"Wingardium Leviosa~"
As the incantation sounded, a plump bubotuber pod slowly drifted down from the vine, floating precisely in front of Adelaide.
She didn't rashly touch the bubotuber with her hands, but instead let it hover in the air to carefully observe its pink skin. The skin was smooth and elastic, as if it would bounce back with the slightest touch.
Adelaide directed her wand to gently pry open a corner of the skin, revealing shiny beans inside that glittered with a charming light.
The appearance of these beans was quite unique; they possessed the rounded, full shape of magic beans while also carrying the crystal-clear texture of bubotuber seeds. It could be said they were a perfect combination of the two.
Adelaide tried letting the beans fall to the ground and found that, just like the beans of an original bubotuber, they would bloom immediately upon contact with a solid object. It seemed that the characteristics of these grafted plant seeds were primarily based on the scion variety.
bubotubers are plants from the third-year Herbology Class curriculum, and were the least dangerous and easiest to grow among the several plants she had prepared.
After all, only by gaining experience through grafting bubotubers could she properly move on to grafting snargaluff.
Adelaide put on her dragon-hide protective gloves and approached the gnarled stump vine with light and cautious steps.
The lumps on the stump looked bizarre. Adelaide squinted and observed for a while, selecting a small lump that had not yet fully matured.
Holding an exquisite silver knife tightly in her right hand, she carefully extended it toward the small lump. When the tip of the knife touched the snargaluff, she paused for a moment, as if feeling for something—then Adelaide made a decisive cut, precisely severing the small lump along with its tender shoot.
Next, Adelaide turned quickly and went to the magic bean plant that had not yet been grafted with bubotubers. Raising the silver knife again, she made a light incision on the main vine of the magic bean.
A small opening instantly appeared on the vine, and a few drops of green sap oozed from the edges. Without the slightest hesitation, Adelaide immediately inserted the freshly cut tender shoot and small lump into the opening.
With a bit of heartache, she took out a small crystal bottle containing an incredibly precious liquid—Phoenix tears, which she had managed to obtain from Phoenix Fawkes with great difficulty.
Adelaide opened the stopper and extremely carefully dripped one-thirty-second of a drop of Phoenix tears into the wound of the magic bean.
It had to be said that the effect of Phoenix tears was truly amazing. The slowly flowing green sap of the magic bean's main vine seemed to be enchanted, stopping its flow instantly.
Immediately after, the wound began to heal at a speed barely perceptible to the naked eye. In the blink of an eye, it was restored to its original state, with not even a trace of the injury to be found.
And the inserted shoot now seemed to have gained a new life, quickly merging with the stem of the magic bean.
Its originally somewhat curved posture became straight and upright, and the fresh leaves attached to the small lump unfurled as if they had been a part of the magic bean from the very beginning.
Adelaide took off her gloves and wiped the sweat from her forehead, stroking the magic bean's vine with satisfaction. The surgery was very successful; you're pregnant with a girl—cough, pregnant with a little lump.
A single lump was a bit too risky. After a short rest, Adelaide followed the previous procedure again, repeating the same actions to graft more lumps one after another. She was careful every time, not daring to be careless—until she could no longer find any suitable small lumps for grafting on that snargaluff stump.
After a period of hard work, she was finally finished.
Adelaide was slightly exhausted, but she still stepped back several paces with joy. After standing still, she began to carefully examine the "masterpiece" she had just completed.
However, for some reason, even though it looked like a fairly perfect piece of work, Adelaide always had an indescribable sense of weirdness in her heart.
Adelaide couldn't help but frown and fall into deep thought: forcibly taking those immature small lumps from the mother snargaluff plant, and then right under its nose, ruthlessly forcing these small lumps into the body of the magic bean vine—hiss~ stop thinking about it!
She couldn't think about it any further!
Adelaide quickly shook her head vigorously, as if to shake all those annoying, messy thoughts out of her brain.
This was a sacred grafting experiment... and the purpose of this experiment was only one: to make her stronger!
Adelaide walked around the plantation a few more times. She realized that she really seemed interested in developing new plant species. Unlike spells and Transfiguration which she learned as soon as she was taught, hybridizing and grafting could bring Adelaide a sense of accomplishment and happiness from deep within—previously, she had only been focused on eliminating the cockroach horcrux and had never considered her own future.
Maybe she should develop in the direction of being the "Mendel" of the Wizarding World, contributing her own strength to the diversity of magical plants?
Adelaide firmly believed that with her intelligence and through continuous exploration and practice, she would surely be able to create unprecedentedly wonderful plant varieties, thereby changing the entire Wizarding World's perception and application of plant magic.
Though her Great-Granduncle would probably be very unhappy about it.
Adelaide sighed. She shouldn't think about so much now; she needed to finish the snargaluff grafting experiment first... As for the venomous tentacula grafting, she still needed to wait patiently for a while.
One must know that once a creature like a venomous tentacula matures, it instinctively catches living creatures around it, and its sharp thorns and the venom it secretes are deadly!
Before being fully prepared, Adelaide didn't dare to easily use this dangerous fellow for a grafting experiment.
However, she really had to admire Senior Penelope's powerful connections. After all, venomous tentacula were not just dangerous plants covered in the sixth-year N.E.W.T. level classes; they were explicitly listed by the Ministry of Magic as Class C Non-Tradeable Goods. They weren't seen openly in the British Wizarding World.
To be honest, when she first asked Senior Penelope for venomous tentacula seeds, she didn't have much hope herself. She hadn't expected Senior Penelope to actually get her hands on the seeds—this made Adelaide re-evaluate the backgrounds of the seniors in the Human Research Group. She had unintentionally latched onto some very influential people!
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