Chapter 7: Hyper-cognition (U)

A/N: The U in the brackets stands for unedited. I will come back and some point and edit it properly. Till then just bear with errors.

***

When she regained consciousness, she found her face having an intimate session with the floor.

"Ugh," grunting as she pushed herself off the ground, she felt a dull ache in her head, an overwhelming sense of weakness permeated her entire being - like it was made of lead - her mind felt sluggish and her perception of Magic tremendously dulled.

It was the exact opposite of what she felt after she assimilated the diary and the diadem: like her stats had decreased.

To confirm her conjecture she once again opened her stat screen.

{

Name: Ginevra Molly Weasley

Race: Witch

Magic: 3.8

Body: 0.6

Spirit: 3.9

Innate Abilities: Assimilate 1/3 (regen: 1/year (Total: 7/decade)), Parseltongue, Magic Perception, Superior Logical Processing Unit (1/1)

Skills: Cooking Lv.3 (4/4000), Flying Lv.5 (121/16000)

Magicks:

Enchantment Lv.7 (63806/64000),

Transfiguration Lv.7 (63997/64000),

Dark Magic Lv.9 (1001000/1024000),

Mind Magic Lv.6 (29800 /32000)

.

.

.

}

Sure enough, there was a tremendous decrease in her stats, clear for her to see. She'd gone from having the magical capacity of a powerful magical, to barely having enough magic to compete with an O.W.L student.

"Ugh. Damn it, Rowena. This had better be worth it or I'll drag your smart arse out from the underworld and give it a thorough spanking. Preferably in front of Helena." Ginny dragged herself to the chair and plopped herself down on it lazily, her limbs splayed out and eyes resembling those of a dead fish.

Lazily casting a Tempus, she realised that she'd slept through the night and into the next day. "6:30… Ugh." She groaned, "Gotta get back before people find it suspicious. Here's hoping the two did not wake up to find me gone. That's gonna be hard to explain."

Once again she dragged herself out of the chair and walked back to the dormitory, barely remembering to disillusion herself. On the way back, she stumbled repeatedly, dizziness threatening to make her lose her sense of balance.

On the bright side, it seemed neither of the two had seen her out of bed, and were peacefully sleeping.

'Gwen purrs when she sleeps.' Ginny noted. Any other time she would have immediately filed it under the list of topics she'd use to tease Gwen, but now the thought didn't even cross her mind.

She plopped into bed and directly went to sleep. She couldn't even be bothered to change out of her clothes.

-x-x-x-

"Oi, wake up, Ginny, it's 12:30 already, you'll miss lunch too if you sleep any longer."

She was dragged out the deepest realms of Morpheus by Aileen, "Mmm…" she was shaken awake, she groggily pouted, "It's a weekend, innit? Why'd you wake me up?"

"Because it's 12:30 now, and you've missed breakfast. Now get up or I'll drag you to the Great Hall."

"Alright, Alright, I'll get up."

The lethargic feeling still permeated her being, making her feel like she had bricks for arms and trees for legs.

She dragged herself to the washroom, cleaned herself up just enough. By the time she was ready, it was time for lunch. Aileen and Gwen had already left.

"Maybe some food will make me feel better?" she mused.

She was very frustrated that her 'hard-earned' stat gain was almost completely negated. Now she had to assimilate something special to regain her stats and might even have to wait for her Special Ability to regenerate a few times to completely recover her stats.

'Thankfully, my control over magic is still there, in fact, it might be better than ever.' she mused. While her Magic had decreased, her experience in controlling her Magic did not. With her experience in controlling vastly greater quantities of Magic, it would be child's play to control her current quantity.

-x-x-x-

In the Great Hall, Aileen and Gwen were staring at their roommate as if she were a monster.

"How could you eat so much?!" Gwen stared at Ginny as she gobbled down food with such enthusiasm it would make the Chinese Taotie look up to her in admiration. And yes, the Taotie did really exist. They were quite endangered, however.

Ginny didn't care. She was too busy channelling her inner Ron to fill up her tummy that had decided to cosplay a blackhole for some reason, while, in her mind, she was still cursing Rowena to the depths of hell.

-x-x-x-

Back in the common room, she lay down on the sofa by the fireplace enjoying while Ron mopped the floor with Harry in chess. Over and over.

As she concentrated on the game, her surroundings gradually slowed and dimmed, leaving only the board and its pieces in her field of vision

That's when something strange happened. She suddenly felt her mind kick into high gear, as if entering a state of hyper-focus in which she could suddenly 'see' the entire game play out in her mind, from start to finish. Even if she had not watched the game from the start, by deducing every single possible move backwards, she could deduce the exact moves that Ron and Harry had played in order to get to this situation. As she continued to concentrate, observing the current pawn structure and positions of the remaining pieces, she could immediately tell that Harry would be cowed and would not be able to make a comeback for the rest of the game.

As Harry reached out to make his move, she blurted out, "Move your pawn to F4."

Harry paused and turned to look at her, and gave her a witty, "Huh?"

"The Pawn in F2, move it to F4."

He looked down and then shrugged, he knew he would lose anyway; he'd never won against Ron, he might as well give it a try.

Then he instructed his pieces, "Pawn to F4."

"Hohoho~! What a move! For the King, I shall lay down my life!" and proceeded to get slaughtered by the Black Pawn.

"Now you have an opening for your queen to infiltrate and threaten a checkmate. Ron won't be able to do much now, since he has to defend his King."

Ron: "???"

Ron was dumbfounded.

"Blimey, Ginny. Since when did you get so good at chess?" a flabbergasted Ron turned to look at his sister.

"Eh, just a stroke of luck." she waved her hand dismissively. Stifling a yawn as she got up, "Well, I'm going to turn in early today. Had too much lunch. See you tomorrow."

She waved bid both a good night and lazily walked to her dorms, while stifling another yawn.

'Interesting…' in that moment when she was hyper-focussed on the chessboard, her newest ability had activated, allowing her to easily deduce and navigate a staggering number of possible tactical manoeuvres in but a few seconds and also deduce backwards to figure out exactly who played what.

However, after that she also experienced the immense strain it put on her mind, body and magic. In fact, she believed that if she had done the same amount of thinking, but without using her innate ability, the consumption would be more or less the same.

This was pretty much Hyper-cognition, but with zero harm to her brain and spirit, unlike the traditional one using the cognitive aspect of Mind Magic; where, if one wasn't very careful, they could suffer anything between permanent brain damage to becoming completely brain dead or perhaps even end up believing they were teacups. This was why no one dared to use Mind Arts to boost their minds beyond normal, otherwise, the Wizarding World would have colonised half the galaxy or something.

The Ravenclaw Diadem could be said to be the epitome of the cognitive aspect of Mind Arts.

'No, the diadem might not have been so perfect and there must have been a price to pay.' she mused. She remembered very well that Rowena had fallen very ill at some point in time and had sent the Bloody Baron to bring the Grey Lady back because she believed she would not live much longer.

'If my assumption is correct, she might have overused the diadem, causing the condition of her body to deteriorate to the point where she knew that she would not be of this world for long.

'However, I don't have to worry about paying such a price. For one, my Innate Abilities are part of me and will automatically shut down if there is a possibility of harm. Secondly, my assimilation ability will remove everything detrimental to my health, even if doing so would make the ability useless.' She calculated as she dressed into her sleeping gown.

'I should begin by gaining perfect control over this ability.' She made mental notes as she pondered how to go about training her newest ability. Unfortunately, this time around, she would not have the aid of Moldy-shorts' memories because as a consequence of splitting his soul, he permanently lost the sanctity of his mind which in turn made him forever unable to enhance his cognitive abilities using Mind Arts. Though he did not really need it. Just his normal state was beyond what normal magicals could reach.

After a bit more planning, she drifted into slumber.

-x-x-x-

It took an entire month to gain just a rudimentary control over her newest ability. There was nothing she could do, as each time she triggered it, she would be left depleted, feeling as if she were running on fumes. Without a good nights' worth of sleep, her weariness would just not go away. Therefore, she only activated it just before going to bed.

On the plus side, she realised that her Magic, Spirit and Body was growing much faster than she'd anticipated. She reckoned that, in around just a year, she would regain the stats she possessed before she had gained the "Superior Logical Processing Unit" ability. This, however, she felt was too long. Her goal was to possess enough power to at least match the likes of Voldemort and the arguably more powerful Dumbledore by the time she graduated, i.e. in five years.

An impossible task, by all means.

Even with her absolutely broken cheat, she deemed this to be very difficult, as Voldemort and Dumbledore were absolute monsters. From Riddle's memories when he was 28 years old - which she gained from the diadem - it was revealed that he already possessed enough power to take over Hogwarts by himself if Dumbledore were to not exist. He could conquer Hogwarts and its resident magicals - the Professors and students - all by himself despite the tremendously powerful wards. Well, if they didn't run away, that is.

And a Wizard's magic only grows with age, it's just the deteriorating body that holds them back.

-x-x-x-

During these few months, she had finally gotten used to life at Hogwarts and the Wizarding World in general, despite its quirks. She fell into a somewhat monotonous but otherwise peaceful school life. Though, she felt that her idea of 'peaceful life' may be very different from others'. To her, life was peaceful as long as there were no immediate threats to the survival of her and those around her.

Her daily schedule included waking up at 7 - courtesy of Hogwarts - getting ready; spending some time jogging in the Room of Requirement with the help of her makeshift treadmill; having breakfast with her roommates and occasionally with the Golden Trio; going to class, being a teacher's pet, earning points (of course, she made sure to fail a few times here and there).

Then she squandered her points in Potions as Snape seemed hell-bent on making her life difficult. And she would never swallow her anger and keep her head down like a mature person, no, no, no - that did not fit her nature. At all. Ginny Weasley was very, very petty.

She would have her revenge at the earliest opportunity. One especially remarkable example was when a vial of very concentrated Hair-Raising Potion that was submitted was found to have a violent temper, exploding in Snape's face after being handed over, giving everyone present the most fabulous view of Snape's greasy hair sticking straight up as if he'd been electrocuted, causing most Gryffindors to burst out laughing. Even a few Slytherins could not hold back their sniggers. That day Gryffindor lost more than a hundred points - almost one hundred and fifty - in one go. Even Slytherin lost a few points. As Snape's reaction was to dock 5 points from everyone who'd laughed. Ginny herself lost 50 points!

Did she regret it? Not one bit!

Suffice to say, she'd earned herself several weeks' worth of detentions and lost all the advantage she'd gained in the past several weeks. McGonagall was not happy. She did not gain a single extra point in Transfiguration class for the next few weeks. Oh, she was still given points for the normal curriculum, but the extra points she'd normally gain from doing work beyond it were nowhere to be seen (McGonagall still made her do the extra work). She also sent a letter home, explaining her misdeeds to Molly and Arthur, on top of that, she was given a lecture nearly two hours long.

She was also given a lecture by Mini-McGonagall - Hermione, who was scandalised and horrified that a person who was just as 'hard-working' as her would do something like this!

On the other hand, she instantly became a celebrity in Gryffindor, and was given the titles - The-Girl-Who-Dared, Batslayer and Hair-Raiser.

Aileen looked at her like she was looking at her idol and expressed her yearning to learn the Ways of the Hair-Raiser. Snape docked points from her quite often as it was very apparent she'd not inherited her mother's talent in potioneering and made a lot of mistakes.

The ever sweet Gwen - bless her heart - was worried sick for almost a week, fearing that her roommate might get expelled for such behaviour.

Anyway, the rest of her schedule included finishing homework in History of Magic; spending some time with her roommates (read teasing Gwen) or the Golden Trio and occasionally Fred and George - who pretty much considered her a part of their 'gang' of pranksters because she had given them many ideas for pranks (well she just reiterated whatever they would do in the future) and spending the rest of her time cooped up in the library - something a certain bushy-haired girl quite approved - devouring tome after tome of magic, before using her newest hax to quickly digest whatever she'd memorised at night.

One might ask, why, despite already having Riddle's own expertise in magic, she still studied magic herself. There did not seem to be a point to it, and seemed like a waste of time.

She discovered the importance of having her own understanding of magic. Every witch or wizard had their own way of casting magic: a way of casting that was best suited to themselves. She realised that as she paid attention to the Professor's classes, comprehended and drew her own conclusions - which was incidentally quite different from Riddle's own - her Magic was far more responsive than before, when she only had Riddle's understanding.

It was through this phenomenon that she came to the conclusion that no matter how brilliant you were, if you did not have your understanding of magic, you would never reach your full potential.

Just like that, days cascaded like a river, merging into weeks 'til Hallow's Eve was nigh.