HP: Supreme Potion Collector [Original Female Protagonist]

Day by day, time passed, and for quite a while, Harry no longer heard the sound of the Basilisk from within the walls.

He also stopped obsessing over the diary. Whenever he remembered that it was Riddle who got Hagrid expelled, he felt a sense of resistance. This, at least, spared Orli some worry—Harry wouldn't be too deeply affected or manipulated by the diary.

She figured that the dark magic on the diary must have been weakened by Dumbledore; otherwise, how else could one explain why Ginny was so heavily influenced in the original timeline while Harry managed to remain rational?

Hermione had suggested asking Hagrid about the incident that got him expelled, but the four of them agreed it wouldn't be a pleasant topic, and no one wanted to be the one to bring it up.

After Easter, they had to decide on their electives for third year. Hermione was particularly serious about this. She carefully studied all the available materials and marked up the new course list with notes.

"This will affect our entire future. Maybe it's time to start planning your career paths," Hermione said with a solemn expression, even though they were only twelve years old.

Orli thought that if she managed to survive past 1998, her future would most likely still involve cauldrons, given she had her system as a magical potion recycling cheat. But Harry clearly thought differently. Resting his chin on his hand, he stared at the densely packed list and said, "I just want to drop Potions."

"Not possible," Ron said gloomily. "We have to take all the original subjects. Otherwise, I would've crossed out Defense Against the Dark Arts ages ago."

"But that's a very important subject!" Hermione exclaimed in shock.

"Not the way Lockhart teaches it," Ron replied. "The only thing I've learned in his class is not to let Cornish Pixies out of their cage."

Neville's relatives bombarded him with letters, offering all sorts of advice on which electives to take. He nervously went around asking whether Arithmancy was harder than Ancient Runes. Meanwhile, Seamus simply closed his eyes and randomly pointed his wand at the list, choosing whatever it landed on.

Hermione ignored everyone's advice and checked off every single subject. Harry and Ron chose the exact same electives, which Orli suspected was just to make copying each other's homework easier. She followed their lead, figuring that if they ended up with any weird courses, at least they could discuss them together.

Gryffindor's next Quidditch match was against Hufflepuff. Every evening after dinner, Harry and his teammates headed to the pitch for practice. Meanwhile, Orli continued her spelling games—she had finally succeeded in shifting everyone's interest away from the Prophet's crossword puzzles to spelling games with names.

But this had an unexpected side effect—Ron started scrambling the letters in everyone's names to create nonsensical words as their new code names. He even set up a bunch of random rules, like the first letter couldn't match the original name, the resulting word had to make sense, and it couldn't directly relate to the person—for example, Harry couldn't be called "Lightning" or "Scarhead."

Orli couldn't help but marvel at how cleverly Riddle had rearranged his name to spell "I am Lord Voldemort." Unfortunately, the four of them didn't have such perfectly aligned letters in their names.

In the end, Ron had to settle for picking out usable letters from their names and forming whatever words he could. According to his method, Harry's code name was "Rot Tear," Hermione's was "Orange Mine," Orli's was "Liar Rose," and his own was "Early Nose."

No one except Ron was satisfied with their new code names. He once tried calling Hermione "Orange Mine" at the breakfast table, but she completely ignored him. Orli and Harry couldn't stop laughing, while an oblivious Neville kindly handed Ron a large orange.

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Small Notes:

Harry Potter — Rot Tear

Ron Weasley — Early Nose

Hermione Granger — Orange Mine

Orli Waters — Liar Rose

Considering Ron's (the author's) level of creativity, it's not like he could come up with anything sophisticated. Just bear with it—these might come in handy in the story later. (Wink)

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