Fire from the Nose

Many people would not give up easily until they had run into a wall.

Albert's roommates were clearly no exception. After staring at the first volume of Practical Defensive Magic and Its Countermeasures Against Dark Magic for a long time, they finally could not resist trying it themselves.

"Shield Charm!" Fred raised his wand and slashed it downward, reciting the incantation from the book, but nothing happened.

"The book says the Shield Charm doesn't glow!" George reminded him, comparing the positions of their wands.

"Come on, try again." Lee Jordan picked up The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection and threw it at Fred.

"Are you trying to kill me?" Fred hastily jumped aside and glared at Lee Jordan.

"Danger brings out your potential better, and one book definitely can't kill you," Lee Jordan immediately argued.

"Use this!" Albert irritably tossed Fred's pillow to Lee Jordan. He figured Fred would have a hard time succeeding anyway; throwing books at him was just asking for trouble. As it turned out, Albert was right. After being smacked by his own pillow several times, Fred temporarily gave up.

Of course, neither George nor Lee Jordan succeeded either.

"All right, you should just practice the simpler spells obediently." Albert could not help rolling his eyes at them.

What should this be called?

Overestimating themselves? Being too greedy? Well, Professor McGonagall had probably seen him the same way back then.

But Albert was different from the three of them! He had a panel and an experience pool. As long as he got a skill started, he could spend experience to cheat whenever he wanted.

"Is there any trick to learning the Shield Charm quickly?" Fred could not help asking.

"A trick?" Albert thought for a moment. "Practice more—that's probably the fastest trick."

"But how did you master all those spells so quickly? Summer vacation wasn't even that long!" George was a little depressed. He had realized Albert knew quite a few spells. It made him wonder who had really been born into a wizarding family.

"I think I can probably guess part of the reason," Albert said after thinking it over.

"What reason?" Fred immediately pressed.

"Have you ever played a game where you can level up?" Albert glanced at their expressions. "Well, I'm guessing you haven't. Let me put it another way. Don't you have to practice chess to get better at it?"

"What does that have to do with chess?" the Twins could not help complaining.

"Chess requires talent, but you also need practice to improve your skill. The better you are at chess, the stronger you become." Albert casually gave an example that did not quite fit. "Magic is actually much the same. Casting spells requires talent..."

"You're saying your talent is better than ours?" Lee Jordan interrupted with a jab.

"No, I'm saying you need to improve your own Magical Power and your control over magic through practice," Albert explained rather speechlessly.

"You mean your Magical Power is stronger than ours, and your control over magic is better too?" the Twins asked suspiciously.

"Yes, at least that's what I think for now." Albert nodded. "As I learned more and more spells, I found that learning new ones became easier than before. I still remember something Professor McGonagall once said: Hogwarts teaches underage wizards how to control and use magic."

"Why do I feel like you're fooling us?" Fred raised an eyebrow.

"I wouldn't do something like that, and I already said it was only a guess." Albert shook his head repeatedly. He was not fooling the three of them. As the number of spells he taught himself increased, the experience he gained from failures while learning magic was also gradually accumulating. That was the extra experience that directly leveling up skills with the experience pool lacked.

After failing over and over, the Weasley Twins temporarily gave up trying to master the Shield Charm and focused their attention on the Unlocking Charm.

After an afternoon of practice, Fred was the first to succeed. He successfully used the Unlocking Charm to open the lock on his drawer.

"That's amazing! How did you do it?" George looked at Fred with some envy. His own drawer was still completely unresponsive.

"See? Fred learned the Unlocking Charm first. I win." Albert, who had been reading nearby, winked at Lee Jordan. Looking utterly innocent, he held a Pepper Imp out before him. "Eat it. A bet's a bet."

"What were you betting on?" Fred asked in confusion.

"Which of you would master the Unlocking Charm first." Albert smiled. "The loser has to eat this..."

As he spoke, he pointed at the Pepper Imps they had bought from Honeydukes Sweetshop.

"Albert's right. A bet's a bet."

George patted his friend on the shoulder and watched him with an expectant look. That was right—he was looking forward to seeing Lee Jordan eat that candy and breathe flames from his nose.

"It's all your fault." Lee Jordan looked deeply resentful as he unwrapped the candy and stuffed it into his mouth. His cheeks instantly turned bright red, and cold sweat appeared on his forehead.

The next moment.

"So spicy..." When Lee Jordan opened his mouth, spicy flames really shot out of his nostrils, instantly scorching George's face.

"You bastard, you definitely did that on purpose." George's face was a little blackened, and it reeked of pepper.

"Cough, cough." Lee Jordan spat out a few more sparks.

But after seeing what had happened to George, Albert and Fred immediately backed far away, afraid of suffering an Unforeseen Disaster.

That guy had definitely done it on purpose. Yes, that had to be it.

A few minutes later, Lee, who had just rinsed his mouth in the washroom, looked resentfully at Albert. The peppery taste had not completely faded, and his nostrils were still bright red from breathing fire.

"Next time, I'm never betting on this with you again," Lee Jordan said irritably.

"Next time, we can eat Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans instead." Albert blinked and casually picked out three with his eyes closed.

"That's not a bad idea."

"Aren't you going to keep practicing? Succeeding once doesn't mean you'll succeed every time." Albert tossed a Chocolate Bean into his mouth and resumed flipping through Nineteenth Century Spell Selection. He had already read two-thirds of the book.

"How is your Disillusionment Charm coming along?" Fred changed the subject.

"I haven't completely mastered it yet. That spell is much harder than the Unlocking Charm." Albert glanced at the panel information. The Disillusionment Charm only had 35 experience points; he still needed to train hard to reach the 100 needed for Level 1.

"Is that spell really that difficult?" George asked suspiciously.

"Of course it is." Albert could not help rolling his eyes. "I heard it's one of the spells Aurors must learn. Hmm, by the way, what kind of job is an Auror?"

Of course Albert knew what an Auror was, but as someone from the Muggle world, he should not possess too much common knowledge about the wizarding world.

"We're doomed!"

"What's doomed?" Albert asked in confusion.

"We definitely won't learn the Disillusionment Charm this year." The Twins could not help wailing. It was an essential spell for sneaking around at night.