Life at the Leaky Cauldron carried on much as usual.
The only difference was that there was now an eleven year old guest living upstairs.
Ever since completing the System’s quest at Ollivanders, Eric had remained at the Leaky Cauldron.
He had nowhere else to go, nor did he have any desire to return to the orphanage.
He didn’t have any luggage there that needed collecting either, so he simply settled into the Leaky Cauldron for the time being.
Tom let him stay and raised no objections.
Frankly, Tom had no idea what else he was supposed to do with Eric.
On the other hand, he wasn’t particularly eager to let the boy wander around freely either.
If Eric’s Magical Pressure at Flourish and Blotts had still fallen within the limits of what Tom could comprehend, then what happened inside Ollivanders had gone completely beyond them.
At least in Tom’s memory, he had never encountered another wizard quite like Eric.
Powerful, fiercely independent, and almost completely unconcerned with what anyone around him thought.
If someone like that stayed at the Leaky Cauldron and caused another disturbance, at least Tom could make sure he was the first person to know about it.
Over the next few days, partly to deepen his understanding of the wizarding world and partly to enjoy some peace and quiet, Eric barely left his room except to eat and accompany Tom whenever the older wizard found time to take him out for the remaining supplies on his Hogwarts list.
He spent those days doing only one thing.
Reading.
A great deal of reading.
Eric quickly worked his way through all the first-year textbooks Flourish and Blotts had given him.
None of the first-year material presented much difficulty.
There were plenty of concepts Eric had never encountered before, but with a little thought, he could usually understand and absorb them without much trouble.
If buying more books hadn’t required drawing further on his Student Loan, Eric would have liked nothing more than to return to Flourish and Blotts and buy the second- and third-year textbooks as well.
Tom definitely wouldn’t have agreed to that.
Most of Eric’s time, however, was devoted to The Standard Book of Spells.
The book contained more than a hundred spells.
It truly lived up to its name, and, for that matter, its price of more than twenty Galleons.
Among those hundred odd spells were many Eric knew well, such as the Summoning Charm, the Disarming Charm, and the Unlocking Charm.
There were also plenty he had never even heard of.
Now that Eric had a wand of his own, naturally he wasn’t about to waste such an excellent opportunity to practise.
He didn’t dare casually experiment with spells he knew nothing about, so he focused instead on those he was already reasonably familiar with.
Backed by his tremendous Magical Power, Eric spent the next several days trying out a number of spells he recognised.
The acacia wand didn’t make things impossibly difficult for him when he used these simple, common spells.
Every so often, it would produce resistance and interfere with the flow of his magic.
Of course, neither did it perform the role a wand ordinarily should by enhancing and directing his magical output.
Sometimes it simply did nothing at all, serving as little more than a channel through which Eric could release his magic.
That was enough.
Eric’s own Magical Power was already more than sufficient.
Over the course of several days, he successfully raised quite a few spells to Basic Spell Proficiency.
Once they reached that point, he could use the System to examine their effects and more advanced casting procedures.
Taking those spells any further, however, would require time.
More importantly, practising magic on his own hadn’t gone quite as smoothly as Eric had originally imagined.
The greatest problem was the Patronus Charm, which he still hadn’t successfully cast.
Whenever he used magic, virtually all the resistance came from the wand in his hand.
Back at Ollivanders, Eric had already attempted to cast the Patronus Charm with this acacia wand.
At the time, the Patronus Charm wasn’t merely the only spell he had properly learned.
His Spell Proficiency with it had already reached Intermediate, meaning he had gone well beyond merely understanding the basics.
If he had been using another wand, then with the benefit of Wand Affinity, Eric was quite certain he should have been able to cast the Patronus Charm successfully.
His understanding of the spell was thorough.
There was nothing wrong with his theoretical knowledge.
Intermediate Spell Proficiency should also have been more than enough for him to summon a Patronus.
Yet in Ollivanders, the spell had failed to produce a corporeal Patronus.
Which meant it had failed.
Without a corporeal Patronus, the white mist produced by the spell could do little more than intimidate Dementors.
At best, it might momentarily slow their approach, but it couldn’t actually drive them away.
Ollivander, who had personally tried and failed to use the acacia wand, had already regarded even that much as astonishing.
Eric wasn’t satisfied.
Over the following days, he attempted the Patronus Charm several more times.
His incantation and wand movements were flawless.
He hadn’t neglected the necessary happy emotions either.
And yet he simply couldn’t summon a corporeal Patronus.
Several times, Eric watched the white mist he conjured begin gathering together, on the very verge of assuming the shape of an animal.
But every time, it seemed to lack one final change.
Then the mist would disperse again.
There was another detail worth noting.
Whenever Eric cast the Patronus Charm, he could always feel enormous resistance coming from the acacia wand.
Far greater resistance than when he used any other spell.
Without question, that was proof of just how extraordinary the wand truly was.
The Patronus Charm wasn’t an ordinary spell.
In a certain sense, a Patronus was a reflection of the wizard’s soul.
Every witch and wizard possessed a different Patronus.
Its form was also, to some degree, an expression of the caster’s personality.
When Eric used something like the Water Making Spell, the acacia wand might not react at all.
But the moment he tried to cast the Patronus Charm, a spell involving a manifestation of the soul, the acacia wand would resist him with everything it had.
That resistance prevented Eric from producing a corporeal Patronus.
Even with no one else present, the wand was capable of fighting Eric entirely of its own accord.
Eric wasn’t particularly surprised by the discovery.
The most likely explanation was that this wand really had possessed an owner before, and that it had yet to betray that owner.
That was why Eric couldn’t properly cast the Patronus Charm through it.
At the same time, Eric remained certain that he hadn’t chosen the wrong wand.
It was powerful.
It had a will of its own.
And given enough time, if Eric could earn its recognition, then this wand would unquestionably become one of his greatest assets.
According to Eric’s reasoning, there was almost no chance that the wand had never had an owner.
Acacia wands favoured talented witches and wizards and were exceptionally loyal.
For this wand to produce resistance powerful enough to unconsciously contend against Eric’s own magic, its former owner must have been extraordinarily powerful.
Very possibly a legendary wizard.
Why such a wizard had lost their wand, Eric had no idea.
If its previous owner had possessed even slightly less talent, the lingering imprint left within the wand would probably have dispersed the instant it encountered Eric’s overwhelming Magical Power.