Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

What on earth was the previous owner of this book doing?

Harry bent low to decipher the ingredients of the potion. But there were annotations and things crossed out, making them difficult to identify.

It took him a long time to see the content clearly, which made him much slower than the other students.

When he dashed back to his cauldron with what he found from the store cupboard, most students were already processing the second or third ingredients. Hermione, who progressed furthest, had already started putting the processed ingredients into the cauldron, which was already full of bluish steam.

Next to Hermione, Evan was processing the materials leisurely. Harry noticed that he looked up at him from time to time.

Their eyes met and Evan smiled at him.

Harry thought he must look funny in his flustered, bewildered state, which Evan probably found amusing. Still, Evan was quite something — he even had the time to glance around and see what others were doing, while most students couldn’t take their eyes off their potions for even a second. Everyone was so focused, aiming to win Slughorn’s prize.

Harry was not as leisurely as Evan. He started cutting up valerian roots as fast as he could.

This process took about three minutes, and then it was time to cut the sopophorous bean into slices.

The sopophorous bean was proving difficult to handle. Its slippery surface, hard texture, and small size made it very difficult to cut up.

From Harry’s perspective, it would take at least five minutes to slice it all.

He admired Hermione, who had managed to process both the valerian roots and the sopophorous bean in less than five minutes altogether.

At this moment, Slughorn began to walk down from his desk and made his way among the students, passing the Slytherin table.

“Sir, I think you knew my grandfather, Abraxas Malfoy?” Draco Malfoy asked immediately.

His voice was loud enough for most of the people in the classroom to hear what he was saying.

“Yes,” said Slughorn, without looking at Malfoy, “I was sorry to hear he had died, although of course it wasn’t unexpected, dragon pox at his age. …”

Dragon pox, what kind of disease was this?!

Most people, including Evan, had a puzzled look on their faces.

It was clear, though, that Malfoy was trying to curry favor with Slughorn.

He probably hoped that Slughorn would look at him differently, or perhaps even hoped for some preferential treatment of the type he had learned to expect from Snape.

But Slughorn wanted nothing to do with Malfoy, so he was probably going to be greatly disappointed!

He would have to rely on nothing but talent to win the bottle of Felix Felicis.

Evan withdrew his gaze, put the cut herbs into the cauldron, and turned his head to continue observing Harry.

Harry, meanwhile, redirected his focus from Malfoy to the sopophorous bean in front of him. He gave slicing it a try, finding it even harder than he expected. His progress was slow, and the slices were uneven. After cutting one bean, he looked down at the textbook again to confirm whether the sopophorous bean needed to be sliced thinly.

It was really annoying that the book was covered in all sorts of drawings, and he had to struggle to decipher the instructions from the scribblings of the original owner. What was even more irritating was that this guy, for some reason had taken issue with the order to cut up the sopophorous bean and had written in the alternative instruction:

Crush with flat side of silver dagger,

releases juice better than cutting.

It took Harry a lot of effort to read this sentence clearly. At this time, Hermione was already stirring the liquid in the cauldron gently with her wand. Her potion already resembled the “smooth, black currant-colored liquid” mentioned as the ideal halfway stage.

Harry was a little hesitant. Should he follow the normal operation method and spend a lot of time slicing the sopophorous bean, or follow the method modified by the original owner of the textbook and use a silver dagger to cut the sopophorous bean into pieces.

No matter how he looked at it, the latter seemed much simpler.

“Hermione, can I borrow your silver knife?”

Hermione nodded impatiently, not taking her eyes off her potion, which was still deep purple, though according to the book ought to be turning a light shade of lilac by now.

“What’s wrong?” Evan asked, moving closer to Harry.

It looked like Snape had made some changes to how the sopophorous bean was handled, and whether this new approach was effective could now be put to the test.

Evan appeared completely unconcerned about his own potion, showing no urgency at all.

That was understandable — according to the normal process, the ingredients needed to be boiled for at least fifteen to thirty minutes before the sopophorous bean inside could take effect.

The exact time depended on the thickness of the bean slices.

Even though Hermione was ahead in the process now, it didn’t mean she would finish first.

The brewing required a long waiting period, unless Snape’s modified method for handling the sopophorous bean truly worked.

“The previous owner of this book said that using the side of a silver dagger to crush the bean releases juice better than cutting,” said Harry, pointing to the small handwritten note in the book’s margin. “I’m not sure…”

He crushed his bean with the flat side of the dagger. To his astonishment, it immediately exuded so much juice he was amazed the shriveled bean could have held it all.

Sure enough, the changes in the textbook were useful. This textbook was indeed left by Snape.

Hastily scooping it all into the cauldron Harry saw, to his surprise, that the potion immediately turned exactly the shade of lilac described by the textbook.

At this point, the liquid in Hermione’s cauldron was still that deep purple.

Harry, who was originally the slowest, became the fastest because of this change.

“Oh my, this is…” Harry’s eyes widened, and his annoyance with the previous owner vanished on the spot.

The sudden change made him a little excited, as if he had suddenly won the grand prize.

“Keep it down! You don’t want the whole class to figure this out, do you? Save the excitement for after class,” said Evan, gesturing for Harry to lower his voice. Now that the book’s modifications had been proven effective, Evan decided to follow its advice as well.

Although he had already put the cut sopophorous bean into his cauldron and the potion inside had begun to turn deep purple, it wasn’t too late for a slight adjustment. A little juice from the bean might salvage it.

Evan crushed a sopophorous bean and carefully added the juice in. He worked slowly, keeping a close eye on the changes in the potion. When the color of the potion began to change, he stopped and waited for the slices already in the cauldron to take effect.

Meanwhile, Harry had squinted at the next line of instructions. According to the book, he had to stir counterclockwise until the potion turned clear as water. According to the addition the previous owner had made, however, he ought to add a clockwise stir after every seventh counterclockwise stir…

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