Bring a fairy tale to Hogwarts!

Chapter 84 Fred: What is this? Let me touch it!

Fred and George have another "big plan":

They stood excitedly outside Quirrell's office, clutching a stack of completed exam papers, waiting to see him.

But everyone knows that it's impossible for the two of them to actually do their homework—seeing them complete their assignments voluntarily or even ahead of time is as rare as the sun rising in the west. Even Professor McGonagall might be wondering if she's getting presbyopia.

Seeing that the office door was still closed, George, who was standing at the front, knocked on the door again.

"..."

"Squeak."

A few seconds later, the door was finally pulled open from the inside, revealing Quirrell's face.

Quirrell looked normal, except that he looked paler and more tired than usual, with beads of cold sweat on his forehead.

After seeing Fred and George, the symptoms clearly tended to worsen.

"Gentlemen, is there anything I can help you with?"

Quirrell said weakly and haltingly.

"Unless you have some very important questions for me, you might consider coming to me after the next class. I have other things to do right now—"

"We've finished all the questions you assigned, Professor! Could you give us a grade?"

"All of them?" Quirrell exclaimed in surprise. "These are all the exam papers up to the end of the semester—"

"That's right!"

Fred excitedly held up the stack of test papers in his hand—every question on the papers had an answer written on it.

The top was also signed: Fred & George Weasley.

Strangely, after the two names, there was a small, hastily drawn circle, as if someone had just scribbled it on.

Quirrell didn't notice the small circle; his entire attention was focused on the exam paper itself. The paper Fred showed him happened to have this question on it:

Question 13 (Short Answer): Please give an example and demonstrate a method that can be used to deal with dangerous and mysterious underwater creatures.

The answer below is:

"Gill-filled grass. Proper consumption of gill-filled grass can mutate the body, causing the growth of gills and the ability to breathe underwater while still using a wand. This allows wizards to easily deal with small sea monsters like Grindylow."

Gills are a very obscure herb. Unless you're a wizard specializing in Defense Against the Dark Arts or herbalism, you wouldn't know about it. Even Grindylow didn't know it from textbooks, because Quirrell didn't teach his students how to deal with dangerous creatures this year.

But they all answered correctly.

You see, Fred and George aren't the kind of high-achieving students who enjoy learning. They're lucky if they don't cause trouble in class; how could they possibly suddenly have mastered the material ahead of time?

Quirrell was somewhat surprised.

"A very insightful answer. Did you write this yourselves? The standard answer is actually just a water-avoidance spell."

"Of course, Professor!" George said confidently. "We also got Percy's papers, and we've finished them all. You said it was homework and we could ask you for the answers anytime, so we wanted to verify it with you."

"—But, gentlemen—"

Quirrell's feeble attempts to stop him were ignored. After asking his question, George, who was standing by the door, slipped through the crack in the open door and into Quirrell's office with lightning speed.

The office was somewhat dimly lit, but clean and tidy.

George's sneaking in was also partly driven by curiosity. He had always found Quirrell mysterious and strange, and even stranger after she took off her headscarf, but he hadn't found anything to prove his point.

This was his first time in Quirrell's office.

But apart from an inconspicuous miniature dog doll on the desk, everything else seemed perfectly normal.

"...Gentlemen, I don't have time right now—"

Quirrell hurried a few steps, blocking George's path a split second before he curiously approached the doll, and causing a dozen answers to float into his own hands.

He handed the answer to George.

"You—you can take a look at it yourselves first. I'll explain some of the questions in tomorrow's class. I have—I have other things to do. If you stay any longer, I'll have to deduct points from your school, Mr. Weasley."

"But isn't this next week's assignment, Professor? Would it be alright if you gave us the answers?"

"It's alright, just the part I saw, you're all right—a very surprising improvement, Mr. Weasley. I'm also very curious how you did it—"

As he spoke, Quirrell subtly pushed George toward the door, clearly not wanting him to stay a minute longer. But while he focused his attention on George, Fred slipped away to the desk.

He stared with interest at the little doll on Quirrell's table—it was the only thing that didn't fit the room's dark atmosphere at all.

Quirrell actually likes small toys?

Because of this discordant contrast, while Quirrell and George were struggling, Fred took a detour...

He walked around to the front of the table and craned his neck to look at the doll's face. Before Quirrell could even find an excuse to stop him, Fred saw its face.

The dog doll had two ordinary black button eyes sewn onto its face, and it sat normally on the table, motionless.

It looks just like any ordinary doll.

It's just a little ugly.

Fred looked at it curiously for a while, then poked it before looking up at Quirrell, who was also turning to look at him. "Professor, doesn't it move? Did you buy it from a Muggle?"

Quirrell paused for a few seconds before walking over, taking the doll from in front of Fred, and placing it on the bookshelf next to him.

The doll slumped limply in Quirrell's hands, just like a real Muggle doll.

Therefore, Fred had no idea what he had just touched.

"It was a gift from someone else. Now all of you get out of here, and Gryffindor will lose five points," Quirrell said coldly at the end.

Quirrell didn't give the two a chance to explain. When he threw Fred and George out, they were still in a daze and didn't realize that Quirrell had deducted points from their answers.

They lingered for a while in the cool breeze blowing through the corridor before realizing what had just happened.

"Quirklo deducted points from our score? Just because I glanced at his doll?" Fred exclaimed in disbelief.

"He didn't treat me like this last time when I didn't do my homework! Besides, we haven't lost any points for a whole week!"

"Alright, buddy," George reassured him, "it's only five points. He probably doesn't like you touching his toys without permission."

"But at least he told us that the questions we wrote were correct, and he even gave us the answers—now we can verify 'that thing'."

George happily pulled out the stack of parchment from behind his back and waved it in front of Fred. This consolation worked immediately, and Fred instantly forgot about the distress of being penalized (if he had any).

The two immediately compared answers in the hallway.

As one scroll after another appeared on the parchment, it became quite clear who made these scrolls: the puppets, not the puppets themselves.