Ch 7 Quests Part 1

"Was that an impression of me, Mr Weasley?" hearing Mcgonagall's stern no-nonsense voice from behind him, just seconds after making fun of her was the stuff of nightmares that even a boggart couldn't conjure. All of them gulped and turned around towards her.

The Deputy Headmistress was carrying a tartan carpetbag in one hand and leaning

heavily on a walking stick with her other. She had been injured during their Astronomy final while defending Hagrid from the Aurors and it looks like she had arrived here directly after getting discharged from St. Mungos.

"N-No, Professor. I-I wasn't!" Ron denied as he hurriedly shook his head. He would rather die than admit to the charges.

"Is that so..." McGonagall replied quietly before scrutinising Ron over her glasses for a few moments, "Nonetheless, I'll take five points from Gryffindor as a lesson, and in addition, you'll serve a detention with me for the rest of your days here. Is that understood, Mr Weasley,"

"Y-Yes, Professor—" Ron mumbled quietly but just as he was about to nod and silently accept his punishment, he suddenly remembered a pesky little detail about points... and then before he could stop and think any further, he blurted out, "But you can't do that, Professor."

Both Harry's and Hermione's heads swirled towards him and their jaws almost fell to the floor at Ron's brazenness. Their eyes looked towards him as if he had gone mad. Even McGonagall was taken aback by his reply before she raised an eyebrow and asked back, "And why not, Mr Weasley?"

"Um..." Ron hesitated briefly, while inwardly cursing his thoughtlessness. Still, he knew that he was already on the tiger's back and couldn't jump off now, so he may as well... "Because Snape—I mean, Professor Snape, Umbridge, and her Inquisitorial Squad already took all of Gryffindor's points... so we've got nothing left for you to take, Hehe."

The professor was silent for a while before turning towards Hermione, "Is that true, Miss Granger?"

"Yes, Professor," Hermione nodded her head with a reluctant expression on her face as if wishing that she could give a different answer to her favourite professor.

'Teacher's pet,' thought Ron and Harry simultaneously.

"I see..." McGonagall replied before turning back to look at Ron and the others with such a stern look that immediately had him squirming in his seat like a naughty student even though he had the memories of an adult Sam, "I heard about all of your adventures in the Department of Mysteries from... somewhere,"

"S-Sorry, Professor,"

"No, you don't need to apologise, Miss Granger," she said while shaking her head, "While it was undeniable that what you did was stupid, reckless and brash... It can't be denied that what you did was instrumental in bringing You-Know-Who into the open, so you should be applauded for that, and I would like to reward you for that...Hmm, let's see, How about 70 points to each of you from Gryffindor, and Luna Lovegood as well... Yes, That should do it."

"Really!" Hermione replied jubilantly before her eyes widened as she realised something, "But t-that would put us right head of Slytherin for the house cup..."

"Will it? That's good then—Oh! but, I nearly forgot," McGonagall eye's suddenly turned back to Ron, "It seems I can finally take the points, Mr Weasley. So that would be 10 points from Gryffindor... Ah, but that would mean that Gryffindor would lose the cup just by five points... such a shame,"

"T-They would kill me," Ron gasped in a horrified voice as he understood what McGonogall was implying. He knew how obsessed the Gryffindors were with their house points, he remembered how many times their housemates had outcasted him and Harry because of them losing a few points, and if they knew that they lost the house cup just because of him...

"I know," McGonagall replied with a twitch of her lip before turning around and hobbling out of the hospital wing, she had only arrived to see if her lions were alright after their encounter with the Death Eater, and now that she had, she could finally retire to her room and rest.

"She—How did she even get into Gryffindor? She would fit better with the Slytherins considering her pettiness," Ron murmured with a blank look after the door had closed behind their Head of House.

"I know," Harry replied, nodding his head dumbfoundedly.

"Ron!!" Hermione snapped while fiercely slapping him on his arm.

"What?!"

"Y-You! You just lost us the House Cup!!"

"See, Harry!" Ron said to his friend in a scared voice, "It's already started. What am I gonna do now?"

The door to the Hospital Wing opened once again at the moment and in came the rest of their squad including Neville, Luna and Ginny.

"Why was Professor McGonagall here?" Ginny asked curiously while placing a basket of chocolate frogs beside Ron's bed.

"Professor McGonagall gave all of us points because of the DOM fight, and we were winning the House Cup, but Ron here lost us Ten points and now we're not winning," Hermione supplied very helpfully.

"YOU DID WHAT?!!"

...

A few hours later, Ron was sitting on his bed all alone, fiddling with his status screen. Madam Pomfrey had kicked all the visitors out of the wing because of all the ruckus that they were creating at the end.

And because Pomfrey was quite irate with the fact that Hermione wasn't getting the rest that she should with her injury, since apparently "READING IS NOT RESTING, MISS GRANGER!!" so the brightest witch of their year had been force-fed a sleep-inducing potion and was now knocked out on her bed dreaming peacefully.

Only three beds were occupied in the Hospital Wing at the moment, his own, Hermione's, and the last one was an unknown as the curtains had been drawn around it since Ron had arrived here and only Madam Pomfrey went in to check every once in a while.

Anyway, since he was all alone in the wing and bored out of his mind, he decided to mess with the system to see if he could find any kind of new function that would help him in the future, something like a way to increase his stats, or a way to level up skills or maybe a way to amass experience.

Of course, he had thought about that obvious method of improving his magic skills by casting them repeatedly, but unfortunately, you were forbidden from casting any form of magic in the Hospital Wing so he couldn't experiment with that at the moment, and was left trying to find alternate methods... which was turning out to be frustratingly fruitless at the moment.

"Ah! Damn it! You stupid system! Why are you so useless—" he let out with gritted teeth while pouring out his irritation by randomly clicking on the status screen, when unexpectedly something actually happened when he double clicked on the Charms skill, "Oh..."

[Charms Lv 5 (15%)]

1. Wingardium Leviosa Lv 5 (70%)

2. Lumos Lv 5 (70%)

3. Expelliarmus Lv 6 (90%) 

4. Alohomora Lv 4 (80%)

5. Stupefy Lv 6 (25%)

6. Protego Lv 6 (35%)

7. Accio Lv 4 (40%)

...

..

"...so you need to double-click to open the drop-down menu for the skills..." Ron murmured while inwardly cursing himself for missing something so obvious.

And then he immediately began clicking away at all the rest of the skills, and sure enough, Transfiguration, DADA, and Potions, each of them had their own menus. While Transfiguration and DADA had their associated spells underneath them, the Potions skill had all the various Potion recipes that Ron had ever worked on under it.

But nothing showed up when he clicked on active skills like Flying and Duelling, which meant that it only worked on the various branches of magic and not simple skills.

"Well, at least, I learned something new..." Ron murmured with a satisfied expression on his face, as he knew that this new function would be a lot of help when he began levelling up his skills, even if nothing else.

"But wait! What if..."

Ron wondered aloud as his hand skipped over the Status and went towards the overhead menu with Status, Inventory, Quest, and other sections, out of which only the Status, Logs and Quest Sections were not grey.

He then tried double-clicking each of them and while unfortunately none of the greyed-out features gave any response, the Quest Section did...

[Quests]

[1. Active Quests]

[2. Quest Search]

'Ooh, this is new...'

Out of the two options underneath the Quests function, the Active Quests one was empty which made sense but when he clicked on the Quest search option, it began blinking rapidly with a blue light. And in the next moment, he felt a pulse originate from his body and cover the whole room.

The next time he blinked, Ron noticed that two exclamation marks had appeared in his vision. One was above the entrance to Madam Pomfrey's quarters and the other one was above the closed curtains around the third occupied bed.

"Ah..." Ron was shocked for a moment at the new revelation before he immediately clicked on the mark above the healer's quarters.

[Healer's Initiation (1)]

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