Meditation Method and the Bloodline Purification Potion (Still Asking for Votes)

Having made up his mind, Jon stopped thinking about Cedric. After all, Harry Potter would not enroll until next year, and Cedric's death was still five years away. There was no need to rush.

He casually flipped through the copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them he had taken from the ring earlier. He had read it once during the holiday, and it was perfect as light reading. He had always liked books on this subject, and he had long heard of the book's author, Newt Scamander.

After all, a Hufflepuff student who had been expelled from Hogwarts was quite the legend.

After glancing over the description of the Basilisk, Jon skipped the page. The Basilisk came from Chamber of Secrets; by then, Jon would already be in his third year, so there was no need to think about it now.

Cedric was quite interested in the freshman across from him who was reading Fantastic Beasts, but he was forced to keep up a lively conversation with Bella, leaving him no chance to speak with Jon. More importantly, he kept feeling that the freshman across from him looked at him with an inexplicable sort of pity.

Being looked at like that was really uncomfortable.

But he had heard earlier that this freshman named Jon would be joining Hufflepuff, so there should be plenty of chances to talk later... right?

"By the way, senior student Bella, have you heard? The Ministry of Magic's new Minister this year is actually Cornelius Fudge. I heard he writes to Dumbledore every month. Maybe when we get to school, we'll even see Fudge's Owl?"

Cedric tried to bring up a topic Jon might be interested in, but it only stirred Bella's interest in talking.

The things he mentioned sounded like major events. If he had talked about some obscure Trivial matter, Jon might have looked up, but he had basically seen all these major events in the Original Work. He knew far more of the secrets behind them than these students did.

The train soon started moving. The journey from the station to Hogwarts lasted from eleven in the morning until nightfall. Jon had prepared plenty of things to pass the time, but with Cedric in the compartment, they were inconvenient to take out.

It would have been better if I were enrolling next year. With The Savior on the train, who would notice an unknown Young Wizard who barely spoke?

The train quickly entered the countryside. Britain's outskirts looked much the same as he remembered—boundless stretches of barren grassland.

Thinking silently, Jon took a pair of earplugs from his pocket and put them in, shutting out Cedric and Bella's laughter and conversation. If he had known how to cast it, he really would have liked to use a Silencing Charm on himself.

He sat cross-legged on his seat, watched the scenery flash past outside the window, and closed his eyes.

Bella would buy food for herself once she got hungry anyway. He did not need to worry about her.

What else was there to do on a train besides sleep?

In the past, Jon's only activity whenever he took a train had been sleeping, since staring at his phone for too long made his eyes hurt. But now, he had a new activity.

Over the past dozen or so days, he had buried himself in magical books and found quite a few ways to increase his magic power.

Hogwarts taught Young Wizards to increase their magic power through constant practice, allowing it to grow naturally. The method was safe, but its effects were far too slow. That was why Hogwarts used examinations to assess students' learning results rather than testing their magic power levels like in Eastern fantasy novels.

Jon felt that this method of training was inefficient. More precisely, it did not suit him.

Just as ordinary people without magic developed technology, the essence of cultivating magic was to strengthen oneself. If he followed Hogwarts' training methods, how long would it take for him to reach the level of an Archmage?

Even Harry Potter had to receive special training from the professors!

So, after filtering through more than a dozen books that the Ministry of Magic had forbidden student wizards to read, Jon found several "cultivation" methods suitable for his current stage.

Laws of Meditation, written by a wizard named Sri Lanka; Wizard Bloodline Activation Theory, by Salazar Slytherin, one of Hogwarts' founders; and Magic Strengthening, written by a woman named Helena.

Every one of these books, explicitly forbidden for student wizards, had its own unique benefits. Their shared trait was that the cultivation methods they recorded were all exceptionally difficult. As old people would put it, they were very dangerous—someone would die every so often.

But rarity was also one of the advantages of difficult things, and such matters often varied from person to person. At least after considering everything, Jon sincerely believed he could use them, and that the risk was not all that high.

As for difficulty... all he could say was that he had never been someone who feared hardship. Anyone who had gone through the Postgraduate Entrance Examination would never think anything was truly difficult.

Wasn't it just solving problems? That was a student's specialty!

After several days and nights of tireless research, Jon, who was now sitting on the train pretending to sleep, had already brought Sri Lanka's Meditation Method to the beginner level. He could sense the magical particles constantly drifting through the air and attempt to draw them into his body.

A wizard's magic power was hidden within their bloodline and body, then guided through the brain—or rather, the soul—to become powerful magic. The magical particles in the air provided the foundational conditions for the environment in which wizards cast magic.

They were like the energy between heaven and earth, or the Gaia consciousness.

What the Meditation Method gave Jon was an exceptionally direct perception of the entire world. In Greenwich, he had felt the prosperity of the human world and the haze above London; here, he felt hard stone, crisp air, and an intense, primal breath of nature.

What sweet, free air!

(Note: I don't know whether Britain's air is as sweet as the Americas' because I've never been there or watched any interviews. Don't nitpick.)

Jon greedily absorbed the magical energy in the air. He did not actually know what level his magic power had reached, but it was still within his control.

As long as it did not exceed his control, there was no risk of becoming an Obscurus. Once he arrived at Hogwarts, he would begin seriously studying Potions and strive to make the twenty-seven-page potion recorded in Wizard Bloodline Activation Theory—the only potion recorded there—the Bloodline Purification Potion.

The reason such a dangerous potion could still be written about and published was, first, that it was a research result belonging to legendary Pureblood Family wizards, and the Pureblood Families controlling the magical world had selfish motives. Second, the Magical Apothecaries' Guild had verified that the potion's feasibility was extremely low. Some of the rare medicinal ingredients had long since gone completely extinct with the passage of time, while the remaining ingredients were all extraordinarily expensive.

Expensive enough to trade for thirty Smith Family vaults.

But Hogwarts had a primeval forest. The Forbidden Forest was full of precious materials. If he could not find the genuine article, he could still find substitutes. Even if the potion's effects were weaker, that did not matter.

As he imagined the adventures that might await him after arriving at Hogwarts, Jon's meditation became noticeably more effective.