Azkaban: The Fifth House of Hogwarts

Christmas was coming, and one morning in mid-December, Hogwarts School woke up from a dream. White snow covered its flat and spacious grassland, and the lake was covered with hard ice, at least two or three feet thick.

On the east side of the Black Lake, there were rising clouds and mist, covering a large area of ​​land. Some curious little wizards tried to go there to find out, especially the Weasley brothers, but everyone's adventure was in vain. After returning from work, the people who entered the fog came out dizzy after walking around in a daze for several large circles. They saw nothing.

Such strange things made the little wizards talk a lot, but no one could tell the truth. A new campus ghost story became a topic of their after-dinner chat.

However, the heavy snow also brings a lot of interesting fun. Whenever Professor Quirrell walks on the snowy road, several snowballs will always attack him quickly under the influence of magic. The students who are tired of Quirrell's incompetence Gradually, Quirrell is no longer regarded as a professor who needs to be respected. His teaching of stuttering and reading the text is not as good as letting them read the book on their own.

Especially those seventh-grade students who are about to graduate. Not only do they hate Quirrell, but no one likes him at all.

Although the Defense Against the Dark Arts professors in the past didn't stay for a short time or even live very long, no matter how bad they were, they could still teach the students some useful skills, even if they were a deceased professor who once squatted in Azkaban. They all taught them a clever little magic trick, so that if you accidentally drop the soap in the shower, you don’t have to bend down to pick it up.

Apart from trying to marinate the students with the smell of garlic, Quirrell is really just a bit of dry stuff... No!Even parallel imports are not taught.

It was during this cold season that two pairs of eyes full of expectation and curiosity appeared in Hagrid's warm cabin.

"Look, they're almost hatching!"

Hagrid spoke in a soft tone. The fire crab eggs were well placed in the incubators. Many of them had cracks on their tops, showing signs of hatching.

"Yeah, but the records later will probably make us busy for a while. I'm thinking about whether we should hire some reliable experimental assistants. By the way, I asked Professor Dumbledore to rent a piece of land. It should be much more convenient to have a small research institute. .”

"I think this is a great idea!" Rolf, holding the magic camera in his hand, almost raised his feet to agree with the proposal. Although the simple experimental environment was usable, when conducting precise calculations and research, There are still many shortcomings.

"I'll take advantage of Christmas to get some money. If I just throw money away in the past six months, I will soon become poor."

Luo Luo felt a little uneasy when he thought that the mountain of gold in his vault had now turned into a hill. Although there were tons of rare materials in the warehouse, it was not easy to cash them out.

"Are you poor? I don't believe it."

Rolf glanced at Rollo, his face full of suspicion.

"Dumbledore, this black-hearted old man, wants to take away my 400 million galleons in one breath, and my annual donation of 100 million. Even if it is a golden mountain, it has been dug up by him. He won't get some gold to fill it up." I’m really unsure about the treasury.”

"This..." Hagrid scratched his hair, "Is it because of the Dragon Training Farm?"

"What else can there be? The construction cost 800 million, which is even a friendly price. The purchase of the dragon species cost 600 million. There is also the first donation of this year. Isn't it exactly [-]?"

"A fire dragon worth 600 million Galleons? I'm a good boy..."

Hagrid didn't care about the construction cost, but when he heard that it cost so much to buy a dragon, he couldn't help but gasped, "I was still thinking about buying two dragons myself, but it seems like there's no chance now."

"If it's a dragon egg, it's okay. The price ranges from 30 to 60, but it's different for an adult fire dragon. We don't want commercial inferior products that have been slaughtered for 120 years. Half of them are directly contacted from various countries. The Wild Fire Dragon Sanctuary carefully selects [-]-year-old purely wild young dragons, half of which are semi-domesticated wild dragons that are over [-] years old."

"The price of each head will not be less than [-] Galleons. For high-risk or rare dragon species such as the Hungarian Horntail Dragon, Yellowstone's Salsaurosaurus, and Australian Opaleye, the base price will be doubled. I heard that in order to save me some money, Professor Dumbledore took the time to place a few fire dragons with his own hands a while ago."

"In order to thank him for saving me this huge sum of money, which is less than a fraction, I plan to give him 36500 pairs of wool socks at Christmas, changing one pair a day, so that he can wear them for 100 years."

"I have placed the order. It will be delivered to Hogsmeade in a few days. I think he will cry with joy."

Rollo, who was murmuring, didn't believe that Dumbledore would make such a trip just to catch the fire dragon. At most, he just wanted to go out for a walk in the middle of the night, and then put down a few of them along the way, and asked someone to drag them back and pack them the next day. , I don’t know whether it has left England or not.

Not many people knew that Dumbledore wanted to receive woolen socks for Christmas. People always liked to give him books. The two people who failed to figure this out were a little confused.

But with the crisp sound of the eggshell cracking, the three people's chat was interrupted.

"Look, look, look! Let me see what a cute little..."

Hagrid's words, which were filled with excitement, suddenly stopped as the little guy revealed his true face.

A lump of rotten meat with a stinky smell of putrefaction emerged from the cracks in the eggshell. The piece of meat, which resembled a mixture of slugs and fermented soot water, was so deformed that even its numb appearance was unrecognizable. It was much better than a newborn baby. The three of them were stained by something as disgusting as a bomb-tailed snail.

"Oh! Damn it! Merlin's pants haven't been washed in 30 years!"

Hagrid covered his face and groaned in pain, "Why is this guy a piece of shit? It will definitely not taste good when he grows up."

"This is no longer a question of being unpalatable, right? Hagrid!"

Rollo, who patted Hagrid's big arm, moved his head away with a look of disgust. The smell of corruption was too unpleasant.

"Forget it, forget it, take pictures first, at least you're still alive."

"I'll isolate the incubator to avoid odor transfer."

With ten fingers flicking, sealing spells were shot out one after another, quickly isolating the nearly twenty boxes. Without affecting the observation, all the smells inside would not be leaked.

"Control test group number seven, number of hatched eggs: four, three dead eggs, three unhatched eggs, appearance: dark gray-white wriggling flesh, with four pairs of asymmetrical flesh whiskers, no obvious external organs such as eyes, ears, mouth, and nose were found. It emits a strong smell of corruption, pending further observation.”

'click, click'

Rolf took a photo with the camera in his hand. The magic camera he got from Newt took color photos. It was much more advanced than the big black and white camera used by the Daily Prophet, but it was only needed by Newt. Only scholars who keep many photos as data collection need such magically modified items. In England, most of this magical modification is illegal.

The few people who were free to chat a second ago quickly became busy. For the fire crab eggs that Luo Luo bought, the seller specially selected the same batch of eggs produced on the same day as a kind of ornamental product. There are many wizards who specialize in raising fire crabs and selling magical creatures with economic value.

This has also resulted in them being very busy now.

Fortunately, there were only twenty groups in total. With the help of magic, they only needed to dictate the contents and take photos and samples to complete the recording and collection. After about an hour, the frequency of shell breaking slowly decreased.

"It's a complete mess..."

After collecting the basic information, Rolf sat on the chair in frustration.

"I don't ask them to look like a manticore, at least they have to be related to fire crabs, right? It turns out that the most similar thing is a lobster that sheds its shell. Fire crabs are turtles, not seafood! "

Rolf, who drank a large cup of hot tea, covered his head and didn't want to speak. He didn't expect that the hybrid creature would have such a weird and twisted appearance, completely shapeless.

"Perhaps the predecessor of the fire crab was some kind of seafood? Then it turned into a turtle?"

Staring at the gray-white lobster crawling around in the box in front of him, Rollo rubbed his chin in thought.

"After all, crabs and lobsters are quite closely related. Maybe these guys have started to undergo an atavistic transformation due to hybridization?"

"But look at this, Rolf, the product of control group three has the lowest distortion rate. Not only does it look most like a lobster, it seems to have a soft shell on its back. It is not just a piece of meat. After breaking the shell, , the soft shell has a tendency to harden, this guy might be a little bit interesting."

"And have you noticed that starting from control group three, as the dose continues to increase, the balance of mutations is constantly broken. Control group ten, which has ten times the manticore's magic power, is the most unstable. There is only one living egg, and its shape is the most distorted.

However, it can also be found from Group No. 11, that is, the control group that reduced the manticore's magic power, that the magic power intake was lower than that of the control group [-], which was the magic dose used in Hagrid's first experiment. They also appeared aggravating morphological distortion. "

"If the success of Hagrid's first test is taken as the passing mark, then the magic power intake of control group three should be just at the full score line. A higher or lower level is not good."

"Ever played Muggle poker? Blackjack?"

Rolf shook his head. He had never played Muggle poker, but after Rollo briefly explained it, he quickly understood the rules.

"The smaller the point, the greater the probability of losing. But once the point exceeds the full value, the card will be destroyed and it will fail immediately, right?"

"Starting from the control group four, the monster no longer even has the appearance of a lobster, and it keeps getting closer to the twisted meat."

"But if the concentration is low, shouldn't the hybrid creature that appears be closer to the original fire crab? Why does it still turn into pieces of meat?"

A somewhat puzzled Rolf asked, pointing to the boxes numbered eleven or above.

"When mixed with the manticore's magic power, this egg cannot be called the fire crab's egg. I think that if the magic power of the two does not reach a certain balance, then the twisted mutation will be the ultimate product."

"Although they were successfully hatched and given the concept of being alive, it does not mean that they are successful."

"Except for control groups [-], [-] and [-], I don't think the others will survive tonight. Only the products of these three groups have no dead eggs. In other words, although their appearance is distorted, this distortion is already in a certain state. Within an acceptable stable range.”

"At least it won't collapse easily due to its own reasons."

"I'm suddenly starting to miss Muggle technology."

Rollo sighed with regret.

"why?"

asked a puzzled Rolf.

"Muggles' research on life sciences is much broader than ours. Although it is difficult for them to achieve the same 'cross-species hybridization' as ours without the help of magic in experiments, their technology also has merits."

"For example, DNA sequencing has been around for a long time. By comparing genes, they can more easily quantify the differences between organisms. Although we have the help of magic, we lack the means to quantify it."

Just like the 'appropriate amount and a little' in Chinese food, wizards' various experiments often rely on their feelings, especially these experiments that require personal exploration and exploration. It is difficult to achieve precise and quantitative delivery, and all can only be done. By feel and intuition.

"Quantitative... right?"

"Of course, for example, the power of magic spells used by wizards depends largely on the amount of magic power. But so far, except for alchemists who use refined magic crystal ore as a quantitative unit of magic power, there is no such thing as a magic spell among wizards. A means of quantifying magic power.”

"Magic power is energy without a unit. No one has defined it. Although this is due to the individual differences in wizards making the power of magic vary greatly, it is still a fact that it is not quantified."

"But there is nothing we can do about it." Rolf sighed helplessly, "Different people of the same age may have very different effects when using the same spell. Talent directly determines it. The upper and lower limits of magic are greatly affected by the wizard's own reasons. Even if you want to quantify it, it is very difficult."

"After all, magic doesn't make sense." Rollo shrugged. Although he really wanted to have some measurement unit like one card of magic power, he just couldn't do it.

Even if he uses the magic power of releasing a light spell as the standard amount of one card, as his spellcasting ability increases, magic perception improves, and the magic flow speed accelerates, the personal definition of this card also needs to be continuously adjusted and changed. cannot be quantified accurately.

"I need to see the experimental records before hatching."

Rolf, who seemed to have thought of something, came to Rollo's small notebook, and quickly read through it with a slight frown.

"The total magic power of the Manticore that was infiltrated into Hagrid's control group is about 15.00% of the total magic power of the Fire Crab, right?"

"If I didn't record the mistake at the time, then yes."

Rollo nodded and answered in the affirmative.

"Remember the Chimera? There are also the Basilisk, the Vampire Chupacabra, and the Dover Demon, the ones I came to tell you about that time."

"On that day, I discovered the commonality of these artificial creatures. They need the commonality of containers, but if I put it now-"

"Maybe we've forgotten a little bit."

"That's quantity."

"The Chimera is the most obvious. It is a magical creature formed by the fusion of the Trinity. The information on the Basilisk is incomplete, but the vampire beast Chupacabra uses purebred vampires, vampire monsters, and blood pool beasts to exchange blood through magical rituals. An evil life born from the fusion."

"The same is true for the Dover Demons. They all have a cultivation container, which is the basis for reconciliation."

"In the legend, Chimera is mixed with dragon eggs, and vampires use vampires as carriers for their conception. Then wizards will add the 'materials' they need to the base of the container - two different materials for fusion. "

Rolf dipped his fingers in tea and drew three line segments on the table to form a triangle.

"Seven is the most magical number, but three is indeed the most stable number."

"If there are only two parties, then the final result will be a life-and-death confrontation, but if there are three parties..."

What do you mean...

Rollo seemed to understand what he meant.

"We're still missing a little something new."

"The current results are incomplete. Between the manticore and the fire crab, we still need to add a third party to mediate the confrontation!"

Rollo's eyes lit up, and a sense of excitement spread throughout his body.

"What do you think of the Acromantula? The eggs of the Fire Crab hatch too slowly, but the eggs of the Acromantula are readily available, as many as you want, and the incubation period can be shortened to a week and a half."

"Using the Acromantula as the base, blend the magic power of the Manticore and the Fire Crab, and then build a solid three."

Rollo also drew a triangle on the table and looked at Rolf and Hagrid.

"Maybe we are not far from success!"

Rolf put his hand on the back of Rollo's hand, followed by Hagrid, who was a little confused, and his palm as big as a trash can cover directly wrapped their hands.

The wind and snow outside continued unabated, and the fire inside the hut continued to extinguish. Along with the smoke, there was laughter and the aroma of celebratory food.

(Spoiler alert, the Spider Girl in the introduction is about to appear. Is there anyone who can help me with the naming?)