First of All, Those Aren't Wands

Hermione Granger had meant what she said in the Great Hall that day.

Over the next few days, she seemed to shift into a higher gear.

Her hand shot up faster in class, she took notes more diligently, and even her trips to the library looked more purposeful. Before long, everyone in Gryffindor knew about the first-year girl with brown curls who was determined to catch up with the Chinese boy named Gu in Hufflepuff's House Points race.

The problem was, she was catching up fast.

Gavin was earning points even faster.

And more consistently.

That was the part that stung.

Week two:

Monday, ten points.

Tuesday, eleven.

Wednesday, another four for answering two questions in Herbology.

Thursday, points in Flying Class and Professor Flitwick's class.

Hermione was earning points too, of course.

She answered questions, turned in excellent work, and knew her textbooks inside out. She earned points efficiently enough to make most first-years despair. But Gavin was like a graph line that climbed steadily and quietly, without wild swings—and without giving anyone a chance to catch him.

Hermione soon discovered something rather unpleasant.

His point-earning streak simply never stopped.

Gavin said nothing. He just kept earning points.

People like that were the worst.

You could hope a sprinter would slip up someday. A steady performer was more like a magical device with its settings already dialed in: as long as it didn't explode, it would keep running.

By the third week, Hermione sat at the Gryffindor table one evening, staring glumly at her Pumpkin Juice.

Her expression seemed to say, I'm trying so hard. Why isn't it working?

Ron glanced at her and wisely said nothing.

Harry took one look at her and made the same choice.

It was clearly the right one.

Hermione looked ready to deliver a moderately long, impeccably reasoned rebuttal to anyone who said, "It's only House Points"—one that would make them regret ever opening their mouth.

And the person responsible for all this—

Hadn't even noticed.

Gavin really had been too busy to notice lately.

To everyone else, Hermione's pursuit of him in the House Points race might have become a popular story among Hogwarts first-years. To Gavin, it meant a few extra glances in the Great Hall and more frequent updates from Ernie on the standings.

What he truly cared about was the Slowing Charm and Transfiguration.

Especially Transfiguration.

The more he learned, the more absurdly fascinating it became.

All he wanted to say was, Mom, this one's different.

It felt more like reaching out to touch reality itself and asking, Could you take another shape?

Gavin had been going to the Room of Requirement every day.

Sometimes after dinner, sometimes around lunch. Whenever he had a spare moment, he made his way to the Seventh Floor and spent a while in that practice room, so quiet it felt almost indulgent.

Lately, the standard first-year answer of turning a match into a silver needle no longer satisfied him.

He had begun trying something trickier—

Partial Transfiguration.

He might change only one end of a wooden block, making it sharper and thinner like a blade tip, or turn just the nib of an old quill into metal while leaving its wooden shaft untouched.

Beyond that, he was trying to turn living creatures briefly into inanimate objects.

Turning a beetle into a button, for instance, was normally second-year work.

Most of his attempts failed.

Even the successes lasted only a short time.

That was already enough to get Gavin hooked.

All that recent practice had also given him a very practical need.

Food.

More precisely, a comfortable way to eat it.

Especially now that the House-elves had learned to make more and more Chinese dishes, knives and forks were beginning to feel out of place.

It wasn't that he couldn't use the cutlery at a British school. It just often made a meal feel like some kind of etiquette exam. After a few days, Gavin had had enough and decided to make himself a pair of chopsticks.

So one evening, after practicing Transfiguration in the Room of Requirement, he took two strips of wood and carefully made a pair.

The length was right, and the weight felt good.

They were nowhere near works of art, but they felt more like proper eating utensils than anything in the Hogwarts Kitchens.

At lunch the next day, Gavin brought them to the Great Hall for the first time.

The effect was immediate.

Not on his ability to eat—though they worked beautifully—but on everyone who saw them.

When Cedric arrived at the Hufflepuff table, the first thing he saw was Gavin lifting a piece of chicken with his new chopsticks. He did it so naturally, his movements so smooth, that it looked like some intricate piece of magic he had mastered at birth.

Cedric stopped and stared for two seconds.

Then he asked in complete seriousness:

"Are you eating with Wands?"

Several people nearby immediately looked up.

Gavin looked up at him too.

"First of all, these aren't Wands," Gavin said flatly. "They're chopsticks."

"But they look exactly like Wands."

"That's because your knowledge of both Wands and cutlery is incomplete."

Cedric kept staring at the chopsticks, his expression complicated.

"So you're using two... utensils at the same time?"

"Yes."

"Without magic?"

"Not yet."

Cedric fell silent for a moment.

"This is a little unfair to British people."

"British people are unfair to plenty of perfectly normal ways of eating." Gavin picked up a piece of greens, his tone calm. "The food usually isn't the problem."

Cedric watched the chopsticks, his face slowly taking on much the same expression he'd worn when he first saw shredded potatoes.

It was the shock of realizing that the world was vast—and that the dinner table was vaster than he'd imagined.

"How do you even do that?" he asked.

"Practice."

"You've been practicing everything lately, haven't you?"

"More or less."

"Including eating?"

"That too."

"Gu," Cedric said earnestly, "I'm starting to think you'll eventually use Transfiguration to make knives and forks obsolete."

"I wouldn't go that far." Gavin shook his head. "They're still worth keeping as failed prototypes."

Cedric visibly choked on his response.

Justin burst out laughing.

Ernie managed to look dignified for a few seconds before he, too, gave up and lowered his head to take a sip of Pumpkin Juice.

But Cedric clearly hadn't come over just to talk about chopsticks.

Once he had given the two slender sticks their due measure of respect and confusion, his expression shifted to something more genuine: frustration, resignation, and a distinctly Hufflepuff sort of unwillingness to give up.

"I've got bad news," he said, changing the subject.

"Has Hufflepuff lunch been replaced with cabbage boiled in plain water?" Gavin asked curiously.

"It hasn't come to that." Cedric paused. "It's Quidditch."

At the word, Ernie immediately looked up too.

Several other Hufflepuff students nearby pricked up their ears.

At Hogwarts, some words had a way of spreading on their own.

Quidditch was clearly one of them.

"What happened?" Justin asked.

Cedric set down his plate, sounding as grim as if he'd just received a report from the front lines.

"I heard Gryffindor has a Nimbus 2000 this year."

A chorus of sharp intakes of breath rose around them.

Even Gavin paused with his chopsticks in hand.

Not because he was shocked.

It was more that the plot point had finally arrived on schedule.

"An actual Nimbus 2000?" Ernie asked.

"Almost certainly." Cedric nodded. "And it's for their new Seeker."

A Hufflepuff student nearby winced.

"How are we supposed to compete this year?"

"The school Broomsticks aren't even in the same league as a Nimbus 2000."

"That isn't a skill gap anymore. That's a whole generation of equipment." The speaker was plainly a Muggle-born student.

"Seriously," Justin said with a frown, "why does the wizarding world allow such a huge equipment gap in sports? It's like a Muggle school letting one team ride bicycles while the other comes onto the field on motorbikes."

"Because a lot of rules in the wizarding world weren't made to be reasonable," Gavin said. None of this surprised him.

"Thanks." Cedric glanced at him. "Accurate summary. Doesn't make me feel any better."

Fair enough.

Cedric sighed, plainly still bothered by it.

"Our lineup wasn't especially strong to begin with, and we're already behind on equipment. Now Gryffindor has a Nimbus 2000 on top of that—" He shook his head. "I don't think we have a chance this year."

Gavin set down his chopsticks and wiped his hands.

"Not necessarily."

Cedric looked up at him.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean there may be room to improve the way you think about Seekers and the Golden Snitch."

"Gu," Cedric said sincerely, "I'm really not in the mood for theoretical reassurance."

"It's not reassurance." Gavin shook his head. "I'm saying that if I played, I could catch the Golden Snitch within five minutes."

The entire table went quiet for two seconds.

Then Justin's fork hit the edge of his plate with a clatter.

Ernie slowly turned his head.

The Hufflepuff students who had been talking quietly nearby fell silent.

Even the next table seemed to sense something was happening, and someone glanced over.

Cedric just stared.

"What did you say?"

"I said," Gavin repeated, as calmly as if he were commenting that today's chicken leg needed a little more salt, "if it were me, I could catch the Golden Snitch within five minutes."

"...Five minutes?"

"Faster, in theory. I'm just allowing myself some margin for error."

Justin finally picked up his fork. Instead of arguing, the first thing he asked was:

"Do you know how fast the Golden Snitch is?"

"More or less."

"And you're still saying that?"

"Because speed isn't really the issue," Gavin replied.

"Then what is?" Cedric couldn't help asking.

"The fact that it has to be somewhere on the pitch," Gavin explained patiently. "As long as it's on the pitch, it can be found. Complicated enchantments and safeguards don't change that."

Ernie frowned, as though struggling to follow the reasoning.

"But the Snitch is tiny, and it moves so unpredictably."

"That's why you need a method."

Cedric stared at him, his expression slowly changing.

The discouragement was still there, but something else had joined it: doubt, interest, and the distinctly Hufflepuff thought that, absurd as this sounded, Gu usually had a reason for saying things like that.

"I thought you didn't like Quidditch," Cedric said.

"I don't like the current rules." Gavin met his gaze. "That doesn't mean I can't solve the problem."

"Solve the problem?"

"Sure." Gavin said it as though it were obvious. "You've got rules, an objective, and constraints. To you, it's a sport. To me, it's more like a word problem."

Even Cedric fell silent this time.

That did not sound like something an ordinary first-year would say.

A few seconds later, Cedric suddenly pushed his plate forward a little and leaned in, his expression more serious than ever.

"Gu," he said suddenly.

"Hmm?"

"Would you be willing to be my personal coach?"

Justin's head shot up.

"What?"

"I'm serious." Cedric ignored him, his eyes still fixed on Gavin. "Whether you treat Quidditch as a problem, an experiment, or some sort of test for loopholes in the rules, I don't care. Since you said you could catch the Golden Snitch in five minutes—you should at least teach me what exactly goes on in that head of yours."

Ernie turned to look at Gavin too.

Several nearby Hufflepuff students had already settled in to watch the show.

"A personal coach?" Justin repeated, his tone conflicted. "How long have we first-years even been here? Has Hufflepuff already developed an industry like that?"

"Quiet," Cedric said, a little irritated.

"I'm not making a fuss. I just think this is very far from normal school procedure."

"When has Hogwarts ever had normal procedures?" Gavin asked.

Justin thought about it and found he could not argue.

Even the staircases in this place were abnormal. Demanding normal procedures of it really was asking too much of everyone involved.

Cedric was still waiting for an answer.

Gavin looked at him without speaking right away.

He was quickly weighing the benefits.

There were downsides, of course. It would be a hassle, time-consuming, and conspicuous, and he might well get dragged into Quidditch, a school sport whose rules could only be described as slapdash.

There were upsides too. It would give him a legitimate reason to access the Quidditch training grounds, the Golden Snitch, and broomsticks, allowing him to test his earlier ideas about the Golden Snitch, an alchemical creation that seemed to possess self-awareness.

Put that way—

It was not out of the question.

"Sure." Gavin nodded his agreement.

Cedric's eyes lit up.

"Really?"

"On certain conditions," Gavin added.

"Name them."

"First, I only provide ideas. I'm not here to coddle anyone." Gavin looked at Cedric seriously. "Second, everyone has to follow instructions during training. Third, I can't guarantee you'll win, but I'll do my best to drag you a little way out of this whole 'losing is a tradition' state."

Justin nearly choked on his Pumpkin Juice.

"Losing is a tradition?" He coughed. "Gu, sometimes you're really harsh on Hufflepuff."

"That's an objective description," Gavin replied.

Cedric, however, was not angry in the slightest.

Quite the opposite: a distinctly excited expression even appeared on his face.

"Deal," he said through gritted teeth.

"Six books," Gavin said casually.

Cedric froze for a moment.

"What?"

"My fee." Gavin raised an eyebrow. "You didn't think a personal coach would work for free, did you?"

Cedric opened his mouth, then very quickly accepted this reality.

"Fine, but you have to tell me what you're planning to do first."

Gavin picked up his chopsticks again and took a piece of chicken, his tone calm.

"It's simple."

"Hmm?"

"First, let me see just how terrible the Hufflepuff Quidditch Team is right now."

The entire table fell silent again for two seconds.

Then Justin was the first to lose it, laughing so hard he nearly collapsed onto the table.

Ernie lowered his head, his shoulders visibly shaking too.

Cedric took a deep breath, his expression somewhere between "that hit exactly where it hurt" and "I have to admit he has a point," with remarkably nuanced layers of conflict.

"All right," he finally managed. "Come watch practice tomorrow afternoon."

"Sure." Gavin nodded.

"And," Cedric added, "the Hufflepuff Quidditch Team isn't as bad as you make it sound."

"All the better," Gavin said indifferently. "That'll save me some time."

Cedric looked at him and suddenly smiled.

"Gu."

"Hmm?"

"I'm starting to think that if you played Quidditch, the other houses would be in serious trouble."

"Don't worry. For now, my interest in this sport is limited to dissecting the rules, rather than personally getting injured."

"...That's a very Gu answer too."

"Thank you."

The Great Hall was still noisy that afternoon. The clatter of cutlery, laughter and chatter, and intermittent discussions between houses all mingled into a stew of typical everyday life at Hogwarts.

Amid the bustle, Gavin lowered his head and continued eating, his new chopsticks, which he had already grown comfortable using, set before him as he began making plans for Quidditch.

As for whether Hermione was still fretting over the points gap—

He naturally had no idea.

Nor had it even crossed his mind.