Sure enough, after Anthony turned the growth journal he had kept for Dittany into a paper and showed it to Professor Sprout, the Herbology professor was delighted.
She awarded Ravenclaw ten points on the spot!
The Ravenclaw students were so excited during that lesson.
All the tension they had been holding in for so long came pouring out at once.
They were supposed to be the House that represented wisdom, yet in class with Gryffindor, Hermione always managed to outshine them single-handedly.
In almost every lesson, the moment a professor asked a question, Hermione's hand shot up before even a second had passed. Ravenclaws were so annoyed that sometimes they took turns watching the professors closely. The instant one looked like they were about to ask a question, the Ravenclaws would raise their hands preemptively.
Their Head of House, Flitwick, was the worst of all!
He would be in the middle of teaching, then put on a show of looking as if he wanted a student to answer. Then he would abruptly change tack and answer the question himself, before cheerfully waving for the Ravenclaws to lower their raised hands.
If competing with Gryffindor was a duel of hand-raising speed,
then they truly had no way to deal with Slytherin.
More precisely, they had no way to deal with Glen Howard.
He never competed with them over who could raise a hand first. He always politely let them answer before him.
But once the professors had already accepted their answers, he would leisurely raise his hand and offer an answer impressive enough to make their eyes light up. Naturally, the points never went to Ravenclaw.
After going through that double whammy over and over, the Ravenclaws were practically numb. They could only count down on their fingers how many classes they had left with Hufflepuff.
But it had to be said: this outcome had somehow brought Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, whose relationship had been so-so to begin with, much closer.
Sometimes, they even visited each other to discuss topics they were both interested in, such as Herbology.
In a sense, that explained why the four Houses at Hogwarts had been so united a hundred years ago.
Headmaster Phineas Black had played a great part in that, successfully making every House see him as an equal source of outside pressure...
After Herbology class ended, Glen didn't hurry off.
When he brought a pot of blooming Dittany to Professor Sprout, she was so delighted that her rather worn hat nearly fell off.
"Oh! This is much faster than I expected!" She crouched down and carefully examined the Dittany before her.
"Dittany is at its most magically potent when it's in bloom, which is also when it's best for making potions." Professor Sprout ran her fingers over its leaves. "Supple, thick, glossy, and in good health. The petals are lovely and bright, too."
"Congratulations, Glen! You've grown your first Dittany that's fit for use."
"Thank you."
Professor Sprout nodded at the Dittany, which was growing beautifully on the table, then drew her wand and tapped it lightly.
"There, I've marked your work. That counts as your first Dittany submission."
"After this, since Dittany is a magical plant that's both male and female, once it's past its flowering stage and has been pollinated, it'll produce fruit. The fruit contains seeds that you can use to grow more..."
After explaining a few more Dittany-growing techniques, Professor Sprout changed the subject. "If you'd like, you can take it to your Potions teacher. I'm sure Professor Snape would be happy to teach you how to make a healing potion with it."
Then she said regretfully, "It's a shame you're not one of our Hufflepuffs. With your talent for Herbology, I think you'd make an excellent Herbologist one day, as long as you kept working hard."
As soon as the words left her mouth, Professor Sprout regretted them. She realized they weren't quite appropriate.
For a student, this wasn't just a difficult question to answer; it was practically a trap. There was no good way to respond, so she quickly added, "But the Sorting Hat must have had its reasons."
Glen didn't answer at once. After a moment's thought, he replied honestly, "But I'm still your student."
Professor Sprout paused in surprise, then smiled even more warmly.
"That's right. You are."
Perhaps because Glen had managed to grow a pot of Dittany fit for use so quickly, Professor Sprout kindly gave him some soil and fertilizer for his next planting before he left.
She also told him that if he needed anything, he could come to the greenhouses and take it whenever he liked.
The greenhouse she meant was Greenhouse One, where Hogwarts taught Herbology to younger students.
It mostly contained basic, low-risk magical plants, and the fertilizer there was ordinary, with no magical properties.
So Glen would still have to rely on his own knowledge of Herbology to speed up the Dittany's growth as much as possible.
That didn't mean Professor Sprout's help was useless, though—at least, he had all the soil he needed.
Otherwise, if he wanted to grow several pots at once, he'd have to make up soil suited to Dittany himself, which would be far too much trouble.
Back in the Slytherin Common Room, Glen picked through the Dittany and snipped off all but the leaves it needed to keep growing.
He wasn't mistreating it.
As Professor Sprout had said, when Dittany was flowering, its leaves were at their most magically potent.
Once it had been pollinated and was ready to bear fruit, it would consume a great deal of the magic in its leaves.
From the Dittany's perspective, this would give its seeds greater resistance and improve their chances of surviving in the wild... but this wasn't the wild, and they didn't need that kind of hardiness.
Wizards grew Dittany to extract its juice and mix it with Horklump Juice to brew a healing potion.
Sacrificing a more potent potion just so the Dittany could reproduce would be putting the cart before the horse.
What? You didn't know what Horklump Juice was?
That was a good question, actually.
Because it didn't matter. All you needed to know was that it came from Horklumps, magical creatures that grew in dark, damp places like caves and looked like pink mushrooms.
Objectively speaking, they were magical animals, and their mushroom-like appearance did make them well suited to catching small animals for food.
But mushrooms were also the standard shape of food, whether to wizards or ordinary people without magic.
They were the kind of thing you had to try cooking every which way, poisonous or not...
The juice extracted from them was called Horklump Juice, which was easy enough to remember.
But Glen couldn't go running off to all sorts of caves right now to find Horklumps and squeeze juice out of them.
Of course, if he were allowed into the Forbidden Forest, that wouldn't be impossible.
But as Professor Sprout had said, Professor Snape was his Potions teacher, and would probably be happy to provide his student with some ready-made Horklump Juice.
With that in mind, Glen stacked the Dittany leaves he'd trimmed into a neat pile and placed them in the wooden box he'd prepared earlier.
This would be a good Potions lesson—even if he'd already repeated its contents countless times.
Before you continue