"Come, sit anywhere you like. There's no need to be so restrained."
Hagrid placed a plate of rock cakes on the table, then took the lead and sat down in a chair. The wooden supports creaked, causing Ivan and the others to worry. Fortunately, the chair was of good quality, and it was still stubbornly supporting the weight it should not have been carrying.
"Hagrid, this is Ron, and Hermione…" Harry introduced everyone to Hagrid, but Ivan stood up before he could.
"Hello, Hagrid, I'm Ivan, nice to meet you!"
"Oh, me, too." Hagrid shook Ivan's hand, but the difference in size made the handshake seem comical.
The dog Fangs were all over Ron, sometimes leaping on him and causing him to drool.
Ron had already hidden Scabbers in his pocket the moment Fang lunged at him, and although he had never heard of a dog eating a mouse, his recent experiences had made him paranoid.
It was as if someone had plotted to murder his mouse…
Harry and Ron then went on to complain to Hagrid about Snape deliberately picking on them in class, to which Hermione scowled but did not argue.
Yvonne did not join in the discussion. Snape disliked Harry and was very prejudiced against Gryffindor students, but he had no problem teaching them, as many of the potions he taught were modified by Snape himself.
In particular, he was unexpectedly given an "A" in his first Potions class, which made Ivan unable to curse.
Of course, it would have been better if Snape had come up with more questions.
"A Gringotts bank break-in?" asked Ivan, intrigued by a piece of newspaper next to the teapot.
Harry and Ron, who had been chatting, stopped and leaned over to read the newspaper. It read that on the night of 31 July, there was a major robbery at Gringotts, which was believed to have been committed by some Dark Witch or Dark Wizard, and that the goblins of Gringotts insisted that nothing was missing.
"It happened on the thirty-first of July," Harry exclaimed, as if remembering something. "Hagrid, as I recall, it was my birthday and we were there!"
"Is that so?" Hagrid mumbled, his eyes avoiding Harry's. He then changed the subject to rock cakes, inviting everyone to eat more.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were nearly broken their teeth by the brick-like rock cakes, but decided not to throw them away when they saw Hagrid's eager face.
Ivan secretly soaked a rock biscuit in his tea in an attempt to soften it up and managed to eat half of it.
When they got back, Hagrid was as enthusiastic as ever, stuffing baskets of rock cakes into everyone's pockets, even though they didn't want them…
The four of them returned to the castle together, and then split up on the stairs, with Harry and Ron heading back to the dormitory, and Ivan taking the time to search the castle for signs of the Room of Requirement.
This was because, in previous experiments, Ivan had found that no matter how much knowledge one had, without actual combat experience, the growth of proficiency could stop.
The search lasted until the morning of the following Tuesday, when Ivan found some clues on the eighth floor.
It was a wide corridor with many portraits and a tapestry of a troll clubbing Barnabas the Fool.
Ivan walked to the opposite wall of the tapestry and concentrated on the training ground. After walking back and forth three times, a door appeared out of thin air…
The door was so close to the wall that there was no gap at all, as if it had been there all along.
Ivan pushed the door open with a sense of excitement, and when he entered, the door closed behind him, revealing a large, brightly decorated training area, with dummies lining the walls.
[Ding, discovered mysterious place, Room of Requirement…]
The voice in her head was exactly what Ivan had expected, but the three-percent increase in the quest was unexpected.
It must be noted that the library only increased the progress by five points, which showed how important this place was.
"Split up!" said Ivan, as he warmed up a little and waved his wand to practice the charm he had learned.
The beam of white light hit the dummy and it exploded, sending splinters of wood flying through the air. Ivan cast a Regeneration Charm to restore it.
For the next half hour, the room was lit up with various coloured lights,
Transfiguration, Petrification, Flight, Illumination…
After nearly half a month of intense study, Ivan had mastered all the basic spells. Although they were not of a high level, they were all at least Level 1.
During his first try, however, Ivan soon discovered that his accuracy with the charm was somewhat questionable. A fixed target was fine, but a moving target might not hit even once.
Ivan also attempted to exchange for a Academic Genius Experience Card during actual combat practice, and found that this learning buff was equally useful in actual combat practice.
The increase in her brain's ability to understand and analyse spells allowed her to cast them more quickly and accurately, increasing her accuracy greatly and even allowing her to predict the movements of distant targets and trace the trajectory of the spell's light.
This made Ivan much more powerful than usual when he was using the experience card, even though he had the same spell level.
"I've become stupid and strong…"
Ivan sighed as he left the experience mode. Every time he used it, the decline in his brain's ability to understand made him feel stupid.
After a morning of practice, Ivan's head was spinning and his magic was drying up. Considering his afternoon flying lessons, Ivan took a short break before leaving the Room of Requirement.
As soon as Ivan stepped out of the secret passage, the long-awaited system prompt sounded again.
[Ding, exploration of the Unknown Passage has reached forty percent.
GPA: 20
Bonus: From 11:00 to 1:00 am, please collect your books from the twelfth shelf of the seventh row in the Restricted Section…]