Julian received his meal twenty minutes later, and he had spent the wait reading {A Veritological Compendium}. The book focused on the types of wood and cores that could be used in the craft, along with the author's own findings regarding them. In this case, the author was none other than Ollivander himself, which made those personal observations especially valuable. Even so, the material was concise and easy to absorb, making it simple to commit to memory. Julian could tell that had likely been done deliberately, since the book was clearly meant to serve as a teaching tool.
After paying the five sickles for the meal and leaving with a promise to return, the old man once again walked through the doorway at the back of the restaurant. If Julian had been there to see what lay beyond it, the sight would have chilled him to the bone. There were three rooms in the back. One was a clean, well kept kitchen. Another was a storage room for ingredients. The last one, however, was the one that would have made his blood run cold.
It was a rather cozy bedroom, and seated inside was a man in a chair, as though he had been waiting for something. He looked exactly like the old man who had just entered, down to the clothing itself. The reason Julian would have been so horrified was that the old man's appearance suddenly began to shift and change. His body grew taller, and he became much younger. Within moments, the old man was gone, replaced by a lean man with white hair and two mismatched eyes, Gellert Grindelwald, wearing a faint smile.
The old man in the chair saw this and smiled back. "I take it the customer interested you, monsieur Grindelwald?" he asked in a heavy French accent.
"Indeed. Even as a seer, I never foresaw that this would be how I met him," Grindelwald replied honestly.
"If it is not too presumptuous of me, may I ask who it was that surprised you so much?" the seated man asked.
Grindelwald gave a small shake of his head. "Not at all, old friend. It was a young man I only recently became aware of, Nicholas Ravenclaw," the dark lord said plainly, making the older man's eyes widen.
"Truly? Did you try to persuade him to join our cause, qui?" the man asked, slipping into French at the end.
Grindelwald chuckled and shook his head again. "There was no need. He is already at the center of our movement, even if he does not realize it yet," he said, leaving the old man confused.
"Enough about the boy. What is the status of the mission I sent the others on?" Grindelwald asked, changing the subject.
"McGellen and the others have placed the sixth ritual circle in secret and are waiting for the roaming aurors to move on before placing any more," the old man answered seriously.
...
Meanwhile, Julian was walking back toward the wand shop with a full stomach and absolutely no idea that he had been only a few feet away from Grindelwald. His magical senses had failed to pick the man up at all. As far as those senses were concerned, the elderly restaurateur had only been an above average wizard in terms of magical power. The reason for that was simple. Unlike Dumbledore, Grindelwald was hiding right now, and because of that he was wearing specially enchanted hagstones that suppressed his magic down to seemingly normal levels.
Because hagstones naturally interfered with magic, Julian's senses could not perceive through them, since his magical senses were themselves magical in nature. That meant unless he already knew Grindelwald's magical signature, there was no way for him to identify the man at all.
Once he returned to the shop, Julian went straight to his room so he could continue where he had left off in the book. He also made sure to copy down the material as he went, using a simple copying charm on his quill so that it reproduced whatever he wrote while reading.
He had bought several blank books specifically for that purpose, since he had no intention of stealing Ollivander's books. Julian learned the properties of each type of wood along with their appearances, the best methods of distinguishing magical trees from ordinary ones, and even which woods wandmakers tended to dislike most and for what reasons. He stayed up until nine o'clock that night reading and memorizing everything before finally deciding he was done, and that was only after going through it no fewer than three times.
Both his copied version and the original were stored away safely, and he went to sleep pleased with the knowledge he had gained.