My Hogwarts has a serious problem.

Chapter 258, Section 255: The Second Cup of Tea

"You look really interesting now, Albus," she said leisurely. "You weren't like this when you were at Hogwarts. Back then, you were a typical Gryffindor, sharp and ambitious, like a lion ready to expand its territory at any moment. You were truly charming back then, otherwise I wouldn't have pursued you at school."

Dumbledore had already spent a lot of time drinking tea with Lynn in the Headmaster's office, but he still seemed to enjoy it at Daniel's old lady's place.

He picked up the teacup, which was at just the right temperature, and took a small sip. "No one stays the same forever. It is precisely because people change that those who make mistakes have the opportunity to correct them."

Grandma Daniel sneered, "You have changed, but your best friend will never be able to leave that tower for the rest of his life because of it."

A long silence fell over the cabin before Dumbledore spoke again.

"I didn't come here to discuss that, Rose. Have you met my student?"

Another teacup floated into the air and landed in Grandma Daniel's hand: "Of course I saw him."

What's your opinion of him?

"What do you think? He's exactly like you back then." Grandma Daniel took a sip of hot tea. She wasn't wearing her usual reading glasses, so her eyes were always squinted. "The only difference is that you're a lion preparing to expand your territory, while he's a venomous snake that's coiled around itself, yet sticks its head out to coldly observe the outside world."

Dumbledore remained noncommittal about Daniel's grandmother's assessment: "He is better than me, and he will achieve more than me in the future."

"That's only one aspect, Albus. Your attitude towards him stems more from your guilt towards your dear friend. Ultimately, it's because you betrayed the vow you made together." Granny Daniels mercilessly exposed Dumbledore's wounds.

But Dumbledore wasn't angry; his expression remained as calm as before. "Perhaps that's part of the reason, but I do have high hopes for him. Aren't you the same? Otherwise, you wouldn't have guided him to get that thing. You were the one who told me that there was such a thing in Hogwarts."

"I was blind back then."

"Where exactly is the entrance that Hogwarts built?" Dumbledore didn't want to talk about the past and stated his purpose directly.

Daniel's mother-in-law's smile always gave off a sinister feeling.

"I've never believed in any prophets in this world. So-called masters of prophecy are just part of the process manipulated by fate. Just like your dark wizard student, fate made him aware of the prophecy about his defeat, and that prophecy was only revealed by your prophecy professor because of his destined defeat. I told him about the scepter because it was destined to be his. I can't predict where the entrance to Hogwarts is; that's also fate's arrangement."

Dumbledore actually disliked dealing with these eccentric people. If it weren't for the prophecy about Harry, he wouldn't have even considered hiring Sybil Trelawney as a professor at Hogwarts.

"I told you this when you came to me more than a year ago, Albus," Granny Danielle said quietly, looking at Dumbledore. "Being changed in fate is not necessarily a good thing. Your dear friend's descendant entering Hogwarts is a case in point. He did change your fate, as well as that of many others, and a crisis that would have threatened the entire British wizarding world vanished. But correspondingly, the more you gain, the more you lose, and fate will retaliate at a greater cost."

"I told you back then that you had to make a choice: either remove him, this unexpected factor, from the magic world and everything would return to the original course of fate, or do your best to nurture him and place your hopes on him leading everyone to shatter the waves of fate that are coming back against you. You chose the second path, so what you are facing now is the first wave of that backlash."

How confident are we of victory?

Grandma Daniel shook her head: "Don't ask me to predict things like Albus. I won't. Just think about what happened to your misguided student after he learned about the prophecy. You should understand that knowing things in advance is not a good thing."

Dumbledore frowned. "Gellert seems to have seen something too. When I visited him, he said something similar to me."

Grandma Daniel smiled strangely: "After all, that's the last bloodline of his family. Even if he died, he couldn't bear to see that child get hurt."

After speaking with Dumbledore, Lynn returned to the Defense Against the Dark Arts office and, for once, took a nap on his familiar bed.

The next morning, as he was getting up and washing up, Umaru knocked on his office door. Lynn opened the door for her, and the lazy hamster hurriedly ran inside.

"Oh no, Lynn! I slept so soundly last night that I forgot to do my Defense Against the Dark Arts homework."

Lynn held a toothbrush in one hand and a water glass in the other, watching her performance with half-closed eyes.

Umaru was also very self-aware, knowing that her acting skills couldn't fool Lynn at all, and she pouted and complained.

"You've assigned way too much homework, and I simply don't know how to write a third-grade paper. I also have to spend a lot of time learning first-grade material. I really can't handle it."

Lynn rinsed her mouth and asked, "What about Ian? Can't you just borrow from him?"

Xiaomai said with a worried look, "These past two days, your two friends went to participate in the math club activities. I was going to go with them, but they know that I am not the real you and that I don't know anything about math. They were afraid that I would give myself away, so they didn't take me with them."

"puff!"

Lynn almost sprayed the mouthwash in her mouth all over Umaru's face.

"What did you say? The Math Club? How come there's such a club at Hogwarts?"

Umaru was startled by his actions and quickly took a few steps back. Then she explained to him how the Ravenclaw math club was established.

"Because of this, the textbooks for all grades that they bought from Muggles have recently arrived, so they've been holding assemblies every day for the past two days, letting the little wizards who know a little bit of math give the little wizards who know nothing about math a basic foundation."

Lynn listened in bewilderment as Umaru finished explaining the reason behind the incident, only then realizing that the root cause of the Math Club's formation actually lay with him!

(End of this chapter)