LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 6: The Second 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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“Haa~” Stifling a yawn, our redheaded protagonist woke up. Looking at the unfamiliar surroundings she was quite startled before realising, “Oh yeah, I’m at Hogwarts now.”
Groggily reaching for her wand, she stifled another yawn. And after having found it, jumped out of her bed. Following a ‘Tempus’, her wand emitted a green mist that shaped itself into the runic equivalent of 7:00 a.m.
‘Bit of an early bird, are you?’ She glared at the walls, miffed about the fact that Hogwarts’ magic started to become active during this time and her super-sensitive Magical Perception caught on to it almost immediately, alerting her into awakening.
Lightly kicking the poor wall to exact her revenge, she briskly walked away and decided to wake up the other two. It was a proven fact that a human would not feel so miserable if others were suffering along with him.
“Wakey, Wakey~ Aileen!” She shook her roommate, trying to fish her out of Morpheus' realms.
“Just one more minute, mum… I need to win this game for the Tornados…” she murmured before slipping back into sleep.
“Now that won’t do. You can’t be allowed to sleep so blissfully when I’m awake and unhappy, can you?”
An idea popped up in her head, causing a sinister grin to appear on her face.
“Goodness! The Hogwarts’ Faculty has decided that there will be no more Quidditch at Hogwarts!” she spoke in a despondent tone, and the effect was immediate.
“What? What?! Who’s banning Quidditch?!” her head whipped around frantically looking all over the place; her gaze so malevolent, the basilisk would give a tails-up at her attempted ocular murder.
“Oh you’re awake too, Aileen. I thought I’d let you sleep for a while.” a surprised Ginny’s voice came from the other side of the room, next to the closet.
“Oh, I-I think I just had a nightmare, Ginny! They said they were banning Quidditch at Hogwarts! Can you believe that?! What would Hogwarts be without Quidditch?!”
‘A safer place?’ she lampooned inwardly. Though she didn’t dare say that out loud. She didn’t want to earn the little quidditch nut’s ire, even if most of the said ire was due to her own doing.
“Aww, don’t worry, Hogwarts will never ban quidditch.” She comforted the girl she walked over and hugged the dismayed girl.
“Mhm… Thank you, Ginny. You’re really nice.” Aileen hugged the cause of her dismay back gratefully.
Ginny just patted the girl on the back.
“Well, you might as well get dressed. I doubt going back to sleep will do you any good.”
Aileen nodded in assent and made way to her own closet that contained her belongings to retrieve tools for morning hygiene. On the way to the washroom, she looked over at Gwen who was still blissfully wandering the realms of Morpheus.
‘Hmph, since both of us are awake, why do you get to sleep so blissfully? Let’s all be miserable together!’
And thus, a very similar scene ensued in the First-Year Girls’ dormitory. It was just that Aileen did not have the disillusionment charm and was caught, causing her to be ignored by one very unhappy Ms. Isolde for the rest of the day.
-x-x-x-
After a day of practice, along with Riddle’s own experience in controlling his Magic, Ginny had managed to bring down the outwardly shown intensity of her magic to a level that was stronger than 13-year-olds, but not enough to alarm the old goat.
‘The things I do because of you old man Dumbles…’ She cursed the old goat.
“Herbology was it? Our first class for the day?”
“Mhm. Taught by Professor Pomona Sprout. She’s good, I heard.”
“Personally, as long as it is not like History of Magic, I will be happy to attend her classes.” Aileen gave her two cents.
“At least she’ll be nice, being the head of the Puffs and all.” Ginny said as she sat down next to Gwen, picking up a piece of toast before placing back down with a disgusted look.
Under their baffled gazes, she tapped the table twice and spoke to it, “Can you remove the crust for me, please? Thank you.”
“What?” she looked up to see the two girls staring at her. “I don’t like the crust.”
“That’s not why…” Aileen trailed off as she looked down with wide eyes. And sure enough, a stack of bread slices had appeared on the table, minus the crust.
Ginny knocked the table twice and uttered a ‘thank you’ to it.
“T-The table can understand us?” Gwen was absolutely baffled, as in her mind many strange images of tables acting like butlers, maids and chefs appeared. Despite being born and brought up in the magical world, she had a hard time reconciling a table with a chef.
Aileen just stared at Ginny, who was busily smearing copious amounts of butter on her crust-free bread slice for a while before she, too, did the same.
-x-x-x-
Herbology, Ginny decided, was not her thing. No matter how well Prof. Sprout taught, she could not conjure the slightest interest in the subject. She did not see anything remarkable about magical plants beyond their use as ingredients in a potion.
‘Let’s leave Herbology to Neville.’
“Transfiguration, double Charms and double Potions.”
“Ohh~! I’m looking forward to potions. My mum was pretty good at potions during her time at Hogwarts. She was in the same year as Professor Snape! Apparently he was an absolute genius when it came to Potions!” Aileen was far too happy and Ginny felt it would not be very nice of her to burst her bubble.
‘Let Snape do it himself.’ she sniggered to herself.
Transfiguration was a tense class for Ginny, especially after word managed to spread that she had petted the stern Scottish Transfiguration mistress and even scratched her behind the ears.
But, the Transfiguration teacher did absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, which did not serve to ease her tensed nerves at all.
Despite the situation, she managed to perfectly complete every task the Professor threw her way on her first try, earning herself a neat 10 points.
In Charms, she earned another 15 points by casting the counter-spell to the Wand-lighting charm on her first try and teaching it to her two roommates.
-x-x-x-
Snape was a character she found quite intersting. Well, the movie Snape, at least. Alan Rickman did an absolutely bombastic job on that one.
Snape in the novels was a pretty interesting character for sure, but her previous incarnation was a bit too young and his thoughts too simple when he’d read the books. So Snape was directly pinned as the antagonist and was not very well liked.
*Bang!*
The loud bang of the dungeons' door smashing into the wall effectively silenced all the students. Snape, dressed in his human bat cosplay suit, briskly walked to the front of the classroom where he imperiously surveyed his students for a while. With a dissatisfied click of his tongue he flicked his wand making a piece of parchment fly into his hand.
“Colin Creevy.”
“Present!”
“There’s no need to shout Mr. Creevy, I can hear you just fine.” Without waiting for a reply he continued,
“Dennis McCarthy.”
“Present.”
After ensuring everyone was present, Snape’s lips curled, “At least no one is late, a somewhat good sign. I have just a sliver of hope now.
“You are here to learn about the subtle art that is Potioneering. Waving your wand will do you little good in this class - if you can even cast a spell properly, that is. I expect most of you will fail to understand the intricacies of ingredients and their delicate interactions with each other, with flames and with magic. And for the few of you who have the right mindset, well, we’ll see if there’s any at all…” Snape said in his classic contemptuous manner.
‘Ah what a fine method of teaching: break your students’ spirits in the very first class.’ resisting the urge to roll her eyes, she paid attention to Snape’s instructions, careful not to miss any. She was still quite interested in the subject after all. She didn’t want Snape to be the rain that poured over her parade.
“You will be starting with the Boil Cure potion, an elementary potion which removes boils, such as those produced by the Pimple Jinx. A very easy potion to prepare, by all means. However, each year, the dunderheads I have to teach manage to astonish me with their utter incompetence.” spat out the Potions Master in his nasal voice.
“Instructions are on the board.” Snape tapped the said board with his wand.
“Snake Fangs… crushed, 4 measures;
“Heat to 250 for 10 seconds…”
While she was immersed in preparing her potion, Snape was conscientiously docking points from Gryffindor while handing them out to Slytherin, much to the former’s displeasure.
“Wave your wand,”
‘Pfft~! After that dramatic speech about the uselessness of wands, the very first potion he taught us requires waving a wand.’ she ridiculed Snape inwardly in amusement, which must have shown on her face.
“What is so amusing, Ms. Weasley? Do share with us.” Snape’s nasally voice came from her side, nearly giving her a heart attack. Snapping her head in the Professor’s direction, she saw him peering down at her imperiously.
“It’s nothing, professor.” She did not want her peaceful school life to be marred by a bitter middle-aged man, who was so complex it gave her a headache. She wanted to keep their relationship as distant as possible.
Snape, however, was not going to let her have it her way. “Surely not, Ms. Weasley? I don’t think anyone would believe that, do you? Or have you perhaps inherited your brothers’ utter lack of regard for authority?”
Slightly irritated, she snapped out, “Well, it is amusing that the very first potion requires waving a wand, professor, when you clearly said there will be little wand-waving in this class” causing sniggers from the dissatisfied Gryffindors.
She immediately regretted it.
“5 points from Gryffindor for rude behaviour towards your Professor, Ms. Weasley, And another 5 for disturbing the classroom.” flicking his sleeves he stomped away.
‘Darn it, why was I so reckless?! Now, I’m on his radar. Ugh.’ she groaned. ‘There go my dreams for a peaceful and respectfully distant Potion’s class.’
Snape stomped around for the rest of the class, trying his best to dock as many points from Gryffindor as possible, leaving them intensely dissatisfied.
-x-x-x-
“60 points! He docked A whopping 60 points! He’s basically negated all the advantage that you gained us. He handed out 10 points for that disgusting brew that Greengrass made! This is so unfair!” A seething Aileen was ranting.
“Yes, I was there, Aileen. A fourth of those points were taken from me.” Snape had docked another 5 points from her saying that she was insufferably arrogant for having made a barely acceptable beginner’s potion.
She really regretted not holding herself back.
She didn’t really care about the House Cup, it was a means to ignite the student’s competitive spirit that had turned into toxic rivalry, and she wanted none of it. Besides, Dumbledore would find a way to give Gryffindor the House Cup while somehow giving Harry the credit.
It was just that she was curious how he would go about handing the points to Harry. There was no way she was going to let the basilisk roam around, even if it was unlikely that it would do any damage, as Riddle’s diary had been assimilated by her.
-x-x-x-
“Ohh~! We have Defence Against the Dark Arts today!” Gwen was ecstatically shoving the Timetable in her face, much to Ginny’s chagrin. As a transmigrator who knew Gilderoy Lockhart’s true face, she could not conjure even a sliver of excitement.
“Yaaay, Woohoo.” she cheered in a half-hearted monotone. Once again, she could not bring herself to burst Gwen’s bubble and decided to let Lockhart do it himself. Even if there would be no basilisk this time around, she still had faith in Voldy’s curse. No matter what the fraud tried, he was bound to fail.
Gwen proceeded to shove the timetable in Aileen’s direction who did not even bother to put up a facade. Her little head was too obsessed with quidditch to care about some pompous fool who cared more about how he looked than his job.
So her reply was, “Yeah, yeah, sure, but can he Keep like Finwick?”
“But he was nominated for Order of Merlin, Third Class!”
“The headmaster was nominated for First Class.”
“He is the Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League!”
“Yeah, just an Honorary Member, right? Mum’s cousin is an actual member, and they don’t really think much of him.” Aileen waved her hand dismissively. “They gave him the position because they couldn’t stand his clamouring.”
“But-but he’s such a powerful wizard! He’s defeated werewolves, hags, banshees, ghouls, yetis and so many other Dangerous and Dark Creatures!” Gwen argued.
“Powerful wizard? Says who?” Aileen challenged.
“Everyone!”
“Where did everyone hear of his ‘power’?
“... The books?”
“Who wrote the books?”
“H-He did…”
“There you go.”
Ginny just watched the back and forth between them and then gazed at Aileen in unconcealed awe. Girls, when not fanatically obsessed, were pretty darn perceptive. Especially someone like Aileen who had a stake in the situation: a quidditch nut who discovered her favourite sport was receiving less attention because of the fraud! That was nothing short of blasphemy to her!
‘Hmph, he’ll show you!’ Gwen thought to herself, having lost the argument.
He didn’t show her.
Lockhart began his class by giving the first years a test to see how much they knew about him. Not about Magic, but about himself. Followed by a re-enactment of his books - the chosen sacrificial lamb was Creevy - having learnt his lesson from the fiasco that was the 2nd years’ DADA class.
Just like that, another day had gone by. After DADA class, Gwen, probably depressed that her idol was a disappointment, retired early. Aileen wanted to meet up with a friend of hers from Hufflepuff leaving Ginny alone to do whatever she wanted.
Her control over her magic had grown by leaps and bounds, to the point she could now appear as an absolutely normal 11-year-old witch.
On top of that, she had pretty much digested the benefits she gained from assimilating Riddle’s diary, allowing her skill in magic to reach its peak, thus she set her sights on a new target.
‘Room of Requirement it is’ she decided.
Of course, she decided to wait for the weekend before she assimilated it as she was not sure if there would be another massive spike in her magical potential. The reason she headed over so early was that she felt it would take her some time to find her target: Ravenclaw’s Diadem.
-x-x-x-
On the Seventh Floor, she ridiculed Barnabas for a while before stepping into the Room.
Entering the familiar room, she let her tightly wound magic slowly unravel, allowing it to merge into the ambient magic and intertwine with it in ways that it did; ways that she couldn’t begin to comprehend.
Letting out a groan of relief, she closed her eyes and allowed her Magical Perception to spread.
The only other place she fully unleashed her Magical Perception was when she was in her dormitory, as that was the only place Dumbledore wouldn’t be able to reach her. Hogwarts would not allow even the Headmaster into their dormitory without a very good reason. It would likely require the vote of a number of professors at Hogwarts.
Through her Magical Perception, she could sense the magical objects and was able to make out very vague shapes and in a spherical radius of about 6 metres. The more magically powerful the object, the brighter and more defined it was in her perception. She felt the presence of many, many artefacts, most very weak, and few that were relatively stronger, but none of them what she was looking for.
She opened her eyes and looked at the insanely large room that was filled with various things that were lost by the castle's residents over so many centuries and couldn’t help but feel a little bit of helplessness.
‘This will take a long time.’
-x-x-x-
A month, that’s how long it took her. Despite spending nearly four hours every day, it took her nearly an entire month to finally find it. She had almost given up many times. But she managed to come up with a trick that allowed her to enjoy the process.
All she had to do was use the unique environment of the Room to try and improve her Magical Perception and the clarity of what she perceived. While it did slow down her progress, it made the boring search a lot more bearable; even enjoyable.
She still remembered when she’d finally found it.
She was walking around as usual with her eyes closed, magic spread out and intertwined with Hogwarts’ own; feeling the little blips on the radar everytime a magical object was in its range.
Then suddenly, she felt a source of magic so strong, it dwarfed all others in its strength and complexity - even from the very edge of her perception it burned so bright that all other sources of magic well within her range of detection were pushed back into the background, like stars under the light of the full moon.
Yet, when she got closer, she realised that the source that seemed like midday sun was waning, its splendour slowly evaporating under that piece of vile, parasitic Magick that overbearingly ‘ate’ through its defences.
She opened her eyes to see in front of her the mythical Diadem of Ravenclaw that gave its user unparalleled wisdom.
Well, at least in the legends it did.
Shoring up her mental defences that were honed in the past month, she approached the Diadem and took it off the white bust of some witch. Almost immediately, she felt a strand magic brushing across her mind in an attempt to find a flaw to breach.
A sneer appeared on her face, “Give up, you won’t find any purchase here. Courtesy of your younger self.” She would never give up a chance to mock Riddle. It made her feel incredibly refreshed. Everytime she thought of a way to disadvantage him, she would feel her mood lift inexplicably.
Not bothering with the horcrux of the Dark Lord, she perused her status screen.
{
Name: Ginevra Molly Weasley
Race: Witch
Magic: 6.0
Body: 0.9
Spirit: 5.9
Innate Abilities: Assimilate 2/3 (regen: 1/year (Total: 7/decade)), Parseltongue, Magic Perception
Skills: Cooking Lv.3 (4/4000), Flying Lv.5 (121/16000)
Magicks:
Enchantment Lv.7 (1009/64000),
Transfiguration Lv.7 (19059/64000),
Dark Magic Lv.8 (127767/128000),
Mind Magic Lv.6 (222 /32000)
}
Her body stat had improved a bit because she had made it a point to go for a small jog every day. Of course, she did not run in the Hogwarts grounds; rather she transfigured and enchanted a simple treadmill in the Room of Requirements, then had the Room mimic whatever environment she felt like exercising in.
This way, she would not draw any attention while also keeping fit.
“Well, it's time to say goodbye, Riddle. It was a pleasure, knowing you for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Now, you can serve as fertiliser for my growth.”
She took a deep breath.
“Assimilate.”
Once again, the tremendous force of attraction burst out from her hands, engulfing the diadem in its clutches. The diadem vomited a horrific volume of malevolent magic in the form of a dense black mist that surged and writhed as it tried to escape her clutches, but failed miserably. It could only be helplessly sucked into the vortex along with its container becoming the unwilling nutrients to the growth of a child, leaving no trace of its existence.
Once again, Ginny felt the tremendous amount of knowledge flooding her mind leaving her dazed.
After a long while, she finally managed to gain a rudimentary control over herself and let out a long breath of relief.
“Status”
{
Name: Ginevra Molly Weasley
Race: Witch
Magic: 6.9 (7.1)
Body: 0.9
Spirit: 6.9 (7.2)
Innate Abilities: Assimilate 1/3 (regen: 1/year (Total: 7/decade)), Parseltongue, Magic Perception, Superior Logical Processing Unit (0/1)
Skills: Cooking Lv.3 (4/4000), Flying Lv.5 (121/16000)
Magicks:
Enchantment Lv.7 (63806/64000),
Transfiguration Lv.7 (63997/64000),
Dark Magic Lv.9 (1001000/1024000),
Mind Magic Lv.6 (29800 /32000)
.
.
.
}
“What the heck is this new status? 6.9, but 7.1 in brackets? What in Morganna’s saggy t*tties does that mean?!” Ginny was irritated. It’s not that she did not understand what it meant. As an avid gamer and reader of plenty of LitRPG novels, she understood that it meant that for some reason, her Magic and Spirit could not reach their full potential as she was missing some critical requirement. She was just venting her frustration, because she could clearly see that her magic was powerful, but she could not exert it because she had not met some unknown requirement. It’s a similar feeling to when you’ve bought an expensive subscription, but you need to pay more to get the service that you actually want. That feeling was very frustrating, making one want to flip the table, call up their customer service and yell, “F**k you!”
Taking a deep breath she tried to calm herself down and looked through the status screen, her eyes falling upon the Body stat of 0.9. “Ah… is it perhaps…?”
She fell into her thoughts. “That surprisingly makes a lot of sense… The Trifecta of Being might hold more truth than I’d initially thought. But the bigger question is, how the hell am I supposed to strengthen my Body to such a monstrous level?!” her frustration returned with full force.
The strongest human male will at most have a 2.0 in his Body parameter even after the best training regime. Anything beyond 2.0 is firmly in the realm of the supernatural.
And Ginny had never heard of any wizard training his body to have supernatural strength.
The only way to increase her Body stat to the realm of the supernatural was to use enhancement Rituals. And that was a path she was not willing to walk down.
It was not because Rituals were inherently evil - they were not, nor were they so dangerous that she would not attempt simply for the fear of something going wrong.
No, a Ritual was just an equivalent exchange; just like any other magic: where you pay a certain amount of magic in exchange for a certain effect; nothing more, nothing less.
There are several types of rituals: But broadly speaking, there were three.
Temporary Rituals: where you gain powers by sacrificing some magically powerful ingredients like a Phoenix’s tears and feathers, a Dragon’s blood or heart or a Basilisk’s eyes, fangs, or skin. But like the ingredients themselves the gained powers were also consumable. It’s merely a temporary boost. It could serve as a great way to kick start some magical practices. It could even help in healing.
Another type was to use your own self as a price: In exchange for sacrificing a certain part of yourself, you gain something else, something that you never had before. These were Exchange Rituals.
Of course, humans would not be humans if they did not try to find a way around having to pay a price and still permanently gain special abilities.
And someone did. They came up with the idea of Sacrificial Rituals - nowadays known as Dark Rituals - which essentially makes the sacrifice pay the price while you get all the benefits. At least that was the theory.
In practice, however, that was not the case; there was still a price to pay: you would be affected by the living being you sacrificed no matter how hard you tried to avoid it, no matter the number of ingenious ideas, no matter the number of precise calculations, the Being that was sacrificed would affect you and there simply was no way around it.
Of course, there was still the case where the one sacrificed would do it willingly. Harry Potter was such an example: his mother, to protect him from the Dark Lord, willingly gave up her life. And this selfless act of devotion allowed Harry to gain a form of protection against Voldemort that ultimately saved his life with almost no cost.
Why did she add the modifier ‘almost’? Well, take Harry’s selfless nature: he would willingly put his life on the line to save you, even if you were his enemy. Just as long as you were not associated with Voldemort he would save you, it didn’t matter if he had to lay his life down. This selfless, heroic attitude is not exactly natural. If one examined deeply enough, they would realise that the state of Lily’s mind when she cast the protection on Harry and compare it with his intrinsic selfless nature, one would find that there were a lot of similarities.
In short, Ginny did not want anything to do with Rituals. But they did give her an idea. More specifically, the Dark Rituals did.
Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she continue to look through her status screen:
{Superior Logical Processing Unit (0/1)}
She concentrated on the letters that made up these words. Upon doing so, she understood what the innate ability she gained was. Her expression became somewhat strange: like a mixture of exasperation and excitement.
“Leave it to Rowena to make the world’s first Biological Chip a whole millennium before the concept even appeared among the muggles.” her mouth twitched, “What a woman!”
She proceeded to try and activate the Innate Ability known as Superior Logical Processing Unit. Just when she thought nothing was going to happen she felt a heavy sense vertigo wash over her causing her knees to buckle, and she directly fell to the ground, unconscious.