A few days later—
Hermione was still sulking about Harry's "gentle" hug with Cho. Her pout was so exaggerated it looked like she could balance two bottles of soy sauce on her lips.
To calm her down, Harry "reluctantly" gave her a kiss on the cheek. After that, Hermione could no longer carry those imaginary soy sauce bottles with her.
When he found a spare moment, Harry went to Gringotts and stored away the Philosopher's Stone.
There were three main reasons for this.
First, Voldemort had already tried to rob Gringotts the year before, so he probably believed the Stone was no longer kept there.
Second, Gringotts had formidable security—when did bank robbers ever actually succeed?
Third, Voldemort was still lingering somewhere around Hogwarts. There was no way Harry was going to leave the Philosopher's Stone near him. If something unexpected happened, wouldn't that be beyond awkward?
As for using the Stone to gain a longer life, that could wait.
There was one critical question Harry still hadn't figured out:
After drinking the Elixir of Life brewed from the Philosopher's Stone, would it drastically slow down one's physical growth? Or would it simply strengthen the body and extend life?
If it was the former, then Harry couldn't drink it anytime soon. If his body stopped developing before he finished growing, he'd be stuck looking like a perpetual primary school student. And then—who would marry Hermione?
That said, the first option had its upsides. If he waited until adulthood, he could preserve his youth forever. That would basically make it a combination of an anti-aging potion and an elixir of immortality.
If it was the latter, the benefit would be that he could start brewing the elixir immediately—but the downside was that he'd still eventually grow old.
Given the choice, Harry would much prefer the first outcome.
He did think he was rather handsome, after all. A few more years of maturing, and his charm would fully ripen. By then, wouldn't girls just throw themselves at him in the street?
Not that Harry cared much about that. But still—if he could stay ridiculously good-looking forever, that would be kind of awesome.
What people did know was that Nicolas Flamel, the Stone's original owner, looked like a white-haired old man. But no one knew exactly when he had acquired the Stone.
Still, that wasn't a huge problem. Wizarding history books from centuries ago must have some record of it.
As long as he was willing to put in the effort and spend some proper time digging through the library, he should be able to find useful information.
...
...
Time slipped by quickly.
By late May, the end-of-term departure was approaching. All the students would leave Hogwarts at the end of June, heading off for a summer holiday that would last more than two months.
The weather had turned stiflingly hot. After a recent heavy storm that had left everyone in a bad mood, the temperature soared. It felt like a clear dividing line between spring and summer.
Studying in this kind of heat was far from enjoyable.
For most kids, opening thick spellbooks, recording the endless steps of incantations, memorizing confusing potion ingredients, or slogging through the dry and dull history of magic—it wasn't something they did willingly.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl.
Every night, the dormitory was filled with moaning and complaints. Occasionally, Harry would hear Dean or Ron mumbling in their sleep:
"…Add blackwood root… then green ant antennae… stir three times… no, two and a half…"
After securing the Philosopher's Stone, Harry found himself unusually calm.
No longer anxious or irritated by Voldemort, Quirrell, Sirius Black, or any of the chaos surrounding them.
Those problems still existed—but they didn't need to be solved all at once.
That was the realization Harry came to after completing the main "quest" of acquiring the Philosopher's Stone.
Even if everything felt tangled like a messy ball of string, he could just unravel it one knot at a time.
With that mindset, Harry decided to go through the entire sixth-year curriculum.
In reality, sixth-year studies required the least time—because students specialized based on their O.W.L. results and chosen career paths.
Harry decided to focus only on Charms and Transfiguration.
The spell he was most interested in—Apparition—he didn't dare attempt on his own.
Harry might have been confident, but he wasn't reckless enough to mess with such dangerous magic unsupervised.
One mistake, and he could end up getting sliced in half by spatial magic.
Still, he was very eager to learn it.
He planned to ask Snape for guidance over the summer.
In fact, the idea of learning the Dark Arts under Snape's tutelage had been on his mind for a while.
Was there anyone safer, more reliable, or more powerful than Snape?
Harry was certain Snape wouldn't turn him down.
While studying, Harry also made frequent visits to Hagrid. Big Black had become even more affectionate toward him—and was growing at an incredible rate.
The shed Hagrid had built just a month ago was already too small.
Hagrid was planning to expand it.
...
...
When Harry closed his sixth-year Advanced Transfiguration textbook, Hermione let out a long sigh of relief.
She rubbed her sore wrist and gazed in satisfaction at her handiwork.
It was a notebook packed from cover to cover with her handwriting—dense but incredibly neat.
Beside it sat every textbook covering the subjects for the first-year final exams.
Hermione had copied every important point, summarized into that one notebook!
"You?" Harry raised a brow. "You're not planning to cheat, are you?"
Hermione rolled her neck until it cracked.
"This is my last review session. Copying everything out was exhausting."
"You did all that just for the process?" Harry asked, stunned.
"Exactly. The process reinforces memory—it's both consolidation and review."
Harry looked at the notebook, basically a textbook on its own. Then he thought about how he'd spent 90% of his time on unrelated books, only flipping through his first-year materials occasionally. He suddenly felt guilty.
"So… are you even going to use that notebook?"
Hermione gave him a look, surprised by the question. "Of course not. Its only purpose was to be written. Now that it's finished, it's useless to me. I'm thinking of giving it to someone who might need it."
As for who ultimately received the notebook—well, that's a story for another time.
June 13th.
Final exams began.
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