Seeing the two angry owls, Victor suddenly remembered that he had kept the little creatures locked in the box since he bought them. They had been in there for most of the day without food or water, so it was no wonder they were so angry.
"Ahahaha, my bad. I forgot to feed you guys."
Victor scratched his head awkwardly and quickly rummaged through the box to find the special owl feed he had bought from the Eeylops Owl Emporium. He fed it to Cygnus and Fiona, and they slowly calmed down. The food smelled so good he almost wanted to taste it.
"Hahaha, all good now. Let's continue!"
Victor wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth and smiled to ease the awkward atmosphere. Aliya and Mrs. Julie had been giving him a strange look, as if he had just done something awful. How could he starve these two cute owls?
"Uncle Wilson, this is for you. It's a Wizarding Chess set, similar to Muggle chess, and it's a very popular game among wizards. The pieces move on their own. If you want to play, it comes with an instruction booklet."
Victor took out a chessboard wrapped in a red cloth and a box with the pieces inside.
"Here is a copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It documents many animals that we thought were only legends but are actually real, like dragons and mermaids. It was written by a master of Magizoology."
Victor took out another book. He had specifically bought two special gilded editions of Fantastic Beasts, both with Newt Scamander's autograph on the cover. When the pages were opened, the fantastic beasts would appear as a pop-up and would move and make sounds. Victor had to spend a lot of Galleons to get these two books, and he felt that no one in the world could resist them, Muggle or wizard.
"And this is the Gilderoy Lockhart Series. The stories inside are supposedly based on the author's real-life experiences and are very famous in the European wizarding world."
"This is for you, Rick. You said you were interested in Quidditch, so this is perfect for you!" Victor then took out a miniature Quidditch pitch, where a dozen tiny figures were playing a match. This item had cost Victor a lot of Galleons at Quality Quidditch Supplies; it was a replica of the final match of a Quidditch World Cup, and it had cost him two hundred Galleons.
"And these, and these…" Victor continued to pull out various gifts of all sizes from the small box. There were flowers that changed colors according to the weather, fireworks that could be set off dozens of times, and a miniature fairy treehouse that would float in the air and sprinkle golden stars.
It took him more than ten minutes to hand out all the gifts. He looked up and saw that everyone was lost in their own world, becoming captivated by the things of the wizarding world.
Aliya was flipping through Fantastic Beasts, her eyes sparkling. She would poke the animals in the book and even put her fingers in their mouths.
Rick, meanwhile, was on his knees, a magnifying glass in his hand, watching the miniature Quidditch match intently.
Mrs. Julie was engrossed in a book called Voyages with Vampires, which was one of the books in the Gilderoy Lockhart Series. Seeing her so captivated, Victor wondered if he should have bought the series in the first place, as they weren't cheap, and he felt like he had wasted his money.
Lastly, Mr. Wilson had placed the chessboard on the living room table. He was completely focused, having lit his pipe at some point. He was frowning, holding the instructions in one hand and arranging the pieces on the board with the other, his face a picture of deep thought.
Seeing this, Victor smiled knowingly, quietly closed the box at his feet, picked it up, and walked to his room. Let them take their time to digest their first contact with the new world.
After returning to his room and putting things away, the first thing Victor did was take a bath. He didn't know what was going on with the wizarding world, but the hygiene was truly questionable. Every shop he had been to in Diagon Alley today had one thing in common: they were all smelly, dirty, old, and messy. He was baffled as to why they couldn't just use magic to clean up. With a wave of a wand, it could all be done, so why not do it?
After getting cleaned up, Victor returned to his bed. He turned on his bedside lamp, picked up a copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1, and began to read it. He wanted to do some preliminary research on the magic of this world, which might help him find a way back home. The clock on his bedside table ticked away, and two hours flew by.
Victor gently closed the book and, after a moment of thought, reached into the air and pulled the wand he had bought today out of his space-altering pocket.
"Lumos!"
Victor casually uttered the spell, and a flash of white light appeared at the tip of his wand, but it quickly vanished. Victor wasn't concerned and tried again. At the same time, his ability, Origin, activated, and his eyes turned a mystical purplish-red. The white light flashed again, and Victor could now see the magical structure of Lumos.
The structure of a spell was three-dimensional and irregular, and the number and complexity of the magic lines determined its complexity.
To his surprise, even for a simple spell like Lumos, the magical structure was far more complex than he had imagined. If it were a magic circle, the same effect would only require two magic lines, but Lumos had more than twenty.
Victor closed his eyes in thought, then tried a few other spells, using Origin to sense their structure. Without exception, for the same magical effect, the spells of the Harry Potter world were far more complex in their magical structure than the spells of Earth Land.
Ever since Victor learned that he had been reborn into the Harry Potter world, he had been trying to recall all his memories of it.
After his brief study, he had a few new theories.
Victor wasn't a huge Harry Potter fan. Most of what he knew came from the movies and a few short clips, and he had only seen the first four films and the first installment of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
So, based on the information he had, if it came to magical combat, Victor could easily crush 99.9% of the wizards in this world. After all, in Earth Land, magic was either used for combat or in service of it.
Of course, he couldn't be so sure about those two old men, Grindelwald and Dumbledore. Based on some short clips he had watched a long time ago, Grindelwald had almost used Fiendfyre to burn all of Paris to the ground, and Dumbledore, who had defeated Grindelwald, could certainly do the same.
Destroying a city was at least at the level of a Great Magic. While Victor was confident in his own power, he wasn't so sure he could easily defeat those two old men.
As for Voldemort, even though some of his Horcruxes were somewhere out there, his weakness was known, so dealing with him wasn't all that difficult, especially since the noseless wizard only ever used the Killing Curse. Victor had plenty of ways to deal with that.
He also speculated that the magical system of the Harry Potter world was completely different from Earth Land.
Magic here was extremely subjective, much like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
From the way Professor McGonagall had been able to dispel his magic so easily earlier, he concluded that the magic in this world could be summed up in three points: first, a person's desire acts as a guide; second, magic is used as a bridge; and finally, a real-world effect is achieved.
In other words, the spells were just mental cues that strengthened the wizard's desire to cast the spell. The words of the spell weren't important. What was important was how strong your desire to have an effect on the real world was when casting it.
For example, the Levitation Charm was a very basic spell in The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1. In the books, Hermione was able to learn it instantly, probably because she was confident enough that she could make the feather levitate. On the other hand, Ron failed to cast the spell in class but succeeded later when he was dealing with the troll.
The reason for this could be that he lacked confidence. With his hot temper, he would just frantically wave his wand at the feather after a few failed attempts without really believing he could make it fly. So, of course, the feather wouldn't float. But later, when he was fighting the troll, his strong desire to save Hermione was enough to allow him to successfully cast the Levitation Charm.
As another example, Mad-Eye Moody (who was actually Barty Crouch Jr.) once said that the Killing Curse cast by a young student would probably only give him a nosebleed. This was because the young students in school were too pure and didn't have a strong enough murderous intent.
So, to sum up, in the world of Harry Potter, as long as your desire and will were strong enough, you could theoretically have power over anything you said. However, these were just theories for now.
But there was one thing Victor had discovered.
Although the magical structures were complex, it also meant that the spells in the Harry Potter world had great potential. If he could modify their magical structures and stabilize them with magic circles, he should be able to unlock a deeper level of power from them.
Without hesitation, Victor activated Origin again and began to modify the magical structure of Lumos.
A short while later, Victor opened his eyes and gave a gentle wave of his wand. A small magic circle flashed at the tip of the wand, and a ball of light flew out, darting around the room according to Victor's will.
It was a success!
Victor smiled to himself and immediately began to modify the other spells.
While Victor was brainstorming, people from the Ministry of Magic were scurrying around the Swinton house. The Ministry had detected an unusual magical signature in the area, so they had sent people to investigate, as per the regulations.
But no matter how hard they looked, they couldn't find the exact location of the magical signature.
In reality, Victor had already cast a spell on the Swinton house that had unintentionally solved the problem of the Trace being detected on his wand, but that was just bad luck for the Ministry officials, who had to work overtime that night.
Modifying the magical structures of the spells was a very mentally taxing task. Victor had to adjust each magic line one by one and keep trying to cast the spell until he achieved the desired effect. It was like manually forging gears: if you wanted two gears to fit together perfectly, you just had to keep grinding and testing.
Deactivating Origin, Victor rubbed his temples. Modifying the spells had given him a headache. He looked at the clock on his bedside table. It was almost midnight.
"Time for one more book."
Victor paused his work on the spells, but he had no intention of resting yet. He picked up Magical Theory and began to read it carefully.
Time slowly passed.
In Victor's room, all that could be heard was the ticking of the clock and the turning of pages.
The start of the school year was getting closer and closer.