During dinner, Hector made up his mind and asked Aberforth, who was sitting across from him, "Grandpa, could you teach me some spells?"
Aberforth kept his head down, eating his meal, and mumbled vaguely, "You're too young. You'd better wait until you go to Hogwarts to learn spells."
Hearing no sound from across the table, Aberforth raised his head and locked eyes with Hector’s (feigned) pitiful look. He had zero resistance to that kind of expression and quickly compromised.
"All right, Hector, I can teach you some, well, rather basic ones, but on one condition: it has to be under my supervision," Aberforth said very seriously. "There's no room for negotiation on this, understand?"
Hector nodded. He hadn't intended to figure things out on his own anyway; the efficiency of that was simply too low. Besides, Aberforth's abilities were quite decent, and having him teach was much better than learning by himself.
Time was tight, the task was heavy, and having a guide along the magical path was a very good thing.
"Don't rush, though. I need to prepare." Aberforth set down his spoon and scratched his head.
Two days later, Aberforth woke up early and said cheerfully to Hector, who was coming down the stairs rubbing his eyes, "Hector, hurry up and eat."
Seeing Hector's puzzled look, Aberforth quickly answered him. "What? Weren't you the one who wanted to learn some spells?"
Aberforth walked out from behind the bar and pointed toward the storage room. "Eat up quickly, I'll be waiting for you in there."
Hector snapped awake instantly. He bolted down his serving of piping-hot vegetable porridge, hurried upstairs to grab the *The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1* he had prepared long ago, and dashed back downstairs into the storage room.
A large space had been cleared out in the storage room. Where various ingredients used to be piled high, there was now a table, a small blackboard of unknown origin, and a chair. Some bizarre equipment stood in the corner as well.
Aberforth was sitting on a bench. Hearing Hector enter, he stood up. A single feather lay on the table.
Seeing the first-year *The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1* in Hector's hands, Aberforth smiled and said, "Pick up your wand. We don't need that book."
Hector obediently put the book down and drew his wand from his robe pocket.
"Good. The first spell is the Levitation Charm, a very simple and useful spell. Listen carefully to my pronunciation: *Wingardium Leviosa*. Pay attention to the pronunciation: it's *Wingardium Leviosa*. If you pronounce the 'f' as an 's'—"
Aberforth gave his wand a flick, and a raging bull roared out from the tip of his wand.
"—that's what happens. You must be careful and cautious. Understand, Hector?"
Hector nodded, looking a bit nervous. He had no confidence either; who knew if the system had actually tampered with his talent or not.
"Don't be nervous. This spell is very simple; it's mainly a test of your patience."
Aberforth was confident that this spell would give Hector a hard time for a while. After all, it had taken him some effort to master it back then. He sat down comfortably in his chair, conjuring a cup of strong tea for himself so he could have a good rest.
Teaching students was really no simple matter, and getting things ready took up so much time. Aberforth rubbed his slightly sore lower back and prepared to take a well-deserved break.
"*Wingardium Leviosa*."
Then he watched as Hector made the feather float on his very first attempt. During the first few tries, Hector still had to speak the incantation aloud, but soon, with just a flick of Hector's wand, the feather danced freely through the air at the command of his wand.
Aberforth was, quite reasonably, shocked out of his wits.
"Merlin's beard! Is this a non-verbal spell? How did you learn that?"
Inside, Hector was also thrilled, though he naturally didn't plan on letting Aberforth see it.
He decided to flex just a little bit, and the crucial part was that Hector actually pulled off the flex successfully.
"I don't know, Grandpa. It's just... really simple," Hector said, putting on an innocent look. "The incantation is too long and complicated, and I was afraid of making a mistake, so..." Hector shrugged, delivering a masterclass in humblebragging that left Aberforth utterly speechless.
"Can we learn the next one?" Hector could now easily cast the Levitation Charm on surrounding objects, basically reaching a state where whatever he pointed at took flight.
Aberforth yanked down a table that showed signs of floating higher and higher. He hadn't expected things to be taught this quickly. Subconsciously, Aberforth went looking for flaws to pick, but he realized he couldn't find a single tiny problem. He had no choice but to agree to Hector's request.
"Fine then, Hector. We'll learn the Repairing Charm. It's a very useful spell..."
Until nightfall, Hector and Aberforth stayed inside the storage room. Even lunch had to be brought in by Aberforth, with Hector eating while reading the explanations in the spellbook.
Aberforth didn't eat much himself. Having witnessed Hector speedrun an entire copy of *The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1* right before his eyes, Aberforth was genuinely too shocked to have any appetite.
Aberforth simply couldn't believe his eyes. He swore that if anyone told him someone could learn an entire academic year's worth of material in a single day, he would never believe it and would spit furiously at that person. He carefully tested Hector's learning progress and ultimately discovered that Hector hadn't merely mastered all the spells in the entire book.
He had managed to learn every single spell to the point where he could cast them as non-verbal spells.
Through the entire learning process, Aberforth confirmed that his grandson was a genius, and Hector confirmed that the "Spell Mastery" talent was truly overpowered.
As for his own glowing ultimate move, Hector had tried to explore it as well, but it didn't trigger successfully. It was probably just a little easter egg given by the system, though Hector's *Lumos* was indeed blindingly bright.
With the guidance of the spell, the first attempt had shocked Aberforth—who had been completely unprepared—so thoroughly that he fell backward onto the floor in a rather ungraceful manner.
Moreover, covering it up, Hector discovered a serious problem: Hector had no way to actively stop the spell. Hector tried putting down his wand, but he found that the wand seemed glued to his hand. This spell would only stop, seemingly unsatisfied, once Hector's magic power was completely drained.
In the end, it was Albus Dumbledore who noticed something was amiss. He hurried over and interrupted Hector's casting with an extremely forceful method.
Finding that the Disarming Charm had no effect, Albus also tried to pull the wand from Hector's hand, but Hector was gripping it far too tightly. Aberforth, who had collapsed onto the ground with his eyes shut and was blindly groping around in the void, was clearly not going to be of any help, so Albus Dumbledore wound up and kicked him out of the way.
Albus swore he was aiming for the wrist; as for hitting any other part, it was truly an accident—people really had to cut a hundred-year-old man some slack.
Although Aberforth felt deeply disgusted by Albus's appearance, he had to admit that his older brother was indeed much better at educating people than he was at cramming at the last minute.
From then on, Albus took over Hector's foundational education, and Aberforth tacitly accepted Albus's presence in the Hog's Head.
Albus felt that this arrangement was wonderful; Hector's appearance truly eased the relationship between the brothers. Naturally, he soon became even more astonished by Hector's glaringly obvious talent.
Which child learns a whole book in a day and, with just a tiny bit of practice, directly masters non-verbal spells without a teacher? Albus declared that he didn't have that kind of ability back when he was a boy.
Aside from this *Lumos* spell being truly bizarre—and any spell carrying luminescent properties cast by Hector having an alarmingly huge momentum—everything else was smooth.
Hector was also quite satisfied. Honestly speaking, Aberforth's teaching quality simply couldn't compare to Albus's. He had always coveted Old Dumbledore's stylish trick of *Fiendfyre* or whatever flame-path creation it was, and had dropped hints about it, but that old honeybee always played dumb. Hector could do nothing about it; he couldn't just demand it outright, or he might not even get to learn the basics.
As for his own talent, Hector felt that the Dumbledore Bloodline, rated as a purple talent, was definitely top-tier among purple traits. It was simply too useful to have. As for the system, it had never appeared again ever since the gacha draw, but Hector didn't care. These three traits were already enough for him to use. With such great talents, Hector wasn't going to ask for a bicycle.
Over the next few months, Albus truly had his eyes opened. He had originally thought that as the difficulty increased, Hector—being so young—surely wouldn't be able to keep pushing his learning progress at this pace and would probably have to stop soon.
Indeed, Hector's learning speed slowed down somewhat, but it still exceeded Albus's expectations.
Even though he tried his utmost to slow down the pace of instruction, Hector forced him to keep teaching with his nearly flawless performances time and time again.
Often, by the end of the day, Albus would pull out all sorts of tricks to raise the difficulty and then pick out every tiny flaw he could find during the examinations. Even so, Albus's meticulously arranged lessons were completed ahead of schedule every single day.
Albus even pulled out O.W.L.S exam papers to properly stump Hector, but he discovered that in the realm of charms, this really couldn't stump Hector at all.
Having a student who was too smart was also a headache.
Albus looked at the theory scores that were undeniably "Outstanding" and the wand-work proficiency that even made Albus himself have to admire him. He couldn't help but sigh: Was this child really only ten years old?
If the magical world didn't reject concepts like reincarnation and body-snatching, Hector would have long since been hogtied by Albus and interrogated with hot sauce and tiny whips.
This learning progress wasn't just "talented"—it had reached the point where it couldn't be explained without someone cheating.
Albus did not plan to teach him any deeper concepts. Some things, Albus believed, required sedimentation and long-term practice to truly master. That took time, and teaching him too early wouldn't be conducive to the formation of Hector's own style. He shared his thoughts with Aberforth, and Aberforth strongly agreed.
Soon afterward, Hector noticed that Albus's teaching quality experienced a cliff-like drop. At first, he thought the old honeybee was deliberately trying to make him slow down his learning pace, and he even went to Aberforth to snitch a few times. When he found out that Aberforth stood firmly on Albus's side, Hector realized things had gone wrong.
Without making a sound, this old honeybee had raided his home. Seeing that both of them were resolute, apart from feeling a bit angry, Hector didn't persist and instead turned his focus to Transfiguration.
Albus was delighted to hear that Hector was preparing to study Transfiguration. He taught very earnestly while preparing himself for Hector to rapidly steamroll through this subject as well.
Fortunately, however, Hector didn't breeze through Transfiguration the way he had with charms. Seeing Hector run into roadblocks in Transfiguration, Albus felt somewhat relieved, though he also harbored a tiny bit of regret—compared to his charm talent, Albus still wished Hector's talent points had been placed in Transfiguration.
After all, that was his own signature skill, and Albus was quite confident in his own talent for Transfiguration charms.
Only at times like this did Albus feel that he was a relatively normal ten-year-old child.
(Albus: "Hacking?" Hector: "Not turning it off.")
Looking at Hector's progress in learning spells, Albus simply couldn't imagine this was something a ten-year-old child could pull off.
Having lived for so many years, he had truly never seen anyone learn spells like this.