Not many students liked staying in the greenhouse. The ones who did were all students with a serious interest in Herbology.
As Leonard passed by the greenhouse window, he saw quite a few students gathered around Professor Sprout.
Aside from a few unfamiliar faces, Leonard also spotted Neville, who was still in the greenhouse watching Professor Sprout take care of the magical plants.
Leonard pushed open the greenhouse door, and the wind-chime-like plant hanging from it let out a crisp, pleasant sound.
"Oh, Leonard, you're here."
Hearing the sound from the doorway, Professor Sprout looked up and gave Leonard a kindly smile. "Sit for a moment. I'll finish dealing with these plants first."
She was currently trimming the leaves of the Mandrakes. This was the main topic for the entire second year curriculum, covering planting, cultivation, and practical uses.
Mandrakes were valuable all over. Aside from their natural aggression, their roots could be used to brew potions that cured powerful petrification curses. Their leaves were important ingredients in the Animagus Transfiguration Spell, and also one of the ingredients in quite a few potions.
At the moment, Professor Sprout was trimming these leaves to gather materials for Professor Snape and Madam Pomfrey in the hospital wing.
"Come along, children. Watch carefully now. When trimming Mandrakes, these are the points you need to pay attention to..." Professor Sprout called out loudly, drawing the surrounding students' attention back to her.
Trimming was not as simple as snipping off a few leaves. The person doing it had to accurately judge which branches and leaves needed to be cut, and which areas could be trimmed without affecting the plant.
Mandrakes were mainly grown for their roots. Damaging the health of the whole plant just to harvest a few leaves would be more trouble than it was worth.
The students around her watched very carefully, while Leonard only took one glance before losing interest.
Trimming magical plants was a little harder than trimming ordinary ones, because the person doing it had to judge not only the plant's biological structure, but also the flow of magic within it.
For skilled, professional herbology experts, experience alone was enough for them to judge the magical flow of a plant just by looking at how it was growing.
But for students, that was still very difficult.
Leonard, however, was not an ordinary student. Setting aside his ability to see the flow of magic, just his power to communicate with plants was enough to let the plants themselves tell him what could be cut and what could not.
Professor Sprout worked quickly, and before long she had cut a small basket full of Mandrake leaves and stems.
"All right, children, that's enough extra learning for today. Off you go now." Professor Sprout straightened up, packed away the Mandrake trimmings, and started shooing people out.
The students looked a little disappointed, but they obediently left.
Neville hesitated for a long time before walking over to Leonard. "Leonard, want to head back together?"
"No, Professor Sprout wanted to see me about something," Leonard said. "You go on ahead."
"All right then." Neville nodded, and his expression looked a little envious.
He was not stupid. Leonard showing up at this moment obviously meant the professor had called for him, and Professor Sprout sending everyone else away clearly meant she was planning to give Leonard some private instruction.
Neville did not feel any dissatisfaction over that, because he knew Leonard had always done very well in Herbology. He had heard that Leonard's classroom performance was excellent, so much so that the professor had even allowed him not to write homework.
Now Leonard and Professor Sprout had a relationship somewhat like the old kind between a teacher and a particularly close student. That was not something you could envy your way into, because Leonard's talent was right there for everyone to see.
And Neville had also heard that during the previous school year, Leonard had come to help in Professor Sprout's greenhouse every weekend. Neville had thought about doing the same himself, but because he was worried other people would say he was copying Leonard, he had never gone through with it.
So Neville did not envy Leonard at all, because he knew Leonard had put in the effort. He was only wondering when he would be able to gain the professor's attention and esteem the way Leonard had.
Neville left dejectedly, but Leonard did not pay any attention to his disappointment. In Leonard's eyes, it was not worth focusing on.
It was better to focus on why Professor Sprout had called him here.
"Professor." Once all the students had left the greenhouse, Leonard finally walked over to Professor Sprout. "You were looking for me?"
"That's right, my boy. How was your holiday?" Professor Sprout asked casually.
"Uh... pretty good, I suppose," Leonard said.
If you left out the part where he had killed four members of a secret organization, then the holiday really had been quite pleasant.
"That's good. But I certainly hope you didn't forget everything you learned over the holiday." Professor Sprout set down the prepared Mandrake leaves and wiped her hands. "Do you remember our agreement?"
"Our agreement..." Leonard paused for a moment, then nodded. "You mean reading The Illustrated Record of Dangerous Plants in Europe and picking one to study?"
"Exactly. Looks like you didn't throw our agreement to the back of your mind." Professor Sprout sounded delighted. "You must have read quite a lot of it by now. What did you think?"
"It was very interesting. The plants in it all felt amazing," Leonard said.
"And which plant did you choose to study?" Professor Sprout asked.
"I picked Blood Grape," Leonard said. "I think it has a lot of character."
"Blood Grape?" Professor Sprout looked somewhat surprised. "That's a very dangerous plant. If it's handled badly, it can easily kill someone."
"There probably aren't many plants in that book that aren't dangerous." Leonard spread his hands. "Blood Grape is just one of the nastier ones."
Compared to other magical plants, Blood Grape was even nastier than the Parasitic Pod Leonard had obtained.
It would root itself into the victim's body and parasitize the host through its growing roots.
Once the Blood Grape was damaged, the host would feel it as though part of their own body had been injured.
And... it was the sort of pain that felt like a devastating blow to a very delicate area. According to the book, it was roughly equivalent to taking a catastrophic hit to the crotch.
Even if you protected the Blood Grape perfectly, it would still draw on your flesh and blood to grow, mature, and eventually bear fruit.
That fruit had an extremely strong attraction to magical creatures. The scent it released could even be smelled by magical creatures twenty miles away, drawing them in.
So anyone unlucky enough to be parasitized by Blood Grape and fail to deal with it would either die of blood loss or be torn apart by magical creatures.
Then the Blood Grape would take the opportunity to plant its seeds in the magical creatures' bodies.
If the parasitic effect of Blood Grape could not be cured by drinking large amounts of high-quality wine, wizards probably would have driven this plant to extinction long ago.