One of those mornings. The kind where the castle creaked like it hadn’t slept either, and Cassian, stretched sideways across the couch with one leg hooked over the armrest, had a pencil balanced on his nose. He’d been at it for ten seconds. Personal record, thirteen and a half.

The knock came like a traitor.

The pencil slipped, bonked him on the lip, and vanished under the desk.

“Damn it,” he muttered, sitting up. “I was about to break my record.”

He rubbed his nose and sighed. “Come in, then.”

Hermione entered with the caution of someone stepping into the wrong office… or the right one, but far too early. Arms hugged around a book. Big one. Probably something with footnotes. She hovered at the threshold, unsure if she had clearance.

Cassian squinted up at her. “Miss Granger,” he said, brushing graphite from his shirt. “Have I finally earned the honour of an intervention?”

She hesitated in the doorway. “No, I…” She hesitated. “I had a question.”

He waved her in. “Right. Do sit. Pretend this is a real office.”

Hermione glanced around. “This is a real office.”

Cassian made a face. “I am pretending it is not.”

She sat down slowly, placing the book on the desk, reverently. Cassian winced.

“It is a first edition,” she said, all serious. “A Guide to Foundational Spell Structures, 1362 print.”

Cassian nodded slowly. “Ah, yes. The thrilling edition. With the appendix nobody read and the footnotes that lie.”

Her eyes narrowed. “They don’t lie.”

He leaned back in the chair, “Miss Granger, I say this with all the love in my cold little heart, books lie all the time.”

“That is ridiculous,” said, bristling. “Books are written by experts.”

“Exactly.” He raised both eyebrows. “Experts with bias. With Ministry oversight. With publishers breathing down their necks about shelf space and scandal. Some of the most famously ‘accurate’ magical texts were written by people who never cast half the spells they described.”

She looked half-horrified, half-offended. As if he kicked a librarian, blasphemy in Grangerese.

“But the information’s been verified… cross-referenced!”

Cassian nodded. “By more people who never tried the bloody magic themselves. You know how many wizards quote The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 3 as if it’s divine law? It was written by a woman who thought Cruciatus could be ‘cleansed’ with lemon water.”

Hermione blinked. She probably had no idea what Cruciatus was.

Cassian pointed at her book. “And that… that is a reprint of a textbook originally funded by a bloodline purity lobby. You think they didn’t trim out anything that made half-blood innovations look clever? You think every charm that has ever existed got documented because it worked? Most were picked because they were easy to teach, not because they were powerful.”

Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it again.

“So,” she said slowly, “you think we shouldn’t trust books?”

Cassian snorted. “I think we shouldn’t worship them. Read them, sure. Learn from them. Then test what they say like it was scribbled on the loo wall.” He nudged a crumpled parchment aside with his foot. “The only real test of magic is magic. Not margin notes.”

She frowned, eyes flitting over the bookshelves behind him… organised, neat, looked like a small nerd temple.

“You are a professor,” she said.

“Scandalous, isn’t it?” He grinned. “Don’t tell anyone. I got a reputation for blasphemy.”

Her arms folded. “Then how do you teach if you don’t trust the texts?”

“I teach what works. And what didn’t work. And the bits that almost worked and left scorch marks on my face.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “You are clever, Granger. But clever doesn’t mean obedient. And it definitely doesn’t mean correct.”

She looked down at her book.

“I still think books matter.”

“They do.” Cassian shrugged. “But they are not gospel. They are suggestions. Compilations. Reflections. The moment you treat one like the absolute truth, you’ve stopped learning.”

Hermione didn’t argue, but she didn’t nod either. Her shoulders stiffened like she wasn’t used to hearing that kind of challenge from adults… at least not ones who wore their coats inside and used mugs as paperweights.

“What is the question?” Cassian asked, cutting through the pause. “You didn’t carry that tome all the way down here just to argue about bibliographic honesty.”

She blinked like she’d forgotten. Then straightened.

“Oh. Yes. I was reading about early wand-making rituals… pre-Ollivander, specifically the older Eastern European traditions. And I came across something about voice-marks.”

Cassian’s brows lifted. “Now that is a word I haven’t heard in years.” Technically, it was old Cassian who heard, but details…

Hermione’s hands tightened on the book. “They are mentioned briefly, but the text calls them ‘lost practice.’ Says they were used to bind a wand to a specific user’s voice. Not their blood or intent. Just… voice.”

“They weren’t lost,” Cassian said, sitting back. “Just shelved. Too specific. Too risky.”

Her expression flickered. “So they are real?”

“Oh, absolutely. Voice-marks were all the rage during the The Wand War of 172 BCE. Imagine a wand that only responds to your command. Right pitch, right phrasing, down to the inflection.”

“That is… impressive.”

“That is also a nightmare,” Cassian said. “Lose your voice, and the wand goes inert. You get hexed in the throat, your wand is a twig. Say the incantation wrong because your nose is broken? Useless. Whisper when you should’ve shouted? Boom, misfire.”

Hermione’s mouth opened, half-formed protest curling on her tongue.

He cut her off. “Don’t mistake complexity for genius. Some magic is complicated because it is clever. Some is complicated because the bloke who made it was stubborn, paranoid, and high on potion fumes.”

She frowned. “But couldn’t it be used for…”

“Security?” he said. “Sure. That is why they tried it. But the failures outnumbered the successes ten to one. People choked mid-duel. Got colds. Hit puberty. One poor sod got cursed into hiccuping and his wand lit the drapes every third minute until they smothered him.”

Hermione winced. “Still. Isn’t there something valuable in exploring it?”

“There is always value,” Cassian said. “Doesn’t mean it belongs in standard practice.”

She leaned forward. “So… you’ve seen voice-bound wands?”

He shrugged. “Not really. But I’ve seen other bits trying to do the same thing. Voice-locked wards, mostly. Useless stuff. A Muggle Walkman could beat it.”

Hermione squinted, trying to picture it, failing. “What?”

Cassian reached into the drawer, pulled out a battered cassette tape, and gave it a shake like it might still hold residual magic… or Rick Astley. “You know what a microphone is, Granger?”

She frowned. “Yes.”

“Brilliant. Then you know you can record someone’s voice. Play it back whenever. So if your magical lock listens for your voice to unlock… what happens when someone plays your voice back at it?”

Her mouth opened slightly, brow creasing.

He pointed at her. “Exactly. Doesn’t take a genius. Just a bit of tech and a button. Voice locks don’t know if it’s really you or a magical dictaphone. Wards never stood a chance.”

Hermione’s brow furrowed. “But… Muggle technology doesn’t work around magic. Everyone knows that. Electronics fail. Radios short out. You can’t even get a calculator to function inside Hogwarts. So how could a Walkman, or a tape recorder, possibly fool a magical ward?”

“It doesn’t have to work forever,” he said. “It just has to work long enough.”

Hermione hesitated. “But—”

“Few seconds, Granger. That is all it takes. You press play. The device stutters. Whines. Maybe the spell around it starts chewing the battery. Doesn’t matter. Because in those few seconds… the voice plays. The ward hears what it thinks is you. And it opens.”

“That is—” she looked like her brain was physically sorting the files, “—flawed.”

Cassian smiled. “I believe the term is crap. But yes. Magical purists got obsessed with the idea of ‘authenticity.’ They thought if the voice came from the lungs, it would be unique. ‘Soulprint,’ some of them called it.” He made air quotes with one hand, already sounding bored. “Turns out, magic is not that sentimental. It hears the sound, checks the parameters, moves on. You can fool it.”

Hermione sat back slightly, arms tightening around her book. “That’s ridiculous. If voice magic can be bypassed that easily…”

“Then it shouldn’t be used for anything important,” he said, tossing the tape back into the drawer. It clacked against a tin of old sugar quills. “They tried layering it… voice plus wand core signature, plus emotional state, plus blood resonance. Still beatable. Still a nightmare to calibrate. If you are even a bit off, sniffly, tired, angry… the spell says ‘not you’ and locks you out of your own bloody vault.”

“Vaults used them?”

“For about a decade in Bavaria. Then someone used a phonograph and half the noble houses started suing each other. It was chaos. Lovely to read about. Terrible to live through, I imagine.”

Hermione looked down at her book, feeling betrayed by ink and paper. “But the logic behind it makes sense.”

Cassian tilted his head. “So does communism. Do you know why it doesn’t work?”

She blinked. “No.”

He sighed. “Are you familiar with the term pejoration, Miss Granger?”

Another shake of the head.

“It’s sometimes called semantic deterioration or degradation.” He sat back, boot tapping against the desk leg. “Right. It is what happens when a word starts off perfectly respectable, then somewhere along the line, people start using it like it got a rash.”

Hermione stared at him, unsure whether he was about to insult her or start a sociology lecture.

“Take ‘spinster.’ Used to mean someone who spun thread. That is it. Perfectly honest job. Then somewhere around the time everyone decided women should marry or combust, it turned into an insult.” He gestured vaguely. “Or ‘hysterical,’ came from the idea that women’s wombs made them mad. Very charming bit of etymology, that.”

She looked mildly horrified.

“And then there is communism,” he went on, picking up a bit of parchment and folding it. “Beautiful idea. Share your biscuits, don’t hoard the milk. Then it turns into a power grab buried in bureaucracy with a side of gulag.” He folded again, forming until the paper shaped a sickle. “Now it is a dirty word. Even when you just want to share biscuits.”

Hermione frowned. “But what does that have to do with voice-marks?”

He pointed the paper sickle at her. “Same principle. Idea wasn’t bad. The execution turned it into a cautionary tale. Wands that only listened to your voice? Sounds clever. All it took was one clever bastard with a mirror charm and a stolen syllable, and half the continent panicked. Next thing you know, people started calling it cursed. Too risky. Too unstable. Boom, pejoration. The idea went from innovation to punchline.”

She opened her mouth. Reconsidered, scratched, and finally glanced down at the book.

“I just thought… maybe it was forgotten.”

Cassian gave a short laugh. “Magic rarely forgets. Ollivander probably has a dozen of them stuffed in a shoebox somewhere, humming in soprano. I’ve heard of fingerprint wands, too. Equally stupid. Thought they could key spells to the ridges of your thumb. As if holding your wand wrong mid-duel wasn’t dangerous enough, now imagine it doesn’t work unless you press the bloody thing correctly.”

Hermione stared, utterly astonished.

“Don’t let novelty fool you, Miss Granger,” he went on. “You treat every bit of magic the same way. Ask one question… ‘Is this useful to me?’ If yes, keep it. If not, bin it. No points for sentiment.”

Spoiler

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Author Rant ↓ 

Spoiler

Ah yes, the famed Reader Contribution. Staring politely. Appreciate the effort.

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