"Or maybe you just don't know how to have fun." Mike joked.
"To me studying is fun, I enjoy learning magic. You have your hobbies and I have mine, nothing wrong with that at all." I said with a shrug.
"Learnings fine and all but I don't want it to be my whole life." Terry said shaking his head.
"Neither do I, but you probably haven't realized that we are on a timer. We have exactly seven school years of time to learn everything we can from here. Once that's gone we are more or less on our own if we want to learn more. I don't want to relax away these years only to regret it later. Sure I can take a bit of time to unwind but most of my time will be spent soaking up every drop of knowledge this place has to offer." I said seriously.
"Youth should be spent freely my boy, not chained by expectations of the future." Flitwick said softly.
"You all act like this is some burden or something. I told you though, I enjoy learning. Being able to noticeably prove that I'm improving is intoxicating. For example Falsa species." I said as I drew my wand and a small cloud of mist formed at it's tip before the illusion of a miniature thunderbird flapped into existence.
"An impressive illusion charm but I don't see how it relates." Flitwick said curiously.
"It's related because only a day ago I could barely pull off a canary. Now though " I sent more magic to the spell causing the illusion to swell until it filled the hallway with the impressive but somewhat blurring image of a thunderbird "Now I can do this." I said with a grin before releasing the spell.
"That's ridiculous! How in Merlins socks did you improve so fast!?" Terry exclaimed in shock.
"I LEARNED. I took the spell apart in my head to try and figure out what each part of it did and how they worked together before adjusting them to create something stronger than what I could before. It's the same spell but my understanding of it lets me do something like this compared to just blindly following the instructions. THIS is what power is, not being able to blast apart a mountain with a spell meant for that. But being able to do the same with a spell made to push someone back." I said seriously.
"That sounds harder though?" Mike said with a frown.
"It is. Theres no shortcuts, no instant gratifications but the end result makes you a better wizard than one that brute forces results. Am I wrong Professor?" I asked Flitwick.
"Not at all. Spot on really. I must admit that I never expected to see a first year grasp this concept though. Goodness you've only been exposed to the magical world for less than two months at this point too!" he said with a awed expression.
I didn't argue with that as technically it was true for this life of mine. But if you counted my previous life however I had years of second hand witnessing of magic and power as a whole. What with anime, T.V, comic books and video games being what they were at the time of my death it was hardly surprising. A common theme in much of that media was that the mastery of ones abilities were more important than just sheer force being brought out. In fact mastery tended to be the reason such force was possible to begin with.-
Still this conversation ended there as we reached the great hall and sat down for lunch. I ate a lot as per my usual and set off for the DADA classroom. I was a bit curious whether or not Quirelmort would be actually teaching anything useful or stuttering through the textbook. If it was the former I would pay attention and take notes but otherwise I'd go back to passively halfheartedly watching with my haki as I studied my potions book again. Maybe risky with how fragile the pride of the noseless face on the back of the professors head could be but I didn't like wasting my time if I could help it.-
Besides the wraith already knew I had memorized the first year textbook so if he was just rehashing it he should not complain that I wasn't sparing him my full attention. The classroom itself was nothing all that special as there were knick knacks on the walls and bookshelves with tomes on defensive magic. The desks were three seaters with enough seats for everyone and the air hung heavy with incense and the potent stabbing scent of garlic. Beneath all that though was an almost imperceptible rotten scent.-
'The books did not do this smell justice.' I thought as my eyes watered just from being exposed to the sheer potency that hung in the air.
I was not alone either and most of my peers also blinked in irritation as they walked in with some directly shedding tears. Forget focusing on the man himself we'd be lucky not to look like we had someone we cared about die by the time class was over. Unfortunately I didn't know the bubble head charm or even an air freshening spell to try and clear the air around my friends and I.-
I swore that I'd go specifically looking once this class was over though as this was just unacceptable. Finally the last of my peers sat down at their desks with uncomfortable expressions and the Professor walked in like he was unaffected by the stench. He walked to the front of the classroom and began to stutter out the lines of the textbook while adding tiny almost imperceptible nuggets of wisdom in the process. This unfortunately left me torn in two directions as the content was what I mostly already knew but those sporadic nuggets of wisdom added in meant I had to seriously focus or maybe miss them instead of noting them down.