During the wait for the visas to be approved, Loren spent his days accompanying Hermione: helping her finish her study plans, researching the Philosopher's Stone together, and slowly refining the functions of the Magic Notebook.
It really was worthy of being called the pinnacle of alchemy in the Harry Potter world. Loren's own alchemy had already reached the brink of perfection, yet he still couldn't extract the Stone's power to transmute matter at will and repackage it as something he could freely control.
He wasn't in a hurry, though. The Philosopher's Stone was in his own hands anyway. As long as he kept studying, he would eventually get what he wanted out of it.
In his spare time, Loren constantly tweaked and upgraded the Magic Notebook. Many of its features were copied straight from the memories of his previous life.
But once the Magic Notebook exploded in popularity overnight and the user base became more and more complicated, a lot of those functions had to be adjusted.
Both families decided to move the launch forward so that sales would begin on the second day of the summer holidays, just in time to ride the wave of Hogwarts hype. They even bought ad space in the Daily Prophet to promote it.
On launch day, the shops selling the Magic Notebook were packed to bursting, people crammed shoulder-to-shoulder.
That was mainly because of the Hogwarts effect. There were only a few major gathering points for wizards in all of Britain, and Hogwarts students came from all over Britain and its neighbouring regions.
First came the Daily Prophet's ad bombardment; by then, most witches and wizards already had a basic concept of what the Magic Notebook was.
Then the students came home for the summer and showed the actual devices to their families, proving that the advertisement hadn't been exaggerated. Add the fact that the price wasn't particularly high, and there was no way it wouldn't sell.
According to Rona's statistics, more than fifteen thousand Magic Notebooks were activated in just a short time—far more than the number of wizards recorded in the British Ministry's official census.
Among those fifteen thousand users were not only ordinary wizards, but also Knockturn Alley's Dark wizards, plus various Dark creatures and intelligent magical beasts.
From what Loren knew, the Forbidden Forest's Acromantulas and centaurs had basically gone "one Magic Notebook per head".
The biggest distributor in the Forbidden Forest was Shiraori, who simply manufactured them directly in the alchemy workshop inside the small world. Loren even went out of his way to give a friendly heads-up to the two families he was working with, to prevent any misunderstanding about where half the stock was really coming from.
The new forum was divided into three sections. One section required real-name verification and was designed specifically for ordinary wizards.
Another section allowed completely anonymous accounts. That one was basically crawling with Knockturn Alley Dark wizards and various troublemakers.
The last section was reserved exclusively for magical creatures; wizards were absolutely barred from entering.
Magical creatures were generally too straightforward. If they were allowed to mingle freely with wizards, they'd probably be scammed until there was nothing left of them but fur and feathers.
This was especially true when it came to the recharge system and the in-game shop in the Games section of the Magic Notebook.
The Notebook's top-up function was built on Loren's research into the Vanishing Cabinet: it could send Galleons from the Notebook straight into a specific location in the small world. Rona would then credit the corresponding number of points to the user's account.
Originally, the recharge system only recognised Galleons. Each Galleon had a unique magical signature that made it easy to identify; one detection spell was enough to get an accurate count.
But soon a new problem appeared: magical creatures also wanted to top up.
They didn't have Galleons, though. What they did have was all sorts of materials.
At the current stage, the only source of points was recharging, and the main use for points was to buy game time or in-game items.
The public Magic Notebook model wasn't like the Hogwarts special edition; it didn't come with unlimited free games. After the trial period ended, you had to pay to keep playing. Some games were a one-time purchase; others required you to buy game time.
None of the magical creatures had ever encountered such carefully designed games before, and they quickly sank into them, just like that first wave of Hogwarts students who got their hands on Magic Notebooks.
But once the free trial was over, points were needed to continue playing—and the only way to gain points was still by recharging Galleons.
With no Galleons of their own, the creatures all turned their eyes on whatever magical creatures did have Galleons.
The Nifflers' hoards were the first to be stripped clean. But the total number of Galleons they had stashed away was limited and couldn't possibly satisfy every magical creature wanting to recharge.
When Shiraori heard about the situation, she immediately summoned all the magical creatures who owned Magic Notebooks and convened a great council to discuss solutions.
After a round of debate, the magical creatures agreed that they could use the materials their bodies produced, or magical plants harvested from the Forbidden Forest, to exchange for Galleons.
Pricing those materials, however, was another problem entirely. Shiraori was still just an Acromantula modified by Loren, obsessed with drawing and games. When it came to the actual economic value of the materials, she was completely clueless.
So Shiraori went to Loren and requested an upgrade to the recharge system. In the beginning, the system only accepted Galleons. After Loren modified it, it could now accept any kind of magic-infused object. Those objects would be sent into the small world, where Borgin would appraise them and assign a value.
Loren even added a reverse-transport function, allowing the system to send items from the small world back to wherever the Magic Notebook was.
That made life more convenient for everyone—and, more importantly, laid the groundwork for a future "online shopping" feature.
The Magic Notebook was meant to be a match for the smartphones in Loren's previous life, and online shopping was an essential part of that.
For now, however, that function was only open to magical creatures, and its main use was to deliver food to them.
Aside from all that, the most important task was the development of new games.
Loren had never expected wizards to be so starved for entertainment. Simple mini-games from his previous world were enough to keep them blissfully occupied.
To keep them from degenerating into game-addicted slackers, he racked his brains and poured his efforts into developing a wizarding game specifically designed to stimulate their enthusiasm for studying. The game was divided into a combat system and a raising system.
The combat system was a bit special: it was a hybrid of Hogwarts Legacy and Harry Potter: Magic Awakened.
The core of the combat was Hogwarts Legacy's free-duel mode. Players could even use gesture casting. As long as the system judged you to have won the fight, you earned points as a reward.
However, the spells and items you could use in combat had to be obtained as cards, just like in Magic Awakened.
Every wizard started as a blank slate and could only rely on their own casting speed and reactions to win.
To increase their combat power, they had to obtain more cards. Cards were divided into spell cards, potion cards, equipment cards, and battle-companion cards.
To get those cards, they had to engage with the raising system: learning new spells, brewing potions, using alchemy to craft equipment, and raising magical creatures and magical plants.
New spells had to be learned in reality. Once a wizard had mastered a spell, they could cast it at the Magic Notebook once, or pass a written test via the Notebook, to unlock that spell's card.
Wizards could also upload their self-developed spells to the Magic Notebook and have them turned into cards inside the game.
If the wizard agreed, the method for learning the new spell could also be sold in the game's shop. Any points earned that way would be automatically converted into Galleons and sent to the spell's creator. Loren didn't take a cut—he was already getting something far more precious: knowledge.
Potions were handled similarly. Only after passing a Magic Notebook test to prove you could brew a particular potion would you be able to brew it in-game.
Of course, wizards could skip learning potion-brewing altogether and simply spend points to buy potions brewed by others.
The process of raising magical creatures and magical plants worked on the same principle. Only after passing the relevant exam could you raise a particular creature or plant in the game.
Creatures and plants raised in this way helped in battle and could also produce materials used for potion-brewing or equipment forging.
If someone managed to cultivate a new magical creature or plant in reality, they could upload it just like a new spell. It would be handled in exactly the same way.
At the same time, a wizard's in-game level would appear directly on their real-name wizard ID, and any Transfiguration level they had officially certified would generate corresponding cards inside the game.
As for Professor Sprout, Loren knew perfectly well that those greenhouses banned to students were full of new hybrids she had developed herself.
The game's design was simple enough. Loren just laid out his requirements to Rona. With the full support of the Hogwarts library data, Rona took less than a day to build the entire game.
Once released, it was instantly loved by wizards everywhere—especially the Hogwarts students, for whom it was the only game where they had a real advantage over adult witches and wizards.
Students still at school had one key benefit: the game could draw directly on the data already in their learning system and instantly generate corresponding cards.
To avoid being crushed into the ground by their juniors, adult wizards had no choice but to pick up their books again, practise their spells, sit tests—and slowly grind out their own cards and levels.
As for Loren, when he looked at all the new spells and potion recipes appearing in the game's backend, he couldn't help but smile in satisfaction.
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