"Well, you've got your work cut out for you," Neville said. "Harry and I have been writing every day, and we still haven't finished our History of Magic and Potions essays. Right now, we're working on the Potions one."
"Yeah, a two-foot-long essay," Harry sighed, glancing at his parchment where he'd already stretched his letters as large as possible. "I have no idea how to fill it up."
Hearing their complaints, Leonard turned to Hermione. "What about you, Hermione? Finished your essays?"
Hermione lifted her head a little proudly at his question.
"She finished ages ago," Harry muttered. "And every single one of her papers is crammed onto a sheet of parchment in writing so tiny it looks like flies."
"You didn't share your approach with them?" Leonard asked, giving Hermione a sidelong glance before looking at the sulking Harry.
"I don't have a special approach. I just organized my notes and wrote the paper. It was simple," Hermione said, trying hard not to let her lips curl upward, lest it look like she was bragging.
"That's actually a good method," Leonard nodded, casually picking up a book from the table.
An Anthology of Eighteenth-Century Charms.
"I picked that one for Harry and Neville. It's perfect for the Charms essay—about the Lumos Charm," Hermione said when she noticed the book in his hands. "Page seventy-nine."
Seems Hermione was looking after the Chosen One quite well. Really thoughtful of her. If Harry still couldn't write the essay with that, well... it wasn't Hermione's fault.
Leonard flipped to page seventy-nine and found a detailed section on the Lumos Charm.
With this much material, how could it possibly be difficult to write?
He glanced at the densely packed text and picked up his quill.
"Even with references, it's still hard to write," Harry sighed. "Right, Leonard...?"
But his words trailed off as he stared. Leonard's quill was flying across the parchment, his expression calm and steady.
Essays could be written that fast? Didn't it take thought?
Leonard, however, had no such concerns. With references right in front of him, what was there to think about?
Hogwarts professors didn't check for plagiarism anyway. As long as your essay didn't look exactly like someone else's, it was fine.
In his previous life, Leonard had never gone to university, but he had worked part-time writing papers for others. He had plenty of experience in turning simple, easy-to-understand words into sentences so convoluted no one could make sense of them.
And for essays with little technical depth like this, it was even easier. Just copy a few keywords from the book, expand on them, sprinkle in some "personal reflections," and the essay practically wrote itself.
Ten minutes later, Leonard set down his quill. Under the stunned stares of the three others, he held up a freshly written essay and left it to dry.
"Leon… Leonard, are you done?" Harry asked uncertainly.
"Yeah, done. The Charms essay's finished." Leonard checked that the ink on the parchment had dried, set it aside, and picked up another sheet.
"Next up is Defense Against the Dark Arts." He looked at the three of them. "By the way, what do you think of that professor?"
"Boring. Completely unoriginal. All he does is read straight from the textbook," Hermione complained. "By the end of class, I don't feel like I've learned anything—it's no different from reading the book myself. Dull and flavorless."
Leonard picked up a book on magical creatures and flipped to the page on gnomes.
How to subdue gnomes—that had been their very first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, and also their homework.
"Gnomes… my gran usually deals with them by grabbing them by the neck and booting them away," Neville said after glancing at the illustration.
"They don't look like dangerous creatures, so none of us really know what to write about handling them. Just saying 'kick them away' seems too weird," Harry added.
"Then save the methods for the end. Start with their origins, features, habits, and then wrap it up by mentioning which spells work best for driving them off."
Leonard spoke while his quill scratched rapidly across the parchment, leaving the others staring blankly. "That's all there is to it. Don't overthink. Professors don't expect professional essays, they just want us to reinforce what we've learned. Quirrell, of course, doesn't think that far ahead—he hardly puts any effort into teaching at all."
"Next is History of Magic. The class is boring, sure, but that makes it the easiest subject for essays. You don't even need to think—just rephrase the textbook in your own words."
Another ten minutes later, Leonard set aside a completed History of Magic essay.
Harry and Neville sat numbly, while Hermione frowned, wondering if there was some hidden flaw in Leonard's method.
But she couldn't figure it out. She couldn't match his speed, and she had no idea what kind of knowledge it took to pull it off.
An hour later, Leonard had finished every assignment. He exhaled deeply, set down his quill, and flexed his stiff wrist.
"I'm done," he said.
Harry and Neville glanced at the neat stack of freshly written papers in front of him, then at their own parchment with oversized, messy writing. Their faces went blank.
Wow… he's too good.
"Don't you think this is a little too perfunctory?" Hermione asked. "What if the professors mind?"
"That depends on the professor. Professor Cuthbert in History of Magic doesn't care. Professor Flitwick in Charms cares more about how you cast spells. And Quirrell? He doesn't even care about his own subject…"
…
Leonard rattled off each professor's quirks as if listing from memory.
"The only one worth worrying about is Snape," Leonard added with a cold laugh. "Not because he cares about my work, but because he'll pick on me if he feels like it."
Hermione fell silent at that. She'd heard the story herself—Snape once docking Hufflepuff seventy-five points in a single lesson.
It was the kind of behavior hard to believe of any mature professor, and even Hermione, who usually respected teachers to a fault, couldn't make sense of it.
"Well, my work's done." Leonard gathered up his parchment. "I'll be going."
"Not staying to read a bit longer?" Hermione asked. "This book of famous figures is really fascinating."
She patted the tome in front of her, so thick it looked like it could crush someone flat.
Leonard cast it a glance. The words "Philosopher's Stone… Nicolas Flamel" were enough to make him lose interest instantly.
"No, I've got other things to do," he said. "See you later."
He stood, heading for the door, but his eyes flicked toward a corner of the library.
There stood a heavy door with a massive lock. Through it, one could glimpse shelves inside, each book bound in oversized iron chains.
The Restricted Section, home to countless dangerous tomes.
But Leonard wasn't interested in the books themselves.
In his mind, the compass needle pointing to the next relic aimed directly at that door.
The next relic lay within the library's Restricted Section.
...
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