Hermione, let's start a revolution from Hogwarts!

Chapter 117 Hufflepuff's Wrath

(2-in-1)

Although it was still cold on Valentine's Day, it felt like spring had arrived.

Nietzsche, wearing a brown trench coat, sat in the center of the Slytherin table, while Daphne immediately noticed the leather gloves on his hands... because they were small and looked very feminine.

“It suits you perfectly,” she said.

"Is that so?" Nietzsche deliberately rubbed his palms back and forth.

"That's enough." Daphne saw through his smugness at a glance and said helplessly, "Let me guess... it must be Granger, right? Only she would give you a gift."

These words pleased Nietzsche, but he did not show it.

But then, Hermione, far away in the lion pack, witnessed a heart-wrenching scene: Daphne seemed to be handing Nietzsche a piece of paper... Was it a greeting card or chocolate?

She then breathed a sigh of relief, because Nietzsche simply accepted it calmly.

“A lot of people have joined Hufflepuff lately.” Lavender casually tossed a large stack of names in front of the group. “They feel safest in our dueling club because the professor is here.”

After all, how could the basilisk in the locked room end up right under the professors' noses?

Gryffindor and Hufflepuff have the most Muggle wizards, so their interactions are relatively friendly... only relatively speaking.

"Hmm~" Hermione absentmindedly moved the papers aside.

"What's wrong?" Lavender followed her gaze and suddenly realized, then revealed a mischievous grin. "I get it... Should I say, 'This is a greeting card from one of Lord Granger's admirers'?"

"Is this even acceptable?!"

Hermione angrily grabbed the wizard's hat beside her, stood up, and threw her roommate aside.

Now, Hermione was starting to hate Valentine's Day too... to be precise, she had never hated the holiday so much, but by the next morning, she had no time to think about Nietzsche.

It was a crisp morning when she found Ron sitting sadly in a chair, with Harry and Neville comforting him.

As for Hufflepuff, who was having a great time with everyone just a while ago, he turned on Gryffindor with a vengeance after only one night, which even affected George and Fred's business.

“You know perfectly well that his parents are Muggles!” Ernie McMillan yelled at Ron.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I slept in my dorm all night." Ron was annoyed by the yelling and naturally lost his patience. "Ask Harry if you don't believe me. I always fall asleep before him."

Ernie slammed his fist on the table, knocking the bowls and plates beside him all over the place.

Upon seeing Hermione arrive, Cedric tugged at his sleeve, then looked at Hermione Granger awkwardly. As a prefect, he didn't want the relationship between the two houses to deteriorate to a freezing point because of something.

“What did Ron do?” Hermione sat down at the Hufflepuff table and put her legs up.

“Justin was taken to the infirmary by the professor this morning.” Ernie’s voice lowered unconsciously when he saw her coming. “Last night he said Weasley was going to take him to catch a chicken for the kitchen, but he died by the Black Lake this morning!”

Justin Finley, an ordinary Muggle student.

Because he was curious about Muggles, and the other person also wanted to hear about magical cars, he and Ron quickly became friends on the Duel Club platform.

Justin had always been craving the rooster by the door, and he didn't expect Ron to have the same idea. He was thinking of taking him to the kitchen to take a look, but the result was... that Filch, who was patrolling Black Lake, discovered them this morning.

Ernie was furious and crumpled the bread in his hand into a ball.

“Of course, your whole family are purebloods, listed in the Pureblood Register, so of course you’re not afraid!” he roared.

“Listen to me… Ron really doesn’t know anything about this,” Harry explained patiently, stepping between them. “He hasn’t even left the house.”

"Really? Why don't you go ask the fat lady guarding the dormitory entrance?" Ernie turned his head away dismissively, not wanting to look at them. "Parasitic... I thought of that a long time ago. Maybe you're in cahoots with the person who opened the secret room."

Hufflepuff is remarkably consistent in its outward behavior.

Even those who liked Harry and Ron wouldn't say a word until their classmates woke up.

The Weasleys' reputation was ruined, just as Draco had predicted... He chuckled to himself as he hid in the crowd.

But then, a wizard wearing a tattered scarf and walking with his head down bumped into him. Draco immediately felt a sharp pain in his arm, his hand trembled, and his sleeve clung to his skin.

"Watch where you're going, you blind man!" Draco yelled. "You... ah!!"

"I...I'm sorry." The man looked down at his right hand, which was badly burned, and immediately bowed and ran away.

At this moment, Draco screamed again as Hermione reached out and grabbed his right arm.

"What are you doing! What are you doing!!" His eyes bulged out, and he roared with anger and pain.

"Oh, sorry... I didn't know." Hermione said this, but her grip tightened, and the corners of her mouth even turned up slightly. "How did you burn your hand?"

Little McGonagall of Gryffindor was seen as a complete devil by the other party.

If his feelings towards Nietzsche were merely resentment and dislike, then his feelings towards Hermione Granger were pure and utter fear... terror...

The impression he made from their first meeting would never be forgotten.

"Let go!" Draco desperately fought back tears. "Is that all you've got? My arm was injured from practicing the Fire Charm... Professor Snape, my hand is about to break... Ah!"

“Granger!” Snape walked in from the hall. “Let go of your classmate.”

Since the head of Slytherin had spoken, Hermione had no choice but to obediently let go.

"Professor, deduct her points... I..." Draco, pale-faced, staggered toward the professor, the itching and pain of his muscles and nerves slowly returning to normal mixed together.

“I didn’t know you were injured like this by a fire curse.” Hermione glanced at him sideways.

“Alright, now you know.” Snape mechanically turned to Draco and said, “Miss Granger did it unintentionally. Now go to my office and get the potion to reapply it.”

The dean rudely interrupted Draco, showing no intention of deducting points, and instead dismissed him with a few words.

This amazed the young wizards around them.

Hermione suddenly realized something and immediately ran to the outer edge of the courtyard. Sure enough, Nietzsche was already standing on a patch of scorched earth, and in the area designated for keeping roosters, not a single rooster was alive.

The scorched earth had spread to the roots of the willow tree, whose branches drooped limply.

“There were two battles last night.” Nietzsche squinted, squatted down, and pinched the dirt. “The first was Smaug chasing Justin and Ron Weasley, and the second was the Basilisk and Smaug.”

He noticed Draco's awkward walking posture in the lounge that morning.

His dominant hand is his right, but he never sways when he walks, and always keeps his arm bent and tucked in front of his abdomen. The person who just bumped into him was Nietzsche in disguise.

Draco's arm was burned, so extensively that it would be impossible to avoid such damage unless his dormitory caught fire.

"He used the excuse of going to the kitchen for a late-night snack to lure Justin outside, but Smaug, a fire-breathing dragon, whose job was only to guard the chicken coop, attacked them..."

Nietzsche continued calmly, "But Draco hadn't anticipated this, so he had to run to the bottom of the Black Lake to hide from the fire dragon, which is why Filch found Justin on the shore of the Black Lake."

"Fire...the reflection of the flames on the lake's surface showed him the basilisk!" Hermione thought for a moment and immediately understood what had happened.

The basilisk may have crawled up from the bottom of the lake through the sewage pipes.

It seems that the professors' decision to block the girls' restroom on the third floor was ineffective in stopping the serpent monster, as the secret room was likely connected to many sewage pipes, and simply blocking the entrance was not very helpful.

“Perhaps last night it wasn’t just Draco and the Basilisk, there must have been someone else…” Nietzsche slowly uttered his thought.

"Who?" Hermione asked doubtfully. "But isn't he the one who wants to ruin Weasley's reputation both inside and outside of school?"

"I can't say for sure, but it's certain that Draco became Ron not just to do this...maybe the main reason was to get closer to Ginny Weasley."

In other words, the person controlling the basilisk and the person deceiving Justin were two completely different people.

But if you think about it carefully, why would Draco bother to visit a freshman who just entered this year, especially one who is a Weasley? In his mind, this kind of person is the most despicable.

“Ginny?” Hermione fell silent, then shook her head repeatedly. “But she’s always with George and Fred. She can’t possibly be the Slytherin heir. Her environment doesn’t support her having that kind of motive.”

It's ironic enough that a Slytherin heir comes from Gryffindor.

Moreover, in Hermione's memory, Ginny had always been a timid little girl who blushed whenever she saw Harry Potter.

Parseltongue is even less likely; the Weasleys were shocked when Harry Potter first revealed it in front of the Dueling Club.

“But if not, then why is Draco spying on her?” Nietzsche opened the fence, walked into the chicken coop and looked around for a while before continuing, “You can go to her dormitory and take a look; maybe you’ll see a few chicken feathers that haven’t been cleaned yet.”

Hermione swallowed her rebuttal and turned to leave.

This was too absurd for her to believe that Ginny Weasley would inexplicably conspire with Draco.

When she returned to the Gryffindor common room, she found Ginny curled up beside her pillow, hugging her legs. When she saw Hermione come in, she quickly turned her head away and wiped her eyes.

“Ron would never do such a thing…” Ginny exclaimed, as if she were a drowning person grabbing onto a piece of driftwood.

“I know he won’t.” Hermione sat casually on the edge of her bed, casually glancing at her messy bed. “Someone is definitely trying to ruin your reputation, just like they did with Harry Potter.”

Her heart sank, because there were a few charred feathers stuck to her shoes along with the dirt under the bed.

"You..." She managed a weak smile.

"Has something happened?" Ginny asked curiously. "You don't also think this has anything to do with Weasley, do you?"

"No, just remember to clean your shoes so you don't bring the chicken feathers from the break room door in again." Hermione said before dashing out of the dorm room.

But the one who was least affected was Ron Weasley, who was pushed into the eye of the storm by Lockhart.

After learning about this from a fan, the professor took it upon himself to help Ron through his predicament.

He feigned concern for the student, sighed, and said, "I know... I know. It must be very painful to see your friend being attacked, right? I can help you forget that helplessness, forget your self-blame and regret."

Although this sounds like he's offering advice, his stance is actually based on the fact that 'Ron brought Justin along'.

“I didn’t hurt him!” Ron glared at him through gritted teeth, wishing he could punch him. “I don’t remember anything like that happening.”

“So you also…” Lockhart nodded repeatedly, saying to himself, “It seems you understand. That’s right, we can’t stay where we are with regrets; we must move forward with hope.”

It wasn't until noon that Ginny learned from the other professors that all the roosters had been killed.

Only then did she feel scared. Clearly, Hermione also felt that this matter was related to Weasley... Ginny was on edge. Every classmate and friend she was chatting with seemed to her to be talking about 'Weasley'.

Feeling wronged, Ginny ran back to her dorm and pulled a diary out of her bag.

“Riddle, I’ve been feeling really strange lately. Every time I wake up, it feels like I’ve been sleepwalking,” she wrote quickly, pouring out her feelings. “Just like last time, I feel like I killed those chickens with my own hands…”

TM. Riddle served as a gentle and humble friend to Ginny.

"Why do you say that?" His handwriting replaced Ginny's.

"Because when I woke up in the morning, I found that my whole body ached and was covered in feathers, as if I had sleepwalked and killed all the roosters in the school, but I don't remember doing that."

Ginny grew increasingly frightened as she wrote, and could only pin her hopes on her 'friends'.