Chapter 66: Busy Summer 

As expected, Ivan was busy all summer.

At four o'clock in the morning on the first day of vacation, Dobby, the house elf, arrived at Ivan's house, as in the past while at Hogwarts or at the Malfoy house, he began to do the housework.

Mrs. Mason gets up early to work and prepare breakfast. When she got up, the trash had been taken out, the floors, windows, and furniture were cleaned, and even the lawn in the garden had been neatly trimmed.

It was so amazing that she ran upstairs in a panic and asked Ivan what was going on.

After discovering what had happened, Ivan had to tell his mother that it was magic.

It took him a while to convince her, but in the end, she still didn't quite believe him. She knew her son too well, she knew he wouldn't just do housework without anyone telling him to do it especially early in the morning.

Seeing the suspicious look on his mother's face, Ivan smiled bitterly.

When she came out of her room, he called Dobby and told him not to do it again, but Dobby seemed to take it the wrong way.

Dobby looked at Ivan with big, bulging eyes and asked him repeatedly if there was something he hadn't done, and after Ivan said no a dozen times, he suddenly burst into tears, suspecting that Ivan was trying to get rid of him.

In the end, Ivan had to comfort Dobby.

Through this, Ivan realized that trying to convince a house elf to reduce his workload was just asking for trouble.

Fortunately the work for the newspaper was a lot, otherwise he wouldn't know how to deal with a workaholic elf.

Surprisingly, the paper sold no less in the summer than it did in school.

Even without pictures and Lockhart's novels, the "Me and the Basilisk" that Ivan wrote attracted a lot of interest.

In addition to young wizards, many adults subscribe to the paper. At first, they wanted to know about the Chamber of Secrets and the Basilisk, but then they were attracted to the other articles in the paper, which most of them found interesting.

This was largely due to the help of the thousands of ghosts from all over the UK, led by Nick Nearly Headless, who were now the paper's main source of news and who, with their round-the-clock sleeplessness and unique perspective on humans, provided Ivan with many interesting news articles and untold stories.

Over the next few days, the success of the paper caused a large number of owls to fly into their home, which frightened Mrs. Mason. So as not to scare his mother to death, Ivan changed his address to Hogwarts, and had Dobby pick them up and check them every day before delivering them to her.

The overflowing enthusiasm of readers and ghosts made editing and proofreading the manuscripts increasingly burdensome.

Ivan had intended to ask the Weasley family for help, but they had won the annual Grand Prize drawing of The Prophet newspaper and were off on a trip to Egypt in the first two weeks of the summer vacation. They were visiting their eldest son Bill and wouldn't be back until near the end of the summer.

Hermione followed her parents to France, although she didn't miss a single review article, the rest of the work fell to Ivan alone.

Harry and Colin had come to help him a few times, but he wasn't much help.

They tended to talk about Quidditch, summer jobs, or Sirius Black's escape. They only visited Ivan during the first few days of the summer.

Soon after, Colin went to his cottage with his father and brother for the summer.

Harry was in a lot of trouble since Ron had called the Dursleys on the fifth day of the summer vacations, Harry had been confined and kept in his room.

Ivan visited the house but they wouldn't let him in.

Just as Ivan was about to rescue Harry, Harry had Hedwig send him a letter. Harry told her that he had to be nice to them so that they would sign a permission slip to visit Hogsmeade.

From then on, Ivan had to ask Dobby to bring Harry food every day to make sure the Dursleys didn't starve him to death.

Although there were many manuscripts to edit, Ivan could handle the load by himself for now.

In his spare time, he needed Dobby's help to go to Diagon Alley to buy magic books on potions, Occlumency and protection spells, which were not cheap and cost him almost all of his savings.

A wand was needed to cast defensive spells, and underage wizards were not allowed to use magic outside of school, so he couldn't practice them, so after learning spell theory, Ivan's focus turned to Occlumency and options.

Occlumency closes the mind to Legeremancy, preventing people from accessing or influencing one's thoughts.

The trick to using Occlumency is to empty your mind so that no one can enter memories through magic. Experienced users like Snape can even fabricate false memories to fool others.

Ivan couldn't do that, in fact, he had trouble getting started, he had trouble emptying his mind.

There were always strange ideas in his head or he would unconsciously start studying a magical problem. After trying for a while, he had to make practicing occlumency a long-term goal, he hoped to master it by the end of his second year.

Besides occlumency and defensive spells, Ivan's option was not what he originally thought. This potion does not help a wizard permanently increase his magical power, but only increases it significantly for a period of time.

Ivan thought it was a waste to use the option to help him improve his magic power in a battle.

After finishing all the magic books he bought, he finally decided to use the magic potion to help him become an Animago.

Animago is a complex transfiguration spell that can turn a wizard into an animal and for most wizards, even for adults, this spell is extremely complex and dangerous, not to mention a wizard who is only twelve years old like Ivan.

During the process of becoming an Animagus, the practitioner must avoid becoming distracted for various reasons, resulting in failed transformation or possibly death.

And the Ministry of Magic records the number of Animagus that exist in the UK.

As a result, only seven have been recorded during the 20th century.

Of course, this is not the total number of Animagus.

Ivan knew many unregistered Animagus, such as Peter Pettigrew, who had been close to him, and Sirius Black, who was about to make his debut. They were all Animagi in their school days, and with that in mind, Ivan, with the help of magic-enhancing potion, decided to complete his Animagus transformation this summer.

He carefully studied the theory of transfiguration in order to have a solid foundation, but he also needed a lot of magical support.

Theoretical knowledge was not a problem, when Ivan had the journal, he consulted Tom about Animagus transformations and from there he received a lot of help. Voldemort may not be a good person, but his magical knowledge may be comparable to that of Dumbledore.

The problem in the first transformation process is that it takes a lot of magical power to turn people into animals. When an adult wizard tries it, he will only succeed in one out of five attempts, this is the reason why most witches and wizards failed to complete the transformation process.

Usually a lot of magic potions are purchased for practice.

The price of these potions are very expensive, however, the effects of those potions are far from the one you have.

Therefore, with the help of this potion, he will have no problem transforming and becoming an Animagus.

He practiced many times and gradually mastered the steps and, after a month of preparations and the beginning of the fifth week of summer vacation, Ivan locked himself in his room to prepare for his first attempt at becoming an Animagus. He did not allow anyone to enter his room without consent during this process.