Malfoy Rise at Hogwarts

Chapter 70 Second Invasion
So ended Schelling's first long private conversation with Hermione.

After separation, Schelling and Hermione returned to their dormitory dormitories safe and sound, but poor Harry was not so lucky.

He came out to look for Hermione, but not only failed to find Hermione, but was also caught by Filch, who copied the school rules most of the night in Filch's office, almost folding his hands before letting him go.

After a while, Harry, who was deeply tired, felt as if he fell asleep immediately after he lay down on the bed... He had a very strange dream.With a Firebolt on his shoulder, he was walking in a forest, followed by a silver-white thing.The thing weaved and weaved through the bushes ahead, and he could just see it appearing and disappearing among the leaves.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Harry woke up suddenly, as if he had been shot in the face.Then he heard movement around him, Seamus Finnigan's voice from across the room. "what happened?"

Harry thought he heard the dormitory door slam shut.He finally found the opening in the curtains and pulled them open, and that's when Dean Thomas turned on the lamp.

Ron sat up in bed, the curtains pulled aside, a look of utter horror on his face, "Black! Sirius Black! He's got a knife!"

"Right here! What happened just now! He tore through the curtains! Woke me up!" Ron continued yelling.

Dean questioned whether Ron was dreaming, but Ron's torn bed curtains showed that it was not a ridiculous dream.Five boys ran down the stairs at full speed.Behind them, dormitory doors opened one after another, and many sleepy voices asked them questions.

"Who was yelling just now?"

"What are you doing?"

Embers in the fireplace lit the common room, which was littered with a lot of litter from the party, and the room was empty.At this time, several girls came down the stairs, yawning in their pajamas.Then, the boys also appeared one after another.

"Everyone go back upstairs!" Percy yelled, hurrying to the common room, pinning his Head Boy badge to his pajamas as he spoke.

"Percy - Sirius Black!" said Ron feebly. "In our dormitories! With a knife! Woke me up!"

There was a sudden silence in the common room.Not long after, Professor McGonagall appeared.Once she entered the common room, she slammed the hole in the portrait behind her and looked around furiously. "Gryffindor won the game, I am very happy, but you are so ridiculous now! Percy, I expected you to perform better!"

"I'm sure I didn't tell them to do that, Professor!" Percy tried to look more serious, although he looked a little funny in his pajamas and the Head Boy badge. "I'm telling them all to go back to bed! My brother Ron had a nightmare—"

"It's not a nightmare!" Ron yelled, "Professor, I woke up and Sirius Black was standing in front of me, holding a knife!"

Professor McGonagall stared at him, not believing Ron's words.However, at Ron's request, she still asked Sir Cadogan, who was guarding the entrance to the lounge, "Sir Cadogan, did you let a man into Gryffindor Tower just now?"

"Of course, ma'am!" cried Sir Cadogan.

Professor McGonagall couldn't believe it, and she hurriedly asked Sir Cadogan about the password, but got an even more surprising answer - Black had the password for the whole week, which was read from a small slip of paper.

Professor McGonagall came back from the portrait hole, her face as white as chalk, her voice trembling with uncontrollable anger, "Which fool wrote down all the passwords for this week and left them everywhere?"

There was silence, and then a tiny, frightened voice broke the silence.

Neville Longbottom slowly raised his hand.

No one in Gryffindor Tower slept that night.Everyone knew that the castle had been raided again, and the entire Gryffindor house was waiting in the common room to hear if Black had been caught.At dawn, Professor McGonagall returned, and she told everyone that Black had escaped again.

The next day, wherever they went, they saw increased security.

Professor Flitwick was holding a large picture of Blake and teaching everyone who guarded the front door to identify; Filch was suddenly scurrying up and down the corridors, plugging everything from small cracks in the walls to rat holes.And Sir Cadogan, with his brain full of oil and glue, was dismissed—his portrait was put back on the deserted landing on the eighth floor.

Then, the fat lady came back.The school board invited a professional magic painter to professionally restore Fat Lady's portrait, but she was still extremely nervous.Her return to work was conditional—she demanded that she be extra protected.A gang of rough troll security guards are hired to protect her.They patrolled the corridors in groups of three or five menacingly, with rough voices, comparing the size of the sticks in their hands.

The troll security guard is not the kind of mountain troll that Schelling knocked down in the first grade.They are new species that have been cultivated by wizards from generation to generation. Apart from having no frightening smell, they also have more humanity and intelligence, although the IQ is still not enough to reach the human level.In the wizarding world, there is a profession that specializes in training such giant monsters to become qualified troll security guards. This profession is called "troll trainer".

In the British wizarding world, there are several companies responsible for training troll security guards, but all of them have the shadow of the Ministry of Magic behind them.The Ministry of Magic will not allow private companies to freely produce military force that can be used for military purposes. Although ordinary people are ignorant of these things, Schelling knows that the largest shareholder of these troll security companies is the Ministry of Magic itself.

Because of this incident, Ron became quite a celebrity. Although he was still in shock from what happened that night, as soon as someone asked him, he would happily tell people what happened that night, and added many exaggerated details.This was the first time in Ron's life that he had been treated like this, and he obviously enjoyed the limelight.

The unlucky Neville was not allowed to go to Hogsmeade village after being punished by the angry Professor McGonagall.Not only that, but she also put Neville in confinement, forbidding anyone to give him the password to enter the tower.Poor Neville had to wait in the common room every night to see who would take him in - and those troll security guards would tease him with unpleasant words every now and then.

None of these punishments, however, compared to what his grandmother, Augusta Longbottom, had prepared for him.Two days after Black broke into the tower, she sent Neville something that was the worst thing a Hogwarts student could get for breakfast - a Howler letter.

On that day, the school owl flew into the Great Hall to deliver the mail as usual.Just then, a huge barn owl stopped in front of him, holding a scarlet envelope in its mouth, and Neville was dumbfounded.Harry and Ron, who were sitting across from him, recognized right away that it was a Howler letter - Ron had gotten one from his mum last year.

"Run, Neville!" Ron urged him hastily.

Neville didn't need him to say it a second time.He grabbed the envelope and sprinted out of the Great Hall like he was carrying a bomb, the Slytherins burst into laughter at the sight of him.Soon, everyone heard howling letters blasting in the hall—it was Neville's grandmother's voice, a hundred times louder than usual, screeching that Neville had brought disgrace to the whole family.

On the long table in Slytherin, Daphne cast an ear-closing spell on her surroundings, and then said in a low voice, "Sherin, I guessed it right, Blake has gone and returned."

Meredith looked in Ron's direction contemptuously: "Those Gryffindor idiots probably thought that Blake was scared away by them-I'm not ashamed... If Black's target is really Harry, facing five weak boys, and four of them are still asleep, he didn't choose to kill them. It doesn't match the rumored murderous nature. It seems that there may be more shady behind Black's imprisonment!"

She was used to Schelling's strategizing and insight. Seeing Ron's clown-like performance at this moment, she felt very contemptuous.

Astoria blinked her lovely big eyes and asked, "Brother Sherin, what do you think Black really wants?"

Schelling replied confidently: "At present, the scope can be narrowed down. What Black is drawing must be the things in Harry's dormitory. Among them, the most likely things are Ron's things. After all, he chose the first one and cut Ron's bed curtain. Although the Weasley family is also an ancient pure-blood family, we all know that they are very poor-so things related to wealth can be excluded, so what else is worth taking such a big risk for Black to steal?"

The corners of Daphne's mouth raised confidently, "Black has no relatives, no reasons, no worries, and there is only one thing that can make him so persistent--hatred! Unforgettable hatred! What he wants must be related to revenge."

Schelling shrugged, "Only he knows what he wants, and we can deduce it to this point. Whether Black's loyalty was in Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix camp or the Dark Lord's Death Eaters camp, it has nothing to do with us. Our family has no grievances against him. If he wants revenge, the target is probably not us. We just need to sit quietly and eat melons."

Daphne asked cautiously, "So—we don't do anything?"

Xie Lin showed an inscrutable look, "Who knows?"

That night, Harry and Ron left the Gryffindor House tower, trotting past the troll guards and making their way to the entrance hall where Hagrid was already waiting for them.

"I have something to discuss with you two." Hagrid sat down between the two of them, his expression looked very serious, at least very different from his usual attitude. "It's about Hermione."

"What's the matter with her?" Ron asked.

"She's fine, that's the problem... She's been to me a lot since Christmas, and she'll often say she doesn't know what to say to you..." Hagrid shook his head suddenly again.

"It ate Scabbers!" Ron interrupted Hagrid angrily.

"Because her cat did what all cats do," Hagrid went on stubbornly. "She cried a few times. You know, she's having a hard time now, and she's chewing too much... If you ask me, she wants to do too much... But she still finds time to help me with Buckbeak's case."

"Hagrid, we should have helped you too, sorry..." Harry said awkwardly.

"I don't blame you!" Hagrid obviously didn't care about this. "You have a lot of things to do yourself. I saw you training on the Quidditch field day and night...but I must tell you that I think you two should value your friends more than broomsticks and rats. That's what I want to say."

Both Harry and Ron felt a little ashamed of Hagrid's sincere warning, but their thoughts were related to their respective personalities.

(End of this chapter)