12 12 - End of first year.

It's Christmas eve and I'm currently at the ROR, I spent a few hours skimming every book in the bookshelf and when the bookshelf was replaced with another assortment or rare spells, knowledge and techniques with some being written by people who ended up becoming famous in History and the books containing some of their creations that were never released to the public.

I decided Christmas was going to be a free day where I can just have fun and laze around, enjoy the feast and not think about getting stronger or anything similar.

On Christmas morning I found that I had a few gifts which apart from the occasional small gift I got from the matron of the orphanage, was a new concept in this life. From Kevin, Ryan and Penelope I got a book about rare magical creatures which I surprisingly hadn't read before, A high quality wand holster and some foreign candy from Greece, in that order.

From Myra, which I wasn't even sure would get me a gift, I got an assortment of sweets surprisingly similar to the ones I had on our trip to Hogwarts for the first time.. I forgot how nice it was to have friends like this, I haven't really talked to people much while in this world and even in my last life, I wasn't very social, getting all these gifts made me kinda happy.

As for the gifts that I got for them, In order of Kevin, Ryan, Penelope and Myra, I gave a book about Obscure Charms because Kevin's favourite subject seemed to be Charms, even if he didn't express it much. For Ryan, I got a book on helpful spells used in everyday life such as the mouth cleaning charm and hair-fixing charm which was surprisingly hard to come by given the fact it wasn't sold in Flourish and Blotts, as for Penelope, I got her a few items for pranks with a letter that read:

'You follow the rules to much, you need to have some fun.'

As for Myra, I got her wand holster because I noticed she didn't have one with a note that said

'Constant Vigilance'

You know, I don't think i'm very good at giving gifts to people.

Nothing out of the ordinary occured during the rest of the year from Christmas to June and i just continued learning and training as much as possible while trying to enjoy classes as much as possible, my duelling skills increased at a good pace and I constantly pushed my body as far as it could with exercise along with training my magic along the way, I know that my magic acts as a muscle, the more I use it, the stronger it becomes and the more I use spells, the more used to them my core becomes and I made sure to not grow lazy or complacent along the way.

Anyway, i'll be leaving for the Hogwarts Express in a few hours so I'm having some last minute practice in duelling.

Activating Mode 3, or 'Average' The room had 5 puppets again, the same as the previous difficulty but instead of just throwing stinging hexes, they all started throwing different non-lethal spells, Quickly dodging 2 and blocking another 2 with 'Protego' I fired back a Tarantallegra, the leg dancing jinx quickly followed by a 'Petrificus Totalus' causing one of the wooden puppets to start dancing which looked sort of weird while the 'Petrificus Totalus' caused another puppet to freeze and stop moving, rolling out of the way of another spell which happened to be orange, I cast a stupefy on the dancing puppet causing it to stop moving while using 'Protego' on another spell coming at me, straight after, I cast a high-powered 'incendio' causing one of the remaining puppets to burn into ashes.

There were only 2 puppets left now, one fired a spell at me with the second following 2 seconds later. Dodging the first and shielding the second I cast 'Immobulus' on one of the puppets, causing it stop moving and finally a stupefy which the puppet managed to barely avoid but was unable to avoid the other stupefy straight after causing it to stop moving.

I've read the entire books instructions on the duelling platform and how it works and it says that these puppets, at full power are able to dodge, block and fire spells. So far the puppets have shown minimal dodging abilities due to their wooden bodies and they haven't really blocked any spells either, so i'm guessing they'll start doing that in a higher difficulty, probably the next level, level 4. If not, then level 5.

The last year students, who have gone through all 3 of their magical maturities are probably stronger than me at the moment because even if I know more spells than most of them, their magic is just at a higher quality and quantity. I suppose I could beat some of the worse 7th year students who aren't very good at duelling or fighting, but the talented ones are still able to beat me, though for my first year I think that I've done a rather satisfactory amount of progress.

In front of me is the Hogwarts Express. I never noticed before, but now that i'm leaving, Hogwarts feels like i'm leaving my home, Phoenix Orphanage has always been my place of stay but never my home, Hogwarts just has this atmosphere that makes you think of home.

There's no point getting sentimental, when i'm back next year i'll have some more fun, I'm gonna start making my own things, whether they're spells, potions or even pranks, in first year I just didn't have enough knowledge to develop my own stuff, but next year i'll be busy.

I can't wait until I turn 13, once i'm emancipated i'll have access to all of the Ignis and Merrygold vaults, including the properties, and libraries! The Ignis family has been around since the time of Merlin, the amount of books in there must be amazing! Not to mention, while the Merrygolds aren't as big as the Ignis family, they've still been around for over 500 years, they must have a ton of books too.

Gold can be made, for someone like me, it would be even easier with my future knowledge and NEWT/Master level on subjects I could easily create something to make money but books, rare books thought to be lost in time, they can only be found in places like the vaults of Ancient families, and I have access to 2 of them!

From what I've found, the Ignis family has always specialised in battle magics, they use weird and powerful spells that by the time the enemy has figured what they do, they've already been cut down, as for the Merrygolds, they made their livings as enchanters, in fact they're some of the best enchanters in the world, at the same time they're a mystery, almost nobody knows their enchanting process or how they work, all the public knows is that if an object is enchanted by someone of the name Merrygold, then it's valuable and high quality.

Getting on the Hogwarts Express and finding a compartment near the end, I once again lay down and summoned a book from my trunk, getting comfortable I think about what I should do during the summer.

I can't use my wand because of the trace which I've been meaning to remove, even in Hogwarts, there were no books that told me how to remove the trace, and I don't even know how the trace works, I suppose I'll have to make a trip to Knockturn Alley at some point, I also have to visit Ollivander and show him how the wand has been progressing with me over the last year.

I also plan on buying most of the books at flourish and blotts and absorbing them through the system. I may be able to learn books with perfect recall using occlumency, but anything that I've absorbed with the system just comes to me faster and more naturally. An example of this is when I absorbed a book on the Latin language, after I absorbed the book on Latin with the system, every word on that book comes naturally to me as if I've been speaking Latin as my first language my whole life, although, it didn't contain the whole Latin language, it has the basics at least.

If I absorb books on runes to the point they look like they're written in english then I'll even be able to use them in combat. The main weakness of Runes in combat is how slow they are and how they need a lot of concentration, but if I become a Rune Master, then I will be able to draw runes fast enough to be useful in battle and considering my Master Occlumens status, concentrating isn't that hard, even in combat.

Let me tell you, while someone with only a basic knowledge on runes wouldn't be very useful or even someone who's adept at runes but once they become a master then they become extraordinarily useful in a variety of situations, whether it's Warding, Curse Breaking, attacking or defending. My skill in both Curse Breaking and Warding isn't that high level because they can't really be learned from books, only the basics can be learned from Warding and Curse breaking through books, if you want to go further with them then you must have felt wards and curses before and be guided through how to do them or break them, though I've learnt all I can with them, however if or once I become a Rune Master, according to the books, I'll find it a lot easier to break and form Wards as they are slightly similar in a way.

And so that's how I spent my several hour trip on the Hogwarts Express, reading and thinking about what i'll learn and do in the future, which was also another boon of being a master occlumens, concentrating on multiple things at once was a lot easier.