Hermione was getting ready to talk about different ways to use Transfiguration when she noticed Adrian staring at her with this excited look on his face.
"Adrian, what's wrong?" Hermione asked, trying to stay calm.
"Come with me, I'll explain later!" While Harry and Ron watched in shock, Adrian grabbed Hermione's wrist and started running.
Hermione barely knew what was happening before Adrian pulled her along. Harry and Ron snapped out of their surprise and followed them, clearly curious about what was going on.
Since Adrian was pretty popular now, lots of students recognized him as they ran through the halls. Seeing him sprint around holding Hermione's hand got the younger kids talking.
Big news!
After all, word about Adrian saving Hermione from the troll had already spread through the whole school. This scene naturally made people think romantic thoughts. Some young witches looked disappointed while others followed with burning curiosity.
George and Fred even whistled when Adrian and Hermione ran past, giving Adrian big thumbs up.
As more people started following them, Adrian felt confused. Meanwhile, Hermione, being dragged along at Adrian's speed, noticed everyone staring at them. Her cheeks turned bright red. Her mixed-up mind slowly recognized the route they were taking.
Wait, isn't this the way to the library?
Sure enough, Hermione soon saw the library entrance. Adrian ignored the usual quiet rules, quickly pushing Hermione into a chair in the study area. He grabbed a half-finished book, "Basic Potion Formulas and Ingredient Analysis", and shoved it into her hands while pointing to a specific part.
"Hermione, this book's seventh chapter says that black bloodroot and buckthorn have opposite effects, but they're used together in tons of potions..."
"What... what?" Hermione came out of her confusion, still blushing. When she realized she'd gotten the wrong idea about what was happening, she felt embarrassed, she wanted to hide behind the bookshelves. But when she recognized the text Adrian had given her, she pulled herself together and quickly focused on the material.
"That's because black bloodroot is really strong, so you usually mix it with opposite but gentler stuff like buckthorn to balance it out..."
After Hermione explained, Adrian kept going with their "academic discussion," turning to the next page for more questions. When she showed she knew something, Adrian shared his own thoughts so they could learn from each other...
The tired Harry, Ron, and gossip-hunters who had chased them finally arrived to see this peaceful study session.
"They're... actually here to study?" George, part of the gossip crowd, wondered if he was seeing things.
What is this world coming to?
Everyone else found it just as hard to believe, they'd run all this way for this?
"I think I should go back to wizard's chess," Ron said blankly.
"Wood definitely wants me practicing Quidditch right now," Harry nodded. They weren't going to waste their free time in the library.
George and some others stuck around, hoping to see something interesting happen, but their big group blocking the entrance soon got Madam Pince's attention.
"Quiet! If you want to use the library, stay silent or leave now!" Madam Pince said impatiently.
Seeing that Madam Pince was about to kick them out, the gossip-seekers left looking disappointed. Not many wanted to stay.
Adrian, totally focused on his learning breakthrough, didn't notice the fuss. He was too busy watching his system skills go up and feeling satisfied.
Hermione knew pretty much everything about basic theory in all subjects. This meant Adrian didn't need to check multiple books to verify stuff anymore.
Plus, the young witch understood things way faster than Adrian normally could, so her explanations naturally made learning more efficient.
Having Hermione around was like having a learning booster. Compared to reading by himself, his skill gains were more than twice as fast!
After going through several pages, Hermione nervously looked up at Adrian, worried she might have made mistakes.
After seeing Adrian easily beat that troll and do perfect Transfiguration work, Hermione thought he was way better than her. This made her constantly worry about messing up during explanations.
"Hmm? Why'd you stop?" Adrian, who had been listening to Hermione explain something, realized she'd gone quiet and turned to see her nervous expression.
Adrian quickly figured out what was wrong and hurried to reassure her.
"Your explanation was great... I was thinking the same thing."
"Here too, exactly what I was considering..."
"Though I see this part a bit differently..."
Over the next few hours, Adrian and Hermione threw themselves into studying and discussing.
Thanks to all his hard work last semester and building up lots of knowledge, Adrian could keep up pretty well in their conversations.
Without realizing it, Adrian had finished several books he'd read before but hadn't fully understood, pushing his reading progress to 100%!
[Ding! Reading progress for "Basic Potion Formulas and Ingredient Analysis" reached 100%. Reading reward: 5 grade points]
[Ding! Reading progress for "Advanced Transfiguration" reached 100%. Reading rewards...]
Grade points from all his reading, combined with previous rewards and spell upgrades, pushed Adrian's total over 100 again.
Without hesitation, Adrian found several tough books while he still had momentum, activated his academic enhancement card, and read quickly while explaining concepts to Hermione to pay her back for helping him.
Adrian expected this would slow down his boosted learning a lot, but he discovered that after he shared his thoughts and explanations, Hermione immediately got the material.
Her learning and memory skills really put him to shame...
However, Adrian didn't realize Hermione was under a lot of pressure. Sweat was beading on her forehead as she pushed her already amazing mind to its limits, struggling to understand Adrian's increasingly deep explanations.
This left Hermione feeling frustrated after their long discussion. She'd thought she had a slight edge in theory, but maybe Adrian's earlier questions had been testing how much she knew. Was this Adrian's real academic level?