Dinner ended, and Harry and Ron never returned to the feast. Even Dumbledore and McGonagall had vanished from the staff table — safe to assume the two of them were getting a thorough dressing-down somewhere.
Kate had no choice but to walk back with the Slytherins.
Malfoy seemed to be in remarkably good spirits tonight. After a whole summer, the business of her having voluntarily reported others to Snape before the holidays had been more or less forgotten.
Same as always — flanked by her two attendants, with Pansy and Blaise walking one on each side — she swept into the Common Room like a proud queen.
Kate deliberately hung back, blending into the crowd of third- and fourth-years, then slipped quietly into the dormitory before Malfoy had the chance to remember she existed.
She was absolutely not going to spend the first night of term trading barbs with that girl for hours on end.
Back in the dormitory, her luggage had already been arranged neatly. Fluffball was curled up in its cage, resting contentedly.
Once she'd settled her things, she ran through the Grand Summoning Spell twice as part of her routine — same result as always: out popped a cat or a dog.
Petting them was perfectly pleasant, but these cats and dogs were essentially harmless, and she couldn't exactly keep them at school. So after getting her fill, she sent each one back exactly as it had come.
Still, Kate estimated that at most another two weeks and the Grand Summoning Spell ought to reach Level 2 — at which point it would start randomly producing magical items instead.
"System, open the personal attribute panel."
[Host: Kate Shafiq]
[Class: Wizard]
[Title: Lord of the Manor]
[Charisma: 40]
[Strength: 36]
[Agility: 36]
[Spirit: 36]
[Vitality: 72]
[Luck: 30+5]
[Mana: 66]
[Academy Reputation: 37]
[Family Reputation: 18]
[Wand Output Power: 2.0]
[Wand Attribute Points: 8]
[Emotion Points: 2]
[Stacked Ability I — Gifted Student Talent: Level 7]
[Stacked Ability II — Magic Resistance: Level 6]
[Stacked Ability III — Legendary Magic: Level 6]
[Stacked Ability IV — Animal Affinity: Level 5 (buff currently inactive)]
[Stacked Ability V — Draconic Protection: Level 4]
She hadn't accumulated many Attribute Points over the summer — only ten, scraped together through two months of exercise — and she'd spread them across Strength, Agility, and Spirit.
As a devotee of balanced builds, Kate's stat allocation for the next year or two would almost certainly remain focused on those three, plus Luck.
As for Charisma… being that pretty wasn't particularly useful. She'd leave it to chance.
"This year's goal: bring Strength, Agility, Spirit, and Luck all above fifty."
Kate ran the numbers in her head and set herself a detailed two-year plan.
She estimated that Voldemort's average personal attributes at the time of his resurrection would be at least seventy across the board — Charisma excluded, naturally.
So her own targets for the next two years were actually fairly manageable: raise her average attributes, excluding Charisma, to above seventy-five.
Beyond raw stats, she also needed to master one or two offensive spells.
The Unlocking Charm could be called mastered, but it had no real offensive power — she'd trained it mainly because it was easy, and convenient for branching into new spells.
Now that she'd already extended it into new spells, there was no need to keep pouring time into it.
The problem was that both the Levitation Charm and the Unlocking Charm had only ever branched into support-type extensions — clones and summoning.
And among the offensively capable spells she currently had, there was only a single Level 5 Fiendfyre to her name.
That was barely enough to deal with a Basilisk — let alone Voldemort.
Spell mastery had its own difficulty curve, and Fiendfyre was undeniably harder to control than the Levitation Charm, which made levelling it up considerably more painful.
Whether she could push Fiendfyre past Level 8 within the next year or two — that was genuinely uncertain.
If the difficult spells were hard to train, she could always fall back on her old method: level up a simpler spell quickly, then use it as a springboard to develop an extension.
So Kate had her eye on another type of flame.
Bluebell Flames. She'd used that spell casually before and it had already reached Level 4 on its own — which said everything about how simple it was.
Amber Wilson had used it before; Hermione had once kept some in a jar for warmth. It was also waterproof — objectively better than the ordinary fire produced by Incendio.
In short: a basic fire spell that even a first-year could learn with ease, and not particularly destructive.
If Kate practised it indoors, no one could object, and it wouldn't cause any trouble.
"For offence — primary training on Fiendfyre and Bluebell Flames. For defence — Protego and Occlumency as always."
Target Level 7 for Fiendfyre, Level 8 for Bluebell Flames; Protego and Occlumency to be practised twice daily without worrying about levels.
As for the Grand Summoning Spell — getting it to Level 3 before next school year would be cause for celebration. The Phantom Clone could be shelved for now, until her Spirit stat saw a significant jump.
Five spells to focus on in a year. It didn't sound that bad.
But Kate herself knew perfectly well how much heavier this load was compared to first year.
Back then she'd practised almost at random, casting about without a clear aim — all in the name of building a foundation and keeping her options open.
Now she was doing targeted advanced training on specific spells. The difficulty was on an entirely different level.
Not that she had much choice. If the plot couldn't be stopped, Voldemort would resurface at the end of fourth year — which meant she had fewer than three years to grow stronger.
Once Voldemort returned, his first targets would be Harry and Dumbledore. After that, she'd be next.
Given her priority on that list, she might even rank above Dumbledore — with only Harry in front of her. That wasn't a comforting thought by any measure.
"System, are there any Main Quests or Side Quests lined up for this year? Even small ones — I'm not picky!"
With her goals for the year set, she was already itching to get started on quests.
Every quest completed was one less weight on her shoulders.
[No quests are currently triggered. Please wait patiently, Host.]
Well, that was just brilliant.
Kate flopped back onto her large bed, listlessly listening to the sound of the Black Lake lapping at the castle walls outside.
Fine. No help from anyone — she'd just have to rely on herself.
She hauled herself back up, opened her Daily Quests, and grudgingly began her warm-up.
And while Kate was busily working through her exercise tasks with the System, the small black box tucked in the very deepest corner of her coin purse suddenly gave a violent shudder.
But just as quickly, the trembling seemed to be forcibly suppressed, and it stilled. From the outside, there was no sign that anything had happened at all.
____
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