The Revolutionary's Wand

Lisandro finished speaking and confidently turned over his cards.

Three kings.

The strongest hand besides three aces.

It wasn't that Lisandro hadn't wanted Vasco to help him get three aces; it was that there had only been two aces in his pile of cards.

Even so, he had already won for sure, because there was no way his opponent could put together a hand bigger than three kings.

At the same time, Murphy turned over his cards as well.

"Impossible!!" Lisandro shot to his feet. "You cheated!"

Laid out in front of Murphy were, unmistakably, the biggest hand: three aces.

Lisandro angrily spread out the rest of his own cards. "I've got two aces here! There's no way you could have three aces!"

Murphy glanced at him. "Why don't you take a closer look at your cards? Are you sure you have two aces?"

Lisandro looked down and froze.

Where are my aces? Where are my two great big aces?!

In the pile he had spread out, there were every suit and every number, yet not a single ace.

That was impossible!

He had calculated it perfectly when dealing the cards: two aces on each side.

Had his technique gone wrong?

Cheating!

The other side had definitely cheated!

But the wand had still been in the notary's hands, and his opponent hadn't touched the cards the entire time. How had he done it?

"I won," Murphy said. Before Lisandro could argue, he took another twenty galleons from his pocket, placed them on the table, and pushed them over.

"What do you mean?" Lisandro was bewildered.

"A game is only to make a friend. Fairness isn't important, and winning or losing isn't really that important either, is it?"

Lisandro hesitated for a while, but in the end he still put the gold coins away.

"Say it. What do you want me to help with?"

"Can we talk alone?"

"No need for all that trouble!" Lisandro stood up, took both their wands from the notary, then looked around at everyone in the tavern. "The tavern's closed! All of you, get the fuck out!"

Before long, aside from the bartender, only Lisandro and Murphy were left.

Lisandro held Murphy's wand but did not return it. Instead, he asked, "How exactly did you cheat?"

"If I told you, it wouldn't be interesting anymore," Murphy said, reaching out and gripping his wand.

"This is my territory!" Lisandro warned.

Murphy glanced at him. "Do you want to win, or do you want the money?"

The two glared at each other for a good long while before Lisandro finally let go.

"Now can you tell me your purpose?"

"I want potion ingredients. A lot of them. I'll buy your herbs at ten percent higher than the price you sell to the apothecaries. I'll take as many as you have. If you can get all the herbs on the market and leave the apothecaries in Diagon Alley with none to use, I'll give you another ten percent on top."

Draco Malfoy wanted to mess with him, so if he didn't find him a little trouble in return, wouldn't that be terribly rude?

Lisandro was caught between shock and doubt. "How much capital do you have?"

Murphy smiled. "Enough."

Fifteen minutes later, Murphy left Siren's Song.

Lisandro sat quietly beside that gambling table for a while. Suddenly, he looked at the bartender. "Master, should we agree to his offer?"

The bartender went on wiping glasses as if nothing had happened. "There's money to be made. Why wouldn't we?"

Lisandro nodded. "I understand."

After he finished speaking, he couldn't help reaching out and flipping over Murphy's cards in one motion.

Then he froze.

They were actually more than twenty aces, all of them.

"This... what's going on? Magic? Wasn't his wand taken away?"

The bartender finished wiping the last glass, took a skull-shaped wine flask from under the bar, poured some scarlet liquid into the glass, lifted it, and took a small sip.

"Idiot. Who said a wizard had to have only one wand on him?"

Cheating was just like magic. It looked mysterious, but once explained, it was really nothing worth mentioning.

After walking out of the tavern, Murphy stuck the wand he had seized from the bald wizard back into the conspicuous spot at his waist.

His own wand, meanwhile, was hidden in an easy-to-draw pocket inside his left sleeve.

It had originally been a precaution against being disarmed. He had not expected its first practical use to be at a gambling table.

Just now, while Lisandro had been controlling Vasco and could not spare any attention, Murphy had used the wand hidden in his sleeve to cast Summoning Charms and Transfiguration spells on Lisandro's pile of cards and his own.

After finding the aces in Lisandro's pile with the Summoning Charm, he had transformed them into other ordinary cards, thereby destroying the evidence of his own cheating.

At the same time, he transformed all his own cards into aces, so that no matter which card Vasco chose, he would be able to pick out the biggest card for him.

With everyone thinking his wand had already been taken away, and with Lisandro's highly captivating moment of performance serving as cover, no one had actually noticed his cheating.

This also let Murphy taste, for the first time, the benefits of keeping an extra wand on hand.

There was a certain risk in using the bald wizard's wand, but this was Knockturn Alley. There were plenty of old wands.

Before long, he had sold the bald wizard's wand and bought several secondhand wands in reasonably good condition as backups.

Speaking of which, his own wand had been bought by the original body at Ollivanders, and Ollivander remembered every wand he had ever sold.

It was like a registered gun. Once you used it to commit a crime, it could be traced back to you.

Was that good?

That was not good!

Murphy thought for a moment, then returned to the Toad Cellar and bought a bottle of Shrinking Solution. After that, he went to Diagon Alley, found a corner, and drank the whole potion in one go.

A moment later, a black-haired boy walked into Ollivanders.

"Hello, is anyone here? I want to buy a wand?"

Ollivander poked his head out from behind the shelves. "Who wants to buy a wand?"

"Me," the boy replied.

"Oh, how old are you?"

"Eleven. I'm going to Hogwarts next year, so I'd like to buy a wand."

"Of course, of course. What's your name?"

"Murphy Darkholme."

Ollivander was visibly stunned for a while. "Darkholme, ah, but, but..."

He looked Murphy up and down for quite some time. "That's right, I remember you, Murphy. Your wand was made of cypress, twelve and a half inches, with a unicorn hair core. A very beautiful wand, as striking in appearance as you yourself... But how are you..."

"Are you getting senile?" Murphy said. "I haven't bought a wand yet. Pick one for me."

Ollivander looked puzzled, as though he could not quite make sense of everything before him. But under Murphy's urging, he eventually began selecting wands for him.

"Try this one first. Cypress, unicorn hair, twelve and a half inches, the same as your original—"

Bang!

Before Ollivander could finish speaking, Murphy gave the wand a wave, and a small crater exploded open in the floor.

"Oh! Oh... all right, this one won't do!"

"Then try this one..."

After trying five or six wands in a row, Murphy finally found one that suited him.

"Oh, this one is excellent. It seems it has chosen you." Ollivander took Murphy's wand again and stroked it. "Aspen, fourteen inches, phoenix feather core... Yes, I remember this wand. This combination is unusual, very rare... It possesses both extreme power and multifaceted control. This is a wand suited to challengers and revolutionaries..."

"Extraordinary, Mr. Murphy. When you truly begin using this wand, you will certainly accomplish something remarkable."

"Oh? Are you saying I'll become a hero?"