Ruby Potter

Chapter 7

Ruby frowned at her wand, she'd been trying for the past few days to cast a lot of the spells she'd read in the books, and was progressing rather poorly in everything except simple healing spells such as Episkey, she just couldn't get a lot of the ones she'd been told to practice, like transfiguration. Who needed to turn a mouse into a snuffbox anyways? Or a match to a needle? So far it seemed rather useless, or at least it was until later in it's curriculum which she had to master a whole bunch of other useless ones before she could learn them. Like turning dirt into rocks, or grass into vicious attack dogs, she had the imagination and creativity required, and by studying her scroll while doing magic, she'd learned that it did in fact drain her aura rather than drawing from some other power source, so she had the power required to cast it.

Her magic using her aura was okay with her as Ruby didn't use her semblance in combat very much since it was more of a hindrance than a help sometimes, preferring instead to practice her scythe skills until she literally couldn't stand, and she had the move dedicated to muscle memory. It was a more brutal system, but she'd expected nothing less from herself when it came to fighting, her Uncle Qrow had trained her, and she wasn't going to disappoint him no matter how much she had to practice. The way Ruby saw it, her magic was like a new semblance, something she could use in conjunction with her semblance and Crescent Rose. If she could find a way to mount or implant it to Crescent Rose, she wouldn't even need to put away her scythe, or hold her scythe with one hand in order to use it!

That or she could just learn wandless magic, which was like fifteen times harder than wand magic, and she couldn't even do wand magic properly yet.

So that idea went out the window for now.

She sighed and turned back to her book that was leaned against a rock under a tree that was near the Black Lake, it gave her a lot of room to move as she practiced, and the shade was nice to read her book under. She'd have to bring Weiss out here at some point, she'd love it here!

Yang would ruin it though, and Blake would much prefer to sit in front of the fireplace, or sit in the tree. Weiss would appreciate the beauty of the place far more than the other half of team RWBY would. Plus the beauty of this spot would match Weiss'- wait, what? Ruby shook her head, getting the thoughts of Weiss with the sun perfectly reflecting off her hair, smiling as she and Ruby hung out under the tree, talking and studying, or whatever Weiss would do out here out of it. She really needed to sort her feelings for her white haired partner out, she could ask Yang-

Okay, she couldn't even keep a straight face thinking that. Blake though, might be a better choice, if only because she wouldn't tease her, and she wasn't Weiss! Who wouldn't really be a help with this, since she would probably be creeped out or confused and then Weiss would yell at her, and Ruby really didn't want Weiss to yell at her.

Ruby shook her head again to get thoughts of Weiss out of it, she'd learned early on from Uncle Qrow that you can't train at anything while being distracted. She took a deep breath and cleared her head before pouring over the book again, trying to figure out where she was going wrong, it wasn't like she'd be using it in the Tournament, but using it on Remnant would definitely be a surprise to people in the Vytal Festival, so getting a grip on it would be absolutely necessary.

She sighed and began waving her wand in the correct pattern, really disliking the annoying movements she had to do. They were a lot like Crescent Rose's stances, but infinitely more annoying because there were just so many.

Ruby rested her head on the tree trunk, she wasn't able to grasp this magic stuff, it was nothing like fighting with her scythe! That had come so naturally when she'd originally started training, but with magic, it was like she was fighting it every step of the way. She was getting extremely fed up with this magic business, but she was determined to get at least some of these jinxes down if it was the last thing she did! She just had to understand it first, which wasn't easy in the slightest, and that really annoyed Ruby to no end.