Chapter 0066 Busy Summer
As expected, Ivan was busy all summer.
On his first day back he woke at four o’clock in the morning. The house elf hurried to Ivan’s home, like in the past at Hogwarts or Malfoy’s home he began to do the housework.
Mrs. Mason gets up early for work and to get breakfast ready. When she got up the trash was taken out, the floors, windows, furniture were all cleaned, even the lawn was trimmed neatly.
It was amazing, she hurriedly to Ivan’s room and asked him what was going on.
After figuring out what happened, Ivan had to tell his mother it was magic.
It took a while to convince here but at the end, she still didn’t fully believe him. She knew her son too well, she knew he wouldn’t just do the housework without anyone telling him to especially early in the morning.
Seeing his mother’s suspicious gaze made Ivan smile bitterly.
By the time she left his room, he called Dobby and told him not to do it again but it seems Dobby took it the wrong way.
Dobby’s two gigantic eyes looked pathetic. In the end, Ivan had to comfort Dobby.
Ivan is trying to persuade a house elf to cut down on his workload, he is just asking for failure.
Fortunately the work for the newspaper is a lot, otherwise, he wouldn’t know how to deal with a workaholic house elf.
Surprisingly, the newspaper didn’t sell less in summer than at school.
Even without pictures and Lockhart’s novels, the ‘Me and the Basilisk’ that Ivan wrote aroused great interest.
In addition to young wizards, many adult wizards subscribe to the newspaper. At first, they wanted to know about the chamber of secrets and the basilisk but then they were attracted to the rest of the paper which most people thought was interesting.
This is mainly due to nearly headless Nick and all of the ghosts help across the UK, they are the main source of news for the paper. Since they don’t sleep at night they can give Ivan a lot of interesting stories and mysteries.
In the next few days, the success of the newspaper caused a large number of owls to fly to his home, which frightened Mrs. Mason. So he wouldn’t scare his mother to death, Ivan changed his address to Hogwarts and made it where he only gets his mail after it has been piling up for an entire day.
Due to the enthusiasm of readers and ghost, manuscript editing and auditing work became increasingly heavy.
The Weasley’s where going to help but they had won the annual Daily Prophet Grand Prize Galleon Draw and went on a trip to Egypt in the first two weeks of the summer vacation. They were visiting their older son Bill and waiting for the summer to come to an end.
Hermione followed her parents to France, though none of her articles were short the rest of the work was up to Ivan.
Harry and Colin had come and helped him a few times but it wasn’t very helpful.
They tended to talk about Quidditch, summer jobs, or the escape of Sirius Black. They only visited Ivan during the first few days of summer.
Shortly thereafter, Colin went to his home in the countryside with his father and brother for the summer.
Harry was in a lot of trouble since Ron had called the Dursleys on the fifth day of summer vacation, Harry had been confined and kept in his room.
Ivan visited the house himself but they wouldn’t let him in.
Just as Ivan was about to rescue Harry, Harry got Hedwig to send him a letter. Harry told him he had to be nice to them so they would sign a permission slip to visit Hogsmeade.
From then on, Ivan sent Harry some food so that the Dursleys wouldn’t starve him to death.
Although there are a lot of manuscripts to edit Ivan could handle the load by himself for now.
In his spare time, h
e went to Diagon Alley to buy magic books about potions, Occlumency, and how to defend against curses. These books ate almost all of his savings.
It takes a wand to cast a spell to defend against curses, for now, he can’t practice it so after learning the spell theory Ivan’s focus turned to Oclumency and potions.
Oclumency closes one’s mind from legitimacy, it stops people from accessing one’s thoughts or influencing them.
The trick to casting this spell is to empty your mind so no one can get the memory out of your mind through magic. Experienced users such as Snape can even fabricate a false memory to deceive others.
Ivan couldn’t do that, in fact, he had a problem with getting started, he was having trouble emptying his mind.
There was always strange ideas in his head or he unconsciously starts to study a magical problem. After trying for a while he had to make practicing Oclumency a long-term goal, he hopes he can master it before the school year starts.
In addition to Oclumency and protection against curses, Ivan’s potion wasn’t what he originally thought. This potion doesn’t help a wizard permanently increase their magic power but only significantly increases it for a period of time.
Ivan thought it was a waste of a lost potion to help him improve his battle endurance.
After finishing all the magic books he bought, he finally decided to use it to help him become an Animagus.
Animagus is a complex, transfiguration spell that can make a wizard into an animal and for most wizards even adult wizards this spell is extremely complex and dangerous not to mention a wizard who is just twelve like Ivan.
When becoming an Animagus, it is for the practitioner to get distracted for various reasons, resulting in the transformation to fail or possibly death.
As a result, the ministry of magic requires all Animagi to register with the Ministry of magic. But for the entire 20th century only seven people have registered.
Of course, this is not the total of Animagi.
Ivan knew a lot of Animagi, such as Peter Pettigrew, who had been hanging around him, and Sirius Black, who was about to debut. They were all Animagi in their school days and with that in mind Ivan who had the potion to help him, decided to complete his Animagi form this summer.
He carefully studied transfiguration theory so he could have a strong foundation but he also needed a lot of magical support.
The theoretical knowledge wasn’t a problem, when Ivan had the diary he consulted Tom on Animagus transformations, from that he received a lot of help. Voldemort may not be a good character but his magical knowledge may be comparable to Dumbledore.
The trouble in the first transformation process needs to consume a lot of magical power to turn people into animals. When an adult wizard ties they will only succeed one out of five tries, this is why most witches and wizards fail to complete the transformation process.
You usually buy a lot of magic potions to practice.
The price of these potions are expensive though but those potions effects are far from the one he has.
Therefore with the help of this potions, he will not have a problem with transforming and becoming an Animagus.
He practiced many times and gradually mastered the ropes and after a month of preparations and the beginning of the fifth week of summer vacation Ivan shut himself up in his room to prepare for his first attempt at becoming an Animagus. He didn’t allow anyone in his room without consent during this process.