Hogwarts: A Chinese-Style Professor

Chapter 202 Slytherin's Locket
"Alright, boys, we've reached the first finish line!"

Little Sirius dusted himself off, his eyes gleaming in the twilight.

"Come on, I'll take you to ride the FiluNet—by the way, have you learned how to manifest your followers yet?"

Harry and Ron climbed out of the cave one after the other and found themselves not far from Hogsmeade Village. Looking back, the cave entrance was hidden behind dense roots and bushes, making it extremely difficult to spot.

They actually came out! They left Hogwarts Castle without permission during the start of the school term!
A cool evening breeze caressed my face, carrying a sense of freedom.

Ron grinned excitedly, and Harry felt an indescribable surge of excitement, temporarily putting aside his regret of missing the Dueling Club and the Study Group.

"Followers manifesting? What's that?"

Harry asked.

"It's a branch of Apparition—learn this, and you can have a master of Apparition take you around."

It seems you haven't learned this part yet—well, while it's a bit early for third-years to be exposed to Apparition, Follower Apparition should be learned much earlier—the environment is definitely much safer than before.”

Sirius continued talking to himself, then looked at Harry and Ron:

"This is all the result of your parents' hard work."

The two boys were stunned for a moment.

But before they could react, Sirius put his arm around their shoulders and said, "Come on, I'll take you to ride the FiloNet."

12 Grimoire Place.

In the dirty, messy environment, Kreacher wandered around the room alone.

He opened the kitchen cupboard and took out a gold locket with the Slytherin emblem on it.

He threw the locket on the ground, chanted a spell over it—the sound of axe and knife striking hard objects rang out, accompanied by the sound of a saw cutting. After busying himself for half an hour, Kreacher sighed heavily and picked up the locket, which was undamaged, from the ground.
Just a second ago he was trying to destroy it, but the next second he was carefully wiping it with his long, textured fingers.

His large, bulbous eyes were now glistening with murky tears, and he muttered softly, "Young Master Regulus... Kreacher is truly useless. He can't even destroy an ordinary locket."

Just then, a loud knocking came from the door, interrupting Kreacher's sorrowful remembrance.

The old elf's pointed ears twitched suddenly—he thought of the man who had visited this old house some time ago. No, it wasn't him.

Although he was an uninvited wizard, at least he knocked with normal force and didn't speak so rudely—"Kreacher, Kreacher, are you home? Open the door!"

Hearing the sounds outside the door, Kreacher, with a faint glimmer of hope, Apparated to the foyer with a "snap" and quietly peeked outside.

Sirius, the young master who caused the mistress and young master Regulus immense grief.
Not only was he covered in dust and had a slovenly, "mud-blooded" air about him, but he was also followed by two teenagers.
Kreacher flung open the door and screamed in his leaky, bellows-like voice:

"Get out! You spendthrift son who only brings grief to the mistress, get your little brats out of the mistress's house right now!"

Harry and Ron were startled by the sudden, malicious scream and instinctively took a half step back.

Sirius didn't even glance at Kreacher, simply saying indifferently:
“Shut up, Kreacher. I am the owner of this house now—if you still have any loyalty to the Black family, then don’t bother us!”

"Oh—really? The owner of the house? Is that the source of the stench that Kreacher is smelling now, like the smell of sewers and criminals?"

Kreacher stepped aside and shouted as he left:
"The young master is a despicable, ungrateful scoundrel who has broken his mother's heart—"

“My mother has no heart, Kreacher,” Sirius said irritably. “She lives entirely on resentment.”

“No matter what the young master says,” he muttered indignantly, “he’s not even fit to shine his mother’s shoes. Oh, my poor mistress, what will he say if he sees Kreacher welcoming the young master back to the house? How much she hates him! How disappointing he is—” Sirius ignored him—he turned to the somewhat timid Ron and the hesitant Harry, and said warmly:
"Alright, welcome to my home—you don't need to worry about it at all. It's my house-elf, but it's getting old and a bit senile."

“Sirius,” Harry began hesitantly, finding the house-elf's appearance rather pitiful, “should we…?”

Ron chimed in quietly, "Yeah, he looks like he's about to fall apart."

"Leave him!"

Sirius interrupted them, his tone tinged with annoyance.

"This old man, like the family he serves, is rotten inside and out."

Do you know what he was most proud of? It was that, like his mother, after he died, his head was cut off and hung on the wall of the Blake family home.

“I didn’t mean to be so rough, but as you can see, house-elves raised in pure-blood families are a bunch of things whose minds have been corrupted to the core.”

Harry and Ron nodded, somewhat skeptical.

"bring it on."

Sirius took a deep breath, trying his best to shake off the unpleasantness brought on by Kreacher.

"I'll show you around."

He led the way down a dimly lit corridor—as they passed a living room filled with umbrella stands made of giant legs and a pile of oddly shaped furniture covered in thick cloth.

Sirius led Harry and Ron into a room—their feet treading on a dirty carpet, kicking up swirling dust.

He stopped in front of a huge tapestry.

The tapestry looked very old, the colors had faded, and it seemed that a vixen had chewed several parts of it—but the gold thread embroidered on it still shone brightly.

Harry clearly saw a sprawling family tree that stretched back to the Middle Ages (as far as Harry knew). At the top of the tapestry were embroidered several large characters:

The noble and oldest Black family

Forever pure
Sirius pointed to a small, charred hole on the tapestry, like a cigarette burn mark, and said, "My mother did this after I ran away when I was sixteen. She was a very capable woman, wasn't she?"

“Where did you go?” Harry asked, staring at him.

“At your father’s house,” Sirius said, “your grandparents are very understanding; they practically treat me like a second son.”

"But—why—?"

"runaway?"

"Because I hate all of them."

My parents were madly obsessed with pure bloodlines; they believed that being a member of the Black family meant being born noble—and my foolish brother, too weak-willed to believe them—that was him.

Harry looked in the direction his finger was pointing.

Regulus Black

(End of this chapter)