What had happened?
When Su Er arrived at the Great Hall to eat, he found every little lion at the Gryffindor table shrouded in gloom, as though a dark cloud hung over them.
He heard a certain Draco at the Slytherin table sneering, "Potter should just go back to his Muggle home."
Then he looked at the four differently colored hourglasses in front of the staff table.
Only a few scattered grains stubbornly remained in the Gryffindor House points hourglass.
There had been a hundred or two points yesterday. How had they all vanished today?
Back to square one overnight?
After a while, piecing together a certain Slytherin's loud proclamations and an account from Hufflepuff's resident know-it-all, Morn, Su Er got a rough picture of what had happened.
The famous Chosen One had led the charge in breaking school rules, playing Dummies with suits of armor in the corridors at midnight instead of sleeping, and even entering the Fourth-Floor Forbidden Corridor.
Peeves had teamed up with the caretaker, Filch, to catch the gang of "criminals" led by the Chosen One red-handed and march them to the Gryffindor Head of House's Office.
Professor McGonagall had flown into a rage. Showing no mercy or favoritism toward her own house, she had deducted every last one of Gryffindor's points.
Apparently, Professor Severus Snape had intended to expel the two boys as a warning to others.
"Give them a chance. They're still children." Professor Dumbledore had intervened to stop it.
At this point, Gryffindor had effectively been handed a death sentence in Hogwarts' annual House Cup competition.
Unless-a certain old bee forcibly turned things around.
As a Hufflepuff, Su Er ought to have been happy that Gryffindor had been eliminated early. At least Hufflepuff House would not have the honor of finishing dead last this year; third place was guaranteed.
But although he did not show it, Su Er was a little worried about Hermione.
Ever since she was little, the girl had been obsessed with points to an almost unhealthy degree. Although the whole incident had stemmed from Malfoy's taunts and Harry and Ron's impulsiveness, Neville and Hermione were actually the two most innocent people involved.
Knowing Hermione, Su Er was certain she would blame herself endlessly.
Strangely, though, he did not see any sign of Hermione on Friday or throughout the weekend.
Snape seemed to be in an excellent mood during that day's Potions Class. Even when Justin, who was paired with Su Er, accidentally knocked over a glass bottle of moonstone powder, Snape did not fly into a rage.
Surprised and apprehensive, the young wizards completed their assignment of learning to brew a Calming Draught.
It was a potion that calmed people's emotions, making it particularly suitable for stressed-out writers and office workers.
Su Er gave it another name-the post-nut clarity potion.
However, the quantities of its ingredients had to be precise down to the decimal place. Adding too much would turn it into a sleeping medicine, roughly equivalent to swallowing an entire bottle of sleeping pills, and send the drinker into an irreversible sleep.
Potions were truly fascinating. Any one of these recipes could create enormous value if introduced into Muggle society.
"It's still early... I'll wait and see." He added the potion to his planning sheet and marked it as undecided.
Compared with this basic potion, he was more interested in the Draught of Living Death. A purely sleep-inducing effect would appeal to a much larger market, and Su Er's adoptive father, Ellison, often suffered from work-related insomnia.
For two days running, Su Er sat in the library leafing through a copy of Refining Elementary Potions, yet never encountered the girl who might need comforting.
This was very unlike Hermione...
Just as he began to wonder whether the four of them had already boarded the train home, something changed.
Su Er finally spotted Hermione on Monday morning.
"Good morning, Hermione." Su Er patted the bushy-haired figure sitting at the Gryffindor table with her back to the doors.
"Good morning." Hermione actually seemed to be in a fairly good mood?
How strange. Had someone swapped Hermione out?
Curious, Su Er sat down at the Gryffindor table, drawing sideways glances from the little lions. After some tactful questioning, supplemented by Neville, who arrived shortly afterward, he could not help sighing.
The protagonist's luck really was atrocious. At the same time, he had to marvel at the plot's relentless momentum.
After parting ways with Su Er, Harry's group of four had encountered Peeves on the castle's fourth floor, drawing graffiti in a classroom. Having caught young wizards roaming around at night, Peeves had naturally started shouting at the top of his lungs, eager to stir up trouble.
"We could've made a deal with Peeves and slipped away, but Ron just had to smack him."
(P.S. Peeves was the only ghost in Hogwarts Castle who could touch physical objects.)
Peeves's retaliation soon drew Filch, the castle caretaker, who was out on patrol. To avoid being caught, the four had been forced to enter the Fourth-Floor Corridor on the Right.
"It was terrifying," Neville said, still looking shaken. "There was a dog bigger than a troll in there, and it had three heads."
Frightened by the Three-Headed Dog's roar, the four had turned and fled, stumbling in their panic into a corridor full of suits of armor. The unfortunate Neville had tripped over a piece of armor on the floor, setting off the clattering and crashing Su Er had heard outside his dormitory door.
They had been forced to scramble for their lives again.
Hermione did not know when she had become separated from Harry and Ron. With pursuers behind her, she had wisely chosen to take Neville back to the dormitory.
As a result, Harry and Ron had been marched to the office by Filch, while Hermione and Neville had luckily escaped disaster.
"I noticed that the Three-Headed Dog was guarding something. He was standing on a trapdoor, with a chain holding him in place," Hermione said. "What do you think it could be?"
Su Er had guessed what it was, but he could not reveal the answer without any grounds.
So-"It must be either very dangerous or very valuable," Su Er said.
"That's what I thought too. But I'm not curious about it. What matters is that I managed to cast Alohomora," Hermione said happily.
"Congratulations," Su Er said, not entirely sincerely. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the ashen-faced Chosen One, Harry, entering through the doors with his little sidekick, Ron.
It looked as though their punishment had been brutal.
According to Neville, there had been at least a hundred suits of armor in that corridor. Reassembling and polishing them without magic was an enormous undertaking.
Su Er clicked his tongue and shook his head, then said goodbye to Hermione and returned to the Hufflepuff table.
Hermione really did seem uninterested in what the Three-Headed Dog was guarding. All week, she kept dragging Su Er along to study the Switching Spell with her.
This was material young wizards would not learn until their fourth-year Transfiguration lessons.
What could he say? A top student was a top student.
However, first-year wizards did not have enough magic within them to sustain this more advanced spell. Here, the definition of the Switching Spell needed explaining: it was a branch of the Transfiguration Spell, as well as an advanced form of transforming an object itself.
This spell could turn a person into an animal, or transform an object into something entirely unrelated to it.
Su Er felt he might have found a way to turn a chair into something resembling a unicorn. He still remembered his promise to his younger sister, Angel, so he was extremely interested in the spell.
Professor McGonagall greatly appreciated their eagerness to learn and confirmed that Su Er's idea was sound. She patiently answered their questions about the Switching Spell.
"If you want to turn a chair into a horse, that's quite easy."
"But if you want to give the horse a horn on its head and make it move, that involves more advanced Transfiguration. For that, I suggest borrowing the 1981 issues of Transfiguration Today from the library. Headmaster Dumbledore published a paper in them that explains the deeper theory behind this magic in detail."
Professor McGonagall wrote out a reading list for them to borrow from the library, telling them they could come to her office with questions at any time.
Well, at least as a first-year, Su Er could not manage that yet. He could, however, try turning a chair into a horse.
Professor McGonagall advised him to choose an object similar in size to the intended result. Transforming between objects of equal size would greatly reduce both the magic required and the difficulty.
That week, Gryffindor had all their classes with Hufflepuff except Potions Class.
Hermione spent all day with Su Er, with Neville and Hannah tagging along.
Su Er and Hermione studied Transfiguration, while Neville and Hannah huddled together over a copy of How to Grow Herbs More Effectively.
Professor Sprout seemed particularly fond of Neville. He was usually assigned to tend the herbs in the greenhouses alongside Hannah under her supervision.
And so an entire week passed in engrossed study, until Hogwarts Castle welcomed Halloween in peace and quiet.
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