The Silent Bookstore Manager at Hogwarts

Harry felt a rusty taste in his mouth, and he knew what was giving off that tickling sensation in his throat.

It was blood. The smell of blood, cold wind, and gunpowder smoke mingled together and filled his nostrils, making him unable to utter a single word for a moment. In the cold wind, he even felt as if he were seeing a wasteland, a wasteland full of black smoke from gunfire.

The blind old man, wrapped in a coat and covered in scars, just "watched" him, witnessing his transformation.

Harry slowly turned around, looking at the troll's corpse behind him, then at the three people: Ron's shock, Hermione's disbelief, and Red's usual calm. He realized that he seemed to have changed a lot, yet at the same time, he seemed to have changed nothing.

"I won."

Harry calmly put down the dagger stained with troll blood. The dagger turned back into a stone on the ground. Ron was clearly not in a hurry to react, but three seconds later Ron almost screamed himself hoarse.

"Harry!!!! You are the savior!!!"

Ron, already frantic, ran towards Harry and hugged him with such ecstatic joy that it looked as if Ron had personally dealt with the troll. Harry hadn't expected Ron to do such a thing and didn't know how to react for a moment.

"I bet even a Gryffindor your age couldn't do something like that! Harry, you're really too..."

Ron felt he couldn't find any words to describe Harry. He could only marvel at how lucky he was to have witnessed the entire battle, a battle destined to be recorded in history, where a first-year wizard slew a giant through his own power.

However, Harry looked up at Red and saw Red shaking his head regretfully. Although he couldn't hear what Red was saying, Harry understood Red's meaning by reading his lips.

"It's too late..."

What was too late? Harry couldn't help but start thinking. Was it too late to kill the troll? Or was it too late to find Hermione? Or perhaps it was too late to understand how to use the ritual of the "Commandments of the Scars"?

Harry's thoughts began to wander. Ron's noisy voice had been banished from his mind, and he suddenly realized something.

"Harry Potter!!"

The drawn-out syllable, born of anger, instantly calmed Ron down and snapped Hermione out of her surprise. Both of them then felt a sense of impending doom, because the person who made that sound was Severus Snape.

The enraged Potions professor looked like a giant bat that could actually devour people, and his anger was directed directly at Harry.

"Very well, very well indeed! You little brat who openly violates school rules, what tricks are you trying to pull?!"

Snape directed almost all his anger at Harry, as if he had ignored the other three young wizards. Only Professor McGonagall, with her serious expression, showed that the three of them had not been forgotten.

"Even if you were so lucky to have dodged the troll's attack and survived, why didn't you stay obediently in your dormitory? Has our savior heard so many people calling him that that that he actually started to think of himself as a so-called 'savior'?"

Snape practically spat out those words through gritted teeth, but when he truly saw the situation, he was speechless. Harry stood quietly beside the troll's corpse, its eyes pierced by a sword, a fatal blow. Harry offered no explanation; he simply stood there as always, just as he had always done. No matter how much Snape tormented Harry, he rarely saw any emotional fluctuation in Harry, which only fueled Snape's anger.

However, Harry remained silent, like a weathered stone.

"Harry Potter!!! Answer me!! Where did you get the audacity to seek out trolls?! Is your brain no different from a troll's? Or do you really mistake your so-called title for your power?! Your courage?"

Snape's voice, though filled with rage, was not as forceful as it seemed to be squeezed from his throat. He stared at Harry with a dark expression, but Harry remained calm until Snape and Harry turned to look at each other.

He couldn't quite say what he thought when he saw Harry's pair of bright green eyes. Those unwavering, lifeless eyes almost instantly reminded Snape of the truth he least wanted to face.

So he didn't want to say anything more, he just dryly squeezed out the last few words from his throat.

"Harry Potter, for your recklessness and stupidity, Gryffindor loses 100 points, and you, Red Maxwell, Hufflepuff loses 50 points."

This made Professor McGonagall frown, but she didn't say anything. What the young wizards did this time really surprised Professor McGonagall. They ran over to fight the troll without any regard for their own safety. Although they did it for their classmates and even killed the troll, this kind of behavior should never be allowed to spread among the students.

Ron and Hermione didn't dare to refute at all and obediently nodded. As for Red, he saw the smile of the white-haired old wizard standing at the back. The apologetic smile made Red understand that today's events were actually completely under Dumbledore's control, and at least Hermione's life should be safe.

"I accept my fate. I have no objections."

Red sighed. Earning back those fifty points wouldn't be too difficult, but it would undoubtedly take a lot of time. However, seeing how Harry looked after completing his own ritual, he felt that the fifty points weren't such a bad loss.

"What do you mean by 'admitting defeat'... Red Maxwell, you'd better give me a reasonable explanation!"

Snape finally found an outlet for his anger. He glared at Red, whose expression and attitude were almost identical to Harry's, making him seem like a little wizard who didn't care about his own life at all.

"I'm just admitting defeat. I can't exactly argue that I came to save Hermione and therefore wanted to avoid punishment, can I? Caring about a classmate won't reduce the points deducted from my reputation with Professor Snape, will it?"

Red shrugged indifferently. After today, he should work hard to earn back the points Hufflepuff lost, so he was now in a position to have no worries and didn't care about Snape's feelings at all.