If there was one thing Tris hated most after transmigrating, it was that his new ethnicity came with body odor-and fucking terrible body odor at that.
It wasn't just him. His whole family had it.
In his previous life, he'd interacted with foreigners, but never gotten particularly close to them. He'd simply wondered why they all wore perfume, men and women alike, and absolutely drenched themselves in the stuff until the smell was overpowering.
After changing ethnicities himself, he finally understood: every white person had body odor. Even his adorable little sister Ginny.
Fortunately, wizards had better ways of handling it than ordinary people and didn't have to foolishly mask it with perfume. A very cheap, low-level potion could suppress it for a long time.
Practically everyone from a wizarding family had a supply. It wasn't anything special. The only problem was that you couldn't sweat; once you did, you had to apply it again.
Tris rarely used it at the Burrow, since he worked out and sweated every day.
Today was no different. He'd worked up a sweat on his run and hadn't thought much of it, only to end up being mocked by Pansy.
Tris's expression darkened at once. He glanced at Pansy's pale face and upturned nose, finally understanding why Harry and Ron described her the way they did.
She was clearly quite a pretty little girl, yet Harry and Ron said she looked like a pug.
Her personality was simply far too unpleasant. She always looked down her nose at everyone.
Someone else might have felt embarrassed after a little girl said something like that, but not Tris. He never beat himself up.
Rolling his eyes, Tris snarled at Pansy, "Keep running your mouth, and I'll shove your head into my armpit. Then you can really get a good whiff!"
Pansy went pale with horror.
Although she had body odor too, she'd used potions to suppress it practically since birth. Her family did the same, so she couldn't stand the smell at all.
If Tris really shoved her head into his armpit...
Pansy immediately clapped a hand over her mouth and shook her head repeatedly, making it perfectly clear that she wouldn't dare run her mouth again.
Satisfied, Tris sat down and quickly started eating. He needed to go back before class, take a shower, change clothes, and apply the potion that had been sitting unused in his suitcase for ages...
Showing up to class still giving off that pungent smell would be rather rude.
The Slytherin first-years' first lesson was Charms.
"Today, we'll be learning the basic logic of incantations and the corresponding gestures." Professor Flitwick stood at the front of the classroom, smiling warmly. "But before we begin, I'd like to ask whether any of our new students have practiced magic at home."
Slytherin shared its Charms lessons with Hufflepuff.
Every Slytherin student that year came from an entirely wizarding family, and nearly half belonged to the Twenty-Eight Families. That was perfectly normal-standard practice for Slytherin.
What was more unusual was that Hufflepuff also had a high proportion of students from wizarding families that year.
Of its ten students, only two came from Muggle families, three were half-bloods, and the rest also came from wizarding families. There were even two from pure-blood families.
With a student intake like that, it was only natural that some of them would have mastered a little magic before enrolling.
As soon as Professor Flitwick finished speaking, nearly half the young witches and wizards raised their hands.
Draco's hand went particularly high. As he raised it, he even glanced over at Tris.
Tris, however, didn't raise his hand. He merely propped his chin lazily on one hand and watched the students who had, a faint, ambiguous smile on his face.
Blaise and Theodore looked at Tris in confusion-they had both raised their hands. Last night in their dormitory, they'd seen him lie down on his bed and point his wand at a sleep mask by the headboard, making it fly into his hand.
They weren't sure whether it had been a Levitation Charm or the more advanced Summoning Charm, but it had definitely been magic.
Yet now Tris hadn't raised his hand?
"I see..." Professor Flitwick's gaze swept quickly over the students with raised hands. He nodded, seemingly committing every one of them to memory.
"Then those of you who raised your hands will have an additional assignment this week. You'll need some extra practice with your wand movements."
"What?" Draco exclaimed. He wasn't the only one. Every student who'd raised a hand wore an expression of disbelief.
Professor Flitwick seemed entirely unsurprised by their reaction. Still smiling, he nodded. "You see, incantations and gestures are the cornerstones of modern magic. They're absolutely essential.
"When you practice magic on your own at home, some mistakes in your movements and the rhythm of your incantations are inevitable. Although minor errors don't prevent you from casting basic spells, bad habits will affect your ability to master advanced magic later on.
"So I hope you'll break those existing bad habits through proper practice. Hmm, I think... an extra fifty repetitions of the basic wand movements every day should do? I'll ask some older students to supervise."
All the students who'd raised their hands were dumbstruck.
Apparently, that was how this worked.
Blaise and Theodore both looked utterly bewildered and couldn't help turning to Tris again. He still wore the same expression and held the same pose. When he noticed them looking, he even gave them a slight nod.
Motherfucker!
If Blaise and Theodore still couldn't tell that Tris had known this was coming, they'd have to be missing a few brain cells.
We're roommates! We see each other every day, and you didn't tell us about something like this?
What a fucking bastard!
Tris couldn't care less what they thought. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing wrong with the professor's approach.
In fact, he'd learned about this problem while practicing magic at home. At first, he'd needed to borrow Molly's or Charlie's wand, so there was no hiding it from them.
Charlie had told him then that if he developed bad habits, his professors would give him special assignments at school to break them.
Tris hadn't been particularly concerned. Just as the system corrected his movements when he ran or exercised, it also corrected his gestures and the rhythm of his incantations when he practiced magic.
What surprised him was that, upon learning he was practicing magic, Percy had actually volunteered to help him correct any bad habits in his movements and incantations.
Tris knew perfectly well that Percy was an outstanding student through and through.
He was a monster who'd earned twelve O.W.L. certificates. Even Hermione, an academic prodigy, had only earned ten.
His guidance was naturally extremely helpful. Although Tris had the system to correct the finer details, he still appreciated the gesture very much.
Knowing all this, Tris hadn't raised his hand when Professor Flitwick asked. There was nothing wrong with his movements or his understanding of incantations, and even if he were found out, he could ask the professor for an exemption.
But why invite extra trouble?
"All right." Professor Flitwick raised a hand to quiet the students, still smiling. "Next, we'll discuss some simple incantation syllables.
"I won't go into the origins of modern magical incantations here. You'll learn about those in History of Magic later. Today, we'll start with three of the twelve basic syllables and the five basic hand movements..."
Tris studied attentively. Although Percy had already covered all this material with him, he still listened carefully.
The professor's understanding was on an entirely different level from Percy's, and there was always something new to learn.
There were forty-one students in Tris's year, divided into two classes: one with twenty students and the other with twenty-one. It wasn't quite the small-group teaching of graduate school, but the professors could still give everyone attention.
Professor Flitwick listened to each student's pronunciation and watched their movements one by one, then corrected them.
There wasn't much material to cover, but checking everyone individually made the lesson pass quickly.
During the lesson, Professor Flitwick praised Tris's precise movements and pronunciation, though he didn't award him any points.
Tris wasn't particularly interested in house points anyway. No matter how many they earned, Dumbledore would ultimately give Gryffindor enough extra points to make Harry's house win.
How hard could that be?
If fifty points weren't enough, he could give sixty, seventy, or even a hundred. Wasn't it all down to a word from the headmaster?
And before that, with their own biased Head of House around, Slytherin couldn't possibly fall behind in points.
Lesson lengths at Hogwarts were very flexible. Professors could dismiss their classes whenever they felt they'd covered enough. This lesson was no exception.
Seeing that the students had more or less mastered the material, Professor Flitwick nodded in satisfaction. "We'll leave it there for today. Make sure you practice when you get back. Next lesson, we'll check what you've learned today."
The end of class was always a happy occasion. The students immediately got up and cheerfully made their way out.
Well, there was also the fact that they needed to hurry to their next classroom.
Hogwarts Castle was enormous, and with its staircases and corridors shifting about, reaching the next classroom on time wasn't something that reliably took a fixed number of minutes.
Tris was about to leave too when Professor Flitwick spoke. "Mr. Weasley, could you stay behind for a moment?"
Tris was a little surprised. He didn't know why Professor Flitwick wanted him to stay, but obediently stopped anyway.
Draco wore a gloating expression as he passed him. Clearly, Little Dragon instinctively assumed that being kept behind by a professor meant trouble.
And as his follower, Pansy also gave Tris a smug, contemptuous look as she passed.
Tris considered them both idiots and couldn't be bothered to respond.
But then Blaise and Theodore passed him too, and they also wore gloating expressions.
Their thinking wasn't the same as Draco's and Pansy's. Neither of them had much against Tris at the moment. They were merely annoyed that he'd clearly known the trap behind the professor's question about spells and hadn't warned them.
Tris considered them idiots too.
Then, however, he remembered a saying.
If you found yourself surrounded by idiots in life, there were two possibilities. First, you were a genius, and everyone else looked like an idiot to you. Second, you were an idiot too-birds of a feather flocked together.
Without his system, Tris didn't think he could really qualify as a genius, so...
"Ah, Mr. Weasley." Professor Flitwick had come over and was looking at Tris with a smile. "Let's keep this brief. I wouldn't want to delay you for your next lesson."
"Um... it's probably fine. I don't think Professor Binns would mind very much," Tris said with a shrug, while trying hard to forget his earlier conclusion.
"Ha ha!" Flitwick laughed. "Yes, he probably wouldn't mind very much, but I'd still rather a first-year didn't get used to missing lessons quite so soon."
His smile softened a little, though amusement remained on his face. "You seem quite familiar with Hogwarts. I imagine your brothers must have told you about it?"
"Yes, Percy told me a few things." Tris had no idea why Flitwick was asking.
"Much as I thought. At least, those two troublemakers Fred and George don't strike me as the sort to teach their younger brother incantation syllables and magical gestures in such detail."
"Ah, well..." Tris immediately felt awkward.
Had the professor realized he'd studied magic before? Had he kept him behind because he hadn't raised his hand in class?
Professor Flitwick seemed to notice Tris's embarrassment and chuckled again. "Relax, relax. I'm not here to take you to task over that. There's something else I'd like to discuss."