Hogwarts: My Grandmother is the Queen

Chapter 402 Going Home

Krum stood by the window, his back to him.

Henry walked over and stopped two steps away from him.

"You came out too?" Krum asked without turning his head.

"Let's get some fresh air," Henry said. "It's too noisy in there, my ears are ringing."

Krum snorted in response.

He raised the cup to his lips, took another sip, and frowned.

Henry noticed that he was drinking moonshine brought by Durmstrang, which was much darker in color than butterbeer and smelled of spicy herbs.

"What was that you drinking?" Henry asked.

"Things from home," Krum said. "You don't have those here."

"Hogwarts kitchen has everything; you can ask them for it."

"I want to go," Krum finally turned around. "They brought me a glass of hot milk."

"Then you'll have to explain the recipe to the house-elves," Henry chuckled. "They only know how to cook British and French food."

"I'm giving up." Krum placed the cup on the windowsill. "I'm leaving tomorrow."

The corridor was quiet for a moment, then laughter came from the auditorium in the distance, probably from Fred telling another joke.

Krum leaned against the window frame, his hands in his robe pockets, his gaze fixed on the black lake outside the window.

The two stood there silently, without saying a word.

After a while, Henry turned and walked back to the auditorium. When he opened the door, the banquet was almost over.

Most students were still in their seats, but their posture was noticeably more relaxed; some were packing their things, while others were exchanging addresses.

Durmstrang's supervising teacher stood in the doorway, speaking quietly with McGonagall. Meanwhile, in Beauxbatons, Mrs. Maxime had risen and was speaking to Dumbledore.

Henry walked back to the Slytherin table, where Draco was leaning back in his chair with a half-eaten fruit pie in front of him and a silver fork twirling in his hand.

Anton was still there, tidying up his chess pieces. He looked up at Henry.

"Krum is back."

"Um."

"He looks a little better than when he left." Anton put the chess pieces into a cloth bag. "Talking to him always makes him feel better. It's strange. You're only thirteen."

"Thank you, I'll take that as a compliment." Henry sat down next to Draco, picked up his teacup, and the tea had gone cold.

He put down the cup.

Anton stood up and tied the cloth bag.

"I should go back now. I'll leave at six o'clock tomorrow morning."

"Have a safe trip," Henry said.

Anton nodded, waved to the students at the Slytherin table, and then walked toward the Durmstrang students' assembly.

The students were leaving one after another. Hermione and Hannah were still discussing the Duel Club's training plan in hushed tones, while Cho Chang was taking notes with a feather pen.

Fleur and the Ravenclaw girl with the ponytail had already stood up and joined several Beauxbatons students, heading towards the Great Hall exit.

Fleur nodded to Harry as she passed the Gryffindor table.

Harry paused for a moment, then nodded.

Fred and George are taking a picture with a Durmstrang boy who is holding two boxes of automatic shuffled playing cards and grinning with his back teeth showing.

George was directing him on how to pose, while Fred was in charge of pressing the shutter with an old-fashioned Muggle camera. The flash went off, and the Durmstrang boy blinked.

Ron had already stood up from the table and was talking to several Gryffindor Quidditch players.

He saw Henry and waved from afar. Henry nodded slightly to him.

Ron said something else, then was pulled away by the people next to him.

Harry sat at the round table with an empty plate and a half-finished glass of pumpkin juice in front of him.

He didn't engage in any of the conversations around him; his gaze swept across the auditorium and stopped in Henry's direction.

Henry picked up his teacup; the tea was cold, but he still raised the cup slightly as if to acknowledge it.

Harry also raised his pumpkin juice glass.

Cedric walked over from the Hufflepuff table, holding the small stone with the fourth arc carved in his hand, and placed it on the table in front of Henry.

"Here you go, I almost forgot."

Henry picked up the stone, turned it over, and looked at it.

The fourth arc shimmered with a very faint green under the candlelight.

He put it back in his inner pocket: "Thanks."

"Are you going to Black Lake tomorrow morning?" Cedric asked in a low voice.

"right."

"If Dumbledore asks and I say I went for a walk," Henry said, "he'll know how to find me."

Cedric nodded and turned to walk back to Hufflepuff.

The Hufflepuff students had already begun to leave, and Ernie and Hannah were gathering their group at the entrance.

Hannah waved to Henry, who nodded in response.

The auditorium was becoming increasingly empty. Only a few pieces of tableware and unfinished glasses remained on the long tables.

The house-elves began to emerge from the kitchen corridor to tidy up. Dumbledore was still standing by the faculty table, having finished speaking his last words to Mrs. Maxime, before turning to face the hall.

His gaze swept across the empty auditorium before finally settling on Henry.

Henry stood up.

"I'm going back now," he said to Draco.

"I'll go with you."

They walked out of the side door of the auditorium. The corridor was darker than before, and most of the torches had burned out, with only a few remaining burning on the stone walls.

"When are you leaving tomorrow?" Draco asked.

"Before dawn, through the fireplace in Professor McGonagall's office."

Draco nodded, and they continued down the stairs, the cold air of the cellar corridor filling their nostrils.

The fire in the fireplace was still burning when the stone wall door to the common room was opened.

Henry walked over and sat down in the armchair, while Draco lay down on the sofa next to him, his boots still on and his feet resting on the armrest.

He didn't speak, he just stared at the ceiling.

Henry took out stationery and a quill from his inner pocket; he needed to write a letter to his grandmother.

The letter from Barty, the seal along the Black Lake, the stone with the fourth arc, Oswald's actions on the day of the match, and Krum being controlled by the Imperius Curse.

Draco rolled over, turning his back to the fireplace. "Call me when you're done writing. I'll take you to McGonagall's office."

"No need, I'll go myself."

"Stop talking nonsense." Draco's voice muffled on the sofa cushions. "You said you'd go by yourself, but then you got lured away by some green light from the Flying Flame. I have to be responsible for dragging you back."

Henry did not refute this; he continued writing.

The fireplace crackled, sparks flew out and landed on the stone bricks, and the fire quickly went out.

After writing the letter, Henry sealed it with wax and pressed the Windsor emblem ring onto the wax.

He placed the letter on the coffee table, intending to have Pansy deliver it to the owl's hut the next morning.

Draco was asleep, breathing evenly.

Henry took a blanket from beside the sofa and covered him with it. Then he leaned back in his armchair and closed his eyes.

A steady warmth emanated from the palm of the positioning stone glove, and the main vein flowed beneath my feet, from the castle to the Forbidden Forest, from the dock behind the tapestry on the eighth floor to the oak trees on the west bank of the Black Lake.

Tomorrow, he will follow this river to its source.

On June 27th, Henry woke up before dawn, earlier than his alarm clock. The fireplace in the common room was already burning with dark red embers, and Draco was still asleep on the sofa, his blanket having slipped to the floor.

Henry picked up the blanket and covered himself again, then got up from the armchair and stretched his stiff neck.

He went to his dormitory and changed his clothes, wearing a dark travel cloak with a Slytherin dark green lining and an ordinary black cloak on the outside.

The positioning stone glove was worn on the left hand, the beacon pendant was tucked inside the collar, and the phoenix feather brooch was pinned to the deepest part of the inner pocket.

The dark green book and the dark green book were placed in the inner pockets on both sides, and the small stone was stored separately in the hidden compartment of the belt.

When he walked out of the dormitory, Pan Xi was coming out from the direction of the girls' dormitory. Her hair was still messy, but her eyes were already clear.

"Are you leaving?" Pansy asked in a low voice, not wanting to wake Draco.

"Hmm. The letter is on the coffee table. Please take it to the owl's hut for me."

Pansy picked up the letter, turned it over, and glanced at the Windsor emblem on the wax seal.

"For the Queen?"

"Um."

When are you coming back?

"By evening at the latest," Henry said. "If I'm not back, tell Draco to go find Dumbledore."

Pansy glanced at him. "Every time you said 'if I don't come back,' you always came back."

"The same goes for this time," Henry said.

He walked up the cellar corridor. The castle was still asleep; there was no one in the corridor.

As he passed the Potions office, there was no light coming through the crack in the door. Snape was probably still asleep, or perhaps he was awake but not in the office.

Henry did not stop and continued up the stone steps.

McGonagall's office was at the end of the corridor on the third floor. When Henry arrived, the door was already ajar.

He pushed the door open and went in; McGonagall was sitting behind her desk.

Her hair was neatly styled, and her gaze behind her glasses was clear and sharp, indicating that she had been up for quite some time.

"The Duke of Cambridge," McGonagall stood up, "Professor Dumbledore asked me to tell you that the Floo Network is now connected. Someone will be waiting at the fireplace in Kensington Palace."

"Thank you, Professor McGonagall." Henry walked to the fireplace and grabbed a handful of Floo Powder from the jar beside him. Just as he was about to sprinkle it into the fire, McGonagall spoke up.

"Henry".

He turned his head.

"Be careful," McGonagall said.

Her voice was a little softer than usual, as if she was trying to find a balance between maintaining the mask of a strict teacher and her genuine concern.

"I will," Henry said.

He sprinkled Floo Powder, and the flames leaped into a vibrant green.

He stepped into the fire and clearly read, "Kensington Palace."

The flames engulfed him. After a spinning and pulling motion, his feet landed on another stone brick.

The fireplace in Kensington Palace was smaller than in Hogwarts, but it burned brighter. He stepped out of the fire and dusted the ash off his cloak.

Eileen stood by the fireplace, wearing a dark gray dress, her silver hair styled in a simple bun, and the wrinkles on her face appeared deeper than usual in the morning light.

"Your Highness," Eileen bowed slightly, "Her Majesty the Queen is waiting for you in the study."

"Grandma got up so early?"

"Her Majesty the Queen is not asleep," Eileen said. "She is waiting for you."

Henry followed Eileen out of the fireplace room; the corridors of Kensington Palace were much narrower than those of Hogwarts.

The study door was open, and Queen Elizabeth II sat in an armchair by the window, with a copy of the Daily Prophet and an opened letter on the coffee table in front of her.

The wax seal on the letter was broken, but Henry recognized the Windsor emblem on it—it was the letter he had written the night before.

"Sit." The Queen raised her hand and pointed to the chair opposite her.

Henry sat down opposite him.

Eileen quietly slipped out and closed the door behind her.

The Queen put down her newspaper and looked at him.

Her gaze was somewhat like Dumbledore's—calm, sharp, but deeper.

When Dumbledore looks at you, you can feel him weighing your magic; when the Queen looks at you, you can feel her weighing your bones.

"I read your letter last night," the Queen said. "It's about the seven seals that Barty Crouch Sr. discovered in 1981, which he tried to tell you before he died."

"He couldn't transmit it," Henry said. "He only transmitted the receiver's serial number."

"But you know where the rest of the information is," the Queen said.

"Professor Snape extracted Barty Jr.'s memories. After reassembling them, there was a remnant of a map. Old Barty Sr. had an old parchment in his drawer with seven points marked on it." Henry took a crystal bottle from his inner pocket and placed it on the coffee table. "The Memory Threads are with me."

The Queen glanced at the bottle but didn't touch it.

"How do you plan to use it?"

"First, confirm the seal along the Black Lake shoreline," Henry said. "This morning."

"Are you going alone?"

"Hagrid is waiting for me at the edge of the Forbidden Forest."

The Queen was silent for a moment. Outside the window, the morning mist in London had not yet dissipated, and the Big Ben in the distance showed a blurry outline in the mist.

She picked up the teacup, took a sip, and put it down.

"Oswald's actions on the day of the match," she began, "were approved by me."

Henry's fingers tightened slightly on his knees, but his expression remained unchanged.

"He touched the stone slab on the east side of the maze to activate the receiver," the Queen said. "The receiver is on the second level of the reverberation chamber, but the activation signal needs to be sent from the stone slab area on the east side of the site. Below the stone slab area is the main vein, which connects to the reverberation chamber. Oswald touched the stone slab to send the activation signal."

Why?

"Because of the last message Barty Crouch sent before he died," the Queen said. "Arnold and I analyzed that message. The receiver is on the second floor, but Barty was concerned about the seventh floor. This means the receiver's function isn't to receive the door key pulse itself, but rather to receive something in the seventh-floor death chamber. We activated the receiver to confirm if there really is something waiting on the seventh floor."

Henry's fingers loosened.

"Have you confirmed this?"

The Queen picked up the opened letter from the coffee table and turned to the last page. Her gaze lingered on the last few lines for a moment.

"You said in your letter that when Krum was under the influence of the Imperius Curse, the spell came from the direction of the judges' table," the Queen said.

"right."

“It wasn’t Oswald,” the Queen said casually. “When Oswald touched the stone slab, I had someone watch him. His left hand was on the stone, and his right hand held his wand, tip pointing downwards. The Imperius Curse requires the wand to be pointed at the target, and his wand wasn’t pointed at the labyrinth.”