"So, what's the secret sauce? Are we talking about a super-specific number of wiggles in the wand-shake?" Albert drew out his words with mock seriousness, tapping his chin as if pondering the most profound mystical knowledge.
He had been asked for the "trick," and the truth—that his success was down to a four-level advantage in his core magical attribute—was obviously impossible to share. The best he could do was provide a piece of advice so maddeningly generic it was almost a joke.
"The key, my friends, is to treat the Lumos charm with the same reverence and meticulous concentration you'd reserve for a final N.E.W.T. exam. Apply the spell with deliberate care and overwhelming will," he declared, finally settling on a suitably infuriating answer.
He had initially intended to say, "The key is to cheat," but even that cryptic truth would have been lost on them. The concept of leveraging an invisible power system was simply beyond the scope of their reality.
A collective groan rippled through the small group. Lee Jordan looked personally betrayed, Shanna's brow furrowed in genuine annoyance, and the twins' faces fell from eager anticipation into disappointed resignation. They had hoped for a helpful, tangible clue—a Latin phrase they could adapt, or a gesture they could mimic—only to be met with another infuriating dose of Albert's vague, Yoda-like wisdom.
Before the twins could unleash one of their trademark synchronized complaints, Albert smoothly continued, preventing the inevitable barrage of questions.
"Alright, alright. To be slightly less philosophical: this isn't strictly the basic Lumos charm. It's an advanced variation. Think of it like the difference between a simple Leg-Locker Curse and the all-encompassing Full Body-Bind Curse. They target the same concept—incapacitation—but one is far more complex to execute and sustain. Separating the light is much, much harder than conjuring it in the first place."
"A variation?" Shanna whispered, the realization hitting her. "So you weren't just… randomly whipping your wand around? You were layering a second, non-verbal spell on top of the first?"
"Of course not," Albert replied, slightly offended but understanding their confusion. The subtle, pushing force required to break the light free had indeed looked like an absentminded flick of the wrist, masking the profound magical effort beneath.
Their intense curiosity, however, was already starting to wane. While they might be briefly interested in the strange, high-level magic Albert was practicing, few of them had the motivation to actually learn it. For most Hogwarts students, the required assignments and mandatory classes already consumed vast tracts of their time.
Adding a complex, utterly useless-for-day-to-day-life spell to their workload was unthinkable. Why bother mastering floating light when you could spend that time practicing the Banishing Charm for Quidditch or perfecting a new Stink Bomb formula?
Shanna, ever the diligent student, quickly abandoned the abstract magic theory and returned to her own, more pragmatic pursuit. She was intensely focused on mastering the Copying Charm—the very spell Albert had taught them, which allowed for the near-instantaneous duplication of text.
It was a spell that required patience and accuracy, but the utility was undeniable. She intended to spend her free time early in the term solidifying this spell, ensuring a less stressful year ahead.
But while Shanna was slowly accruing experience points through diligent practice, Albert's progress wasn't just fast; it was, quite frankly, becoming horrifying.
His internal progress bar for the light separation technique—a skill that should have taken weeks or even months of frustrated failure—was accelerating at an absurd rate.
The small, sputtering orbs of light he had managed earlier were now substantial spheres, bright and stable. They no longer immediately faded but flew several feet forward, hanging suspended in the air before finally dissipating.
The sheer speed of his visible mastery made the friends, even the pragmatic twins, stop their activity and stare.
Shanna looked up, her face a mask of disbelief. She had been staring at the same spot for the last half-hour, struggling to keep her copying charm stable, and now Albert was performing something that looked like professional-level magic.
"Did that… actually work?" Shanna muttered, wiping a piece of ink from her cheek. Less than thirty minutes had passed since he'd started.
Fred, who had witnessed countless displays of Albert's innate skill, tried to reassure her and, more importantly, himself. "Don't be so shocked, Shanna. It's Albert. He must have been secretly practicing this for ages. He just waited until now to show it off."
Albert glanced at his Panel. The skill, which he mentally named Light Projection (Advanced), currently held a mere 65 XP. It hadn't even reached Level 1, yet the practical, visible progress was astronomical. Fred's assumption was sound; for anyone else, this level of control would take weeks.
But the Level 4 Wizard Lineage was acting as a massive multiplier, allowing the paltry 65 XP to translate into the competence of someone with a thousand. He wasn't cheating; he was playing on a difficulty setting that didn't exist for anyone else.
The uncanny silence was broken by a new voice, laced with dry amusement.
"Well, you certainly seem determined to make the Great Hall chandeliers redundant, Anderson."
Katrina had materialized behind Albert, quiet as a shadow, her keen eyes fixed on the dissipating sphere of light above his head. She was immediately dissecting the mechanics of the failed charm.
"By the way, thank you for the timely interruption," Albert said, closing his notebook and pulling out his pocket watch—a beautifully simple, engraved piece he'd charmed himself—to check the time. "Precisely twenty minutes until the appointed hour."
Katrina turned, a playful edge in her voice. "Last time, you took me to the prestigious Classroom 21. For the sake of social equilibrium, I'm leading you to the slightly less ostentatious, but equally functional, Classroom 17. Can't have you thinking you have the upper hand on all things club-related."
The Damned Club. Both of them had received invitations.
Albert remembered the immediate aftermath of his conversation with Katrina when she'd smugly declared he hadn't been invited. He had simply continued his work, only for the Panel to flash with a notification the very next day.
Professor Flitwick's invitation had triggered a quest: "The Way of the Charms Master." The quest was completed immediately upon receiving the invitation, granting him a hefty 2000 XP.
He had immediately poured the majority of that into his Magic Theory skill, elevating it to Level 2. This meant he no longer had to strain to keep up with Professor Flitwick's dizzying theoretical leaps during the club meetings. The remaining experience—still a solid chunk of over 600 XP—was now earmarked for the next critical upgrade.
As the two competitive minds walked out of the common room, the quiet returned, but the atmosphere remained charged.
"Seriously, when did those two become… a thing?" George muttered, watching their receding backs.
Shanna sniffed, folding her copying papers neatly. "It's a natural inevitability. Geniuses tend to gravitate toward other geniuses. They speak the same language of effortless complexity."
"Hmph. That's a bit rich, isn't it?" Fred challenged, genuinely slighted. They considered themselves geniuses of a different, more practical sort. "We're his roommates! We're his closest friends! He wouldn't have ventured deep into the Forbidden Forest for us months ago if he didn't see us as equals—or at least, close friends."
"No, you're his lab assistants and his entertainment," Shanna countered dryly, getting back to her copying practice.
"Nah, no, no," George disagreed, waving his index finger in a knowing circle, a smirk returning to his face. "We are geniuses. We're just the practical, entrepreneurial, mischief-based kind. Albert is the terrifying, world-conquering kind."
"And I think Katrina is setting herself up for unnecessary trauma," Lee Jordan interjected, shaking his head.
"Trauma?" Fred asked.
Lee elaborated with a sigh. "She seems to genuinely enjoy competing with Albert. That's just a bad investment of emotional energy. You don't compete with a hurricane, you stand back and watch the show."
Fred pulled out a brightly colored, self-shuffling card deck from his pocket. "Forget the existential dread for a second. Anyone want to play a game? Exploding Snap?"
Shanna replied without lifting her head, the low, practiced whisper of her copying spell barely audible. "Don't you have ten feet of Ancient Runes homework due on Monday, Fred?"
"Never mind. Forget I said anything about homework."
George and Lee burst into snickers at Fred's crestfallen expression.
In truth, beneath the surface jokes and lighthearted jealousy, all three of them felt a quiet, simmering sense of awe for Albert. They were all aware of his situation—the undeniable, freakish nature of his talent. But they also bore witness to the terrifying, relentless effort he poured into his craft, often in places no one else would ever look.
They knew, for instance, about his endless 'pen pals.'
Albert would write a thick stack of letters several times a week, and he received an equally daunting volume of replies. The sheer quantity defied the casual nature of simple correspondence. And the content… they had occasionally glanced over his shoulder.
The text was thick with arcane diagrams, dense theoretical explanations, and complex equations that looked more like advanced mathematical physics than simple witchcraft.
They could read every word individually, but the combined meaning remained maddeningly, terrifyingly incomprehensible. It was a feeling of fundamental inadequacy that went far beyond the difficulty of their own schoolwork.
Albert's commitment to this silent, impossible-to-understand Grind was what truly frightened them.
Katrina was undoubtedly brilliant, easily the second-brightest witch in their year, but in the eyes of his roommates, she was merely ordinary in the face of Albert's combined gifts. That's why Fred had concluded that competing with Albert was simply setting oneself up for failure.
Sometimes, meeting a pure, natural genius wasn't scary. What was genuinely, deeply horrifying was encountering someone who was gifted with talent far surpassing yours, who then chose to work exponentially harder than anyone else to maximize every single advantage.
They had been so comprehensively and consistently outpaced for so long that the normal human emotion of jealousy had long ago withered and died, replaced by a strange mix of resigned admiration and quiet dread. They were not on the same pitch as Albert; they were merely spectators, watching a prodigy play a game whose rules only he understood.
And that, they realized, was the most terrifying thought of all.
They looked at the empty space where Albert had been practicing, then at the thick stack of books on his desk, and then back at their own neglected homework. The realization hit them: there was no catching up. There was only watching him grow stronger, day by relentless day.