After finishing Hagrid's rock cakes, Rowan headed back to the castle. Afternoon classes were still on the schedule.
He barely stepped into the main hall before a Valentine's dwarf ambushed him. The creature shoved a thick stack of cards into his arms, lifted its harp, and began strumming loudly.
Students immediately gathered around. Quite a few witches, too. Some of them were clearly the authors.
Rowan didn't try to flee. Running would only make the dwarf chase him while playing, which would turn mild embarrassment into public execution.
Instead, he stood there calmly, holding the cards, and waited for the performance to finish.
"Thank you all for your kindness," he said with an easy smile. "I'll read every card carefully when I get back."
With that, he walked out of the crowd as if nothing unusual had happened.
Midway through, however, he caught sight of a seventh-year witch staring at him in a way that made him pause internally.
…Seriously?
He quickly did the math. He had received more than thirty cards. Even if every first-year witch had written one, that number didn't add up.
Which meant older students had joined in.
Second or third years, maybe. Fine.
Seventh year was pushing it.
The thought alone made him feel like he'd wandered into the wrong genre.
On the way to class, he spotted Harry being cornered by a Valentine's dwarf, only for Malfoy to snatch Harry's card and read it aloud. Moments later, Harry used a Disarming Charm to blast it back out of Malfoy's hands.
Despite the name, the spell didn't just disarm weapons. It forcibly knocked whatever the target was holding out of their grasp. Wand, sword, book, or love letter, it made no difference.
Rowan didn't linger on the scene. He headed straight to Transfiguration.
Both afternoon sessions were with Professor McGonagall.
"Today we will be covering Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration."
Her tone was as strict as ever.
Rowan took notes seriously. Gamp's Law was foundational. No conjuring food from nothing. No permanent transformations. No altering magical objects. No changing quantity. Transfiguration obeyed rules, whether wizards liked them or not.
Then, mid-lecture, Rowan froze.
His pen stopped moving.
A grin spread across his face.
Something had just happened elsewhere.
In a forest behind the Fairy Tail guild hall, Rowan stood holding a newly finished wand.
"Sectumsempra."
A transparent blade nearly a meter long tore through the air and sliced a massive tree clean in half.
The trunk crashed to the ground.
Rowan stared.
"…That strong?"
He looked down at the wand in disbelief.
Earlier attempts had been modest. A wand made with his own fur as the core had only been slightly better than his Hogwarts wand. A second wand, crafted with hair from a reasonably strong magical creature, was better still.
Then Natsu, Lucy, and Happy had returned from a job.
Rowan had quietly plucked a single strand of Natsu's hair.
The result was this.
The increase wasn't incremental. It was explosive. Spell output had jumped by more than ten times. This wasn't just a good wand. It was absurd.
The wand shafts were identical in all three cases. Same wood. Same craftsmanship.
The only difference was the core.
"So Dragon Slayers really are built closer to dragons…" Rowan muttered.
Even so, this was excessive.
If he could become a Dragon Slayer himself, the implications were obvious. With shared traits across bodies, he could use his own hair as a core in the future.
No more compromises. No more hunting rare materials.
A self-sustaining supply of super-grade wands.
He had already learned that Dragon Slayer magic didn't always require being raised by an actual dragon. Laxus, for example, had become one through the implantation of a Dragon Lacrima.
The problem was availability.
Dragon Lacrima were vanishingly rare. Priceless artifacts that couldn't be bought even with money. And as a cat who spent most days lounging around the guild, Rowan wasn't exactly well-positioned to stumble across one.
That would have to wait.
"For now… a better wand body," he decided.
The core was too strong for the current shaft. It felt like mounting a siege engine on a toy frame.
"Incendio."
What should have been a simple flame erupted into a roaring pillar of fire.
Rowan tested dozens more spells.
A pattern emerged.
Fire magic and curses received the greatest amplification. Dark magic too. Utility spells were boosted, but not nearly as dramatically.
Sectumsempra and fire spells showed roughly twelvefold increases. Spatial and repair magic hovered closer to nine.
The fire affinity made sense. Natsu was a fire Dragon Slayer.
The curse amplification was… odd.
Rowan considered it briefly, then shrugged.
Whatever the reason, the results spoke for themselves.
And for once, power came without strings attached.
That was enough.