So his answer hadn't been completely wrong. Olly felt relieved and kind of good about that as he listened to the next instructions. He took the scalpel and cut a line on the mandrake's head, and then cut two chunks off from either side of the line. He poked around in the little holes he'd made and discovered, as Professor Myers had said, that there was no brain. That was kind of a relief, actually. Brains made things smart, and smart plants could probably take over the world.

Olly didn't know that mandrakes had personalities. Sure they could move around and scream and whatnot. Sentience he got, but personalities? That was a bit more difficult for him to wrap his head around. "Things can be sentient without brains. It's probably....the magic. Portraits, for example, would be considered sentient, yeah? But they don't have brains either."