Days at Hogwarts

Chapter 75 Christmas Prophecy 4k

Ron found a small bucket, put his big carp in it, and planned to feed and care for it, so that Harry could come back and show him the fish he had caught.

Soon after returning to the castle, the sun disappeared behind the clouds, and the sky turned gloomy. By nightfall, the wind began to howl, carrying snow with it.

The wind blew all night.

When Loren woke up, it was already late. The blankets, still warm from his body, made him reluctant to get out of bed.

Turning my head, I saw Ron standing by the window, looking at Loren's pears buried in the snow.

Hearing Loren's movement, Ron turned to look at him: "Your pears have turned a bit dark, are they ready to eat?"

"Let me see." Loren, still in his pajamas, walked to the window to take a look.

The pear's yellow skin has turned somewhat dull, with a grayish tinge, and it hasn't frozen black yet.

"It will take a few more days until the color turns completely black."

Loren picked out some pears that needed to be thawed, put them in a basin and thawed them indoors as a control group. These pears needed to be repeatedly frozen and thawed.

The sky outside the window was still overcast.

This is normal weather for this time of year. The previous two days of sunshine were indeed perfect for fishing. Loren felt he was also in line with the "human element" principle, but the location wasn't ideal. The local fish in Black Lake were unruly, and Loren didn't dare to teach them any rules.

Fishing was out of the question, so after getting dressed and quickly washing up, we went to the cafeteria for breakfast.

The table was laden with extra meat patties, roast turkey, and other dishes, leftovers from the house-elves' preparations for the Christmas feast, after they had tasted the different kinds of food.

"Want to play chess later?" Ron asked, leaning closer with a piece of bread in his mouth.

Loren rolled his eyes and slurped his pumpkin porridge loudly. "If you ask again, I'll turn you into a Wizard's Chess piece and put you on the board so the other pieces can beat you up."

"If you're not going to play, then don't play. Why are you being so fierce?" Ron muttered to himself as he went to the next table to find Rolf.

Actually, Loren doesn't know how to transform his body; he was just trying to scare the kid.

Back in the lounge, Loren refrozen the thawed pears. He then took out his quill, ready to finish all his homework that day.

Ron played chess by himself, occasionally tossing a couple of pieces into his mouth. What a quirky little snack! It was both edible and fun.

Loren suspected that the kid had spent all the money he had left over from buying a wand on Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans.

Professor McGonagall assigned the most homework, mostly basic knowledge questions. Loren smoothly copied the answers onto the parchment as he opened the textbook.

Snape's assignment was the most difficult, but Loren's knowledge of potions far surpassed that of first-year wizards; he could write down the answers without even looking at the book.

Before he had finished his two assignments, Ron started sighing again, trying to get Loren's attention.

The sound of the quill pen gliding across parchment was interspersed with Ron's sighs.

The fundamental theorem of transfiguration has a total of fifteen corollaries, which are...

"Ugh!"

The venom of the Winged Demon can be used to erase bad memories.

"well!!"

The two-horned beast is obese and has a fondness for eating kind and loyal husbands.

"well!!!"

Loren put down his pen and looked at Ron in silence. He finally understood that he was bound to be harassed whenever he was in Ron's presence.

Sensing Loren's gaze, Ron casually turned his head away, as if he hadn't just sighed.

"Let me teach you another board game," Loren said, standing up and sitting down next to Ron, intending to give him something to do.

"Okay, okay, okay!" Ron nodded vigorously.

With a light tap of the wand on the table, the grid of Gomoku, originally fifteen lines horizontally and vertically, became nineteen lines. The Gomoku pieces in Ron's candy box became even more distinct in black and white, and their material became harder.

"Go is a traditional board game from the East..."

About half an hour later, Loren left the lounge with his homework, looking quite pleased.

In the lounge, Ron stared intently at the chess pieces on the board. If his brain had a cooling system, the fan would be spinning like crazy right now.

This was unlike any of the games he had played before. Why could a piece be placed so far from the center of the battle, and in the end, that far-away piece blocked out an entire area?

Ron was excited, but also confused. Predictably, Loren had filled Ron's memory and wouldn't bother him for a long time until Ron figured out Go.

This isn't a Stunning Curse, but it's a different kind of Stunning Curse; their effects are similar.

For some peace and quiet, Loren decided to go to the Room of Requirement and be alone.

As he climbed the stairs, Loren had mastered the patterns of the stairs, moving up and down freely and even conserving energy by using them.

He greeted Barnabas, who was dancing with the trolls, and was thinking about creating a library for doing homework. Perhaps he could try to imagine a library with all the answers to his homework.

Before Loren could even try, a door suddenly appeared in the wall where the House of Requirement was located.

A thin woman with large round-framed glasses and countless chains and beads around her neck came out of the door, holding a bottle of sherry in her hand and smelling strongly of alcohol.

"Hello, Professor Trelawney."

Loren recognized the divination professor; they wouldn't take the elective until their third year. But the professor was very famous among the students, her reputation was widespread, because her assignments were the easiest to fake—all you had to do was make up a story about being in big trouble.

Professor Trelawney had drunk quite a bit and looked drunk; her eyes were hard to focus.

The professor looked at Loren, sizing him up from head to toe.

"Gryffindor student, you haven't had my class yet, hiccup!" Professor Trelawney suddenly hiccuped and drooped her head.

Loren subtly moved a few steps to the side, making way for the professor.

"Black hair, Jack of Spades," Trelawney murmured incoherently, her body suddenly trembling violently.

Trelawney suddenly looked up, and Loren could clearly see that the color of her pupils had faded, and her entire eye sockets were filled with white.

"Black—" Her voice became hoarse and shrill.

"The Dark Lord has departed his forest... His schemes... White foresaw them... The Black Forest is the beginning of the tide... The Blue-Black Ones must go there... At the turn of the old and new... Desperate souls are crying out... The tide is about to rise..."

Loren's pupils contracted; Trelawney's condition was abnormal; she was making a prophecy.

In the Harry Potter series, this Divination professor looks like a fraud, but every prediction she makes comes true.

From Harry, Voldemort's destined rival at the very beginning, to Dumbledore's death in the tower at the thirteenth seat, her prophecy runs throughout the entire story.

Loren repeated Trelawney's words to himself, then took out a pen and paper and wrote them down.

The prophet had witnessed his prediction, and Loren suspected that it was closely related to him, so he had to take it seriously.

Professor Trelawney's eyes returned to normal, but she was still drunk and had no recollection of making a prediction: "Gryffindor, remember taking my class in your third year? You seem to have some talent."

After saying that, he walked away unsteadily.

Loren watched her walk away, his gaze lingering until she was out of sight.

Looking down at the contents of the paper, Loren attempted to decipher the prophecy he had just heard.

The Dark Lord is Voldemort. Voldemort's plot was foreseen by the White One, who should refer to Dumbledore.

What is the Black Forest, and what is the Wave? These two questions remain to be determined.

Is the person described as blue and black referring to him?

Blue eyes, black hair, that's what Loren guessed, but he wasn't entirely sure.

At the turn of the year, what is new and what is old?

The familiar phrase "desperate soul" made Loren's eyes light up. He had a strong premonition that there was a clue to Nico's riddle.

The prophecy likely means that at the time of transition between the old and the new, a wave will rise from the Black Forest, within which dwells a desperate soul.

Loren planned to speak with Dumbledore; perhaps this white figure held more clues.

It was almost noon, and Loren planned to go straight to the Great Hall for lunch, where Dumbledore would also be.

……

Principal's Office.

Fox preened his feathers by the table, looking listless and lacking energy; Phoenix didn't like this kind of weather.

Dumbledore looked intently at the parchment before him, and he began to speculate about the contents of the prophecy.

Looking up at Loren, Dumbledore smiled slightly. He could sense Loren's haste in writing down this passage, but just now in the Great Hall, Loren had calmly finished his meal before leisurely finding him and revealing this shocking prophecy.

Loren sat opposite Dumbledore, counting how many lemon shambles were in a box, not including the one in his mouth.

"Even though this isn't my first encounter with it, I'm still amazed by the mystery of prophecy," Dumbledore said, putting down the parchment.

"So you know what 'waves' and 'black forest' refer to?"

Loren felt that this was probably a small storm brought about by his own butterfly, as neither of these two things were in the plot he knew.

Dumbledore took out a lemon-orange candy and put it in his mouth, saying as he savored it, "I don't know exactly what the Waves refer to, but the Black Forest might not be so hard to guess."

Both centaurs and mermaids had spoken to him about the Waves, a great upheaval unprecedented in a thousand years, which even Dumbledore couldn't be sure what it was.

Since Professor Trelawney had made a prophecy about something beyond his control, he was determined to see for himself.

"No riddles! No riddles! No riddles!"

Loren repeated three times, tapping his palm lightly and rapidly on the table, "Explain the meaning of the prophecy directly. I hate it when you old folks beat around the bush."

This anxious look made Dumbledore laugh, even though he had been eating leisurely. "Oh, Loren, I think a wizard should have plenty of patience."

"Urgent, very urgent!" Loren kept urging.

"Well then," Dumbledore said, taking another lemon-shabu candy, "if your Christmas present surprises me, I'll tell you."

"You're already a hundred years old!" Loren reminded Dumbledore, "Could you please stop being so childish?"

Dumbledore chuckled as he looked at Loren. "Of course, when I'm with you young people, I always feel like I'm a little younger myself."

Loren understood that this person would definitely not tell him until after Christmas, so he jumped off the chair, dusted himself off, and prepared to leave.

"Goodbye, Loren. I look forward to your gift," Dumbledore said with a smile as he watched Loren's retreating figure.

Loren, with his back turned, waved at him. "I'll send you a box of cockroaches, with a real cockroach inside."

Dumbledore's face stiffened. Just imagining the scene was terrifying—it was a truly frightening prank.

As Loren descended the stairs to the fourth floor, he encountered Ron.

"What are you doing here?" Loren was surprised. He thought Ron should be in the lounge right now, wishing he could disappear into the chessboard.

Ron, looking as if he'd just accomplished something remarkable, grinned smugly and proudly boasted to Loren, "I just protected the Philosopher's Stone!"

Harry wasn't at school, so it's uncertain whether the Philosopher's Stone was even in that room. Ron's protection might have involved him contacting Fluffy or something similar.

"oh."

Loren asked no questions and continued down the stairs. Having just suffered a loss at Dumbledore's hands, he wanted to transfer Ron's smile onto his own face.

"Why don't you ask me what I did?" Ron quickly caught up and pressed Loren for an answer.

"I don't want to know." Loren felt a surge of pleasure. The law of conservation of happiness was indeed true; the netizens were right.

"That's a Philosopher's Stone, you really aren't going to ask about it?"

"I don't want to ask."

"No, you should ask me how I protected the Philosopher's Stone."

……

As the two pulled at each other, Loren's smile grew increasingly cheerful, while Ron's smile vanished.

In the afternoon, Ron received another piece of bad news, which deepened his grief.

After returning from fishing yesterday, Ron intended to keep the fish in a wooden bucket, but ended up placing the bucket in the courtyard outside the castle.

A snowstorm struck overnight, and the carp froze to death in the ice, its eyes wide open in death, gleaming with an eerie light.

Ron was deeply saddened; his grief had deepened.

Upon hearing this news, Loren and Rolf didn't know how to describe their feelings. They could only stand beside Ron and try their best not to laugh out loud.

Ron didn't bother Loren to play chess for the rest of the time, but he kept talking about it until he went to bed.

"How could I have forgotten about Reed outside?"

Ron named the carp because he thought the name suited the festive Christmas atmosphere.

"Riddle is so cute, it's all my fault."

……

The day before Christmas.

Ron still missed his fish after getting up, and couldn't muster any energy, even eating listlessly.

Loren then realized the seriousness of the situation; Ron couldn't even eat anymore, and Little Red's death had been a huge blow to him.

To comfort the grieving Ron, Loren dragged him to play Go all day. His CPU was burning up, and Ron had no other mental space to recall Reed. His muttered words shifted from Reed to black and white, and then to interception…

When I woke up the next morning, my bedside was piled high with packages.

"Merry Christmas!" Ron was already awake, and his bedside was piled with packages, which he was about to open.

(End of this chapter)