Volume 1 Chapter 46: Afternoon Tea is worse than Eating Rock Cake
"It's true that what you are learning now is a new way of casting spells, but the foundation of the spell itself is still based on the method of casting spells with a wand. So if you want to strengthen your ability to cast the levitation spell, the most fundamental thing is to have a deep understanding of the levitation spell."
Slughorn poured Jon a cup of black tea, while he himself drank a glass of lemonade while speaking.
Jon raised the wand in his hand as he thought.
"In other words, the better I master the normal levitation spell, the better the levitation spell I use on myself will be. If I want to improve myself, I just need to keep practicing the spell itself."
Slughorn nodded .
"You understand correctly. The essence of wand casting and ring casting is the same. The only difference is the object of change. This is why only the syllables of the spell change but the spell itself does not change."
As he said this, he took out a large stack of notebooks and magic books from under the cabinet of the desk.
"And these, take them with you when you leave. Adrian left behind some of his insights on the spellcasting method you learned, which should be of great help to you. Of course, the part left in Hogwarts Castle must be much more than what I have now. His last wish was to donate all his research results to the Hogwarts Library, but unfortunately, such a thing happened later. Before he died, he also asked me to try my best to help bring out the materials and stones in the castle. Now that you have inherited everything from him, I will hand this matter over to you, Jon."
Slughorn smiled.
"I hope you can really do this one day, but don't put too much pressure on yourself. After all, you are only 11 years old."
Jon looked at the things Slughorn handed him, and a look of surprise appeared on his face.
"Professor...does this mean that you are no longer going to teach me about what is behind the ring?"
"It's not that I don't want to teach you." The fat walrus shook his head, "but this is all I know, Jon. After all, I have never really learned how to use the ring. Everything I taught you before was learned from these notes. Now that you have mastered a spell, it's better for you to understand it yourself instead of asking me to tell you half-baked. Besides, if you have any questions later, you can of course continue to ask me, but it's likely that I won't be able to give you a direct answer. We have to discuss it to solve the problem."
Although he said so, Jon still couldn't accept it for a while. He originally thought that teaching this way of casting spells would take a long time, at least one or two school years, but now it's over in only half a school year.
While they were chatting, the office door suddenly opened a crack. Jon turned his head and looked over, but didn't see anyone coming in.
Just when he thought that some student accidentally opened the door, he suddenly found a familiar little figure nimbly running past his feet, then leaping lightly onto the table and running in front of Slughorn.
That was Hagrid's pet - Beech.
It seemed to be very familiar with this office. It was not shy at all when facing Slughorn. It just spread out its little paws as if asking for something.
Slughorn looked at it and smiled as he took out a handful of weird-tasting beans from the drawer and placed them in front of it. His skillful movements showed that this was not the first time he had fed it in this way.
"Professor, why is Beech here with you?"
Slughorn seemed a little surprised to hear Jon call this Niffler.
"Do you know this Niffler?"
"This is Hagrid's pet. It's the one that stole things from me when Hagrid and I first became acquainted."
"Yes, Hagrid told me that this is the only animal he brought out of that forest. This little guy is indeed not very clean, but it is also a sniffing nature. " Slughorn blinked and said, "Not long ago, when I returned to the office, I found it stealing my candied fruit. This magical animal is very interesting, so I took the initiative to give it some snacks, and then it has been pestering me since that day. It comes to my place every once in a while to drink afternoon tea for a while."
It was certainly true that Beech was there for tea, and Slughorn actually prepared a cup of tea for him in a tiny cup so that he wouldn't choke on his sweets.
Jon looked at it with an expression of enjoyment, and couldn't help but complain in his heart that no wonder he kept seeing Hagrid coming to the carriage to look for it recently. If he were Beech, he would rather come to Slughorn's place for afternoon tea than eat the rock cakes made by Hagrid himself.
After sitting in the office for a while, Jon said goodbye to Slughorn and left.
In fact, what the Fat Walrus said was indeed correct, that is, there was nothing much for Jon to learn from him about rings now.
In order to learn the next magic, he needs extra sapphires, but apart from knowing that one of them is in Hogwarts Castle, there is no clue about the remaining three. Now John certainly cannot rush into Hogwarts Castle to look for them, so he can only study the levitation spell he has already learned.
As for improving his proficiency in the Levitation Charm, Slughorn couldn't provide him with much help, and he still had to rely on himself to figure it out.
Thinking of this, Jon felt relieved. He returned to the dormitory and began to concentrate on studying how to improve the effect of the levitation spell.
But at the same time he did not forget to learn other spells.
The spells learned in the first-year spells class are basically elementary spells. They may be very practical in life, but in real wizard battles they can only play an auxiliary role at most and it is difficult to produce any effective killing power.
Of course, he would not wait until Flitwick started teaching in the second year to learn those spells that directly cause harm. Instead, he borrowed a spell book from the library, selected the petrification spell and began to study it privately.
The petrification spell is undoubtedly a very useful spell. Even now, the Aurors of the Ministry of Magic still use the petrification, stun and disarm spells as their main ones.
After all, no matter how vicious a criminal is, you can't use the Killing Curse to kill every criminal. As an important means to subdue the enemy, the Petrification Curse has always performed very well.
And this spell is not difficult to learn. In the original book, Hermione could learn it by self-study in her first year, so it is naturally not a problem for Jon.
