Chapter 62: The Mobile Advertising Cat Plan

As the exams drew closer, the atmosphere in the castle gradually grew tense; students clutching thick, heavy magic books could often be seen hurrying through the corridors, softly reciting spells and potion recipes.

The library was even more crowded — sometimes, if you ran even a little slowly, you couldn't find a seat and could only borrow the books to read elsewhere.

But most of those people were students preparing for their O. W. L. s and N. E. W. T. s; as a first-year, Silven didn't feel the slightest bit of tension.

The only difference, perhaps, was that he had become more popular.

Mainly because of Fred and George — the moment their detention ended, at noon that day, they strutted around the castle waving their "brand-new" wands.

Having grabbed plenty of attention, they also ran a little advertising campaign for Silven; now, many people had started coming to him to ask about the color-changing spray.

Honestly, it was a bit embarrassing — the stuff had been ready since the start of term, but one thing after another made him forget all about it, and it wasn't until near the end of the school year that he sold the very first bottle.

But by then, most students' pocket money was basically spent, and Silven's pricing followed the principle of "open once, eat for thirty years," so most of the time people only asked, and basically no one bought.

"What if you lowered the price a little?" Fred suggested over breakfast. "If it were just one Galleon, most people could probably grit their teeth and afford it."

"Yeah," George nodded beside him. "A wand only costs seven Galleons — the color-changing spray can't be more expensive than a wand, right?"

"No way, I don't rip off poor students," Silven said righteously.

"Hmm?" The Weasley brothers looked at him, suddenly feeling as though they had been subtly roasted.

Silven actually thought they weren't poor students — hey, that felt pretty nice… ah, wait, no.

Thinking about it more carefully, if the discount Silven offered hadn't really been tempting, they wouldn't have spent ten Galleons on a bottle of wand color-changing spray that was utterly useless for anything but decoration.

"Then you can only advertise more," George said. "Maybe trick a few more people."

"That does sound like a good idea." Silven rubbed his chin. "The question is how to advertise — the notice board in the common room?"

"If you could get into the other three houses' common rooms, that would be a decent choice."

"But I can't get in." Silven shrugged. He hadn't even gotten to know all the Gryffindor people yet, so how could he possibly know anyone from the other houses?

"Want to hear my suggestion?" Fred suddenly lowered his voice and chuckled. "Think about it — who is it that tirelessly runs back and forth to every corner of the castle every single day?"

"Who is it that always likes chasing after every student?"

"And who is it that every student knows?"

"Dumbledore?" Silven ventured.

"No, no." George shook his head vigorously. "It's Mrs. Norris."

"Why don't you use the color-changing spray to write your ad on Mrs. Norris?"

"That way, she'll carry your product right in front of every student." Fred tempted. "Even better, you won't have to spend any extra money."

"Yeah, and she'll also carry it right to Filch, and then by next year, Filch will have the color-changing spray added to the list of banned items." Silven said, annoyed — he shouldn't have expected those two to come up with any decent ideas.

"Don't say it like that — how would you know it won't work unless you try?"

"Exactly, give it a try."

The two chased after Silven, earnestly and persuasively trying to convince him to give Mrs. Norris a bright new color.

But Silven knew perfectly well they just wanted it to be easier to keep an eye on enemy movements during their nighttime wanderings.

Besides, Tom swaggered around in his daily life and had caught Mrs. Norris and beaten her plenty of times; he really couldn't bring himself to torment the poor cat's already-sparse fur any further.

Anyway, the "Pet Wand" he was putting out could earn pocket money just as well — as long as it was enough… on this point, Silven was pretty easy to satisfy.

And so a few more days passed, and the exams began.

Silven had no choice but to, like everyone else, sit in the stuffy, uncomfortable great hall and match wits with those exam questions.

The first-year exams weren't hard; Silven estimated he'd get about half of them right. The main issue was that some of the trivial, vague, long-winded questions he simply hadn't bothered to memorize… like the fifteen ways to deal with a werewolf.

Honestly, that thing didn't need fifteen ways at all — simply put, there were only two: either run, or if you can't run, find a way to kill the werewolf. Everything else was nonsense.

Besides, the werewolves would be reading that too — Hogwarts textbooks hadn't been changed in at least thirty years, so the werewolves had probably long since worked out countermeasures.

In all of Gryffindor, only Hermione would bother memorizing something like that… hmm, maybe Percy too.

By comparison, the practical exams were much more interesting, especially for Silven — after all, he could "cheat," and as long as he used his wand correctly, getting a high score wasn't hard.

What Hogwarts taught was basically all within the realm of white magic; with Silver Mane's boost, the exams that had originally been a bit challenging all became much easier.

For the Transfiguration exam, you had to turn a mouse into a snuffbox — Silven was the first to finish.

In the Charms exam, Professor Flitwick asked them to make a pineapple tap-dance across a desk.

This tested the students' application of the Levitation Charm; the so-called tap-dance was simply making the pineapple bounce up and down on the desk surface so that it looked like it was tap-dancing.

After all, *Standard Spells, Grade One* didn't contain a Tarantella Step Spell — to learn that, you'd have to look in *One Hundred Ways to Get Back at Your Enemies*.

If it was just the Levitation Charm, there was naturally no difficulty — even without Silver Mane, Silven could easily meet the requirements.

It's just that his tap-dance looked a bit like robot dance — he wasn't sure if points would be deducted.

If you had to pick the most troublesome exam, it would definitely be Potions, because potions mostly used the cauldron; the wand basically only served as a stirrer.

Snape required them to brew a correct Forgetfulness Potion within two hours.

This was not at all Silven's strong suit — the correct result should have been a blue potion with blue smoke, but what Silven handed in was a brown potion with pink smoke.

Judging from Snape's expression, he probably wouldn't be getting a high score.

Silven then took the Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and History of Magic exams in turn, and after that, the exams were completely over.

To welcome the upcoming holiday, the castle was swept up in a sea of joy; the previously oppressive, heavy atmosphere was swept away in an instant.

On the second day of the break, Fred and George once again sought Silven out for collaboration, inviting him to go after the Whomping Willow that night, and repeatedly assuring him that this time there definitely wouldn't be any mishaps.

But Silven refused again.

Besides not really trusting their assurances, he was also waiting for something more important.

……

(End of chapter)