HP: I beat the otome game at Hogwarts

Ever since Lockhart's first lesson went wrong, he has never brought any living creatures into the classroom again. Now, in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, Lockhart either reads long passages from his own books to the students, boasts about his adventures, and even acts out some dramatic scenes.

Like Lockhart himself, the course content was superficially exciting but actually empty inside; it was just a useless facade.

Therefore, apart from occasionally listening patiently to Lockhart's marketing techniques, Lyra spent most of her time either playing around with the Geminis or completing homework in other subjects, which freed up a lot of free time for her to research and develop new prank products.

George and Fred recently announced with great pride that their new product was almost ready for testing and would be ready to be showcased soon, and they also joked about her seriously delayed "Hit-the-Willow" project.

Layla's competitive spirit was aroused by them, and she immediately declared that her own "Hit-and-Beat Willow" bonsai would soon be mature, and then it would compete with the twins' mysterious new project.

Getting carried away with emotions might feel good in the moment, but it's a disaster once you sober up. Leila had to devote more time and energy to her studies, hoping to overcome the difficulties as soon as possible—so recently she's been spending less time in the greenhouse and more time studying diligently in the library.

Leila pushed aside the large stack of herbalism books in front of her with a mournful expression, and slumped lifelessly on the library table like a withered rose—clearly, these books were of no help to her.

"Come on, it's just an idiot's signature, are you really going to keep feeling sorry for it...?"

"He's not an idiot..."

Oh, it's Ron and Hermione's voices!

Lyra's eyes lit up when she thought of Hermione, who always excelled academically and often even studied ahead of others. While she couldn't involve the twins in researching the Whomping Willow, she could always ask the even smarter Hermione for help!

"Hi, Hermione—" Lyra enthusiastically caught up with Hermione, Ron, and Harry, and was about to ask for help when she saw that the three of them panicked and hid a thick, moldy book behind their backs as if they had something to hide.

Unfortunately, their concealment was not very successful. In the instant they dodged, Lyra inadvertently saw the name on the book cover: "Powerful Potion".

"Lyra, is something wrong?" Hermione shifted awkwardly to the side, trying to cover herself more completely with the thick book behind her.

“…Oh, it’s nothing,” Lyra thought for a moment, deciding not to expose their completely failed attempt at concealment to avoid embarrassment, “I just wanted to ask Hermione if she would be willing to participate in the development of one of my joke products—”

"Uh, sorry Lyra, I've been too busy with schoolwork lately, I might not have time..." Hermione said apologetically but firmly refused.

"Oh, it's okay, homework is more important after all," Leila quickly replied. "Then I'll go first, I still need to find George and the other guy."

Lyra was the one who said she was in a hurry, but Hermione and the others were even faster than her. The three of them disappeared in the blink of an eye, as if they had cast a speed spell.

"...It seems the purpose of school rules is to be broken." Thanks to her recent research in the library, Leila was quite certain that the book "Powerful Potion" in the three of them came from the restricted section, and no professor would authorize second-year students to look through books in the restricted section.

However, without the professor's signature, the strict and cautious librarian Mrs. Pince would never have allowed students to take books from the restricted section—this can only mean that the trio did have the professor's signature, but the source was not so legitimate.

Leila was instantly tempted; she also wanted to visit the restricted section—after all, she had practically searched the entire library except for the restricted section, but hadn't found any books useful for researching the Whomping Willow.

If it weren't for the three of them looking like they'd bite their tongues and commit suicide to keep the secret if they were exposed, Leila would have really wanted to learn from their experience.

*

Five minutes after saying goodbye to Lyra, Harry, Meyer, and I hid in Moaning Myrtle's long-neglected and neglected washroom.

“Oh, if I didn’t have to brew Polyjuice Potion, I really would have said yes to Lyra.” Hermione was clearly very disappointed to have missed Lyra’s invitation. “Advanced research definitely involves a wider range of knowledge, and it must be a very interesting challenge—”

“It’s alright, she’ll understand. Our Polyjuice Potion plan was to extract information from Malfoy so we could catch the evil Chamber of Secrets heir sooner, and also to protect her,” Harry reassured him.

“That’s right, the most important thing now is to find out whether Malfoy did it or not,” Ron nodded. “You saw it yourself, Malfoy pointed at Lyra and cursed her, saying that she would be the next one to suffer, and that Lyra was in danger.”

“You’re right, he calls her Mudblood too,” Hermione said firmly, clearly having made up her mind. “Obviously, in Malfoy’s eyes, Mudblood wizards like us don’t deserve to learn magic at Hogwarts, but I won’t let him have his way, and I must protect Lyra!”

The three of them quickly and carefully opened "Powerful Potion" and huddled together to read it intently.

*

The next morning, despite it being Saturday, Harry woke up very early because it was the day of the Gryffindor vs. Slytherin Quidditch match.

He woke up far too early. There was still a long time before the match, or even before breakfast, but Harry felt very nervous and couldn't fall back asleep after lying in bed for a while.

Last night, Ron secretly told Hermione that if they could knock Malfoy off his broom during today's match, it would be the fastest way to protect Lyra.

Although Ron was joking, Harry couldn't help but wonder if Lyra would excitedly rush up to congratulate him, hug him, and even kiss him on the cheek, just like she had kissed the twins during their last victory celebration?

He had never been so eager to defeat the Slytherin team, to defeat Malfoy.

But—the Slytherin team rides the fastest broomsticks available in the entire wizarding world, can they really win?

If Slytherin won today's match with the latest broomsticks, will they continue to lose to Malfoy for the next five years, and will Gryffindor continue to lose to Slytherin?

If Gryffindor loses, what would Captain Wood, who is focused on Quidditch and leading the team in rigorous training, say?

What would Lyra think if that damn rich Malfoy caught the Golden Snitch before her?