Professor Chambers placed the small wooden block on the desk in front of Charlie.
"Your grip and technique are far too crude. Look at this. Carving a rune the size of a Golden Snitch onto a wooden block is fine for an absolute beginner."
"But if you don't correct your form right now, how do you ever expect to inscribe microscopic runes in the future?"
He pointed toward the front of the room.
The older students each had a quill on their desks. Obviously, inscribing magic onto a fragile feather was infinitely harder than carving into a solid block of oak.
Charlie soaked in Professor Chambers' guidance, asking a few targeted questions of his own. Before he knew it, ten minutes had flown by.
Professor Chambers finally dropped the silencing ward and walked off to check on the rest of the class.
Charlie stood up from his desk in the back row, quietly observing the upperclassmen at work.
A few had already started their practical attempts.
They were using carving knives that looked more like long, heavy needles. Charlie had seen similar tools back in the Room of Requirement's studio. They held them exactly like wands. He also noticed them dipping the needle tips into a metallic liquid.
Is that quicksilver? Charlie guessed.
Once coated, they waved the needles through the air with slow, deliberate grace, as if painting on an invisible canvas.
Five minutes later, a violent spark of electricity flashed from a sixth-year's desk diagonally in front of Charlie. With a sharp crack, the boy's quill snapped clean in half.
"Oh, bloody hell!" the student cursed under his breath.
"Professor, may I have another quill?"
Chambers nodded slowly. "You may. However, I highly suggest you deeply analyze the cause of your failure before blindly rushing into a second attempt."
"I know, sir," the boy sighed. "I think there's a flaw in my runic circuit. Could you take a look?"
He handed his parchment over to the professor.
The class ended quickly. By the time the bell rang, only three students had managed to successfully craft a Quick-Quotes Quill.
One student's quill hovered erratically, violently wobbling in the air. You couldn't trust it to write a legible sentence if your life depended on it.
Another student's quill was painfully slow at perceiving the user's thoughts. Its dictation speed was worse than a toddler just learning the alphabet.
Only the Ravenclaw prefect—the girl Charlie recognized—had produced a genuine success. Her quill wrote steadily and at an acceptable speed.
Though, as Professor Chambers bluntly pointed out, even her "best in class" work paled in comparison to the mass-produced quills you could buy for a few Sickles at Scrivenshaft's.
After class, Charlie continued his trek up the stairs.
The drafts howling through the eighth-floor corridors were bitterly cold. He hurried into the Room of Requirement to begin his daily practice.
Dinner was still two hours away.
He absolutely couldn't afford to miss dinner again.
He sat down at the workbench, picked up a fresh block of oak, and adjusted his grip on the carving knife just as Chambers had shown him.
It's incredibly easy to lose track of time when you're doing something you genuinely love. The second the blade touched the wood, Charlie fell into a state of absolute, hyper-focused flow.
By the time his muscles cramped and he finally leaned back to stretch, an entire hour had vanished.
He set the knife down and inspected the wooden block.
It was now as heavy as a solid chunk of iron. Charlie tossed it lightly onto the workbench, and it landed with a dull, incredibly heavy thud.
Practice makes perfect.
He grinned. He had initially worried that changing his grip would set him back and force him to relearn the basics. But surprisingly, the corrected posture made channeling the magic significantly smoother.
He had only failed five or six times before successfully inscribing the [Heavy] rune.
He still had plenty of time. Charlie rested his hands for two minutes, grabbed his knife, and picked up another block of oak.
Another hour slipped by. Now, he was holding a block of wood that felt as soft and squishy as a fresh pudding.
Charlie bounced it lightly in the palm of his hand, grinning as the enchanted wood literally jiggled, letting out a soft, cartoonish wobble sound.
He let out a long exhale, tossed the jiggly block onto the desk, and left the Room of Requirement, heading down for dinner.
Down in the Great Hall.
Charlie was halfway through his steak when Anthony and Hector finally sat down.
"Did you track down the Alchemy professor this afternoon?" Anthony asked.
Charlie nodded, swallowing his food. "Yeah. He even let me audit his sixth-year class."
"That's mental," Hector shook his head in awe. "We're absolutely exhausted just dealing with our normal classes. I can't even imagine having the energy to voluntarily take on extra N.E.W.T. level subjects."
"I simply don't have the mental bandwidth. You know?" Anthony agreed.
Charlie laughed. "Don't worry. Once you hit sixth and seventh year, you'll be forced to find the energy, whether you have it or not."
Honestly, the first-year workload was incredibly light. At least, it was to Charlie.
But then again, he wasn't exactly a normal eleven-year-old. He knew better than to hold Anthony and Hector to his own bizarre standards.
"So where are you off to after this?" Anthony asked. "Back to the eighth floor?"
Charlie shook his head. "Nah. I've still got actual homework to finish."
"Your time management is terrifyingly good," Anthony sighed. "Honestly, you being so productive is starting to make me feel guilty."
"So does that mean you're actually going to do your homework tonight?" Hector asked, shooting Anthony a highly skeptical look.
Anthony looked deeply conflicted. He clenched his fists, as if making a monumental, life-altering decision.
"Given the sheer pressure... I have no choice but to aggressively relax and play exploding snap."
Charlie laughed out loud. Maybe he'd just head back to the common room, talk absolute rubbish with his mates, and play a few rounds of wizard's chess before hitting the books.
Over the next week, Charlie settled into a brand new, highly productive routine.
On Monday afternoons, he'd head up to audit Professor Chambers' Alchemy lecture.
On Wednesday afternoons, he usually had a short class. By the time he made it up to the Alchemy classroom, the older students were already deep into their practical exercises.
Since watching them fail at advanced practicals didn't offer him much value right now, he simply skipped the Wednesday sessions.
If he ever ran into a wall during his own practice, he'd just seek out Professor Chambers in his office.
In Potions, the essay he had handed in last week—detailing the complex chemical interactions in the Cure for Boils—was finally returned alongside his standard homework.
Charlie eagerly unrolled the parchment, fully prepared for Snape's grading.
Despite the essay being violently littered with aggressive red ink calling him an "insufferable know-it-all" and a "troll-brained dunderhead," Charlie couldn't help but smile.
Because buried right beneath the insults were Snape's brilliant, highly detailed corrections and deeply insightful adjustments to Charlie's theories.
During dinner that exact same evening, an owl dropped a small parcel onto Charlie's plate.
The package was barely the size of his palm. Inside was a simple, coarse burlap pouch.
He opened the drawstring, and a quiet clinking sound echoed from inside.
"What did you buy now?" Hector asked.
"A dozen glass phials."
Standard apothecary phials were shockingly cheap. He had snagged over a dozen for just a little over two Galleons.
After finishing his meal, Charlie grabbed the burlap pouch. "I'm heading up to the eighth floor tonight. Don't wait up for me."
"Got it," Anthony flashed him a thumbs-up. "Stay safe out there."
Charlie smiled and nodded. "If you're talking about dodging Filch, I'll do my best."
"And Mrs. Norris," Hector quickly added.
Charlie waved them off and headed straight for the stairs.
His goal for tonight was incredibly straightforward: he was going to successfully craft his very first Material Vial.