Chapter 75: Chapter 75: Hermione's Part-Time Job (Edited)
Tom was there, listening to the question.
It was a complicated question. The root of the complication was the morbid system of currency conversion in the magical world, where one gold galleon was converted into 17 silver sickle and one silver sickle into 29 copper knut.
Tom didn't understand why two prime numbers had to be chosen as the unit of exchange. Even if the magical world wanted to flaunt its distinctiveness, why not choose the most magical number, seven?
It is difficult to understand.
But it is possible to make a general judgment, the entire Lockhart collection is worth 35 galleons, 10% discount is 31.5 galleons. If you have to ask for more money, it depends on whether the rest is worth 2.5 galleons.
At 3 galleons and 9 sickle, it seemed to me that even at 20% off, it would be more than 2.5 galleons, so the person had to give more money.
But then Tom was a bit dumbfounded: how much money to get back, I'm afraid must be calculated carefully.
Hermione: "..."
She looked as if she had been overloaded with calculations and was frozen for a while, rolling her eyes and breathing hard, but she couldn't think of anything, so she pulled out a pen and paper and did some hand calculations before coming up with, "367.5 knut, that's 12 sickle with 19 knut..."
Lawrence pulled out a typewriter-like thing and clicked away, after a moment he nodded.
Seeing both Tom and Hermione looking at the machine, he smiled a little sheepishly, "It's a calculator, and to be honest, I was being deliberately difficult with that question just now, we don't normally have such fancy discounts in the store..."
He then showed Tom and Hermione how to use the calculator. The calculator was covered in metal gears and levers, giving it an eerie look.
It was easy to use, with three glass wheels on the left side of the calculator, corresponding to the gold galleons, silver sickle and bronze Knut that customers paid. On the right, there are five scroll wheels where you enter the price of the book, the first three in monetary units, the second to last one for the discount amount and the last one for confirmation. Once you have pressed confirm, you can enter the price of the next book. If you press it twice in a row, it means that the price of all books has been entered and the machine will start calculating. At the bottom of the machine there are also three scroll wheels, where the change is displayed.
Tom and Hermione looked at the calculator with complicated expressions: there were so many things to say about it that they didn't know what to say.
"So if you get a number wrong, you have to enter it again, right?" Hermione had figured out the crux of the problem.
Lawrence: "..."
"And you got the right answer just by doing the math?" Lawrence asked.
Hermione: "Nothing, I'm just sensitive to numbers."
Tom and Lawrence: "..."
Lawrence coughed twice and said, "Actually, since it's a pain in the ass to do the math, there's basically no discount at Flourish and Blotts. bookstore, so let me ask you a few more questions."
So Mr. Lawrence asked a few more questions, and this time, since there was no discount involved, Hermione was able to do the math much faster than Lawrence could do with the calculator.
"Merlin is up!" Mr. Lawrence scratched his wispy hair, he thought Hermione was a monster, it was unbelievable.
"She's number one in our grade" Tom reported Hermione's identity.
Lawrence's eyes passed between them for a moment and, without another word, he led Hermione to sign the contract.
Once Hermione signed the contract, Lawrence gave them each a vest with the Flourish and Blotts Bookshop logo on it, and Tom and Hermione became part of the Flourish and Blotts Bookshop.
Hermione was in charge of the front desk and Tom was in charge of restocking the shelves.
For Hermione, work at the bookstore was light and there weren't many customers during the day, many of them just came in and left, which meant Hermione didn't have much work to do.
She also worked normal hours, which coincided with the bookstore hours: 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Tom arrived an hour before her and stocked the shelves. Hermione worked five days a week and was paid ten gallons a week.
Tom was a little busier, he had to get the new books out of storage, put them on the shelves and note the missing ones in a little book, and then go back to the store to restock them. But since there weren't many books being sold, and only a few bestsellers, it only took Tom a few trips to become proficient.
In the blink of an eye, Tom had done his work and began to rest. He sat on a small stool next to the reception desk, hands on the counter, and looked at Hermione with his head cocked to one side.
Hermione didn't have much work to do: the last customer had left a quarter of an hour ago. At the moment, she was reading with great interest a best-selling book entitled "Recreation with the banshee". She felt someone watching her and, as soon as she put the book down, she saw Tom leaning his head on the cash register, staring at her.
Hermione blushed and smacked Tom's head with the book, "What are you looking at? Get on with your work."
"But I've already finished my work." Tom said.
"Then find a book to read!" Hermione said.
"Is it a good book? This author's books are selling very well recently" Said Tom.
Speaking of books, Hermione opened her mouth and started talking about what she had read. Tom listened in silence, as if he was listening to a monologue. But after a while it occurred to him to look for a copy of Lockhart's book to read.
So he found a Lockhart novel and glanced at it. The fact that Lockhart's stories were "based on true events," and the fact that they were well written, made them a hit with many people.
That was the end of the first day's work. At five o'clock in the afternoon, Tom and Hermione cleaned up and left Flourish and Blotts Bookstore, Hermione crossed the Leaky Cauldron and took her father's car home, and Tom headed back to Ollivander's wand store.
Back at the wand store, Mr. Ollivander had finished his work. He stood up with a smile and handed Tom a thick book and a medium-sized box.
"You will read this for the next two days, along with the contents of the box."
Tom noticed that the large book was a picture book of wand materials, and the box contained samples of various materials. Mr. Ollivander handed Tom the catalog and left. But Tom did not immediately return to the dormitory, although Mr. Ollivander did not say so, he cleaned up the store a bit, swept the floor and wiped the counter: this is the duty of an apprentice.
After that, he settled into the house provided by Mr. Ollivander. The house was behind the wand store, small and simply furnished: just a bed, a chair, a table and an oil lamp. There was also a small cubicle next to the house, with a bathroom and a toilet, two in one.
This is where Tom would be living for the next two months. The room was simple but clean, and the furnishings were adequate.
Chapter 76: Chapter 76: Wand Making (Edited)
Late in the evening, Tom was still studying. With the detailed descriptions and photos of the various wand cores and woods, and the samples provided by Mr. Ollivander, Tom was gaining a better understanding of the materials used in varitology.
[Enough knowledge was gained to unveil the theory of the hidden knowledge of Varitology.]
[Varitology talent will be revealed when a wand is created for the first time]
[Level 0 of Varitology (0/100)]
Tom: Yes (^-^)V
Although he didn't know the use of learning Varitology, the thrill of having a skill for nothing was very satisfying.
The next day, Mr. Ollivander was surprised to see Tom's progress. He had given Tom three days to finish the book, but he hadn't expected him to have memorized it in one night.
So he was excited to begin the next stage of his teaching.
Mr. Ollivander was in a much more relaxed state, to say the least. He had thousands of wands in stock, enough to keep him going for years, and with so few customers coming in before the start of the school year, he always had time to spare.
Since he had nothing better to do, he decided to teach his apprentice.
"Tom, do you know what a wand really is?"
Tom recalled the process of casting spells with his wand and said, "A magic amplifier?"
Mr. Ollivander shook his head, "A wand is not a magic amplifier, in fact, it's more of an auxiliary accessory..."
Ollivander pulled out a huge piece of parchment with a drawing of a man and his inner workings, "Beginners often have the misconception that a wizard's magic is weak and needs a wand to amplify it, but this is fundamentally wrong. If wands were magic amplifiers, why would a great wizard like Dumbledore cast spells without a wand?"
The question confused Tom: Yes, a wand was never meant to turn one unit of magic into ten, if that were the case, why would Dumbledore and the others be learning to cast spells without a wand? Wouldn't that be a deliberate weakening of their power? If you use a wand, a wizard's attack is 100, without a wand it is only 10, why wouldn't Dumbledore use his wand?
Are you afraid of being disarmed in battle? You can have a spare wand, or find a way to secure your wand to your hand, which would be easier than casting spells without it.
"Wands simply help wizards channel their magical powers so they can concentrate on more complex spells. Most spells require the use of a wand, but spells can also be cast without a wand. Wandless spells require incredible concentration and skill, and powerful wizards have honed their skills this way."
Tom understood, in general, that magic within the wizard himself is abundant. As evidenced by the accidental magic of little wizards, it was indeed true. The wand was more like one of those fancy aids to a modern bow and arrow that helped to shoot more accurately, but did not prevent the skilled from shooting with confidence in their own abilities.
After explaining the principles of wands, Mr. Ollivander showed Tom how to create one.
"Different combinations of magical materials can have different effects and, of course, the length of the wand will make a difference."
With that, Ollivander greeted Tom and sat him down at the workbench, where he picked up a piece of pine wood and pulled out a piece of unicorn tail hair that looked old. As he explained, he polished the wood, split it in half and inserted the unicorn tail hair.
After inserting the core of the wand, Ollivander took out a small carving knife, the tip of which was as thin as a hair, and then began to write carve the wand for a while. He did not explain this step to Tom, but concentrated on carving.
It took Ollivander about a quarter of an hour to finish carving the inside of the wand, and then he took a small note out of the drawer, but then he reacted,
He put it in place.
"There are several effects that can be achieved by carving runes into the inside of a wand, but a wand body with a wand core is useless, as every wand maker uses a different rune. If I could get my hands on that wand and study it..." Ollivander was halfway through the sentence when something occurred to him and his eyes lit up with desire.
He put the two pieces of pine together, let them return to their original shape and made himself a rough wand.
He waved the wand with slight distaste, and a bright light emerged from its tip.
"Look, it's done. But the quality of the wand is too mediocre due to the materials used." Without further ado, the Ollivander broke the rough wand. But he did it deftly, breaking only the useless pine wood and not the unicorn tail hair inside.
He pulled out another roll of parchment, on which he had drawn all sorts of strange symbols.
"These are some of the basic runes of varitology, as well as some rune arrangements. You can find a piece of wood and carve the runes into it, bigger at first, then smaller as you get better, do this until the rune is the size of a grain of rice."
Ollivander set about leaving homework and then left him alone. He left only the wand he stemmed for Tom to study.
Tom found a workbench and sat down. He first lit the magic lamp on the workbench, an alchemical device, something like the lamps found in Muggle operating rooms, and then placed the parchment and carved wand on the table.
He studied the arrangement of the runes on the scroll and discovered that most of them consisted of seven runes, with a fixed beginning and end and a variety of oddities in between, followed by a note explaining their effects. These arrangements essentially seek "stability," so that the magic passing through them can function stably.
Tom chose an initial rune and began trying to carve it.
It was much harder than he expected. One movement of the hand and the whole thing would be ruined, runes are extremely delicate things, and a slight difference will cause the characteristics to undergo shuddering changes.
It took Tom almost an hour to carve the first rune, and in the end it was identical to the rune on the parchment, but the strokes, deep here and there, were simply unqualified products.
But when Ollivander came over, he was delighted and congratulated Tom: in his opinion, he had talent for carving something like that for the first time.
Tom spent the next day carving runes, and by the time he returned to his dormitory at night he had mastered all six runes. What surprised him was that not only had his varitology experience bar become a question mark, but he had also gained a few points in Alchemy.
It seemed that varitology and alchemy had something in common.
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