Five o’clock in the morning—a bit later than Kobe’s famous early routine.
Inside the circular Gryffindor common room, several upperclassmen had already claimed the best seats.
Sitting upright, they silently memorized passages from their textbooks, leaning forward every now and then to take notes.
Mason let out a long yawn and scanned the room.
Miss Beaver was nowhere to be seen, nor was Percy.
None of the famously high-scoring Gryffindors were present.
Oh, wait—he did spot the captain of their house Quidditch team.
What was his name again?
Mason sneakily drifted over.
Oliver Wood hastily covered the parchment on his table, letting Mason catch only a few capitalized annotations.
Case solved: classic last-minute cramming.
Wood straightened his back, feeling a bit self-conscious.
Freshman almost never woke up this early.
Then he took a closer look.
“Aren’t you that new student who beat up a Slytherin at the Sorting Ceremony?
Ma…
Mason, right?
I’m Oliver Wood, current captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team!”
As long as you beat up Slytherins, we’re brothers for life.
“Quidditch?” Mason wasn’t particularly interested in sports, but since he was waiting around for Miss Beaver anyway, there was no harm in chatting with Wood for a bit.
“You don’t know Quidditch?
I assumed you came from a wizarding family!
Let me tell you, there is no sport more wizardly than Quidditch.
Take this paper I’m writing, for example: *On the Impact of the Invention of the Cushioning Charm on the Treatment of Hemorrhoids in the Wizarding World*.
You don’t know the Cushioning Charm?
No problem, I’ll explain it in a bit…”
“Who knew wizards had an anorectal department?” Mason muttered under his breath, surprisingly intrigued by Wood’s essay topic.
“Odonnell was the first to realize that broomstick sports were rather unforgiving to hemorrhoid sufferers.
When he accelerated into a dive on the pitch, a wooden splinter on his broom…”
*Hiss—*
Mason and several nearby Gryffindors, who were equally disinclined to study, gasped in unison.
The temperature in the common room instantly plummeted.
“…After the Cushioning Charm was invented, the application of concentrated Essence of Dittany to the affected region saw a drastic drop, indirectly causing the bankruptcy of the Souras Brothers Potions Co.
…”
When Hermione finally entered the common room, she was greeted by a bizarre scene: a group of hardworking Gryffindor students sitting in a circle, staring up at Wood as he passionately decried the hazards of hemorrhoids from the center of the room.
He urged the young wizards to stay active—preferably by practicing on broomsticks—and suggested they might even discover a natural gift for Quidditch.
Percy, the prefect who wished to remain anonymous, led the room in emotional, tear-filled applause.
Hermione immediately locked eyes with Mason, who was egging the crowd on from the front.
Yesterday he had mentioned wanting her help finding his way around.
“I didn’t say we had to wake up *this* early…”
Wood finally wrapped up his speech.
Before leaving, he patted Mason, who had been acting as his hype man the whole time.
“I see great potential in you, kid.
Maybe we’ll be teammates one day.”
The other Gryffindors remembered their original reason for waking up early, and quiet descended over the room once more.
“You like Quidditch?” Hermione sat across from him, casting a glance at Wood’s paper on the table.
Truth be told, her eyes held a subtle hint of disdain.
Mason pulled out the textbook hidden behind his back and offered a flimsy excuse: “Actually, I just wanted to wake up early to preview our lessons.”
“Then should I leave?” Hermione rolled her eyes.
Yesterday she had overheard her roommates calling her an oddball behind her back, but it seemed Mason wasn’t much better.
“Your book is upside down.
Besides, we have Herbology first.”
“Huh?” Mason turned the cover sideways to check: *”Forty-Nine Ways to Lull Young Wizards to Sleep—Spells at the End”*.
“Seamus, you set me up!”
Wood darted back to grab his paper.
He was bursting with inspiration now and couldn’t wait to submit it to the *S.H.I.T.* journal tomorrow.
The textbooks and learning equipment Mason needed as a first-year were all in the luggage transferred over yesterday.
It included three sets each of autumn and winter wizard robes.
Wearing them boosted his maximum mana by fifty points.
Mason had also borrowed Seamus’s robe to try it on; it yielded the exact same fifty-point boost.
It seemed blank, unenchanted robes had a fixed upper limit.
Mason recalled that Hogwarts had a game version—and he had arrived just in time for free enrollment, though he hadn’t played it much.
He hoped those outfits from the game existed somewhere in Hogwarts; their stat bonuses certainly wouldn’t be lower than a basic robe.
Back in the dormitory, Harry and the others were still sleeping soundly.
Having packed their books, Mason and Hermione were already nearing the Great Hall.
“Isn’t that book on your belt heavy?” Hermione asked, curious.
Mason’s Beginner’s Journal had a prominent copper-plated cover.
Setting the weight aside, wasn’t he worried about the metal rusting?
“Finally, someone asks me!” Mason unbuckled the belt with one hand and handed the Beginner’s Journal to Hermione.
“This is my wand.
Ever seen one of these, you Brit?”
“A wand?” Hermione weighed the spellbook in her hand.
It was indeed heavy.
Only a few runes decorated its edges, and no matter how hard she pulled, the closed pages wouldn’t budge.
*Hey!
Don’t go tossing it around!*
“It’s a family tradition.
It frees me from the constraints of wand casting.
My understanding and engravings of spells are stored inside.
It can’t be opened without my permission.” Mason snapped his fingers, and the Beginner’s Journal could be flipped open again.
Hermione glanced inside.
The text was in a language she didn’t recognize, so she promptly closed it.
“I thought you came from an ordinary family…
Anything that needs a lock holds secrets.
Take it back.
I was just curious about what it did.”
“It’s not that hard to make.
In fact, I remember another type of spellbook that was bound tightly with iron chains.
In emergencies, you could unhook it and use it as a morningstar.
Supposedly inspired by a monastery.”
Chatting casually, the two strolled toward the greenhouses near the edge of the castle grounds.
“A lion should always be full of energy, wouldn’t you say, my dear?” Professor Sprout walked over with a warm smile, patting Hermione on the shoulder approvingly.
Young wizards grew fast; in two years, she probably wouldn’t even be able to reach her shoulder.
“We were just a bit excited, Professor.
Oh, by the way, I have a question…”
Hermione pulled out her textbook and pointed to two distinct herbs, looking somewhat confused about the differences between them.
“Ah, I knew they shouldn’t have placed illustrations of plants from different growth stages side by side just for symmetry.
Come into the greenhouse and take a look, children—you lot too.” Professor Sprout gestured to Mason and a few cold-eyed Slytherins nearby.
“The most obvious difference between these two plants is the season.
Although their leaves and stems look almost identical, one will never sprout before the other blossoms…”
Professor Sprout’s explanation was incredibly detailed.
Even the proud Slytherins lowered their heads to take notes.
Their early arrival at the greenhouse was driven by genuine interest; if they hadn’t been wary of Mason’s heavy palms—and his tendency to charge at people with a mana shield—they would have crowded around like that Mudblood to ask questions.
“Dragon dung fertilizer is a science in itself, but today your main task is fertilizing—Longbottom!
Don’t dump an entire bucket of dragon dung into a single planting box!”
Not long after the lesson began, several glare-filled eyes stabbed toward Mason.
Unsurprisingly, it was Malfoy and his cronies.
The Gryffindors were not to be outdone.
Even though Mason didn’t care, he glared right back, creating a tense standoff between the lions and the snakes.
They didn’t dare start anything inside the greenhouse, but after class was a different story.
“That’s Professor Sprout’s fourth sigh.”
Hermione was busy chatting pleasantly with the Gryffindor girls a short distance away.
Seeing this, Mason drifted back to his roommates’ little circle, only to hear Elaine whisper under his breath.
“What?” Mason looked over at the professor too.
He had been so focused on taking notes earlier that he hadn’t noticed.
“Fifth time…
Haven’t you noticed?
Every time she looks at the compost bin outside the greenhouse, she lets out a sigh.
That’s not normal.”
“Is there a body hidden in the compost bin?” Mason let his imagination run wild.
Elaine shuddered, backing away from Mason with a muted murmur.
“You’re scarier than I am.”
Elaine, the blonde baby gorilla, turned his head and asked Mason in a hushed voice, “I see Hogwarts assembled with talents from all over, yet it lacks true heroes who serve the public good.
What do you think about setting up a commission board?”
“Are you serious?”
“I have money.
A lot of money.”
“Count me in.”