There was another reason why I was getting caught in tag so much despite being faster. More than the tricks Ned, Alyx, and Erin used, was the fact I didn't want to come into this room.
In fact, I actively avoided it, both subconsciously and consciously. Even if that would end up in me getting caught, I didn't care. To me, it was as though there was no path to this room. Instead, it was just a wall.
And I wasn't going to try to go through a wall.
However, it was at this point I was forced to confront the lie I had been telling myself.
That I had no time to practice magic.
It was more than just having my time taken up by playing tag. Upon asking myself if I could've at least tried to learn magic, there was only one answer.
In reality, if I forced myself to, I could have squeezed some time to work on learning the spells. In other words, the only reason I wasn't working was because of laziness, rather than any sort of real constraint.