Albus Potter, Classmates and Elves

Ch 13 Teasing Out The Origins of Magic

The assembled group went down to a comfortable inner room on floor minus-seven of the huge castle. The castle had a large main floor at the same level as the plaza off the lowest main road that circled the valley of the Magi. There were two floors above the main floor, labelled floors one and two. There were ten floors below the main floor before the castle reached the level of the valley below. They were numbered "floor minus-one" to floor "minus-ten." Floors minus six to minus eight seemed to be Elf areas.

As they arrived at the room Hermione Granger-Weasley showed up, obviously out of breath.

The room was a modest sized, windowless room. It had stone floors, walls and ceiling. The walls were covered with paintings of the outside of the castle, and the paintings seemed to be the only thing giving light to the room. There was comfortable seating for both Elf and Magi, overstuffed leather chairs and couches. Everyone sat down and made themselves comfortable, except for Henry who was moving around the room taking photographs.

Cindy Base Hudson, looking over to make sure her dicta-quill was working properly, asked, "Could you introduce yourselves, please. I know who most of you are, but I want to make sure I know who is at this meeting."

Harry started, gesturing to the two elves sitting together, "You know John and Mary, the head Elves here in the castle. Since signing contracts with me as Regent, they have taken surnames, and are now John and Mary Rivendell."

Harry turned to the Elves. Mary nodded and took over. "For most of the last two-thousand years we have been possessions of Magi or of Goblins. If we needed any secondary identifier we just referred to the family we belonged to. Several Magi and Elves have encouraged us to adopt surnames, and we have. My daughter Arwen and her mate Elrond have adopted the surname Lothlorien. Our granddaughters are Galadriel and Luthien."

Mary turned back to Harry, who continued, nodding at people around the room who waved or nodded to Cindy. "You know Kingsley and Hermione. I think you have met Goblin Zefenslot, the chief goblin of Gringotts in Switzerland. The Swiss bank is generally acknowledged as the head bank of all the Goblin banks. He has an assistant here, Bibliothekar.

"I know you have met Gerhardt Richter, the head Magi of this valley."

"I work for the ruling family, Harry," Gerhardt reminded him.

Harry shook his head, and emphasized, "Gerhardt runs the valley.

"Finally we have the Swiss wandmakers Aragorn and Elanor Zauberstabhersteller."

"Thank you," Cindy said as she composed some notes. Harry noticed that she was also recording the meeting.

Mary Rivendell, the Elf, looked over at her mate before looking back at the room and started to speak. "We want Aragorn and Elanor to examine Galadriel's wand, then Thorin's. We then want them to examine the Elder Wand and the wand that Cleopatra is using. Wand lore is central to the story we are trying to tease out." The wands were pulled out and the Magi came forward.

The two wandmakers first examined Galadriel's wand. They were obviously confused. "I cannot tell who made this wand," Elanor mused, "or how it was made. In almost all wands, all that I have examined, you can get some idea about the parents of the wand, which wands and wandmakers made the wand. With an older wand you may not know the wandmaker, but even then you can get some idea of the age. This wand is ageless, not old although we know it is, nor young."

They then examined Thorin's wand. Elanor again was the one to speak. "It looks like this wand may have been made in part by Galadrieln's wand, but there is more going on here. Someone and something made this wand in addition to Galadriel's wand."