"Dr… Dreyar?" Cedric still didn't dare to open his eyes.
"It's me. Congratulations on escaping the illusion!" Victor reached out and gently pried open one of Cedric's eyelids, smiling.
To be honest, Cedric's performance had exceeded Victor's expectations. Victor hadn't expected that Cedric would be able to clearly distinguish between illusion and reality so soon after entering the former. This showed that Cedric had a very clear awareness of himself and reality.
Furthermore, he was able to empty his mind within a short period, casting away his body's superficial perception and understanding of everything to achieve the goal of leaving the illusion.
"I really got out?!" Cedric slowly opened his eyes, still a bit doubtful, and looked around. He found that his surroundings were indeed the same as they were before he entered the illusion, and he finally let out a sigh of relief.
"Alright, don't think you can relax just because you succeeded this time. If I had set it up so that when you woke up in the illusion you saw me, would you still have realized you were in the illusion?" Victor asked with a raised eyebrow.
"That…" Cedric was stumped by the question. It was true that if he had jumped off the stairs and opened his eyes to see the scene in front of him, he would still be in the illusion.
"But no matter what, you passed!" Victor took out a copy of [The Basic Principles of Magic Circles and Rune Carving] and handed it over, saying, "Read this book thoroughly within three months! If you can't, then don't expect to be able to learn Skyscraper."
"Thank you!" Cedric took the book. Although he didn't know what the magic circles written in it were, he thought they might be some kind of runes. After all, a powerful spell like Skyscraper must have knowledge that was different from what he studied in his normal charms classes.
"Oh, that's right!" Cedric suddenly remembered something and asked with curiosity, "Dreyar, was that an Unbreakable Vow you cast on me when we shook hands?"
"You can just call me Victor from now on!" Victor replied, and then he finally answered Cedric's question. "You're right. It was an Unbreakable Vow."
"But isn't that charm only supposed to be cast by a third-party witness, but you…"
"I just modified it a bit. If you can learn Skyscraper, I can teach it to you, too!" Victor replied calmly. "What, do you want to learn it?"
"No, I was just curious," Cedric laughed awkwardly. "I have one more question. Why did you send me to that strange staircase first? Was there a deeper meaning behind it?"
"That's called the Penrose stairs," Victor corrected him. "The Penrose stairs are an infinitely looping staircase that is difficult to distinguish as going up or down with the naked eye. Since you have no experience in fighting illusions, the Penrose stairs were a hint for you."
"The infinite loop represents that if you don't find the right way out, you will be trapped in the illusion for the rest of your life. And the indistinguishable shape of the stairs was a reminder for you to discard what you see with your eyes and use your mind to find the way out of the illusion."
"I see…" Cedric realized. "Thank you so much, Dr… Victor!"
"It's fine. We'll be guildmates in the future, so too many thank yous would be overkill," Victor waved his hand generously. "And don't be too quick to thank me. You haven't even touched the threshold of learning Skyscraper yet! But compared to this girl, I think you're a bit more rational!" he said, patting the head of Hermione, who was still asleep next to him. Hermione frowned instinctively in her sleep.
Watching Cedric walk away with the book, Victor continued eating his lunch while thinking about how to establish the guild. Now, two people in Hogwarts, Hermione and Cedric, had started learning about magic circles.
To be honest, both of them had the potential to be a vice guild master. However, establishing a guild at Hogwarts was not the same as in Earth Land. In Earth Land, a Wizard Guild was essentially a mercenary organization where members completed requests from clients and earned commissions. But this model would never work at Hogwarts.
After all, there weren't that many jobs to choose from, and you couldn't expect students in the learning phase to go on missions like the Aurors.
For now, Victor didn't have a concrete idea of what kind of model the guild should adopt. He also needed to talk to Dumbledore about it. After all, he was the headmaster, and it was impossible to build a guild in Hogwarts without his permission.
And so, with time, over a week passed.
On this day, Victor had just left the library when he ran into Ivanna in the corridor. But why was she walking so fast?
"Victor, why are you still at the library? We're running out of time!" Ivanna said to Victor.
"Running out of time?" Victor had a question mark on his head. "What are we running out of time for?!"
"It's the first Quidditch match of the school year, don't you know that?" When she asked this, Ivanna's face was filled with excitement and disbelief. In her opinion, how could anyone forget the time of a Hogwarts Quidditch match?
"Oh, I remember!" After Ivanna's reminder, Victor remembered that the Hogwarts Quidditch matches usually started in early November.
"Let's go. If we're late, there won't be any seats left!" Ivanna said to Victor as she jogged. "It's Gryffindor vs. Slytherin today. I heard that Harry Potter has become the youngest Seeker at Hogwarts in a century, and so many people are going to watch!" With that, she ran like the wind toward the stadium.
Victor was surprised as he watched Ivanna's retreating figure. He hadn't expected that the normally strict prefect would be such a huge Quidditch fan. "Oh well, I guess I'll go watch! I've never actually seen a Quidditch match before!"
After a morning of reading, Victor also wanted to take a break. But before he went to the stadium, he had to make a Thought Projection!
Quidditch is an important team sport in the Harry Potter universe, played in the air by wizards and witches on flying brooms. The sport is very popular among wizards and witches.
According to Hagrid, Quidditch is as popular as football in the Muggle world, with fans ranging from young students to hundred-year-old elders.
The only way to win a Quidditch game is to score more points than the opposing team. A Quidditch pitch has three fifty-foot-high golden poles with hoops on top. Two teams of seven players on flying brooms fly against each other. Each team has three Chasers, two Beaters, one Keeper, and one Seeker.
Every time a team scores a goal by throwing the Quaffle through one of the hoops, they get ten points. The Seeker can get one hundred and fifty points by catching the Golden Snitch.
At the same time, a Quidditch match can only end when the Golden Snitch is caught or when both team captains agree to end the game. If the Snitch is not caught, the game can go on for many days. The longest Quidditch match on record is said to have lasted three months.
"Oh my, is this a Quidditch pitch?" Rick and Aliya looked in awe at the giant pitch, surrounded by high stands and the loud cheers and shouts of the crowd.
That's right, because Victor had been so fascinated by Quidditch, he used spatial magic to bring Rick to Hogwarts, along with Aliya, who was also at home.
The Hogwarts pitch was very large, surrounded by high stands with hundreds of chairs, allowing spectators to clearly see the game from above. On the surface, the Quidditch pitch looked no different from a regular football field, but it was more than double the size of one in the Muggle world. But this wasn't surprising, considering that Quidditch players fly on brooms while football players run on the ground.
Victor led Rick and Aliya to an empty spot in the stands and sat down. The other students were curious to see two people not wearing robes, but the announcer, Jordan from Gryffindor, let out a loud shout that immediately diverted the students' attention.
Jordan was holding a golden megaphone that looked like a microphone and shouted, "I'm your announcer, Jordan, and welcome to the first Quidditch match of the year at Hogwarts, Gryffindor versus Slytherin! The players are in!!!"
"Go Gryffindor…"
"Slytherin will win…"
In the stands, the Gryffindor and Slytherin students were cheering for their teams at the top of their lungs. Among them, Professor McGonagall in the Gryffindor stands was particularly excited.
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