Chapter 94: Isn't this programming? (Edited)

While Lockhart was in despair, what was Tom doing?

He was carving runes.

That day, he took advantage of the confusion to sneak off and join Harry and Ron in a corner for sandwiches. When Lockhart left the bookstore exhausted, everyone burst out laughing.

But their good humor was soon disturbed by two unexpected visitors: the Malfoys arrived at Flourish and Blotts Bookshop. They met Mr. Weasley and, just as hydrogen ions meet hydroxide radicals, the two naturally collided.

Mind you, Lucius Malfoy secretly confirmed before arguing with Mr. Weasley that the diary he had left there was missing.

In the end, the two parted without any physical altercation.

That day, Tom was extremely happy.

For some time after that, Tom studied. He had finished reading Riddle's research manuscript. He also felt the need to do something practical: he wanted to make a gift.

In later times, there was a hot key that was essential for paper writing: Ctrl+F, a keyword search that made it much easier for students to find information. But this, in the 1990s, did not exist in the magical world.

Tom had to create an alchemical device that could replace Ctrl+F.

So he found a piece of magic silver and shaped it into a leaf shape, Riddle had told him that gold and silver were good conductors of magic, but Tom tested it and found that magic silver was more suitable than either metal. It seems that Riddle had not had access to this magical metal at the time.

Tom wrote and drew on the parchment for a while before settling on his idea.

The alchemical creation was to first identify and record the contents of the book and its corresponding location. Next, he would record the words and phrases that the operator wanted to find in the book.

After thinking about the principle of operation, Tom began to carve the runes.

The principle may not seem too difficult, but in practice it is much more complicated. After carving all night, Tom felt as if he had just started.

Looking at the hair that had fallen out, Tom fell into a deep thought, this stuff removes hair!

And the runes always looked familiar: there were beginnings and endings, judgments, denouements, transfers in and out....

I'm a magician, why do I do things so much like programming?

For the rest of his days, he helped Mr. Lawrence restock and stock the bookstore, and acted as a guide for magicians who couldn't find their books. One of Mr. Lawrence's newly hired temporary workers signed a full contract to work in the Flourish and Blotts bookstore, since Tom only worked three days a week. Having found reliable help, Mr. Lawrence is able to sit in his office every day, relaxing with a book and a newspaper, and drinking some cider at lunchtime.

Mr. Ollivander's job was a little easier: Tom was mainly in charge of measuring arm lengths and heights of little witches for Mr. Ollivander. In his spare time, he would carve runes for Mr. Ollivander; Mr. Ollivander would mark the positions on his wand and let Tom carve the corresponding runes on it.

Every day after work, Tom worked on his alchemical artifact in the bedroom. As the start of the school year approached, the object was slowly being completed.

The whole thing looked like a summer oak leaf, except that Tom had painted it with gold leaf to give it a shiny finish. Tom had deliberately turned it into a bookmark.

It's easy to use, so you stick the leaf in a book and it automatically scans the contents. When you need a query, you write the word you are looking for on a piece of paper, stick the leaf into the writing and it remembers what you are looking for, then automatically inserts it into the book, pointing the stem of the leaf at the key word.

If the word is not what the searcher is looking for, it will automatically fly to the next place.

But Tom also found two small bugs....

The first is that if you scan one book and then scan a second book, the contents of the first book are not overwritten. This means that when you search for keywords in the second book, the keywords that match the first book are also picked up, and in the order they are scanned, the leaf bookmarklet also gives priority to the first book...

This is a headache. Let's say Tom scans the book "Standard Spells: Beginner" and then the book "Standard Spells: Level 2", and then Tom wants to search for the word "counterclockwise" in the book "Standard Spells: Level 2", the leaf bookmarklet will start searching for phrases with "counterclockwise" in the first book, and then start displaying phrases from the second book after it has indicated the phrases from the first book.

Another small problem is that once it gets going, it doesn't stop.... This was a problem that Tom realized by accident. Once he accidentally typed the letter "g" as the word he was looking for, and the marker jerked until it ran out of magical power.

Tom picked up his second alchemical creation, the first being the floating coin lamp, and looked at the description of the system:

[Keyword marker - Refinement 1 (3 stars): the work of a crude apprentice alchemist, can automatically search the book for a specific keyword, there are still a myriad of flaws in this object waiting to be discovered, after fixing the flaws the artifact may be able to be upgraded]

Tom was not convinced at first: all the chocolate frogs I drew had three stars! Is this marker of mine of the same grade as the chocolate frogs?

But after learning more about it, he realized that there is a star grading system for alchemical creations, and three stars is pretty good. His floating coin is only one star, and the note says "rated one star because it is the minimum."

Also, Tom's alchemy has gone from level 0 to level 1, currently at [Alchemy Level 1 (1/200)], thanks to Riddle's selfless notes.

The summer vacations were over very quickly for Tom, he had a busy vacation and it seems like only yesterday he was on a train back to London. He could even relax for a while after school.

Harry, who lived at the Burrow, also felt that the summer was over too soon, and it had been a memorable one for him: first he had met an inexplicable house elf at the Dursley's, then he had travelled in a flying car to the humble Burrow, and then he had lived there for a whole month: the happiest month of his life, Harry would say.

Of course, there were those who found the vacations so long that they couldn't wait for school to start, like Peggy Grossman.