A Werewolf's Promise (Scarwood Chronicles #1)

Chapter 13: How... (Un)Lucky

A non-standard wand?

Sugar looked up at Ignatio, eyes wide. He had to be hearing things wrong. How could someone as average as him ever qualify for a non-standard wand?

The silence of the classroom just seemed to add to the uncanniness of this encounter, and Sugar felt the gaze of all the students in the classroom on him. He felt he was some poor magical specimen, prepared to be dissected for a class of onlookers.

"Pardon?" he asked, still in shock.

"Oh, we're just going to do a few tests to determine what type of non-standard wand you need, or if you even need one at all." Ignatio continued on, just as jovial and upbeat as he had been before, like he didn't even notice how silent the class got.

"You really think I need one?"

"Of course, you see, if your wand glows any colour other than white, or behaves however else strangely, it means that your own magic is overpowering the wand's ability, and it cannot sustainably handle your magic. And we want all our students to be able to realise their full potential, so we'll definitely have to organise a few tests for you... going to have to slot them around your free periods..."

The rest of Ignatio's words fell on deaf ears, as Sugar's brain was still reeling from the realisation that hey, maybe he wasn't a complete magical disappointment after all. In his head, he was jumping around for joy, but in real life, shock still had him completely rooted to the ground. Finally, after a few more moments of nodding along to whatever Ignatio was saying, Sugar was pretty much left alone again, and slowly, life returned to the classroom, and Knight and co. immediately leaned over to talk.

"Wow, wouldn't have expected that from such an ordinary guy like you," Rosa said, making another jab at him, but her words lacked their usual sharpness.

"I don't know too much about all this stuff, but that's really cool, right?" Knight smiled, bright and supportive as ever.

"Yeah, it is!" Sugar said, the realisation slowly settling in, along with the joy that came with it. He grinned, an unusual expression on his face, but the occasion called for it. A non-standard wand! That meant he was one of those whose magic was too powerful to be held in a simple wand!

It was like nothing could bring him down.

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"Oh, come on! We actually have a detention? This suuuuucks..." Sugar groaned as he paced around the mostly empty classroom. He had pretty much forgotten all about Headmistress Nightblood's decree on the first day that every single one of the first-years would get a detention. What a downer. At least he was in the same detention time slot as Knight, Rosa and Hugo. There was another boy in the slot too: some kid called Luca Delavigne, who, one week into school, still had not shown up. Sugar vaguely recalled some of his other classmates talking about him, saying something about a holiday.

Lucky bastard...

"Ms Nightblood's not the type to go back on her word," Rosa said, completely unbothered, "she means what she says."

"You're saying this like you're not in detention too!" Sugar huffed, "what are we even supposed to do here?" he kicked a crate of old textbooks, hard enough to disturb the dust, but not hard enough to actually damage anything.

"Eh, the teacher who comes will probably give us a task," Rosa shrugged.

"That's strange though..." Knight suddenly piped up.

"What's strange?" Rosa looked at her friend strangely.

"Well, our detention should have started, like five minutes ago, and the teachers here are usually very punctual... do you think something might have happened?"