The slacker professor at Hogwarts

Lockhart did not find Hagrid; he may have already set off for Hogsmeade Station, located at the border between Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and Hogsmeade Village, to wait for the young wizards to arrive.

After leaving Hagrid's game hut, Lockhart encountered Professor Pomona Sprout, a master of herbalism.

Professor Sprout was carrying some magical plants that had just finished sunbathing from a gravelly area by the Black Lake to the greenhouse. The plants looked like chubby little babies, with roots hanging down into the soil pots.

Lockhart immediately stepped forward to help.

"Oh, thank you so much." Professor Sprout had more white hair than Lockhart remembered, and looked much older.

"You're welcome. As the student you gave the most points to back then, I think I should have performed even better." Lockhart smiled brightly.

Professor Sprout paused, unsure if such a thing had actually happened back then.

However, Lockhart did indeed behave quite wildly back then. In order to get high college points and stand out, he reportedly memorized the textbooks and actively raised his hand to answer questions in class, earning bonus points from many professors.

It's certainly a good thing to memorize the textbook, and the professor was generous with the credits. Unfortunately, Lockhart didn't keep it up after he had his moment in the spotlight.

Professor Sprout looked at Lockhart with a touch of emotion, his expression very kind. "Yes, you were a very outstanding child back then, but now you've grown up and come to Hogwarts as a professor. I hope you can continue to be outstanding."

Oh~

Lockhart was somewhat moved.

Really.

From the moment he arrived at the school, despite his best efforts to greet people with a smile, he never received a single act of kindness from them.

"Professor Sprout..." Lockhart's smile faded, and he said softly, "Thank you."

Next, Lockhart didn't mention the professor's ambitious book publishing plan, but quietly helped Professor Sprout tidy up the greenhouse and prepare teaching materials for the new semester.

The most unique one here is the chubby baby plant that just got some sun.

Back in the greenhouse, the babies seemed to have lost all their moisture and began to shrivel up, looking as old as monsters.

This stuff is called mandrake, and it's an important component of many antidotes. It can also be used as a powerful restorative agent.

In the magical world, this plant is extremely expensive and rare.

What you see on the market are usually wild-caught.

Only Professor Sprout could be so skilled as to cultivate this precious and dangerous plant on a large scale.

The mature plant emits a cry that sounds like a baby crying, and hearing it can be fatal.

Even young plants are very dangerous and can easily cause fainting for at least a few hours.

This is still referring to a single plant.

There were over a hundred plants in front of me, and the combined sound of them all shouting was absolutely terrifying.

"We need to bury them back in the ground quickly before they wake up. Just to be safe, we need to put on earmuffs. Wait, where are the earmuffs?"

Professor Sprout stood up and looked at the somewhat messy greenhouse. After a moment's recollection, he suddenly slapped his forehead. "Oh, damn it, my memory is terrible. I have to go get it. You wait here for me."

She took a few steps, then stopped. "Or if you have other things to do, you can leave first. I can handle it myself."

Lockhart simply smiled and shook his head. "No, no need. I'll wait for you."

"Thank you so much, Lockhart, you're a good boy," Professor Sprout said with gratitude, and quickly left.

After she left, Lockhart behaved himself and didn't move around much in the greenhouse.

In fact, he didn't dare to move around recklessly.

Professor Sprout's greenhouse is definitely no safer than the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts. It contains all sorts of plants that the Ministry of Magic prohibits from being traded alive or as seeds, and many of them are extremely dangerous.

For example, there's a huge, menacing vine in the corner of the wall. That thing is called a poisonous tentacle. It secretes highly toxic vine tentacles that grab any living thing that passes by, inject it with deadly toxins, and then pull it to the main trunk to tear apart the prey's carcass with its sharp teeth.

Lockhart had absolutely no desire to try it out and see how terrifying it was.

Even though his memory clearly told him that the leaves of this thing cost as much as 10 Galleons each.

When reading online novels in my past life, many people jokingly referred to Hagrid as the richest hidden tycoon at Hogwarts, but in reality, every professor had the ability to easily earn more money than an average wizard could accumulate in a lifetime.

He squatted quietly in front of more than a hundred mandrake seedlings, and suddenly had the illusion that his hurried life after time travel had suddenly calmed down.

Gazing at the dust particles swirling in the afternoon sunlight filtering through the unrepaired gap in the roof, his thoughts seemed to take flight as well.

He was actually quite grateful for this time travel.

This is not because Lockhart had accumulated a great deal of fame and wealth, but because he was grateful to finally feel the vibrancy of life again.

He didn't want to delve into his past life, but the experience of lying motionless in a hospital bed for the last five years of his life made him cherish life as much as he did.

only……

It's too vivid.

He frowned slightly, feeling the memories surging and boiling in his mind. It was as if, as the memories were sorted and pieced together, the emotions and feelings contained within were also pieced together, as if a personality was about to be reconstructed.

And there were more than ten of them.

How to solve this?

Lockhart thought of Dumbledore's Pensieve, which was said to be able to extract memories from the head and put them in; perhaps this was a solution.

Of course, borrowing the Pensieve from Dumbledore is out of the question. I'll have to use my existing connections to see where I can find such a magical artifact, since it's not particularly rare.

The only problem is that he is now extremely reliant on these memories, and taking them out would increase the risk of the original owner's secrets being exposed.

Take it easy.

Don't rush.

He told himself that.

Those memories cannot construct a true soul; they are merely overly vivid memories that, at most, prevent him from casting magic, nothing more.

Professor Sprout was gone for a little too long.

Lockhart could see the beam of sunlight shining through the opening in the roof shifting slightly.

then……

The light shone on the roots and stems of several of the mandrake seedlings.

The light acted like a switch, directly waking up the roots that looked like withered babies. The roots, which resembled hands and feet, flapped around and cried out loudly.

"Aaaaaaahhhhh..."

hiss~

Lockhart only had time to gasp before his head started buzzing.

Then he saw that the cries of these few mandrakes seemed to have awakened all the mandrakes, and more than a hundred of them simultaneously emitted a scream that sounded like crying.

"Aaaaaaahhhhh..."

Lockhart clutched his head in agony and collapsed to his knees, feeling a terrible tearing sensation ripping at his mind, a pain that felt like more than a hundred tearing wounds combined.

He felt as if his soul was being torn apart.

Fortunately, he did not faint as a result.

Unfortunately, the jumbled memories in my head were almost completely mixed up by these cries, with countless sounds from my memories mingling and echoing wildly in my mind.

Think of a solution!

Think of a solution quickly!

Lockhart quickly came up with a solution.

Yes, his memory contained so much wisdom that it even included methods for dealing with mandrake.

Especially these seedlings that look like tiny babies.

As we all know, if a baby cries incessantly, there are only two possibilities—they've soiled their diaper, or they're hungry.

The 'baby' in front of us is clearly not defecating.

That means you're hungry.

So the wisdom of a powerful witch who lived in the jungle was to feed the mandrake seedlings, preferably with nutritious food.

The most rustic and down-to-earth way is to urinate into the mouths of the mandrake seedlings that are howling.

The technical term is fertilization.

See, it's that simple, but Lockhart is sure that most wizards don't know this secret.

He struggled to his feet, suppressing the pain in his mind, and tremblingly reached to undo his belt.

……

"Merlin's beard!"

Professor Sprout, who was being pulled aside by Professor Snape to complain about how annoying Lockhart was, was startled and turned to look at the greenhouse not far away, where the screams of mandrakes could be heard from afar.

"It's all my fault, I shouldn't have wasted time talking to you..."

She quickly drew her wand and ran towards the stairs. "Lohart is still in the greenhouse!"

Professor Snape frowned slightly, hesitated for a moment, then drew his wand and rushed over.

He was much faster than the aging Professor Sprout—he knew the Flight Charm.

The Dark Lord taught him; he and the other two in the entire magical world knew it.

He leaped directly from the castle corridor, flew to the ground, and rushed quickly towards the greenhouse.

However, a miraculous thing happened.

The countless wailing and screaming sounds disappeared one after another, and before they could even reach the outside of the greenhouse, the sounds had all vanished.

Lockhart killed all of Professor Sprout's precious mandrakes? — Professor Snape speculated with no small amount of malice.

He stopped and waited for Professor Sprout to arrive before they both went inside with expressions of surprise and doubt.

Professor Sprout cared about the mandrakes, but he cared even more about Lockhart's safety; he didn't think as much as Snape did.

She rushed into the greenhouse, wand in hand, and quickly surveyed the situation, trying to pinpoint Lockhart's location so she could begin treatment as soon as possible.

But then Lockhart was spraying the mandrake seedlings with her concocted dragon manure nutrient solution.

"you……"

"Are you alright?"

Lockhart turned around, looked at them, grinned, revealing his signature perfectly charming smile, "Of course, that's no problem for me."