The mastermind behind Hogwarts

Chapter 11 Professor Snape can finally wash his hair!

Lockhart had to run around asking around for advice.

Lockhart knocked on the castle gates on the morning of December 4, 1987.

After being picked up by Luke, he went straight to the dining room, where Moriarty was having breakfast.

"Young master, I know why the Daily Prophet didn't report on the mutual aid foundation."

Lockhart's voice was dry and harsh, and Moriarty noticed that he looked terrible.

He must have hadn't slept well for days because of this; he had huge dark circles under his eyes, and the hem of his embroidered coat was covered in mud. Clearly, the running around these past few days had left him exhausted.

Moriarty poured Lockhart a glass of milk. "Here, Lockhart, drink it and talk slowly. Put your mind at ease. With me here, no problem is a problem."

Lockhart gulped down a glass of milk, his face turning rosy, and he pulled out a letter.

"Young Master, look! Old Foley wrote to me this morning saying the Mutual Aid Foundation is being boycotted!" Lockhart said through gritted teeth, "It's Lucius Malfoy! He's teamed up with several pure-blood families to boycott your Mutual Aid Foundation! That treacherous Death Eater! If you ask me, he should be locked up in Azkaban, he's utterly wicked!"

"Haha, don't say that." Moriarty was amused by Lockhart's expression.

The pure-blood family didn't put any pressure on him. He didn't even look at old Foley's letter. In fact, he understood everything when he heard the name Lucius Malfoy.

"It's important to figure out who's behind this, Lockhart. You've done a great job!" Moriarty praised, then his eyes sharpened. "I've already prepared for the worst—if it's the goblins behind this, I might do everything I can to take down Gringotts first."

Lockhart blinked, seemingly lost in thought, and said, "In that case, perhaps the pure-blood families' intervention isn't a bad thing for the young master. Could we cooperate with the pure-blood families?"

"I am delighted by the way you think about problems."

Moriarty gave Lockhart another glass of milk and even clinked glasses with him.

After drinking the milk, Moriarty cleared his throat: "Regarding purebloods, you need to remember that most of them are still basking in their former glory."

Have you forgotten the era of revival you proposed? When the times abandon them, they won't even say goodbye.

Unless the pure-blood families change, my relationship with them will only be one of cooperation.

"I understand, young master," Lockhart said seriously. "So, what should we do this time?"

"Even in a collaboration, I won't lose out," Moriarty said slowly. "My original intention in having you establish the mutual aid foundation was to set a trap for the fairies. Now that the pure-blood families have emerged, let them make Merlin lose everything!"

Moriarty left the restaurant, took Salazar's diary from his bedroom, and pointed to a note on one page, saying to Lockhart, "See this? Go to Diagon Alley yourself and buy these potion ingredients."

"Wow!" Lockhart exclaimed in surprise, "You're going to brew a potion?"

"That's right, I'm going to concoct the first of the 17 potions left behind by our ancestor Salazar, and it's a potion that has never existed in the magical world before: the Neutralizing Potion!"

Moriarty had already memorized Salazar's diary, and he began to recite it fluently.

"This potion acts like a weight, balancing a tilted scale. It's used on unbalanced potions, reducing the dangerous components while enhancing their properties."

The ancestor Salazar said it could even neutralize the bad luck caused by taking too much Felix Felicis. However, making it is no easy feat; many of the raw materials, besides those available on the market, are now extinct. But I think I should find the materials I need in the basement.

After Moriarty finished speaking, he saw Lockhart, who was already stunned. "What are you still standing there for?"

Lockhart jolted awake, shook his head, and stumbled away.

"He's acting really strange today," Moriarty clicked his tongue in amazement. "Don't you think so, Luke?"

The house-elf made a perfunctory assessment, but his joy was short-lived; Moriarty soon sent him to clean the cauldron.

"Ingo!" Moriarty ordered the slowly approaching goblin, "Go to Knockturn Alley and buy vampire eyeballs, werewolf fingernails, dew from the first bloom of a treant, and the buck teeth of a chameleon-like ghoul..."

Many materials are only sold in Knockturn Alley, and Moriarty dared not let Lockhart buy them; the fairy Ingo was the most suitable candidate.

Moriarty sent out three of his assistants and headed towards the underground vault, where he found the most important documents according to Salazar's diary.

Luke moved the crucible, balance, small medicine bottles, furnace and other instruments into the room where Salazar had concocted potions nine hundred years ago.

There were more than a dozen crucibles of various sizes and materials. Luke numbered them and placed them one by one on the long table.

Moved by the scene, Luke teared up: "Young Master really looks just like the old master..."

Moriarty recited each step repeatedly to avoid making a mistake; this was his first time concocting a potion.

According to his academic plan, he would only attempt to refine neutralizing potions and two other potions after enrolling in Hogwarts. However, the targeting by the pure-blood family caused him to bring forward this plan by nine months!

An hour later, Lockhart was the first to return, and as soon as he entered the door, he couldn't wait to look for Moriarty.

"Young Master? Young Master? Please allow me a minute to tell you my idea, my idea!"

Lockhart ran into the Potions Room, panting, and said, "When I was still studying at Hogwarts, I thought about making a shampoo."

And that's exactly what I did—I successfully created a new shampoo using the yolk of a bird-snake egg as the main ingredient, and I call it Bird-Snake Egg Yolk Shampoo!

It effectively locks in the shine of your hair; I've tried it, and it really works.

However, the downside is that it has certain risks... for example, your hair may suddenly grow long, then you may go bald, and then it may grow even longer!

Of course, this only happens occasionally, and I think it's related to the fact that the bird-snake can extend and retract at will...

Lockhart talked for a long time, and the room was extremely quiet. He looked at Moriarty expectantly: "So? I've been thinking about it on the way here. I think adding a neutralizing agent to the bird snake yolk shampoo might neutralize the danger posed by the bird snake! Young master? Do you think my idea is right?"

Moriarty seemed to be getting to know Lockhart all over again; he understood why Lockhart had acted strangely before.

I remember Gilderoy Lockhart saying in his class that his greatest ambition was to eliminate evil from the world and sell his own line of hair care products.

A crisp "ding" sounded in his mind, and Moriarty received a system notification.

"Mission issued: Refine a harmless bird-snake egg yolk shampoo and deliver it to Professor Snape! Mission deadline: one year. Reward: one achievement lottery! Mission failure: the host will be given the same hairstyle as Professor Snape."

Is this the same hairstyle as the one worn by the teacher?

Isn't that messy yet elegant and beautiful (oily) hair?

Moriarty fell into deep thought. This mission, which appeared to be one, was actually two.

The first thing to do is to refine a new shampoo.

Even if the system didn't issue a mission, Moriarty would still refine this shampoo. He wanted Lockhart to use the new shampoo to break the Potter family's monopoly on shampoo and then compete with the pure-blood families for market share.

Secondly, sending Professor Snape a new shampoo???

This task left Moriarty speechless. Given Snape's personality, he probably wouldn't accept shampoo from Lily, let alone Voldemort!

It seems this task will have to wait until the start of the school year. Moriarty sighed and turned to look at Lockhart.

Lockhart was like a student who had just finished an exam, anxiously waiting for the teacher to grade his paper.

"You never disappoint when it comes to fashion!" Moriarty praised Lockhart. "No one else could come up with such a brilliant idea! The bird-snake yolk shampoo combined with the neutralizing potion will surely shock the entire wizarding world."

"Oh, young master, thank you!" Lockhart silently shed tears. He was a nobody at Hogwarts, but he longed for fame and recognition, yet no one could give him a single word of praise.

The thought that people who had once looked down on him would use the shampoo he made made Lockhart happier than winning his fourth Most Charming Smile Award. For some reason, the first person Lockhart thought of was Severus Snape.

"I'm going to write to Professor Snape and recommend my shampoo to him! Haha, that's brilliant!"

Lockhart, a man of action, was about to write a letter when Moriarty stopped him: "Wake up, we haven't even started brewing yet! Come and brew potions with me. You need to brew a lot of bird-egg yolk shampoo to make sure I can experiment with the proportions of neutralizing agents you like."

If Lockhart were to write to Snape, Moriarty's mission would likely never be completed, and he would be eliminated by the system that very day!

Therefore, Moriarty's tone was very stern, and Lockhart quickly put away his smug expression and hurriedly began to concoct shampoo.

Luke laughed so hard he bent over when he saw this, but he was soon sent by Moriarty to sort out the mountain of materials.

"That's more like it." Moriarty glanced around the potion room; now that there was an atmosphere for making potions, he gradually got into the zone.

The process of refining the neutralizing potion is not dangerous. Salazar developed it with the intention of eliminating the danger of most potions. When dozens of deadly toxic ingredients were added to the No. 1 Golden Crucible, they made a "gurgling" sound.

Moriarty simmered the second golden crucible over a low flame. After baking for thirty minutes, he needed to pour the materials from the first golden crucible into the second to extract the essence from the dangerous ingredients.

This was no easy task. Perhaps, just as there is no true fairness in the world, Salazar's formula eliminated the potential disasters caused by dangerous ingredients, but it could not eliminate the unpleasant smells they produced.

The chameleon's buck teeth emitted a hot, fishy stench that nearly made the master and two servants in the potions room vomit their breakfast.

"Luke, keep the fire at 44.43 degrees!" Moriarty said to the house-elf, covering his mouth and nose. "Not even one degree above that! The dhole's dew will react with the black dragon's saliva."

At this point, Moriarty regretted not having learned fire magic, as potions and the magic fire used to make them are closely related, like twin brothers.

Having fire elemental magic would undoubtedly make his control over simmering and raging fires more refined, instead of relying on Luke for support as he does now.

This made Moriarty determined to learn more about potions, but the challenges he faced didn't end there.

Salazar's recipe was very complicated. Moriarty had to remember the time when each ingredient was added to the first golden crucible, and then pour them into the second golden crucible in the order of the recipe to extract the white essence.

"Lockhart, bring me the scales. I need to make sure the serum doesn't weigh more than 610 grams!"

Sequence, temperature, weight—Moriarty overcame one hurdle after another, finally reaching the last step.

time.

Moriarty poured the essence into an ordinary crucible and stirred it for fourteen hours and seventeen minutes!

Lockhart looked at Moriarty with admiration. Even though there was an automatic stirring crucible that could stir things automatically, Moriarty insisted on stirring with his own hands!

"The speed and force of the automatic stirring crucible are different from those of the Salazar ancestors, and I cannot ignore any detail because of the hard work."

Lockhart, remember this: shampoo is something we sell, and we must ensure that every step is the same as that of our ancestor Salazar.

Moriarty said this, and Lockhart was greatly encouraged by it. He decided not to rest and to seize the time to refine more bird-snake egg yolk shampoo.

Luke shed tears of excitement and relief again, closed the door and silently left. He could finally get some rest; at least he didn't have to prepare lunch and dinner.

Fourteen hours and seventeen minutes later, Moriarty finally stopped stirring, and the neutralizing agent was complete!

Moriarty let out a sigh of relief, put down his spoon, and plopped down in his chair, his arms hanging limply at his sides.

He was exhausted. Even after fighting four dark wizards, Moriarty wasn't particularly tired.

Lockhart had already collapsed on the carpet, having concocted more than ten batches of bird-snake egg yolk shampoo, and was waiting for Moriarty.

He mumbled weakly, "Young Master, I'd rather fight four more dark wizards, or go through another avalanche, than concoct any more potions!"

I didn't do very well in Potions class during my school years, and I had quite a few complaints about Professor Snape, that old bat.

Looking back now, I really admire him. Those potions masters—I don't know how they persevered, they... are truly amazing!

Lockhart covered his forehead and eyes with his hands. He was famous, but he did not have the strength to match his fame.

"Come on, Lockhart, get up! We still have one last step to complete! After today, your bird-snake egg yolk shampoo can be on the market!"

Moriarty struggled to his feet and looked out the window. It was around one in the morning. He knew that no amount of comforting words would have much effect on Lockhart's lament.

Moriarty could only continue to explore the magical realm, leading Lockhart to experience the allure of magic, changing and shaping him.

The rest was much simpler. The neutralizing agent perfectly eliminated the bird snake's ability to stretch and contract at will, and the bird snake egg yolk shampoo no longer had any mutation or danger.

Lockhart seemed to have been fully revived, rushing into the bathroom with the freshly made shampoo and happily washing his hair with it.

1. The inventor of the bird-snake egg yolk shampoo was Gilderoy Lockhart. Its effect was to ensure that hair "locks in shine." The known ingredient was the yolk of a bird-snake egg. However, this shampoo was expensive and dangerous to use, so it was never produced for the mass market.

2. The Owl Serpent is a winged, bilegged animal native to Asia. It is a bird-like man-eating monster with a bird-like head and a serpentine body, classified as a 4x-level magical creature. The Owl Serpent can expand and contract at will, allowing it to grow large enough to fill any space, or shrink to fit within available space.

3. The above information is from Fandom, Harry Potter Wiki.

(End of this chapter)