Hogwarts Card System Chapter 008

Ted let out a long breath and asked, “Can you tell me about the boy who lived, Neville Longbottom? You know, I used to live in a Muggle orphanage, and I only recently heard about him.”

“Oh~” Old Tom raised his eyebrows, “That’s right! The Savior, the Boy Who Lived, thanks to him. Otherwise, who knows what things would be like now.”

“He survived that disaster and defeated the mysterious person in some unknown way. After all, he was only one year old at the time…”

“I heard he didn’t show much excellence, even a bit… disappointing. So some wizards think he was just lucky…”

“But no matter what, it’s because of him that the mysterious person fell. We can sit here and talk about these things, instead of being shrouded in darkness, living in fear. We should all thank him.”

After returning to his storeroom, Ted didn’t continue studying spells. Instead, he picked up the secondhand A History of Magic that he had never opened before.

The previous owner of this secondhand book might not have been a good child, as many character illustrations in it were defaced with mustaches and other graffiti.

But it was cheap, after all, and it didn’t affect its use.

Ted directly flipped to 1970, starting from when Voldemort led the Death Eaters in open opposition to the Ministry of Magic.

Since he didn’t know what happened in the original novel during those ten years, he also didn’t know if anything had changed.

But when it reached 1981, the situation was different.

The book recorded that Voldemort seized the opportunity to raid the safe house of the elite Auror couple, the Longbottoms. The Longbottoms clearly had a chance to escape, but they chose to fight to the death to protect their child.

Then, when Voldemort was about to kill Neville Longbottom, something unexpected happened. He left an “S”-shaped scar on Neville’s forehead and “died”!

And after Voldemort “kicked the bucket,” the world quickly experienced a second Celestial Convergence.

If the first Celestial Convergence mainly brought huge impacts on astrology and climate, as well as many living creatures, plants, and monsters from other worlds, then the second Celestial Convergence brought intelligent races from other realms.

Elves, dwarves, gnomes, and demi-humans are currently recognized as “humans” and accepted by the wizarding world.

As for merfolk, kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins… they are considered humanoid monsters.

Although they have their own crude civilizations and languages, they are cruel by nature and ugly…

It seems this world should be renamed Neville Longbottom!

Voldemort chose Neville as his archenemy; the Savior had changed.

The two Celestial Convergences caused this world to be filled with many unknown magical creatures, and who knows how much more impact they will have.

His biggest advantage of knowing the plot, was gone.

“Sigh~ Alright!” Ted put down the dog-eared A History of Magic.

No matter what, he still had to live, right?

Whether it was Neville or Harry, didn’t he still have to learn magic and become stronger?

He still had his golden finger, what was there to be afraid of?

It wasn’t some tragic protagonist story…

He reopened Magical Theory.

The author of this book is Adalbert Waffling, a British wizard who studied magical theory and is considered to have written “all magic.” Waffling is more or less seen as the “Father of Magical Theory” because every modern wizard has read his works.

Waffling summarized the basic rules of magic and authored Magical Theory, a book that still serves as a textbook for young wizards at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to this day.

This is a character who appeared on the Wizarding Cards found in Chocolate Frogs.

After learning a few simple spells, Ted began to read this book.

After all, this was the foundation. It provided certain explanations about what magic power is, the function of spells, and so on.

If one wanted to achieve something in magic, these basic theories had to be learned sooner or later. They even required in-depth exploration.

It wasn’t impossible to just use magic without knowing the ‘why’ behind it.

But in that case, one could only become a powerful elite Auror. Becoming a grandmaster of magic like Dumbledore, Grindelwald, or Voldemort would be impossible.

According to the widely accepted theory among wizards, magic is formed by wizards manipulating magic power with their own will.

The ultimate effect of magic is highly correlated with the caster’s personal desire.

And the movements of spells and wands are merely auxiliary means of casting magic.

After all, young wizards experiencing accidental magic have neither wands nor spells, but they can still directly cause magical effects.

However, that primitive method is too uncontrollable and extremely difficult, even dangerous, for most wizards.

That’s why wizards two thousand years ago devised spells and wands. The purpose was to “standardize” magic, reduce the difficulty of casting, and allow them to learn more spells.

Around the time of BC, the number of spells each wizard mastered was very limited. It depended on their talent.

For example, a kind-hearted and compassionate wizard might only know a few healing spells and have no combat power.

Or some witches who grew up in the countryside might be best at brewing potions, and at most, they could use black cats or crows as spies. They also had no combat power in a fight.

Some were only good at Transfiguration, while others were only good at long-range curses… Otherwise, witch hunts wouldn’t have been so effective.

In short, there has been great progress now.

Ted picked up another book borrowed from the bookstore, Controlling Your Magic Power—A Must-Read for Young Wizards.

This book superficially teaches young wizards how to control their magic power to avoid major outbursts.

Although the content is shallow, it is especially suitable for novice young wizards to learn.

In addition, Ted also had a copy of The Power of Will in his hand.

This was the benefit of working at the bookstore—he could get books for free~

Deep in the storage room of Flourish and Blotts, there were many books accumulated over the years, all unsold remnants from previous years, and some that no one bought.

Ted even found a copy of The Invisible Book of Invisibility.

It was said that the bookstore had bought a few copies, but they were never sold because they couldn’t be found after a quick glance.

These were all free treasures, and Ted meticulously took notes on them…

If he had had this much drive back then, Ted would have graduated from Tsinghua University long ago.

Now, in the skill bar of his character interface, there was another skill: Spells Lv 1.

It seemed that in terms of spells, he had entered the realm of a beginner.

He had also come to terms with it—no matter how the world changed, his own strength was the foundation.

To adapt to all changes by remaining unchanged!

…

The next day, Ted still went to the apothecary to process herbs.

He could now process more than a dozen kinds of herbs, which was truly rapid progress.

This kind of work depended entirely on how much effort he put in. Ted had written down every word Mr. Jiggs said about potion ingredients in his notebook and would organize and review them at night.

Basically, Mr. Jiggs didn’t need to say anything twice.

Now, Jiggs also felt the benefits of having a reliable “child laborer” in the shop. It truly reduced most of the tedious, repetitive, and low-value work of processing low-level materials that still had to be done.

Jiggs went to get supplies and returned with a backpack. It was clearly enchanted with an Undetectable Extension Charm, as he pulled out things five times the volume of the backpack.

“What are these herbs?” Ted asked.

“Hehe! These things are not easy to get! They are new varieties that appeared after the Celestial Convergence. These few have been confirmed to have medicinal value after long experiments…”

Jiggs began to show off, “Look at this…” He picked up an ordinary white flower, “This is called Peacebloom, and it can be used to make healing potions.”

Ted was stunned. This name sounded a bit familiar.

Jiggs continued, “Unlike dittany, healing potions can also effectively treat many internal injuries, which dittany cannot replace.”

“And this, Silverleaf, and this Earthroot… these are all herbs that appeared after the Celestial Convergence.”

“As for this one~” Jiggs took out a large glass jar filled with liquid, and something like a pig’s brain floated inside.

“This is a Drowner brain, from a Drowner. Drowners are also monsters that appeared after the Celestial Convergence. If you go near water in the future, you have to be careful, these things are very dangerous!”

Peacebloom? Silverleaf? Earthroot?

Isn’t this from World of Warcraft? Has Azeroth connected to this world?

What about the Burning Legion?!

As for Drowners, Ted initially thought they were the legendary Kappa!

But when he mentioned Drowner brains, he remembered, aren’t these monster materials from The Witcher 3 or the Witcher world?

What exactly did the Celestial Convergences converge?!

Although Ted gained a lot of experience today by learning new herbology and potion ingredient knowledge, he couldn’t be happy.

This world doesn’t have the Well of Eternity, so it shouldn’t be on the Burning Legion’s radar, right?