Since the Slytherin team had lost the match, Sean no longer paid much attention to Quidditch. He continued to devote himself to his usual, rigorous study life. At the same time, he would go to the Room of Requirement every weekend to brew potions, which he would then provide to Andy. Through selling these magic potions, Sean had now managed to accumulate a small but respectable amount of savings.
"Andy," Sean said, as he handed over the week's supply of potions, "I need some new ingredients. I was wondering if you might be able to get them for me."
As soon as he accepted the fifteen vials of mental recovery potion from Sean, Andy heard Sean's request. Without a moment's hesitation, Andy immediately replied, "Of course I can. I just don't know what specific materials you need. If they are particularly hard to acquire, it might take me a little time."
Looking at Andy's confident attitude, Sean immediately knew that his previous impression of the third-year student had been a bit too conservative. This guy didn't even entertain the possibility that he might not be able to get them; he simply said that he might need more time. In other words, Andy was confident that he could obtain most potion ingredients. Otherwise, he wouldn't exude such self-assurance.
"I need some scarab beetles, ginger root, and armadillo bile…"
Listening to the list of ingredients Sean rattled off, Andy's eyes lit up slightly. "That's a Wit-Sharpening Potion!" he exclaimed. "Sean, do you want to make a Wit-Sharpening Potion?"
A Wit-Sharpening Potion is a concoction that can make the user's mind exceptionally clear for a certain period of time. In reality, it doesn't actually possess the ability to increase intelligence. It only allows the user to achieve an extremely lucid mental state while the potion is in effect, with their thinking becoming much more flexible and agile than usual. In essence, these are all the user's own inherent abilities, but they are fully unlocked and utilized by the effects of the Wit-Sharpening Potion.
Of course, even with these limitations, the Wit-Sharpening Potion was a very popular potion within Hogwarts, especially towards the end of the term and particularly among the fifth and seventh-year students facing their O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. exams. It was well known that while under the effects of a Wit-Sharpening Potion, the things one learned were retained even after the potion's effects wore off. Therefore, many students, if their financial conditions allowed, would purchase some Wit-Sharpening Potion to assist with their daily studies and exam preparations.
Naturally, its market was quite large, and its value was correspondingly high.
Sean looked at Andy and said, "Andy, don't get so excited just yet. I'm planning to use this potion for myself. And the difficulty of brewing a Wit-Sharpening Potion is significantly higher than that of a mental recovery potion. I won't be able to increase my success rate enough for commercial sale in a short amount of time. For now, I can only buy the ingredients to brew Wit-Sharpening Potions for my own personal use."
"This…" Andy sighed with some disappointment, but he quickly spoke again. "Sean, then have you been able to improve the success rate of making the mental recovery potion recently? If so, can you possibly increase the supply of the potion? At present, more and more people are coming to me to buy mental recovery potions, and some people's orders are already scheduled for next month."
"There's nothing I can do about that," Sean replied with a shrug. "I still have my own studies and life to manage, don't I?"
"That's true," Andy conceded with another sigh. "Well, I'll be going now. I suppose I'll have to slow down the rate at which I'm accepting new orders this month. Otherwise, if too many orders pile up, it's easy for problems to occur."
Andy left, looking worried.
After Andy had departed, Blaise, who had been observing the exchange, closed the door of Sean's room and then said to Sean, "Sean, I investigated the matter a bit more, as we discussed before. It turns out that Andy does have more than one potions supplier. However, at the beginning of this term, two of the three people who had previously been consistently providing potions for Andy were poached by a rival."
Blaise's expression grew serious. "If he hadn't managed to find you later, I'm afraid Andy's little business venture at Hogwarts would have suffered a considerable blow. The impact might even have been severe enough to force him to shut down his operations entirely."
"Do you know who did it?" Sean asked.
Nodding, Blaise said, "I found out incidentally. It's a fourth-year student named Dorian Cook. He also comes from a small, relatively obscure family, even smaller than Andy's. Therefore, I suspect that there's someone else behind this Cook, pulling the strings. I've already asked my family to investigate the matter further; it should be clear after a while."
"Okay, I understand. Thanks, Blaise."
Rolling his eyes, Blaise said impatiently to Sean, "You're always like this, thanking me back and forth. This matter wasn't difficult for me at all. I just had to write a letter and send it by owl. It didn't take any real effort, so you don't need to thank me."
"Then I thank your family for helping you find this information."
Glancing at Sean, Blaise said helplessly, "Alright, I'll accept your thanks on their behalf."
The two chatted for a while longer, then Sean and Blaise went out together. Sean headed to the Potions Club meeting, while Blaise went off to meet his girlfriend for a date. Recently, he had been hitting it off with that third-year senior, and they had already officially confirmed their relationship. But for some reason, the more intense their relationship became, the more Sean felt that his friend might be stringing the senior along. There was no concrete evidence, of course; it was just a feeling, based on Blaise's often uncertain and flighty character when it came to romantic relationships.
As Sean left the common room, two older students who had watched him depart immediately started talking in low, conspiratorial voices.
"Looking at the time and the book in his hand, he must be heading to the Potions Club."
"So, the potions expert that Andy found is actually a first-year student?" the other replied, a note of surprise in his voice.
The first student smiled. "You might not know much about him, but he's not just some ordinary first-year. He's won two Pure-Blood Duels in a row already, and the second time, he even beat that Malfoy kid so badly he ended up in the school hospital. Later, old Lucius Malfoy himself came to Hogwarts and still couldn't do anything to him. This is not your ordinary first year."
"No matter how extraordinary he is, he's still just a first-year student," the other countered dismissively. "So what if his surname is Bulstrode? He's just the son of a Squib. I'm afraid the head of the Bulstrode family is only protecting him somewhat for the sake of the family's reputation and perhaps his own personal abilities. How could a true pure-blood family ever be expected to strongly protect the son of a Squib?"
The first person did not refute his companion's words. The other student was an extreme pure-blood supporter, the kind of person who, if he had been born a few decades earlier, would undoubtedly have been prime material for a Death Eater. Such individuals were inherently dangerous, and there was no point in refuting their deeply held beliefs. As long as they could cooperate and earn galleons, that was enough.
"Let's not talk about that for now," the first student said, refocusing the conversation. "The fact that he was valued by our Head of House and was invited to join the Potions Club must be solid. We've also studied the kind of mental recovery potion he brews, and the technique is quite good. Plus, his output is also extremely high. Since we've agreed to make it so that Andy's business at Hogwarts can't continue, we must get rid of this Sean. Otherwise, with a supply of fifteen mental recovery potions per week, Andy's business can keep going indefinitely!"
"Just leave this kind of thing to me," the second student said with a sneer. "I was the one who poached those two suppliers before, and this one won't be an exception."
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