9 The first month and progress

About a month of Hogwarts and I'd come to the conclusion that magic classes were… well, they were what you'd expect from classes aimed at eleven-year-olds.

Slow, repetitious and all around extremely annoying.

That's not to say they were any different from the mundane classes I had to go to, though they did offer a more nuanced coverage of the basics to complement my magical self-studying, but unlike with the mundane classes I couldn't just doze off or read my own thing.

So what each class ended up being, is me learning something for the first ten minutes and then spending the rest of the class sitting there bored but unable to just read my own books since the teachers actually cared and would call me out.

The worst of the classes was Snape's potions 'class'… or as I like to call it 'a grown man bullying a child and taking his anger out on the rest of the class'.

Since Harry was in my class, what with him being a Hufflepuff and me a Ravenclaw, Snape spent most of his time cycling between two states. Taking points off from Harry and taking points off from anyone who asks questions because he's angry at Harry's existence.

At least the other teachers let anyone ask questions for elaboration, something that even I needed on rare occasions, without insulting the person who asked. Even if they did spend most of the lesson playing catchup with the students who didn't get the explanation the first time… or the second… or the eighth.

Even worse is that Snape gave quite a bit of raw information in his classes, it's just that he presented it in such a bad way that it didn't matter.

It was quite literally to the point that I, someone who had experience from my past life in understanding complicated subjects, needed to go and do research, since he didn't allow questions in a class with Harry Potter, to even fully decipher what he taught.

Which makes it all the more ridiculous, since he was actually teaching a bunch of eleven-year-olds!

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It was all very… vexing… possibly because I may have expected too much.

However, in complete contrast to my frustrations with classes (Snape in particular), my self-study was coming along wonderfully. Not only have I learnt various spells up to second year, but I'd also learnt quite a bit about the wizarding world. But most important in that was progress I made in two specific spells.

The killing curse and the imperius curse.

Now I had a couple of good reasons for learning what is considered the 'darkest' of magics… which all just came down to them not really being all that dark. Oh sure, they were still pretty dark, often leaving me in a particularly sadistic mood after casting them, but compared to the ridiculously dark stuff in the forbidden books from the room of requirements?

Like seriously, there was no way that curses that instantly killed someone or controlled someone were darker than ones that enhances someone's stomach acid and causes it to slowly eat through them. The only one of the "unforgivables" that I'd consider actually unforgivable is the crucio curse, for obvious reasons. Really, it made me think that the only reason that those three were 'unforgivable' was due to some arbitrary reason by the government… or I was missing something since there weren't really that many books that went into details over them.

Regardless of my misgivings however, I had still managed to learn the two spell, at least to the point that I could kill smaller animals instantly or control weak willed creatures… something that'll be very useful in the, once I practice it a lot more, for this coming Halloween.

Especially since I have (more or less) perfected the Essence creation array.

Yup, through the combination of the Room of Requirements and knowledge from my ritual book, I had managed to remove the pesky "gaining unwanted features" problem. In fact, using materials I scavenged from the room of requirement I'd even gone ahead and redone the whole apparatus in some better material, using tools made by the room.

How do I know this?

Science (sorta), of course… or at least through a lot of animal testing. It was actually a great way to practice the imperius curse, using it on the animals I captured with the body bind curse to force them to drink whatever essences I could make.

What's more is that the essence's were significantly more potent due to the small size of the animals, with it taking less of the red liquid to cause the same level of changes, so I didn't have to spend too long hunting down other animals to make the essences AND I discovered that it'll take about three to four hundred doses of an essence (compared to size of consumer) before they gain the full trait (adapted to their biology). Something that was a great discovery, as it allowed me to properly divvy up my time.

But with the good came the bad

While I had indeed removed the problem of gaining unwanted animal feature, I had not been able to remove the colour changing issue. This was especially apparent in the pink fur and indigo eyes of the tiny bank vole who I'd fed an even thousand doses (which was only five doses for me).

The only consolation was that, unlike the vole, I didn't get outrageous colours for my hair and eyes and the change was gradual enough that I could pass it off as a change due to growth if I took it slow enough.

So, in spite of the month of annoyance, I did get a lot done. I learnt a bunch of utility spells, got the basics of two of the 'unforgivables', started the first part of "Project: Gigachad" and am now able to start consuming essences again, though at a reduced rate. All in all, a net positive for me…

…and now I have to euthanize some small, cute woodland creatures because I don't need people discovering them.