Ch 20 Butterfly Effect? Part 1

Instead of going to his usual training spot near the river, Ron with his broom on his shoulder, skipped out of the front yard and jogged down the village road towards a large orchard fifteen minutes away from his home.

Ron didn't know if this Orchard belonged to someone and had been abandoned for years or if it was a natural one.

All he knew was that there were hundreds of different varieties of trees growing in it uniformly distributed with a big empty space in the middle.

That empty space was where the younger members of the Weasley family, who liked quidditch more than anything, had been regularly going to fly on their brooms, and for the impromptu matches they held when enough of them were at home during the holidays.

The empty space in the centre had perfect shade from lush trees to hide their flying activities from any prying eyes and there were even makeshift goalposts made of wood on both ends of the pitch, making it a perfect spot for Ron to practise.

But when Ron cleared the trees and finally reached the spot, he found out to his surprise that he wasn't the only one in the family who was in the mood to fly his broom today.

Dashing from one end of the field to the other with a quaffle in her hand while weaving naturally between invisible enemy players was his little sister wearing her Gryffindor quidditch robes.

"Oho, she's quite good!" Ron murmured with an impressed look on his face as he saw her diligently go through her chaser drills again and again...

While he knew that the girl was a talented flyer, Ron was still a little awed by seeing her score perfect goals one after another all while controlling her broom as if it was part of her body.

It was honestly quite amazing...

After observing her for a few minutes, Ron shook his head and turned away from her as he decided not to bother her while she was so concentrated.

He went some distance away to a smaller empty space towards the side of the ground, to begin with his own practice.

'Now, let's see if I got rusty,'

Placing his right leg over the broom, Ron took a deep breath and then slowly but surely he supplied his magic into the broom as it gradually began lifting off from the ground.

There was no hint of hesitation or fear on his face as his legs left the ground and the broom took him into the sky.

Ron had been doing this for years before the merger... and the merger only added to him without subtracting anything.

So having deep memories of both Ron and Sam meant that the current him could do whatever either of the previous ones could do before the merger, which meant that there was no learning curve for him, as flying to Ron was as familiar as riding a bicycle was to Sam.

But what there was... was a sense of excitement and fascination that came from the Sam part of him who was flying for the first time, and safe to say it was quite... exhilarating.

"WoHoo!!"

Ron screamed as he abruptly sped up and began zooming around the field in wild circles with the air screaming around him.

His eyes were wide open as his surroundings blurred past him...

The height, the speed, the control... all of it was such a high that Ron couldn't keep his emotions under control, his face was aching because of how wide he was grinning, and he didn't want to stop... he was having the absolute time of his life.

Unlike Ginny who was flying down inside the quidditch field, Ron was flying up high just below the absurdly tall trees, circling in a large ring above her.

And with every passing second Ron was slowly increasing his speed until finally he was at the fastest speed that this circuit would allow...

But even that wasn't enough for him and he wanted to go even faster, to push the very limits of his broom, and he knew that just going around in circles wouldn't let him do that... it was too restrictive.

So raising his head, Ron took a fleeting look towards the wide infinite sky up above and after a very brief moment of hesitation, he said, "Fuck it!" and immediately tilted his broom straight up and went roaring towards the blue sea above his head.

He went up... and up... and up...

Only when his broom began shaking and it became a little hard for him to breathe did he finally slow down and gradually come to a stop mid-air, and when Ron finally took a look around... he saw that he was in heaven.

His puny brain was telling him that he should be terrified at how high he was at the moment...

That a single moment of inattention could lead him to his death, of how the only thing between him and a drop of hundreds of meters was just a very thin piece of wood... but the only thing Ron could think of at that moment... was how beautiful the view up here was.

Ron couldn't even begin to describe how mesmerising it was...

With the bright orange-red sun slowly sinking down on the horizon into the strikingly white sea of clouds, and with no one up here for miles and miles except for him... Ron didn't think he could even get enough of this view.

He didn't know how long he stayed there enchanted by the stunning sight, when Ron was suddenly pulled out of his thoughts by a loud shout coming from below him.

"RON!! Have you gone mad!"

Startled, Ron looked down only to see his sister flying up towards him while hugging her broom with an annoyed look on her face.

"Don't you remember that we aren't supposed to fly up this high? What if someone saw us?" she shouted angrily as she came to a stop beside him, "Mum would take both of our brooms if she knew about it, you idiot!

"Humph! And how would she even find out about it?" Ron retorted back with a snort, "Only you know about it and you are not going tell her, are you?"

"And why won't I?" she asked with a raised eyebrow, "Why should I keep your secret? What is in it for me?" she said with an evil smirk on her face as if asking him to offer her some tribute if he wanted her to keep her silence.

"Because I am not the only one up here... you here too," Ron replied, pointing at her with an equally sly smile on his face.

"W-What?!" Ginny sputtered before an indignant look appeared on her face, "But that is only because I came here to warn you!"

"Hmm, I don't think Mum would care about that," Ron said with an unrepentant shrug.

"YOU!!"

"Now, come on! We should go down before anyone sees us!" Ron scolded her as if it was all her fault before he smirked, turned his broom upside down, and began falling towards the ground at his highest speed.

"Argh!! You Idiot!!" Ginny's indignant screams only emerged in Ron's ears for a single moment before the screeching wind washed them away.

Ron whooped in delight as he burst out of the clouds with his body tightly pressed against the broom.

He couldn't even fathom how anyone could ever get tired of flying...

As he flew faster and faster with the ground approaching closer and closer, Ron's bodily instincts automatically began ringing alarms in his head that he needed to slow down if he didn't want to become a puddle of blood on the ground...

But his mind, on the other hand, didn't agree with that sentiment... it told him that there was no need to worry, that there was still plenty of time.

Ron decided to follow his mind.

And so the ground came closer and closer, with his broom diving faster and faster, until...

Abruptly, it was as if a switch was turned on and everything suddenly became a little slower and clearer...

It was as if he was watching a video that had now been turned to 0.75x...

It wasn't a lot by any means, maybe just ten to twenty per cent slower, but in the grand scheme of things it meant a lot... because it gave his brain a few precious microseconds more to process everything, and when it came to the speed at which neurons move in a human body.. even a tiny increase mattered a lot.

This sudden heightened perception of his surroundings meant that Ron was able to smoothly pull up his broom at barely a few meters from the ground without slowing his broom even a little.

It was the closest thing to a Wonksi feint Ron had ever pulled in his life and it was sending jolts after jolts of adrenaline throughout his body, making him feel as if his heart was beating at a thousand beats per second.

"Woohoo!!"

He was laughing so loudly that any watching him would have declared him crazy but Ron was so thrilled that he just couldn't stop.

It took him two full-speed circles around the ground before his excitement finally came under control and he slowed his broom to a cruising speed.

Now that he was finally in his right mind, Ron only had a single question in his mind: 'How? What was that slow down?'

The clarity and increased reflexes he had gained during his dive were just too sudden and unnatural to be hallucinations...

And so he did what he had been doing ever since he got the Mage system, whenever he came across inexplicable stuff... Ron went to his status to find the answers.

[Status]

Name: Ronald Weasley (Sam)

Level: 16 (35/340)

MP: 270/270

Physique [Max.]: 6.7 + 0.3 (Pending) [11]

Dexterity [Max.]: 5 [10]

Spirit [Max.]: 9 [16]

Perception [Max.]: 4.1 + 0.9 (Pending) [11]

Stat Points: 0

Skill Points: 1

[Skills]

Transfiguration Lv5, Charms Lv5, Herbology Lv5, Potions Lv5, DADA Lv5, Astronomy Lv4, Flying Lv6, Dueling Lv6, Observe Lv1, Reader Lv1...

"So it was because of increased perception," Ron mumbled as he suddenly got an enlightened look on his face, 'I guess that makes sense...'

It seems that the perceptions did exactly what its name had implied...

It slowed down his perception of his surroundings, so that he could see better and have more time to process information, it was somewhat like that infamous Bullet Time skill repeatedly used in all those web novels he had read...

Only it wasn't a skill here but a stat...

Which was even better for him, as it meant he didn't even need to spend any mana but it was still constantly switched on...

Even now Ron could feel that he could easily control and slow down his perception if he just focused his mind, and while it wasn't much at the moment, he knew that in the future when he increased the stat by a few points, it would give him a massive boost in any kind of combat...

And what was even better was that he now knew that quidditch was a perfect way to train this stat, so all in all, it was a very productive trip to the clouds...

"Did you just pull a Wronski feint?" Ginny asked, her eyes wide in amazement as she pulled up her broom beside him, "I didn't know you could do that?"

"Neither did I..." Ron replied with an amused snort.

"What?!" Ginny screamed as she abruptly pulled the breaks on her broom, "Y-You pulled something so dangerous for the first time with no one around to watch you?! Are you insane?!!" she bellowed with a furious expression on her face, "What if something had happened? One mistake and you could have easily broken your neck... were you actually trying to get killed?"

"I-It wasn't that dangerous. I had it all under control," Ron hurriedly replied trying to calm his sister, "I was very careful and besides I didn't get that close to the ground before letting go... Harry always pulls up way closer and almost touches the grass before he pulls up and he never got hurt,"

"That's because he's Harry Potter, you idiot," Ginny snapped while swiping her palm towards the back of his head.

"Fine! Fine! I am sorry, alright!" Ron immediately apologised while dodging her slap, "Now come on, let's have a friendly, Keeper vs Chaser match," he immediately changed the subject to distract her before taking off towards the goal post on the other side of the ground, "I want to see if you have gotten any better at being a chaser,"

"Ugh! Fine!" she groaned before going down to pick up the quaffle with a challenging gleam in her eyes, 'I'll show you how good I've gotten,'