Hogwarts: From Selling White Peppers to Becoming a God

Chapter 211 Is there something you're hiding from us, Tom?

The match against Slytherin is about to begin.

Harry was slightly nervous before going on stage.

He had been training for almost half a year for this day. His teammates and Professor McGonagall had high hopes for him, which put a lot of pressure on him.

Ron encouraged him from the sidelines, "It's okay, you don't have to perform too well. Charlie didn't catch the Golden Snitch on his first try, and he almost broke his arm when the ball hit him."

"Oh, shut up, you're making him even more nervous," Hermione said.

Since it wasn't a match against Ravenclaw today, she naturally came to support her friend.

Just then, Wood suddenly walked over and placed a gold coin in Harry's hand. "Will it have a permanent adhesive charm?"

"Huh?" Harry was a little confused.

"Put this next to your ear; it will transmit sound through your bones to your ear. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to hear others when flying at high speeds."

Harry was stunned. "These are goblin coins?"

"Yes, everyone on the team has one. This is my pocket money that I've been saving for a long time. I was planning to use it to buy a broom, so don't lose it." Wood said, leaning closer. "Using it to give you guys instructions during the game is much better than gesturing with your hands."

"But... this isn't cheating..." Harry was about to say cheating when Wood covered his mouth. "Slytherin uses it too, we'll be at a disadvantage if we don't! Besides, the rules don't say we can't bring gold coins into the game."

Harry was convinced and had Wood use a permanent adhesive charm to stick the gold coin behind his ear, making it completely invisible unless you got very close.

"Alright, everyone listen to my commands from now on. This time, we must defeat Slytherin! Let's go!"

Harry listened to Wood's voice coming from the gold coin. The voice came in part through his ears and part through his bones, which felt a little strange, but he quickly got used to it. He picked up his Nimbus Two Thousand and followed his seniors into the arena.

……

Murphy wasn't very interested in Quidditch, mainly because the scoring system was too strange and completely ruined the game.

The Seeker's position is too important, but the Seeker has no competitive advantage: what's the point of two Seekers trying to catch a Golden Snitch that the audience can't even see?

Want to see them showing off their flying skills on broomsticks?

Why don't I go see acrobatics?

Moreover, most of the time the Golden Snitch still needs to be found, so they can only watch the two Seekers running around aimlessly like headless flies.

The most competitive players, the chasers and batters, only scored 10 points per shot, which seemed insignificant compared to the 150-point Golden Snitch.

The entertaining parts are unimportant, and the important parts are unwatchable; this competition is just getting more and more frustrating to watch.

However, he still appeared at the stadium today and sat in the teachers' section to watch the game.

Well, it's been years since I've been here. Whether I participate in the competition or not doesn't matter. I mainly want to soak up the atmosphere and observe the plot's development, just in case Harry actually falls to his death.

Speaking of Harry, he basically just stood there in the air for the first half of the game.

Since the Golden Snitch hadn't appeared yet, he didn't have much to do. Apart from almost being bumped by Slytherin's captain Flint, all he needed to do was avoid the Blink Ball.

Just when Slytherin finally gained a twenty-point lead over Gryffindor through various means, the Golden Snitch appeared, but at that moment Harry's broom suddenly malfunctioned again.

Just like in the original story, Quirrell cursed Harry's broom, and Hermione mistook Snape, who was trying to protect Harry, for the culprit. However, inadvertently, she knocked down the real culprit, Quirrell, thus averting the crisis, allowing Harry to obtain the Golden Snitch, and ending the contest.

Slytherin's willingness to foul in order to score is adorably foolish given the Seeker's 150 points.

In this scoring system, shouldn't we focus all our efforts on eliminating the opponent's Seeker first?

However, seeing that the plot was developing as originally planned, Murphy was relieved.

……

Meanwhile, several friends who had finished their match came to Hagrid's hut to celebrate Harry's victory in his first match.

Harry and Ron were already quite familiar with Hagrid, while Hermione and Tom often helped Murphy make wands near the hut and were also quite familiar with Hagrid. In addition, since they belonged to different houses, it was not appropriate to celebrate in the common room, so they came to the hut instead.

"Oh, I see. I thought Flint broke Harry's broom."

Tom was watching the game from the Slytherin box and had no idea what happened in between.

He didn't really care who won or lost. Slytherin was his house, and Harry was his friend. It didn't matter who won. In fact, he didn't particularly hate Flint's behavior. It was okay for him to do whatever it took to win, he was just a little stupid.

Sigh, those Slytherins are a bunch of idiots; they're really giving this genuine Slytherin descendant a lot of trouble.

"It was Snape!" Hermione exclaimed. "I saw it with my own eyes! He cast a spell on Harry's broom; he wanted to kill Harry!"

"Nonsense! That's impossible. Why would Snape do such a thing?" Hagrid simply couldn't believe that a professor would murder a student.

“He hates me,” Harry said. “I don’t know why, but he’s hated me from the beginning. And I found out his secret… Yesterday when I went to his office to get something, I saw it. His leg was injured, a big wound, from being bitten by the three-headed dog that guards the trapdoor!”

"How do you know about Luwei?" Hagrid asked, puzzled.

"He must have released the troll and used the opportunity to go to the trapdoor to steal things. We saw it," Harry said.

The young wizards all nodded. On Halloween Eve, even Tom saw Snape rushing upstairs alone, probably heading to the fourth-floor corridor.

"I'm telling you, you're wrong!" Hagrid snapped. "Snape would never want to kill a student! You're meddling in things that don't concern you. It's dangerous. Forget about that big dog, forget about what it's guarding—this is between Professor Dumbledore and Nicolas Flamel—"

"Aha!" said Harry. "So this involves a man named Nicolas Flamel, doesn't it?"

……

They were kicked out by Hagrid.

The young wizards were about to leave when Tom told them to go ahead, saying he had some questions for Hagrid.

"Are you hiding something from us, Tom?" Ron asked, somewhat displeased. "Don't you consider us your friends?"

Tom's appearance in the fourth-floor corridor and his visit to Myrtle were all strange; he must be hiding something. They were originally just a small group, but Ron now felt they were friends, and keeping it a secret seemed incredibly unfair.

Tom hesitated for a moment, then finally said, "This is a personal matter for me... I might tell you if the opportunity arises. But right now, I haven't figured it out yet..."

"You know we can help you..." Ron was still somewhat unhappy.

"Alright, Ron, let's go!" Hermione pulled Ron away.

"If you need any help, just let me know," Harry said before leaving.

"Okay," Tom said, adding, "Thank you."

After the three little wizards left, Tom returned to Hagrid's cabin.

The latter wouldn't open the door for him, saying, "Go back, go back. I'll never say anything again. Go, go back to sleep."

"Hagrid, I'm here to talk to you about something from fifty years ago. Do you know Tom Riddle?"

(End of this chapter)