On October 27th, Cassian found himself with the Fourth Year Gryffindors and Slytherins.
"Right. Summoning Charm."
The illusion above the classroom flickered to life, an open plain, sunbleached and harsh. Dust curling in the air, carved stones half-buried in the sand. A goat trotted past for some reason.
He gestured up without looking. "The oldest known version of this spell comes from Egyptian stone tablets. Well, sort of. Depends who you ask, but they've got the earliest inscription we can trace that says, more or less, 'I want that thing, bring it here.'"
A few students squinted up at the illusion as shapes sharpened, a series of faded hieroglyphs appearing on a crumbling obelisk.
"The spell was found carved into the side of a temple storage vault. Bit of a disaster site, actually. Half-collapsed, full of sand. But someone had scrawled this charm into the stone. Pulled loose offerings back when they were buried too deep. Or nicked by the priest who fancied extra olives with dinner. But those are later applications of the spell. Initially, it was something else."
He paced across the front of the room, hands shoved in his coat pockets. "It's one of those spells I love talking about. Not only because it's flashy, but also it works on three things... intent, mental picturing, and magical imprinting."
He grinned at them, raised a hand. "Accio wand."
Neville's wand zipped off his desk like it had been waiting for the excuse. It soared past a startled Daphne Greengrass and smacked neatly into Cassian's hand.
He turned it over, then pointed it right back at Neville. "Now. Why'd that fly to me and not, say, explode in a fit of loyalty?"
A few hands twitched. No one actually raised one.
"Anyone?" he prompted. "No? Don't make me start pointing at people. You know I'll do it."
Lavender tried. "Because you said the spell?"
Cassian blinked. "Yes, Miss Brown. Well done. Gold star. But not what I'm asking."
A few chuckles. She flushed pink.
Seamus piped up, "Is it power? Like... your wand's stronger?"
Cassian gave a long-suffering sigh. "My wand's not stronger. It's pointier. Nott?"
Theodore shrugged. "Because it was the closest wand?"
Cassian stared at him. "You think my summoning charm's got lazy radius detection?"
He tossed Neville's wand back. It wobbled in the air and dropped straight into the boy's lap.
"The reason is," he said, "most wands are alive. Sort of. Don't overthink it. Their cores, dragon heartstring, phoenix feather, unicorn hair, even the weird ones like kelpie mane, carry a sliver of sentience."
He crossed back to the front.
"Ollivander likes to say the wand chooses the magick. Which is romantic until you realise it also means your wand has opinions, judgement, and occasionally, a spiteful streak."
A few students shifted uncomfortably.
"But more importantly," he said, "a wand will submit when your magic does. When you lose, when you're bested, even slightly, it remembers."
"Now you try," Cassian said, flicking a hand toward the rows. "Pair up. Let's see who's nicking whose wand."
The room filled with a shuffle of benches and half-hearted muttering as students found partners. Wands raised. A few spells flew.
Only a handful of wands actually moved.
Tracey's zipped into Daphne's hand and stayed there. Dean managed to call Seamus's across two rows and looked smug about it until Seamus whispered something under his breath and Dean's quill set itself on fire.
Cassian watched it all from the front, arms folded.
"Good. Now, if your wand didn't move, don't panic. Or do."
He lifted a finger. "Imprintable items are rare. The more time you spend with one, the more of you it remembers. Your magic leaves residue. Intent. Pattern. Preference. All of it."
He paused.
"But before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion, no, this does not mean Accio only works on imprintable objects."
A few students looked relieved.
"You can summon almost anything," he said, strolling between the desks. "Books. Quills. Shoes. Rocks. Chairs. That awful scarf someone's knitted you that smells like wet sheep. Magic will happily shove any of it across a room if you ask properly."
He flicked his wand lazily. A chalk stub skidded an inch along the floor and stopped.
"The difference," Cassian said, tapping the air, "is distance."
He straightened.
"Most objects don't remember you. They don't care about you. Your magic hits them, nudges them, and unless you're close, focused, and very clear, they shrug it off."
He glanced toward the desks where wands had refused to budge.
"Imprintable items are special because they don't stop listening just because you're far away."
He paused, making sure they got the difference. "That's why you can call a broom from halfway across the grounds, or a wand from another room, and it comes screaming back.
"Second thing," he went on, gesturing toward the floating illusion of the wand. "Intent. You lot should know this already, but clearly we need the reminder. Intent isn't about shouting louder. It's not about rage or panic or clenching your jaw hard enough to crack your molars."
He waved the wand and the diagram shifted.
"Intent is thought. Clear, focused thought. Doesn't matter how dramatic you look when casting, if you don't mean it, it doesn't move."
"And third, mental picturing. The bit where your brain does most of the work." He pointed at Neville. "Longbottom. If I say, 'Accio plant,' what's the first image in your head?"
Neville blinked. "Er. Which one?"
Cassian raised his hands. "Exactly. The more you imagine, the clearer your intent gets. Your magic's not a mind-reader. It can't pick between twelve plants unless you hand it a picture. Or an emotion."
He turned back to the projection above. The goat from earlier reappeared, chewing peacefully on an invisible bush.
"Now. Here's why I love this spell. It teaches you the basics of spellcasting. Control. Clarity. Connection."
He turned back to them, eyes scanning the rows.
"Fifty points to anyone who can guess how this spell came to be. Go on. Best guess wins."
Hermione's hand shot up before anyone else breathed. "Was it for tomb robbing?"
Cassian looked at her. "Admirably dark. No."
Seamus gave it a go. "Food?"
"Closer."
Lavender raised her hand, slightly less confidently. "Fetching lost offerings?"
Cassian paused. "Tempting. Still no."
Draco muttered, "Slaves?"
Cassian's eye twitched. "No. But thanks for the cheerful image."
The guesses kept coming, transportation, building tools, battlefield use. None of them right.
He finally held up a hand. "Alright, alright, you're all wrong. Every last one of you."
He waved the illusion on, and the desert scene melted away. In its place, a cramped bazaar snapped into view, crooked awnings, stalls jammed too close together, crates stacked high. Behind one such crate, two men crouched, carving runes into whatever they'd managed to nick that week.
They looked shifty enough to be guilty of anything on sight alone.
Cassian pointed at them. "This spell was invented by a pair of smart fellas."
A few heads lifted.
"Two friends," Cassian went on, pacing a slow line in front of the projection. "They worked the western trade routes, Tangier, Tripoli, Alexandria, back when you could vanish into a crowd and no one asked your surname, only whether you had something to sell."
Hermione frowned thoughtfully. "Merchants?"
"Nope," Cassian said. "Try again."
Dean guessed, "Smugglers?"
Cassian snorted. "Smugglers have dignity. These two didn't."
Pansy leaned forward. "Thieves?"
"Closer," Cassian said, "but still wrong."
He flicked his wand. The illusion zoomed in. The two men were whispering to each other, one carving a looping sigil onto a silvery part of a brass lamp, the other checking that no one important was watching.
"These two," Cassian said, tapping the air above them, "figured out something clever. Well, clever in the way putting wheels on a chicken might be clever. Impractical, morally bankrupt, but undeniably funny to watch."
A few students laughed.
"They learnt how to imprint items," Cassian said, tapping the illusion.
Pansy spoke without looking up. "You said imprintable items are rare, right?"
Then she realised she'd cut in. "Oh. Sorry."
Cassian waved it off. "No worries. A good question, Miss Parkinson. True, imprintable items are rare. That's where their genius came in."
He flicked his wand and zoomed in on the illusion where the two men were crouched over a crate. One of them held a narrow, silvery rod, notched with grooves. The other was melting it straight into the brass lamp with a charm that sparked a little too much for safety.
"They didn't imprint the items themselves. They just buried something inside them that could be imprinted."
He pointed at the half-merged strip now glowing faintly in the lamp. "That metal is magical. Conductive. Bit of old alchemical trickery. It's the bit your magic talks to."
He paused, letting the thought settle.
"Most new brooms these days use the same trick. Little sliver of that silver stuff embedded in the core. So when you cast Accio broom, you're actually calling the metal. The broom's dragged along because it's welded to it.".
Hermione's brow crinkled. "That's clever."
"Downright criminal," Cassian said. "But yes, clever."
Daphne frowned thoughtfully. "So those two, what were they? Inventors?"
Cassian grinned. "Very much so. Not all inventors are decent people. Most of them aren't. These two were downright awful, but yes, bright as anything. Makes you wonder why they didn't use that brainpower for something noble, but life's messy. Opportunity, nature, nurture... and in their case, terrible judgement."
He flicked the illusion forward. The two men were now at a market stall, one waving a brass lamp about while shouting something dramatic. The other was slipping a coin pouch into his sleeve.
Cassian tapped the image. "These two didn't create Accio with the noble intention of retrieving lost heirlooms. They made it because selling the same few items over and over again was easier than actually acquiring or crafting new ones.
"Find a handful of decent magical items, slap a sliver of enchanted metal inside, flog them for a tidy sum, then summon them back when the buyer turns the corner. Repeat until someone notices, or you get bored."
A few snorts scattered through the class.
"They called it recycling. Others called it theft. Depends how many drinks you've had."
He flicked the wand again. The illusion jumped, now the two men were being chased through a crowd by a furious merchant swinging a frying pan.
"Eventually they got caught, obviously. Got chased out of Alexandria, banned from most coastal ports, and, rumour has it, hexed so badly by a retired hag-sorceress that one of them couldn't eat figs without convulsing."
The image dissolved, leaving only Cassian pacing slowly at the front.
"But Accio outlived them. Refined, restructured, polished into something actually useful. Because underneath the idiocy was a decent framework. And that's what matters. Magic doesn't care who made it. It only cares if it works."
He paused. "Which is why understanding where a spell starts matters just as much as what it's become."
Class watched the last flicker of the illusion fade, the two men vanishing like smoke blown off a lantern. Cassian let the image drop without so much as a footnote on what became of them after the Pharaoh's guards caught up. Not the point of the lesson, and judging by a few wide-eyed Gryffindors, probably for the best.
"Their discovery," Cassian said, "opened an entire market. Imprintable items. One charm, suddenly useful for everything from nicking your mate's quill to calling your broom halfway across a field. And, of course, it gave magical law enforcement a collective migraine that lasted a few millennia."
A soft ripple of laughter passed through the rows.
He pointed at the air where the illusion had been. "These days that special metal is regulated to hell and back. You won't find it lying about unless someone's either very licensed or very illegal."
He paced a slow line in front of the desks. "That's the bit you lot forget. Every spell you learn had someone behind it. A moment. A purpose. Some bright spark making life easier, or messier, or both. Magic's built. Stolen. Borrowed. Improved. Badly improved. Rewritten after someone blew half a workshop through a wall."
As the bell rang, Cassian made his way back to the desk.
"Right. A foot on Magical Imprint and Intent. Another on Mental Picturing."
Groans followed him out. He dropped into his chair with a theatrical sigh and threw one leg up on the desk, wand dangling from his fingers, already waving off half-hearted goodbyes from the stragglers.
"Accio Bathsheda," he muttered under his breath.
Nothing happened.
He stared at the ceiling. "Useless thing. What good is magic if it can't summon my beloved?"
He let his head thunk back with a groan.
Then the door swung open.
Cassian grinned.
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Accio Lurker!
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