From Azkaban to Hogwarts.

After the professor left, all the fifth-year students cheered at the same time—in the past, during Hogwarts weekends, they would have had to return to school at a certain time to be searched by Filch.

Although people always manage to smuggle prohibited items into the school through various means, this doesn't change Filch's determination to crack down on such activities.

Indeed, people do crash every week—which is why Filch keeps doing it.

However, after the market was converted into a market, the inspection time was brought forward and students did not need to return to school. In fact, apart from the unlucky fifth graders, everyone else had a lot more time to browse the market.

They went off to the market, calling out to their friends and family.

Fred and George leaned against the wall, declining the occasional invitations—their popularity had declined since Hogwarts started offering extra classes, but it had suddenly surged again after the other grades returned to normal.

"Yes, there's a little prank going on, but it'll be late. Have you seen Peeves?"

"Yes, don't worry. Getting caught just means being put in solitary confinement. Did you see Pipi Ghost today?"

"... "

"Pikachu isn't in the kitchen either? Hmm, okay, thanks."

But now an even bigger problem has arisen—Peeves, the mischievous boy who has managed to avoid major trouble at Hogwarts for a millennium, has always been unpredictable.

Although people often say that Pikachu is somewhere or playing pranks, it's really hard to find it when it doesn't want to show up.

After questioning the students in the castle for a long time, the two finally discovered something terrible: they kept crashing at Filch's place, but Peeves never did.

'What the hell... Mischievous Ghost has always been at school, but why can't I find him!'

'If only we had the Marauder's Map... but we've already got the money, we can't just shamelessly ask for the map again, can we?'

Left with no other choice, they began to seek help from outside the school—there were quite a few ghosts at Hogwarts who disliked Peeppithecus, and they had gotten to know quite a few of them while running around the school.

"Mischievous Ghost?"

The fat monk looked at the two of them, his eyes full of suspicion. "Weasley kids, you're not planning to cause trouble with it, are you?"

"No, we're just investigating some things, um... or rather, we have some minor questions we want to ask him."

"Really?"

The fat monk looked at them suspiciously, not quite believing it.

"He's caused a huge disaster, scattering those horrible parchments all over the castle..."

"Fortunately, there aren't many people at school today, but Professor McGonagall is still very angry," the fat monk suddenly remembered something, "By the way, those parchments weren't written by you, were they?"

He stared at the two brothers, his face full of sudden realization. "If you really do that, I'm afraid I'll have to inform Professor McGonagall."

"No, we promise! We think someone is playing a prank on the professor and we're planning to mess with him!"

The two reacted quickly and found a good excuse for themselves.

"Really? Well... if that's what you're after..." The fat monk hesitated for a moment, "The pesky imp should be hiding in some secret passage right now. We agreed to inform each other if we found it, so it doesn't dare to show itself."

"Okay, thank you, we'll help you look for it right away!"

The two exchanged a glance, suppressing their inner elation—find Pikachu, get the original, and just wait, that stranger!

There are plenty of places to hide people at Hogwarts, but really not many places to hide ghosts.

Although Peeves isn't a ghost, with all the ghosts in the castle ganging up on him, he doesn't have many places to hide—the ghosts know most of the secret passages in the castle.

Chapter 317 The Gryffindors

"you…"

The two stared at Pipi Ghost, frozen in place.

They never expected the Pippi to go to such lengths—by somehow copying the contents of the parchment and distributing it, then destroying the original.

"Hehe," Mischievous Ghost spun around in mid-air, "Finding people based on handwriting is too common, I won't fall for that kind of trick!"

“So…” he looked at the two brothers arrogantly, “don’t even think about ruining my plans, Weasley!”

George and Fred exchanged a glance and, with perfect understanding, drew their wands.

Whether it's true or false—we absolutely cannot let Pipi Ghost get so cocky.

-

"Professor! Something's wrong! There's a strange noise coming from a room that can't be opened!"

William was happily sorting a bunch of candy he had just bought in his office when he suddenly heard panicked shouts from first-year students.

"what happened?"

He carefully opened the office door to the side before looking at the student who was running in and asking.

This is a first-year student, from Gryffindor.

“Um… Professor,” the child, who had paused at the door, said breathlessly, “I was exploring the castle when I heard strange noises coming from the underground classroom…”

What kind of noise was that?

Although he knew the student was unlikely to lie to him, he still had to ask.

"It's... a terrifying scream..."

"Take me there."

-

Half an hour later, in William's office, the cabinet storing potions, which had hardly been used, was opened, and bottles of potions were taken out one by one and handed out.

The two oddly shaped twins stood there, wearing tattered robes, their faces unreadable.

“Drink this again…” William found another bottle and handed it to one of the Weasley brothers—after all, he couldn’t tell the difference either. “This should counteract the curse of hiccups.”

"And this, for treating your toothaches..."

"This...theoretically, can cure some weird and complicated curses..."

He handed the bottles to the two unfortunate men one by one, trying his best not to laugh.

After following the Gryffindor boy to the abandoned classroom, he quickly determined that it wasn't a hoax or a trap, and then decisively blew open the door.

Sure enough, he found the twins hanging there inside.

After using magic to remove part of the curse and restore their ability to walk, William dared not use magic to remove it again—for various reasons, he had been thinking about high-attack magic and magic that made it easy to escape, while his healing abilities were only so-so.

Therefore, the remaining curse could only be dealt with slowly in his office—not to brag, but in terms of the medicine to remove the curse, the school hospital definitely didn't have as many as his office.

"Honestly, the way you guys were just now... could have given a seventh-grade class." After dealing with most of the curses, William couldn't help but ask, "What kind of trap did you trigger to get so many curses?"

He waved the parchment in his hand, which contained records of curses for easy access to medicine. "These are way beyond the scope of your exam questions, there are over a hundred of them. To be honest, I've only seen some of the curses before, and I don't even know the incantations. What bad things have you done to deserve such hatred?"

“Just looking for…” George struggled to move his tongue—it wasn’t very nimble yet.

“Oh, he drank too much of the antidote and it might have caused a reaction… There’s nothing we can do about it.” William observed him again, and after confirming that there was nothing wrong, he gestured for him to continue.

"We were just looking for... looking for trouble with Mischievous Ghost, and then..."

“Alright…” William waved his hand to stop him. “I understand. You guys caused trouble for Peeves and got cursed like this, right?”

"Uh-huh!"

The two nodded frantically.

Why did you provoke it...?

William was speechless for a moment—although Peeves seemed easy to bully most of the time and was very respectful to the professors, it didn't mean that the Pokémon was unbeatable.

“I remember now,” he said, rubbing his forehead, “your detention for that section of school history was lifted, so you weren’t involved in editing it…”

He briefly told the two how Peeves used the items in the trap to dominate Hogwarts for three days—Professor Euprasia Moore, the headmistress at the time, had given Peeves great privileges after having to give the students a three-day break, thus ending its dominance crisis.

Either the principal, professors, and prefects at the time were all incompetent, or Prickly Ghost was like a war god—William leaned towards the latter.

"There are too many stories in the school history about driving away Peeves, but no one has ever succeeded. Moreover, according to the existing historical materials, the bigger the pranks it plans and the stronger its determination to protect them, the stronger its abilities become."

William looked at the two of them with pity. "Judging from the curses on you, it's clear you've thwarted its grand plan..."

“No…” the two looked at William pitifully, “Why has no one ever said this before?”

“There is a school history…” William looked at the two of them, “You two participated in writing most of the content, aren’t you interested in reading the rest?”

'Things made while in solitary confinement—who would be interested in reading that!'

The two of them subtly expressed their disdain at the same time, then Fred changed the subject, "Professor, that portion..."

He was only halfway through his sentence when George stopped him with a look—Professor McGonagall's wasn't their doing, but Professor William's was!

So, the original request for advice was swallowed back, and after cursing the mischievous ghost for a while, the two slunk away from the office.

After leaving the office, feeling certain parts of their bodies occasionally acting out of control, the two looked at each other and smiled wryly.

"How should we investigate this matter?"

"I'm at a loss... I can't exactly look it up in terms of word choice, can I? Or how do I get things from the Pipi Ghost?"

"Don't even think about it..." Fred shook his head. "I'm not going to look anymore... I'm going to go to the library to study."

"Are you serious?"

"Otherwise—get beaten up by Peeves again, then go to the professor's class as material to earn a teaching assistant salary, and incidentally promote the other students' understanding of curses?"

In the middle of his speech, his feet started to dance involuntarily again.

"Unbelievable! That old monster has been here since the school was founded!" he said, regaining his balance with annoyance. "He got beaten up so badly!"

"So, you plan to study hard so you can play better?"

"What about you?"

"I think that makes sense. At least we can't be beaten so badly that we don't even have a chance to fight back—damn it, even Slytherin's Nimbus 2001 wasn't this despairing!"

The two of them cursed and swore at the mischievous ghost as they helped each other walk toward the lounge.

Today's beating had a profound impact on them—they should study hard, at least study self-defense, transfiguration, and spells.

As the professor has said, wizards basically rely on these three things when they fight.

-

"That's enough, we need to go back."

Although Sirius was engrossed in his trip, Lupin followed the doctor's orders and prepared to take him back.