A/N: "Dear readers, if this chapter resonated with you, I humbly request a Power Stone to help the novel climb the ranks."
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At the Nine and Three Quarters station at King's Cross, the express train to Hogwarts was about to depart in a quarter of an hour.
Jon Hart was sitting on this train. After spending more than half a month of boring Christmas vacation, he could finally return to Hogwarts.
That's right, the Christmas holidays in Southampton can be described as boring. Magic cannot be used, there are few books in hand, and there is no trace of wizard activities within a hundred miles. There is nothing to do every day except practicing occlumency.
Fortunately, he persuaded parents to allow him to go to London alone and take the train back to school... otherwise, he would have accomplished nothing during this half-month vacation.
Finding a separate compartment, he placed his luggage on the footboard and took out a diary from his cloak.
The old black cover and the yellowed pages inside show that this diary is quite old. From a distance, this diary even looks a bit eerie.
Jon ran around several streets in London and searched for an entire afternoon before he finally found it in a second-hand bookshop and bought it for fifteen pence.
Bored, Jon opened it and wrote on a blank page:
"Polyjuice Potion, recorded in the book 'Powerful Potion', is a powerful potion.
...
...
You can add something from the target's body (such as hair or nails, but mainly hair) into it, drink it, and within a certain period of time you can turn into the other person's appearance.
The ingredients needed to prepare the polyjuice potion include lacewings, crude antimony, leeches with their mouthparts removed, sap grass picked during the full moon, powdered ammonium chloride, powdered two-eared grass leaves, powdered two-horned animal horns, saltpeter, mercury, iron filings, and dried African bush snake skin.
The configuration process is relatively complicated, but not too difficult.
Taking about 5 ml of the compound decoction can maintain the transformation for about 10 minutes;
Taking about 50ml of the compound decoction can maintain the transformation for about 1 hour;
Taking a large dose of the compound decoction (more than 1L) can maintain the transformation time up to 24 hours;
However, the longest transformation time is 24 hours, and it cannot be increased no matter how much you take.
The initial taste of Polyjuice Potion is like overcooked cabbage, and the specific color and taste will change according to the user's mood towards the transformed target. (If you feel good about the transformed target, the taste will be OK; if you have a bad relationship with the transformed target, the taste will be quite disgusting.)
It can only be used for human transformation and not for other creatures... Attempting to transform into an animal will cause extremely serious side effects. Attempting to transform into a hybrid of a human and other creatures (such as a hybrid giant or werewolf) has unknown effects, but it is highly unlikely to succeed and will be accompanied by certain side effects.
After successfully transforming using the Polyjuice Potion, you can copy the target's voice, strength, intuition and all other physiological functions... but you cannot copy any wizard's magical abilities. You can't expect the Polyjuice Potion to turn you into a powerful wizard.
There have been known cases where Polyjuice Potion has been able to perform gender reassignment, but…"
After writing a full page, Jon described everything he knew about Polyjuice Potion... then he carefully tore off the paper.
After folding it, he marked the letters PP (abbreviation of PolyjuicePotion) on the outside, and Jon put it in a very secret folder in his suitcase, together with a small pile of other notes.
…
There was a gentle knock on the cubicle door.
Jon put the journal back into his cloak and said, "Come in!"
"Jon..." The beautiful girl with golden curly hair and a childish face pushed open the door of the compartment.
In their correspondence, the two of them had already expressed their wish to meet in this carriage.
"Merry Christmas!" she winked.
"You too, Astoria," Jon nodded.
She sat down across from Jon and they exchanged a few pleasantries.
"Did you like the Christmas presents, I sent?" Jon asked with a smile.
"Great!" Astoria's face lit up immediately. "Unbelievable... That three-sided makeup mirror is amazing. I love it so much... Even my mother praised it."
"Really? That's great!" Jon bit his lip.
"What about you...Did you discover the secret I hid in the chocolate frog?" Astoria suddenly blushed and asked in a low voice.
"Ah?" Jon was suddenly stunned.
He casually tasted a few of the box of chocolate frogs Astoria gave him and threw them aside.
Who knows what secrets are hidden in it!
"Idiot... Humph!" Astoria snorted coldly and turned away.
She decided to ignore him.
…
Fortunately, their cold war didn't last more than a few minutes and ended.
The smiling retail clerk on the train appeared in time and resolved their embarrassment.
Astoria seemed to have forgotten her previous unpleasantness as they devoured pot pies and pumpkin cake together.
After eating a licorice wand, she seemed to remember something.
"I heard..." Astoria whispered, "There was another attack at Hogwarts!"
"Hmm?" Jon frowned.
"Gryffindor's ghost, Sir Nicholas, was Petrified, as was one of your Hufflepuff students, Justin Finch-Fletchley!" Astoria said seriously, "They were turned into stone just like Mrs. Norris and Colin Creevey before. It happened just a few days after we left school."
"I see..." Jon nodded expressionlessly.
Just as he expected, according to the original plot, Nick and Justin should have been petrified at this time... However, he did not receive any news about this during Christmas. Perhaps the Hogwarts officials suppressed the news, but it could not be concealed from a big family like Greengrass.
"I wanted to write this to you in a letter..." Astoria said, "But my mother stopped me. She said that this matter should not be spread casually."
"Yeah!" Jon nodded and said slowly. "Professor Sprout's mandrake should be mature in a few months, and by then, all of their students who have been turned into stone will be able to recover; so, everything should return to normal."
"You have to be careful!" Astoria suddenly lowered her head and moved closer.
Her voice was low but full of worry:
"My mother almost didn't allow Daphne and I to go back to school... Hogwarts is getting really dangerous... The Slytherin monster actually exists!"
"I know... and thank you!"