End of the Second Semester

Chapter 20: End of the First Semester

The advent of the psychic booster directly opened the door for Avada to explore psychic powers.

On the first weekend after school started, he spent the morning in the library, finishing all his weekend homework in one go. After attending his first Hufflepuff picnic on Saturday noon, he locked himself in the Room of Requirement.

After taking the psychic booster, the effects of the drug and Avada's own abilities created a massive chain reaction: the psychic booster allowed him to observe the process of his mental structure being optimized, and the enhanced mental strength allowed him to easily remember every detail. Furthermore, the speed of his thinking and the frequency of inspiration were greatly enhanced, making his understanding of mental strength advance by leaps and bounds as if he were on a rocket!

Moreover, the research on the crown was greatly accelerated under the influence of the intelligence enhancer, and made new progress. Thus, with the help of the intelligence enhancer, the crown, and Avada's own mental energy as triple samples, he developed a preliminary talent optimization plan in just two weeks, and even set aside an entire day to modify his mental energy.

However, an unexpected event occurred during the implementation process: when he began to fully analyze his mental power, he was astonished to discover that there was actually a magical structure hidden in his mental power, the purpose of which was unknown.

It was exceptionally strong and tightly connected to his mental energy, as if it were something he was born with. At the same time, its presence constantly pressured Avada's mental activity, essentially reducing his intelligence—meaning Avada's talents should have been better than they are now, but this inexplicable magic had forcibly diminished his intelligence!

What angered Avada even more was that after a long period of research, he finally confirmed the identity of this magic: it was the ineffective "name curse"!

Upon confirming this, he almost sent a shouting letter directly to the Department of Mysteries.

This thing caused him to suffer from intellectual impairment for eleven years!

Voldemort's poor performance in terms of strategy in the later stages might be partly due to this curse!

Fortunately, with the help of his previous research, he finally managed to "sever" the curse. The moment the curse completely dissipated, Avada felt a roar in his head, and his mental power surged as if boiling, giving him a significant boost in thinking speed and memory.

In this way, his talent was upgraded from "ordinary person" to "relatively intelligent ordinary person".

After Avada implemented his talent optimization program and succeeded, he officially transformed from a "relatively intelligent ordinary person" into a genuine "intelligent person".

As for the inspiration for evolving from a "smart person" to a "genius," he has already obtained it through the crown.

But by this time, it was already after Halloween, in November. In other words, he had been studying with almost constant mental strain for two whole months, with virtually no rest during that time; even attending classes was a form of relaxation for him. So, after his talent had been improved, the physically and mentally exhausted Avada decided to take a good rest. Apart from self-studying advanced material and occasionally visiting the Room of Requirement to study the gadgets left behind by his predecessors, he wouldn't assign himself any other tasks.

After Avada Kedavra returned to normal school life with his improved talents, the most noticeable change was his rapid progress in potions. At the beginning of the school year, Snape mocked him for not being able to master all the knowledge from the first to the fourth year in his first year, but two months later he had already completely digested the second-year textbooks and was almost halfway through the third year.

Furthermore, Avada, determined to master potions, often braved the ridicule to seek Snape's advice, so these improvements naturally caught Snape's attention. Although his outward attitude remained unchanged—still a cold snort followed by sarcasm—Avada noticed that Snape's explanations seemed much more detailed and contained some of his own unique insights.

Needless to say, his own headmaster's herbalism class was also excellent—potions and herbs have always been inseparable, and since he started practicing in the greenhouse, his magical senses had also come in handy, which made Professor Sprout greatly admire Avada's progress.

What made Avada even more gratified was that the professors seemed to have stopped paying attention to his real name. Every time they called roll or asked him a question, they could call him "Mr. Ken" or "Ken" without batting an eye, instead of frowning and making a joking sound when their names were called, as they had done at the beginning.

His classmates were used to it—even those with excessive curiosity who tried to find out more, after learning that it was Headmaster Dumbledore who asked Avada to conceal his real name, they wisely stopped asking.

Gradually, even he himself almost forgot that his real name was "Avada Kedavra".

Besides his achievements in magical research, he also gradually became familiar and harmonious with his classmates. Baron, needless to say, even during the two months of his intensive research, they almost always went to the library together, either he was pulling Baron along or Baron was pulling him along.

Then there are Cedric and the Weasley twins, all three of whom successfully made it onto their school's Quidditch team this year. Cedric naturally invited Avada (and Cho) to the final selection. To Avada's surprise, Fred and George also remembered him and invited him to watch the Quidditch selection tournament in Gryffindor.

Their explanation was that they were very pleased with the title "Maggi the Mischievous," and therefore always remembered Avada Kedavra's "kindness." However, they all tacitly avoided the fact that Baron of Slytherin was the one who coined the title.

So, after accepting the invitation, Avada promptly dragged Baron along to attend the Gryffindor preliminary rounds. Baron also saw this as an opportunity to change his stereotype of Slytherin and ease the pointless feud between the two houses, so he readily agreed.

At first, the twins and the other Gryffindors were somewhat dissatisfied, but they couldn't vent their anger on a freshman who had just enrolled and knew nothing. However, when Baron showed a rather sincere and friendly attitude, their resentment subsided considerably.

And after Charlie Weasley led the Gryffindor team to victory in the school Quidditch tournament, this little grudge was completely forgotten.

Later, Avada heard that Baron had been dealt with by his Slytherin seniors because of this, but he himself didn't care much.

In addition, the mental magic inspired by the crown's connection module was finally completed. Its function is to remotely connect the mental energies of two people, allowing them to hear each other's thoughts directly in their minds—of course, this connection only extends to the surface of mental energy and does not pry into the thoughts of others like Legilimency, and it also requires the other party's consent to connect, essentially functioning as an in-game voice chat.

However, experiments have shown that this connection currently only works between humans, not animals, and the effective range is only a few tens of meters. As for house-elves, centaurs, and other non-human intelligent beings, Avada has not yet tested it.

Finally, the Christmas holidays arrived.

(End of this chapter)