Ending Maker: Fate Wizardry

Chapter Intro:

This fic’s premise is inspired by the webtoon titled Ending Maker/엔딩메이커  by Chwiryong and their illustrator chyan . Please check them out.

Story Starts

-=&<o>&=-

Ch 8.2 - Pardon my French

The bell above the door chimed with a crystalline note that hung in the air far longer than any natural sound ought to. Harry stepped through the threshold behind Fleur and immediately felt something pass through him—not hostile, but attentive. Curious. The shop's interior stretched deeper than the narrow Parisian frontage suggested, its walls lined floor to ceiling with slim wooden drawers, each labelled in faded gilt script he couldn't read. Sawdust and something sweeter—sap, perhaps, or resin—thickened the air. Workbenches cluttered with chisels, clamps, and half-turned spindles filled the middle of the room. A lathe sat near the back wall, its foot pedal worn smooth by what must have been centuries of use.

No pre-made wands on display. Not a single one. He'd expected shelves stacked with dusty boxes—thousands of wands waiting for their match, the way the books had described Ollivander's. But this was a workshop, not a showroom. Boisvert built to order.

Fleur moved through the space with the ease of someone who had visited before, her fingers trailing along the edge of a workbench. She'd had a wand since she was eleven—one of the old Delacour family wands, retuned to her by Boisvert when her magic first stabilised.

That was the advantage pureblood and old magical families held over Muggle-raised children like him. Unlike the story they'd read, Hogwarts didn't start at eleven here. Magical schooling began at maturity—eighteen—which meant the children of established houses had spent years learning at their mother's knee or under private tutors. The head start was real, and every attempt to introduce earlier schooling for Muggle-borns had been quietly blocked by the families who preferred to keep the gap intact.

Ted had told him it wasn't all disadvantage, though. Muggle-borns came to magic without preconceptions. They didn't carry the inherited assumptions about what magic could or couldn't do, the unquestioned traditions that sometimes calcified into blind spots. Fresh eyes saw things trained eyes missed.

Still. It would have been nice to start with a wand before the age of eighteen.

"Gabby, come 'ere—let's not disturb zem during zis," Apolline called from the doorway. Gabrielle, who had been seconds away from latching onto Harry's hand again, pouted but obeyed.

Hermione had already zeroed in on a glass case near the far wall containing cross-sections of various woods, each labelled with dates stretching back to the Roman Republic. Her eyes gleamed. Harry recognised that look. It was the look that preceded three hours of questions and a subsequent essay no one had asked for.

Jean-Paul entered behind them with Apolline on his arm, Gabrielle darting between them to press her nose against the glass case Hermione was studying—before Apolline gently steered her back to the sitting area. Andromeda brought up the rear, closing the door softly. Gascon—who had been avoiding Harry's eyes since they'd arrived at the wandmaker's shop—positioned himself outside. Harry could see the man's silhouette through the frosted glass, arms folded, scanning the arcade.

A curtain of deep burgundy velvet parted at the back of the shop. The woman who emerged was perhaps seventy, though the word old didn't quite fit. Silver hair pulled into a severe chignon. Dark eyes that took in the entire group in a single sweep. She wore a leather apron over a grey linen dress, and her hands—Harry noticed immediately—bore the calluses and small scars of someone who worked with tools every day of her life. A craftswoman's hands. He respected that instantly.

She addressed them in rapid French, her voice carrying the warmth of someone greeting familiar clients. Her gaze lingered on Jean-Paul and Apolline with recognition, then moved to Fleur with an approving nod.

"Madame Boisvert," Fleur said, inclining her head with a smile. "Would you mind terribly if we spoke in English? 'Arry does not understand French, and I would 'ate for 'im to miss ze conversation about 'is own wand."

Harry stepped forward and offered a small bow. "Sorry about that. I've been meaning to learn, but it hasn't exactly been a quiet few months."

Madame Boisvert studied him. Her eyes moved from his face to his hands, then back again, as though she were reading the grain of a piece of wood.

"'Arry?" the wandmaker asked.

He wasn't sure whether his name carried weight outside of Britain. He didn't particularly care either way. "Potter, Madame. Harry Potter and this is Hermione Granger."

"Ah! Ze one who survived, when no ozzer 'ad." Her eyes sharpened, scanning him for something he couldn't identify—perhaps a clue to how he'd survived the killing curse, or perhaps just curiosity about why he was in her shop when Ollivander was perfectly capable. "Curious."

"It is rare," she said, her English precise but accented, "for Englishmen to purchase from my shop. Normally, your kind goes to Ollivander." She pronounced the name with careful neutrality—neither praise nor dismissal, but the professional acknowledgement of a peer. "You are attending 'Ogwarts, or Beauxbatons?"

"'Ogwarts," Fleur answered before Harry could open his mouth. "All three of us."

The sound Jean-Paul made was not quite a growl. Something between a bear disturbed mid-hibernation. Apolline placed her hand on his forearm. The sound ceased.

Madame Boisvert's mouth twitched. Then she laughed—a short, bright bark that echoed off the drawer-lined walls.

"A Delacour in 'Ogwarts! Your grandfather would 'ave 'ad something to say about zat, Jean-Paul." She turned her attention back to the three of them, her amusement fading into the focused calm of a professional about to begin work. "Very well. Sit, please. All of you."

She gestured towards a long bench running parallel to her main workstation. Harry settled between Fleur and Hermione, their shoulders touching his.

Madame Boisvert pulled a stool from beneath her workbench and sat facing them, close enough that Harry could see the fine wood shavings caught in the creases of her apron.

"First, you should understand ze difference between what I do and what Garrick does." She held up a finger. "Wiz Ollivander, 'e stocks many wands. Zousands. 'E 'as a different school of thought to wandmaking—'e matches a person wiz a wand zat already exists. Zis is not inferior." She said the last three words with emphasis, correcting a misapprehension she'd clearly heard too many times. "It is simply very difficult. It is like finding your soulmate. Ze wand chooses ze wizard, 'e says, and 'e is not wrong. When ze match is true, it is extraordinary."

She paused, folding her hands in her lap.

"But sometimes love is not perfect. Especially if ze wand wielder changes who zey are—significantly. A wand chosen for a child may struggle wiz ze adult, if zat adult 'as walked a very different path zan ze child would 'ave imagined. Ollivander's method captures a single moment of perfect resonance. If you change..." She spread her hands. "Ze resonance weakens."

Harry felt Hermione shift beside him.

"My approach is different," Boisvert continued. "I do not match. I tune. I find ze combination of wood, core, and craft zat best fits your magic as it is—and as it moves." She searched for the analogy. "Like trying to recreate a colour from sight and feel alone. Not copying anozer painting, but mixing ze pigments fresh, until what is on ze canvas matches what is in your eye." She tapped her temple. "Ze magical alignment itself does not change wiz character. Ze person who excels at transfiguration will still excel at transfiguration, whether zey walk in light or shadow or even shades of grey. But 'ow zey wield it—ze shape of zeir intent—zat shifts. And ze wand must be able to shift wiz zem."

She looked at each of them in turn.

"Now—perhaps you 'ave brought somezing personal? A core material of your own?" Her eyes moved to Fleur. "I recall your mozzer brought 'er grandmozzer's 'air when she first came to me."

Fleur moved first. She reached into the pocket of her pale blue coat and withdrew a small crystal vial, no longer than her little finger, sealed with silver wax. Inside, a single hair shimmered—not blonde, not silver, but something between the two that shifted through warm golds and cool whites as the vial turned between Fleur's fingers, catching the morning sunlight through one of the window panes.

"My grandmozzer's," Fleur said.

Boisvert accepted the vial with both hands, holding it up to the light from the window. The hair caught the light and scattered it into tiny rainbows across the ceiling.

"Oui," Boisvert murmured. "Zis will do nicely."

Harry reached into the mokeskin pouch at his belt. His fingers found the vials as he thought of them—the mokeskin following the guidance of his intent. He drew out three containers and set them on the workbench one by one.

The first was a narrow glass tube containing a viscous amber liquid that occasionally pulsed with a faint bioluminescence. The second, slightly larger, held what appeared to be a curved shard of dark chitin, hollow and wickedly pointed—a fragment of the stinger, still carrying a residue of venom that beaded along its surface like sweat. The third was a squat jar sealed with goblin-wrought metal, and inside it sat something the colour of dark wine, dense and fibrous, still faintly warm to the touch even through the glass.

"Venom," Harry said, pointing to each in turn. "Part of the stinger. And the heartstring." He met Boisvert's gaze. "From a manticore. I killed it."

The heartstring was the size of a man's fist—thick ropes of muscle fibre compressed into the jar. Boisvert's eyebrow rose—just enough to indicate she had heard something unexpected and was deciding what to make of it. Her gaze dropped to the heartstring, then travelled back to Harry's face. He knew what she was calculating. The size of the heartstring implied the size of the manticore, and manticores grew slowly. A heartstring that large meant a creature that had been alive for a very long time.

Behind them, Jean-Paul's coffee-drinking hand had frozen halfway to his mouth. Andromeda's expression hadn't changed, but her eyes had sharpened. Only Hermione remained unsurprised—she'd been there for the aftermath, after all, and had spent a week cataloguing the harvested materials with the methodical glee of a magus who had just acquired rare research specimens for free.

Madame Boisvert withdrew her wand—a slender thing of dark wood, almost black, with a faint grain that caught the light like oil on water—and passed it over the vials in a smooth, unhurried arc. A thread of golden light spooled from the wand's tip and connected to the heartstring first, then the venom, then the stinger fragment. The threads pulsed once, twice, then stretched sideways and attached themselves to Harry's chest.

The connection held. Steady. Unambiguous.

"Conquest," Boisvert said. The word landed differently than her previous explanations—quieter, weighted. "Ze beast fell to you. Ze magic confirms it."

Harry nodded once.

Hermione's turn. She reached into her mokeskin pouch and produced three gems, setting them on the workbench beside Harry's vials.

The first Harry recognised immediately—the gem she'd shown Ragnok during their first visit to Gringotts, the one she'd been filling with mana since the day she'd rediscovered her magical circuits. Deep blue, almost indigo, roughly the size of a large marble. It sat in her palm and hummed, a subsonic vibration Harry felt in his teeth rather than his ears. The light inside it didn't reflect the room. It generated its own—a steady pulse like a heartbeat.

The second was a sapphire, raw and uncut. The third, a garnet, its surface rough and dark as dried blood. Both were inert—no magical charge, no pulse—but even Harry's untrained eye could tell the stones were exceptional. Hermione didn't buy cheap materials—his vault would eventually know of this, intimately.

Boisvert's wand moved again. The golden threads found the Veela hair first—the light brightened as it connected to Fleur, a clean, strong line. Boisvert nodded in satisfaction.

Then the gems.

The indigo gem didn't wait for the diagnostic. The moment Boisvert's wand passed over it, it pulsed—a flare of contained light that sent the golden thread recoiling before it steadied and connected to Hermione in a thick, luminous band. The sapphire and garnet responded more quietly, glowing faintly as thinner threads linked them to her as well.

Boisvert stared at the indigo gem. She picked it up carefully, held it to the light.

"Zis gem," she said slowly. "It 'as gained magic—not from a leyline, not from a magically saturated area." She turned it between her fingers, watching the internal pulse. "You were able to artificially inject magic into a gem wizout gradual leakage?"

"It's a process of conversion," Hermione said, her spine straightening, chin lifting, voice dropping into the register she used when she was about to explain something at a level of detail no one had requested. "The gem itself has an inherent crystalline structure that can hold magical energy. It's a natural structure that gradually locks ambient magic within it, though due to its lattice properties it can also discharge that magic just as easily. It takes decades for a gem to naturally retain magic and centuries for it not to discharge its whole payload upon an intentional injection of processed mana—or rather, magic."

Boisvert leaned forward. "But 'ow did you get past ze initial leakage from an inert gem?"

"The answer is active conversion. A crystal is mainly a highly ordered repeating pattern of atoms, ions, or molecules, which creates a distinct lattice structure." Hermione's eyes had taken on that particular gleam—the one that meant she had forgotten her audience entirely. "Despite its solid structure, on an atomic scale crystals are primarily empty space. But their repeating pattern is the key to how they trap magic naturally over time. A unit of mana strikes one of the atoms within and becomes trapped in its own pattern, bouncing off a set of atoms within the crystal. Over time, several more become trapped, sometimes dislodging other units, sometimes forming a complicated pattern of mana bouncing around the gem. After sufficient time, this pattern creates a stable lattice of bouncing mana units trapped within the crystal, but there's still space in between, so another system of bouncing mana interacts with the stabilised lattice and the repeating atomic structure—"

"Ahem."

Harry and Fleur coughed in perfect unison. Around the room, eyes had glazed over to varying degrees—Andromeda was doing her best to follow, Jean-Paul had stopped pretending, Gabrielle was examining her fingernails, and Boisvert's expression suggested she was genuinely interested but had lost the thread somewhere around "atomic scale."

Hermione's mouth snapped shut. A flush crept up her neck. She scratched at her jaw—her tell—but rallied in under a second.

"With active conversion," she said, restarting at a level humans could follow, "I constantly deconstruct and reconstruct the gem's structure, layering mana into each available space, building a stable lattice of atoms and mana together." She tapped the indigo gem. "I think gems like these could be excellent channels for focused magic. Perhaps laid into the wand's handle?"

"And you 'ave been doing zis since...?"

"Since I was roughly nine. So about eight years of continuous work on that particular stone."

Boisvert's eyebrow climbed. She placed the gem back on the workbench with the care of someone handling something she now respected considerably more than when she'd picked it up.

"Zis could be excellent for channelling," she said. "And as long as ze ozzer inert gems are imbued ze same way, zey would work for ze ozzer two as well."

She turned to the full array of materials spread across her workbench—the Veela hair, the manticore parts, the gems—and frowned. Not disapproval. Calculation. Her wand moved again, and new threads emerged, thinner and more tentative than the first set. They reached from the manticore heartstring toward Fleur and Hermione, flickering but present. From the Veela hair, similar threads stretched toward Harry and Hermione. A web of connections, faint but unmistakable, linking all three of them through the materials on the table.

Boisvert lowered her wand and looked at the three of them with an expression that had sharpened considerably.

"You are all romantically involved, yes?"

Jean-Paul's chair creaked as his hands tightened on the armrests. The sound that emerged from his throat was definitively a growl this time—low, sustained, and rich with paternal fury. Apolline squeezed his forearm. The growl subsided to a rumble but did not cease entirely.

"Oui," Fleur said, as though confirming the weather.

Boisvert nodded slowly, studying the web of threads.

"Ze magic deems zat both Mademoiselle Granger and Monsieur Potter would benefit from a piece of Mademoiselle Delacour—ze 'air, to be exact, freely given." She traced one of the flickering threads with her finger. "While both Mademoiselle Granger and Mademoiselle Delacour would benefit from Monsieur Potter's blood."

"Zis is preposterous," Jean-Paul muttered, low enough that it was meant for himself. Harry heard it anyway. "Zey only met recently."

Boisvert either didn't hear or chose not to acknowledge it. Her attention had fixed on the threads connecting Harry's blood to the other two.

"Wizards and witches are magical creatures in zeir own right," she said slowly, "but it is exceedingly rare for zeir... parts... to function as wand cores. We channel magic through a focus, you see. Unlike magical creatures zat live and breaze magic as naturally as zey breaze air, our magic is processed—refined through intent. It does not typically leave a residue strong enough to anchor a wand."

She looked at Harry. The professional curiosity in her eyes had taken on an edge.

"And yet your blood resonates wiz zeir magic. Partially, but unmistakably." She glanced at the web of golden threads still hanging in the air. "Very curious indeed."

She dismissed the threads with a flick.

Hermione turned toward Fleur and Harry. Both of them stiffened at the look on her face—a look they knew well.

"We can conduct some mana transfer rituals so that the gems are filled with your magic," she said brightly. "I'll handle the conversion process. Madame Boisvert, would it be possible to set the inert gems into the wand handles now and have them charged afterward?"

Harry kept his expression carefully neutral. The mana transfer ritual wasn't the problem. The sex was fine. It was everything else—the synchronisation of breathing, heartbeat, the precise timing of release—that turned what should have been pleasurable into something closer to an endurance test. When your mind was occupied with maintaining a magical circuit pattern instead of the person beneath you, things tended to... extend. Considerably.

Fleur's expression mirrored his own careful blankness. Neither of them looked at Jean-Paul.

"Very well," Boisvert said, the professional mask reassembling. "Everyzing you 'ave brought me—ze Veela 'air, ze manticore parts, ze gems—zese are all strong partial matches. Zey will form part of your wands, but zey are not enough on zeir own." She held up a finger. "Each wand requires at least one more core to complete ze resonance. And I still need to determine ze wood."

She rose from her stool and crossed to a tall cabinet against the wall, its doors carved with images of trees—oak, yew, hawthorn, elm, dozens of species Harry couldn't identify. She opened it and withdrew a flat tray containing what looked like paint swatches, except each was a thin shaving of different wood, and each one shimmered faintly with its own inner light.

"Ze wood must match ze colour of your magic," Boisvert explained, setting the tray on the workbench. "Its unique signature. Its unique colour against ze tapestry of magic."

She raised her wand and pointed it at Harry.

"May I?"

Harry nodded.

The spell was gentle—a whisper of warmth that passed through his chest and settled somewhere behind his sternum. He felt his circuits flare in response, then his magical core, then something deeper—Avalon itself, stirring like a sleeper half-roused. Not painfully. With a kind of recognition, as though something inside him had been asked to show itself and had decided to comply.

Boisvert's eyes widened as it glowed.

The light that gathered around Harry—he couldn't see it himself, but he could feel it, could sense its shape in the way the air shifted against his skin—seemed to hold Boisvert's attention completely. She tilted her head to one side, then the other, as though trying to see past an optical illusion.

"Rust," she said quietly. "Iron. And green. Verdant green."

She lowered her wand but didn't look away.

"Ze forge and ze garden," she continued, speaking more to herself than to him. "I see... iron. Old iron. A blade left in a field for a very long time." Her eyes narrowed.

She fell silent. Harry said nothing. The description had landed somewhere in his chest that he didn't like to examine too closely. 'The forge and the garden.'  A blade left in a field. Verdant green threading through rust and iron. He hadn't attempted to deploy his reality marble in this life—hadn't even tried to look inward at whatever landscape waited within him. But if the colours Boisvert was reading mapped onto what he thought they mapped onto, then the field of swords was still there. Still waiting.

And if it was—maybe Hermione could actually keep the promise she'd made to his Counter Guardian self.

Boisvert turned to Fleur.

"Mademoiselle Delacour?"

Fleur sat very still as the spell washed over her. Harry watched Boisvert's expression shift—the curiosity sharpening to something closer to wonder.

"Deep red," Boisvert said. She pointed at Harry without looking away from Fleur. "And... zat green again. Curious, zat it is ze same shade of verdant green as Monsieur Potter."

Harry felt something tighten in his chest. The same green. Avalon, reaching across both of them.

Boisvert paused, and her brow creased.

"Ze red is fire. It wants to consume everyzing it touches. And ze green wants to 'eal everyzing ze fire 'as burned." She shook her head slowly. "Zey should not coexist. But zey do work togezzer—and are in 'armony."

Her voice dropped.

"A truce neizzer fully accepts."

Boisvert turned last to Hermione.

The spell settled over her, and Harry felt the air in the shop change. Not the temperature—the quality. As though someone had opened a prism to sunlight and the resulting spectrum had decided it didn't want to pick a colour and stay there.

Boisvert stared.

"Prismatic," she finally said, and the word came out strained, as though it had been extracted under duress. "Iridescent. Like light through a cut gem—shifting, refracting. I try to focus on one 'ue and it splits into three more."

She passed a hand over her eyes.

"Of course, zese are just conjectures. I do like to zink zat if I understand your relationship wiz magic, zen I can better match ze proper materials to ze customer."

She set her wand on the workbench and looked at Hermione with an expression Harry had never seen on a professional's face before. Not confusion, exactly. More the particular discomfort of someone encountering the limits of their own expertise for the first time.

"Zough, I 'ave not seen such a tapestry of colours, Mademoiselle Granger."

She paused.

"Kaleidoscopic, perhaps. But even zat—"

All three of them flinched.

The reaction was simultaneous and involuntary—a shared jolt that rippled through them at the same instant, as though someone had struck a tuning fork only they could hear. Kaleidoscope.  The word carried weight none of them had expected to feel here, in a Parisian wandmaker's shop, from a woman who couldn't possibly know what it meant to them. The Second Magic. Zelretch. The operation of parallel worlds. The only type of sorcery that could have—

Harry's jaw tightened. Fleur found his hand. Hermione's breath caught audibly.

No one else seemed to register the flinch—except Jean-Paul, who growled when Fleur's fingers closed around Harry's.

Harry exchanged a glance with Hermione, then Fleur. The memory surfaced unbidden—a night just weeks ago, in Fleur's sitting room at the château, long after Jean-Paul and Apolline had retired. The three of them cross-legged on the floor with cups of tea gone cold, talking until the sky lightened.

Hermione had raised the subject first, as she always did when something had been gnawing at her. The Kaleidoscope. The Second Magic. The only framework that could account for three souls landing in the same reality, in the same era, with their memories intact. They'd ruled out Akasha—the reincarnation cycle didn't work like this, didn't preserve continuity across parallel worlds. Not unless something—or someone—had intervened.

They hadn't reached a conclusion. The tea had gone cold and the sky had gone pale and they'd fallen asleep in a tangle on Fleur's rug, and in the morning Gabrielle had found them and shrieked with delight, and Jean-Paul's eye had twitched four times over breakfast.

But the word kaleidoscopic  hadn't come up since. Not until now.

Though, if he still carried his elemental alignment even across realities, then Hermione's prismatic aura might simply be what an Average One looked like through a synesthete's eyes—all five great elements present, none dominant, each refracting off the others. Less a mystery and more a diagnosis.

That was the rational explanation, anyway. He wasn't sure Boisvert would find it comforting.

"Very well." Boisvert gathered herself, rising from her stool and moving to the tray of wood samples. "Zen we proceed. Ze partial cores you 'ave brought are excellent starting points—ze manticore 'eartstring for Monsieur Potter, ze grandmozzer's Veela 'air for Mademoiselle Delacour, Mademoiselle Delacour's own 'air shared between ze ozzer two, and ze gems distributed as secondary channels. But each wand will need at least one more core to complete ze resonance." She ran her fingers along the wood shavings, touching each one as though checking for warmth. "And I must match ze wood to what I 'ave seen today."

She paused, her hand hovering over a dark, reddish-brown shaving that seemed to drink in the light rather than reflect it.

"Zis will take time," she said. "Not ze hour I typically quote. Your magics are..." She glanced at the space where the diagnostic light had hung moments before. "Unusual. I will need to consult my archives. And I will need to source ze additional cores myself—what you require is not somezing I keep in stock."

She turned back to them, her professional composure fully restored, though Harry caught something in her eyes that hadn't been there when they'd walked in. A hunger. The craftsman's hunger for a challenge worthy of the craft.

"One hour for ze initial measurements and ze wood selection," she said. "Zen you may go and spend your money in ze arcade." A ghost of a smile. "I will 'ave your wands ready for collection before you return to England. I will send word to ze Delacour estate."

Harry reached for his mokeskin pouch. "How much—"

Boisvert raised her hand.

"We will discuss price when ze wands are complete. I do not charge for work I 'ave not yet done." She paused, and the smile became fractionally more visible. "Besides. I 'ave not 'ad a puzzle like zis in decades. Zat is payment enough for ze first hour."

Harry glanced at Hermione, then Fleur. Both of them were smiling.

He supposed they were about to spend a great deal of his money in the arcade. Hermione had already earmarked a gem shop three doors down, and the look on her face suggested his vault was about to learn a valuable lesson about the cost of having Hermione as a partner.

-=&<o>&=-

End

Follow me on my other socials

and stack additional voting

points on the story of your

choosing.

𝕏Twitter𝕏

🔞𝕏Twitter𝕏🔞

t Tumblr t

🤖Discord🤖

🦋BlueSky🦋