Hogwarts Advanced Guide

Chapter 428 Christmas

The Weasleys and Harry were in the kitchen waiting for dinner when Hera and Penelope arrived at the Burrow.

"Hey, Hera, we didn't get the news before!" Fred sat at the kitchen table and greeted Hera, and whistled at Penello, but was knocked hard by George.

"You'd better not do this. Everyone knows that Hera values ​​​​his Penello the most. Be careful that he will cast a curse on you."

"Believe me, he won't." Penello said with a smile, and she walked towards the kitchen. "Mrs. Weasley, is there anything I can do to help?"

"Oh, no, baby, of course not, I'll take care of everything." Molly looked very happy, but she still tried to push Penello away from the boiler, obviously not allowing the first-time visitor to enter the kitchen to help.

"Well, if you need anything, just call me." Penello had to say that.

"Penello, I think you can go upstairs to rest for a while, you are too tired for a while." Hera patted Penello on the back, and sat down at the kitchen table next to George and Fred.

"How's the business going recently? I heard that many shops in Diagon Alley are closed. Does it affect you?" Hera asked.

George and Fred looked at each other and smiled, "Not at all. Our business is even better. After all, the Death Eaters won't attack a joke store unless they want to get a lot of prank toys."

"Fred, ask Ron to come down and help, there are a lot of guests coming tonight!" Molly said to her twin brother.

"No problem, of course no problem." Fred stood up, went to the living room and shouted Ron's name upstairs.

"I think you'd better pay attention to safety, after all, it's not the usual time." Hera said in a low voice, he didn't want to make Molly worry too much, and the twin brothers obviously knew this too.

"Don't worry, buddy, we know that." George and Fred exchanged glances, then sneaked a glance at their mother. "We never deal with unidentified guys, and whenever something goes wrong, we close the shop and hide in the house."

"Yeah, we'll just tell mum we want to eat her cooking," the other twin added.

"But she only feeds us mashed potatoes, doesn't she?"

"Please, we have been eating for almost 20 years, there is no more boring food than this." The twin brothers spread their hands with wry smiles.

Hrazonson shoulders, "I think it would be nice to have a place where you can relax."

"By the way, is anyone else coming?" the twin brothers asked. "The house is too small to accommodate too many people. Of course, you are very welcome."

"I think Remus will come over and take Sirius with him." Hera thought for a while. Remus had written to him a long time ago, hoping to meet Harry, see how he was doing recently, and care about Sirius' recent situation by the way.When he learned from Hera that he had arrived at Hogwarts from 12 Grimmauld Place, he happily expressed his willingness to bring Sirius along.

"Oh!" The twin brothers looked very excited, "Are Moony and Padfoot coming? We happen to have something to ask them about!"

"Uh, you'd better not bring up this matter at dinner, I don't want them to think of Peter Pettigrew when they are so happy." Hera said with an awkward expression.

"Of course—" Before they could finish speaking, Ron walked into the kitchen, followed by Harry.

"Merry Christmas, Harry, Ron." Hera waved at them.

"Why are you here?" Harry asked excitedly.

Hera shrugged and said lightly, "I can't think of a more lively place than here."

"Ron, help me peel these potatoes!" Molly brought a large pot of potatoes with two small knives in it, and said to Harry with a smile, "Harry, if you want, you can do it with Ron."

"Of course, ma'am," said Harry.

So Harry and Ron sat at the table peeling potatoes with their pocket knives, while the twins and Hera sat watching them.

"Oh, George, look, they're still using knives, Merlin bless them."

Hera watched the twin brothers joking, and felt warm in his heart. He seemed to have never experienced this kind of family atmosphere.

When Voldemort is defeated, he and Penello will definitely look like this, having a lot of children, living in a small but very cozy house, and a few children playing and playing.

"I'm only 17 years old in a little more than two months," Ron said grumpily, "and then I can use magic." He suddenly looked at Hera who was beside him, "Hera, you are the headmaster, can you allow us to use magic outside of school? Even though we are not yet 17 years old."

Hera shook her head in disgust, "This is not allowed."

"Okay." Ron said regretfully.

"Oh, I think before you turn 17," George said, throwing his feet up on the table, but Molly didn't notice what was going on behind him, "we can enjoy watching you demonstrate how to use it properly-whoops!"

"You did it!" said Ron angrily, sucking on his cut thumb. "Wait a minute, I turned seventeen—"

"I'm sure you'll overwhelm us with magic hitherto unimagined," said Fred, yawning.

Hera looked at them bickering with a smile and felt warm, even though Ron didn't think so.

"Speaking of magic that no one has thought of so far, Ron," said George, "we heard from Ginny that you had an affair with a little girl, Lavender Brown, if our information is correct. How is this going?"

Hera also looked at Ron with interest. He had also reached puberty, although he was a little later than Harry, but he had also taken a mature step.

Watching them step by step from the little radish heads that just entered school to their current appearance, Hera still feels quite proud, these are all the students he brought out!

At the mention of this topic, Ron blushed a little and turned to peel the kale in another pot, but he didn't seem unhappy.

"Hera, you must know the inside story better than us, right?" Fred put his arm on Hera's shoulders, "Tell me, let's have some fun, our youngest brother has started to fall in love, but our two older brothers are still lonely, tsk tsk tsk!"

"I'm not that gossip, but I heard that Lavender is a good Gryffindor girl." Hera said with a smile, he didn't want to be nicknamed a gossip headmaster, and he really didn't care much about Ron's love life, his attention was basically on Slughorn and Draco.

"Of course we knew, we wanted to know something different," Fred said.

George clapped his hands, "That's right, what we want to know is... how?"

"What do you mean?" Ron asked suspiciously.

"Is that girl anything other than a car accident?"

"what?"

"How could she have such a large area of ​​brain damage? Be careful!"

Molly was drawn back by George's applause just in time to see Ron throwing the cabbage knife at Fred.But Fred just turned the knife into a paper airplane with a lazy flick of his wand.

"Ron!" Molly was furious. "Don't let me see you throwing knives again. And you, Hera, keep an eye on the children, don't let them do such dangerous things."

Facing the angry Mrs. Weasley, Hera could only bow his head and admit his mistake. He didn't take good care of these children.

The children fought for quite some time again, but they managed to get rid of the ingredients before Mrs. Weasley could use them.

When Arthur came back, it was completely dark. He looked very tired, but when he saw Hera, he was obviously more excited.

"Molly told me before, I thought you guys would come over later." Arthur threw the briefcase on the sofa in the living room when he got home. "How about we go to the living room and talk? Let the children stay in the kitchen. I think Molly will keep an eye on them."

"It's my pleasure." Hera nodded, stood up and left the kitchen.

Sitting on the sofa, Arthur couldn't stop yawning, as if he hadn't rested for a long time.

"Sorry, I haven't closed my eyes for almost two days." Arthur said while yawning. Hera waved her hand to show that she didn't care. "How is the Ministry of Magic doing? Are you still following the Death Eaters?"

"We can't do anything else." Arthur wiped away the tears from the corners of his eyes, and he was trapped in tears because he hadn't rested for a long time. "Scremgeour is a grumpy guy. I don't deny that he is much better than Fudge, but he doesn't take Aurors' feelings into consideration at all. We haven't had a vacation for almost three months."

"I think this is a hidden danger. One day Scrimgeour will find that he can't pick out a combat-capable Auror from the Ministry." Hera sighed. Although he was also very aware of the current shortcomings of the Ministry of Magic, he had no better way.Scrimgeour thinks the same way, but this situation doesn't give him more choices.

Arthur patted the armrest of the sofa, "We all know why we did this, so we have been insisting. Scrimgeour can't blame it all." He was still speaking for Scrimgeour.

"I think you can go back to your room and take a rest first, there is still some time before dinner." Hera patted Arthur on the shoulder, "It's a rare vacation, go and have a rest."

"But it's too inappropriate."

"There's nothing inappropriate, I just went to look at the children." Hera said in a relaxed tone, "Ron almost stuck a knife into Fred's body just now."

"How dare he - do that?" Arthur was shocked, "Ron he -"

"Molly has already taught him a lesson, and you know that George and Fred are always making fun of Ron." When Hera said this, Arthur could fully understand it, but it still seemed a little difficult to accept.

"Okay, I think—I've got to go get some rest—" Arthur's yawning was unstoppable, his eyes were barely open, and he almost sank into the sofa and fell asleep.

Hera watched Arthur stagger up the stairs and out of the living room, and he went back into the kitchen, where Ron and Harry were whispering something, ignoring Fred and George altogether.This made them very uncomfortable, and teasing Ron was their greatest pleasure.

It wasn't until a quarter of an hour before dinner that Lupine and Sirius came late. Lupine even trimmed his beard, which made him look much younger, but his deep eye bags betrayed him, which made him look haggard, and cutting off his beard didn't help.

After a short exchange of pleasantries, they sat in the living room, Penello sitting on Hera's left and Harry on his right, all crowded together because there were too many people in the room.

The room was so colorful and full of flowers that it looked like a garland of flowers had exploded.

"The cherub on top of the Christmas tree is actually a little garden goblin," whispered Harry, as Hera looked at the tree. "Fred was bitten by the ankle when he was pulling turnips for Christmas dinner, so it was stunned, painted gold, stuffed into a little tutu, and had little wings glued to its back."

"Hmm." Hera narrowed her eyes, "No wonder it looks so awkward."

Harry snickered, "By the way, Hera, do you have time after dinner? I want to chat with you."

"No problem at all. I think Arthur and Remus will be there too. We can talk about some private things." Hera said in a low voice, and then enjoyed dinner with the others as if nothing had happened.

Dinner was generally pleasant, except that they had to listen to Celestina Warbeck's Christmas broadcast, her voice twirling from the big wooden radio.Under the cover of a particularly jazzy tune "A Pot of Fiery Love", the twins and Ginny played crack and blast.

The dinner didn't end until midnight, and Molly took the children upstairs.

"Let Harry stay." Hera said, because Harry was looking at him with resentful eyes, as if Hera had forgotten something important.

"Oh?" Molly frowned, "I hope you don't have some unreasonable words with him."

"Don't worry, it's just that there are some things that are inconvenient to say in the castle, and Harry should know." Hera said while winking at Arthur and Remus, signaling them not to leave in a hurry.

"Sirius, you go upstairs first, I think you must be exhausted." Lupine patted him on the back, and Sirius followed Molly upstairs like children.

After they left, Harry almost couldn't wait to tell them about the opal necklace, and how he'd seen Draco captured by Filch at Slughorn's party.

"Have you ever thought, Harry," said Arthur, "that you're just thinking too much?"

(End of this chapter)