Who let this Dementor into Hogwarts!

Chapter 578 Undercurrent
The class is over. Let Harry go back first, and then Cohen will have to negotiate with Dumbledore about the payment for the memories.

But in the end, Cohen decided to save the compensation he wanted for later.

“Because I haven’t decided what I want yet,” Cohen said. “And you haven’t decided what to give either, so let’s just owe you for now.”

“I already owe you so much,” Dumbledore said with a smile.

After leaving Dumbledore's office, Harry waited for Cohen downstairs as usual.

"Did you get anything good from Dumbledore?" Harry asked curiously.

“I haven’t decided what I want yet; I plan to ask for it later,” Cohen said. “After reading about Voldemort’s memories, how did you feel?”

“What if we can’t find his last Horcrux?” Harry asked anxiously.

“Voldemort’s Horcruxes are relatively easy to find.” Cohen patted Harry on the shoulder. “With you as the monitor, and considering he’s a collector with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, at least we have a clue.”

Compared to Helbo, Voldemort is weak in every way.

Helbo doesn't have OCD, so he might make Horcruxes into anything, "Horcruxes that can never be destroyed"...

Cohen felt that after dealing with Dumbledore's affairs, he might have to go to Greece, the place where Helbo had spent his life.

Maybe we can find some traces of Herbo there.
-
The day after class, Ron and Hermione, as the best gossip lovers, quickly got their hands on Voldemort's juicy gossip.

And every now and then they would speculate about the Horcruxes that the Undwelling Demon might be making.

“It could be another relic from the Gaunt family…” Hermione wondered.

“But all that’s left of the Gaunt family are the locket and the ring. The locket was eaten by Korn at Sirius’s house, and Dumbledore said the ring was destroyed too.” Harry shook his head.

“Or his wand; his wand must be very important to him too,” Ron guessed.

“Personal belongings? Great, that way he can be wiped out in one fell swoop,” Cohen said. “I feel like it’s more plausible that Harry is spying on Voldemort.”

“But before, at the Ministry of Magic…” Hermione said worriedly, recalling the incident last year when Harry was controlled by Voldemort at the Ministry of Magic.

“He doesn’t dare to clash with Harry’s soul again,” Cohen said. “Harry’s soul is like boiling water; I touched it once and got burned, and it took me half a month to recover.”

“Wait a minute…” Harry suddenly remembered something, “Cohen, didn’t you say something to me during the summer before we started school… ‘Bro, you smell so good’?”

"what happened?"

"You wanted to eat my soul back then?" Harry asked.

“Maybe,” Cohen turned his head away. “I was young then and couldn’t really control my appetite.”

"Or for some other reason?" Harry asked, squinting.

“What else could it be?” Cohen said.

Harry didn't ask any more questions; they were almost at Slughorn's Potions classroom.

But Cohen felt that Harry was about to realize that he himself was also a Horcrux of Voldemort.

“We have a lot to learn today.” Slughorn clapped his hands after the students were seated. “Gobarot’s Third Law… Can someone explain it to me—of course, Miss Granger!”

“Gobaloth’s Third Law states that the antidote for a mixture of poisons is greater than the sum of the antidotes for each of the individual ingredients,” Hermione jumped up and recited quickly.

"What total?" Ron leaned over to Cohen and asked in a low voice.

"What antidote?" Harry asked, peering over to Cohen from the other side. After realizing that Cohen was a more "generous" Potions Master than Hermione, the two immediately chose to sit on either side of him in every class.

Even though Harry has the Half-Blood Prince textbook, there are still some parts that he finds difficult to understand but the prince understands easily, which still give Harry a headache, because these parts usually don't have notes.

This is where Cohen comes in.

"It means that mixing multiple different poisons together will definitely produce new toxicities. At that point, the antidote you need to prepare will not just be the antidote for each individual poison," Cohen explained helplessly to the two heads.

“Oh.” Ron and Harry nodded in unison.

"...Now, if we accept that Gobalot's Third Law holds true, we need to use Spinka's Revealing Charm to correctly analyze the potion's ingredients. At this point, our primary goal is no longer simply to choose the antidote for each individual ingredient, but to find the additional ingredient, which can transform various unrelated ingredients into..."

"Turn into what?" Ron asked, his mouth slightly agape, looking as if he hadn't understood anything.

"Alchemy?" Harry asked, puzzled.

“I can’t be your external brain forever,” Cohen said, rubbing his forehead. “We need to use the Revealing Charm first—you know what the Revealing Charm is, right?”

"What is the Revealing Spell?" the two asked in hushed tones.

"..."

Cohen closed his eyes.

Just as Cohen was lamenting that there wasn't a single person in his entire dorm, he was somewhat distressed to discover that the other students were actually in the same boat.

Some were daydreaming, while others pretended to take notes in their books but were actually just doodling.

Hogwarts is starting to look more and more like a vocational school.

"So, I want each of you to come to my podium and take a small bottle. You must prepare the antidote from the contents of the bottle before the end of get out of class. Good luck—and don't forget to wear protective gloves."

They went up one by one to receive poisons of completely different colors, which meant that Harry and Ron couldn't get the correct answer by copying Cohen and Hermione's process.

“Maybe I should just drink it,” Ron said desperately. “That way I won’t have to—”

"Don't do anything foolish, Ron, it's just a class assignment..." Harry immediately stopped Ron's dangerous move.

“First, use the original form to show the results,” Cohen said helplessly. “Then separate the poisons of different colors and textures, put them in bottles, and find their names and corresponding antidotes from the poison catalog at the back of the book. Forget it, you guys should brew the antidotes first, at least you can get a passing grade on the assignment… After you finish, we can consider the compatibility of the mixed poisons.”

Cohen's advice was undoubtedly the most suitable for Harry and Ron, because they had barely managed to prepare the antidote for each poison by the end of the class, let alone analyze the new toxicity produced by the mixture.

"It's all because we're not familiar with the books," Hermione said smugly after the class. "Harry, Ron, I told you, reading more books is useful."

"Cohen doesn't read much either," Ron said unfairly.

“Who says I don’t read books?” Cohen said. “I often study potions and alchemy.”

“Norton, your letter.” Suddenly, as they were leaving, a Slytherin student hurriedly slipped a small note into Cohen’s hand.

"What do you want with a Slytherin student?" Ron looked suspiciously at the student's retreating figure. "He looked like a second or third year student..."

Cohen glanced at the note.

Malfoy wants to meet me on the third floor that evening, probably because he's anxious about murdering Dumbledore.

“It’s nothing, just another flatterer,” Cohen said.

(End of this chapter)