Adrian was still trying to figure out what the hell had just happened when the loud clapping from the Great Hall brought him back to reality. Swallowing down his mountain of questions, he placed the Sorting Hat back on its stool and walked down the steps on unsteady legs.
Some older Gryffindor students moved over to make room as he got to their table. Before he could even sit down, two identical twin brothers with bright red hair grabbed him and squeezed him into the space between them.
"Holy crap!" one of them said, sounding amazed. "I bet you're the first kid in Hogwarts history to ignore Professor McGonagall like that during sorting. That was totally..."
"What?" Adrian asked, really confused by how excited they were.
"Amazing!" the other twin said with a big smile.
"You're gonna be famous at this school!" they both said at the same time, like they planned it.
Adrian almost choked. These two were so weird he couldn't understand how they thought. Somehow his total confusion had looked like some kind of brave rebellion to them.
"Uh... thanks?" Adrian said politely, still confused by their 'blessing.' "I'm Adrian Blackwood, by the way. What about you guys?"
"I'm George Weasley," the first twin said with a big wink, "and that's Fred over there. You better remember that, Fred really hates it when people get our names wrong."
Adrian could tell they were trying to trick him right away. He'd read about these two and their pranks, so he wasn't going to fall for something this obvious.
"Nice to meet you, George," Adrian said with a smile, then looked at the other twin. "And you're Fred, right?"
Fred, who was waiting to see another first-year mess up their names, just stared at him. George looked shocked too before asking, "Wait, how did you know I was George?"
"Easy guess, right?" Adrian said. "What first-year doesn't know about the famous Weasley twins and all your pranks?"
He couldn't say he'd read about them in books, so he had to make something up.
"Wow, are we really that famous?" George and Fred looked at each other, super happy. "Even the new kids know about us? All those years of breaking rules finally worked!"
"Pffft—" Ron, who had been enthusiastically eating his dinner nearby, nearly spat out his food. Since when had his brothers become legendary among incoming students? This was news to him.
The twins got curious about Adrian's long talk with the Sorting Hat. They'd never seen anyone chat with that old hat for so long.
Adrian gave them half-answers and changed the subject. After all, talking about knowing dark magic wasn't great dinner conversation for Gryffindor.
He got them talking about their adventures around Hogwarts instead, trying to learn about secret passages and hidden spots in the castle.
Adrian knew from reading the books that the Weasley twins had a magic map that showed most of Hogwarts' secret passages and could track everyone in the castle. With something like that, he could explore the place without getting caught by teachers.
Even though Adrian remembered lots of Hogwarts secrets from the books, his memory wasn't perfect. That map would be really helpful.
The twins loved talking to what seemed like a big fan. They told him lots of stories about their adventures and even tried to get him to join their pranking.
But they didn't say anything about any magic map.
Adrian wasn't surprised. They just met, after all. No matter how good their talk was going, they wouldn't tell such a big secret to someone they barely knew. Adrian just wanted to make a good first impression for later.
But then, totally out of nowhere, a voice spoke inside his head:
[Ding!]
[The host learned secret informations, the task is being generated...]
[Mission Objective: Explore Hogwarts]
[Current progress: 2/100]
[Task introduction: The curiosity to explore the unknown is something every wizard should possess. The thousand-year-old castle contains countless secrets. Explore and understand them. When the exploration progress reaches a certain level, rewards will be given at a certain level based on performance.]
Adrian stopped talking mid-sentence with the twins, totally caught off guard.
A system? Like in those stories?
Adrian felt a sense of hope wash over him.
Ever since showing up at Hogwarts out of nowhere, Adrian had been excited but also really worried about being stuck in this weird magical world. He'd been trying to act brave, but deep down he was scared shitless about what might happen.
Now, for the first time, he actually felt hopeful.
Adrian quickly made excuses to the twins, who were still talking, and focused on this new thing in his head. After messing around with it for a bit, a bunch of information appeared in front of him:
[Adrian Blackwood]
[Job: Wizard]
[Magic Spells: Mortificus Level 1 (3/200)]
[Knowledge: Magic Item Making Level 0 (435/500)]
[Magic Items:
-Wand (Yew wood, unicorn hair, eleven and three-quarter inches)
-Magic Power: Medium]
[Wand Match Rate: 72.5%]
[Grade Points: None]
The info was pretty much what Adrian expected, though only seeing part of it was kind of disappointing.
"Mortificus? Magic item making?" Adrian whispered to himself. As someone who just got here and barely knew what was going on, he definitely hadn't learned this stuff himself.
Thinking about those weird memory bits that popped up during sorting, Adrian figured he must have gotten these abilities from the original Adrian Blackwood, whoever used to live in this body had learned magic before coming to Hogwarts.
This wasn't that weird for wizard kids. Even Hermione, who came from regular non-magic parents, had learned some basic spells by reading before her first year. Made sense that a kid from a wizard family would know even more.
But this Mortificus spell was totally new to Adrian. He couldn't remember anything like it from the Harry Potter books.
That wasn't too surprising though. The Harry Potter books only showed a small part of the magic world, and they barely talked about dark magic. A real dark wizard would obviously know way more nasty spells than the few mentioned in the books.
Hogwart's Restricted Section probably had tons of dark magic books.
What really worried Adrian was what kind of family the original owner came from. Any family that taught their kids dark magic before school was definitely not normal.
Adrian felt scared for his safety. If someone found out that Adrian Blackwood had been taken over by someone from another world, who knew what kind of fate might be waiting for him...