In Horace Slughorn's murky eyes, a glint of determination flickered intensely.
He slowly put away the invitation that Hermione had ignored, his plump fingers lightly stroking the edge of his ornate wizarding robes.
A collector's patience can sometimes brew a person's heart more effectively than the finest Potion.
The next day.
The Hogwarts Dungeon was always so cold and damp.
However, the first Potion Class of the new semester seemed somewhat heated due to Professor Slughorn's excessive enthusiasm.
Eerie blue flames burned beneath dozens of cauldrons, the air interlaced with the scent of crushed herbs and ground minerals; countless strange odors mixed and fermented, permeating every inch of the space.
Slughorn stood in the center of the classroom like a mountain of flesh.
He dramatically pointed to three cauldrons on the podium, each filled with a different concoction.
He cleared his throat and began his performative opening remarks.
"Veritaserum, Polyjuice Potion... and this bottle,"
He triumphantly held up a small glass vial, the golden liquid inside sloshing violently with his movements, as if it had captured a handful of molten sunlight.
"Oh, ladies and gentlemen, look! This is today's grand prize! Felix Felicis!"
As soon as he finished speaking, a chorus of gasps erupted in the classroom, and some students even stood up from their seats.
Everyone craned their necks, looking at the bottle of liquid with a near-greedy longing.
It shimmered with an incomparably seductive luster under the candlelight.
"That's right! Just one tiny sip will make everything go your way for the next twelve hours!"
Slughorn's voice was filled with a beguiling magic, "And this bottle of Felix Felicis will be awarded as a prize to the student who can brew the most perfect 'Draught of Living Death' today!"
Hermione's eyes instantly lit up. She subconsciously straightened her back, her fingertips lightly tracing the pages of her well-worn copy of advanced potion-making.
Her breathing became focused; this was the pride of a top student.
On the other side, Harry and Ron looked at each other, their faces written with embarrassment. They hadn't bought the book at all.
"It's alright, boys!" Slughorn waved his hand generously, "Go look in that storage cupboard; there should be some spare school textbooks there. They're a bit old, but better than nothing."
Harry and Ron felt as if they had been granted a grand reprieve, immediately heading to the dusty wooden cabinet in the corner of the classroom and rummaging through it in a flurry.
Ron pulled out a relatively clean one at random.
Harry's fingers, however, brushed against a textbook with yellowed pages and a cover that was nearly falling apart.
The moment he picked up that book.
Lia, who had been quietly napping by Hermione's bag with only her small head showing, gave a very slight twitch of her snow-white nose.
A familiar, strange scent.
An indescribably complex odor wafted from the open storage cupboard, like an invisible serpent slithering deep into her sense of smell.
In that scent, there was the smell of dust settled in old paper over long periods of time;
The faint botanical scent of various long-dried inks;
And the nervous smell of sweat and anxiety mixed from the touch of countless students over decades.
But at the very bottom of these odors, there lurked a very faint, yet extremely sharp and unique soul-aura.
With the Eye of Truth passively activated, in Lia's vision, a layer of grey-black magical resonance hung over that tattered book.
That aura didn't resemble any substance; it was more like the scent of a thought.
The thought of a brilliant person who was misunderstood by the world because they were too lonely.
It had slowly soured over the long years, like a lemon forgotten in a dark corner, gradually rotting.
It was Snape's scent!
"Alright, children, let's begin!" Slughorn announced enthusiastically.
Hermione immediately turned her attention back to her cauldron.
She strictly followed every step in the textbook, precisely weighing the Sopophorous Beans and carefully crushing them with the side of her silver dagger.
Lia watched quietly.
She saw Hermione's stable and orderly magic slowly pouring into the cauldron, resonating gently with the various medicinal ingredients.
The comforting scent unique to Hermione, a mix of bookishness and a faint fragrance, diffused outward. Lia took a deep breath beside her, intoxicated.
Lia's hands made a show of fiddling with some tools, pretending to be a "helper" for the good student.
But on the other side, Harry's style was entirely different.
He wasn't looking at the main text of the textbook at all. His gaze was locked onto the annotations written in scrawled ink on the edges of those old pages.
"Crush the beans with the flat of the blade to squeeze out more juice..."
"After stirring counter-clockwise seven times, add a drop of Peppermint oil to neutralize the bitterness..."
"Only an idiot stirs clockwise ten times! It should be thirteen! The person who wrote this book is worse than a Troll!"
He was completely immersed in those notes, his movements fast and decisive, carrying a blind confidence as if an invisible voice were sternly directing him from behind.
In Hermione's cauldron, the Potion was giving off pale purple steam; everything was as perfect as the textbook described.
But Harry's cauldron, at a certain moment, eerily turned into a deeper pale purple, like blackcurrant juice.
Hermione's brow furrowed.
She noticed Harry's abnormality, but with time pressing, she could only focus more on her own cauldron, striving for perfection.
The bell for the end of class rang. Slughorn walked down from the podium contentedly and began checking the students' results one by one.
"Oh... not bad, Mr. Weasley, the color is a bit dark, but it's already very good..."
"Miss Granger! Ah! Textbook perfection! Every step is beyond reproach! Very excellent!"
Slughorn praised her unsparingly, and a reserved smile finally bloomed at the corners of Hermione's lips.
Then, he walked to Harry's cauldron.
He leaned in close, took a deep sniff, and the expression on his face froze instantly, followed by an explosion of near-ecstatic amazement.
"merlins beard! This... this is too perfect! I've never seen a student do so well on their first try! The color, the consistency, the scent... impeccable! Harry! My boy! You're simply a natural Potion master!"
He excitedly announced on the spot: "The Felix Felicis! It's yours!"
Amidst the mixed looks of envy and amazement from his classmates, Harry took the vial of golden liquid luck from Slughorn, his face beaming with a joy he hadn't even anticipated.
The curve of Hermione's lips stiffened.
A faint displeasure surged in her heart, but more than that, it was the anger and unease of a top student's instinct seeing logic being brutally trampled upon.
This wasn't right.
This was absolutely not right.
After class, she quickly caught up with Harry.
"Harry, let me see your book."
Harry, however, clutched the tattered book tightly to his chest as if guarding a rare treasure, looking at her warily.
His eyes held a childish showiness and defensiveness, along with a bit of irrepressible pride.
"What for? This is my secret weapon." His tail was practically wagging in the air.
"Alright, then can I see your secret weapon?"
Hermione took a deep breath, trying to make her voice sound calm.
"I just want to see how it differs from the textbook. This is very important for my Potion research; it concerns my... understanding of Potions."
"Fine, but you have to give it back to me tomorrow night."
Harry didn't really mind; it was just a book, and he believed Hermione wouldn't keep it from him.
The victory of the Felix Felicis made him somewhat lightheadedly generous, completely failing to notice the turmoil deep within Hermione.
Back in the common room, Lia quietly jumped onto Hermione's lap, snuggling beside her.
Hermione spread the old textbook open on the table, each yellowed page carrying the secrets of years gone by.
Lia's cat paw lightly tapped on those scrawled annotations, her sky-blue eyes flashing with a cat's insight and cunning.
She recalled carefully, then leaned closer to the pages to sniff a few more times before nodding with certainty.
"The scent is correct; this is Snape's book."
Hearing this, Hermione's tense body relaxed, and with a mix of exhaustion and complex emotions, she slumped into her chair in relief.
If she lost to Professor Snape in Potions...
Even for her.
She couldn't muster even a bit of a temper.
After all, that was Snape—someone she might dislike immensely,
But whose talent and ability as a Potion master she could not deny.
[Offering a huge reward for a Cat-girl who can transform!]
[My Tangyuan always sleeps with me when I'm home.]
[The only downside is that she won't transform.]
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