Wizard, he'd love dueling."

Rubbing the back of her neck, she slumped down and pulled a book out at random, flipping through without actually looking at the words that passed by on the pages, "What about you, Eevee? Why do you like the idea so much? Just curious, is all. Is it like Karate or something? Do you get... dueling belts or something cool like that?"

Shrugging, the boy turned to his own book he chose, though as he flipped through he did look at a few excerpts. Wands were a fascinating concept to Yvaine, even as a pure-blood with extensive exposure to such knowledge openly throughout his twelve years. Some didn’t need a wand to cast magic, but for most it was a crucial and necessary item. What made it so useful was a complexity his mind still could not comprehend. The fact that even the wood contributed to the effects and personality of a wand made the craft mind boggling.

Maisy’s question held no answer in the boy’s mind. It was possibly a good thing she’s continued to talk on, for he could only really relay the words from a page in the book before him. Could her wand perform healing magic well? The book said there were some best suited for the healing arts, but nowhere did the pages state the wands could or couldn’t do anything the caster wanted.

“You get points,” he said. “But I think it’s fun. And it’s good practice if you want to be an Auror! It’s safe, too. No one gets hurt. I guess it’s kind of like karate! Fighting can be helping people. You can use dueling club to get better at fighting so you can defend people. All the stuff that happened here before needed people to defend themselves and others.”

"I'm very glad I have a friend like you, Eevee." Maisy noted with a small chuckle. They hadn't known one another terribly long, but she'd already learned so much from the Ravenclaw boy... And there was, no doubt, a great deal more they could figure out, together, "You know so much about all of this, but you don't make funny faces when I talk about stuff like karate and pokemon. Oh! Speaking of..."

Putting her wand away and the books she had pulled, she grinned, gesturing to the shelves around them, "I almost completely forgot what we were meeting here, for! It's all so exciting, and there's so much to read. Do you think there's a book about making your DS work? I doubt it'll be easy to find in all this... Probably best we don't ask the librarian, either... Hm."

Her eyes scanned the stacks as she rubbed her forehead, tapped her forehead... Eventually, her fingernail was pinched between her teeth as she considered the task ahead of them, "Where would we even begin to look. It's like a jungle of books..."

A jungle of books and she had every intention of combing the library to figure out what each one held.