The working days of Quinn's first week passed, and the weekend arrived. Quinn sat on his bed, reading a book on Magic Theory he had borrowed from the Hogwarts library. Since the wand incident, Quinn had been growing increasingly worried about the progression of his magic. He wanted to improve his ability to focus his magic, but as nothing changed with turning eleven (11), he looked for alternate methods but had little success finding a way.
'My current level of focus is fine for this year and maybe even the next year, but after that, I would be in trouble if I can't improve my ability to mold and focus magic,' thought Quinn as he read the book in bed.
Quinn sighed as he failed to find a method in this book as well. He closed the book, and after a mental session of occlumency practice and making sure that his magical core was drained, he went to sleep.
When the clock turned eleven (11), Quinn was already gone to sleep. Then the clock turned to twelve (12), and the date changed to 8th of September. Around that time, a change started in Quinn's body. Over the night, the magic in Quinn's went through a qualitative change. The unstable nature of magic in Quinn's body gradually changed to a state seen in the usual eleven (11) year old child.
On the morning of 8th of September, Quinn woke up at his usual time. As he sat up and stretched his arms, the duvet slid off him and folded itself. The pillows behind him fluffed themselves, and when he got up from his bed, the bedsheet fixed itself. Of course, this was all Quinn's doing. He liked to start off his day by using magic.
Standing in front of a sink, Quinn brushed his teeth, and after using his hands to hold the brush, Quinn used magic to maneuver the toothbrush to reach hard places with ease. A fun fact about toothpaste from the magical world; it was mixed with a teeth-cleaning potion. There were a few teeth cleaning charms, but none were as effective as using a toothbrush and toothpaste.
As Quinn exited the attached washroom, he just happened to see Marcus' open trunk tipping over from the top of his cupboard. At this rate, Marcus' things were going to fall out of his trunk, with the trunk itself falling down on the floor.
Quinn's eyes widened as he instinctively raised a hand, "Oh shit-!" A split-second later, Quinn's magic kicked in, and Quinn rushed to at least save the trunk from falling, but the next second, Quinn was shocked to see the sight in front of him.
Instead of just the trunk floating in the air, all of Marcus' things were floating in the air. Quinn, in stunned silence, looked at floating things from his spot. Among the things floating, Quinn saw Marcus' winter clothing, thirty individual pieces of Gobstone that had escaped from their pouch, and many of Marcus' personal belongings.
Quinn was stunned because he hadn't been able to exert influence over these many objects before, but currently, he was using magic to keep the things in mid-air.
'This isn't accidental magic,' thought Quinn as he slowly stepped closer to the floating things. Quinn had his fair share of accidental magic, so he knew what it felt like. It was instinctive use of magic with no conscious control over magic's actions.
But, Quinn had complete control over all these objects. He could move them any way he liked. Then Quinn remembered something, and with a look, the curtains around the poster beds of his roommates fell down to block their view.
Quinn returned his attention to the floating stuff, and the next second, all of Marcus' stuff repacked itself into his trunk. Quinn levitated the trunk back to its position above the cupboard.
Quinn smiled and thought, 'I know what is going on.' With a smile, he turned to Eddie's desk, and with the use of magic, Eddie's desk drawer opened, and a single Gobstone shot towards Quinn, who caught it, and he set it onto the floor.
Quinn took a deep breath to calm down his nerves, focused his magic, and pushed it towards the Gobstone. The next second the Gobstone transfigured into a cat. Quinn smiled as he put the transfigured cat into a full-body bind before it could hiss at him.
Quinn, with a smile, picked up the magically bound cat to observe it.
"Yes, yes, yes! It finally happened!" exclaimed Quinn as he moved the cat around to check all the detail. Transfiguration of an inorganic object to an organic being with a different size and weight was at the fifth-year level.
Quinn pumped his fists in the air as he returned the cat back into a Gobstone.
"My focus increased overnight!" said Quinn, and after the excitement and elation passed, Quinn began thinking about the reason behind it.
He thought back to yesterday. If he did something different, something that could trigger the change in his body. But, nothing came to mind.
After having breakfast, Quinn went to the library to think in peace. He wanted to know the reason behind this change. His magic had changed, and Quinn wanted to know everything about it.
After spending hours in the library surrounded by books about Magic theory, magical biology, and any other books that could provide him answers, Quinn couldn't find anything other than that his magic had entered the period of growth.
'But, why did my magic enter this period now, after two months of me turning eleven (11)?' Quinn sighed as he climbed the stairs of his dorm. It wasn't that the change happened precisely on a person's birthday, and it could occur anytime between before or after a fortnight of a person's eleventh birthday. But two months didn't make sense.
Quinn took a shower to relax, and when he came out, he saw Eddie and Marcus were playing in the room. They were pretending to be swordsmen and were using rolls of newspapers as swords.
Quinn chuckled as he looked at his two roommates, "What are you guys doing?"
Marcus spoke as he battled Eddie with his newspaper roll, "We were waiting for you. Do you want to play Gobstones?"
Quinn thought about the offer, 'Well, it would take my mind away from the change.' Quinn nodded and replied, "Sure, give me a minute. I will be down there."
Both of them nodded, and Eddie dropped his newspaper roll on the floor before bolting down to the common room. Quinn sighed as he looked at the newspaper on the floor and picked it up. Then his eyes caught the date of the newspaper, and then things clicked in his mind.
"Ah~, that's why it happened today," Quinn said as everything made sense to him. "Of course, it would happen today, on September 8th," Quinn sighed as he threw the newspaper in the trash.
8th of September was the day he found himself in this body. It was also on 8th of September that he had triggered his magic for the first time. He had kept track of the day for a couple of years, but with time he had forgotten about it. Now, on the very same day, his magic had gone through a qualitative change.
'My coming to this world must have pushed the changed to this date,' Quinn thought as he tried to place his thoughts on this matter. Quinn also entertained the theory that even though it had been only seven (7) since he had come to this world, his body was still eleven (11) years old.
"Body, mind, and soul; three parts of a being," quoted Quinn as he felt the path ahead clear up. Quinn felt a weight has been lifted off his chest and looked around the room with a smile.
"Who knows, it might happen again when I turn fifteen (15)," Quinn said in optimism as he thought what would happen at the eleventh anniversary of his coming to this world.
Quinn felt the need to use his magic this very moment, so he looked around the room and closed his eyes, took a deep breath. With a wave of magic from Quinn, things around the room began moving, and multiple different magic began showing their effects. When the things stopped moving & the magic stopped working, the dorm room looked like it had been freshly cleaned, and all the furniture from the beds to the cupboards looked brand new.
"If anyone asks, I will just give credit to the elves', shrugged Quinn, but then he laughed as he climbed down the dorm stairs, "Though the elves might not be happy about me cleaning the room."
Quinn stepped into the common room, and with a broad grin, he said, "Time to destroy people in Gobstones!"
- (Scene Break) -
The very next day, Quinn began drafting a medium-term plan spanning two years. He climbed down into his suitcase and stepped into the library.
On the paper in front of him, Quinn wrote what he wanted to do before entering his third year.
"Completing Hogwarts education with practical usage," wrote Quinn as the basic goal of his two-year plan. Quinn wanted to cover Hogwarts' cover subjects and the electives he was interested in; Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, Charms, Defense Against Dark Arts, Arithmancy, Study of Ancient Runes, and Astronomy. He wasn't interested in Divination and Muggle Studies and wasn't sure if he wanted to pursue Care of Magical Creatures; he wasn't thrilled at the idea of being close to magical beasts.
Next was "Supplementing all the Hogwarts' subjects with knowledge from around the world." Quinn's approach had always been to expand his knowledge from reading books from all around the world. From his experience of learning the first four years of Hogwarts' curriculum, he knew the curriculum was missing several things that text from other schools could supplement. It was the same with every school and region in the world. Everybody was missing something, but at the same time, everybody had something to offer as well.
The third goal was "Learning new branches of magic that were taught in other schools." There were other branches of magic like Transmutation, Illusion magic, Dark Arts, Alchemy, Elemental magic, Warding, Soul magic, Healing magic, Abjuration, Body magic, to name a few. Quinn wanted to learn these magics to the N.E.W.T level or equivalent.
Coming to mind arts, he wanted to set some goals. Quinn decided he wanted to build the highest level of occlumency defense in his current system. He wanted to make sure that his defense would stand firm against a master occlumens, plus he wanted to increase the immersion level on his memories. On the legilimency front, he wanted to become a master legilimens by the end of the second year; Quinn was planning to use the entire school body to explore the insides of a mind.
Quinn knew he needed to be ready for the year when the Basilisk roamed the castle. Quirrelmort didn't scare Quinn; he just needed to ignore the professor and not poke his nose in the matter. Quinn would decide if he wanted to make a play for the Philosopher's Stone when the time came. Currently, he wasn't sure if he wanted to go against a professor of defense against dark arts with a master of dark arts stuck to his head.
After Quinn decided his plans for the next two years, he thought about the immediate plan. With Quinn's increased focus, he wanted a place to practice magic, and the best place for doing so would be the Room Of Requirement. Quinn hadn't gone to the seventh floor because he was too busy getting used to the new lifestyle at Hogwarts, but now that he had spent a week at the school, he was ready to go to the mysterious room.
It was time to the greatest room in Hogwarts known to Quinn.
- (Scene Break) -
On Monday, Quinn had a History of Magic class at nine (9) o'clock in the morning, and after that, he had two hours of free time and one hour of lunch. Quinn decided to skip lunch and spend three hours in the Room Of Requirement.
The room was located on the seventh floor in the left corridor of the Hogwarts castle. Quinn looked at the tapestry depicting the attempt of Barnabas the Barmy to teach trolls ballet. He recalled the method to enter the Room Of Requirement and walked past the tapestry three times, thinking about a place to practice magic.
Immediately after the third time, a door appeared opposite the tapestry. Quinn, with a beating heart, pushed the doors open and entered a spacious room. In one corner of the room, he saw dummies to practice charms and jinxes. In another corner were objects of different shapes, sizes, and materials to practice transfiguration. He also a potion workstation for brewing potions. He was also surprised to see a comfy chair for sitting while practicing mind arts.
Quinn walked around the room and saw the details in the room. He found that the room had everything he wanted, but Quinn also noted that the room specifically provided things related to the magic he wanted to practice today.
On the transfiguration corner, he saw a sizeable amount of mercury, Quinn had planned to study how mercury reacted to transfiguration, and the room had read that from his mind and provided him with mercury. On the charms' corner, he saw a fast-moving golden snitch as he had imagined wanting a snitch to practice the Slowing Charm. On the potions workstation were copper cauldrons and the tools he needed to brew a Befuddlement Draught.
"The room provides what I need," Quinn dropped his book bag on the comfy chair and walked to one of the dummies and casted an Exploding charm (Bombarda) on it, and the dummy exploded, and Quinn smiled when the destroyed dummy didn't disappear or fix itself.
Quinn was happy to see the damaged dummy not because he enjoyed seeing the mutilated dummy but because the room had even picked up on the finer details of his request. Quinn had also wished to practice his mending charm, so he requested the dummies to stay damaged.
Quinn swept an eye over the broken pieces and levitated them near the dummy. He began casting several simultaneous Mending charms on the dummy, and before he knew it, the dummy was like it never exploded.
Quinn nodded before his smile disappeared, and he said to himself, "Let's get to work." He removed his robe and levitated it to the chair and thus began the repeated explosion of dummies. Quinn experimented with the strength and accuracy of the Explosion charm. For Quinn, there was no difference between Bombarda and Bombarda Maxima as he didn't rely on chants and understood the essence of magic before practicing it.
When Quinn used the Explosion charm, he was the one who decided the configuration of the spell and not some words in Latin. Quinn decided when to explode the whole dummy or when to only take its head off. Quinn tried simultaneous casting and continuous casting of the charm and how it would affect him. Quinn found that he was at an acceptable level in continuous casting but lacked efficiency while he casted simultaneously.
In between explosions, Quinn experimented with the Mending charm; Quinn checked if it could mend the dummy if he completely eradicated a part of the dummy; the answer was no. The Mending charm could only fix the available parts. He also found that if he trapped one of the parts, then the Mending charm would mend the object and leave the trapped if it couldn't get to it. There was also a distance restriction, where if a piece of the broken object was farther than a certain distance, then the Mending charm would ignore the part.
After half an hour and hundred Exploding charms, Quinn decided he had enough practice with the Exploding charm and moved on to the potions part of the room to brew a Befuddlement Draught. Befuddlement Draught was a potion that caused the drinker to become belligerent and reckless.
He donned his gloves and protective goggles and got to brew the potion. It took an hour to brew the potion. Quinn withdrew his potion notes and began preparing the ingredient as he experimented for best efficiency. After starting the brewing, Quinn took out a stack of paper and started documenting every change in the potion, cross-referencing it with listed changes. Quinn observed his potions with an almost obsessive hawk-like gaze. Quinn had learned that some stages of different potions required constant attention, and not many books mentioned those stages, so Quinn had made it his goal to document every change of every potion he learned.
After an hour of careful brewing and close observation, Quinn had ten standard doses of the dark acid green high-grade Befuddlement Draught. Quinn poured potion in vials and packed three vials to send to Elliot at home, and packed five for long-term storage, and the last two doses, he was going to use on the stuck up Prefect, who scoffed while telling Quinn and his roommates that they couldn't Gobstones in the common room.
"Let's see if he can still have a stick up his butt after I give him this," said Quinn with an evil smirk on his face.
Finally, Quinn stepped into the Transfiguration corner to work on mercury. Mercury was a poisonous metal, so with the utmost care, Quinn transfigured the given material into different things. He also boiled and froze the mercury and then transfigured it at those temperatures. Quinn tried to turn into different materials like other metals, rubber, wood, and many other organic and inorganic material. He even turned small droplets of mercury into tiny ants and relatively bigger cockroaches. He turned larger amounts of mercury into more complex things. Experimented with turning a drop of mercury into a much larger block of stone and tried to shrink down a glass of mercury into a small earthworm.
After working for a quarter of an hour on transfiguration, Quinn rested for fifteen before diving into his mind. At a distance from the West Manor, Quinn began building the Hogwarts replica. Unlike the West Manor, where Quinn had built the exterior before turning to the interiors, his current approach was going to be much different. Quinn was going to construct Hogwarts, one room at a time. For example, Quinn was going to start at the ground floor and then move up. His first room was going to be the Great Hall, and then he would expand to the rest of the ground floor. Quinn sat on the comfy chair, and for the rest of the time, he worked on his mindscape.
Fifteen minutes before one o'clock in the afternoon, Quinn exited the Room Of Requirement and headed to the defense of dark arts class while humming in a good mood.
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Quinn West - MC - Found RoR - Guess who has the best secret base in the world.
Eddie Carmicheal - Ravenclaw - Currently obsessed with Gobstones
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