After the new students gradually became familiar with the unpredictable staircases in the castle, Vid's life at Hogwarts took on a certain routine.
The schedule for first-year students was quite relaxed, with as few as one class a day and never more than three, leaving the rest of the time for students to manage themselves. Upon seeing such a timetable, Vid was quite skeptical—why were so many students constantly complaining about professors assigning too much homework, when they couldn't even complete a mere few inches of essay on time?
When Vid was under ten years old in his past life, his essays had to be at least three hundred words, and that was in Chinese, known as the "language compression package." If converted to English, he could easily expand to a thousand words. After the systematic refinement of high school, university, and postgraduate studies, he could churn out ten thousand words in two days without much difficulty.
After studying with Michael, Hermione, and others for some time, Vid finally understood the reason.
Among the few first-year students, apart from Vid, Hermione completed assignments the most effortlessly—for starters, she did not make basic grammatical mistakes and rarely struggled with spelling, quickly extracting key points from the texts and relaying them clearly.
The above mentioned skills were difficult for the other three to achieve, even for Michael of Ravenclaw.
Because they all came from wizarding families.
Wizards and ordinary people's lives are almost entirely isolated—even if one spouse is from a Muggle background. Most wizarding families live in seclusion, not only refraining from proactively interacting with Muggles but also casting "Muggle-Repelling Charms" around their residence to prevent Muggles from accidentally intruding on their lives. Because of this, wizards don't understand Muggle attire, are unaware of Muggle technological developments, and certainly wouldn't consider sending their underage children to Muggle schools to study. In their eyes, that would be akin to humans sending their children to be taught by monkeys living in trees.
The United Kingdom has only one Magic School, Hogwarts; "Magic Elementary School" and "Magic University" do not exist. In the wizarding world, children under eleven mainly receive homeschooling—parents, if available, would teach their children to read, write, and do simple arithmetic; while irresponsible parents might leave their children unable to spell "Quill."
Michael and the others started receiving parental education from about five or six years old, so at least with reading and writing, there's no large issue, but being able to read and write is not the same as having learning abilities. Wizarding family education lacks many elements compared to systematic Muggle school education. For example, wizard parents do not deliberately cultivate logical reasoning or summarizing abilities when teaching their children to read—Vid suspects many wizards might not even be aware of these concepts, as they've always disregarded Muggle theories.
Also, young wizards, including Hermione, generally lack the ability to quickly extract and comprehend key points from articles. For instance, young wizards can, at most, comprehend "Object A and B are at the same temperature, B and C are at the same temperature, therefore A and C are also the same temperature"; but their reference books state, "If each of two thermodynamic systems is in thermal equilibrium with a third, they must also be in equilibrium with each other. That is: if it can be assured that they will not change their physical properties even when capable of exchanging heat, even if it's not allowed to exchange heat, they can be assured to be in states of mutual equilibrium."
Young wizards: ...?
A stream of letters smoothly slid through the brain, leaving no trace behind.
Hermione relied on her powerful memory to memorize all content verbatim first, then gradually understood by comparing different materials; whereas most young wizards could only take confused notes they couldn't understand themselves, scratching their heads and cobbling together an assignment to submit, hoping the professor would grant them an A (Pass).
Not to mention, eleven-year-old kids boarding away from home, and the college professors are not strictly regulating—even reputedly strict Professor McGonagall or Professor Snape wouldn't care if young wizards were indulging in sleep or playing games in the common room when they had no classes. This relaxed environment is a huge test of minors' self-discipline; it's natural to laze and play, but learning isn't, learning is interesting to only very few.
Like Hermione.
Like Vid.
In just half a month, they stood out among first-year students. The difference is, Hermione is strict with herself and others, and resolutely refuses any behavior like copying homework or violating school rules; whereas Vid never minds if others copy his homework, and when burying himself in practice rooms to study hard and repeatedly practice spells, he never forces others to work hard alongside him.
Vid actually understands perfectly the laziness of kids in their teens towards study; he himself was once like that in his past life. In this life, he works harder than anyone else, not because he loves studying, but because he loves magic—for him, magic isn't an innate, taken-for-granted ability, so he cherishes this opportunity more than anyone else in school.
Once again practicing until near curfew time, Vid hurried back to Ravenclaw Tower. At this hour, the corridors outside were all quiet, as if everyone was asleep. But upon entering the common room, it seemed it was still too early.
Hogwarts had a curfew but no lights out time; if students wanted, they could stay up all night in the brightly lit common room. At that moment, Ravenclaw's common room had many students from different grades—there were couples in love whispering sweet nothings on the sofa in the corner, boring young wizards playing Wizard's Chess at the round tea table, and senior students swiftly rushing through their homework.
Although there were lots of people, it wasn't noisy; Ravenclaws lowered their voices consciously while conversing.
The sofa in front of the fireplace gathered seven or eight people, and occasionally bursts of girlish giggles could be heard. Vid glanced over casually, found a secluded corner to sit down, and read while taking notes.
Noticing this, Michael, in the crowd, said a few smiling words to a girl nearby before walking over to sit beside Vid.
"Studying late again?" Michael leaned against the table, saying, "Vid, we've been here less than a month, and you're close to finishing all the first-year courses. What's left to do? Honestly, you're working a bit too hard, you should relax sometimes. Vid, buddy, do you know how many girls want to meet you?"
He raised his eyebrows towards the fireplace, causing another wave of gentle laughter among the girls.
Vid stopped the Quill, gazed calmly at Michael with his gray eyes, and asked, "I don't know. But Michael—do you know how long we can stay at Hogwarts?"