“Will, you have plenty of time left.
There’s no need to rush any of this.
Remember, at your age, Voldemort had barely learned his first handful of spells.
You have no real reason to feel this anxious.”
Will climbed the staircase slowly, Dumbledore’s words still echoing in his head.
There was no denying the old man had a point.
He didn’t need to push himself this hard.
Once, he’d explored magic purely out of curiosity, studying diligently but never at the cost of his own wellbeing.
Lately, though, something had shifted.
Even with the system behind him, there was no realistic way to grasp the full depth of magic in the time he had.
In the end, I’m still just a small wizard with shallow knowledge…
He understood, on some level, that the anxiety wasn’t purely about Voldemort.
The deeper he went into any subject, the more clearly he saw just how little he actually knew.
By the time he reached his room, exhaustion had caught up with him completely.
He managed a few final steps before collapsing onto the bed, and the tension he’d been carrying for days finally loosened its grip.
Sleep took him almost instantly.
The next morning, in the Great Hall, Dumbledore sat at the head of the staff table, an unusual sight so early in the day, working through a slice of freshly baked pumpkin pie, his attention drifting occasionally toward Quirrell a few seats away.
He’d never expected to develop this level of interest in a student who wasn’t Harry.
Exceptionally sharp, gifted well beyond his years, already dabbling in runes as a first-year, his mind clearly crowded with half-formed theories and raw magical instinct.
Arrogant, certainly, but there was something genuinely compelling about the boy underneath it all.
Dumbledore could already picture the kind of figure he might grow into.
The trouble was, without the right guidance, that same potential could just as easily bring ruin instead.
Dumbledore felt the weight of it settle on him more heavily than he’d expected.
At a hundred and ten years old, raising Harry and managing the slow-building threat of Voldemort already demanded more than enough of his remaining energy.
Worse, he genuinely doubted his own ability to shape a mind like Will’s properly.
The thought pulled his gaze back toward Quirrell once more.
Pale and visibly unwell, Quirrell picked at his mashed potatoes, finished quickly, and left the Hall in a hurry.
He’d barely gone when Will and Sylvia walked in together.
Unusually, Will had left his satchel behind for once.
The two of them laughed about something as they settled at the Slytherin table.
Dumbledore caught Will’s eye, and Will raised his glass of milk in an easy greeting across the room.
Something in that small gesture made Dumbledore’s smile widen slightly.
In the days that followed, Will visibly eased up.
He still carried a reputation among the younger students as the resident bookworm, but he’d found his way back to the mindset he’d had before ever setting foot at Hogwarts.
Rushing accomplished nothing.
Experience came in its own time, one piece at a time.
With that pressure lifted, Will settled back into a genuinely peaceful rhythm at school.
He attended his classes each day, sought out extra guidance from professors afterward, and spent the rest of his time working independently, absorbing whatever knowledge and experience he could find on his own. This story is hosted at novelping(.)com.
He’d also started carving out small pockets of time to actually enjoy himself, good meals, quiet afternoons by the Black Lake with Sylvia, the occasional gathering with Hermione, Neville, and the others.
Every professor had grown fond of him by now, Snape included, who’d taken to offering the occasional grudging pointer on potion work.
“Call that mess a potion again, and you’ll spend Halloween scraping bat guano,” Snape would say, though not always with quite that much bite behind it.
As for Quirrell.
Will had expected another invitation back to his office eventually.
Instead, Quirrell stopped teaching almost entirely, reading flatly from the textbook or simply letting students work through material on their own.
Will wasn’t especially bothered by it.
Experience came slower this way, but slower experience beat sitting too long under Voldemort’s direct attention.
A month slipped by quickly, and Halloween arrived.
That afternoon, Will and Neville worked through spell practice together in the Room of Requirement.
“Heard you impressed Professor Flitwick this morning.” Will cast a Reinforcement Charm on a practice dummy, then kept working through a rotation of spells against it.
Notifications flickered through his awareness now and then, though less frequently than before.
As his mastery of individual spells climbed, the rate of experience gain dropped off accordingly.
Spells he’d already drilled to near-perfection now required dozens, sometimes hundreds, of repetitions just to earn a single point.
[You have used a spell multiple times.
Proficiency increased.
Spell Mastery Experience +1]
[You have used a spell multiple times.
Proficiency increased.
Spell Mastery Experience +1]
[You have used a spell multiple times.
Proficiency increased.
Spell Mastery Experience +1]
Still, he’d noticed that genuinely new material, real depth rather than repetition, tended to pay out far more generously.
The system clearly rewarded actual understanding over rote practice.
“Thanks for teaching me the Levitation Charm last week.
Trevor, come here!” Neville flicked his wand, and Trevor drifted lazily through the air overhead.
Every time the toad floated near Neville, it kicked its legs and tried to bolt, only for Neville to reel it back in with a quick Summoning Charm.
Watching Trevor loop through the air, Will could already picture next year’s first-years walking into the common room to find a toad permanently airborne above their heads.
“Don’t thank me.
We’re friends.”
[Someone feels grateful toward you.
Charm Experience +1]
[Someone feels grateful toward you.
Charm Experience +1]
[Your Charm has reached LV4.
Choose a bonus ability.]
A.
(Stacks with Art of Language.)
B.
Radiant Charm: Your rate of Charm experience gain increases by 10%.
C.
Lunar Presence: You stand out the way the moon does against a night sky.
You’re rarely lost in a crowd, and people tend to notice you quickly wherever you are.
Will raised an eyebrow.
Option C felt a little abstract for his taste, but A and B both had obvious value.
After a moment’s thought, he went with A.
Swaying minds with nothing more than a few well-placed words?
Barely any cost at all, compared to something like the Imperius Curse.
There wasn’t much of a decision to make, really.
With that choice locked in, his overall profile shifted upward once again, another comprehensive step forward.
Host: Will Behrens
Talent:
Wizard’s Eye: You can actively activate your “Vision” to see the flow of magic and its manifestations.
Skills:
[Transfiguration LV3 (11/300)]
(LV2 Bonus: Inquisitive Mind, increases Transfiguration experience gain by 10%; LV3 Bonus: Swift Form, increases your Transfiguration casting speed by 10%)
[Dark Magic LV3 (117/300)]
(LV2 Bonus: Mental Fortitude, your emotions resist the negative effects of studying Dark Magic more easily; LV3 Bonus: Unyielding Malice, increases the duration of your Dark Magic effects by 10%)
[Potions LV3 (29/300)]
(LV2 Bonus: Keen Eyes, you can more easily read the state of a potion as it changes; LV3 Bonus: Potion Yield, increases the output of your potions by 5%)
[Charms LV4 (200/400)]
(LV2 Bonus: Spell Replicator, your spell learning rate increases by 10% to 30% depending on the source; LV3 Bonus: Spellcaster, your spells cost 5% less mana; LV4 Bonus: Spell Burst)
[Astronomy LV1 (59/100)] (No bonus yet)
[Herbology LV2 (113/200)]
(LV2 Bonus: Herbal Affinity, you can tend magical plants more easily)
[Runes LV2 (12/200)]
(LV2 Bonus: Rune Deconstruction, makes it easier to identify runes embedded within spell and ritual structures)
[Curse Studies LV1 (99/100)] (No bonus yet)
[Stamina LV2 (23/200)]
(LV2 Bonus: Abundant Stamina, increases your maximum stamina by 10%)
[Mana LV?] (Cannot be viewed, due to the unusual nature of this world)
[Charm LV4 (118/400)]
(LV2 Bonus: Dazzling Star, people notice you more, and their feelings toward you, good or bad, run stronger; LV3 Bonus: Art of Language, your words carry more weight; LV4 Bonus: Master Orator, your speeches can sway the minds of listeners to some degree)
[Cooking LV3 (223/300)]
(LV2 Bonus: Heat Sense, you can precisely feel changes in cooking temperature; LV3 Bonus: Magic Tongue, your sense of taste sharpens, letting you pick out magical ingredients in food)
[Note: Abilities reach their full potential only at special thresholds, or at their peak level.]