"I'm really curious why it came out so red," smiled Professor Lionel Squisshy, looking at Elizabeth.
"Three drops of venom."
"Ah, poisonous cave bat venom? Very rare ... It helps in petrifying spells."
"No, it's just bee venom."
"Oh, it helps you play with time ... or turn the day into night and vice versa."
"Professor Lionel Squisshy, I thought more about being able to ..."
"I'm Smart. Lionel is in the room for the creation of luminophobic objects, the professor indicates a dark corridor that led into a room located deeper in the basement of Elmbridge School of Magic.
The girl said nothing but looked puzzled at the professor.
"I see that you also added the beast herb. It helps you get through various locks. But for what? You just have a key that allows you to reach all the places where you are allowed."
She was about to say something, but Mr. Smart wouldn't let her.
"What else did you put in the liquor in which you boiled it?"
"Mermaid tears."
"Oh, mermaid tears ... Why?"
"I don't know exactly, but I read in an old recipe. And I thought ..."
"I'm going to look up in the ingredients book. I'm really curious."
The professor moved away from Elizabeth, after that book, but as he took two steps, he again found a long-lost object.
"Smart! I found the fork! Finally ... For three years I've been eating with my hands, because I haven't found it. Wait to get it."
But the professor put the fork in a little bag around his neck and headed to another student, completely forgetting whom he should give the fork to. But if we think better, he found its owner.
"What does your liquor contain? I also see tarantula hairs, very good."
That student went about his business. And he worked with great care, as if he worked with a crystal wand.
…
"For more than fifty years I haven't seen anything like this. Or ... better said, I've never seen anything like this before."
Elizabeth and Johnny, sitting at the same desk, stared at Mr. Lionel Squisshy as he swung that wand, as he kept twirling and twisting it, unblinking his eyes with the two huge zooms, gazing at that wand.
"Not even a crack. Not even a ... scratch."
And again he started to spin and twist it.
Alexander, who was also close to the three, could not say anything to such an assertion.
"I also have such a wand, Mr. Smart."
"No, I have already seen yours. It's like a branch of a tree barely peeled, rough and full of knots and chips."
Alexander got close to Mr. Lionel Squisshy, with his proud, lofty posture, displayed as every time by this Soimesti little prince.
"I'm not talking about the one I made. That's ... rubbish. I mean this one."
And the boy took from his sleeve a beautifully crafted sheath, made of carved ivory and decorated with gold and diamonds, and inside that ivory he took a beautifully crafted wand, also adorned with gold threads and a diamond that looked as if it grew on top of that wand.
"It is an inheritance, left for more than three hundred years to my family, the boy piped up, when he saw how all his colleagues looked at that wand.
Almost the entire group of children stood there gaping, bug-eyed at Alexander's legacy.
Smart took the wand and looked at it, as carefully as all the others, even wider-eyed, as if the two magnifying glasses got bigger.
"Yes, very beautiful. Worked with great care. Refined and elegant, worthy of a wizard prince. And the top diamond, obtained from the mines in Damascus, I suppose ... a real splendour. It gives it enormous power."
Alexander was prouder than a peacock.
"But ..."
This ¨but¨ of Smart's, or Lionel Squisshy's, depends on which of them talked, intrigued everyone there.
"But what?"
"But this wand is not as perfect as the other," Smart replied to Alexander sharply.
The boy looked at his wand, then at Elizabeth's simple one, without any carvings, engravings or gold ornaments, after which he laughed.
"Hmm, what does a man who hasn't come out of the basement for over 100 years know? And who also has multiple personality."
"I told you I'm not human. I'm a gnome," Smart said without feeling offended by the boy's words, except that he was considered human. Apparently for him it was great pride to be a gnome.
Then he went on:
"And I'm sure of it, as I'm sure this little girl's wand is ... perfect. But yours, no matter how bright, is not perfect."
Alexander was a boy perhaps too stubborn and too proud, but he was not so stupid as to contradict a professor endlessly.
"We'll see when we try them. Let's see which is perfect".
The boy took his wand, put it back in the sheath, and hid it in the wide sleeve of his school clothes, then went back to his work table to continue making his wand ... that rubbish.
Smart took Elizabeth's wand again, placed another huge magnifying glass next to the ones attached to his eyes, and then exclaimed again:
"It's perfect ... as if made by forest elves."
And he moved away.
The girl was glad that at the creation class she managed to make her "wizard's sword", that wand, properly, but all this time, careful as always, she asked Johnny:
"What are the forest elves?"
"Some creatures that lived long ago. It is said they were the first wizards."
"Some horrible creatures, ugly and not too smart, even if they have the impression that they are. But any gnome would tell you the same as me if you asked," the same Mr. Smart, who could hear anything, intervened. "Some say it's better they disappeared and I agree with them. Yet, unfortunately they did not disappear ..."
Then the professor went to the desk, speaking nonsense for the children's ears.
"It seems they are creatures that gnomes don't really like," Johnny concluded the story about those forest elves.
The children continued to work on their wands.
"Each of you tuck the wand with the chosen gem into this furnace, one at a time. Diamond, ruby, sapphire or jade, it doesn't matter... stick the gem to the wand or what you want to attach to the top, with basilisk glue, then insert it here. But be careful, the fire inside is even hotter than the sun. Leave it there until you count three dragons, and then drop it into this cauldron, where the wind and the blast of midnight wind are hidden. But ...be careful to take it out in the blink of an eye, otherwise it breaks the wand into pieces, as it happens to an icicle...
…
Professor Lionel Squisshy checked the students' creations. Those weapons that will turn them ... into wizards.
But the proficiency and the fame of the wizard only depended on them.
In any case, they had much work to do in this regard, given Mr. Smart's encouragement:
"This one has a crack in the top of the gemstone. You can hurt yourself with it, you can put out an eye. Throw it!" a girl with red, curly hair just got feedback.
"This one has a crack inside the beech wood, as big as a million years old canyon. It will break at the smallest magic that comes out of it and you can even cut a vein by mistake. Throw it away," he said to a boy who didn't seem so upset, considering he didn't put as much effort and thoroughness as others.
"This one ... to spare you from getting hurt, I'm breaking it right now."
The professor broke that wand like a toothpick. The dark skin girl's face darkened even more, but only for a moment, as Professor Smart placed a beautiful wand in her right hand.
"You can keep it until you manage to make one as good. Just don't start crying because I saw thousands of girls crying and I'm fed up with it."
The girl started to smile, but not because the professor asked, but because she got a wonderful wand: reddish because of the cherry wood it was made of, with green aura surrounding both the wand and the girl's hand, from the jade stone which was on top.
Lionel Squisshy got close to Elizabeth's wand again and as if he saw it for the first time, and exclaimed again, to Prince Dragoesti's indignation:
"Perfect! Finally a perfect wand!"
And he started the inspection of that wand again.