“Morning, Hermione.” Mason sat on a bench in the Great Hall, dark circles under his eyes, slowly nibbling on a waffle.
He couldn’t help but inwardly complain about its sponge-like texture, wishing the house-elves would hurry up and figure out how to make peanut milk—he had tried asking for it with his wand in the kitchen two days ago.
The house-elves clearly hadn’t known how to prepare such a drink and had Disapparated right to him to ask, promising they would ‘replicate’ it perfectly within a week.
“It’s one in the afternoon, Mason, and you’re still eating breakfast?” Hermione looked at him suspiciously.
While reading for leisure in the common room this morning, she had heard a mind-boggling piece of news: Gryffindor’s House points were completely gone!
Keep in mind, school had only been in session for a week, a crucial time for building a foundation for the House Cup.
Gryffindor was basically sleeping at the starting line now, with virtually zero hope for the final sprint.
“Elaine’s snoring was too loud.
By the way, do you know that our House’s point hourglass is empty…” Mason dumped the blame on Elaine and started gossiping before Hermione could, trying to dispel her suspicions.
“Of course I do!
I was counting the rubies yesterday!
There were clearly seven or eight left, and if we worked hard next week we could catch up to Hufflepuff…
Just who did this?”
“Who knows?
It couldn’t possibly be that someone was caught wandering at night by the Headmaster, haha.”
Hermione caught a whiff of guilt in Mason’s tone, and the suspicion in her eyes deepened.
But seeing his utterly exhausted face and how hard he was finding it to swallow, she choked back her words.
She opened a book, sat down beside him, and quietly waited for him to finish eating.
“Why did they serve such a huge slab of butter with the waffle?”
“You can spread it on.” Hermione put her book down and mimed the motion with her hands, though her face showed a disgust similar to Mason’s.
“My dad loves eating it like that.”
“That’s way too greasy…
Where are we going next?”
Mason still remembered the one-foot essay Professor McGonagall had assigned.
He recalled the sheer disbelief on Miss Beaver’s face when he asked her for help, as if to say: *You can already run, and you’re asking me how to crawl?*
Occasionally playing the maggot is good for spine health.
“The library, of course.
It closes at eight tonight, so we don’t have much time.” Hermione stood up clutching her books, tilting her head slightly to signal for him to follow.
“It closes at eight?”
“As you command, Professor Granger!”
Mason was soundly whacked with a book three shields thick.
The library on the fifth floor of the castle was the greatest treasure trove in all of Hogwarts.
Supposedly, it held thousands of bookshelves, hundreds of narrow aisles, and a single librarian, Madam Irma Pince.
Only Mason, who had volunteered in a library in his past life, truly understood what a terrifying horror story that was.
Without a modern electronic management system, all book check-outs, returns, cataloging, filing, and reshelving rested on Madam Pince’s shoulders alone.
If not for magic, the librarian position would definitely have higher turnover than the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
Hermione had Mason save a spot while she brought out a prepared catalog to search through the stacks.
She wouldn’t claim to know all fifty bookshelves near the front entrance inside and out, but for the first twenty, she could pull out whatever book she wanted in a flash.
“The wizarding world’s prejudice against muggles is way over the top,” Hermione complained as Mason took a stack of books from her.
“The only thing I could find was a copy of *Children’s and Household Tales* from nearly two hundred years ago.”
“What’s that?” Mason flipped through the catalog, sounding uncertain.
“Grimms’ Fairy Tales?”
“Bingo~ And I suspect it’s probably an old antique first edition.”
Hermione carefully took the ancient book back from Mason, glared at him for flipping through the pages too roughly, and softly read aloud:
“Why don’t we start with Snow White?
Let me think…
what about discussing the relation between wicked witch archetypes like the ‘Queen’ and the medieval witch hunts?” Hermione pointed to the section on the first edition of Snow White and asked.
“That’s a pretty heavy topic…
There’s no way you can cover that on a one-foot scroll of parchment anyway, and what does that have to do with Transfiguration?” Mason shook his head, flipped a page, and let his eyes linger on words related to the magic mirror.
Hermione shook her head, explaining that behind many rumors of evil witches were stories of Transfiguration masters with terrible personalities tricking Muggles out of their money.
“Then—how about disproving [‘Cinderella’ and the ‘Pumpkin Coach’: Pure-bloods?
A Muggle’s Ridiculous Fantasy of Pure-blood Glory!]?”
“???” Mason snapped out of his thoughts, his face full of question marks.
“Don’t you think Cinderella sounds a lot like a witch?” Hermione rested her right cheek in her hand, looking at Mason and then at the stack of reference books.
Half of them recorded wizarding perspectives on the witch hunts, the other half were studies on various aspects of magic awakening in young wizards, plus two books Hermione couldn’t quite understand that she planned to read later for fun: *May the Blood Ever Remain Pure* and *In Search of the Obscurus*.
Mason felt that if they really went with Hermione’s line of thought, just listing the reference book titles on the parchment would fill a foot.
Professor McGonagall surely didn’t hold such high expectations for someone who had only taken a single Transfiguration class.
So Mason cautiously leaned over to Hermione’s left and nervously suggested:
“For instance, the magic mirror in the Queen’s hands—given the historical context when the story was written, could we recreate that mirror using Transfiguration?”
Mason felt a little embarrassed; after all, the materials Hermione had painstakingly gathered would mostly go to waste.
“I remember Professor McGonagall reminding me that academic journals on Transfiguration are mostly on the tenth row of shelves in the southeast corner.
And descriptions of Two-Way Mirrors are in the seventh compartment on the fourth row to the left.
Go fetch them.”
Once the direction was settled, Hermione’s mind sparked to life.
Together with Mason, she returned the previously borrowed books, and in the blink of an eye, she gathered an unknown number of research books related to mirrors.
The two leaned over the table, writing furiously.
“…The magic mirror is clearly filled with the whimsical fantasies ordinary people have about magic.
According to Mr.
Emerson’s 1807 paper published in *Transfiguration Today*, *Mirrors and Portraits?
The Feasibility of Turning a Mirror into a Wizard’s Second Soul*, if the villain of the story successfully copied her soul into the mirror, it would indeed be possible to achieve the full effects of the magic mirror mentioned earlier…”
“Why are you writing two?” Hermione incorporated her own Transfiguration practice insights into the paper, outlining several hypotheses on methods to create a magic mirror.
After writing four or five pages straight, she paused to stretch, only to see Mason starting a whole new topic.
“This one’s for Harry.
I’m only responsible for giving him inspiration.” Mason’s reading volume was less than Hermione’s, so he couldn’t write as effortlessly as she did.
Hermione nodded, then pointed to a passage about maternal love and filial piety in the book, saying to Mason, “Speaking of which, that poisoned apple that causes a permanent coma—that could probably be achieved through Potions, right?”
“Soak an apple in Draught of Living Death.” Mason stopped writing too; writing any more would mean making Harry pay him ghostwriter fees.
“The downside is that true love’s kiss won’t undo the effects of the Draught of Living Death.”
“Ordinary charms won’t work either.” Hermione began pondering the spells she knew; there seemed to be very few specifically designed to cleanse negative status effects from the human body.
In the wizarding world, such needs were mainly met by potions.
Mason remembered that execution methods in the MACUSA involved immersing wizards in an excessive amount of Draught of Living Death.
He wondered if his negative status transfer technique would work on Draught of Living Death.
“Not necessarily—” Mason decided to show off a little.
He glanced sideways at Hermione, his peerless intellect activating instantly.
“Professor Granger, would you be willing to help share some of my drowsiness?”
Expressionless, Hermione raised a book four shields thick.
“Sorry, Miss Hermione,” Mason said, making a begging gesture.
“Please, begin your performance,” she said.