The Rune Mage Starting at Hogwarts

Ritz and Terry are in a bunk bed relationship.

Whether it's a coincidence or not, all four people in Rizz's dorm are half-blood wizards; there isn't a single pure-blood or completely Muggle-born wizard.

After packing their luggage and writing some letters at the table to send home the next day, the group began to study the class schedule for tomorrow's official start.

"Hogwarts' schedule is based on alternating weeks, with more classes on alternating weeks and fewer on even weeks."

"Tomorrow, Monday morning, I have Charms class with Gryffindor, and in the afternoon, I have Herbalism class with Slytherin. The day after tomorrow, I have Transfiguration class with Hufflepuff..."

At Hogwarts, classes are generally held between two houses, but the houses that attend classes together are not fixed. In order to promote exchanges between houses, each house will have courses that are shared.

Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are naturally fine, but Slytherin and Gryffindor are more prone to conflict when taking courses together, which is a characteristic of the Lithops.

“My mother reminded me that the staircases at Hogwarts change frequently, and the classrooms for different courses are quite far apart. To avoid being late, I’m thinking of getting up as early as possible tomorrow morning to go to the Great Hall and find out the locations of the classrooms for the next few days, so I can get there in advance and reserve a seat. What do you guys think?”

Anthony, who was born the latest and was the most robust, lay on the bed and made this suggestion while looking at the class schedule.

The others naturally had no objections.

Rizz doesn't mind getting up early; he plans to wander around Hogwarts before class tomorrow morning.

However, there is an easier way to find out where you will be attending class.

He summoned Alley.

“This is my familiar, Aery; it can help with these things.”

Chapter 14: Dormitory Night Talk

Aery's appearance is already quite endearing, not to mention that this is a magical creature that these teenagers, who grew up in wizarding families, have never even heard of before.

"You're saying it's a familiar your father found in some magical ruin and left to you? Merlin's beard, your father must have been an incredibly skilled adventurer. I have a cousin who once wanted to go on an adventure, but he almost lost his life after just going with a few wizards to a secret dark wizard's base from decades ago, and he completely gave up on the idea after that!"

Terry moved closer to Aery in amazement, wanting to get a better look at the magical creature's structure.

“Even professors of ancient runes don’t recognize these ancient runes, so they must be at least medieval magical relics… It’s unbelievable. I’ve heard that many ancient spells from before the Middle Ages have been lost, and this Aery is probably one of them!” Anthony exclaimed in amazement.

"Isn't it a bit of a waste to have such a rare magical creature do these errands?" Michael asked, scratching his face, somewhat embarrassed.

"Professor McGonagall confirmed that Aery's combat power was not strong; at most, it could generate some protective magical shields for young wizards. Therefore, she thought that Aery might have been a service familiar created by a wizard a long time ago to work for him. That's why she agreed to let me bring it to Hogwarts, and that's what I've been instructing it to do for the past year."

“Isn’t this like having your own personal house-elves? That sounds really convenient,” Anthony said, looking at his three roommates. “You all know about house-elves, right? But we don’t have any. I’ve heard that only very wealthy pure-blood families can afford to buy house-elves to serve them.”

Michael and Terry shook their heads immediately. Although they were both from wizarding families, they had only ever seen other house-elves; they didn't have any in their own homes.

“If that’s the case, if we can figure out the runes on Ellie’s head, wouldn’t we be able to mass-produce these magical familiars?” Terry quickly came up with the same idea as Professor Babling.

"Professor Babling thinks so too, but she hasn't found a way yet, and I think it may take a long time."

The group sighed regretfully.

"Forget it, even if the method of making familiars like Ari is really replicated, the initial price probably won't be cheap. It will probably take a long time before it becomes widespread."

"Anyway, I'm sorry to trouble Reese and your Ellie. It's really a great help to figure out the internal environment of Hogwarts as soon as possible," Anthony said, thanking Ellie and Reese.

After watching Ellie circle around Ritz and then nimbly fly out of the window, his gaze then fell upon the nearly five-foot-long, seemingly ordinary wooden stick that Ritz had placed on the headboard.

"Speaking of which, I was wondering about this when we were packing our luggage together. Is that wooden stick next to your bed some kind of special magical item?"

Ryze had been waiting to be asked, and immediately nodded: "It appeared with Ari. Olivander said that this great wand may also be a product from before the Middle Ages, but I don't know why only I can use it."

Alley has Professor McGonagall's and Professor Barbling's research, and the useless stick has Olivander's judgment. Anyway, Ryze just needs to insist that these are all "legacy" left to him by his cheap old man.

After hearing Olivander's assessment of the great wand, Terry, feeling a bit itchy, asked if he could try the useless stick, and unsurprisingly, he failed.

The useless stick and other equipment from the system can only function as a wand in Ryze's hands.

Then the remaining two young wizards also came over to examine the useless stick more closely, but compared to Ellie, it was too ordinary, and they couldn't see anything special about it.

However, it was clear that the three young wizards did not show any signs of frustration; on the contrary, they were more interested in Ariel and the useless stick.

After all, Ravenclaw students are naturally more curious about the unknown than others, and they are more eager to solve these mysteries themselves.

Ryze, their roommate, possesses two things related to ancient magic. If they could use these things to unlock the secrets of those lost ancient spells, it would be an irresistible temptation for them.

The group, who had originally planned to go to bed, became more energetic because of these events and began to chat in bed about their family situations in more detail, as well as their goals for the next few years at Hogwarts.

Of course, for first-year wizards, their goals are still somewhat elusive.

The titles they hold, such as Minister of Magic, Chief Wizard of Wizengamor, Alchemist, and Duel Champion, are probably not taken seriously by them; they're just casually boasting.

Ryze casually added that he wanted to study these lost ancient runes and strive to become an ancient rune master in the future.

Ryze is still quite energetic mentally.

Hogwarts, the Sorting Ceremony, the officially launched system, new runic talents, and house effects.

These events, happening one after another, have kept his brain very active.

He turned his head and glanced at his curse energy.

According to the doomsday prophet's detailed explanation, one can accumulate a maximum of 1 point of curse energy per day, but he doesn't know exactly how much that 1 point of curse energy is.

Anyway, it's been over an hour since I got the Doomsday Prophet title, and the curse energy column is still showing 0. I don't know how it's calculated, and I'm even less sure if it's absorbing the unknown curse on Ryze.

"I wonder if curse energy can exempt me from the consequences of using dark magic?"

In the Harry Potter universe, dark magic does possess immense power, but it requires negative emotions to be generated in the wizard's mind for the spell to have its true effect. Under such circumstances, long-term use of dark magic can even change the wizard's personality.

If Ryze could directly manipulate curse energy as a medium for casting dark magic, it would undoubtedly be of great help to him in his research on dark magic.

After all, he could do without black magic, but he had to understand how it worked.

"There's also the Adaptability Force, which is converted from Curse Energy. In the game, the conversion rate of Curse Energy to Adaptability Force is 150%, while Adaptability Force is converted to Magic Power at a rate of 100%."

"Curse energy and adaptation power conversion has now been reduced to 100%, and I don't know if the conversion of adaptation power into spell power will shrink further."

In the game, ability power is not as valuable as attack power; 1 point of adaptive force can only be converted into 0.6 attack power.

I wonder what the conversion ratio is like here.

If the conversion ratio of legal strength is still 1:1, then he thinks it is still acceptable.

After all, as long as you can steadily obtain a little curse energy every day, you can accumulate 30 points of spell power over a month.

With 100 spell power roughly equivalent to a third-year student at Hogwarts, he estimated that he would only need to repeat one year to reach the level of an ordinary adult wizard.

In seven years at Hogwarts, one should be able to accumulate at least 2000 spell power. I wonder if they'll be able to compete with Dumbledore and the others by then.

"But spell power alone isn't enough. Attack speed and skill haste also need to be increased. So, it's time to add points," Ryze thought to himself, while silently selecting the attribute crafting option in his mind.

He can use the Galleons he retrieved from Gringotts immediately.

Before the start of the school year, he took out several thousand Galleons and some antiques without magical effects from the vault and asked his brother-in-law Ted to exchange them for pounds to renovate the house.

He brought about 1000 Galleons with him to Hogwarts just in case.

Although it's only enough for one forging machine, the next quarterly forging machine purchase limit will be refreshed in December.

It was Christmas holiday time, and he definitely had to go back home to figure out how to explain such a big expense to his cousin and brother-in-law.

Ryze actually felt a bit regretful about this.

The system doesn't give him a chance to exploit bugs.

Otherwise, if he could directly use the Galleons he had in Gringotts, he could find an opportunity to claim that his Galleons in Gringotts had mysteriously disappeared, and thus extort money from Gringotts.

With this regret, Ryze watched as the forging tool before him emitted a silver light that vanished in an instant.

[Swift Shard: +10% Attack Speed, +8 Skill Haste].

Chapter 15: Prophetic Dreams?

750 Galleons were exchanged for a Silver Forging Tool.

Rizzo's heart was bleeding a little.

Fortunately, a seasoned bodybuilder will always believe that the next bodybuilder will definitely be colorful.

What if the body-building exercises here could produce amplifiers?

Ryze skillfully comforted himself, at least this time he had forged a dual-attribute shard, and attack speed and haste were indeed the attributes he currently lacked.

Then, as the soft snores of the young wizards began to drift in from all around, he suppressed his emotions, closed his eyes, and drifted into his first sleep since arriving at Hogwarts.

He slept very deeply this time and didn't have any problem with sleeping in the same bed.

Then he had a dream.

He dreamt of a beautiful, dark-haired woman standing atop a tower, her gaze filled with sorrow as she looked southeast and sighed.

He felt that the woman looked somewhat familiar, but in the dream he didn't have much self-awareness and could only silently watch her.

At the end of the dream, he seemed to make eye contact with the woman for a fleeting moment.

Ryze could sense the depth and doubt in the other's eyes.

But just as the other person opened their mouth as if to say something, Ryze snapped back to reality.

Looking at the gradually brightening sky outside the window, Rizzi lay on the bed, carefully recalling the dream she had just had.

"Was I dreaming about Ravenclaw?"

According to records, Rowena Ravenclaw was indeed a beautiful dark-haired witch.

Aside from not wearing a crown, the other person does indeed bear some resemblance to the Ravenclaw statue in the Ravenclaw lounge.

But why would he suddenly dream of Ravenclaw, just because he was assigned to Ravenclaw?

"Could it be a divination talent brought by the doomsday prophet?" Ryze wondered with some doubt.

After all, he would quickly forget normal dreams once he woke up.

But even now, he can still clearly recall everything from the dream.

This includes the final eye contact with the other person, and the words they wanted to say to him but hadn't had a chance to say yet.

But could his talent for divination allow him to dream of events from a thousand years ago?

He thought for a moment and confirmed that the timeline of his dream should be after Helena Ravenclaw's daughter, Helena Ravenclaw, who is now the ghostly Lady Grey of Ravenclaw Academy, stole her mother's crown.

But he had no idea what the dream was foreshadowing for him.

Should we let him regain his crown?

However, Ryze didn't dwell on it for too long. With insufficient information, further deliberation wouldn't yield any results. He decided to wait until he had similar dreams in the future before investigating further.

He glanced at the time; it was 6:15 in the morning.

I slept for about seven hours.

The first class at Hogwarts starts at 8:50, so he has two and a half hours to go.

Then he subconsciously glanced at the curse energy.

Good news, the curse energy has increased.

The bad news is that it only rose by 0.2.

"In other words, even if I survive to the death, this curse on me can only provide me with about 0.5 units of curse energy per day?"

Fortunately, the Adaptive Force did not disappoint Ryze, still maintaining a 1:1 conversion ratio.

Based on this calculation, relying solely on the curse on him, he would gain approximately 15 points of spell power per month.

Ryze wasn't too surprised by the result.

After all, he has been suffering from this curse since birth, so the person who cast the curse or the magical item must have been quite powerful.

But Ryze felt it wasn't exactly a particularly powerful curse.

Otherwise, he would have been cursed and killed as an infant, and it would have been impossible for him to survive for so long.

Unless the curse itself is intended to keep him in a half-dead state, neither letting him die nor allowing him to live a proper life.

It's already quite good that they can provide him with so much curse energy.

"0.5 a day... which means I need to find some more curse energy each day to make up the difference."

The curse energy was not fully charged, and Ryze felt ants crawling on his body.

Fortunately, he had thought of many ways to obtain curse energy last night, and he has plenty of time to verify those methods.

He sensed that Ai Li had returned to his body in the middle of the night.

So he got up quietly without waking the other three.

After a quick wash and some life magic to tidy himself up, he wrote a note on the table and went into Ravenclaw's common room.