"You mean… a trick?" Albert deliberately drew out his voice, pretending he was trying hard to think of how to answer the question.
After a moment, he finally said, "The trick is… to practice the spell with the same intensity you'd put into a final exam."
Originally, Albert wanted to say 'cheating,' but after thinking it over, he gave up, assuming no one would understand what 'cheating' meant.
At this moment, the expressions on their faces froze. They had expected to hear some useful trick, but it turned out… Albert had tricked them again.
Before they could voice their thoughts, Albert continued, "Alright. Actually, this is another type of magic, a variation of the Lumos Charm, somewhat like… well, the Leg-Locker Curse and Petrificus Totalus. Of course, this magic is harder to master than the Lumos Charm."
"So, you weren't shaking your wand just now?" Sannafinally understood what was going on.
It was just that casting the spell while the wand tip was glowing gave the illusion that the orb of light was being shaken off the glowing wand.
"Of course not." Albert looked speechless, not expecting these people to think that way. Well, admittedly, it did look like he was shaking his wand randomly just now.
Their curiosity didn't last long. They might be interested in the spells Albert practiced, but not many would want to learn them. For most students, they not only had homework to do but also spells to practice from class, and these two things would take up a lot of their free time, leaving no extra time or effort to practice new, more complex spells.
Especially those spells they didn't understand at all and would require a lot of time to learn.
Sanna was undoubtedly the most efficient student in their year, besides Albert. At least, that was the case when doing homework, which was related to her Muggle education when she was younger.
After Sanna finished her homework, she began practicing the Duplication Charm using strips of paper.
It was a spell she had learned from Albert; it wasn't very difficult to learn, but to initially master it still required a considerable amount of time to practice.
Unlike Sanna's situation, Albert's learning progress was very fast. The orbs of light he shook out became larger and larger, and they didn't immediately extinguish; they could even fly forward a certain distance.
This visible speed of progress was truly astonishing, and they all realized that Albert would be able to master this magic in no time.
Sanna looked up, staring blankly at the orb of light floating above her head, her face full of disbelief, "It just succeeded like that?"
From when Albert started practicing until now, it had only been less than half an hour!
"No need to be surprised, this is normal." Fred casually comforted her, "Albert must have been secretly practicing, you just didn't know it."
Albert glanced at his skill panel; the skill only had 65 experience points and hadn't leveled up yet, but the experience gained was already astonishing.
"It seems you forgot about the meeting time." Someone spoke, interrupting their thoughts.
Katrina had walked behind Albert at some point, also looking up at the disappearing orb of light above his head, a thoughtful expression on her face.
"Speaking of which, you actually came to remind me." Albert put down his wand, took a pocket watch from his pocket, opened the cover, looked at the time, and said, "Twenty minutes left."
"Last time, you took me to Classroom 21. This time, I'll take you to Classroom 17," Katrina said, turning her back to Albert. "Consider us even."
The two were, of course, talking about the Charms Club; they had both received invitations.
Actually, the day after Katrina said Albert hadn't been invited, he received an invitation from Professor Flitwick. Similar to Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration Clubinvitation last year, the task panel directly completed a task related to the Charms Club, and it also rewarded 2000 experience points.
After completing the task, Albert directly raised his Charms theory to level two, so at least when attending the club, he wouldn't have to worry about not understanding what Professor Flitwick was saying. Moreover, the 2000 experience points rewarded by the task had not been fully used; one-third remained.
George looked up at their retreating figures and muttered softly, "When did their relationship become so good?"
"Geniuses' friends are usually also geniuses, I guess." Sanna pouted.
"Then what do you say we are?" Fred disagreed with her point of view. Their relationship was very good, especially a few months ago when Albert ventured deep into the Forbidden Forest to find them.
If Albert didn't consider them good friends, how could he have taken such a big risk?
"Roommates." Sanna said without hesitation.
"No, no." George didn't pay much attention to that statement, wagging his index finger and saying in a joking tone, "Actually, we are also geniuses!"
"What kind of geniuses?" Lee Jordan couldn't help but tease, "Prankster geniuses?"
"I think they're trouble-making geniuses." Sannawatched them goofing around speechlessly, then continued to bury her head in practicing her Duplication Charm. She planned to master this spell quickly during the free time at the beginning of the school year.
"I actually feel Katrina works quite hard."
"Hard?"
"She seems to like to compete with Albert, which isn't a good choice." Fred took out a card from his pocket and waved it in front of Sanna: "Want to play a round?"
Sanna didn't even look up and retorted, "Don't you have homework to do?"
"Never mind, I didn't say anything."
Seeing Fred's discomfiture, George and Lee Jordancouldn't help but laugh.
In fact, they also envied Albert's talent, but as friends and roommates, the three of them were very clear about Albert's situation. Perhaps he was indeed a genius, but in unknown places, he also put in efforts unimaginable to ordinary people.
To master those spells, Albert also needed to spend a lot of time researching and practicing.
Especially writing letters to those so-called "pen pals," each mailing was a thick stack, and it was trending towards getting thicker, which was simply anti-Wizard.
The three of them had seen the contents inside; that feeling of understanding every word but not understanding it when put together was truly awful.
Those things were countless times harder than the homework they did.
Albert could actually write several letters a week and receive the same number of replies, which seemed terrifying to them.
However, even with all that, that guy still looked more at ease than them.
Katrina was a genius, but in the eyes of the three, she was just that. That's why Fred would say that Katrinacompeting with Albert was very hard.
Sometimes, a genius isn't scary. What's scary is when the other person is more of a genius than you and works harder than you.
Because they had already been left so far behind that they couldn't see a shadow, the three of them had no so-called jealousy. They all realized that they and Albertwere no longer on the same level in some aspects.