translating_wizard
patreon
Chapter 82: The Beginning of Fear
🕑 Added 2019-08-15 15:36:07 +0000 UTCDriven by successive events, Hogwarts fell into a strange and depressing atmosphere at the beginning of the new term.
Evan had a feeling that several people around him were gradually heading for collapse.
First was Neville, who was completely frightened by Snape.
In the second Potions class for the third year, he was punished by Snape with two months of detention for throwing the Shrivelfigs into the cauldron without skinning them. But in fact everyone knew what was going on. Snape was retaliating. From there, Neville would involuntarily look pale and sweat profusely whenever he saw Snape.
Next was Hagrid, who seemed to have lost his confidence.
Now in the Care of Magical Creatures class, students were now spending lesson after lesson learning how to look after flobberworms: a ten-inch long, round, dark brown, squirming, and disgusting worm. The existence of this creature was almost completely meaningless. Apart from eating, they always stayed alone and did nothing.
And then was Harry, who was now more and more afraid of Divination lessons.
Professor Trelawney always looked at him with big tearful eyes. The omen prophecy spread almost all over the school. Whoever, and whenever they spoke to Harry, their voices became soft, as if he were already dead in bed.
Besides, he had to worry about going to Hogsmeade. Professor McGonagall rejected his demand. This meant that he was likely to be the only third-year student not to visit Hogsmeade.
More worried than Harry were Colin and Ginny.
They fully believed Professor Trelawney's prediction of death. In their eyes, Evan and Harry could fall at any time. Therefore, they both collected a lot of things that were said to ward off evil spirits and break curses, most of which were items popular in the castle during the basilisk rampage last term.
As for Hermione, she was getting more and more nervous.
This was mainly because she chose too many courses. Her body and spirit had been overloaded for a long time, and she had reached her limit. Evan saw that her bag contained more than ten books of magic every day. He wondered if Hermione would faint if she went on like this.
Finally there was Ron, who had been suspicious lately.
After several attempts from Crookshanks to attack Scabbers, he was always on his guard against the cat. He showed Scabbers to everyone, who was now skin and bone.
In Evan’s opinion, the reason why Scabbers became this weak had nothing to do with Crookshanks.
Peter Pettigrew must have known that the real reason why Black escaped from prison was to seek revenge. After all, he had sold out the Potters. He was afraid, and as Black got closer to Hogwarts, panic gradually paralyzed him. He wanted to run away, but he didn't know where to go.
Hogwarts Castle was currently the safest place, and there were so many horrible Dementors guarding the outside. It stood to reason that Black had no reason to break in, but since he could escape from Azkaban, then entering Hogwarts seemed to be only a matter of time.
The mental suffering had made Peter Pettigrew extremely gaunt.
In fact, it wasn’t just the others, even Evan was also very busy during this period.
On top of preparing newspaper articles, he devoted most of his energy to the preparation of potions, especially for Peter Pettigrew. He found a tracking spell in Moste Potente Potions. As long as Peter took this potion, within a certain range, Evan would be able to could his position with special magic.
In this way, he wouldn’t have to worry about him becoming a rat to escape.
Evan’s plan was to mix this tracking agent with a rat tonic, and to make sure that Ron would make Scabbers drink it. The only problem now was that the boiling process took too much time, and although he had made enough preparations, the potion would not be ready until Halloween at the earliest.
On Halloween, Ron and Hermione went to Hogsmeade, and Harry pitifully accompanied them to the entrance hall.
Evan refused Colin's suggestion to play wizard chess. He ran to the seventh floor of the castle alone. After confirming no one paid attention to him, he quickly walked back and forth three times in front of a wall and entered the Room of Requirement.
The room he requested was similar to Snape’s office, with glass products of various shapes, two tin cauldrons and a heating device on the long table in the center, and the cabinets on both sides were filled with Potions ingredients.
Evan had bought all these things from Diagon Alley. Since last year, he had been cooking the potions he needed here, reviewing the potion lessons in advance, and so on.
After a long time of practice, Evan became very skillful with his potions.
He placed the prepared materials in the cauldron in turn according to the formula in Moste Potente Potions.
About five hours later, he finally finished making the tracking potion, and he mixed it with his own rat tonic, which was dark red, exactly the same color as the rat tonic he had seen in the Magical Menagerie during the holidays. Evan satisfactorily put the potion in a bottle, and when he came out of the Room, he found that the Halloween party had already begun, and he hurried into the Great Hall.
It had been decorated with hundreds and hundreds of candle-filled pumpkins, a cloud of fluttering live bats, and many flaming orange streamers, which were swimming lazily across the stormy ceiling like brilliant watersnakes.
The food at the feast was very delicious and everyone looked very happy.
The tense atmosphere that shrouded the place since the beginning of the term had been swept away. Harry seemed to have forgotten the damned prophecy; Hermione was finally not thinking about learning, and after Evan gave the rat tonic to Ron, the latter’s mood gradually improved and he no longer worried about Scabbers.
Everything went smoothly, even Hagrid, who had not appeared recently, sat happily at the staff table.
The feast finished with an entertainment provided by the Hogwarts ghosts. They popped out of the walls and tables to do a bit of formation gliding; Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor ghost, had a great success with a reenactment of his own botched beheading.
Everyone felt that they had a pleasant evening, but less than ten minutes after the dinner, everything turned upside down.
The little joy accumulated at the Halloween feast disappeared, and the atmosphere of panic filled the castle again.
When the whole thing happened, Evan, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Colin, and Ginny were slowly returning to Gryffindor Tower along the usual path. They took almost two servings of each meal at the dinner party, and their bellies were badly swollen.
When they reached the corridor that ended with the portrait of the Fat Lady, they found it jammed with students.
“What’s the matter? Why isn’t anyone going in?" said Colin curiously.
“Maybe they forgot the password!" said Ron with a smile.
How was that possible? It was impossible for so many people to forget the password at the same time. Evan saw Peeves the Poltergeist bobbing over the crowd and looking delighted. Evan suddenly had a bad hunch in his heart. Peeves only showed this expression at the sight of wreckage or worry. Shouldn’t it be...?
Before they could get into the crowd, Professor Dumbledore, who got the news, hurried over. He swept toward the portrait of the Fat Lady. The Gryffindors all squeezed together to let him through. Evan and a few of them moved closer to see what the trouble was.
“Oh, my God!" Hermione suddenly screamed and grabbed Evan’s arm.
In front of them, the portrait of the Fat Lady had been slashed viciously. Strips of canvas littered the floor, and great chunks of it had been torn away completely.
“Professor McGonagall, please go to Mr. Filch at once and tell him to search every painting in the castle for the Fat Lady." said Dumbledore quickly.
“You’ll be lucky!" Peeves grinned broadly.
“What do you mean, Peeves?" said Dumbledore calmly.
“Sorry, your Headship, sir!" Peeves’s grin faded a little. He didn't dare taunt Dumbledore. Instead he adopted an oily voice. "She doesn’t want to be seen, she’s a horrible mess. I saw her running through the landscape up on the fourth floor, sir, dodging between the trees, crying and saying something dreadful."
“Poor thing," added Peeves unconvincingly.
“Did she say who did it?" said Dumbledore quietly.
“Oh yes, head professor!" said Peeves with the air of one cradling a large bombshell in his arms. "He got very angry when she didn’t let him in, you see. He’s got nasty temper, that Sirius Black!"
