“Ivan, after dinner how about we head back to the dorm and play some Wizard’s Chess?” Ron asked around a mouthful of chicken leg in the common room after the last class on Wednesday afternoon.
Ivan finished the final piece of steak, considered for a moment, then shook his head.
“Not today.
I’m going to the library.
You and Harry go ahead.” “Harry’s chess is terrible.
No challenge at all.” Ron’s disappointment lasted exactly one second before the second half of Ivan’s sentence registered.
The chicken leg hit the floor.
“The library?
Merlin’s beard, I thought only one person in the whole year went there!” “Hermione?” Ivan guessed.
After only a few days of term, the only first-year who treated the library like a second home was the walking encyclopedia.
“Who else?” Ron said with exaggerated horror.
Harry suddenly tugged Ron’s sleeve.
Hermione was standing not far away with an armful of books.
Ron dropped his voice at once and launched into a quiet rant about how she never stopped lecturing and how full of herself she was.
Harry looked uncomfortable.
He hated this kind of talk behind someone’s back, though most of the other first-years seemed to find it entertaining.
In less than a week Miss Granger had already earned a solid reputation in the first-year gossip circuit for being both brilliant and insufferable.
Ivan stayed out of it.
Eleven- and twelve-year-olds rarely enjoyed being corrected by one of their own, especially when the corrections were constant.
“Why the library?” Harry asked.
Ron’s eyes carried the clear message: Are your brothers not fun enough?
Is Wizard’s Chess suddenly boring?
It was the same look a group of friends would give the one who announced he was skipping the usual after-school game session to study.
Ivan’s mouth twitched.
He had zero interest in Wizard’s Chess right now.
He was simply testing whether there were other ways to earn Academic Points.
It was definitely not because the game looked both novel and entertaining.
“Have you noticed the homework is getting harder already?” he said at last, glancing at Harry.
“If we don’t start putting in work now, the end-of-term exams are going to be painful.” His own talent was average and the wand compatibility made everything worse.
In practical casting he sat solidly in the lower-middle of the year.
The only realistic way to improve the professors’ evaluations was through knowledge—answering questions in class, looking prepared, collecting a few impression points.
“Ron, you coming?” Ivan stood and packed his things.
Ron’s magical talent was a step above his own, but still only upper-middle.
The gap between him and Harry was obvious, and Ron’s work ethic was not going to close it.
In the original timeline that combination had left him the weakest of the eventual trio.
A quiet warning felt like the decent thing to do, even if Ivan expected the answer he got.
Ron shook his head so fast his freckles blurred.
“Are you mental?
We’ve only been here a few days.
End of term is ages away.
Why panic now?” “Suit yourself.” Ivan left without another word.
“Watch,” Ron muttered after him.
“He’ll be back in an hour or I’ll eat the chessboard.” Hogwarts library held the largest and most complete collection of magical texts in Britain, possibly in Europe.
Everything from basic schoolbooks to obscure forbidden curses and dark magic sat on its shelves.
Ivan’s first sight of the place stopped him short.
Row after row of towering bookcases stretched away, each packed with hundreds of volumes.
It was far more impressive than any film version he remembered.
Because term had only just begun, the library was quiet.
A few students leaned against shelves or sat along the galleries.
The central reading area was mostly empty.
[Ding.
Library explored.] The system notification pulled his attention back.
The Explore Hogwarts quest jumped a full five percent.
More importantly, the Academic Points from that jump finally pushed his total to exactly one hundred—enough for the Top Student Experience Card.
His eyes drifted toward the Restricted Section.
Legilimency and Occlumency were almost certainly in there.
“Looking for something, dear?” Madam Pince appeared at his elbow, voice soft but precise.
“Yes, ma’am.
Books on Transfiguration, preferably the basics.” Ivan pulled his gaze away from the restricted shelves.
“This way.” She led him to a section, pulled down a volume titled A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration, and handed it over.
Then she paused.
“That area you were looking at is the Restricted Section.
Without written permission from a professor you may neither read nor borrow those books.” “Just curiosity,” Ivan said with an easy shrug.
“I wasn’t planning to go in.” He had no intention of touching the dangerous material yet.
His current foundation was nowhere near ready for advanced magic.
There was an entire term ahead; opportunity would come later.
Madam Pince finished her instructions and left briskly.
High-year students tried to sneak into the Restricted Section with tedious regularity, and she had to keep an eye on them.
Before she went she reminded him, firmly, that silence was mandatory.
Ivan settled into a seat in the reading area.
He did not activate the Top Student card immediately.
First he would read for a while under normal conditions, then compare the difference in efficiency.
The soft sound of turning pages filled the quiet space, broken only by the occasional distant creak of a chair or footstep.