Chapter 6

After the revelation with Cho, I started to use my observe skill on various people who’ve I already scanned. Revealing to me that other people had been given different titles.

And strangely enough, it was people who seemed to interact with me more than not. For example, Cho. She was a roommate, and she also went to various classes with me.

But not all people who interacted with me constantly were given a title. Such as Tim, who interacted with me more than anyone else at Hogwarts.

It was strange, very strange.

So far, the one’s I’ve discovered was Victoria’s. Who was labeled ‘The High Priestess’.

And of course, Cho, who was labeled ‘The Lovers’.

After a bit of research on these terms in the library, as well as the perk name, I came to the realization that these names matched up to something called the major Arcana. Something used in fortune telling.

Which was related to Divination. An elective class that wasn’t available to first years just yet. Unfortunate. As it seemed my research had come to a sort of wall. Or rather, I was able to get more information, but said information relied on prior knowledge to understand.

Knowledge of Divination, I assume.

If the titles were connected to divination, then…it would seem to suggest that it predicted something about their futures. Or at least their fate. Which was quite interesting, but also a bit puzzling.

If that was it, why was the title they were given so large? It was just as big as their own name, signifying some sort of importance. Not only that, it was only very specific people that were given these titles. Most people didn’t have them.

Was there perhaps something I wasn’t seeing?

It would seem I needed to try to study more on the subject…

*~o~*

After a session with me training my owl, Athena, a pop up occurred. Leading me to look over to it as I rewarded her.

[BOND LEVEL WITH ATHENA HAS INCREASED TO 1/10]

‘Bond level’? Hmm, perhaps this was some sort of affection meter? I see. Then Athena was growing fond of me through all of this. I turned towards Marie, who was also in the Owlery with me.

Whenever I came here, she seemed to have been here before me, more often than not. Actually, I don’t think there was a time where she hadn’t been here when I visited Athena…

Which was odd when I thought about it. Wasn’t the Slytherin common room all the way down in the dungeons? It must be a bit of a long walk from the west tower to there.

Ah right. I had almost forgotten to observe her…

Sure enough, she too had a title above her name.

‘The Chariot.’

It was interesting, and also a bit ominous. After a while of staring, Marie looked towards me, and proceeded to question why I was staring at her so hard. After a few minutes of conversation with her, she challenged me to another race between her owl and mine.

This had been a pretty constant thing between her and me. Which is probably why I still had the mission to beat her in a race, and why it didn’t delete itself after Athena failed to do so.

I wasn’t sure why Marie kept challenging me to a race. It wasn’t as if my owl had gotten any faster or better coordinated in twenty-four hours than hers.

Sure enough, her owl proceeded to beat mine with more than a few minutes to spare. Although I was pleasantly surprised this time around as Athena actually completed the entire course for once.

Something she hadn’t been capable of doing beforehand.

Winning usually put Marie in a good mood. Causing her to love and dote on her owl. Rubbing and smoothing it’s feather’s as it shook around in her hands.  After a bit of this, she sat up. Coughing into her hand lightly before crossing her arms and giving me a look.

“I have decided to go out and get my owl a treat due it’s hard won victories. If you’d like to come along and get some for your own owl, I won’t stop you.”

Hmm? A treat? How was she planning on doing that? There was a nearby town, but students weren’t allowed to just go there whenever they felt like it. There were specific times in which we could visit, and that was with adult supervision.

But that also only applied to students in their third year and up.

Out of genuine curiosity, I decided to tag along.

Instead of heading towards her own room, she simply made her way down Hogwarts before leaving Hogwarts through the Herbology classroom path. The sun was still up and quite bright, showing off quite clearly it was in the afternoon.

It didn’t seem like Marie had brought any money with her. Though she did bring a small empty sack that she pulled out of her pocket, and even offered one to me. We kept heading further down and down onto the path that lead to the classroom of care of magical creatures.

There was also what seemed like a house that a trail lead to. I found it rather odd, as I thought most of the teachers lived inside the castle. Perhaps the care of magical creatures professor didn’t?

Marie kept leading me further and further away, until finally we were close to the edge of the forest. Something that I was quite certain was against the rules.

“Oh don’t worry. We’re barely going to be sticking our toes into it. We’re just going to be looking for little snacks for our owls.”

Ah, I see. She was meaning to find little creatures in order to feed to our owls. That made sense. She quickly shushed me, despite me not saying anything, before crouching down. Pointing over to a small patch of bramble that…on closer inspection, did in fact have movement in the area.

After using observe, I quickly learned that it was a pair of voles.

Marie quickly ushered me to take out my wand, and on the count of three, we both fired off spells towards them. Only mine seemed to hit, with Marie’s quarry having immediately sped off due to the disturbance. Marie cursed her luck before attempting to find another, while I picked up the stunned creature.

It’s body wasn’t moving, but I could see it’s eye dilating. It was…an interesting feeling to have something so small in the palm of my hand. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. After a few minutes of observation, the vole suddenly shifted.

I frowned for a moment. Thinking that perhaps my spell had somehow not been perfect once again, I observed the vole. Only to see that it was labeled dead next to its name.

And then a pop up appeared.

[CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE LEVELED UP!]

[+1 STR, +1 DEX, +1 END, +1 INT, +1 WIS, +1 CHR, +2 LUK]

Leveled up? I was unfamiliar with this term. But it seemed to have given me rewards. Very big rewards, actually. That was a lot of stats that had just went up. And yet…I hadn’t done any sort of mission. Heck, I hadn’t done anything of note.

The only thing that happened was the vole dying but…

That couldn’t have been the reason that I was rewarded so heavily, could it? It definitely seemed to point that way but…I was confused.

Why would my mom want me to kill these creatures?

…Ah, I see it now. What was probably happening was the fact that she saw voles as vermin. I had even heard before that they’d ruin gardens and the like. So it made sense that my mother wouldn’t approve of them in that case.

Thus why I would be so heavily rewarded and incentivized to kill more.

I hadn’t even tried to kill the vole, and yet it died anyway. Of shock, I’d guess. Or maybe as the spell was meant for a human being, it had paralyzed an organ that it needed to live. Whichever the case, killing the vole had been absurdly easy.

Which meant if I wanted to ‘level up’ again, it would be extremely easy to do so. Perhaps…I should pay more visits to the forest then?

Just to go looking for more voles, of course. I didn’t dare go any further the tree line. That area was stated in no uncertain terms to be wildly dangerous. And although I was curious, I knew better than to go looking for trouble.

Especially with dinner being only a few hours away.

We continued to look for more voles, and Marie had indeed found one more, before finally giving up and returning back to the castle. I absentmindedly fed the fresh meat to Athena as I considered what I would do next.

*~o~*

After another session with the Dueling Club, I had discovered two new titles. One given to Penelope, and the other to Tonks. Penelope had been given the title of ‘Temperance’ and Tonks had been rather strikingly dubbed ‘Justice’.

Now that I think about it, Tonk’s title does make a bit of sense. She wants to be an auror, and it could be said that they bring dark wizards to justice. So, it wasn’t hard to see how she was tied to that title.

Still, it was a rather…powerful sounding title. One that sounded much more important than all the others previous.

Perhaps because she had been the only one labeled such a prominent and important concept, like Justice.

Maybe it was trying to say that she was just and fair? It was possible, but I wasn’t so sure if that was correct. The Arcana had deep ties into divination, so it didn’t make much sense to talk about what she is, as much as it would be to talk about what she would be.

…With that logic, it’s conceivable that it could also be implying that she will indeed be accepted into her future career as an auror. As she would become Justice. In a sort of way.

Penelope’s though…I had no clue. I wasn’t even sure what Temperance even meant. Something to do with patience, I think? More research would be required.

That wasn’t the only good news that I was in for though.

After my stats had increased, I reviewed everything I knew about them, before remembering the books I had gotten long ago. The ones that couldn’t be read because of my Intelligence and Wisdom being too low.

So, I brought them back out, and attempted to read them once more.

The one that had been inside the blue box was unfortunately still not readable, but the other one that had been in the green box, now was. And it detailed a very interesting spell.

It was more of an enchantment really.

It detailed a way to imbue a weapon with magical power, and the various ways on how to do this, as well as the effects of it. Of course, this was absolutely useless in this day and age. I mean, who’s ever heard of Wizards fighting with swords?

That had been popular a long time ago, when it was seen as sporting for Wizards to fight muggles on a sort of even playing field. But nowadays not even muggles use swords anymore. And there were just a variety of easy to cast charms to deal with muggles if a fight broke out.

That being said, the art of enchanting weapons was something that wasn’t very well known at all. It was actually very rare for anyone to know how to do something like that, besides the very basics of enchantments, like making something more durable, and lasting longer. Or to not be as dusty.

I wasn’t quite sure, but I think it was because not only had it become archaic to even do something like that, but back in the day wizards were much less willing to part with their spells.

It was possible that I could make quite a bit of money off of selling the secrets laid out in this book. Though it would require me to find people who were interested in such niche things as enchanting weapons.

I’d just have to worry about that later.

For now, maybe I should consider what I should finally use my upgrade hammer on. There were a variety of things I wanted to test out, but which one came first…