[HP] Raven

Episode 11

When Alex was admitted to the isolation ward, there were already a dozen classmates living in it. She met Helen Claude and the Pike brothers and sisters who had been away for a few days.Helen-Claude often fell asleep, and would fall asleep halfway through the wizard chess game.Heidi Pike's red rash ran down her neck to her face, which was a little frightening, and she worried about what to do with her face all day long.Edmund was slightly better, save for intermittent low-grade fevers.

Madam Pomfrey hadn't come back yet, and every day two nurses who didn't know anything came in and distributed potions to everyone. It was said that it could curb the worsening of the infectious disease, but the effect was minimal.Because no one is watching and cannot go to class, the life after being quarantined is very monotonous. Apart from sleeping and eating, playing wizard chess and reading books are very few pastimes that can be realized. Soon the quarantined patients began to invent new ways to play. : Whoever loses in Wizard Chess will be punished. For example, read aloud a section of "The Caterpillar and the Snowball", a fairy tale adventure story that was very popular in their junior grades. Now it seems that the content is very naive and illogical. Read aloud It's more like a public execution.

Alex is inferior to others in wizard chess. Under the siege of Ravenclaw, the winning rate fell off a cliff, and even reached the embarrassing situation of repeated defeats. Occasionally winning a few games depends on Edmund- Pike releases the water.

But the wizard board is also a rare resource, everyone takes turns to play, and most of the time they can only sit on the bed and chat.Helen Claude and her three History of Magic textbooks were sleeping on the bed on Alex's left. It is said that she was found infected in the library. Mrs. Pince took her to the medical wing without noticing Helen hid the three thick books inside the cloak and brought them in together.

Until one day, Helen was in good condition and chatted with Alex about the migration of the elves in Cornwall for more than an hour. Maybe it was too boring during the isolation period. Alex listened very attentively, and from time to time Also made a few comments.Helen originally planned to share with her the legend of Scottish folk wizards, another direction of her recent research, but she was so tired that she decided to put down the curtains and go to sleep after yawning a few times.

That's when Alex became aware of a sound coming from behind the never-drawn curtain to the right.

"Hello." Came a thin and weak voice.

Alex was startled, and asked politely and coldly. "Do you need help?"

The curtain moved, and then a small corner was lifted. A girl who looked thinner than other freshmen was lying on the bed, with light brown hair hanging on her shoulders. Her fingers kept rubbing the tips of her hair, and her movements At first glance, it looks a bit like an old lady knitting a sweater.

"I'm Alice Burns." The girl's voice was very soft.

"Evely." She adjusted the angle of the pillow.

"I heard them call you Alex." Alice raised her eyes to look at her, and then continued to look down at her hair.

Amber eyes.Alex thought of his mother.Because of this subtle similarity, she softened her tone when she spoke again. "Yes, you can call me Alex if you want."

"Alex," Alice paused, as if mustering up the courage to ask something big, "are you the person from that night?"

"Feel sorry?"

"The one who scared those two bully boys away. I can make out your voice."

Alex remembered that Alice was the freshman Slytherin who was bullied that day. If the other party hadn't mentioned it, she wouldn't have remembered it at all.

"It's really me."

"Thank you, Alex."

"No need," she was not used to welcoming such occasions, "it's just a matter of raising your hands."

"This is very important to me," Alice murmured, lowering her eyes and playing with her hair. "Those villains never dared to trouble me again."

Alex nodded. "It's good." The night was getting dark and she felt a little cold, so she waved her wand and cast a warming spell.

"Your wand is beautiful," Alice whispered coldly.

"Thank you."

Alex glanced at her wand, blackthorn, twelve and a quarter inches, with a core of dragon heart tendon.She was no taller than the counter when Mr. Ollivander handed her the wand. "Miss Everly has the eyes of a soldier." The silver-haired old man once said so. She was ignorant at the time and didn't understand what it meant.Later, when she was in the Hogwarts library in the first grade, she borrowed a book related to wands out of curiosity, and felt Ollivander’s avoidance of the most important: Of course, both blackthorn and dragon heart would choose strength, but more importantly Yes, both are compatible with black magic.

The whole wizarding world knows that it is not the man who chooses the wand, but the wand chooses the man.She felt something, and the topic of black magic popped up in her heart again.

"Alex," Alice called her three times in a row before she realized, "how are you?"

"Maybe I'm a little too tired," she waved her wand, and her own candlestick with a glass cover at the head of the hospital bed dimmed. "It's too late, I think we should go to bed."

--

She dreamed again, thanks to Helen, the dream was full of the chattering voices of the Cornish elves. She woke up in a daze, heard a few indiscernible noises, and waved her wand half-awakely to draw the curtains.

Black hair, thin and handsome face, gray eyes in the moonlight, silver like star tide.

"... Sirius Black?" She muttered to herself, her whole body was groggy, and she felt that everything in front of her eyes was like an illusion seen from the bottom of the water.

The other party's slightly astonished expression only lasted for a second, and soon returned to normal. "Shh, I'll come and see you."

Alex blinked. This must be a hallucination. She used her remaining rationality to analyze that hallucinations were probably an uncommon potential symptom of an infectious disease.

"Are you going to be here all the time?" She was completely unaware of what she was saying.

Sirius seemed to find something interesting, smiled, and took a few steps towards her. "Don't worry, Everly, go to sleep."

Maybe it was because she was really too sleepy, she nodded obediently, closed her eyes, and soon fell asleep again, and when she woke up, this memory was forgotten along with the dream.

In the first few days of isolation, she seemed very leisurely. She didn’t need to attend work, and she didn’t have homework. If she wanted to preview, she could ask any Ravenclaw to borrow textbooks. Anyway, she could always borrow them. Dazed with guilt.Lily-Evans wrote her a lot of small notes in the first few days, and passed them all to her by magic, telling her some things, such as how boring Professor Binns' history of magic class was, and what new things Professor McGonagall taught. Daily chores like class.After the notes accumulated to a certain extent, Alex began to have to reply to some of them. She scratched her head and couldn't think of what to write, so she simply started to report on her Wizard Chess game, writing something like "3 wins and [-] losses in Wizard Chess today, Read out loud "Chapter [-]" from "The Caterpillar and the Snowball" and stuff like that.

Maybe the life in the isolation ward was indeed too boring, and she never felt bored in this kind of boring word game, until one day she glanced at it and jumped up from the bed like a spring.

Lily wrote in black and white: "Potter may come to the isolation ward tomorrow."

She replied quickly. "Isn't he afraid of being infected?"

Lily soon passed a new note. "Everyone has already summed up the experience that only Muggles and mixed blood can be infected, even if no one knows what the disease is."

"Stop him, Lily."

"Impossible, I tried. Potter said it must be some kind of conspiracy, they must investigate."

You don't even have to think about knowing how many members "they" have.What a silly Gryffindor.Alex crumpled up the note angrily.Why can't we just wait a few more days for Madam Pomfrey's return?She would be back at Hogwarts in a week at most.If there is really any conspiracy in this epidemic, it should be Principal Dumbledore's investigation at that time, and it has nothing to do with them.

never mind.She couldn't stop it anyway.

The nurse handed over today's potion, a milky white liquid with a bitter and astringent taste.Alex put it on the bedside in an agitated mood, not intending to drink it anymore, and went to the other side of the isolation ward to find Parker and brother to play wizard chess, and it didn't matter if they lost.

--

That night, Alex was upset and experienced her first insomnia after the infection, which is very rare among patients, and the third or fourth symptom among the symptoms is "drowsiness".

She lay on the bed like a corpse until two o'clock in the morning, the curtains were not all closed, she heard a slight noise but saw no one.

Blessed to the heart, she got up from the bed and put the cloak on her body. "...Potter?"

"Merlin's beard!" Potter deliberately lowered his voice, but no one appeared, "Avery, you are trying to scare me to death—"

James Potter's head popped out of nowhere, suspended in front of her.

Alex didn't know how to evaluate the scene in front of her. "Your head is floating in the air, Potter, if it doesn't bother you, I'd like you to explain why...if it's any trouble."

"Hey, it's not easy." There was only a rustle of cloth rubbing against each other, and James Potter seemed to come out of something and stood in front of her.

"This is the invisibility cloak. My father gave it to me. When I wear it, no one can see us." James Potter shook something in front of her eyes, but unfortunately she couldn't see anything.

"This thing is really cool," she agreed mechanically and politely, and then thought of the purpose of her speech, "Also, you come to the isolation ward at night—"

"I suspect it's not an epidemic, Everly," Potter interrupted her, "but a Slytherin conspiracy."

Although she didn't reject this statement in her heart, she still frowned without leaving a trace. "so?"

"Muggles and half-breeds are the only ones who get infectious diseases. I suspect that someone is going to take a knife against you," Potter said.

"What do you mean taking us under the knife?"

"The snot-nosed man hasn't been following Sirius and me in secret lately. He used to try to catch us all day long and get us expelled from Hogwarts. You know about Hogsmeade. We suspect him and 'those people ' Hanging around all day thinking about..." Potter couldn't find the right words.

Alex cut him off. "Want to harm us? What's the point?"

"Anyway, this matter is not easy." He insisted stubbornly.Then he saw the potion Alex had placed beside the bed, pulled the cork out and smelled it. "What is this? It feels weird."

"I forgot to drink yesterday's potion."

Potter took it without thinking and hid it in his cloak. "Thank you very much for the sample."

"Hey!"

He waved his hand, what he said was not on point at all. "Don't worry, we will give this potion to Evans."

Alex rubbed his head. "Why did you bring Lily into it?"

Potter gave her an unnatural look. "She voluntarily. Everly, everyone found this epidemic unusual. Have you ever seen a nurse who doesn't understand anything? They send you this kind of thing that they don't want to disclose the formula all day long. Who knows what's inside What it was, and Slughorn didn't ask to see what it was . . . he was just playing dumb, to avoid trouble."

"They were recruited by the school."

"It's the Board of Trustees," Potter corrected her. "Do you know how many of those people's fathers are on the Board of Trustees? They can't do anything while Dumbledore isn't at school lately?"

Indeed.She was suddenly a little moved. "So, what do you want to do?"

Porter said. "Every night from now on, as long as there are no accidents, Sirius and I will come to patrol. Evans will try to find out what is in the potion you drink every day. Then we will tell Dumbledore all about it .”

One day, Lily's note said that they learned about Boggarts in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and Alex had read about the existence of this creature in the book before.She was even a little thankful that she missed this class. For some reason, she didn't want to reveal what her deepest fear was.

There was a sudden rainstorm at night, the howling wind beat against the windows, and lightning flashed across the sky, casting jagged shadows on the ground of the medical wing.

"Today is the full moon," Alice Burns said suddenly, "according to the date, it is today."

"so?"

Alice whispered: "There will be wolves howling at night. Lanica told me that there are werewolves in Hogwarts."

"Maybe it's just wolves."

"Anyway—I'm afraid I won't be able to sleep tonight," said Alice Burns, lying on the bed and starting to play with her hair. "Daddy used to laugh at me and call me a coward."

Alex smiled, not knowing what to respond, and lay down with his back to Alice.

"So," Alice Burns went on self-consciously, "Alex, can I share a bed with you?"

After a minute of silence, Alex felt the girl's warm body against her.

She didn't turn over and kept her eyes closed. "I didn't promise you, Alice."

Alice stroked her hair and her back. "Feel sorry."

Alex sighed and wrapped herself in the blanket. "...so you have to go back to your bed tomorrow."

When the rustling sound came in the night she thought it was Potter or Black again, until she realized that was not the case when the conversation sounded.

"Where is she?" a rough voice asked.

"No on the bed." Another voice was hoarse, like a cluster of spider webs knotted in the throat.

It's Lockwood and Rozier!Who were they looking for when they broke into the medical wing at night?Alex closed his eyes silently and continued to pretend to be asleep.

"Go and find, Malfoy said she must be found—"

"I've found so many mudbloods and half-breeds as cover-ups, so I must catch that brat Pence no matter what."

Alice!Alex touched the sleeping little girl next to her to make sure she was safe, then quietly covered her with the blanket.

With a sound of "shua", Alex's curtain was lifted, her eyes were closed, her heart jumped to her throat, and the curtain was pulled up again three seconds later.

"No. What the hell."

"Neither over there. That brat! She must have hidden herself!"

"What can we do about it. Malfoy won't give us good fruit. He's already given us Snape's potion."

"Don't worry about it so much, did you see that Gryffindor prefect is on the night watch, damn it."

"Go - leave first - don't be found!"

Everything quickly returned to silence.Alex hugged the quilt and waited for a long time before opening her eyes. She broke out in a cold sweat in the dark, and it took a long time before she lifted a corner of the quilt to observe Alice.She was still breathing.Alex had never felt so thankful about this.

It turned out that the pure-blood clique inside Slytherin was already so rampant.When she got out of the isolation ward, it was time for her to study the use of that potion.

She couldn't sleep at night, wand in hand, and stayed awake through the night until dawn.

The next day, Heidi Pike found that all the rashes on her face had disappeared. In the afternoon, Helen Claude also felt that she had regained her spirits. Everyone recovered from their illnesses one after another. When Madam Pomfrey appeared the day before.

The first thing Alex did when he regained his freedom was to find Lily. The red-haired girl dragged her to the long table and asked her to listen while doing homework. The group of four also surrounded her. It was more like a celebration than a celebration. trial.

"You said, you heard the voices of Rookwood and Rozier?" Potter was very surprised, "I know them...I will tell Dumbledore."

"Prefect Prefect also said just now that he did hear some voices when the prefect was on patrol at night, but he didn't know it was them." Lupine said.

"They're looking for Burns, Alice Burns, an infected freshman Slytherin." Alex dipped his quill in ink and wrote "A. Everly" on the paper, to himself Thesis begins.

"A freshman Slytherin? Is there anything strange about her?" Lily asked.

"I don't know. It looks perfectly normal." Alex shook her head.

Sirius Black, standing beside Potter with his hands in his pockets, duly entered into the conversation. "Pence was originally a traditional pure-blood family. He was expelled for intermarrying with Muggles."

Alex glanced at Lily, and erased anything related to Snape. "They, I mean Rookwood and Rozier, look like they're going to make trouble with her—not a little trouble."

"She's only in first year, I guess it's something to do with her family, her parents are Aurors," Potter pointed out.

"It must be revenge." Sirius snorted coldly.

Alex didn't answer him and asked Lily. "Did you find anything unusual about the potion that the nurse gave us?"

"What they gave you was just tranquilizers."

"Just tranquilizers?" Alex opened the astronomy textbook.

"They may be trying to hide something, but they may just want to let everyone sleep at night. Placebos are indeed not uncommon in the medical world." Lily analyzed.

"In any case, this matter must not be as simple as an infectious disease. Although Madam Pomfrey has returned, you have no symptoms at all, have you?" Sirius Black leaned against the table, as if planning something Look up at the soaring roofs of Hogwarts.

The author has something to say: some easter eggs... Burns is indeed an Auror, I remember mentioning this surname when referring to the Order of the Phoenix, so I used it.Another reason is, Helen Burns in "Jane Eyre", I read Jane Eyre when I was a child, and the only passage I liked was when Helen Burns was lying in bed with Jane, and Helen Burns died of typhoid fever.The name Alice is because of Alice in Wonderland, another work I like very much, just a tribute

The character Alex Everly does not exist in the original book, but Everly does exist. After the fifth grade OWLs, Lily accused Snape of staying with some unscrupulous classmates all day long, among them There was Everly, who later became a Death Eater, and Harry also had this guy in their second battle.When I read the Chinese version when I was a child, I remembered this person, so I replaced him with Alex hhh when I was writing. It's a/very...but I've already written it, just forget it