The Return to Hogwarts

On his way from the common room to the Great Hall for breakfast, Harry couldn't wait to share the news with Ron and Hermione, but as Harry had predicted, Ron, as always, missed the point.

"I knew it wasn't a hallucination. I could smell the pie! Why didn't they bring me some too?"

Ron said indignantly,

"I gave Dobby a pair of socks for Christmas last year!"

"The point isn't the food, Ron—"

Harry nimbly leaped past Angelina, greeted her, and then glanced sideways at Ron and Hermione.

"The key is the crisis that Twinkle and Dobby talked about. Dobby said that Hogwarts is facing a crisis comparable to the Chamber of Secrets in Slytherin. What does that really mean?"

"This means Hogwarts may face closure."

Hermione's cold and stern words nearly caused Harry and Ron to slip and fall on the stairs.

The two boys, supporting each other, finally managed to stand up. They looked at Hermione, who always gave them the right advice and always seemed to see through things, with a bewildered expression. Harry hoped to see a joke on Hermione's face, but unfortunately, the serious look in Hermione's clear brown eyes told Harry that she was not joking.

"You're kidding, Hermione."

Ron, on the other hand, gave his assessment directly.

"Hogwarts may face closure. Oh, didn't your book, 'A History of Hogwarts,' tell you that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has existed for a thousand years and no one can bring it down? Besides, Professor Dumbledore and Professor Blaine are here now, and even the Void wouldn't dare to mess with this place."

Ron's words inadvertently revealed the true reason why those wizards who believed the Dark Lord had been resurrected and returned to the people were not particularly panicked.

“Oh, actually, ‘A History of Hogwarts’ tells me more than you think, Ron—”

The three of them started running again, Hermione's fluffy curls rhythmically expanding and contracting in the morning breeze like seaweed floating on water.

"The Ministry of Magic, even with the support of the Board of Governors, the Senior Undersecretary of Magic still hasn't been able to get into Hogwarts. Her wand was even broken by Neville, and she's ended up in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Arts. Do you think they'll let this go so easily, Ron?"

"But what can they possibly accomplish?"

Ron disagreed.

"They can't do anything about Professor Dumbledore and Professor Blaine, can they?"

"If you'd read 'A History of Hogwarts,' you wouldn't be so optimistic, Ron—"

Hermione said with a gloomy expression,

"I guessed they might use some dirty tricks, and oh, it seems I was right again."

Harry pressed for details, but Hermione refused to elaborate, simply stating coldly,

"Just you wait, Harry, soon everyone will know."

The three of them ran from the foyer into the Great Hall. Harry immediately looked anxiously toward the staff dining table and, sure enough, noticed something amiss.

First, Professor Blaine disappeared from the teaching staff again, and Professor Dumbledore was also absent. The remaining professors also lost their usual cheerful expressions. Professor McGonagall did not touch the breakfast in front of her, but looked sadly at the children below.

The auditorium was still noisy, but much quieter than usual, with many people having left their seats for classrooms.

"When did you learn to keep people in suspense, Hermione?"

Ron frowned and muttered a complaint about Hermione, then quickly pulled out a stool and sat down.

Ron, who was complaining that he was starving, rubbed his stomach and prepared to feast, but when he saw the food on the table, his eyebrows immediately furrowed.

Compared to the abundant food usually piled on the table, today's food selection is much simpler.

The few plates held toast, fried eggs, and potato pies, while the few plates of sausages had already been cleared out by the little wizards who had arrived earlier.

"what happened?"

Ron looked at Neville, who was struggling to swallow a piece of dry bread, with a puzzled expression, and handed him a glass of pumpkin juice.

Who ate all the food?

Neville took Ron's pumpkin juice, nodded gratefully, gulped it all down, and then let out a satisfied sigh.

"This is how I came down—"

Neville said, with no small amount of complaint,

"I was woken up by hunger, so I came down early to find something to eat, but there wasn't much food on the table. I managed to snatch a plate of fried sausages from two second-grade students."

Harry's expression subtly changed. He looked up at the Hufflepuff table next door and the Ravenclaw table further away, and found that the situation at the tables was similar.

Harry turned to Hermione, and asked in surprise,

"The Ministry of Magic has stopped people from selling food to Hogwarts?"

“Oh, perhaps things are even worse, Harry.”

Hermione sighed, somewhat exasperated by Harry's awkwardness.

"Don't ask, Harry, I'm not sure yet."

Many details prove that something unusual has indeed happened, but Harry is still unsure whether his guess is correct.

The bland breakfast had ruined Ron's usual appetite. After quickly finishing his breakfast, he and Neville went down to the basement together.

The Potions classroom was a dark and damp room located underground. When Harry entered the classroom, most of the Slytherins had already arrived. Some of them were whispering around Draco Malfoy, mostly about physical education class. These people looked uncomfortable, and Malfoy, who was in the center of the group, also looked extremely unpleasant.

Harry paused subconsciously, sensing that their discussion was related to some kind of predicament Hogwarts was currently facing.

Draco quickly noticed Harry's spying. He coughed heavily twice, impatiently shooed away the people surrounding him, then straightened his posture and looked down at his Potions textbook.

Harry also looked away in disgust.

The last time Malfoy caused trouble was when Hermione was chosen as a champion. Since then, the two had not had any conflicts, but after Voldemort's resurrection, Harry's dislike for Malfoy rose sharply again.

Lucius Malfoy was undoubtedly one of the Death Eaters, and he was even personally named by Voldemort during Voldemort's resurrection ceremony.

Not only him, but also Crabbe, Goyle, Sabine and Nott, their fathers were all 'die-hard fans' of Voldemort. Slytherin was a den of dark wizards.

So, will Draco and his friends follow in their fathers' footsteps and join Voldemort's evil forces?

Harry, who had quietly walked to his seat, was surprised that he had only just thought of this question.

The Ministry of Magic went to great lengths to send that toad-like woman into Hogwarts to monitor Professor Dumbledore and Professor Blaine, but the even more wicked Voldemort naturally had a whole host of spies at Hogwarts.

A sudden urgency welled up in Harry's heart. He needed to warn Professor Dumbledore and Professor Blaine to be wary of these Slytherins. But then he remembered that Professor Blaine had seen everything he had seen at Voldemort's resurrection ceremony.

Why doesn't he kick these people out of gym class? Keeping them in gym class is like creating enemies for Hogwarts.

Harry was lost in the thoughts swirling in his mind when a sudden pain in his ribs jolted him awake. He looked up in surprise to find Snape standing on the podium, his eyes cold and a lazy, mocking smile playing on his lips.

"Ah, it seems Mr. Potter has finally woken up from his dream of saving the world?"

Chapter 1022 Hogwarts' Financial Problems

2024-07-09

Outside, the sun shone brightly, but inside the Potions classroom, the oppressive heat and humidity persisted. A slight breeze stirred the curtains, and the dim sunlight rippled across Harry's hardened face like water.

"No."

Harry said coldly that ever since Sirius was exonerated and they recognized each other, he was no wonder Snape was so keen on targeting him in Potions class.

While attending Hogwarts, Snape was at odds with his father and Sirius Black's gang, and they all hated each other to the core.

"No?"

The Potions classroom fell into its usual oppressive atmosphere. No young wizards spoke, only Hermione and Ron were exchanging glances with Harry.

"Gryffindor deducts ten points, Potter--"

Snape's empty, abyss-like black eyes looked at Harry with disgust.

"Because you were daydreaming in my class."

Snape spoke in a more effeminate and sinister voice,

"Here's a friendly reminder, Potter: if you continue to waste material with those silly tricks in my class, you'll find that Gryffindor might lose all their marks by the end of the lesson."

Harry wanted to say that Snape was bluffing and that he would never dare to deduct all of Gryffindor's points from him, because Professor McGonagall would definitely question it. However, the thoughtful expression on Hermione's face that he caught in the corner of his eye made Harry slightly distracted.

By the time he came to his senses, Snape had already returned to the podium and was writing down on the blackboard a potion they needed to try to concoct for this lesson called 'Intelligence Enhancer'.

"You need to work together to complete this potion—"

Snape's cold gaze swept across the classroom, lingering deliberately on Harry and Neville, a malicious smile playing on his lips.

"Four people will complete one potion. Each group will hand in their potion after class. If any group fails to complete it, they will have the opportunity to collect leech slime for us in the Forbidden Forest after dark."

Soon, Hermione retrieved the ingredients needed to brew the Intelligence Enhancer from the student storage cabinet. Under Hermione's direction, the group divided the work: Ron was responsible for slicing ginger root, Neville crushed the dried scarab beetles into powder, Harry was assigned to dilute armadillo bile, and Hermione squinted as she memorized the brewing steps and precautions that Snape had written on the blackboard.

"This punishment is quite novel—"

The classroom was filled with the sounds of hammering and grinding. Ron glanced quickly at Snape, who was pacing around the classroom in his cloak, and said, his face pale.

"Where did he get such a brilliant new idea—to have students collect leech slime in the forbidden forest?"

"That's not a difficult task at all."

Neville diligently ground those scarabs.

"If you've ever helped Snape clean up frog entrails, well, when did he start learning from Professor Blaine and having students work in teams to do this? That's never happened before."

"I think it's to save on materials."

Hermione lit the alcohol lamp and, while setting up the crucible, said expressionlessly,