Information asymmetry.
It's a problem every witch and wizard faces in a fight.
And with Sean's young, harmless-looking face, he could exploit that gap perfectly.
When he went all out—wielding Master-level Transfiguration, dual-casting spells, and silent instant-cast Dark magic—Sean could suppress a veteran Auror for a short while.
Pretty much exactly as he'd expected.
But his shortcomings were obvious too. He'd only been using magic for a short time, and simply didn't have enough raw magical power to sustain those heavy spells for long.
At this point, he had two options:
Wait for his magic to grow with age—wizards' magic does naturally get stronger over the years.
Or improve how well he controlled the magic he already had.
For magic, the higher your proficiency, the easier it is to cast and the less it drains you.
Sean thought:
If he could get magic-type Transfiguration to Adept level, it should barely be enough to use in real combat.
Over the next few days, Sean constantly sparred with Marcus.
Marcus very quickly noticed the boy's problem.
His casting time was too long—so long that Marcus had enough time to fire off several Expelliarmus charms before a big spell landed.
At that stage, all the boy could do was counter with Finite, and anything he tried afterward turned into a weak, low-impact attack.
What was frightening was that once Sean realized this himself, he started casting Finite with one hand while using Transfiguration with the other.
And very soon, Marcus was the one who got knocked flat again.
When Marcus switched tactics to unleash a storm of curses to stop Sean from ever finishing a long cast, the boy did something else he hadn't expected.
Sean stopped casting powerful spells altogether and instead used simple Transfiguration to force Marcus to repeatedly cast time-consuming Shield Charms.
Marcus had never seen a kid react this quickly. Sean's grasp of his own magic was insanely high, letting him improvise all sorts of variations.
And through those real-combat sessions, Sean started to feel out the limits of his abilities.
And he also got a deep, painful sense of how far he still had to go with Transfiguration.
…
A month had passed since Fairy Tale Workshop last opened.
In the past few days, the British wizarding world had been completely abuzz.
Witch Weekly was practically camping outside, desperate to snap a photo of that mysterious alchemist—even if it was only his back.
There were plenty of curious witches out there waiting for him, and Mrs Weasley had, of course, joined the hype.
"Mum cares more about Se—about that alchemist now than she does about Gilderoy Lockhart… Oh, he's a celebrity. Mum idolizes him."
Because Harry was visiting the Burrow for the first time, Ron stuck to his side constantly. Right now Ron was holding up a book whose cover read, in gold curly script:
Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests.
Below the title was a large moving photo of a very handsome wizard with wavy blond hair and bright blue eyes. Magical photos always moved; this Lockhart kept winking at them.
"Is that… the alchemist who might be at Hogwarts?" Harry asked, confused.
"Not just might, I mean—very likely."
Ron's face went red as a beetroot; after struggling with himself, he finally squeezed out a few words.
Harry gave him a strange look, then saw an owl arrive with the Daily Prophet.
As they opened the envelope, Ron muttered quietly to Harry:
"You still planning to go back?"
His meaning was obvious.
"I have to," Harry said after a little silence.
"We'll help. Remember? Justin wrote that he's looking into those scum—er, your aunt and uncle's lot. Don't worry."
Ron's voice was comforting.
At the words "we'll help," Harry's eyes went quietly red.
Ron realized he might have said too much, so he quickly snatched the Prophet off the owl's leg.
"Come on, let's see if they invite you too…"
It was that same shop again on the front page, with that tall, slim back in front of the door.
Every time Ron saw it, he felt a weird rush of excitement—he knew the secret almost no one else in the wizarding world did.
The only pity was that he still hadn't managed to get that Chocolate Frog card; it seemed rarer than pulling "King Arthur" from Weird Wizards Chess.
Under the moving photo was a bold headline:
"A Never-Before-Seen Invitation-Only System! Marketing Hype or Real Substance?"
That pulled Harry's attention back; he looked over, expecting criticism of such a strange sales method, but instead found nothing but praise.
Rita—the reporter with that massive, stiff perm—praised the system to the heavens.
In her words, receiving an invitation from this shop proved you had real status and power in the wizarding world; if you didn't, well, your reputation was all talk.
The article left a lot of readers stunned. But when Rita listed the names of people who had received invitations, the wizarding world fell into thoughtful silence.
Albus Dumbledore. Nicolas Flamel…
Most importantly, both of them had actually accepted the invitations instead of refusing them.
Everyone knew what that meant: implicit endorsement.
It only poured more fuel on emotions that were already running hot.
Unfortunately, all invitations were delivered via enchanted paper airplanes. There wasn't even a chance to wave a bag of galleons around to buy your way in.
Maybe, just as the article said, only those with enough standing would ever see one.
That afternoon.
The cobblestones shimmered in the warm haze; brick shopfronts baked under the sun. Outside Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, only a few empty tables and a sun umbrella dozed in the breeze.
Not far from there, a small crowd of very distinguished witches and wizards was gathering.
Watching them from inside the joke shop, the Weasley twins began to understand what Sean had meant when he'd said the shop wouldn't be affected.
Sean himself had arrived early and was already inside Fairy Tale Workshop. The place had been renovated again.
A solid black-ebony door stood quietly at the entrance, its brass knocker a coiled ouroboros.
The glass display counters now stood upright, and behind each one loomed a vivid sculpture of a magical creature.
Sean waited for Professor Tayla to arrive. Just then, the Daily Prophet came; he glanced down at it.
"A Never-Before-Seen Invitation-Only System! Marketing Hype or Real Substance?"
He read on in silence, frowning slightly when it framed the system as a marker of "status and power."
It wasn't that complicated at all. The whole invitation system existed for a much simpler reason: production was tiny. The Fairy Tale cookies were always pre-ordered by alchemists and the Ministry before they ever hit shelves.
Publicly, there were "seventy" invitations per month—but in reality, no one except the paper airplanes knew how many went out.
What Sean needed most was flexible production time.
That was the real point.