Days at Hogwarts

Chapter 4: The Book, and the Exploration of Grandpa Bates' Secret

In the evening, Loren sat by the stove reading the two books he had acquired during the day, while Grandpa Bates packed his bags.

"A Comprehensive Explanation of Pictographic Symbols" is not a book that introduces symbols in a difficult or obscure way. The pictographic characters in the book probably refer to the runes, which are introduced in a large chapter in the middle.

The first half of the book contained occult alchemical content, which Loren considered mostly baseless fantasy. It included the use of dragon blood, magical creature materials, and some plants whose names Loren had never heard of in his two lifetimes.

There is a distinction between a full moon and a waning moon when it is forged, and between a stormy day with thunder and a stormy day without thunder.

Is this British feudal superstition? Loren found it quite interesting to treat it as a tale.

However, the second half of the book is even more interesting; it is a first-person narrative by a man who calls himself Nicolas Flamel.

He recounted that he was born in 14th-century Paris and initially worked as a scribe, copying books, letters, and wills for various nobles. Occasionally, he would come across alchemy, which he pursued as a hobby.

His ordinary life took a dramatic turn one day when a person in a black cloak appeared in his dream and told him that he would receive a magical book. He must study it diligently and understand it thoroughly in order to gain extraordinary and amazing power.

This dream has come true.

The book reads: I have an ancient, enormous book that I bought for two Florin. Unlike other books, it is not made of paper or parchment, but of fine, smooth young tree bark. The cover is tightly bound in brass, engraved with words or strange symbols… It has three sets of seven pages each, including the first page. The seventh page of each set is blank, but on the seventh page of the first set, there is a drawing of a magic wand being devoured by a giant serpent.

Upon seeing this, Loren picked up another book and examined it closely.

This must be the Book of Abraham. The contents of the book do indeed look like they were pressed into a metal and then inked. It is not a script that Loren has ever seen before, and he cannot understand it at all.

The book has 21 pages in total, and every seventh page contains a strange illustration.

The first seven pages depict an ancient walking stick with two snakes of unknown species coiled around it, one of which is devouring the other.

This book must be quite old; the pages are yellowed, and the simple lines depict a colorless picture that is far from clear. But when Loren looks at this picture, he sees a colorful and clear image in his mind.

The cane was an antique black, with two snakes marked with white spots, and he could even feel the matte texture of the scales.

Loren guessed that it was because he was too bored with life and had filled in the blanks with a lot of online movies and TV shows from his previous life.

The second page, which is page fourteen, shows a cross, but instead of Jesus, a snake is nailed to the cross.

Looking at the picture, Loren felt that the snake in this painting was not the same one as the previous ones; the snake on the cross seemed to have two small horns on its head.

The third page, page twenty-one, depicts a desert where several clear springs emerge, and many snakes crawl out of the springs.

Loren's impression of this picture is more about the spring water. The image of the spring water gushing out is in his mind, and he can almost feel the sweetness and coolness of the spring water.

In addition, there were four small pictures on the fourth and fifth pages, but they were so small that Loren couldn't imagine what they were.

In his "Explanation of Hieroglyphs", Nicolas Flamel commented that these small figures are unimportant, resembling narratives or popular myths, and do not mention alchemy.

The subsequent self-narration became incoherent, with numerous spelling errors and nonsensical grammar.

Further on are some travelogues by Nicolas Flamel, who traveled to almost every corner of the world and recorded the customs and habits of many places. Of course, there are also some garbled texts interspersed among them, but Loren still enjoys reading them carefully.

Grandpa Bates packed his bundle and glanced at the sky through the small window.

Although it was snowing, the clouds were thin, and a crescent moon with a notch could be seen hanging low in the sky.

Grandpa Bates closed the small window and secured it with a stick. "Loren, listen up. I'm going into the mountains tomorrow. You stay home by yourself, as usual, understand?"

This happens every month, and Loren couldn't get any answers from her questions. "Okay, I understand!"

Grandpa Bates probably doesn't realize he's no longer young, and the winters of the last two years have been particularly tough. Especially the days after returning from the mountains, he feels so weak, as if he's just recovered from a serious illness.

Loren sometimes felt that, just as the residents down the mountain said, Bates was making a deal with the devil up on the mountain.

But after living together for several years, Bates didn't have any other strange traits. He might be a bit eccentric, but once you got to know him, he was just a slightly stronger old man, like any other farmer.

In any case, he decided to secretly follow Grandpa Bates tomorrow to find out what was going on.

The next morning, after breakfast.

Grandpa Bates packed his bundle and took his walking stick, then went out to climb the mountain.

Loren wasn't in a hurry; even without thick snow, the mountains were still difficult to traverse in winter.

He leisurely finished feeding the sheep, then put enough hay and water for several days into the sheepfold. He made a simple timer using a wooden rope and a glass bottle filled with water. The water would drip continuously from the bottle, and the temperature of the sheepfold would prevent the bottle from freezing. Only after a certain amount of time would the hay fall from the roof beam. This was to prevent the sheep from quickly consuming several days' worth of food.

After doing all this, Loren packed several days' worth of dry rations, coarse bread, cheese and smoked mutton, a small knife, a windproof lighter, and a windproof tarpaulin in his bundle.

After thinking for a moment, he put the strange old bookseller's fur blanket in as well.

It was already past lunchtime when Loren locked the door. He followed the tracks in the snow and the direction of the fallen wild grass and flowers to Bates.

The trees were covered in a white coat, and scattered snowflakes occasionally fell on Loren. The wind blowing on the road cut Loren's exposed skin like a knife.

He tried his best to protect himself with a hat, gloves, and scarf, but the wind still managed to seep into his body and bones through the gaps in his clothes.

After walking for a while, Loren took out the tarpaulin and blanket and draped them over himself, then put another tarpaulin over it, like a cloak, to protect his body.

It works very well. The wind that keeps creeping into my body is blocked, and the blanket is warm and cozy, like sitting by a stove.

This is definitely the fur of a polar bear or something similar, Loren thought.

In less than an hour, following the obvious tracks into the forest, they emerged from another corner. The footprints in the snow led to a boulder, one side of which was close to a small hill. The footprints scattered around the boulder and then disappeared.

Of course, Loren didn't think Mr. Bates had turned into a stone spirit.

There were some wooden stakes and poles next to the rock, forming a simple lever to save effort. It's clear that Grandpa Bates didn't move the rock by brute force; there should be a cave behind the rock, and there should be a similar effort-saving device inside the cave.

After circling around a few times, Loren cleared out a spot in another sheltered area and built a shelter with branches and tarpaulin, hoping to hear some sounds coming from a cave.

Wrapped in a fur blanket, he didn't feel cold at all, so he didn't light a fire; it was warmer than a polar bear's fur.

He had eaten something and was quietly waiting for night to fall...

(End of this chapter)