Chapter 488 - 310: Who Can Tell the Campus from the Theme Park? (2)

Chapter 488: Chapter 310: Who Can Tell the Campus from the Theme Park? (2)

"Excellent."

Zog praised.

"You’ve done an excellent job. I trust we’ll have more opportunities to work together in the future."

"Thank you for your appreciation," the designer replied.

Even so, he wasn’t sure if he would take on another job like this in the future.

It was too mentally draining.

To achieve the effects Zog demanded, the entire team had lost quite a bit of hair.

Perhaps going bald was the destiny of those in the design industry. His mentor’s head was already reflective, and his own hair was thinning by the day.

Zog wandered the empty campus for several hours before concluding the inspection, completely satisfied.

Universal Studios? Compared to the fidelity of his reproduction, it looked as crude as a roadside stall.

The "hardware" was ready; naturally, the "software" had to match.

In the original *Harry Potter* books, aside from the absurdly overpowered Time Converter, Feilin already possessed most of the other magical trinkets, and those he didn’t have weren’t difficult to replicate.

The Time Converter was truly outrageous. Even now, Zog couldn’t quite understand how a world with a relatively low display of magical power could produce a Rule-System item that was so easy to activate.

The only explanation was that it was just a story. No need to get too serious about it, as long as it was a good read.

Zog sourced all sorts of Magic Items and snacks directly from merchant groups he had good relationships with.

The only thing he needed to make himself was the Sorting Hat.

This thing was also ridiculously overpowered. For a Magic Item, it possessed super-intelligence, vast knowledge, and could even read minds.

Zog asked Old El if he could make one.

Old El replied, "You look like a Sorting Hat to me."

However, Zog had no intention of sorting by mind-reading and personality anyway.

Grouping people with similar personalities, creating huge divides between the groups, and on top of that, having the school administration encourage competition between the houses...

It was a veritable petri dish for bullying.

It would be a disservice to this sorting method if cliques, conflicts, and confrontations didn’t break out.

Zog’s plan was to make the sorting process more like a real school.

Each house would correspond to different schools and majors.

Gryffindor would house practical, hands-on majors like the Plastic Energy School, the Spellcasting School, the Defense School, geological surveying, and journalism.

There was also criminology, a new major cobbled together by the Devils and the Twin Tower City guard. It wasn’t about teaching crime, but the behavioral science of studying it.

Hufflepuff would have the Transformation School, the Enchantment School, medicine, Priests, Alchemy, education, and engineering—basically, all the majors that emphasized a peaceful, non-confrontational existence.

Ravenclaw would have the Prophetic School, pure humanities, pure sciences, philosophy, archaeology, biology, and sociology. As theoretical as it gets. Graduates probably wouldn’t have the best job prospects.

Slytherin would get the Illusion School, the Necromancy School, finance, and law.

What? Why law in Slytherin?

Please, it’s a major where the primary career path is becoming a lawyer.

It wasn’t hard to see that this was a school with both magical and technological majors.

It was also the first school on the Continent to do so.

Zog believed that the fusion of Magic and technology was the future.

Interdisciplinary studies!

Students who wanted to attend would choose their majors when they applied, usually by listing several preferences.

As for the role of the Sorting Hat in this process...

It was for candidates who met the score threshold but didn’t get into any of their preferred majors.

Sorting Hat ❌

Academic Transfer Hat ✔️

For candidates requiring a transfer, their acceptance letters wouldn’t specify their major.

If they accepted the transfer, they’d come, and the Sorting Hat would reveal their fate on the spot.

It was sure to be exciting.

This way, the Sorting Hat only needed to be smart enough to recite pre-written lines based on the admissions information.

And just like that, Zog’s very own Hogwarts was basically complete.

Now, all it needed were students.

This was also the headmaster’s biggest concern. Being a headmaster with no students wasn’t much of a job.

"Mr. Zhuoge, when will our university begin admissions, and how will we recruit students?" the headmaster asked anxiously.

The first batch of students for the middle school has already been confirmed, but there’s been no movement on the university side.

The school is built now; it should be time to get things on track.

"No rush," said Zog. "We’re aiming to become the best school on the Continent, so we need to build our reputation first."

"Build our reputation first?" The headmaster didn’t understand. A school’s reputation takes a long time to build. Besides, who ever heard of a school becoming famous before it even had students?

"Yes. Trust me, it won’t be long before Hogwarts becomes an ’internet-famous’ school," Zog said with certainty.

The headmaster felt that "internet-famous school" didn’t sound like a good thing.

Seeing the headmaster’s troubled expression, Zog explained, "To get enough applicants, academic achievement is certainly the main driver. But fame, for its own sake, can also be a boost. With a sufficient student body, we can produce academic results, which will attract better students, creating a positive feedback loop. As for the first step to becoming famous, you should be seeing it very soon."

The truth is, most students preparing for higher education don’t have a specific understanding of the schools, or even the majors.

It’s a common phenomenon to just pick whichever one is more famous.

There wasn’t even a unified exam within any single country in Sutton, let alone across the entire nation.

Each school has its own exams, and some even have scheduling conflicts with one another.

If you register for one, you can’t go to the other.

And the pool of students capable of attending a university isn’t as large as the pool for middle school.

At least, not before Zog’s educational model becomes widespread.

So for Hogwarts, student loan policies aren’t enough. It also needs the illusion of being a prestigious school to compete with others for students.

Hogwarts Marketing Plan, activate!

Step one: find the organizations that rank and review schools, and "make a donation."

Get Hogwarts’ name out there so the public becomes familiar with it.

Step two: Aggressively piggyback off the fame of the Mage Guild’s elders.

Every single one of them will be listed as a professor here. It doesn’t matter if they can actually teach classes, how many students they can mentor, or how many times a year those students will even see their advisor.

In short, Hogwarts’ faculty is packed with Legendary figures.

Besides, the actual teaching staff isn’t bad at all; they just aren’t that famous.

The teachers Zog recruited were similar to the headmaster: Mages who had academic achievements but lacked practical combat skills, and thus weren’t highly regarded in the traditional evaluation system.

Meanwhile, the science-track teachers were mostly from within the Zog Group.

’I wouldn’t dare say our research capabilities surpass the Twin Towers City Research Institute, but I can guarantee that what’s taught in the school will seamlessly connect with a future job.’

Anyone who has gone through the painful transition from university to employment knows just how valuable that is.

Step three, the most far-reaching step of all: plant a "Hogwarts dream" in the hearts of children from a young age.

So that when they grow up, they’ll yearn for Hogwarts.

Ideally, when it came time to choose a university, their mindset would be "Hogwarts or bust."

To achieve this goal, Zog of course had to pull out the titan of children’s literature, a series that was not only great for building a reputation but also a master at making money: *Harry Potter*.

This time, Zog didn’t plan on making a Shadow of Evil; instead, he decided to start with a novel, just like the original.

Because a Shadow of Evil doesn’t show many of the details, and the world-building isn’t fully developed.

Simply put, it’s not convenient for creating an IP.

Even if he made a Shadow of Evil, he’d still have to release the novel as a supplement, so he might as well just write the novel from the start.

However, if he was going to write *Harry Potter* here, some adaptations were necessary.

First off, the use of Magic in actual combat was a bit... sloppy. This was mainly because the original work didn’t focus on combat. The only memorable spells were Avada Kedavra and Expelliarmus.

And those two spells could even clash in a beam struggle.

Zog needed to adapt it into magic duels better suited to the Feilin Baby physique.

They should at least be on par with what’s in *Hogwarts Legacy*.

He also had to sneak some of his own ideas into the book’s version of Hogwarts, like a Magic School actively embracing technology.

And some other miscellaneous details and background elements.

After outlining the parts he wanted to change, Zog began to write the story.

He remembered a very inflammatory topic that used to be debated on the internet back on Earth.

Whether the quality of *Harry Potter* was superior to web novels.

Zog chose to solve this problem at its root.

He would serialize *Harry Potter* online and turn it into a web novel.

He turned on his terminal. Web novels here were still in a primitive state, serialized on forums and message boards, though dedicated sections for them had started to appear.

Zog typed into the webpage, "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Prewett Street, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal people..."