What is a Game?

Chapter 8 - All Kinds of Exploration

AN: More big fat chapters for you all. I'm happy to see people are enjoying the chapters as we go. This one has my take on Combat (hint I don't like writing combat, and this will be clear, in how I write it. No frills. 'I did this, that and the other thing, to such and such an effect.' Again, as this is not the point of the story, I will skip it if I can. Aside from the rampage this chapter, she largely won't go off and try to beat things up.

She has no reason to do so.

Also a lot of emotional garbage, and what are probably some highly volatile opinions are reached. As a heads up. We get really mushy and really opinionated really quick. (I think this is accurate to reality. Some of my strongest, real opinions are the ones I form in a state of extreme emotional distress. So I write this character as being similar. I'm not saying what opinions she comes to are correct, but that to her perception of reality, they are.)

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The rest of that week was rather odd - I slowly sunk in with Sarah and her two friends - Matthew "Matt" and "Bond, Heather Bond." who liked making bad jokes. All were Ravenclaw first years and they were all decent enough people. I'd say they were in the top 5 boys or top 5 Girls of our year - considering there were only 10 girls and 12 boys, this was something of an accomplishment still.

Oh and we learned there was a leader-board, of which I was at the top for the first years in close to everything. The exception was for Herbology, right now. DADA was also close, but my study and practice was paying off, there.I had gone from an EE on Herbology to what would barely scrape an O, while Matt, the lovable oaf, along with Heather were the top 2 and made it look easy.

Sarah was really good in DADA, surprisingly, and was constantly pressing me, she seemed to have a natural talent for the art of defense. My constant multi-hour training periods were massively helpful. They got my skills to level 11, but then stopped improving, so I swapped my spells around, and they started to improve again, but I could feel it wasn't as fast as it was before - maybe every ten, the amount of time or effort you needed to put in multiplied? Or maybe the spells I was using, because I was getting so good at them (I could now cast 12 strings before resting, compared to my original 9, and that was because the spells cost less, not because I had more mana.) or if it was because I needed new spells - when I was on my third resorting, and found that I was already almost ready to swap again. After doing two other iterations of this, I felt that it was natural. I might stop and select new spells, soon.

Oh! Wanded magic also went up from level four to level six in this time, which was a big boon! Very notable, but slow going. I guess as we go and cast more and more complex spells it goes up. Casting low level spells gets low level experience in the art. You aren't a master because you can cast seven spells better than anyone else, you're a master when you know more than anyone else in the field.

That's my opinion, anyways.

But today was the day. Saturday - after the first week of classes. My study group was meeting up and I had piles of notes on the history of Magical Britain for them, basically everything I could think you might need to know from the first year stuff. I'd get the second year Syllabus from them today, hopefully, and go through that.

I excitedly bounced in my chair in the library, scratching out notes with vigor as I thought about it. The boys should be here any minute now. And Alicia, with her friend Angelina, maybe. Hopefully.

A familiar head poked into my alcove - "Cedric!" I greeted happily but still quiet enough not to get shushed. "How have you been?" I asked as he got into his spot, taking the one right across from me.