Chapter 185: Importance of Fish (Edited)

With Fish by her side, even though he had gone to sleep, the mandrakes were much calmer than normal, so the process of changing their pots was very simple.

After removing her headphones, Professor Sprout reluctantly reminded the other students that the mandrake, under normal circumstances, is much more troublesome than the current one, and that one day they might accidentally lose their lives.

It seems that in the future, when dealing with relatively dangerous plants, Fish will have to be thrown out...

At first, Professor Sprout thought of ways to keep Fish from interfering with her teaching, but she soon realized that she could also use Fish's strange influence on plants to expose other students to more problematic plants.

Professor Sprout would have to figure out exactly how to do that, and she would probably have to ask Fish to work with her on some tests.

Come to think of it, Fish was a real gem.

In retrospect, Professor Sprout cast a covetous glance at Fish.

How could Fish have been adopted by Minerva in the first place?

She sighed inwardly, regretting why he wasn't an animagus cat.

Unaware that he was being watched by Professor Sprout after Professor Flitwick, Fish was awakened by Harry and the others after a good night's sleep and followed them back to the castle.

After a long and exhausting lesson, Harry and the others rushed to the seventh floor for a shower before hurrying to the Transfiguration classroom, where Professor McGonagall hated it when they were late.

Besides him, the Ravenclaws who were taking classes with Gryffindor had already arrived and were surrounding Fish, trying to find a way to talk to him.

When Professor McGonagall entered the classroom, everyone quickly took their seats, even Fish, who was sitting upright and seemed to be paying attention.

After a relaxing summer vacation, Professor McGonagall knew that most of the students' transfiguration skills would have regressed to some degree, and in order to get a handle on their current levels, she asked them to turn a beetle into a button in this class.

Compared to the final exam, which required turning a rat into a bottle of tobacco, this test was fairly easy, and he predicted that most students would be able to do it with a few stumbles.

However, reality hit Professor McGonagall hard, as in Gryffindor, aside from the exceptionally gifted Fish and Hermione, only Parvati Patil of Gryffindor barely made it.

Harry and Neville were better off chasing beetles around the table.

Ron's wand was damaged, chipping and flashing, and every time he tried to transform the beetle, he was engulfed in a cloud of grey smoke with a rotten egg smell that drove everyone away from him.

On the other hand, Seamus, the explosive maniac, just blew up the scarab....

Unlike the Gryffindors, the Ravenclaws who were in the class with them, although most of the buttons they made were rather simple, with no pretty patterns, they largely completed Professor McGonagall's task.

This made Professor McGonagall, as the dean of Gryffindor, feel very humiliated, and her face got very ugly from the beginning of the lesson, even after Fish and Hermione turned in two of the prettiest buttons in the class, it didn't make her look any better.

So when the bell rang for lunch, the Gryffindors didn't even dare look at Professor McGonagall's face and ran out of the classroom.

"Stupid...useless...thing...useless...."

Ron cursed furiously as he taped his wand to the table.

His wand, already second hand, had been uncomfortable to use, and with the damage, had become even more uncontrollable.

"Write home and ask for another."

Harry suggested earnestly, looking at the wand in Ron's hand, which threatened to explode at any moment.

Ron, however, did not follow this very sound advice.

"Yeah, get another howling letter," he said as he stuffed his wand into his school bag, while mimicking his mother's tone of voice in a fake flat tone, "You're to blame for your wand breaking..."

The real reason is...

Poverty.

Only Harry was oblivious to his friend's financial distress, and continued to coax Ron on his way to the Great Dining Room.

It wasn't until they were seated next to Neville and Dean that the sensitive Dean noticed Ron's embarrassment and interrupted Harry's insensitive behavior.

"Speaking of which, what's the class this afternoon?"

"Defense Against the Dark Arts." Neville, who was checking his schedule, replied.

"Oh... damn..."

They all let out a groan of pain, in less than a day they had seen how brash and vain Lockhart was, and they still hadn't realized that his name didn't live up to it.

"I used to admire him."

Seamus scratched his hair and explained to the group of wide-eyed students around him, "My mom's a fan of his books, so I've had this term's textbooks at home for a while now, and I've read some of the books from . In which Lockhart is very wise and powerful."

Then his face fell and he sighed helplessly, "It would be very sad for my mother if she knew that Lockhart is really like that."

"Actually, my mother is also a fan of his books...," Ron said after a moment of silence, but quickly shrugged again, "But she's the only one in our family who is also a fan of his books."

The two's words were soon echoed by more, and then it became clear that almost all of Lockhart's fans were female relatives in their families.

Some of the senior boys even said that their sisters, now graduated, were as crazy about Lockhart as the girls at school were about Fish.

Then they all looked at Fish, who was surrounded by girls, as usual.

"I mean, if it wasn't for Fish, how likely is it that they would have treated Lockhart like that?" said Ron, pointing to the group of girls not far away.

All the boys flinched as if they had imagined what Ron was saying.

"Don't say such horrible things!" Dean yelled and rubbed his arms, "I've got goosebumps!"

"Thank God for Fish..." exclaimed Neville in a slurred voice as he chewed his food, to the unanimous approval of the group.

Unaware that he had somehow gotten another surge of goodwill from the boys, after lunch, Fish ran out into the yard by the black lake, transformed into his cat form and took a nap in the sun.

Sister Sharpay sat beside him, holding a comb that Professor McGonagall had given him, and gently ran it through his fur.

But the peace and quiet didn't last long, and soon a noise from across the courtyard woke Fish from his nap.

"Nya? There's something interesting over there, I'm going to check it out!"(●ΦωΦ●)

Fish grabbed the comb from Sharpay's hand and ran towards the noise.

Sharpay's face darkened as she stood up and patted the grassy remains off her body, and headed that way too.

She wanted to see who had the guts to bother her time with the kitten!