After lunch, in the Gryffindor boys’ dormitory.
Ethan took the two acceptance letters.
[Exchange Value: 1 (Mental Resistance)] [Exchange Value: 1 (Magic)] Ethan could hardly hide his surprise.
It had originally been a sudden whim, but he hadn’t expected it to actually work!
If he randomly exchanged potential points, there was only a tiny chance they would land on special attributes.
Only free potential points could be 100% allocated to rare attributes.
But the problem was that experience points were extremely difficult to accumulate.
He had calculated that after a whole day of hard study, he could only earn about 30 experience points.
Gaining an extra point in a rare attribute would save him ten days of hard work.
[Mental Resistance +1] [Magic +1] He carefully examined the acceptance letter addressed to “Harry Potter” and muttered, “Could this have been written by the Headmaster himself?
Or was it pure luck?” Harry asked a little uneasily, “White, what’s wrong with my acceptance letter?” Coming back to his senses, Ethan placed the two letters together and said softly, “Look, the handwriting on these two is slightly different.
Mine is exactly the same as Weasley’s.” Ethan pulled out his own acceptance letter and placed it between the two.
Ron stared wide-eyed and said in surprise, “They really are different!
Harry’s letter looks more like—well, written by a man?
Every letter is a bit scribbled?” Harry thought for a moment and said, “Maybe it was Hagrid?
He handed this letter to me himself.
There were a lot of them before, but Uncle Vernon confiscated them all.” Ethan blinked, and just as he was about to say something, he heard Harry continue, “It’s a pity Uncle Vernon burned every single one of them.” “Heh, what an irritable man!” Harry deeply agreed.
Just then, Neville returned, cradling his toad, and leaned in curiously.
“What are you guys looking at?” Ron beat him to the punch.
“We’re looking at Harry’s acceptance letter.
It’s different from ours!
Neville, where’s yours?” Standing nearby, Ethan silently gave Ron a thumbs-up in his mind.
Neville said blankly, “I think my grandmother has it.
Because I forget things so easily, she was worried I’d lose it.” Ethan felt a bit disappointed, but on second thought, that was indeed a very Neville thing to do.
His family had been so desperate for him to prove he was a wizard that they had even thrown him into the Black Lake, nearly drowning him.
Ron’s eyes darted around.
He quickly ran out, shouting, “Thomas, is your dorm back yet?
Let me see your acceptance letters!” Before long, several young wizards who had heard about it crowded in, holding their own letters.
“Harry, look at mine!” The group of young wizards chattered as they spread their letters across the bed.
Ethan thoughtfully smoothed them out for them.
Soon, he obtained 2 points of Mental Resistance, 2 points of Magic Affinity, and 1 point of Spell Resistance.
Rare attributes, in the end, were low-probability events.
“Because Professor Filius Flitwick of Charms is away and has not yet returned, the 1:30 PM Charms class has been swapped with Tuesday’s Defense Against the Dark Arts.
The second period, Herbology, remains unchanged.” A mouth-shaped envelope cried out again and again in the Gryffindor common room.
Ethan grabbed his textbooks for both classes and hurriedly left with Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville.
The Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom was on the fourth floor, which required climbing a lot of stairs.
There were a hundred and forty-two staircases in total at the school.
Some were wide and grand, others narrow and small, and they all wobbled.
Some would suddenly lose steps halfway up, or swing in a completely different direction.
This was why, as soon as they heard about the schedule change, the group bolted upstairs like they were being chased by a pack of hounds.
Especially Ron and Harry.
They had already been late once that morning and had spoken with Professor McGonagall.
If they were late again for the afternoon class, Professor McGonagall wouldn’t believe any excuse they made, no matter what they said.
But worrying about being late was only part of it; on the other hand, everyone harbored great expectations for this class.
Because in Defense Against the Dark Arts, they could learn offensive magic.
“Learning how to use offensive magic to protect yourself from dark creatures and the Dark Arts.
In other words, ‘the best defense is a good offense.’ ‘As long as you take out the enemy before they take you out,’ that is a successful defense against the Dark Arts.” Before class, Ethan paraphrased the true meaning of Defense Against the Dark Arts, drawing laughter from quite a few people.
This class was shared between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff.
With no annoying Slytherins around, the atmosphere in the classroom was quite lively.
The Hufflepuffs cast curious glances over to the Gryffindor side—specifically at Harry Potter, the most famous of all the first-years.
From his corner, Ethan watched them quietly, lost in thought.
He really wanted to get his hands on all the first-years’ acceptance letters, but the Slytherins would almost certainly ignore him, so conventional methods wouldn’t work.
As for Ravenclaw, he could try asking Luna.
But most of the Ravenclaw kids were loners who barely interacted with their own housemates; if he, a Gryffindor, blindly went to borrow their letters, he’d likely hit a wall.
Only these quiet, sweet, honest, and upright Hufflepuffs were likely to be easy to talk to—people like Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones…
The classroom door swung open soundlessly, and then a strong stench of garlic filled the entire room.
Quite a few young wizards grimaced and immediately covered their noses.
Ethan was no exception.
The smell choked him so badly he nearly gagged.
This smell—garlic mixed with the sour stench of sweat—had fermented into an unimaginably lethal odor.
Professor Quirrell, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, walked up to the podium looking rather anxious.
Ethan could hardly bear to look.
No wonder he smelled so terrible, wrapping such a thick turban around his head in the dead of summer.
Only Voldemort had no nose; otherwise, if he didn’t die of anger, he would have been choked to death by the smell.
“Th-this is everyone’s first Defense Against the Dark Arts class.
It was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but Professor Flitwick did not return to school in time and asked to swap classes with me…” Quirrell’s eyes darted around as he stammered out his explanation in a weak, timid voice.
Ron pinched his nose tightly and called out, “Professor, why do you always wear that big turban?” Quirrell quickly explained, “It—it’s a long story.
I helped an African prince get rid of a troublesome zombie, and this was a gift from him.” Ron looked even more exasperated.
“He gave you a turban that smells completely like garlic?” A wave of quiet laughter rippled through the room.
Professor Quirrell flushed slightly and said in a hurry, “I—I also warded off a vampire in Romania.
To prevent it from seeking revenge, I stuffed some garlic inside the turban.” Seamus raised his hand eagerly.
“Professor, what spell did you use to deal with the zombie?” Everyone looked at him with great expectation.
Zombies were terrifying dark creatures.
If the professor could use them as an example to teach them spells, it would be wonderful.
Professor Quirrell opened his mouth, his face turning bright red.
After stuttering for a long while, he said, “The weather this afternoon is very nice, perfect for a walk…
Now, please open your textbooks to page one…” A collective sigh of disappointment echoed through the classroom, but the young wizards still did as they were told and opened their books.
“For our first lesson, we will understand what the Dark Arts are, and the history of their rise and fall…”