Bring a fairy tale to Hogwarts!

Chapter 73 Excuse me, what am I?

When the three of them climbed the rope ladder and returned to the house with the little wooden puppet, it was already evening. The setting sun in the distance tinged the surrounding fog with a pale red hue, and everything appeared warm and peaceful.

In this atmosphere, Harry was the first to climb to the vicinity of the trapdoor of the hut.

But when he opened the door, he found that there was one more person in the room, which had only had two people a moment ago.

It was a very old woman, sitting hunched over on one side of the dining table on the left. Her face was covered in pimples, and she had only a few sparse teeth in her mouth.

It was the old woman, Baba Yaga, whom he had met before.

At this moment, Grandma Baba Yaga was chatting with several other people around the table. She picked up a biscuit from the table and put it in her mouth, her hard, grayish surface revealing it to be a rock-skinned biscuit.

Harry quickly climbed a few steps, trying to stop Grandma Baba Yaga. Unexpectedly, the next second, her few sparse, seemingly unsteady teeth easily bit through the rock cake.

"Click!"

Harry: "?"

He stared in disbelief as Grandma Yaga easily bit into the rock-skin cake.

While chewing, the mother-in-law was still talking to Hagrid:

"Oh, this snack is really good—you giants really know how to cook—..."

As she spoke, she continued to bite into the rock-skin cake, and soon swallowed the whole piece.

"I'm glad you like it."

Across from him, Hagrid smiled somewhat awkwardly, scratched his head, and tried to hide his emotions by drinking beer.

At that moment, Granny Barbaya, who was still chewing on her rock bread, seemed to have noticed something. She suddenly turned her head and met Harry's gaze, who had just climbed up a little through the trapdoor.

A gentle smile appeared on her dry face:

"Come on up, kids, dinner will be ready soon."

Harry gave an awkward laugh and quickly climbed up, followed by the three Weasley brothers who went into the hut below.

Once the trapdoor was closed, the cold winter wind was immediately kept out, leaving only the warmth emanating from the fireplace. Beside them, the dining table was twice as long as it had been when they left, presumably magically lengthened.

The four men, each carrying bags full of spices, found a seat at the table and began chatting.

Harry and Ron tentatively picked up a piece of rock-skinned bread from the table—and unsurprisingly, they were met with a sharp shove. Harry felt as if he had bitten into a rock, a dull ache running from the tips of his teeth to the roots.

He put down the pancake in his hand with a sense of shame.

This doesn't make sense, does it?

When he turned to look at the three people next to him who were easily sharing rock-skin cakes, he immediately felt the enormous gap between people.

"Harry, come with me for a second."

A few minutes had passed while they waited for dinner to be ready when Victor suddenly stood up and beckoned Harry to come over.

Although he didn't know what the professor wanted to do, Harry was relieved to put down the rock bread in his hand and leave Ron, who was still struggling to chew it.

The two walked to a room on the right side of the living room. When Victor opened the door, Harry realized it was the kitchen.

The kitchen was clean and tidy. The only thing that seemed out of place was the row of strange dishes steaming on the table. Harry noticed a glass pot on the far right that was bubbling with red liquid and blue flames rising from the top.

On the left side, there is a bowl of green soup with dead caterpillars floating on it.

As soon as Victor walked in, he threw the fire peppers that Harry and the others had picked into the thick caterpillar soup, making the already despairing color of the soup even more terrifying.

Two weak bubbles rose weakly from the caterpillar soup.

Seeing this, Harry shrank back in fear.

"Don't worry," Victor said without turning his head, "it won't taste bad."

Harry gave an awkward but polite smile, thinking to himself—saying that made him even more worried.

But after stirring the soup for a while, Victor came back and said to Harry:

"Alright, take out your wand and unleash a little flame at that bowl of red liquid."

Harry obediently did as he was told—fire was something he and Hermione had learned in the past few weeks. While casting the spell, he asked, "Professor, what is this dish?"

"Aging red wine stewed lamb chops," Victor said.

"The aging wine is a recipe from my hometown, which requires a bit of hopeful human fire to be fully cooked. I've modified it by combining it with your aging agent, so now it only projects a little bit of what everyone might look like five years from now on their face."

"I see."

Harry said, seemingly understanding but not quite.

Victor continued working in the kitchen for a while, adding some spices that made Harry dizzy to each dish, successfully making many of them look inedible.

But after finishing his work, Victor suddenly said:

"Harry, would you like to become our apprentice?"

"Huh? An apprentice?"

Harry paused for a moment.

He had no concept of the word because he had never heard of anything related to the wizarding world before, and he hadn't heard of anything similar after he came to school.

Victor then said:

"An apprentice is a wizard's personal student. The wizard will teach the apprentice for life, and the apprentice will also need to assist the wizard in return. There used to be an apprenticeship system in your area, but it was replaced by the academy system in the last few hundred years."

"How about it? If you become my and Grandma Barbaya's apprentices, I can teach you some other magical techniques we know."

"That's no problem, Professor."

"But why do you want me to be your apprentice?" Harry asked hesitantly and with doubt.

"Just assume it's because you have 'talent'."

"Victor said calmly."

Talent, it's talent again.

Harry looked up at him, really not understanding what he meant by "talent"—he had been studying at Hogwarts for most of the semester and hadn't discovered any magical talent in himself.

If we're talking about talent, he thinks Hermione is a more fitting candidate.

But for Victor, the purpose of doing so was obvious.

In order to find some children for Grandma Baba Yaga.

Grandma Barbara is not far from completely erasing her abnormality. If she were to take in a student like Harry, who is exceptionally special in terms of fate, she might be able to resolve all the unexpected events in one fell swoop.

In fact, this was the real reason he invited Harry to his house for dinner.

After a brief moment of thought, Victor suddenly said:

"Since you've agreed, Harry, I'll give you a trial to join us. Complete this initial trial, and you'll learn an important spell and truly become one of 'us.'"

"The trial is a riddle:"

I have no physical form, yet I cannot be ignored; I can create something from nothing, yet I am not a miracle; some call me the origin of magic, the cornerstone of all unseen knowledge—please tell me, what am I?