Chapter 93

"Why was Doreumble... Dormble... Dumbledore here?" Hannah asked, fighting down a yawn.

"He wanted to ask me about yesterday," Milo explained. "He'll probably come back later to talk to you about it."

"Oh," said Hannah, who, if truth be told, would be just as happy forgetting it had ever happened. Then she shrugged, and went back to sleep.

Milo, whose brain was wracked with too many unanswered questions—Dumbledore, Milo had noticed, had an unfortunate habit of answering a question in a way that provoked twelve more—started memorizing spells simply to clear his head. Unfortunately, the arcane sigils in his book kept blurring together and dancing in front of his vision for him to make much progress there, and he grudgingly set aside his spellbook for later. He hadn't had trouble preparing spells since he was apprentice level.

So, I've been bewitched, have I? Enchanted by powerful and ancient magic that's compromising my ability to think logically. There must be some cure... Break Enchantment probably wouldn't even do it, as it only works on spells of fifth level or lower. This love magic business sounds closer to ninth level. Assuming magic here even has levels, of course. Maybe there's some cure to be found in the local magic... Dumbledore said there wasn't, but not even he can know everything, right? Maybe if I—

"Hey," Neville said abruptly.

"Uh, hi, Nev," Milo responded. "What's up?"

"Well, you looked busy earlier, but now that you're not studying anymore, I thought I'd ask what happened. You and Hannah look pretty beaten up, I mean. Did Peeves do something?"

"No, I got gutted by a Redcap with a sword."

"Oh," said Neville. "Wow. Why didn't you just pull out your wand and cast—"

"Didn't have time," Milo lied.

"Shame, 'cause it's a dead easy spell. Even I can do it, and I'm rubbish at, well everything."

"We should probably be quiet," Milo said. "Hannah's trying to sleep. Damnit, I did it again!"

"Did what?" Neville asked.

"Uh. Nothing," Milo said, having forgotten that NPCs could hear you when you weren't speaking directly to them.

"You're right, though, of course," Neville said. "You can tell me all about it later."

Milo lay back, cursing his confused brain. Everything had seemed so simple a few months ago. PCs help you defeat monsters and get treasure, NPCs give you treasure for defeating monsters. Everything was becoming so tangled lately.

And his combat skills must be going rusty as well; that Redcap, judging by the XP he earned, was only CR 2. He'd nearly died fighting it, which was completely unacceptable. The problem, looking at it in hindsight, was obvious: Milo's spell list was carefully optimized for what he had previously considered to be a typical combat. As a Wizard, his job was to neutralize as many enemies as possible in the first few rounds of combat so that his partymembers with knives and pointy sticks could move in and do the actual damage unimpeded. To that end, he preferred spells that could make as many enemies as possible as useless as possible as quickly as possible—thus, Grease and Glitterdust. But lately, he'd been involved in a lot of solo encounters, and Milo just wasn't capable of dishing out the kind of damage necessary to finish off an enemy—which is why he'd had so much trouble with the Troll and the Redcap. It meant he had to burn a much larger number of spells per enemy than he normally would, and, as a result, ran out of ammo precipitously fast.

"I should stop going out alone," he realized. "I need backup. That and the capability to rain down fiery doom, just in case." Milo briefly considered Fireball, but realized that at his current level, the much more toned down Kelgore's Fire Bolt would deal the same amount of damage without the same possibility for collateral damage. Also, being a Conjuration spell, he would get a few bonuses from his specialty school. Fireball would take longer to research, being a 3rd level spell (Kelgore's little toy was only 1st level) so Milo opted to begin research on Kelgore's Fire Bolt now and get Fireball afterwards—and maybe Scorching or Seeking Ray after that.

Thinking about spells, tactics, and general optimization had put Milo back into his more usual mindset, and he opted to continue memorizing spells.

A few minutes after the requisite hour had passed, the door opened again to reveal yet more visitors.

Harry and Ron walked in. Ron looked part worried and part excited, while Harry just looked distracted. Ron, to Milo's delight, was carrying a platter laden with toast, butter, and tea.

"Blimey!" said Ron. "What happened? We were worried when you didn't come back at night, but figured you'd just gone off to work on something mad like you usually do. Next morning, Dumbledore himself walks into the Common Room and asks us to take breakfast up to you and Hannah—hi, Hannah" (Hannah had woken up when they entered, and was staring at the food with undisguised greed) "—and blimey you look terrible." Ron was, however, carrying food, so Milo decided to let him live—this time.

"Yeah," Harry said distractedly.

Milo shrugged, and for the third time told the story again, glossing over the part where he'd accidentally knifed the girl now sitting a few feet away from him.

"I reckon you couldn't have just driven the Red Cap off with—"

"No," Milo sighed, resolving to punch the next person who suggested using one of the local wizards' simple anti-Redcap spells. "I can't cast those, remember? Anyways, what's up with you two?"

"What do you mean?" Ron asked.

"Harry's off in his own little world," Milo said.

"Is he?" Ron asked, looking over his shoulder at the Boy-Who-Lived, who had been staring absently at one of Milo's bed fixtures. "You're right," Ron said, surprised. "He is. Oi! Potter! What's going on in there?"

"I saw my parents last night," Harry said reluctantly.

"What, like in a dream?" Milo asked. "'Cause they seem to be going around."

"No," Harry said. "In a mirror."

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