Lockhart didn’t find Hagrid.
He had likely already headed to Hogsmeade Station, on the border between the school and the village, to await the arrival of the students.
However, after leaving Hagrid’s gamekeeper hut, Lockhart ran into the Herbology master, Professor Pomona Sprout.
Professor Sprout was currently moving some magical plants that had just finished sunbathing from the stone area beside the Black Lake into a greenhouse.
The plants looked like chubby little babies, their roots dangling in clay pots.
Lockhart hurried forward to help.
“Oh, thank you so much.” Professor Sprout had more gray hair than Lockhart remembered; she looked much older.
“Don’t mention it.
As the student you awarded the most points to back in the day, I thought I should try to be a bit more helpful,” Lockhart said with a radiant smile.
Professor Sprout blinked, unsure if that was actually true.
She did recall that Lockhart had been a rather hyperactive child.
In his desperate bid to earn House points and stand in the spotlight, he had supposedly memorized the entire textbook, always waving his hand frantically in class to answer questions, racking up reward points from many of the professors.
Memorizing the book was, of course, a good thing, and the professors hadn’t been stingy with points, but back then, Lockhart hadn’t managed to sustain that level of effort once he’d had his moment of glory.
Professor Sprout looked at Lockhart with a sentimental, kindly expression.
“Yes, you were a very bright boy back then.
But you’ve grown up now, and you’ve come back to Hogwarts as a professor.
I hope you can keep up that excellence.” Oh.
Lockhart felt a flicker of emotion.
Really.
Since he had arrived at the school, despite his best efforts to meet everyone with a beaming face, he hadn’t received a single ounce of genuine, proactive goodwill.
“Professor Sprout…” Lockhart’s smile dimmed, becoming more subdued.
“Thank you.” After that, Lockhart didn’t bring up the self-serving plan of writing a book.
He simply helped Professor Sprout tidy up the greenhouse in silence, preparing materials for the upcoming semester.
The most peculiar items were the “fat baby” plants that had been sunbathing.
Back inside the greenhouse, they seemed to lose their moisture, shriveling up and turning into gnarled, monster-like shapes.
These were Mandrakes.
They were a crucial component for many antidotes and could even be used as a powerful restorative.
In the wizarding world, they were exceptionally expensive and rare.
Usually, what one found on the market was gathered in the wild.
It was a testament to Professor Sprout’s skill that she could cultivate such rare and dangerous plants in such large quantities.
The scream of an adult Mandrake sounded like an infant’s cry and was lethal to anyone who heard it.
Even the seedlings were extremely dangerous, capable of causing a coma that lasted at least several hours.
And that was just for one plant.
Here, there were over a hundred of them.
The overlapping sound of them all screaming together was terrifying.
“We need to hurry and get them back into the soil before they wake up.
To be safe, we must wear earmuffs.
Oh, where are the earmuffs?” Professor Sprout stood up and looked around the cluttered greenhouse, then suddenly realized something and patted her head.
“Oh, blast!
My memory.
I must have left them.
Wait here for me.” She walked a few steps, then paused.
“Or if you have other things to do, feel free to leave.
I can handle this myself.” Lockhart smiled and shook his head.
“No, no.
I’ll wait for you.” “You are such a dear, Lockhart.
A good boy.” Professor Sprout sighed and hurried off.
After she left, Lockhart obeyed the rules and didn’t touch anything.
In fact, he wouldn’t have dared to.
Professor Sprout’s greenhouse was arguably more dangerous than the Forbidden Forest.
It contained plants whose trade was strictly prohibited by the Ministry of Magic, many of which were lethal.
For instance, in the corner sat a massive, clawing vine called a Venomous Tentacula.
It secreted highly toxic sap and used its tentacles to grab living things, injecting them with a lethal poison before dragging the carcass to its main stem to gnaw on it with sharp teeth.
Lockhart had no desire to test how terrifying that thing was, even though his memories clearly told him that a single leaf was worth 10 Galleons.
In his previous life, while reading online fiction, many people would joke that Hagrid was the “hidden billionaire” of Hogwarts, but in truth, any professor had the skill to easily earn more money than an average wizard could save in a lifetime.
He crouched quietly in front of the hundred-plus Mandrake seedlings, and suddenly, he had the illusion that his frantic post-transmigration life had finally calmed down.
Staring at the dust motes dancing in the afternoon sunlight streaming through a hole in the roof, his thoughts seemed to drift along with them.
He was actually quite grateful for this transmigration.
Not because of the fame or wealth the original Lockhart had accumulated, but because he finally felt the vibrancy of life again.
He didn’t want to chew on the memories of his past life; he had spent the last five years of it bedridden in a hospital, unable to move.
Anyone who had experienced that would love the vitality of life as much as he did.
Just…
it was almost too vibrant.
He frowned slightly, feeling the memories in his brain churning and boiling.
As he sorted and pieced them together, the emotions, thoughts, and values contained within them were also being woven together, as if they were constructing a new personality from scratch.
And there were over a dozen of them.
How to solve this?
Lockhart thought of Dumbledore’s Pensieve.
Legend had it that one could extract memories and place them inside.
That might be a solution.
Of course, he couldn’t count on borrowing Dumbledore’s.
He would have to use his existing connections to ask around where one might acquire such an artifact; they weren’t exactly rare.
The only issue was that he relied heavily on these memories right now, and removing them would increase the risk of his secret being exposed.
Take it slow.
Don’t rush.
He told himself.
Those memories couldn’t build a real soul—they were just overly vivid recollections.
At most, they were hindering his ability to cast magic.
That was all.
Professor Sprout was gone a little longer than expected.
Lockhart watched the beam of light hitting the floor shift bit by bit.
Then…
It landed on the roots of several Mandrake seedlings.
The light acted like a switch, waking the withered, baby-like roots.
They flailed their root-limbs and began to shriek.
“Aaaaaah—!” Hiss.
Lockhart only had time to gasp before his head began to thrum with a dull buzz.
Then, he watched as the cries of those few plants seemed to wake all the others.
Over a hundred of them began to scream in unison, a sound like a chorus of wailing infants.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH—!” Lockhart clutched his head in agony and dropped to his knees, feeling a horrific tearing sensation scratching at his mind—a hundred layers of pain superimposed on one another.
It felt as if his soul were being shredded.
Fortunately, he didn’t faint.
Unfortunately, the chaotic memories in his head were being churned into a thick soup by the sound; countless voices from his memories were screaming and clashing in his brain.
Think!
I need to think of a solution!
Lockhart quickly found an answer.
Yes, his memories contained a wealth of knowledge, enough to even provide a way to deal with Mandrakes—especially these baby seedlings.
As everyone knew, when a baby cried incessantly, there were only two possibilities: they had soiled their diaper, or they were hungry.
These “babies” clearly hadn’t soiled themselves.
They were hungry.
The wisdom brought to him by a powerful witch who had lived in the jungle was simple: feed the Mandrake seedlings, preferably something nutritious.
The most rustic, “down-to-earth” method was to sprinkle a bit of urine into the gaping, wailing mouths of the seedlings.
Professionals called it fertilizing.
See?
Simple.
But Lockhart could guarantee that most wizards in the world would never know this secret.
He struggled to climb to his feet, fighting through the agony in his mind, and tremblingly unbuckled his belt.
…
“Merlin’s beard!” Professor Sprout, who had been listening to Professor Snape gripe about how annoying Lockhart was, turned pale with shock.
She spun around toward the greenhouse in the distance, where the shrieking of Mandrakes could be heard.
“It’s all my fault!
I shouldn’t have delayed…” She whipped out her wand and sprinted toward the stairs.
“That boy Lockhart is still inside!” Professor Snape frowned, hesitating for a second, before drawing his own wand and rushing after her.
He was much faster than the aging Professor Sprout—he knew the Flying Spell.
The Dark Lord had taught it to him; he was one of the only two people in the wizarding world who could perform it.
He leaped from the corridor, flew to the ground, and sprinted toward the greenhouse.
However, a miraculous thing happened.
The chorus of wailing shrieks vanished, one by one.
Before they even reached the greenhouse, the sound had ceased entirely.
Did Lockhart kill all of Professor Sprout’s precious Mandrakes?
Snape couldn’t help but guess maliciously.
He slowed his pace, waiting for Professor Sprout to catch up, and then they walked inside together, both wearing expressions of suspicion and alarm.
Professor Sprout cared about the Mandrakes, but she cared about Lockhart’s safety even more—she didn’t have time to consider Snape’s dark theories.
She charged into the greenhouse, wand held high, eyes scanning the scene to find Lockhart and administer emergency aid.
Instead, she saw Lockhart standing there, calmly spraying her prize-winning Mandrake seedlings with a dragon-dung nutrient solution.
“You…” “You’re alright?” Lockhart turned, looked at them, and grinned, flashing his perfectly charming, signature smile.
“Of course.
That was nothing I couldn’t handle.”