In the midst of Lohart's despair, what was Tom doing?
He was inscribing runes.
That day, after creating chaos, he slipped away and joined Harry and Ron in a corner to enjoy the show. When Lohart left the bookstore in a mess, the three of them burst into hearty laughter.
However, their good mood was quickly disrupted by two unexpected guests: the Malfoy father and son arrived at the Enchanting Bookstore. They encountered Mr. Weasley, and just like hydrogen ions meeting hydroxide ions, a conflict naturally arose between the two.
Of course, Lucius Malfoy, before arguing with Mr. Weasley, secretly confirmed that the diary he had left there earlier was now missing.
In the end, the two parted ways without physical conflict.
That day, Tom felt like he was enjoying melons in a melon field.
In the following days, Tom focused on learning. He had finished reading Riddle's research manuscripts. Feeling that it was necessary, he decided to undertake a practical project: he wanted to create a gift.
In modern times, there is an essential shortcut for writing papers: Ctrl+F, a key that can search for keywords, greatly facilitating students in their research. However, such a thing did not exist in the magical world of the 1990s.
Tom was going to create an alchemical instrument that could replace Ctrl+F.
So, he found a piece of magical silver and hammered it into the shape of leaves. Riddle had mentioned that both gold and silver were excellent carriers, but Tom found that magical silver was more suitable than these two metals. It seemed that Riddle had not encountered this magical metal at that time.
Tom first spent some time writing and drawing on parchment before finalizing his thoughts.
The alchemical creation had to first recognize and record the content and corresponding positions in the book. Then, it would record the words and sentences the operator wanted to find and locate them in the book.
With the operational principle in mind, Tom began to carve runes.
Although the principle seemed not difficult, the actual operation was quite complex. Tom carved runes all night and felt like he had just scratched the surface.
Looking at the fallen hair, Tom fell into contemplation. This thing really cost hair!
Moreover, these runes gave a sense of déjà vu: there were beginnings and endings, judgments, termination judgments, as well as calls and exits... Most importantly, it required overtime, and it cost a lot of hair.
I'm a wizard, why does what I'm doing feel so much like programming?
In the following days, he worked at the Enchanting Bookstore, helping Mr. Lawrence with stocking and organizing, and acting as a guide to assist wizards in finding books. The work at the Enchanting Bookstore was entirely taken care of by Tom, Hermione, and a temporary worker hired by Mr. Lawrence—because Tom only worked three days a week. With reliable help, Mr. Lawrence could sit in the office every day, leisurely reading and enjoying some apple cider at noon.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ollivander's work was simpler: Tom mainly assisted Mr. Ollivander in measuring the young wizards' arm length, height, and other body data. In his free time, he even helped Mr. Ollivander carve some runes—Mr. Ollivander would mark the positions on the wand body and then let Tom carve the corresponding runes.
Every day after work, Tom would work on his alchemical creation in the dormitory. As the start of the school year approached, this item gradually neared completion.
The entire alchemical creation looked like a piece of summer oak leaf, except the surface was brushed with a layer of gold leaf, giving it a sparkling appearance. Tom intentionally made it into a bookmark.
The usage was straightforward; you simply clipped the leaf onto the book, and it would automatically scan the contents. When there was a need to search, write the desired word on a piece of paper, press the leaf onto the writing, and it would remember the word to be searched. Then, it would automatically insert into the book, pointing the stem toward that keyword. If the word wasn't what the searcher needed, it would automatically fly to the next occurrence.
However, Tom also discovered two minor bugs...
Firstly, if a second book was scanned after the first, the content of the first book wouldn't be overwritten. This resulted in when searching for keywords in the second book, keywords matching the conditions from the first book would also be selected—and following the scanning order, the leaf bookmark would prioritize displaying sentences from the first book...
This was quite annoying. For example, if Tom scanned "Standard Spells - Basic" and then "Standard Spells - Intermediate," immediately after, when Tom wanted to search for the term "counterclockwise" in "Standard Spells - Intermediate," the leaf bookmark would first search for sentences containing "counterclockwise" in "Basic" before displaying sentences from "Intermediate."
The second minor problem was that once it started indicating, it wouldn't stop... Tom accidentally input the word "g" as the search term, and the bookmark went haywire, only stopping when its magic was depleted.
Tom picked up his second alchemical creation—the first being the floating coin lamp—and looked at the system's description:
1
At first, Tom was quite dissatisfied: even the Chocolate Frogs I pull out have three stars! Is my bookmark in the same tier as Chocolate Frogs?
However, after delving deeper, he found out that alchemical creations had an independent star rating system, and three stars were already quite good. His floating lamp only had one star, and the annotation even stated, "Rated one star because it can only achieve one star at the lowest."
In addition to this, Tom's alchemy skill had broken through from level 0 to level 1, currently at 2, and for this breakthrough to level 1, he had to thank Riddle for generously giving him the notes.
For Tom, the summer vacation ended too quickly. He was incredibly busy during this break, and in the blink of an eye, school was about to start. However, after school started, he might be able to relax for a while.
Coincidentally, Harry, who lived in Devon, also felt that the summer vacation ended too quickly. This summer was unforgettable for him: first encountering a mysteriously domesticated house-elf at the Dursleys', then flying in a flying car to the Burrow. After that, he spent a whole month living at the Burrow—Harry dared to say that this month was the happiest time of his life.
Of course, there were people who felt that the vacation was too long and couldn't wait for school to start immediately, like Peggy Grossman.
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(End of this chapter)