Harry Potter: Becoming a Top Student from Scratch

The afternoon class was History of Magic, shared between Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Sitting diagonally in front of Wade was a boy with pale blond hair, accompanied by two pudgy little cronies. Wade recognized him as Draco Malfoy — the minor antagonist who opposed the protagonist for seven years in the original story.

Still, the relationship between Slytherin and Ravenclaw was fairly neutral. Malfoy didn't go around spewing venom at everyone. In fact, aside from being a bit arrogant and showing off his family background and wealth now and then, he was reasonably well-mannered in class.

That is, except toward his archrival, Harry Potter.

When Professor Binns floated through the wall and into the classroom, Malfoy was still badmouthing Harry to his goons:

"Always flaunting that scar on his head, like it's something amazing—hanging around with that stinking Weasley, carrying the stench of poverty everywhere—"

The surrounding Ravenclaws glanced over, quietly edging away from the Slytherins.

—No matter what might happen in the future, right now Harry Potter was still a hero in the eyes of many wizards. These children had grown up on his story. Naturally, Malfoy's words rubbed people the wrong way and served as a reminder of certain uncomfortable truths that had been buried.

"I heard Malfoy—Draco Malfoy's father—was a Death Eater who followed You-Know-Who," Michael whispered to Wade. "They say after the Dark Lord was defeated by Harry Potter, he claimed he'd been under the Imperius Curse and escaped prison by donating a huge sum to the Ministry of Magic. Just look at Draco—clearly, his dad still holds a grudge against Harry, and he's passing it on…"

Wade shook his head silently.

He knew Draco probably hadn't thought it through that deeply. In fact, Draco originally seemed like he wanted to be friends with Harry — but his snobby attitude made a bad impression, and Harry snubbed him. That kind of humiliation was intolerable for a prideful young master like him. So he kept opposing the Boy Who Lived out of sheer stubbornness.

"Don't take it lightly, and don't get close to Malfoy," Michael warned. "His family's one of the ones that really cares about blood purity among the Sacred Twenty-Eight."

"The Sacred Twenty-Eight?" Wade asked. This was outside his knowledge base.

"They're the twenty-eight pure-blood families — no Muggles in their ancestry, no Muggle marriages in their lineage," Michael explained casually. "But my dad says it's all nonsense. Lots of families on that list have Muggle ancestors — or at least claim to."

...

History of Magic, it had to be said, was mind-numbingly boring.

Their ghostly professor, Binns, droned on in a sleep-inducing tone, reading directly from the textbook. He never asked questions, never cared what the students were doing, and his speech was muffled and wheezy. Within five minutes, half the class had their heads down on their desks. The other half were either dozing off or playing board games on makeshift grids drawn on their parchment.

Wade, however, filtered out Binns's hypnotic voice and drew a timeline on his paper, listing key dates, figures, and major events in magical history — the kind of things the History of Magic exams focused on. On his desk was also a copy of Hogwarts: A History borrowed from the library. Comparing the two made it easy to imagine the grand adventures and struggles the four founders of Hogwarts must have had — and to wonder what role the school had played over the past thousand years.

History itself was actually fascinating — it was just Binns who made the class utterly lifeless.

As soon as class ended, Binns abruptly stopped talking and floated through the wall and out. Wade nudged Michael awake, and the two headed to the library to work on their homework — a one-foot-long essay on the terror reign of the dark wizard Emeric the Evil.

"No one in Hogwarts works harder than you," Michael muttered while writing. "I bet everyone else will wait until the last day to even start this!"

Before he could finish, a shaky figure passed by — Hermione was carrying a huge stack of books. She stopped when she saw Wade and dropped the books onto the table with a thud that made the whole surface tremble.

"Hi, Wade," Hermione greeted cheerfully, sitting down beside him. "How's Ravenclaw?"

"Other than having too many stairs to climb, can't complain," Wade replied. "Hermione, this is Michael Corner. Michael, this is Hermione Granger — we met on the train."

"Hello," Hermione said with the fierce enthusiasm of a little lioness, extending her hand. "Are you in Ravenclaw too?"

Michael glanced at the towering stack of books, swallowed hard, and hesitantly shook her hand.

"P-probably?"

In front of these two, he seriously started to question whether he deserved to call himself a Ravenclaw.

"—Probably?" Hermione frowned.

Feeling the pressure of the intellectual food chain, Michael shrank a little and asked timidly, "Can I ask… why you've got so many books? Are you planning to read all of them?"

"Of course! These are what I plan to finish this week," Hermione said matter-of-factly.

Michael turned pale. He glanced at Wade with a look that said, Seriously? One week? She's even more intense than you?

Wade raised an eyebrow at him.

Michael stopped complaining about being dragged along to do homework and buried himself in finishing his essay. Wade, having already completed his, continued working on his timeline.

"Oh, this method is pretty effective," Hermione said, leaning over for a look. "But I think comparing it to Muggle history could offer more insights."

"Yeah, I plan to add that later." Wade pushed his notes over. "You've read more than I have — mind checking if anything here needs correction?"

"Let me see." Hermione didn't hesitate. After a careful read, she said, "Here — the exact date of the invention of wands is unknown. Melaina Simms' main contribution was identifying the magical properties of eighteen wand woods, and she proposed wand compatibility theory and the Simms Formula…"

She pulled out a book from her stack and flipped it open:

"In 382 B.C., the Ollivander family began making wands. To this day, they're still the best wandmakers. That could definitely be a test question too…"

Quills flew across parchment as they took notes. Madam Pince kept shooting sharp glances in their direction, clearly ready to kick them out if they got too loud.

Michael, rushing his paper, just felt more and more insignificant. After listening for a while, he quietly pulled out a fresh sheet and started copying Wade's revised magical history timeline.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up. He elbowed Wade and whispered, "Look!"

At the library entrance stood Theo, peeking inside. He had clearly just come from Herbology — there was greenhouse dirt on him — and Madam Pince wasn't letting him in. When Theo spotted Wade and Michael, he beamed and waved for them to come out.

Wade said goodbye to Hermione, packed up with Michael, and headed to the entrance, where they saw both Ryan and Theo covered in grime. He asked, "Is something urgent?"

The two Hufflepuffs exchanged a glance, and Ryan jerked his chin toward Theo. "You tell him — it was your idea to ask Professor Sprout."

Theo grinned. "Wade, this morning you said you wanted a quiet place to practice spells, right? Professor Sprout is our head of house, and after class I stayed behind to help her out. Once we finished, I mustered the courage to ask her—"

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