LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 10: Third Assimilation (U)
A/N: The U in the brackets stands for unedited. I will come back and some point and edit it properly. Till then just bear with errors.
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“Are you certain of your decision Ms. Weasley?” McGonagall’s tone was serious as she inquired.
“Very, professor.” Ginny nodded firmly.
“Very well.” McGonagall acknowledged. “I have discussed with the other professors and we have unanimously decided that your extra classes will begin after Christmas Holidays and should any professor feel that you are not meeting their expectations, they will have the right to cancel your classes.”
Ginny nodded seriously to indicate that she understood.
“Very well then, off you go. I have a lot of work to do.” she dismissed her.
“Thank you for your time, professor.”
Ginny skipped her way back to the Common Room while humming a tune.
‘Status’
{
Name: Ginevra Molly Weasley
Race: Witch
Magic: 4.3
Body: 0.9
Spirit: 4.4
Innate Abilities: Assimilate 1/3 (regen: 1/year (Total: 7/decade)), Parseltongue, Magic Perception, Superior Logical Processing Unit (1/1)
Skills: Cooking Lv.3 (4/4000), Flying Lv.5 (121/16000)
Magicks:
Enchantment Lv.8 (1/128000),
Transfiguration Lv.8 (6/128000),
Dark Magic Lv.9 (1001067/1024000),
Mind Magic Lv.7(63800/64000)
.
.
.
}
‘My Magic and Spirit have recovered quite a bit, while my Body has completely recovered. My skills have upgraded greatly. I should easily be able to match and overpower an ordinary witch or wizard who has just graduated from Hogwarts. If I were to use my prowess in Dark Arts, I could probably give trainee Aurors a run for their money. My only problem is my shitty endurance.
‘However, my next target for Assimilation should solve that problem.’ she mused.
-x-x-x-
Another month had passed by and it was now December and nature had covered the entirety of Hogwarts’ grounds in a blanket of snow.
Ginny had woken up later than usual thanks to overusing her Innate Ability - which she had taken to calling Hyper-cognition - yesterday trying to cram much of the 2nd year’s Charms syllabus. Her use of Hyper-cognition might be getting better and better, but that did not mean that the toll it took on her was anything lesser. In fact, it had no change at all.
Repressing a yawn, she walked into the Common Room to see a large number of students crowded around the notice board, chattering excitedly. She walked over to the notice board and saw a poster mentioning the re-opening of the Dueling Club.
‘Ah, it’s already that time, is it? Darned Lockhart. I really, really wish it was Flitwick instead. Any other faculty would do! Even Snape would be fine!’ she was miffed before remembering how Lockhart was to be blown away by Snape and immediately felt better. ‘Well, at least there will be a great show to watch.’
Truthfully, she hated Lockhart far more than she did Snape. Snape, despite being an overgrown bat, was at least a decent professor. Lockhart was the most disgusting piece of human scum she’d ever come across. He was a straight-up mind-r*pist. If he were just a fraud, she wouldn’t really care. After all, she quite liked conmen shows in her previous life. No, this creature not only stole other people’s work and sold it as his own, but he also went on to completely erase the poor people's memories of their heroic deeds! She was just waiting for Riddle’s curse to take effect.
Sighing, she walked to the sofa, which was currently occupied by the Golden Trio minus Ron, who was probably still sleeping. She plopped down next to Hermione, who’d seen her coming and shifted to make space.
“Morning~”
“Morning” the two of them greeted her back.
Hermoine excitedly brought up the Dueling Club, “We were just talking about the Dueling Club. D’you think it will be Prof. Flitwick? I heard he became the Dueling Champion not long after he graduated from Hogwarts!”
The astute young witch soon noticed that neither of her companions seemed interested.
“Why are the both of you not excited?! It’s a duelling club, you know?”
“Hermione… have you looked at the poster properly? That disgusting, pompous colour scheme is not Prof. Flitwick’s style at all. That is more Lockhart.”
And Hermione’s enthusiasm was met with a basilisk’s gaze.
“M-maybe, prof. Flitwick likes those colours?” Hermione looked desperately for any other alternative. Unlike the Hermione from canon, the one in front of her wasn’t a fangirl. At least, not after she had a talk with her, while abusing Riddle’s skills in manipulation to make her see sense.
‘Riddle may just get a better place in hell thanks to me.’ Ginny had felt very proud of herself for destroying a 12-year-old’s rose-coloured dream.
“You should see reality, Hermione. See? Even Harry knows.” gesturing towards the Chosen One, who was slightly miffed, ‘Why'd you have to use me as a benchmark?’
After chatting with them for a bit, she stood up.
“Well, I gotta go, I haven’t had breakfast yet. See you guys later.” she strolled away.
-x-x-x-
“Bloody hell, I should have done this sooner!” Ginny cursed as she trudged her way back to the castle. It was very irritating that her disillusionment charm was rendered useless by her footprints on the snow.
To ensure that she was not caught, she had to continuously cast a spell that removed her footprints from the snow. She also had to cast a notice-me-not charm on herself, which apparently did not like the disillusionment charm very much, causing it to fail every few minutes. All of this made her journey back to the castle a very frustrating ordeal.
“If only I had an Invisibility Cloak.” she lamented.
As for why she was being so secretive, well it had something to do with a large number of roosters transfigured into buttons in her pocket.
Indeed, her third target for assimilation was the one and only basilisk.
Back in the dorm she decided to take a nice long nap before she set off to the second floor girls’ washroom.
-x-x-x-
Inside the washroom, she scouted the surrounding cubicles to ensure that Moaning Myrtle was not hanging around, which fortunately for the redheaded protagonist, she was not. Unlike what people thought, Myrtle didn’t only hang around one washroom. She visited all the washrooms in Hogwarts, especially the boys’ washrooms. Perks of being a ghost.
Having located the sink embossed with Salazar’s Crest, she once again checked to see if anyone was around through both her Magical Perception and the Marauder’s Map.
Reassured that no one was around to witness her, she turned to the sink.
“~$Open$~” she hissed out in parseltongue. At once, the sink glowed with a bright, white light and began to spin, moving downwards until it disappeared from her sight. Squatting beside the hole large enough for a fully grown man to slide into, she reached out with her finger and swiped the mouth of the pipe, bringing with a mixture of grime, dirt and who knows what. Nose wrinkling in disgust, she whipped out her wand and pointed it at her hand.
“Tergeo”
Standing up, she pointed her wand at herself and whispered, “Impervius”
Taking a deep breath, she jumped in while hissing loudly in Parseltongue, “~$Close$~!”
She noticed while sliding down that the light from above disappeared, signalling that the entrance had indeed been closed. Upon seeing the end of the tunnel in sight, she chucked a ‘Spongify’ at the end of the tunnel, allowing her to have a relatively comfortable landing.
Getting to her feet, she walked through several bends to finally reach the end of the tunnel and came to face a wall carved with many entwined serpents.
She took a deep breath, and somewhat nervously said, “~$Open$~”
There was no way she would not be nervous: she was about to face one of the most dangerous beasts in the entire world. A basilisk was an XXXXX rank beast. Meaning that if any normal wizard encountered it, they should run the other way and pray that it had already had lunch and that it would be uninterested in them.
She knew very well that it was incredibly reckless of her to face the basilisk at this point in time, when her abilities weren’t up to mark. However, she also knew that the earlier she assimilated the basilisk the greater the potential rewards she’d gain. A fact that she had learned just a little while ago.
She had found an interesting read in the RoR. It was a book that detailed innate abilities like metamorphmagus, natural legilimens and occlumens. The most important point to her was that innate abilities grew with practice and age. Especially during puberty. And her Innate Abilities being like any other Magical Innate Ability, the same rules applied to it.
Thus here she was, staring at a long, gloomy chamber at the end of which was the gigantic carved face of Salazar Slytherin.
She stared at it for a long, long while. Part of her wanted to run away from here, as fast as her legs could take her, really.
‘Come back another time, another day.’ Some part of her whispered, ‘When you’ve grown, when you’ve become stronger, when you wield more magic. ’
It was only with a lot of effort and liberal use of occlumency that she managed to suppress the voice.
She took out a few dozen buttons that she untransfigured back to roosters before casting a Silencio then a Confundus charm on them to keep them crowing. Then ran back to the other end of the room, as far as physically from the statue of Slytherin.
Taking a deep breath, she tried her best to give herself some confidence and push down her fear.
“~$Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four$~”
The rumbling of stones moving against each other echoed through the empty chamber. She looked towards the rooster ensuring that they were still crowing.
After the rumbling stopped, a loud hissing sounded from deep within the hole, bouncing off the walls before finally reaching Ginny who understood it as, “~$Hungry… sssooo…. Very hungry…$~”
As the snake had slithered out halfway, Ginny immediately pointed her wand at the rooster and chanted the counter-charm for the Silencing Charm. “Clarus Vocem”
Immediately, the crowing of dozens of roosters echoed throughout the chamber. The basilisk which was just halfway out of its nest froze for a moment before it went mad and hissed loudly in pain, thrashing against the walls, ceiling and floor over and over as if to get rid of its immense agony. Yet the crowing was relentless and slowly the basilisk’s struggles weakened little by little, until it lay limply with half its body still inside its nest. Ginny, however, did not move, keeping her wand at the ready, paying attention to the roosters to see if the confundus wore off. She waited for a whole 15 minutes.
Very carefully, she walked over to the basilisk, her wand at the ready. Her caution was in vain as she realised that while the basilisk was not dead - merely unconscious - it was very weak and could not muster any strength.
Letting out a massive breath of relief she plopped down on the ground, completely uncaring of the fact that it was wet.
“That was scary.” she declared to the ceiling.
Despite having many, many plans in case of all possible scenarios she could think of with the help of her Hyper-cognition, she still was still incredibly nervous throughout the whole ordeal.
Five minutes later, having regathered her wits, she stood up.
“Now, it’s time to reap the rewards.”
Getting close to the basilisk, she placed her hands on the basilisk's head, “I wonder if I’ll get the death gaze?” she idly pondered. “I’d love to see the look on the Death Eaters’ faces when Voldy falls down with a single look from me. Would they proclaim me the next Dark Lord? Or Dark Lady?”
Such absurd fantasies played through her head bringing her ample amusement.
Shaking her head to disperse her weird thoughts, she intoned, “Assimilate.”
Once again, the familiar devouring force erupted from her hands. What was odd this time was that a black sphere manifested before her, enveloping the entirety of the basilisk’s head, and then slowly elongated, covering more and more of the basilisk’s huge body. In about two minutes the entire basilisk was covered by a pure black… something. Then it contracted into a large sphere, which became smaller and smaller until it was about the size of a golf ball. The ball lazily spun in the air before it floated towards Ginny and sunk into her body.
Ginny initially felt nothing for the first few moments, but soon an overwhelming sensation of searing, burning pain engulfed her entire being, as if she had been hurled into a scorching pool of lava.
“ARRGHH!” The intensity was unbearable, causing her to involuntarily scream in agony. Writhing on the ground, she was consumed by the feeling that she might end up dead.
For a long time the pain persisted. It was only after what felt like eternity that the pain subsided.
Gasping for breath, Ginny's body continued to spasm uncontrollably, akin to the tremors that follow an earthquake's aftermath. She couldn't help but release a vehement curse, her voice filled with a mix of frustration and disbelief. “Morganna’s Unholy A******!”
“What the F*CK was that?!” she exclaimed, struggling to comprehend the intense ordeal she had just endured.
She stayed flat on the floor, letting the spasms subside.
Tiredly, she raised her wand and cast a tempus. “5 minutes? 5 minutes?! But that felt like a mo**********g eternity! … Ugh.” she exclaimed in disbelief.
In an unsteady manner, she mustered the strength to rise from the ground and headed towards the roosters that were still crowing under the confundus charm. With a flick of her wand, she transformed them back into small buttons. Determined to depart, she made her way towards the exit, yearning to leave this place.
Ginevra Molly Weasley, really, really wanted to have a long intimate session with her bed.