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Chapter 598: The First Headmistress
🕑 Added 2019-09-12 14:24:23 +0000 UTCThe crowd was noisy, and the young wizards were all around Fred and George, waiting for them to come up with more prank products.
Pig’s tail candy and Canary Creams were very popular, and there were continuous sounds of deformation and laughter in the crowd.
Only Hermione did not go up to join in the fun, she crouched quietly on the sofa, staring at the fire in the fireplace.
Hermione's bright brown eyes were shining with the beating flames, frowning slightly as she seemed to be thinking hard.
Looking at her, Evan knew that she must still be thinking obsessively about the house-elves in the kitchens.
He knew Hermione too well. Since she knew how to get into the kitchens, she was definitely planning to do something there.
Indeed, in the middle of the party, she sneaked out alone.
Evan, who had been watching Hermione, sighed and hurried to follow.
In the dim corridor, Hermione turned like a kitten when she heard footsteps behind her.
"Why did you follow me?" She looked at Evan in surprise.
"I know you’re going to the kitchen to find the house-elves, I’ll go with you," said Evan seriously.
He had visited the kitchen several times during his nighttime adventures in the castle, but he had not gone deep into it.
Imagine the scene, in the middle of the night; him sneaking into the school kitchen to find something to eat.
As soon as he entered, he was surrounded by a group of house-elves who came out of nowhere to his knee level.
They stared with their big bulging eyes, looked respectfully at the master, and asked in a shrill voice what he needed.
Before he even spoke, more house-elves continued to appear, lighting the fire and making food on their own initiative.
He was just a little hungry, going to the kitchen to see if there were any cookies, pies or anything left over from dinner, but these house-elves were very enthusiastic to prepare a sumptuous banquet for him. They could even cook a cow if necessary.
Although it was late at night, although they had been surprised in their sleep by his intrusion, even though the delicious dishes were all very troublesome to cook, despite all the difficulties, they never complained.
The house-elves only use a humble tone to ask if he were satisfied, and if he needed more food.
If the expression on his face seemed slightly dissatisfied, they would voluntarily punish themselves, with profound respect, humility, and … fear...
This scene was so embarrassing that Evan had only experienced it once and didn't want to try it again.
After that, whenever he wanted to eat, he was to ask Dobby to get him some food to the Common Room.
Regardless of whether Hermione’s concept of defending the elves’ rights was correct or not, Evan believed it was really necessary to change the minds of the house-elves. They really didn’t have to do that, even if they were slaves of wizards…
This was also the main reason why Evan planned to accompany Hermione to the kitchen tonight. He also wanted to do something for the house-elves.
Also, considering that Hermione might be too excited at the sight of so many elves, Evan thought it necessary to keep an eye on her to prevent her from doing anything wrong.
Besides, he had consulted a lot of information about Helga Hufflepuff's life and speculated on the location of the key to the secret treasure she had left behind.
He believed that the key to the treasure left by Hufflepuff was probably in the hands of a house-elf or in the kitchen.
In fact, Helga Hufflepuff was the greatest wizard of that era.
In historical evaluation, her final achievement surpassed that of the other three Founders.
Unlike Slytherin, who left the school all of a sudden and had not been heard of, nor were there any records about him for the rest of his life, Hufflepuff remained at the school since it was founded, and she had devoted her whole life to Hogwarts until death finally came.
Hufflepuff lived the longest among the four founders, and she was also the first Headmistress of Hogwarts. (T/N. Nowhere in the books or others could we find that Helga Hufflepuff had ever been Headmistress of Hogwarts. on the contrary, in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which is a themed area, based on J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, it is clearly read: "One statue is of Hogwarts' first headmaster: the founders were professors, none was ever a headmaster...")
Those who had read Hogwarts, A History would know that at the beginning of the story, the four founders co-founded Hogwarts and left many legends.
But the second half of the story was Hufflepuff's solo performance. She worked hard day and night, by herself, to make Hogwarts grow stronger.
She laid the foundation of the world's greatest School of Magic and changed the whole wizarding world.
For nearly a thousand years, almost all magic historians had regarded Hufflepuff as the greatest wizard and educator in the history of magic.
She had won the praise of later generations with her practical actions. The school rules and teaching framework she created had continued to this day.
As Headmistress of Hogwarts, Helga Hufflepuff had continued the traditions left by the other three founders to the greatest extent and implemented them strictly.
While inheriting the educational philosophy of the other three founders, it had also become the most important school in the world and a distinctive place.
In addition, her main achievement during her tenure was to enroll Muggle-born wizards.
Although this point had been raised during the period of the Four Founders, the enrollment scale had been very small.
At that time, the mainstream view in the magic world was that magic was sacred and should not be defiled by Mudbloods.
Most foolish Muggles, on the other hand, referred to children with magic talent as evil and killed them directly.
In that environment, it was extremely difficult to enroll Muggle students on a large scale.
Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff had made a lot of preparations for this, but because of many restrictions, they had not been fully implemented.
After Gryffindor and Ravenclaw passed away, the benevolent Hufflepuff became Headmistress of Hogwarts. Shortly after she took office, she made a big effort to discuss the issue, disregarded the opposition of many pure-blooded wizarding families, to further expand the enrollment of Muggle students, pointing out a clear path for many Muggle students.
At its peak, Hogwarts expanded its enrollment to the entire European and Mediterranean regions, with more than 50,000 students.
It is worth noting that in the era when there was no board sponsorship, the tuition and living expenses of these Muggle students were all borne by Hufflepuff alone.
For this reason, she exhausted all the wealth that the family inherited for thousands of years, leaving only her favorite gold cup.
Of course, her move was unanimously opposed by the mainstream wizarding community, dominated by the pure-blood wizard families.
Even her descendants and the descendants of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Slytherin did not approve of her doing so. The pure-blood wizard families united to boycott and blockade Hogwarts, and many evil dark wizards even directly attacked it.
Hogwarts was once on the verge of collapse and was in a difficult situation. Hufflepuff was the only one who managed to maintain it.
Regardless of their origins and talent, she treated all the students equally. She dedicated the magic knowledge left by her, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Slytherin to all the young wizards, and taught them how to grow up and how to behave in the world.
In the last decade of her life, Hufflepuff stood alone and operated this school of magic with lofty beliefs.
Her efforts had finally paid off, with more and more wizards graduating from Hogwarts.
Most of these students were Muggle-born and would have been burned alive as demons, but Hogwarts and Helga Hufflepuff saved them.
They gradually became the backbone of the wizarding community, changing the wizarding world dominated by the pure-blood wizard families, and even changing the course of the entire magic history.
