[Chapter Size: 1800 Words.]
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In the days leading up to Christmas, Harry was thinking about how to teach Ron and the others his meditation method. After all, he had tried it himself and observed the effects.
This meditation method could really speed up the improvement of magical power.
In contrast, so far, neither the school curriculum nor the books in the library mentioned any methods for improving magical power or mental strength.
There is a rule for the growth of magical power. Harry glanced at it and simply noted that it follows age.
So, Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard of his time. Is it because he lived longer? That doesn't seem right. It seems that Dumbledore was already a world-renowned super-wizard fifty years ago. He even defeated a dark wizard. What was his name? Harry couldn't remember, but it still seemed pretty impressive.
Well, then it probably isn't just age, talent might also be a factor.
This reminded Harry of an ancient Aegean proverb about magical training, written by Neil: "In magical training, three parts depend on luck, seven parts depend on hard work, and the remaining ninety parts depend on talent..."
As for finding clues about the Philosopher's Stone, Harry and his team had hit a bottleneck.
They were currently studying medieval documents and had found some descriptions of the Stone of the Sage, which outlined how the Philosopher's Stone was first refined.
That was nearly two thousand years ago. The prophet Ptolemy and an Eastern alchemist proposed the oldest theory about the Philosopher's Stone, and then they simply conducted experiments.
This Stone of the Sage has the ability to turn stone into gold. The alchemists at that time primarily wanted to use gold to trade for a large number of other magical materials. But there was no mention of immortality or other abilities.
This is the oldest record of the Philosopher's Stone that Harry and his friends were able to find. But even so, it still didn't have any substantial effect.
Young people always lack perseverance.
Although the Philosopher's Stone was very enticing, Harry and Ron gradually grew tired of the search because they had not achieved any significant results. Finding time to do homework and enjoy themselves while searching the library for over a month had already been too much for the two of them.
In recent days, even Hermione, who had been the most enthusiastic, especially hoping to make up for her knowledge gaps, began to feel a bit weary.
Harry and Ron, on the other hand, had started to relax. At that moment, they were playing wizard's chess.
Harry had bought his own wizard's chess set a long time ago, but he wasn't very keen on playing with Ron. Even though his chess pieces were obedient now and his chess skills had improved greatly, he would still lose when facing Ron.
Hermione wasn't convinced at first, but now she rarely mentioned chess anymore.
If Harry wanted to play a game of chess with Ron to gain some experience with each other, Ron would have to give up at least a knight and a bishop. But even then, Harry still lost more than he won. Besides, what was the point of such a victory?
"Hey, did you hear that?" Harry and Ron were reviewing Harry's mistake from the last chess game. Of course, the game had been played between Harry and a senior student, the senior student had won and then left, refusing Ron's request for revenge.
At that moment, Dean Thomas rushed in. His face seemed a little red, either from the cold or from excitement.
"What's up, Dean? Why are you in such a hurry?" Ron handed him a cup of hot milk to warm him up.
"Thanks!" Dean took a big sip of milk, took a deep breath, and said, "It's Seamus. Seamus just arrived at the hospital wing."
"Oh." Harry remained calm and continued watching Ron's critique.
"It's nothing." Ron said casually while giving Harry some tips.
Seamus Finnigan's ability to create explosions impressed both Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick.
Snape had even stopped deducting points from Gryffindor for causing small explosions in his Potions class, as a Potions master, he couldn't even fully understand how Seamus used these potions to cause explosions.
"Talent!"
Harry and Ron said this in particular.
Sometimes, these explosions were very small, maybe just a puff of white smoke or a change in Seamus's and his friends' hairstyles. But sometimes, they could be very powerful.
Since the explosion was caused by magic, the usual recovery magic wasn't very effective, so Seamus frequently returned to the hospital wing to report in.
Madam Pomfrey stated that her treatment of various injuries caused by explosions had significantly improved over the past six months. She even planned to organize it and publish a long paper for academic institutions.
"Of course, it's not surprising that Seamus exploded by himself, but this time, there's also Professor Kettleburn!" Dean didn't keep it a secret and went straight to the point.
"Ah?" Now, many of the younger students in the common room became interested, especially first and second-year students.
The students above third-year remained calm because their experiences, along with descriptions from their peers, told them that Professor Kettleburn had been injured more than once or twice.
He was the only professor who everyone had seen many times in the hospital wing, lying in a hospital bed.
"Ah? What did they do?" Harry and Ron, who didn't know much about this strange professor, were curious. They only knew that he had a good relationship with Hagrid and that they could often find him at Hagrid's house. He was a professor who was always smiling, liked to joke, and was very easy to talk to.
"Christmas is coming, and Professor Kettleburn wants to do some decorating," Dean said, sharing the news he had heard.
"As you know, there's a fire crab nest near the Black Lake, so the professor wanted to collect some gems from their shells. Seamus knew about this too, and he was interested in the fire crabs, so he followed along. As a result, when he tried to use the freezing charm on the fire crabs, it caused an explosion."
Ah, Seamus's magic caused an explosion, and this is the part Harry and the others were familiar with.
But could Seamus really use the freezing charm? This was a very difficult spell, at least for a first-class wizard, and Harry wasn't very proficient at it.
But considering that Seamus's mother was a witch, this wasn't hard to accept.
But how did cryotherapy cause an explosion? Harry and Ron wanted to laugh, but with their classmates and possibly professors injured and in the hospital wing, it felt inappropriate to laugh out loud.
They held it in as best they could.
At the same time, there was something else worth noting: Christmas was approaching.
"By the way, Harry, are you going home for Christmas? If you are, we could go together," Dean asked.
"Well, I haven't really thought about it..." Harry hesitated.
Now, he was quite serious about learning magic. At Hogwarts, it was certainly possible to improve his magical power faster. However, he felt a bit of longing for his older cousin Dudley. After all, they had grown up together.
Shaking his head to push these thoughts away, Harry began thinking about other things.
Three days before the Christmas holiday, classes had already been suspended. Tomorrow, Professor McGonagall would compile a list of students who were going home for Christmas and those who would remain at school. But Harry still hadn't made a final decision. He was busy with something else.
"Ron, look at this." Harry pulled Ron over mysteriously and took out a slightly yellowed piece of paper from a large book.
"Why would you borrow a book like this?" Ron looked at the large book titled A Discussion and Continuation of the Heritage of Magic in the Middle Ages with an amazed expression.
This was a book that almost no one cared about, because it only recorded discussions about the evolution of ancient magic into modern magic, focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of both types.
However, this book contained no real magical theory or decent spells. It was a useless book that even Hermione would avoid.
Harry and his friends noticed that this book hadn't been borrowed in over eighty years.
However, this was exactly what Harry needed.
"I borrowed it by mistake and thought I'd take a look before returning it. Well, it's not important. Look at this." He pointed to the yellowed paper.
Ron took the paper suspiciously. The paper seemed to be from a long time ago and was a bit damaged. The handwriting on it was very messy, but it was still almost legible.
The top line of the text said: How to rapidly increase magical power, an ancient meditation method.
"Rapidly increase magical power? How is that possible? Doesn't magical power only increase with age?" Ron said with some disapproval.
"Ah, I thought that at first too, but I had nothing else to do these past two days, so I tried it, and it really works!" Harry pretended to be surprised. He wasn't sure how good his acting skills were, but anyway it should be enough to fool Ron.
This piece of paper was, of course, written by him. It had been buried in a plant pot in his room for a week, then soaked in water and baked in the fire, making it look very old.
If this were an archaeological study in the Muggle world, the traces would likely be visible at first glance, but it was enough to fool Ron and the others.
What was written on the paper was the meditation method.
Meditating isn't easy, but if you do it with your heart, ordinary people can do it with more time.
Ron and Neville's magic wasn't going well, and Harry really wanted to help his friends. This was the only method he could think of right now.
"Ah?" Ron didn't doubt Harry's words for a second and immediately took the paper and read it carefully. After reading it once, he closed his eyes and began to try.
Failure, failure, and more failure.
"It's much harder than it looks," Ron said, somewhat surprised.
"Yes, but the effect is also very ideal." Harry smiled brightly and was the first to take the bait.
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