*Discontinued* No Longer

Dangerous

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**Era Damon White

Surprisingly enough, all Era had had to do to get the murder wood for his wand was break a branch off from the tree. From what he'd learned interacting with Gregorovitch, since it was his soul wood, touching it wouldn't kill him.

The basilisk venom was just as easy to acquire, with all him having to do being create three thousand galleons to get a pint of the stuff. He figured that being able to soak the murder wood in the venom as well would help it to be swishy, because Era thought he'd hate having a rigid wand.

With all his materials together, he returned to the workshop that was in the back of Gregorovitch's place. It appeared to have been cleaned, and Era was grateful for it. This would make it easy to find what he needed.

Taking out a cauldron formed of solid dragon scales fused together with the inside gilded half in pure gold and half in pure silver, Era set the phoenix feather into the cauldron and poured basilisk venom into the cauldron until it was submerged. Then, he magically combined the venom with the feather, because Gregorovitch had misread the signs in his spell. It wasn't meant to be soaked, as he'd assumed, but fused.

Era put the feather onto the table and admired the faint lines of green and purple that traced the shadowy filaments. It was beautiful, and so very, very powerful.

Generally, it was best to soak wood overnight to make it nice and swishy, but Era figured if he put magic and concentration into it, he'd be able to do it in a few minutes. From what he'd gotten in Gregorovitch's mind, wand making depended a lot on instinct. Every wand was different, and they knew how they wished to be made as surely as which wizard they wanted to wield them.

With this in mind, he took out a flat rectangular dish and poured the remaining 3/4 pint into it. Closing his eyes, he held his hand over the multiple sticks of murder wood and concentrated. Whichever one was the right piece for him would float into his hand, he was sure of it.

Putting a few drops of magical incentive behind his wish brought a stick flying into his palm. It would need some work, but it was very straight. At two spots, smaller branches came off, and Era used his magic so that when he smoothed his hand over them, they fell away. It was about an inch and a half in width, so he figured he'd end up carving it down at some point.

Smoothing his hand down the entire stick, he watched the bark seem to melt beneath his fingers, leaving behind a smooth stick that had a grain similar to tiger wood, except that instead of red-orange and dark stripes, they were ashy white and darkest mahogany.

He set the wood carefully into the venom, and pushed currents of magic into them very gently to speed up the process. Carefully, he closed his eyes to watch the actual process his magic was performing. Sweat beaded at his temples with the urge to go fast, but Era knew if he did the wand would be ruined.

Deeper and deeper through the venom sank, and the murder wood went from ashy white and mahogany to a white so pure it was like bleached porcelain and a black as depthless as a starless, moonless sky at midnight. The venom increased the magic inherent in the wood, and Era felt the magic of his spell being tugged on by the wood too.

The wood was hungry for more magic, even after it had been properly soaked, so Era slowly added more until the magic of creating the wand told him to stop. The wood seemed to glisten in the pan, and he lifted it up to find the wand was comfortable cool beneath his fingers.

It was time to carve it down now. For some reason, Era felt it had to be done manually. He took out Gregorovitch's diamond headed carving tools, and was grateful that as soon as the sharp tip touched the wood, his hands knew exactly where and how deep to carve.