[Quest: Save Sirius]

[Status: Complete]

[Reward: Stats +2, Exp +300]

"Now, let's see," Ron mumbled with an excited look on his face, "Where should I add these points..."

[Status]

Name: Ronald Weasley (Sam)

Level: 15 (315/320)

MP: 240/240

Physique (Max.): 6 (10)

Dexterity (Max.): 5 (10)

Spirit (Max.): 8 (15)

Perception (Max.): 4 (10)

Stats: 2

[Skills]

Transfiguration Lv5, Charms Lv5, Herbology Lv5, Potions Lv5, DADA Lv5, Astronomy Lv4, Flying Lv6, Dueling Lv6, Observe Lv1 (New)...

Ron was inside the Hospital wing's toilet at the moment, which was surprisingly muggle for being inside a magical school. But then again there may just be something akin to a vanishing charm down there, who knows...

Anyway, the reason that he was accessing his status in here and not outside on his allocated bed was simply because Hermione was already up and about reading a book. And Ron didn't want to seem like an idiot staring at an imaginary screen in the air, or answer any unnecessary question so he went to the only safe haven he could find in the Hospital Wing.

Besides, Madam Pomfrey was already after his ass, trying to make him drink some kind of mind-correcting potion, along with Dr Ubbly's Oblivous unction that he was already using for the scars by the Brain tentacles, to correct all the wrong that had been done to him in the brain room.

Thankfully, he had somehow managed to dissuade her that he was alright and didn't need the potion, but he was still taking as many precautions as he could to not seem too different to force her to use the potion and 'correct him'.

Coming back to the topic, Ron didn't want to haphazardly add his only two points into random stats, as he didn't know when the next chance to get them would come.

After all, if even something as big as saving Sirius only gave him two points and three hundred experience then he didn't know what else he would need to do to get more...

So he wanted to carefully go over all the options in front of him to see which were the best for him at the moment...

Physique, Dexterity, Spirit and Perception...

Among them adding points to Physique seemed simple enough. It should lead to an increase in strength, speed, and stamina, as all of these usually come under the physical body's umbrella. And safe to say, he remembered quite clearly from Ron's memories that his stamina, while not atrocious, wasn't the best.

And if he ever wanted to play quidditch, which he definitely did (I mean who wouldn't), then it was in his best interest to have a lot of stamina, as the sport was supposed to be a very physically intensive game and at the moment Ron probably couldn't even fly for more than an hour.

Putting point in Spirit was similarly straightforward as it should lead to an increase in MP and probably something like better magic recovery after exhaustion.

He was doing a lot guess work here because, for some goddamn reason, the system was ridiculously non-user friendly at the moment and was refusing to give him any explanation of what was what. Thankfully, Sam had played a lot of games in his previous life so he didn't have too many problems approximately guessing what each stat meant...

In any case, moving on to the next one, putting the point in Dexterity would probably mean an increase in hand speed, reaction speed and flexibility and while all these were kind of essential to improve his combat ability, Ron knew that he wouldn't be having any deadly magical battle any time soon, so he felt that this stat could be left for later.

Now, Perception was somewhat of a curve ball as it was the stat that Ron was most doubtful about. It could mean a lot of different things depending on what game he was playing and what build he was using.

For example, if he was going for a warrior build, perception would directly correlate to his physical senses such as his eyesight, his hearing range, and his sense of smell among other things, and in addition, it could also indicate his ability to slow down very fast objects in his vision so that he could perceive them. For ex. during the DOM battle, Ron could barely see Bellatrix's hand move because of how fast she was, so he knew that it could help with that.

But on the other hand, if it was Mage's build, perception could also imply his magical talent, and how good he was at perceiving the mana or the magical elements surrounding him and Ron knew that talent meant a big deal in this world as one only needed to see how the two magical titans outpaced the rest of the world to understand it.

And in this instant, the perception here could mean any of the above things or even all of them. But even though it was his worst stat, Ron felt that it would be somewhat of a gamble at the moment to put his points in it as there was no way to be sure if it would pay off or be a bust.

So after a lot of thought, Ron decided to go for the safe bet and decided to add his points to his physique and his spirit stat. Maybe if, in the future, he gets some easy points, he can experiment and see where the perception stats take him.

'Now how to go about it—Oh!' Ron had barely thought about putting it into action and a system alert appeared in front of him.

[Physique +1, Spirit +1]

'Well that's convenient,' he thought before hurriedly closing his eyes to see if he could sense any changes in his body.

But no matter how long he waited he could feel no changes in his body, no tingling sensation over his skin, no feeling of suppressed strength, no sense of magical fullness from the inside, not even that legendary burst of clear-headedness that you were supposed to feel when your stats increased. He felt nothing...

'What the fuck,' Ron thought in bewilderment before hurriedly opening his eyes and saying, "Status,"

[Status]

Name: Ronald Weasley (Sam)

Level: 15 (315/320)

MP: 243/243

Physique [Max.]: 6.1 + 0.9(Pending) [11]

Dexterity [Max.]: 5 [10]

Spirit [Max.]: 8.1 + 0.9(Pending) [16]

Perception [Max.]: 4 [10]

Stats: 0

[Skills]

Transfiguration Lv5, Charms Lv5, Herbology Lv5, Potions Lv5, DADA Lv5, Astronomy Lv4, Flying Lv6, Dueling Lv6, Observe Lv1 (New)...

Ron quickly browsed through the now familiar screen and it only took him a few glances to see where the discrepancies were.

Physique [Max.]: 6.1 + 0.9(Pending) [11]

Spirit [Max.]: 8.1 + 0.9(Pending) [16]

'Wait! What does this mean?' Ron thought with a confused expression on his face while scratching his head, 'Wait! I think I've seen this before...' he closed his eyes and concentrated deeply and ever slowly a long-forgotten memory was dragged up to the forefront. 'Ah! So that's where...'

He had read about this particular situation in an obscure unpopular webnovel where the world was filled with people who had the gamer system. And in that world, people don't immediately have access to their stat gains, instead, they would only get the small amount of increment that their body can handle at that moment, and for the rest of it, they would have to work hard at exercising and eating nutritional meals to gradually digest the gains over time.

'So I need to work for my stats, is that it?' Ron groaned while slapping his face with a tired expression on his face, and on cue, his stomach grumbled loudly with a bone-deep hunger, solidifying his guess as the correct one as he felt at that moment as if every cell in his body was starved and craving nourishment.

'Damnit! You couldn't have just let me have an easy win could you?' Ron groused as he aired his grievances against the imaginary puppet master before standing up and leaving the bathroom with a sigh.

...

"You were gone for an awfully long time," commented Hermione as she saw him come back from the bathroom.

Ginny only had a broken ankle so Madam Pomfrey had been able to fix her in jiffy, and Neville similarly was only physically injured so he too was immediately healed and released from the hospital wing.

And while Luna had a case of bad concussion, Madam Pomfrey had given her some potions and as long as she took them for two, she should be fully healed, so she too had been freed which meant that only he and Hermione had been left behind to be at the healer's mercy.

"What can I say, the longer I take a dump, the emptier my body... and the emptier my body, the more I can eat..." Ron replied with a snicker while lying back on his bed, "It's all very logical, you know,"

"Ew! Ron! That is so disgusting," Hermione said her nose curled in distaste, "How can you be so gross? I swear, you're becoming worse as you grow up and I can only pray that—"

Thankfully, before she could get into a full rant she was interrupted by the door to the Hospital wing opening. And both of them turned to see the last missing piece of the Golden trio entering the wing.

"Harry!" Hermione screamed in happiness, and for a moment it looked as if she would run straight towards him to hug him, but then she looked at him and noticed his condition, "Why are—" she had a frown on her face as she asked, "Why do you look like that, Harry? Did you not get any sleep last night?"

Hermione was right in that, Harry looked very messed up at the moment. He looked as if he had come here straight after the fight in DOM. But that wouldn't make any sense as the fight should have concluded somewhere around midnight, and it was around Seven O'Clock in the morning right now, which should have been enough time for him to... 'Maybe his talk with Dumbledore took longer than intended...'

"Harry, what happened? Ron told me that you were alright—" Hermione tried again when she got no reply from him, but Harry still didn't answer or even look at her, as he only had eyes for a single person in that room.

"Umm... What's up, Harry?" Ron asked with a nervous expression on his face as the Boy-Who-Lived, stared at him with such an intense expression that he thought for a moment that he had found out about him, "Why are you looking at me like that, Harry? Haha, Don't tell me you want to kiss me, because you know that I don't—"

Ron's nervous attempt at humour was rudely interrupted as Harry launched himself at him and hugged him with all his might. "T-Thank you," he said earnestly, "Thank you!" and he kept repeating himself with a tremor in his voice.

"Hey! Hey! Come on, get yourself together, Mate," Ron said with an internal sigh of relief while patting Harry on his shoulder, "Come, on now, Hermione's going to get the wrong idea if we keep at it any longer... Look she's already looking at us kind of funny..."

"No, I am not!" Hermione denied hotly with a flushed face but Ron's tactic had worked as Harry chuckled and disengaged from the hug while wiping his eyes, "Wait! Why are you like this, Harry? What happened after I was unconscious? Did someone get hurt? Will one of you please just tell me what this is about?"

"It's nothing too big," Ron replied waving his hand casually, "I just helped Padfoot a little bit during the battle and Harry here is being overly dramatic about it,"

"He's being humble," Harry quietly contradicted with a small smile on his face, "He brought Sirius back from the jaws of death and saved his life... I-We both are very indebted to him and I don't know if I'll ever be able to repay him..."

"What? Ron saved Sirius?" Hermione asked with a shocked expression on her face as if the very notion of it was absurd, "How did he—I mean, How could he—Wait! Does that mean that you know healing magic?" she asked Ron in a half-accusatory tone as if blaming him for learning something as interesting as Healing alone without including her.

"No, of course, I don't know healing. It was just a simple mundane something that I knew about and it helped him," Ron replied without mentioning CPR as he didn't want to go into that whole rabbit hole of, 'How do you know about it? Who told you about it?' at the moment. So he immediately turned to Harry and tried to change the subject, "And Harry, what debt are you talking about? Because I didn't know were keeping count and if we were... then shouldn't I first thank you for saving my Father. But I didn't at that time, did I?"

"You did, in fact," Harry said as he nodded his head with an amused expression on his face, "And your father even told me that saving a life without expecting anything in return creates a very strong magical bond called Life-debt and that—"

"Then how about when you saved my sister from Basilisk in the second year, Huh? If we count all the times you've saved me or my family, I think I come ahead by a lot..." Ron countered quickly as both Ron and Sam were quite uncomfortable with all this talk of Debts and favour between friends, "So why don't we cancel it all—"

"But then don't you remember saving me from prison and starvation during the summer before the second year—"

"Oh Yeah! Then what about that time—"

Hermione's head jerked from left to right and back as she watched both of her best friends bicker and go back and forth, trying to one-up each other on who was more heavily in debt.

They left the serious life-saving graces after a while and went into the smaller nitty-gritty favours, things such as who gave whom an extra quill on that Sunday or who helped with that particularly hard potion homework that one time.

"Then what about that one time you held the door open for—"

"Um... Harry," Ron interrupted softly while leaning forward, "If we're going to be doing this for a while, then I think we should get some food because all this talk has made me quite hungry," his stomach had been silently growling and begging for food all this while due to the small stat increase and now his body was entering the territory of being dangerously starved.

"Oh, Um, Sure, Do you want me to call, Madam Pomfrey?" Harry asked back in a whisper, "I am sure she can get us some food."

"Ugh! No, I don't want to eat any hospital food," Ron replied with a grunt of aversion, "But I've got a far better idea on where we can get our grub—"

"What—"

"What are you two whispering about?" Hermione suddenly interrupted with narrowed eyes, she had been enjoying the back and forth between her friends when they suddenly stopped, taking away her entertainment.

"No, Nothing," Ron replied as he hurriedly looked up, before taking a serious expression, "Er, Hermione, can you go away and give us privacy for a few seconds to have a talk between us,"

"What? Why?"

"What do you mean, why? Did Harry and I ever ask you why, when you wanted to have the "girl talk" with Ginny? No, right! Then you should give us the same privilege, shouldn't you?"

"B-But, That's different!" she stuttered with a flustered expression on her face.

"And how is this different? Unless... don't tell me, you're discriminating against us just because we're boys? he asked before shaking his head in disappointment, "Tch! Tch! I thought better of you, Hermione,"

"No, I didn't mean—"

"Oh, You didn't? That's good then. Thank you, for giving us the time to have some boy talk, Now shoo!"

"Ugh! Fine!" she huffed as Ron immediately threw the curtains around his bed, shielding them from the view of a very irate Hermione.

"Un, Ron... What did you want to talk about, specifically?" Harry asked with an uncomfortable expression on his face. All this talk about "Girl Talk" and "Boy Talk" was making him scared that the red-haired boy wanted to talk to him about the bird and the bees.

"Call Dobby! Quickly!" Ron immediately urged in a whisper.

"What?! Dobby? Why do you want—"

Before Harry could even finish asking his question, a soft pop interrupted them as the elf in question appeared amidst them with a giddy look on his face, "The Great Harry Potter has called for Dobby—"

"Shh! Dobby, not so loud," Ron said in a panicky tone while glancing towards the closed curtain, "Do you want us to get caught?"

Dobby immediately understood the assignment and nodded his head, "What does the great Harry Potter and his weasel friend want Dobby's help with?" he asked in a conspiratory whisper as if they just needed to ask and he would the job, no matter how illegal.

"We need food, Dobby, Food! Can you get it here?"

"Of course! Dobby can!" Dobby squeaked as he nodded his head with a pleased expression on his face, "Dobby will go and get it right away."

"Good! And try and make it as healthy and nutritious as you can, will you."

"Dobby will," the elf nodded and then disappeared with a click of his finger.

Ron immediately sighed in relief before he noticed a peculiar expression on Harry's face as if he was seeing Ron for the first time, "What?! What happened?" he asked while going over his words, checking if he had messed up somehow.

"Healthy? You asked for healthy food?" Harry asked with a strange almost concerned expression on his face, "Are you sure, you're alright, Ron?"

"Oh! Stuff it, Potter!"

...

Hermione impatiently paced in front of her bed while frequently glancing towards the curtain with an intensely curious expression on her face, 'What could they be talking about for so long?'

Finally, when more than five minutes had passed without a single squeak from inside, the girl lost her patience and went towards the curtain before loudly announcing, "I'm coming in!"

"No! Dob't cobe ib," came Ron's panicked voice but it sounded as if his mouth was stuffed with— Hermione's eyes widened and she immediately ripped open the curtain only to see both Harry and Ron sitting on the latter's bed with a large sumptuous spread in between them with both of their mouth's filled with food and both looking towards her with wide alarmed eyes.

It took the smartest witch in her class only a single glance to understand what all this cloak and dagger had been about all along, "You! You didn't call for Dobby, did you?" she immediately asked while looking at the boys with an accusatory glare.

Ron first swallowed the food in his mouth before answering Hermione with an indignant look on his face, "Hermione Granger, that is so insulting of you, how could you even think that we're capable of such a crime!" he knew that he couldn't be on a backfoot when in a conversation with the stubborn girl so he immediately went for the offence.

"Then, how did you—"

"We obviously used magic to bring food in here, didn't we, Harry?"

"Umm..."

"See! Even Harry agrees with me,"

"But you can't use magic to create food." She immediately shot back with a triumphant look on her face, "Gamp's law of elemental transfiguration states that food cannot be created with magic—"

"I know that," he didn't "But don't you remember that I said 'bring' and not create, Tch, Tch, Tch! Don't professors always say that the devil's in the details? I expected better from you, Miss Granger," Ron said while shaking his head with a disappointed expression on his face that was eerily similar to one stern Head of House, "That'll be five points from Gryffindor, Miss Granger,"

"You!" Hermione let out with an absolutely scandalous look on her face, "How dare you, Ronald Weasley—" but her reprimand abruptly died in her throat as she looked behind Ron with a horrified expression on her face.

"Was that an impression of me, Mr Weasley?" quietly said a voice that immediately sent shivers down Ron and Harry's spines.

Both of them gulped and slowly turned their head to see their head of house, Minerva McGonagall, standing there with a very unimpressed expression on her face.

/

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