Chapter 59 - Ursprungliga

The next week was concerted training in the modern day. Reading the low-level books I have access to, and reconciling them internally with what I know. The past was traveling.

The travel was not very hard, nor very eventful. It consisted of shadow-jumping as far as I could, followed by flying on a broom as far as I could while my shadow-magic was filling back up so I could jump again. By the end of the third day, I was at the edge of Scotland, the fourth, I was in the Shetland Islands, and the fifth saw me landing, after a day of flying, in Norway.

The map of Ursprungliga put it in the general vicinity of Knutshø, on a small lake which was warded and hidden from Muggles.

So high in the mountains, that it would be hard to get there, by foot, and warded to be unfindable unless you knew what to look for.

The seventh day saw me landing in the warded vale.

It was, of course, the site of a slaughter. The week-old bodies were beginning to decay, though with it being winter, the snow and ice was helping to slow the process. The stench was not yet extremely pervasive. When I first laid eyes on the building, I saw the Herbology grounds closest, which bled off, with some very aesthetically pleasing grounds, to the main academy building, which was directly south of the dorms to the north.

Both buildings were perhaps a quarter the size of Hogwarts, with the land set for Herbology being maybe the size of the dorms. I could see beyond those, too, from my perch, to their hidden lake. It had a large stone obelisk in the center, which I knew to be the wardstone, which kept people who didn’t know of the pace from finding it. The bodies are mostly near the edge of the wards, with a few of them being scattered close to the main buildings, mere dots on the horizon.

Flanking the school buildings were animite statues, which were very sluggish in how they were moving, clearly low on power.

Consulting the map, I also noted that some of the outlying towers were specialty classrooms. They had a potions and alchemy tower, a smithy and rune shop, along with one general guard tower, which on the map was labelled ‘prison’. Not hard to guess what that might hold. I hopped from my ledge, and floated with my broom to the Herbology section, as it was the closest.

The plants here were thought to be either extinct or lost. They had a number of potions ingredients planted - mostly in larger plots - which were specific to Scandinavia, and when the supplies had run out, it caused a major setback in potioneering, which lasted almost 200 years. That had been in 1492, but these were whole fields of the herbs. So I made sure to carefully get viable sample which I could re-plant later, along with soil samples from where they grew to make sure I could re-plant them with some success.

That done, what I considered ‘the boring part’, I slowly wandered towards the dorm building.

The building was four stories, and probably the size of the North Wing of Hogwarts. It had four towers flanking the edges, which were seven stories in total, and one central tower, which was eight stories. I entered the western door, and felt around with my senses.

A main dining hall was before me, some closets on this floor, above me, there were… 25 rooms, most of which were well furnished and appointed. I jumped up to one, and looked around.

A professors room.

There is a large book-case covered in what Observe calls journals. They are numbered, and written by a Galmar Stoneweaver. The door is a smooth granite, and has no handles, indicating it is a standard, for the day, push door.

The bed is pretty utilitarian, and empty. It is unmade, indicating either Galmar was asleep when the attack began, or he doesn’t generally care to make the bed when he could be doing other things.

Aside from those features, there is a desk, with a large stack of essays in two piles. I quick glance tells me they are sorted by whether or not they have been graded, with the best marks on the bottom, and the worst on top.

My brain tells me this is so he can give more help via notes, to the people who scored low, if he had the time.

I quickly pull the essays, journals and two coursebooks which were inside the desk into a chest, then flicker to the next room.

It is very similar, except it has a few tapestries, the bed is made, and the journals are by a ‘Mariela Ur’.

All of the 25 rooms are like this, except for there are 3 - which seem to be uninhabited - which had 3 book-shelves, and they seem to be full of the old lesson plans, and journals of the professors who died, retired or otherwise left. The rooms doors are highly warded, and I, not for the first time, am glad I can just ignore those things.

I flicker up to the third floor, which I can feel has many more rooms, owed in part to the fact it’s not sharing room with the dining hall, which was tall enough to cover the first 2 floors.

The third floor is mostly younger students rooms. I acquire any personal possessions, to return to the families if I can find anything indicating where they live, and any books. Most students have a journal or two which is their notes on whatever they’ve been taught or have been working on in their spare time.

All of the rooms are abandoned, but well lived in and cared for. It’s a sad site, the abandoned toys and beds.

The fourth floor, however, is a little different than I expected.

There are only forty rooms on this floor, and none of them have journals. Just beds, desks with unfinished essays, and general notes on loose parchment. There aren’t even a lot of personal effects, though I do grab what I can, before moving to the towers.

The outer towers are much more dense with journals. Past student journals which are tattered from misuse, and a few warded doors which I hop past to find rooms with more well repaired journals.

The journals of the 4th floor kids, I guess. I loot those, and then go to the top of the north-western tower.

In the room are three things, a pedestal with a book, a shelf full of similar books, and a lone chair.

I flick through the book to find it is a list of students, where they live and their next of kin.

In case they die from some magical mishap, or similar, I guess. Medicine is not so good, at this time.

I flicker to the other towers, finding similar setups. I notice, after the second tower, that the journals seem to be on specific subjects. The first tower had charms and defensive magics, the second was offensive magics and transfiguration, the third and fourth towers were on specialty magics, like introductions to alchemy, runes, and so on. They were, unsurprisingly, sparse in detail and generally just primers. I think the more in-depth ones will be in their respective towers.

So I moved to the central tower. There are eight rooms in this tower, one for every floor. The first five appear to be storage. The sixth, a two-part office, and the seventh a bedroom.

The eighth is an office, and it is here I find the first bits of the real library.

Advir’s personal library. It is also here I find a snake-faced looking rogue, who wears the symbol of Durmstrang.

Probably left behind to cast the buildings so when the others came back they could loot quickly and get out.

He dies before he notices I am there, so engrossed in his reading as he is.

I loot the personal library, and find a set of letters in a desk, to his sister apparently, and make sure to commit the address she lives at to memory. It’s not so far from the school, which she had moved closer to in order to be closer to her last living relative.

Finishing the dorms with a good haul of tomes - mostly student-written books - I flicker to the academy, admiring the beauty of their courtyard, which separates the two buildings from a window, and then, I loot the Academy building.

There are no personal effects here. There are a lot of classrooms, which have writing on various boards and such, which I make sure to copy down, and not much else. They clearly kept no books here, and nothing important was stored in the building itself. So I flicker to the Owlery, and quickly write a letter explaining the school has fallen, and all are dead, including the owner of these birds, before duplicating it and sending them ‘to their home’.

The few school birds I send to the places I have addresses for. On the bottom of the letter, I make sure to put where they can find the possessions of the dead, should they wish to recover them, and that they will be there for two weeks, starting tomorrow. The village is called Skoll, it’s more of a town than a village, and it should be a good place for everyone to show up. I’ll have to rent a room or two to store all of the stuff in - or at least make it look like that’s what I’m doing.

Oh well. I’ll figure it out as I go.

I quickly move on, going to the Smithy and Runes building.

The fact there are no books in the work areas doesn’t surprise me. Nor does it say that the top floor has only two books. One for smithing and one for Runes, which appear to be the course books whoever was teaching here was going off of. I sight, pocket them, and flicker to the Potions and alchemy area, to find much the same, except here they have a lot of ready ingredients for both potions and alchemy, and the top floor has a cupboard full of finished product, which I assume was their stock for medicines and the like.

I loot those, and then move over to the temple, which is almost a kilometer away, north of the lake proper.

I stop before the steps of the Temple, seeing the statues here are unactivated, and bow before them ceremonially. Then, I stand and smile at the temple.

“My name is Aubrey Hawthorne, also known as Kalanast Amaglain or Sindrie. I request entry into your temple, so that I might put the poor souls here to rest.” I murmur at the temple, and the statues, to my surprise, move and open the doors for me. I bow again and then walk inside.

The interior is one massive room, about the size of the Dorm building, and the pillars are the various Norse gods, with Odin and Thor at the front of the room, sitting on, or standing beside, a Throne. I bow to them, and then say the only thing which seems appropriate.

“May you welcome their souls into Valhalla. They died defending their homes from traitors and thieves. I have avenged their deaths by killing the masterminds of the plot, with the aid of my allies who could not come. They have earned rest, I think.” Then I bow again and, as I go back out of the room, the Odin statue gives me a nod, then speaks as the divine pressure of a god entering the room slams into me.

“Brave champion. Your wish is granted. May you fight well in the days to come, for you must fight.” Then it ceases moving, and I bow once more, and move out, whispering a quiet prayer of thanks, even as my body uncols the tension from a god deciding to speak directly to me.

I sure am popular with them, lately.

A ding from the system, telling me something happened distracts me, and the title of the notification makes my eye twitch.

Backing of the Norse Acquired. (i)

Enmity of the Egyptians, Acquired. (i)

What did I do to make the Egyptian gods not like me? I’ll never know. Maybe they just don’t get along with the Greek, Norse and other european gods which have come to like me. I don’t know. I don’t care.

Well, I do care. Gods choosing to oppose you is usually a good way to have to deal with their general tampering. I can expect them to send stuff to kill me, at least.

Hopefully nothing too crazy? Either way, I’ll be sure to stay away from Egypt and the Middle-East where their power is most potent.

Of course, there may be a way to assuage their disliking of me. I’ll have to look into what the gods of Egypt like, and see if I can do that without making the other gods angry at me.

If not, I’ll let the gods of Egypt stay mad at me. You can’t win every foot race, after all.

Having finished with that, and moving to the forest, I surveyed the map.

The library was in a clearing 2 kilometers inside of the forest, and 10 kilometers away from the main building of the school. Why? Because why not? Also the wards go that far, but I don’t count that.

I quickly fly over to the forest, and begin to fly down to the marker tree, indicated on the map, then take a sharp turn in, and fly for a couple minutes before coming across the massive green building.

I land, and seeing more inactive statues, bow, and say the indicated password.

“I come to discover, to learn and to master!” To my utter lack of surprise, the statues spring to life and open the way for me. I scurry in, and begin salivating immediately. The entry area, where senior students are allowed, is three stores crammed full of books. Most looked quite old, and a quick observation and running around indicates these books go back to roughly 500 BC.

I look toward the much larger main chamber, and grin in glee. I quickly loot the room, and then walk up to, and say the next password, which is the same as the first, but it has a different ending. Instead of ‘to master’ it is ‘to remain the eternal student’.

The doors open, and my jaws drop.

There are five of every book, sure. They are the original copies, then translations which were made as the language changed. But there are easily a few thousand individual books here. On the first floor.

I can feel an underground level, too. Who knows what's down there?

I go about summoning the books into chests, sorting them by subjects with a few alterations to the summoning charm, which I had recently learned via the dragon’s books. Then, once the massive library was emptied, I found the trap door leading down.

Locked.

So, I tried to guess the password. After 10 minutes of trying, and failing, I sighed in anger. “Everyone is dead, and there’s no way to get the password. I just want to make sure this place doesn’t get destroyed and all the knowledge lost!” I grunt as I kick the trap door, and to my surprise, the door falls open.

Okay, seriously. What was the password? Was it intent based and could detect if you lied? You had to tell it why you wanted the stuff down below and can’t lie?

Or was it something else?

I fucking hate wards sometimes.

I drop into the new hole in the ground, and grin at the books, only for the grin to fade as I realize what these books are.

Dark arts. Lost, evil magic. Chained down here to never be found again. I squint as I look through what titles we have. Everything from ‘Necromantic Rituals’ to ‘Calchian Magics’.

Calchian magics were one of the founding stones for the modern black magics, made by a powerful seer who looked into the future and reverse engineered evil magics to try to conquer the world. They also began the process of how to make Horcruxes, which Herpo the Foul finished.

The most impressive book I find is a solid-gold covered, with what look like Gold Leaf pages, which Observe tells me is the journal of Circe.

How the fuck did that get here? I have no clue. I do know that she was functionally immortal, though, and that she had really powerful magic - enough that nations decided leaving her alone on her island was for the best.

So yea. I took all of the books.

Mostly so other people can’t find them later and misuse them. Also so I can figure out how this evil stuff works - and how to counter it.

Lastly, the idea is that if it tries to take over my mind - like the Circle book probably will - I am probably the best person to fight that. Not to toot my own horn, but I am kind of a specialist in mental defense and general control of myself and my mind.

Having finished my survey of the library, chests full of books, I shadow-jump twice and find myself near the prison tower.

There are people inside. Young people. The wards are strong, though. If my map hadn’t told me it was here I’m sure I’d have missed it.

I interface with the ward, and begin slowly removing the layers. These wards aren’t super complex but they are super deadly. As a result, it takes me about an hour of careful work to strip the wards, and step inside.

There are about 80 children in the tower, each of which wear the robes which I recognize marks them to be junior members of the school. I’m guessing everyone over 14 or so went to fight, and the rest were sealed and hidden in the tower. I smile as I walk in, trying to appear like I’m not a threat.

A few whimpers are returned, and I sigh.

“I came from Hogwarts. It’s been a week since the people of Durmstrang tried to kill us all, and you’re all that’s left of your schools. I already sent letters with every owl I could, confirming the deaths of the school, but I’m going to assume some of those were your pets, so I’ll take care of you until we can get you back to your home.” I say loudly, before bending down and carving a few runes into the entry.

“What are you going to do with us?” One particularly brave young man asks. I smile over to him.

“I’m going to make this tower fly to the nearest magical village, which I have the address of thanks to some of the Headmasters notes. Then I’ll see about getting you to your families. Sorry if it’s not the smoothest. Moving buildings takes a lot of power and concentration, so I won’t be able to talk much once we’re moving.” I will explain. Frankly, if it was any bigger than 4 floors, I wouldn’t be able to move it. I have to set the runic sequences for levitation charms, then I have to add a few matrices for push, and then I need to add at least one every 2 meters for stability in flight.

Powering all of those will be sustainable for maybe four hours at a time, if I’m meditating while I do it, then I can do six hours. The nearest magical village is about five hours away, at a run.

Moving this faster than a run isn’t going to happen, so that’s pretty good, I guess.

I field their questions while I set the tower up for movement, and then, I start moving it.

I’ll tell you, these things are heavy. A lot heavier on the magic than I thought they would be. Thankfully meditative trances help to alleviate the stress of the situation, and pass the time more quickly. In what feels like a few minutes, we’re at our destination, and I open my eyes to find the sun is setting. With effort, I lower the tower to the ground, and step out of the building to see a large group of very surprised townsfolk.

It takes maybe an hour to explain the situation to them, and get the kids comfortable. Then, I settle in to sleep.

I have a busy few weeks ahead of me, studying the books I’ve obtained and returning the children - or what they owned - to the people who should receive them.

If the parent is abusive, I’ll just take the kid back to Hogwarts with me, should they want me to.

Life is stressful, but it is good.

The next few days are full of tearful reunions, and more than a few older witches and wizards leaving with their great loss. Almost all of the latter are going to the school to collect the corpses of the lost. I offer what personal effects I can, and then, in what feels like the blink of an eye, I am going back to Hogwarts. Thankfully, I can move much quicker on the return trip.

Apparition is useful like that, and jumping to the edge of the landmass at dawn, flying for a few hours and then teleporting to the isles, and then doing a bunch of quick jumps to the edges of Hogwarts land sees me back by nightfall.

Long distance apparition isn’t a very easy skill, but thankfully with enough magical control, and the purchase of a perk, I find it all too easy to get where I need to go. I have a list of the 80 kids who want to continue their education. The list includes only 22 of those 80, of which only 2 of them have parents I have confirmation of being abusive, and 3 of which are generally unable to properly care for their kids - being muggleborn. I hand the list over to Haelga as I wander into the castle, a good week before I was expected back.

The reason for my early return is that I want to spend as much time learning and going over what I acquired with the founders, while also working with them on dangerous tasks. History doesn’t have a lot of information of these early days of Hogwarts, beyond the major invasions, and a general note of how hard the early days were. This is mostly due to how intense and destructive the early days were. Plenty of invasions, magical creatures coming over, and other things which would see a school in modern days be closed down. I also want to work with Salazar on the list of things I’ll need to do to get the ritual where I sacrifice the Triwizard cup, and all of the mana, ready.

I also will need to make a look-alike fake, and don’t think I’ll get better resources for that than the founders. With their help, I’m hoping to get an identical look alike, with more favorable charms and such upon the cup.

All of that aside, the 1% mana increase from the cup’s total is a good reward. 73k mana for myself - and more for whoever wins the modern tourney - is nothing to sneeze at. Making a cup with a standard 1.5 million mana, which gives half of the total to a person, before recharging over the course of 5 years for the next tourney is, I think, the best way to make a fake.

So, I’ll need to propose it.

I track down Salazar for that, because I think he’ll be the easiest one to convince, and of course because if he knows I have plans for it, and the fact I’m from the future, he’s least likely to betray me.

I entered his office, finding him grading some papers, and set myself across from him.

“Yes?” he asks, not looking up. I roll my eyes at his intensity.

“I have something I should tell you, and a plan I’d like to work on with you.” I tell him, and he sighs, then puts his papers aside, finishing the one he’s working on, and shifts his whole attention to me.

“What is it, this time? Something exciting, I hope.” He asks, and I smile, and nod.

“I think my situation is pretty exciting, yes. We’ll start there. To be blunt, I am from the future.” I tell him, not flinching or looking away. I may have hidden from revealing this until now, but there’s no point in doing that, now.

“Really? Well, that does explain a good bit. I wonder how much things have changed, considering you’re so advanced. Are all people your age so… skilled?” He asks, and I shake my head, confirming that, no, they are not.

“Not really. I’m currently considered the greatest student the school has ever seen. By far the most powerful. Granted, we don’t have exact measurements for the older students, like those of this age, but the more powerful in this age are easily outstripping everyone else in my age, Only one other in my time could match them, and he doesn’t apply himself fully so as not to draw too much attention. A waste of potential in my opinion, but I try not to judge him for it.” I explain, getting a nod to continue as I do.

“My plan, you see, is in relation to the Triwizard cup. The goblet we used to select champions. It grants mana to the winners, is an artifact and holds a tremendous amount of mana. I would like to sacrifice it, in my time, to empower rituals. However, in my time, if I do this, then it will be obvious, and it’d be a crime. Thus, I need a replica which looks and feels the same for most tests. I was hoping to get your help in this matter. I can make something which looks similar, sure. And I can copy the enchantments just fine, but I’d rather replace it with something less…” I trail off, looking for the word.

“Parasitic? Evil? Stupid?” He asks, and I nod to each. He grins. “Honestly, I - along with the others - were against the Goblet’s use. You see, it isn’t exactly good, but I figured your goal was something like this, given our previous discussions, so I looked into rituals I could use to incorporate it. I have a list of tweaks to various rituals, and I can share those with you, but making a convincing replica which isn’t a parasite like this thing will be hard. I’ll speak to my fellow founders, and we’ll see what we can come up with. I expect Godric will ask for your help with the smithing and the enchanting, while Rowena will likely ask for your help with the general layout of the enchantments, to make it optimal. Still, I will note this is dangerous. If it were anyone but yourself, with such control of mana and mind as you have, I would recommend against this idea. You’ll have to fight the cup - in a sense - for control. For the mana. I’ll have Haelga work with you on that, while we make our replica, should you have time between what we all ask for.” He concludes, leaning back into his chair and steepling his fingers.

“Honestly, that sounds great. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about was the Druidic houses, and their state. What’s the landscape look like, on that front?” I ask, and he nods, launching into a long winded explanation of the 17 active druidic houses, before he gets to the one I care about.

“Of course, the Hawthorne family is a bunch of sticks in the mud. They don’t trust a school for magic, and say that it’s all just a perversion of the arts. Each mage, according to them, should self-discover the path for them, following a basic education. While we agree this tends to result in better mages overall, the fact remains that around one-percent of the people in any given land are magical, so we need to find a way to train them en-masse, as there are more children with magic than there are adults to teach them. They don’t vote against us in the councils, but they don’t vote for us, unless we’re trying to, in some way, advance a school of magic, which has happened twice of the twenty-seven meetings I’ve been to, so far.” He wraps up, before continuing on, and then, when he’s done, he leans back with an enigmatic smile on his face.

“Would I be right in my guess that you’re from one of the Druidic houses, and that you might be the rightful head of that house?” He asks, and I nod, distractedly.

A lot of the information he’d given me was interesting, new and generally thought to be lost to the annals of time.

“Its good to know, but I need to complete the process of going and confirming my status, which I don’t want to do right away. I haven’t been given sufficient training to be head of house, due to political complications. It’s something I’m working on. Making sure I have all those ducks in a row, as it were.” I comment offhandedly, and he turns from a jovial happy guy to dead serious.

“You mean to tell me, you have no political training? And you’ve done all of this?” He asks, and I think over my actions.

They seem politically astute for someone with no training, I agree, but that isn’t due to a mastery of this system, but more of instincts from my last life.

“I’m just following what I think is the best thing to do. There are many, many ideas for how to handle certain situations. I just do the one which sits best with me.” I explain, and then shrug. “I honestly expect to self-study my way to proficiency, going to balls and such to figure out the lay of the land, as it were.” I continue, then I smile a little. “Unless you were wanting to help me, or know someone else who could help get me up to snuff?” I ask, and he rolls his eyes.

“I’ll try to make time. You’ve just dumped a lot on my plate, but I should have time. Grading manually is a luxury I can put off, I guess.” As he says it, he waves his wand, and the quill goes about auto-grading the papers for him, and he stands. “I’ll just be off to work on this, unless you had something more?” He asks, clearly expecting nothing of the sort. At my shrug, he nods, and then billows out of the room. I quietly follow, planning to go to sleep. I have a lot of research to do, along with my classes.

As we head into February, I notice something odd. I have a steady - but not large - XP source from something I don’t recognize. My initial conversation with the Daily Prophet, and the International Duelist, had been going over well, and they had each been publishing small pieces which had to do with small things. Who my trainer was, what my favorite style of dress was, things like that. Simple things which the readers of the articles may find interesting.

The Daily Prophet wrote my answers to be more dramatic than they were, while the Duelist wrote them to be much more serious and dour, which is also in line with what they’d expect from the specific papers.

The replica cup is coming along not-as-well. Ever since my help with putting down the enemy forces who invaded and tried to destroy the castle, after they had destroyed a different magical school, all four of the founders were fully on board with helping me out. Salazar apparently explained it as the price I was asking for my help in securing all of the new students, uncovering and forcing the plot early, and of course, taking out the most important figures in the plot.

So while all four of them are working on it, we’re finding making the replica cup which isn’t just evil is really hard. There are a set of charms which can be applied which work, but the flames are more red than blue, which is a giveaway. Then, there are issues with the vessel. We know what it looks like, but by god, it shouldn’t work. The runes it has aren’t affecting the normal answers, apparently because they’re set in Mythril, which has whacky effects on runes.

Great!

But we’re closing in on an answer. Last I checked, Godric was fairly certain he could layer in a thin sheet of metal to copy all of the aesthetic effects, and then the Mythril would just be a mana conductor and shell to make it look exactly like it does now. A good idea.

Rowena had the spell matrix down, and was just tweaking it, which was proving hard if we don’t want to break it completely. She has another theory in case using the extant spells doesn’t work out.

Haelga was teaching me mental defensive abilities, which were not limited to Occlumency, surprisingly. There was a technique she called ‘Sharpening’ which you can used to actively cut out, or slice, anything in your mindscape. It’s purpose is to trim excess or things which hurt you into a separate area - not just lock them up. You’d actively forget about them, but you would know where the knowledge is, and how to reclaim it if you needed to know.

You can use this in mental combat, obviously, by ‘sharpening’ your enemy in half. It could be as precise or wide-scale as you please, which means it is a deadly thing.

Salazar was, of course, refining the rituals. When that was done, he moved on to helping Rowena on the spell matrices.

I mostly helped Godric when Haelga wasn’t busy showing me how to lop off useless emotions in the middle of a fight, or partition certain instincts while I train so I can focus on getting the right habits.

Because you’d literally forget everything. You’d be a blank slate on which the new things are being piled. This can be useful for a number of reasons, but mostly because certain things, like how you block a spell, are usually only able to be learned one way, because you just do it automatically. With this, you could learn how to do it one way, then learn another, then, you could use all three in the matter of a month, where for anyone else it would take a few years.

This is also a technique some people use to beat truth potions. Occlumency can only beat ones which force exact truth, but if they force more general guesses out of people, then this is the only way to make sure you don’t say the wrong thing.

She doesn't say that exactly, but it is implied.

Haelga and Godric, when not working, mostly attended the school. Rowena just used a spell which ‘she had been sitting on’ to automate her teaching and grading efforts. She showed up every third day to her classes and answered questions, taught them manually, and reset the spell to teach the next two lessons. Which was a vocal recording, and a writing spell customized to write an exact set of things when prompted by the recording.

Pretty genius. Though I’m glad more teachers don’t do that, because it’s really impersonal, and anything other than Runes or Arithmancy would really struggle under that style of teaching.

Well, maybe not History, I guess.

Live wands and open cauldrons though, would not go over well without a teacher present. So it’s good that’s not her classes, usually.

In the present, though, my plan for stealing and replacing the goblet is going astoundingly well. They have the goblet is a very lightly warded room in one of the dungeon levels which hasn’t been used in a few decades. Relying on simple attention aversion wards along with an unused part of the castle to hide it.

Too bad a few of us know every corridor of the school, and finding it wasn’t hard. The other thing of note, here, is that there are no alarms or anything. It’s just in a box. Someone goes and checks on it once a week, which I confirmed with a simple proximity ward, but other than that? Nothing.

So yea. That’s going well. The only thing I need to work on is my interview. In the present, anyways, because that’s set to happen the day before the second task of the Triwizard. Then I have another one a few weeks later. I plan to give them a lot of general sightings and quick interviews. Nothing too crazy. Based on the letters, they’re going to do a general interview first - followed by specific questions. Diet, exercise routines, things like that.

I expect they will not like that I eat a lot of meat and such. Usually reporters are a bit… sexist on such things. They’re surprised when women athletes aren’t perfect ladies at all times. After all, every woman should moderate how much she eats, so she can be slim for her husband.

Sports papers are more accepting, and I did request that they bring a dietician with them to the event to help clarify on points of my diet. I know what I should do, from various books. I don’t really understand the exact biochemistry and the interactions with magic and how all that works.

A wizarding dietician should.

The Daily Prophet will likely either cut out that part, or try to make a new trend, which has happened in the past, where women do exercise and eat more.

I think it results in not only healthier or more beautiful physical aspects, it also helps in confidence and general health. Doing 30 minutes of exercise every day, pushing yourself to the limits… you’ll look really good after a few months. It’s just the effort that needs to be put in.

So we skate through February, with me watching the slowly ticking experience bar as it goes.

On the 21st of February, I figure it out, when I get my paper in the morning, of Duelists Weekly, The Daily Prophet, and a couple letters from my penpals.

I get around 30,000 xp.

Why? The papers both are hyping up my interview - in the sections those things go in.

It seems that fame does equal experience. Infamy likely does too. That would explain why Dark Lords are so powerful. And why Snape is a higher level. Love him or hate him, he’s a very famous potioneer and most of the UK knows very well who he is.

Being a teacher is such a good way to get XP, if you’re really good at your job, I’m realizing. Dumbledore likely gets oceans of XP every year from all of his jobs. He has to be known to over 100 countries, along with the whole of Europe and most likely the Americas.

This, obviously, will generate a lot of XP.

Fame = XP.

Doing really crazy things which will generate fame = XP.

Making legendary items which will generate fame = XP.

I get it now.

Managing your fame is, in many ways, the best way to gain power, as long as you have a foundation for it to go into. Lockheart was really famous, but had no skill. So he wasn’t really a threat, hence low level.

Snape is known for knowing lots of magic, making his own, benign super good at potions and is relatively famous, or infamous, so his level is very high.

This all makes sense.

So, how can I play to my fame the most optimally, so I can please the most people, is the optimal question.

I think the answer is to be straight and not lie. If I’m straight and honest and do my job while playing myself up as a bit of an airhead, which I can be, then it’ll go well, I think.

So, plans all set, and ready to interview and defend the school while remotely watching the task. In case someone will try something while they’re focused on the task, I move on, going to decide my wardrobe for the meeting.