"My dad's best friend... is coming to see me?" Harry sounded hesitant, or perhaps simply unable to believe it.
"It's possible." Tris certainly couldn't tell him that Sirius must be desperate to see him at the earliest opportunity, so he kept it vague. "But getting to see you might not be that easy. You know Hogwarts is a boarding school."
Harry nodded, though his gaze remained somewhat distant.
He seemed to be looking forward, just a little, to meeting this friend of his father's.
Harry didn't get a visit from Sirius right away. What he got instead was a scolding from his professors.
Of course, he wasn't the only one being scolded. Nearly every first-year had been thoroughly chewed out.
The reason was simple: their essays were truly awful.
The more good-natured professors, such as Professor Flitwick and Professor Sprout, put it this way: most of the essays this time weren't very good, and the students needed to reorganize their information and introduce some fresh approaches.
Those who were less polite, such as Professor McGonagall, stated bluntly that the vast majority of the essays were utterly unreadable. She seriously wondered whether this year's students had problems with literacy. Otherwise, how could they do such a dreadful job of writing a simple essay summarizing information from their textbooks?
Professor McGonagall's words were harsh enough, but compared with a certain someone, she was still being far too polite.
That someone was, of course, Snape!
When Snape swept an entire stack of parchment onto the classroom floor, nearly every young witch and wizard fell into terrified silence.
Ron even ducked his head involuntarily.
"Unbelievable. Students I have taught have actually handed me this pile of rubbish." Snape's vicious tongue had never known the meaning of restraint. He sprayed venom indiscriminately.
"If your brains contained anything slightly thicker than paste, you would know that what you have written amounts to copying, not essays.
"What is this? Does Hogwarts need to open a nursery as well? Must we teach you reading and writing from scratch? Rewrite them. Everyone except Tris Weasley will rewrite their essays!"
Well, nearly every professor had said some version of Snape's final remark.
Almost every professor who had assigned an essay told the other students to rewrite it, but made an exception for Tris.
As soon as potions class ended, Harry and Ron, their faces dark as thunder, grabbed Tris from either side.
"Tris, explain yourself. What's going on? That's the fourth professor who's made us rewrite our essays, and you're the only one who doesn't have to!" Ron practically spoke through gritted teeth.
"Even the Ravenclaws had their essays sent back." Harry glared with his emerald-green eyes. Those eyes, usually described as resembling emeralds, now looked like those of a wolf that had gone hungry for three days and just spotted a lamb.
As far as they were concerned, every Ravenclaw was a top student.
Whether it was their performance in class or the occasional homework discussion they overheard, Harry and Ron, neither of whom was particularly fond of studying, had always thought the Ravenclaws were the sort who could handle any assignment with ease.
Yet in the classes they shared with Ravenclaw, they had clearly heard the professors reject most of their assignments too.
Of course, that already demonstrated how capable the Ravenclaws were, because Gryffindor had been wiped out completely. Even Hermione's work had been judged barely readable, and not really an essay.
"Hey, hey, hey! What are you two doing?" Held between them, Tris was rather speechless.
"You have to tell us your secret to writing essays, or else... heh-heh!" As Ron spoke, his wicked little hand was already reaching toward Tris's waist.
"No, don't!" Tris hastily begged for mercy. He was ticklish. "It's not some big deal. You just want to know how to write essays, right? I'll tell you!"
To his surprise, the moment he said that, nearly ten people crowded around.
Some were Gryffindors, and some were Slytherins.
Well, perhaps because term had only started a week ago, and Draco had spent most of that week in detention, he hadn't had any further clashes with Harry and the others.
Relations between Gryffindor and Slytherin weren't good, but they weren't yet as terrible as Tris remembered them being in the films.
Now that they had heard something interesting, they all gathered around, gazing eagerly at Tris and waiting for him to share his secret.
Tris was genuinely at a loss for words.
"Hey, let go of me first. I've already agreed to tell you. This looks ridiculous, doesn't it? It's not as though I'm going to run away," Tris said.
"Fine, we'll let you go, but don't you dare run. If we catch you again, we'll tickle you until you can't stand it," Ron threatened.
Tris really wanted to say that their little legs could never catch him.
But this didn't seem like the time to argue about that, so he immediately nodded. "Fine, fine."
Harry and Ron released Tris, though they stayed close enough to grab him again at any moment. The other students from the two houses also surrounded him, leaving him no chance to escape.
Tris was utterly speechless.
He cleared his throat softly, then began, "Actually, essays really aren't as difficult as you think. You just need to distinguish an essay from a personal response. In other words, you need some relatively independent ideas and thoughts of your own."
"But we've only had a week of lessons. We haven't even built up a framework of knowledge yet. How can we have ideas of our own?" Hermione asked.
Only then did Tris notice that this future academic superstar was there too. She was watching him with an inquisitive, appraising gaze, and a faintly unconvinced expression.
Clearly, losing to Tris on their very first class assignment still rankled with Hermione.
Hermione had been competitive since childhood. During her six years of primary school, the number of times she had come second, whether in a major exam or a little quiz, could be counted on one hand.
First, first, always first.
After coming to Hogwarts, her enthusiasm for studying magic, a subject that fascinated her, had soared to a hundred and twenty percent.
She had thought that even if she couldn't take first place by a huge margin the way she had in primary school-after all, many children from wizarding families had a clear head start over her, such as Tris-
She should at least have no trouble placing among the top students.
Instead, every professor had approved Tris's essays, while hers, though Professor Flitwick and Professor Sprout had said they were better than everyone else's, had still been judged unsatisfactory.
Unsatisfactory homework!
Hermione hadn't experienced that in years!
And now it had actually happened!
Hermione found this utterly unacceptable. She had to understand the gap between herself and Tris. Unfortunately, the professors had returned their unsatisfactory assignments and told them to revise or rewrite them.
Tris's satisfactory essays, however, had been kept.
She couldn't even look at them to see the difference.
On her own, she probably wouldn't have cornered Tris like this, but if her classmates organized it, she didn't mind joining in.
Hearing Hermione's question and seeing her doubtful gaze, Tris first nodded in agreement. "Hermione is right. We've only just started lessons and haven't built up a framework of knowledge. Coming up with profound, original ideas is indeed difficult.
"But you need to understand that we're not being asked to pioneer new paths for the wizarding world or the system of magic. That's the professors' job.
"All we need to do is show the professors that we've done some thinking of our own while studying. Whether someone else has already thought along those lines has nothing to do with us."
At that moment, Tris felt rather grateful that the wizarding world had neither CNKI nor Zhai Sheng.
Oh, even the Zhai Sheng of the ordinary world hadn't made his earth-shattering remarks yet at this point...
Of course, it wouldn't matter even if he had. Surely first-year students' homework essays wouldn't need plagiarism checking?
That would be absurd.
Among those gathered around, Hermione looked thoughtful, while Sally, Daphne, and Sophie, who had relatively good grades, also seemed to be beginning to understand. But the vast majority, such as Harry and Ron, or Seamus and Theodore, indicated that they hadn't understood a thing.
"Can you explain it more clearly?" As his own brother, Ron saw no need to be polite and simply voiced everyone's thoughts.
"All right, all right." Seeing Ron and Harry looking ready to pounce again, Tris hastily raised his hands in surrender. "I'll tell you how I write my essays."
Everyone immediately pricked up their ears, Hermione included.
Tris thought for a moment, then said, "Let me give you an example. The essay our head of house assigned last week was about selecting ingredients for the Boil-Cure Potion, right?"
Everyone nodded.
Tris continued, "Then the first thing we should do isn't find the relevant passages in the textbook, copy them out, and add a little of our own understanding. Hmm, I'm guessing quite a few of you did that?"
Several students who performed fairly well in class nodded, but more shook their heads.
"I just copied it straight out," Ron said without a hint of shame. "What understanding could I possibly have? Those snakes and horned slugs and things-I didn't even know what they were before the lesson."
You, a slug swallower, actually claim you don't know what a slug is? Seriously? Seriously!
Tris suppressed the urge to make that remark and looked at Ron speechlessly. "Ron, could you stop sounding so proud of your ignorance and laziness?
"You didn't know, but isn't it explained in A Brief Introduction to Processing Basic Potion Ingredients in the library? I remember several notes in our potions textbook, Magical Drafts and Potions, citing that book as their source."
"I didn't really read the notes," Ron said, still utterly unashamed.
"Fine. Remember to read them from now on." Tris wasn't going to keep arguing with Ron about this. It would get him nowhere. He simply continued,
"There are actually plenty of hefty books like that, such as Stellar Cycles and Potion Transformations, Moonlight and Potions, and Potion Ingredients and Their Origins. Even Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has quite a lot to say about potion ingredients.
"But because their focus differs, there are quite a few differences in what these books say. What we need to do is find the relevant passages in them, copy them out, then analyze their similarities, their differences, and how the authors' views differ.
"Then offer our own opinions and conjectures on the subject..."
"But could our conjectures be wrong?" Daphne asked with a frown.
"They probably will be." Tris nodded. "But that's how research works. You always have to go through the process of conjecture, thought, verification, and falsification.
"Geniuses like Dumbledore, who can come up with twelve uses for dragon blood in one go, are rare, after all. Most ordinary people like us still need to start with basic conjectures and work our way forward little by little.
"If we do that, our essays will probably still be worthless. But at least they'll be genuine essays."
The young witches and wizards nodded thoughtfully. This time, all of them did.
Tris breathed a sigh of relief and once again gave thanks that the wizarding world had no Zhai Sheng and no plagiarism checking...