Ch 20 Butterfly Effect? Part 2

And the result of the match was... an overwhelming win for Ron.

"Haha!! Too slow," Ron laughed heartily as he zoomed past the goalpost while smoothly slamming the fast-spinning quaffle off its course. 

With there being only two of them, there weren't many variations of the game that they could play while being competitive, so they went for the simplest contest.

Ginny would set off from the middle of the field with a quaffle in her hands while simultaneously Ron would take off from a distance half as far to the right of the goalpost that he was supposed to guard.

Ginny's objective would be to score the goal as quickly and from as far away as she could while Ron's would obviously be to save the goal.

And so far the score of their impromptu game was 35-15 in Ron's favour...

"Ugh! Since when did you get so good?" Ginny said breathing a bit heavily as she once again flew towards the ground to get back the quaffle as it was the loser's job to get the ball.

It had been almost 45 minutes since they had started the game and she had been flying continuously all this while so it wasn't a surprise that she was getting tired... after all, quidditch was a very physically intensive game.

But the thing that ticked off Ginny the most was that unlike her, her brother didn't look winded at all.

He had this relaxed look on his face as if he hadn't even gotten warmed up, which was just infuriating, 'And somehow the idiot is still getting better, Ugh!'

'It seems the points in the physique are paying off,' Ron thought with a satisfied look on his face.

Not only had the points in physique improved his stamina by such a margin that he could now easily handle flying for longer sessions, but they also had a significant impact on his overall balance and broom-handling abilities, making him an overall better flyer and keeper.

And that was all without mentioning that he had gotten another 0.2 increments in his perception during this short but intense training session.

This meant that as the game went on, he was actually getting better at defending... which kind of explained why Ginny was getting so irritated...

"I was always this good. I just didn't show it," Ron replied with such an arrogant look on his face, that it made Ginny want to punch him... repeatedly, "Now, if my math is correct then that was the 35th goal that I blocked... which means that I won, right,"

"Ugh! That doesn't count! We need to see the best of 100, to see who's the winner," she said with an scowl on her face, as she came back with the quaffle tightly held in her hands.

"Didn't you say the same thing when I won 13 out of 20, and then again at 20 out of 30 and then 28 out of 40 and now..." Ron reminded her with a teasing look on his face before he shook his head with disappointment, "Tsk! Tsk! I didn't know you were such a sore loser, Ginny,"

"Shut up!! I only lost because you just need to defend one goal," Ginny retorted frustratedly.

She was indeed correct in that the game was completely in Ron's favour from the very start...

Because normally there would be three chasers going for three goals, instead of just one going against a keeper guarding just one goal and not only that had his new broom that was a lot better than Ginny's.

And it only goes to show how good Ginny is that even with these disadvantages she was able to score so many goals, but Ron wasn't about to admit that...

"Excuses, Excuses," Ron said shaking his head with an exaggerated snobby look.

"Ugh!! Just shut up and defend!!" Ginny groaned while tossing the quaffle at Ron's face.

"No, can't do," Ron said, easily catching the quaffle with just his fingers, "I need to go. It's time for my other training,"

"Training? What kind of training?" Ginny asked with a confused tilt of her head.

"The secret kind," Ron replied with a mysterious smile on his face before he threw the quaffle back and took off towards the ground, "Bye, bye, loser,"

"Argh!!"

The frustrated roar of his sister was like music to his ears as Ron got down from his broom and left the orchard with a satisfied expression on his face.

...

After carefully placing his broom inside the shed, Ron took off running into the forest and less than ten minutes later, he reached his training spot beside the river.

Since flying was also considered half a workout in Wizarding World, Ron didn't feel the need to go for his usual training session of an hour and a half as that would leave him too tired for his magical training.

Instead, he opted for a shorter but intense one focusing on compound movements and cardio... but it still took him almost 45 minutes before he was completely satisfied with the amount of fatigue he was feeling from all the muscles in his body.

After a short ten-minute break Ron stood up and slowly jogged towards that sweet spot between the trees where he could peacefully work on his magical practice without anyone bothering him.

Reaching the marked trees, Ron took out his wand and immediately began his practice, starting once again with the 'Wingardium Leviosa' spell...

Big and small rocks began flying all over the place as Ron waved his wand like an orchestra baton.

Not a single word left his mouth as he manipulated the flying objects with just pure will and magic.

About thirty minutes later, the concentrated expression on Ron's face finally broke as the massive rock flying a few meters high in front of him fell to the ground.

'It's not increasing as fast as before,' Ron frowned as he looked towards the proficiency percentage next to the Levitation skill.

Wingardium Leviosa Lv 7 (14%)

Unlike before when he could see a few percentage increases in his proficiency every minute, the improvement had slowed down drastically after reaching Level 7 and now barely gave him three points for every ten minutes of intense practice.

But his practice was still worth it in the end because when his proficiency hit 10%, Ron found out to his delight that he could now levitate three objects instead of just two... and if it went on like this he could eventually control dozens of high-speed objects at the same time...

Ron could scarcely imagine how powerful that would be...

So he decided that this would be one of those spells that he would practise daily, even if only for half an hour.

This spell could definitely become one of the strongest ones in his arsenal in the future.

But even if it was a good spell, Ron couldn't just focus only on it and ignore the rest...

So after a short rest to recover his magic power, Ron began trying out all the first Charms and Transfigurations that he had read in the first-year books over the past few days.

Most of them he had already learned during his classes and were already at levels 4 or 5 but there were the occasional few that the teachers didn't have the time to teach during the classes so they left them as voluntary homework for hardworking students to try on their own... which obviously meant that Ron never worked on any of them, so now he had to get them up from Level 1.

But it wasn't so bad as it only took Ron a dozen successful casts to get these lower-year spells from Level 1 to Level 3, and after that, it was just pure labour of repeatedly casting them until the spell became smoother, faster and instinctive for him, which is also the hallmark of reaching Level 5.

He was skipping the DADA spells at the moment because most of the important ones among them had already been covered under Harry's tutelage in the DA classes at Hogwarts, so he felt that it was better for him to first shore up his weakness, get all his main classes at a similar base before he went for the higher levels.

But one thing he noted after a while was that the Charms spells were almost always a bit easier to level up than their Transfiguration counterparts from the same year.

He could think of a few reasons for that...

First of all, every single charm spell was related to a specific task meaning that a charm spell would only do the exact task that it was made to do and nothing else... no matter how similar it may seem.

For example, the levitation charm was a charm to levitate objects which meant that no matter how much magic you supplied, it could never be used to levitate a living human or an animal, you would need a different spell for that.

But Transfiguration was different, as in this branch of magic there were very few specific spells that only did a few things.

Instead, it only gave you a non-specific general-purpose spell and then you had to remember all kinds of theories and formulas that applied to your present situation before you were able to cast the spell you wanted to cast...

For example, most of the first-year Transfiguration class was about changing the properties of small objects from one material to another such as turning a matchstick into a needle, which was also the first spell that they learned.

But the incantation for that spell would be the same regardless of whether the match was made of wood, lead or even iron.

The only thing you need to remember is to keep a very precise image in your mind while waving your wand along the exact path required for the situation, that you could derive using the formulae taught during class.

This just goes to show, how many things one needs to keep in mind while doing something as simple as changing a matchstick into a needle.

On the other hand in charms you just had to have a clear incantation and a firm will to get a good result...

No matter how hard it was, Ron had decided that he would get all of his basic spells to at least 5 before moving to the next spells on his list.

And while one might wonder if he would ever need to change a needle to a matchstick later in his life, that would be wrong thinking, because from what he had read in the first-year Transfiguration book, it was essential for him to get these basic spells right, if he didn't want problems later on...

These spells are the ones that would lay a foundation for him to learn their higher-end version during the higher years, and if the foundation was not sturdy enough then he may not even be able to learn them later on.

They functioned very much like those spell chains in the games, where you had to first level up the lower-end spells to unlock the higher spectrum of the spell tree.

This meant that practising turning a small piece of wood into iron could lead him down the path where he would able to transform pieces of rubble into a deadly rain of steel spears to shower down on his enemies.

'But that's all for later... for now, less daydreaming, and more practice,'

...

..

.

By the time Ron was done with his magical training for the day, the sun had almost completely disappeared on the horizon...

Training that day had been very fruitful, as he was now almost halfway through with his goal of getting all the charms and transfiguration spells of the first year to Level 5, which meant that it would only take him one more day before he was done and he could move on to the next year.

But he had gotten a bit overenthusiastic with his training and pushed himself a little too hard so by the time he reached the front door of his home, Ron was completely exhausted both physically and mentally, and wanted nothing more than to hearty meal and then go to his room to sleep immediately.

But when he entered his house, the scene that he saw in the kitchen was so shocking that food became the last thing on his mind...

His father, Arthur was sitting at their dining table, covered head to toe in bandages that were almost completely red from how fiercely the wounds under them were bleeding.

He had a pained look on his face and was at the moment surrounded by Molly, Ginny and the twins, each of them with pale worried expressions on their faces. 

'What happened? What changed?'

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