A certain broken Hogwarts

Chapter 34 The Truth Transmitter

"Unbelievable! How did you manage to make almost all the professors fall for you? Huh?" Blaise frantically poked at the button in front of him with his wand, turning it into a crooked, oval-shaped unidentified object.

He looked at the result of his transformation, clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction, and then started chatting quietly with Owen.

"Geniuses are always favored." Irving looked at him with a smile, giving him an "I can't help it" expression. "And being studious, polite, and humble are qualities that professors appreciate."

"Your first statement wasn't exactly humble," Blaise muttered. "I dare say Professor Binns of the History of Magic isn't so kind to other geniuses besides you. In fact, he acts like everyone else doesn't exist, but he'll give you a bonus!"

"Professor Binns just likes students who can offer genuinely interesting insights into what he's saying," Irving said with a laugh. Actually, putting aside the ghostly professor's hypnotic teaching style, Irving found the knowledge he presented quite interesting.

"Forget it, we've already exhausted all our energy just trying to stay awake in the History of Magic class," Blaise said, shrugging.

Daphne, who had just turned her button into a rather crude badge, agreed in a low voice, "I agree with your point of view."

In the seat in front, Harry had successfully transformed his button, then turned around and whispered, "Owen, what other spells do you think can help us get away from Percy Weasley and his gang?"

Lately, the Gryffindor prefects have been keeping a close eye on them every night, making it difficult for Harry to sneak out of the common room at night, which has reduced the frequency of his nighttime outings.

Fortunately, the prefects would never dare to ambush someone at the exit of the opposing house's common room or on their main route out, otherwise, a dozen or so masked upperclassmen would have come out that night, knocked them unconscious, and stuffed them into the toilet. For the students, they could tolerate playing cat and mouse with the prefects in the castle, but what if the other side dared to block their way at the door? That was provocation! An infringement on their freedom! And, did they expect us to back down to another house? Let's fight!

Learning from the mistakes of several prefects, including Percy Weasley, the four houses began to maintain this tacit understanding. This is why students weren't forbidden from roaming at night; instead, they used their skills to outwit and outmaneuver the prefects, staging a series of late-night "battle royale" scenarios.

"If you can learn the Disillusionment Charm, they definitely won't be able to find you," Owen joked. He had studied the Disillusionment Charm, a complex and difficult spell, for a long time before the start of the semester, and had only recently begun to grasp its basics. Although it had quite a few flaws, it should be enough to fool the young wizards who hadn't graduated yet.

"Or, having an invisibility cloak would also work," he added.

"It's not like the Disillusionment Charm and the Invisibility Cloak are common..." Harry sighed helplessly. He had been pondering the Disillusionment Charm for a long time, but had no clue what to do. As for the Invisibility Cloak, although he had a lot of money in Gringotts, the Invisibility Cloak itself was a very rare item.

"I can write to my dad, and he'll surely find me one," Draco said smugly, having overheard their whispered conversation.

These past few days, Harry and Draco's relationship has gradually improved. Although they still have some differences in values ​​and neither can convince the other, they've both learned to compromise. Draco no longer speaks ill of Hagrid, and Harry no longer talks about Hagrid in front of him... Anyway, they're just making do.

"Before that, I might try the Illusion Charm," Harry muttered, inwardly marveling at Owen's genius, how he could learn even the Disillusionment Charm so quickly. He had recently borrowed the Complete Book of Spells from Owen and learned quite a few spells from it.

Little did he know, Owen was secretly envious. This guy's talent for Charms was truly exceptional. If Owen's rapid progress in Charms was due to solid theoretical knowledge, Harry was a genius with an exceptionally keen intuition for spells, especially gifted in dueling magic. Besides that, Harry's greatest strength was… Potions.

Perhaps genuinely believing Professor Snape's unfounded promises of high hopes, Harry devoted himself to Potions, excelling particularly in Potions class. Even when Snape practically pressed his hooked nose against the back of Harry's head, he struggled to find any major faults. Ultimately, Snape could only resort to throwing out his own Potions theories to attack Harry, then, in his own rage, would turn on the Gryffindor students…

Gryffindor: Destroy, I'm tired.

As the bell rang, Professor McGonagall assigned a thick pile of homework before letting the young wizards leave the classroom.

"Want to see my new gadget?" Blaise excitedly pulled a rectangular, metal-like object from his bag and stuck it to the wall. The metal instantly became identical to the wallpaper, as if it had blended into the wall.

Harry and Draco kept their distance, wary of the strange contraption Blaise had produced. Crabbe and Goyle, however, watched curiously for a moment, but after realizing it wasn't food, they followed Draco with little interest.

"Daphne, want to come and try it?" Blaise's eyes darted around as he looked at the girl who was chatting with Pansy.

"Me?" Daphne looked up at him with her clear, beautiful blue eyes, a bright smile on her lips. "Okay."

She walked quickly over, and as she approached the metal plate, she suddenly stretched out her right foot and hooked it at Blaise's ankle, causing him to stumble and slam his face against the wall.

bang——

A huge red fist with a spring-loaded frame sprang out from the metal sheet and punched Blaise in the face, sending him flying like a ball until he landed against the opposite wall.

Blaise slowly slid down the wall, his entire face covered with a large red fist-shaped pattern. He laughed heartily as he got up from the ground and excitedly ran over to peel off the restored metal sheet.

"A fully automatic face-slapping machine, with super ink smeared on the gloves that requires a strong detergent to wash off, otherwise you can only wait for it to fade on its own after seven days..." Blaise, sporting comical red fist marks on his face, nonchalantly ruined his charming features, excitedly introduced, "Interesting, isn't it! It's a pity Daphne couldn't enjoy it."

"Brace!" Daphne kicked him, but after he dodged it, she glared at him. Instead, she was amused by the pattern on his face. "Then you can live with this fist mark. I mean, you look much better now than before."

"Right, Owen?" She winked at Owen with a sly smile.

"Perhaps," Owen winked at her. He genuinely felt that Blaise would get along with the Weasley twins, if he were willing to set aside a little of his haughtiness towards strangers…

"Since you put it that way, I'd better hurry up and wipe it off." Blaise shrugged. "Want to go for a walk outside the castle?"

"Great, I need to send a few letters anyway," Owen said.

……

Late at night, Irving returned to his dorm room looking exhausted. Clearly, it was another fruitless night.

Theodore was the only one in the dormitory. He was fast asleep and snoring softly.

After Owen finished packing and climbed into bed, a considerable amount of time passed before Harry and Draco returned together.

"That damned Percy Weasley! That ungrateful bastard, I'll turn him into a pig and hang him on the gates of Hogwarts one day!" Draco's furious voice carried from afar.

"Don't say anymore, he was just doing his job," Harry said dejectedly. "I really can't believe that fax machine was just messing with me..."

"I told you so, that stuff is completely unreliable!" Draco was still angry, but his tone had become smug. Then he hurriedly ran to the bathroom.

Owen asked in a low voice, "So, you found the fax machine?" Is this the protagonist's halo?

"Yeah," Harry said, his tone even more dejected. "In a basement classroom. We'd just finished asking questions when we were caught..."

"What did you ask?" Owen asked curiously, "If I could tell you..."

"There's nothing I can't say. I'll ask it... what special power I possess," Harry said weakly.

"You would actually ask such a question?" Owen was surprised.

"Actually, I'd rather ask it why I was assigned to Slytherin. I want to find out who did this to me," Harry said after a pause.

"However, Draco told me I'd better figure out what kind of power I possess that allowed me to defeat Voldemort. He said it's essentially the same thing, and it must be the talent that Slytherin values... Even if it isn't, the Sorting House issue can be investigated, or he can ask for me next time..."

“I happen to be curious about that too,” Harry said.

"Did you get the answer?"

"Um..." Harry groaned, "But it was just a prank!"

"Can I ask?" Owen's eyes gleamed in the darkness.

"Uh..." Harry scratched his head awkwardly, finally squeezing out a few words through gritted teeth, "The protagonist's invincible halo?"

Irving's gaze froze. What happened to the "love" they were promised?

This is by no means the real answer, but rather... something that Irving himself would think of first!

"Is the purpose of a fax machine not to provide the correct answer to a question, but rather to provide the answer that someone who already knows the answer is thinking of?"

"The Truth Machine... I see, not truth, but truth! It speaks the truth as spoken by those in the know!" Owen hissed softly. "There are some questions it can't answer because nobody knows!"

"This is terrible..." The key problem is that Irving knows too much!

(End of this chapter)