Because of this sudden incident, the morning’s teaching plan was temporarily suspended.
After Newt finished writing the letter and sent it off by owl, he went upstairs to check on his young disciple’s condition again.
But before he could even knock, the bedroom door silently opened on its own.
His eyelid twitched, his intuition telling him nothing good would come of this.
He knocked and then pushed the door open and walked in.
“Kate, why aren’t you resting properly? Are you still practicing spells?”
As soon as he entered, he saw his young disciple still sitting on the bed, murmuring incantations, her wand pointed at the closed window.
Newt felt like he had endless worries.
He quickly went over and closed the window that had just been opened.
Then he turned around and glared at her sternly.
“Didn’t you just take the magic-suppressing potion? Why aren’t you lying down to rest?”
Kate flinched at his expression and cried out pitifully, “Teacher, I just wanted to test the Potion’s effects. I’m sorry…”
No matter how angry he was, faced with such an innocent, pitiful Child, Newt couldn’t bring himself to stay angry.
He could only move a chair over and sit by the bed.
“Then rest now. I’ll watch you sleep.”
Kate pursed her lips hesitantly and tentatively asked, “Teacher, did you write to Professor Snape?”
“Yes, I asked him to reconfigure the Potion ingredients. How are you feeling now?”
At the mention of this, Newt’s attention was immediately diverted.
Kate secretly tightened her grip on the wand hidden under the covers and spoke hesitantly, “I feel like the burden that’s been weighing on me seems to have lightened considerably.”
Then she leaned closer, grabbing Newt’s sleeve and pleading, “If Professor Snape is going to improve the formula, he should probably see my condition, right?”
“Teacher, how about letting me use magic first to feel my current physical state? Then you can write down the details and send them over. What do you think?”
“With such a powerful Wizard like you here, I definitely won’t get hurt, right?”
Her words were earnest, her reasoning sound, and it even included a bit of praise that seemed particularly sincere.
Newt sat there, actually beginning to consider the feasibility of this proposal.
“But your body…”
Ultimately, she was still benefiting from the advantages of this young body.
Although Newt had seen his fair share of trials and tribulations, he didn’t impose his past experiences on Kate when dealing with a Child.
Seeing her sincere and earnest words, Newt had no choice but to agree.
Successfully persuading her teacher to watch her cast spells, Kate became instantly exhilarated.
The only spells she had unlocked so far were the Levitation Charm and Alohomora, both of which were beginner-level simple spells.
Using ordinary practice methods would be rather dull.
The essence of the Levitation Charm lies in controlling magical power to make objects float.
Alohomora is even easier to understand—it opens locked doors, windows, or objects.
However, in many scenes from Harry Potter, there are also doors that even Alohomora cannot open, which is a limitation inherent to the spell itself.
Unless one creates a new unlocking spell specifically for an object that even Alohomora cannot open, but that is beyond the scope of magic Kate can currently perform.
“Wingardium Leviosa!”
“Alohomora!”
Two magical incantations were uttered in quick succession.
The small locked wooden box Kate had specially prepared floated into the air and opened with a click.
This feat wasn’t particularly ingenious, but what surprised Newt was that after drinking such a potent magic-suppressing potion, Kate still had enough energy left to cast two spells consecutively.
Indeed, Dumbledore was right.
This Child’s magical power was already stronger than many adult Wizards.
In the future, he would have to be doubly careful to prevent the Child’s emotional fluctuations from triggering another magical outburst.
“Alright, Kate, you should rest now.”
Thinking the practice was over, he wanted his disciple to lie down for a while longer, but to his surprise, Kate took out several iron rings from the small wooden box.
Some rings had already separated, while others were still linked together.
“Failed again.” Looking at the remaining linked rings, Kate couldn’t help but pout in disappointment.
She had originally planned to show her teacher how she used Alohomora to solve this thing.
“Uh…” Newt looked at this unfamiliar and somewhat crude little object, a sense of foreboding rising in his heart.
“Little Kate, what is this thing?”
She looked up, her little face still showing traces of frustration from failure.
“It’s a Nine Linked Rings puzzle. Don’t you know it, Teacher?” This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
As a quintessential Briton, a Wizard who traveled the world focusing only on magical creatures, he naturally wouldn’t know about such a thing.
“This is called Nine Linked Rings, a kind of small toy,” Kate explained as she reassembled it.
“When I was bored at home alone, I asked the Old Butler to make this toy for me.”
“Each ring of the Nine Linked Rings puzzle constrains the others. Solving it requires 256 steps. For Ten Linked Rings, it would take 682 steps.”
“I remembered this thing today while practicing Alohomora, so I wanted to see if I could use the spell to solve it.”
The Old Butler, feeling sorry for her, had slipped her a small handbag before she left, which also had an Undetectable Extension Charm cast on it.
It contained not only a change of clothes but also all the things she used to play with at home, to keep her from getting bored.
Kate deftly reassembled the Nine Linked Rings and picked up her wand to cast Alohomora once more.
This time, the Nine Linked Rings were completely disentangled.
“So the magical power cast through the wooden box wasn’t enough after all…” She couldn’t help but murmur softly, looking at the scattered parts.
Just like leveling up in a game, the higher the difficulty of the object targeted by the spell, the higher the spell proficiency displayed by the system.
Her daily energy was limited, so she could only try to increase the difficulty to save on time costs.
Fortunately, Snape had sent her the magic-suppressing potion, which significantly reduced the energy required for each practice session, so she didn’t have to stay up late like yesterday.
Watching his little disciple once again immersed in her own world, Newt was now at a loss for words and felt particularly bewildered.
Was his disciple now rapidly developing towards mastering one skill with extreme precision?
Are young Wizards nowadays all like this?
When he practiced Alohomora and the Levitation Charm back in the day, he never thought of such tricks.
“Kate, look at me first.”
He quickly stopped his disciple’s train of thought and asked with a troubled expression, “You… well, what’s the purpose of practicing this way?”
Ultimately, the purpose of Alohomora and the Levitation Charm is to unlock things and make objects float—otherwise, they wouldn’t be beginner spells for Wizards.
They are meant to be simple and easy to understand, allowing young Wizards to quickly get a preliminary grasp of spellcasting.
But he really couldn’t understand why Kate chose such an unconventional practice method.
Wouldn’t the end result be the same?
“Why?” Kate was taken aback, tilting her head in confusion.
“Shouldn’t magic be exactly like this, full of infinite possibilities to explore?”