Time slipped by, and three weeks passed since that late-night conversation in Dumbledore’s office.
Will’s detention had long since ended, and Dumbledore hadn’t summoned him again since.
Flying lessons started during that stretch.
Will felt no real enthusiasm for it.
Not that he disliked flight itself, but he’d rather have flown under his own power, the way Voldemort reportedly could, than lean on a broomstick to get him there.
Predictably, Harry and Malfoy ended up chasing each other over a stolen Remembrall during one of those lessons, and not long after, Harry found himself pulled onto the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
None of that touched Will much.
He had experience to grind.
Over those three weeks, his Potions skill had climbed to Level 3, unlocking a new bonus along the way.
[LV3 Bonus: Potion Yield, increases the output of your potions by 5%]
If he was honest, Dumbledore’s late-night talk hadn’t left much of a mark on him.
He wasn’t chasing power the way Voldemort once had.
As for strength itself…
In a world where knowledge translated directly into power, strength was simply what happened once enough knowledge accumulated.
A natural byproduct.
Nothing more.
That had to be the explanation.
…
Saturday, in the library.
“Will.
Will.” Sylvia nudged him, still buried in his book.
“What is it?”
“Longbottom wants to talk to you.” She nodded toward Neville, sitting quietly beside her.
“Neville.
What’s going on?” Will set the book down.
“Next time, just say something instead of waiting around.”
He already knew Neville’s hesitation came from shyness more than anything else.
This wasn’t the first time.
“Right, sorry.
I wanted to ask if you’d teach me the Summoning Charm.” Neville kept his voice low, his usual nervousness fully on display.
“Summoning Charm?” Will paused, then it clicked.
“Trevor’s gone again?”
“Yeah.
He’s always trying to get away from me.” Neville looked close to tears.
“I tried learning it myself, honestly, but I’m hopeless with wandwork.
Nothing worked.”
“Ah.
That explains why you’ve been camped out in the library with Hermione all week,” Sylvia said, understanding dawning on her face.
“Neville, spells don’t come from reading.
They come from practice.” Will closed his book.
“Let’s find somewhere quiet, and I’ll walk you through it properly.”
“Where, though?” Sylvia asked, helping him pack the book away.
“Hogwarts is enormous.
The grounds, the lake, the edge of the Forbidden Forest, plenty of options.” Will picked up his bag.
“Actually, I think I know exactly the place.”
…
“We’re practicing spells.
Why are we climbing all the way to the eighth floor?” Sylvia was out of breath.
Hogwarts’s staircases had a habit of shifting without warning, and theirs had already rearranged itself twice on the way up, costing them time. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Will stopped in front of a tapestry.
“Here.
This is it.”
“This is just…
a corridor.” Neville, even more winded than Sylvia, could barely get the sentence out.
Facing the tapestry of trolls clubbing Barnabas the Barmy, Will paced back and forth in front of the blank stretch of wall, focusing hard.
I need somewhere to practice spells.
On the third pass, a smooth wooden door materialized out of nowhere.
Will pushed it open.
“Welcome to the Room of Requirement.”
Because of exactly what Will had asked for, the room wasn’t the usual clutter-filled storage space people described.
Instead, it opened into a wide, circular hall, a handful of practice dummies lined up along one wall.
“Where even is this?”
“One of Hogwarts’s hidden rooms, the Room of Requirement.
It shapes itself around whatever you need it to be.” Will waved them both inside.
“This is where we’ll practice from now on.”
“Brilliant!” Sylvia darted in immediately, Neville trailing close behind Will.
Once they’d both had a proper look around, Will clapped a hand on Neville’s shoulder.
“Right.
Let’s get to work, Neville.”
Something about the look in Will’s silver-grey eyes made Neville’s stomach twist unexpectedly, like being watched by something far older than an eleven-year-old boy.
He swallowed hard and said nothing.
Five hours later, Sylvia sat slumped in a chair against the wall, having mastered the spell ages ago.
Neville, meanwhile, had only managed to nudge his practice apple a few inches across the floor.
“Say it with conviction.
You have to believe it’ll work!”
“There, see that?
It moved.
Did you feel that?”
“Wrist up!
Watch your arm angle!”
“It’s Acc-io, not ACC-i-oh, listen to the emphasis.”
Will wasn’t especially harsh about any of it, but somewhere in the process Neville finally understood exactly why Will topped every class he attended.
He demonstrated the spell over and over, had Neville copy him, corrected, repeated, again and again, and despite casting the spell far more times than Neville, he barely seemed winded by comparison.
What Neville didn’t notice was how closely Will kept watching him the entire time, his silver-grey eyes tracking something beyond the spellwork itself.
With his Wizard’s Eye active, Will had picked up on something odd about Neville’s magic almost immediately.
Most young wizards’ magical flow moved smoothly, like water down a riverbed.
Neville’s came out jagged and uneven instead, never quite settling into a clean current.
Will turned the problem over privately, wondering if years of memory charms from Neville’s grandmother might be behind it somehow, though he couldn’t quite work out a mechanism that would explain lasting damage of that kind.
He filed the observation away for later.
For now, the Summoning Charm needed his full attention.
Between the irregular flow and Neville’s chronic lack of confidence, on top of imperfect wand movement, he kept failing to close the spell’s magical loop cleanly, leading to one botched attempt after another.
Will simply kept correcting him, having him mirror each motion until the spell’s shape finally started holding together properly.
By the end of the afternoon, Will had cast the spell more times than he could count and felt thoroughly drained.
Neville looked worse, arms hanging heavy at his sides like they belonged to someone else.
“Come on…
one more go.
That last one nearly worked, the apple actually lifted.” Will’s own breathing had gone ragged, his magic and stamina both running low.
“Believe you can do it.
He wasn’t just saying it to be encouraging.
Modern spellcasting genuinely responded to a caster’s emotional state and conviction, unlike the older, more mechanical magic of the past.
The Patronus Charm stood as the clearest proof of that.
“Accio apple!” Neville swung his wand, and the apple shot straight into his waiting hand.
He nearly shouted with disbelief.
“I did it!
I actually did it!”
“Nice work, Neville.” Will meant every word of the praise.
[Someone has developed feelings for you.
Charm Experience +1]
[Someone has developed feelings for you.
Charm Experience +1]
…
[You have cast a spell repeatedly, deepening your understanding of it.
Spell Mastery Experience +3]
[You have undergone physical exertion.
Stamina Experience +1]
[You have undergone physical exertion.
Stamina Experience +1]
…
[Your Stamina has reached LV2.
Choose a bonus ability.]
[LV2 Bonus: Abundant Stamina, increases your maximum stamina by 10%]
Not a wasted afternoon at all, Will thought.
Solid experience, and a decent bonus on top of it.
Wait.
Does casting spells until exhaustion technically count as physical training now?
Does that mean I need to run myself ragged with wandwork every single day?
Are there potions that boost physical conditioning?
Would those grant experience too?
Worth testing.
…
Having missed the dinner hour entirely, the three of them skipped the Great Hall and headed straight for the Hogwarts kitchens instead, a spot Will had discovered during a late-night snack run back during his detention.
By the time Neville made it back to Gryffindor Tower, the hour had grown quite late, and he looked thoroughly wrung out.
His stamina had taken a beating, but his magical reserves had suffered far worse, nothing a quick meal could fix.
“Neville, what happened?
Did Malfoy get to you again?” Harry, mid-game of wizard’s chess with Ron, took one look at Neville’s exhausted state and jumped straight to Malfoy, especially given the curse incident from a few days back.
“No, it wasn’t him.
It was Will.” Neville sank into a chair, breathing hard, his head swimming slightly, a clear sign of how depleted his magic really was.
“That Slytherin?
Knew it.
They’re all the same, every one of them.” Ron sat up immediately, ready to be outraged.
“No, it’s not like that.
I asked him to teach me Charms.” Neville caught his breath slowly.
“I finally learned the Summoning Charm.”
“Wait, you actually learned it?” Harry looked genuinely surprised.
Neville’s track record with that particular spell hadn’t exactly been promising.
“Hang on, you went to a Slytherin for Charms lessons?” Ron, predictably, had zeroed in on the one detail that mattered least.