Chapter 62: Operation Walking Advertisement Cat

As final exams drew closer, the atmosphere in the castle grew increasingly tense. In the corridors, students hurried past clutching hefty textbooks, muttering incantations and potion recipes under their breath. The library was even worse. If you were even a little late, you'd find not a single seat left—only the option of borrowing books to study elsewhere. Most of the pressure, however, came from the students preparing for their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s. As a first-year, Harold wasn't particularly stressed. What had changed, though, was his popularity. This was thanks to Fred and George, who had proudly paraded their "refreshed" wands around the castle the very afternoon their detention ended. They turned plenty of heads—and in doing so, gave Harold an excellent burst of free publicity. Now, a bunch of students were lining up to ask about the color-changing wand spray. Honestly, it was a bit embarrassing. He'd prepared the product at the start of term and completely forgotten about it in the chaos of the year. It wasn't until the end of term that he finally sold his first bottle. But by now, most students were out of pocket money. And Harold's prices—intentionally steep—didn't exactly invite impulse buys. Lots of inquiries, almost no sales. "What if you dropped the price a bit?" Fred suggested over breakfast one morning. "Most people could just about manage a Galleon." "Yeah," George agreed. "I mean, a new wand's only seven Galleons. Your dye's more expensive than the wand itself." "That's exactly why I'm not lowering the price. I don't rip off poor students," Harold said righteously. "Huh?" The twins exchanged a look. For a moment, they felt strangely... complimented. Harold didn't think they were poor students? That felt weirdly flattering—wait, no. Scratch that. If he hadn't offered such a steep discount, they never would've bought a bottle of cosmetic wand dye in the first place. "Well then," George said, "you'll just have to advertise more. Trick more—uh, reach more customers." "Now that's an idea." Harold tapped his chin. "Only question is, where? Maybe the Gryffindor noticeboard?" "Sure, if you could also sneak into the other three common rooms." "But I can't." He didn't even know every student in his house, let alone those in the others. "Want our suggestion?" Fred asked, leaning in with a sly grin. "Think: who roams the castle tirelessly, day in, day out?" "Who chases down every student she sees?" "Who is known to every student in Hogwarts?" "...Dumbledore?" Harold guessed. "No, no," George shook his head. "Mrs. Norris." "Why not spray your ad on her?" Fred grinned. "She'll carry your brand all over the school." "Exactly. You won't even have to pay her." "Right, and then next year, Filch will ban wand dye entirely," Harold snapped. "Why did I even think you two could give good advice?" "Oh, don't be like that! You won't know unless you try!" "Come on, give it a shot!" The twins chased after him, trying to convince him to dye Mrs. Norris in bright colors. But Harold knew what they were really after: they just wanted a more visible "enemy marker" during their nightly escapades. Tom the cat had taken plenty of beatings from Mrs. Norris over the years—Harold wasn't about to mess with what little fur she had left. In any case, the "pet wand" line was selling steadily, and Harold didn't need more money than that. He was pretty easy to please when it came to pocket change. And so, a few more days passed, and exams began. Harold had to sit in the same hot, stuffy classrooms as everyone else and wrestle with a pile of test questions. First-year exams weren't exactly hard. Harold figured he could answer about half correctly—he hadn't bothered to memorize long-winded, pointless lists like the fifteen different ways to fend off a werewolf. Honestly, you only needed two: run—or, if you couldn't run, find a way to kill it. The rest was fluff. Plus, werewolves probably read these outdated Hogwarts textbooks. They might've developed countermeasures by now. Really, only Hermione—and maybe Percy—would bother memorizing something like that. The practical exams were a different story—especially for Harold, who could cheat. With the right wand, high marks weren't hard to achieve. Everything Hogwarts taught was essentially white magic, and with Silvermane's massive bonuses, even the trickier spells became simple. For Transfiguration, they had to turn a mouse into a snuffbox. Harold finished first. For Charms, Professor Flitwick asked them to make a pineapple tap dance across a desk. It was a test of fine control using the Levitation Charm—make the pineapple bounce just right to look like it was dancing. After all, the real Tap-Dancing Jinx wasn't in Standard Book of Spells, Grade One. You had to dig it out of One Hundred Ways to Vex Your Enemies. Even without Silvermane, Harold would've aced it—but his version of a tap dance ended up looking more like a robot dance. Hopefully, that wouldn't cost him points. The trickiest exam? Potions, of course. Potions mostly relied on cauldrons, with wands only used for stirring. Snape asked them to brew a correct Forgetfulness Potion in two hours. This wasn't Harold's strong suit. The correct potion should've been blue with blue smoke. His was brown with pink smoke. From Snape's expression, he wasn't going to be getting any bonus points. He went on to take exams in Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and History of Magic. And then—it was over. To celebrate the upcoming holiday, the castle exploded into joy. The previously suffocating pressure vanished overnight. On the second day of break, Fred and George came to Harold again, asking him to help with the Whomping Willow, swearing up and down that this time nothing would go wrong. Harold still refused. He didn't trust their promises—and besides, he had something more important he was waiting for. ... (End of Chapter)