The next morning, Harry had gone to bed too late and was physically and mentally exhausted, so he woke up the next morning with obvious lack of sleep, and several times he almost dozed off at breakfast and plunged into a basin of cereal.

Harry wasn't late for falling asleep at the cafeteria table with the help of Ron and Hermione, but he did something like snoring in Transfiguration class, causing a frenzied Professor McGonagall to almost end up in the school infirmary due to high blood pressure.

Originally, Zhang Xu wanted to find an excuse to report Professor McGonagall that he was sick and let him go to the school infirmary to catch up on his sleep, but before Zhang Xu could raise his hand, Harry's snoring sounded.

Another consequence of Harry's snoring in class was that he had planned to find some time in the evening to find out something about the gem around his neck, but he was punished and confined by Professor McGonagall, and he had to postpone his search for Zhang Xu every night in the professors' offices.

On the last Friday night of January, Harry was in the Potions classroom helping Professor Slughorn with the fresh herbs that Professor Sprout had delivered.

In the past, confinement for the Potions professor was Harry's greatest punishment.

The professor in this classroom had changed this year, and Harry didn't know if it was good or bad for him.

Slughorn's penchant for the best students was perfectly cashed out in Harry's body.

As Harry excelled in class with the help of tips from second-hand textbooks, Slughorn was reminded of the ingenious girl who had been in this classroom all those years ago, so the two preferences of mother and son overlapped, and this double preference led to more and more favoritism.

In the end, Slughorn's preference for Harry even reached the level of pampering.

Slughorn learned that Harry was being held by Professor McGonagall, and he asked Professor McGonagall to allow him to stay on the eighth floor.

In the Potions classroom, Slughorn was not so much punishing Harry for his labor as he was giving him a small stove.

And Harry, who relied on the wisdom of the "half-blood prince" to perform well in class, exposed the weakness of insufficient foundation when faced with supernatural knowledge.

Whenever Harry made a mistake here and there in this regard, Slughorn always acted helpless.

Harry was lying on his side on a desk in agony, and Slughorn was pouring potion into one of Harry's nostrils with a large teapot with an elongated spout.

The magically controlled potion from the teapot flowed through Harry's nostrils and into his lungs in a circle, then spit out of his mouth with the foreign object that had been cleansed from his lungs.

Just when Harry thought he was about to drown in the Potions classroom, Slughorn finally finished his treatment.

Harry vomited the potion in his lungs and lay on his desk panting for air.

"You didn't swallow the potion in your stomach, did you?" Slughorn asked with concern.

Harry shook his head feebly.

Just now, he accidentally sneezed when he introduced the spores of the big puff mushroom into the crucible to prepare for dry frying, and then accidentally inhaled a lot of spools that were blown up by the sneeze.

"Ugh~" Slughorn said with a sigh, "I thought you knew you needed to use the Bubble Head Charm when dealing with the spores of the Puff Mushroom. ”

Slughorn continued: "The spores of the Spray Mushroom, when they fall to the ground and encounter water, immediately and slowly secrete a toxin that poisons the plants in a small area around it, leaving it with no other plants and resources to grow on its own. ”

"And after these spores are eaten by the animal or sucked into the lungs, the toxins it secretes will make the animal run wild until it dies of exhaustion, and then new Puff-mushrooms will grow on the carcass of the animal with the carcass as nutrients."

"If you encounter a corpse or zombie, these spores will immediately start to grow rapidly when they fall on the rotten wood, and the mycelium it produces can destroy the body structure of the corpse and zombie within a few minutes."

After Slughorn explained the characteristics of the Puff-shroom spores, Harry shuddered at the thought of his mushroom-covered corpse.

After a while, Slughorn saw Harry recover and smelled, "Then do you know why these spores were dry-fried beforehand?" ”

Harry thought for a moment and asked in a very uncertain tone, "Is it because you want to inactivate the spores and then refine those toxins?" ”

"Wouldn't it be easier and faster to get the toxins by putting the living spores in the water and letting it secrete the toxins on its own?" Slughorn asked rhetorically.

Looking at Harry, who kept answering the wrong answers, Slughorn gave up and gave him the question as extra homework.

Why is this so? Your talent in Potions class is not like your mother's, but like one of her best friends. Slughorn looked at Harry and said strangely, "If it weren't impossible, I thought you were her child." ”

"You know, your mother has shown a talent for potions since she was in first grade."

"And your mother's friend, who had a terrible start at potions, made the cauldron explode almost every month. I got a 'good' on the LS exam. But since sixth grade, she's been just as suddenly enlightened about potions as you are, and although her excel wasn't all right at first, by the time she graduated from seventh grade, her exam score was 'excellent'. ”

"So, keep trying."

Slughorn stood on tiptoe and patted Harry on the shoulder as he sat at the table, then turned to go about his business.

Harry also got off the table, put a bubble head charm on himself, and continued to fight the spores of the big puff mushroom.

For the next half hour, the only thing in the Potions classroom was the flames under the cauldron and the sound of the two of them doing various things.

"Harry, did you get extra help somewhere, and it's limited to your textbooks?" Slughorn asked suddenly.

"What?" Harry's hand shook as he revealed his secret, and he nearly dropped the crucible containing the processed spores to the ground.

"If that's the case, you don't have to worry." Slughorn's words relieved Harry a little.

Judging by Harry's reaction, Slughorn knew that the guess that popped up in his mind was most likely correct.

But this kind of thing happened a few times in his teaching career, so he didn't think it was anything strange.