Hermione stood there with her mouth hanging open like she'd just watched him pull a rabbit out of his ear. Yesterday in Transfiguration class, he could barely make a match twitch, and now he'd just performed a perfect transformation in under two seconds.
"But... how did you..." she started, but Adrian was already walking away.
"Practice makes perfect," he called over his shoulder with a grin, leaving Hermione to figure out what had just happened.
Walking back to Gryffindor Tower, Adrian nearly ran into Harry and Ron carrying their wizard chess set. Both boys stopped dead when they saw him, like he'd suddenly sprouted a second head or something.
Ron's eyes went wide when he noticed the thick book under Adrian's arm. The shock made him drop the chess piece he was holding - a small knight that tumbled onto the stone floor with a metallic clang.
"Careful, you clumsy fool!" the knight shouted as his armor cracked. He drew his tiny sword and jabbed it straight into Ron's thumbnail before the red-haired boy could react.
"Ow! That hurt, you little git!" Ron jerked his hand back and accidentally flicked the angry knight across the corridor.
"Language!" the knight yelled as he sailed through the air.
Ron stuck his injured thumb in his mouth and glared at where the piece had landed. "I hate it when they fight back," he muttered, quickly gathering the rest of the pieces and shoving them into their box before they could cause more trouble.
Still nursing his thumb, Ron turned to Harry with genuine concern. "You don't think Adrian's going to start acting like Hermione, do you? All 'Actually, Ron, if you'd read Hogwarts: A History...' and that sort of thing?"
Harry winced at Ron's surprisingly good impression of their bushy-haired classmate. "God, I hope not. One Hermione is more than enough for all of Gryffindor."
They both shuddered at the thought of being lectured by two know-it-alls instead of just one.
Meanwhile, Adrian had no idea his friends were worried about him becoming a second Hermione. He was too busy checking his system interface, amazed at how much progress one session with the Study Genius card had brought him.
[Adrian Blackwood]
[Occupation: Wizard (First Year)]
[Spells: Mortificus Level 1 (6/200), Wingardium Leviosa Level 1 (12/200), Transfiguration Level 1 (30/200), Expelliarmus Level 1 (16/200), Lumos Level 1 (1/200)]
[Knowledge: Magical Item Crafting Level 0 (435/500), Basic Magical Theory Level 0 (88/100)]
[Magical Item:
-Wand (yew wood, unicorn hair, eleven and three-quarter inches)
-Magic Power: Medium]
[Wand's Compatibility: 72.5%]
[Grade Points: 20]
"Not bad for a few hours' work," he said to himself. Almost all his spells had jumped to Level 1, which was more progress than some of his classmates had made in weeks.
Since his dormmates were still downstairs, it seemed like the perfect time for some practical testing. Or as he preferred to call it, messing around with magic because it was brilliant fun.
He gathered some boxes, stools, and pillows to use as practice targets, then pulled out his wand with a grin.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" The wooden box rose smoothly into the air and hovered there like it was floating in water.
"Expelliarmus!" A pillow went flying across the room to smack against the far wall.
"This is amazing!" Adrian laughed, continuing his impromptu practice session. Within minutes, pillows were scattered everywhere, boxes floated at different heights around the room, and he was grinning like he'd just discovered the best secret in the world.
This was what real magic felt like, the power to change reality with just words and wand movements. It was everything he'd dreamed about during those long nights in his previous life, reading fantasy novels and wishing he could escape into worlds where impossible things happened every day.
After about fifteen minutes of enthusiastic spellcasting, Adrian's head started feeling fuzzy. He'd learned his limits pretty quickly: the Levitation Charm could keep an empty box floating about a meter high for forty seconds, or lift his bed for five seconds, though only about a foot off the ground.
But Transfiguration really caught his imagination. The ability to change one thing into something completely different seemed to have endless possibilities. With enough skill, he might even learn to create living animals from objects, just like Professor McGonagall.
"I wonder," he said, tapping his wand against his palm, "could you use Transfiguration in a fight? Turn someone's wand into a snake, or their robes into rope?"
Thinking back to the books and movies, he couldn't remember seeing much of that. Even during serious battles, wizards mostly stuck to hexes and curses. Maybe there were rules about transforming people, or maybe wizards had natural defenses against it.
"Although," he added with a smirk, "Hagrid did give Dudley a pig's tail, and Mad-Eye turned Draco into a ferret. So it definitely works sometimes."
The memory made him chuckle. Draco bouncing around as a white ferret had been pretty entertaining, even if it was slightly terrifying coming from someone they thought was Mad-Eye Moody.
"Right then, enough theory. Time to test something more interesting."
His attention turned to the one spell he hadn't tried yet, Mortificus. It was listed as dark magic in his system, which made him nervous but also curious. The spell had appeared after he'd arrived at Hogwarts, though he had no memory of learning it.
Adrian looked around the room for a target and spotted Echo, his tawny owl, perched on her stand preening her feathers.
"Sorry, girl, but this is for science," he told her, raising his wand. "Mortificus!"
A dim purple light flickered from his wand tip, but Echo just tilted her head at him with mild interest, as if to say, "That's it? I've seen more impressive light shows from the fireplace."
"Hmm. Mortificus!" He tried again, putting more focus into the spell. More purple light, same unimpressed owl.
"Mortificus! Come on, work!" He cast the spell several more times, growing frustrated as Echo began treating the purple lights like an entertaining game. She even grabbed his wand tip with her beak and gave it an experimental tug.
"Alright, let go before you break it," Adrian laughed, gently retrieving his wand. He checked his system interface, Mortificus was definitely Level 1, so it should work properly.
Maybe Echo was just too comfortable with him to be affected? Or maybe owls were naturally resistant to fear magic?
His gaze wandered around the room and landed on a small gray shape curled up on Ron's nightstand. Scabbers, Ron's pet rat, was fast asleep with biscuit crumbs around his whiskers. His tiny paws twitched as he dreamed what were probably very rat-like dreams about cheese and warm, dark places.
"Well, Scabbers," Adrian said quietly, approaching the sleeping rat with his wand ready, "let's see if you're more cooperative than Echo."