Chapter 520

A little time passed and the great hall is filled with delicious smells.

Felix put down his knife and fork contentedly, waiting for the dessert after the main meal, the other students in the great hall are still eating feverishly, while chatting noisily, oblivious to the ghosts floating above their heads.

At the Gryffindor table, Harry had almost finished eating and began to pay attention to the sounds of talking around him. He isn’t too happy to find that one of the topics people talking about is him, the ghost of Gryffindor House – the voice of the Nearly Headless Nick drifts into his ears from seven or eight seats away.

“Yes, that’s Harry Potter, there he is, you’ll have plenty of chances to see him later …”

Harry didn’t turn around, but he guessed that Nick was talking to Hogwarts’ new student, and he concluded that the new student came from a wizarding family, so he would have learned his name before he went to school, unless that student is a Topper like Hermione.

Dean and Seamus chatted loudly about the news from Diagon Alley. He pricked up his ears, this year he did not have the opportunity to go there, the textbooks, stationery, and potion materials needed were bought by Mrs. Weasley, he had planned to go to the Future World 1 store in Diagon Alley to see if there are any new products, but that plan had felled through.

He also wondered if the Weasley twin brothers’ Anti-spell series products are on sale …

“The stores are packed, with more people than ever … It can’t be helped, who made this year’s book list distributed this late, so everyone hurried to get them. Not many people were interested in stopping for a chat, and I saw several familiar faces, but they disappeared in a flash as if something was chasing after them …”

“The demand for rune booklets exceeded the supply, and mom tried to buy a few for her relatives living abroad …”

Seamus said excitedly, and when he met Harry’s gaze, he grinned and his voice became louder.

“There are a lot more mobile stalls on both sides of the street, which is actually just a stall with a piece of cloth on the ground. What were they selling? All kinds of amulets, of course, my mother told me they are all rubbish, with lesser odds than finding real things at Knockturn Alley … of course she was joking.”

“That damn place still hasn’t been closed down by Aurors.” Ron spoke with his mouth stuffed full, and Harry magically understood what he meant.

Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley are adjacent to each other, but with completely opposite reputations; Diagon Alley covers a huge area and is the commercial center of British wizards, while Knockturn Alley is just a small, out-of-the-way alley with stores selling not-so-regular goods.

At that moment, a voice whispered in his ear: “Excuse me, make room for me.”

Startled, Harry looked back to see a tall girl with long braids looking down at him, her face barely a foot from his, Angelina Johnson, jabbed her finger between Harry and Ron respectively and managed to squeeze a seat between the two of them.

“So, how was your summer?” She asked briskly.

“Fine.” Harry said, momentarily confused about what she is up to.

“Well, it was,” Angelina smoothed her hair, “I got selected as the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team.”

“Quidditch captain…” Harry repeated, then his eyes widened as he exclaimed, “Quidditch?!”

Angelina showed a “Really” look, “Fred told me you forgot about Quidditch, I didn’t quite believe …”

“Ha-How could I.” Harry stammered, “I even played with Cedric over the holidays.” He looked around and spotted the handsome face on the long table at Hufflepuff’s side.

“Yeah, so you’re not quitting the team?” Angelina asked, her big eyes fixed on Harry with a dead stare, and the pressure steadily building inside Harry.

“Absolutely not, I’m hoping to win another trophy.” He assured.

“That’s good,” Angelina sighed in relief, “I don’t want to seem overly sensitive, but I’ve just taken over the team and I sort of feel a lot of responsibility, I kind of understand why Oliver was so nagging … ”

“Don’t ever follow his footsteps.” Harry hurriedly said.

Angelina laughed.

“I’ll be off then, ah yes, since Oliver is gone, we need a new keeper. I’m going to arrange the try-outs on Friday afternoon at five o’clock, and I want the whole team to be there at that time, alright? That way we can allow the new guy to try and play with everyone.”

“No problem, do you already have someone in mind?” Harry asked, and Ron, who was eating at the side, pricked up his ears.

“Not yet,” she sighed, “I’ll go back later and put the application on the wall.” She bent over and left.

“She looks so stressed, I almost forgot about Quidditch.” Hermione said.

“Maybe captains who just took over the team are like that? Cedric wasn’t used to it at first either …” Harry only answered the first half of the statement.

“So do you have time, it’s O.W.Ls year, and don’t forget, you promised Neville to reassemble the dueling self-study group.” Hermione reminded him that.

“I know.” Harry muttered.

The food on the table cleared up, and after a few seconds, various desserts suddenly appeared on the plate.

Harry picked up a deep-fried jam doughnut and chewed it ” crunch, crunch, crunch” while looking over at the faculty table. His eyes first focused on Dumbledore, who sat in a golden high-backed chair in the center of the long table, wearing a dark purple robe covered with silver stars, with a matching hat and gloves, looking like the lead singer of a band that had walked into the wrong place. To his left and right sat Professor McGonagall and Snape respectively, Professor McGonagall is trying a kind of fresh strawberries drizzled with sauce, from her expression it does not seem to be quite to her taste, Snape, on the other hand, squinted his eyes in response to Dumbledore’s questions, his lips barely opened and closed, and between Professor Flitwick and Professor Sprout, Sirius and Professor Hap are seated. Oddly enough, Sirius had also given up eating early and poking his fork at the fruit on the blueberry cake in boredom.

As for Professor Hap – Felix gazed at the ceiling, which looked the same as the outside environment, but much plainer than the previous years. He and Sirius actually arrived at school earlier than the Hogwarts students, it was just that Madam Pomfrey took a lot of time to give Sirius a full check-up.

In the words of Madam Pomfrey, Felix’s approach is quite “crude” and “unprofessional”, if not treated in time it may fester and puss in a few days, while she re-cleaned the wound, Felix chatted with the rushed Dumbledore.

“The one who delivered the message to you was Severus.” He said in a definite tone.

“I knew you could guess.” Dumbledore said with a smile.

“I also know,” Felix said slowly, “that it was also Severus who revealed Bones’ whereabouts to Voldemort, as Sirius had mentioned it at the meeting and was overheard by him.”

Dumbledore went silent for a moment, “You’re right.”

“Was it really necessary to do this, there was a 1% chance I could not save their life, in fact, Voldemort’s most loyal servant, Barty Crouch Jr. died right before his eyes,” Felix said in a slightly aggravated tone, “I did that.”

“As a qualified spy, to gain Voldemort’s trust, he must show a unique value, and this value must be impossible to be given by others, only then, Voldemort will treat him differently.” Dumbledore said without emotion.

“That’s not the answer I want, Albus, and I never thought you would be so apathetic.” Felix said.

“Thank you for saying that, Felix.” Dumbledore gave a small smile, and the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes stretched.

“I certainly wish I could do more if I could, trading my life for Voldemort’s? Very cost-effective indeed, if there is a chance I will not hesitate … Hopes of too many people have been placed in this position of mine, I can not easily bet …”

“I know Voldemort, probably more than he himself, without experiencing a failure, he will not reflect, and Amelia will always be in danger. Voldemort has to realize: that it is not an easy thing to catch her, and she can call for support at any time, this time it is only you, but next time not necessarily, so Voldemort will look away.”

“Only Sirius is innocent in this whole thing, but then again he’s not, every member of the Order of the Phoenix should be prepared. Just like the person you buried in the Death Eaters-”

Felix raised his eyebrows slightly and made a listening gesture.

“Lucius, is it?” Dumbledore asked softly, “There might be more-”

“How did you guess?” Felix interrupted.

“Ah, Lucius has tried to target me in the past, and I didn’t think that taking him off the list of the board would be the end of the confrontation between us, and it did continued. But I’ve noticed that the complaints against me have decreased by a large margin in the last year, almost like a certain part of the board had lost their voice. Or it would have been much trickier during the board meetings.”

“So,” Felix said slowly, “if you knew of Lucius’ existence, why did you still-”

“Risked Severus?” Dumbledore asked with a smile, twirling his thumbs as he did so.

Felix nodded.

“As I said, Severus has a unique role, he is Voldemort’s greatest asset, a nail in the heart of the Order of the Phoenix, able to provide information about everyone, including you and me -”

Felix suddenly understood, “You value how to reasonably deliver information to Voldemort more than getting it from him?”

Dumbledore blinked.

“Instead of letting Voldemort act recklessly, I prefer if he acts at the time I expect, in the way I expect, even if there are risks, I can control them in a justifiable range.”

…

“You really got it? The day before school starts?” Hermione asked, amazed.

“Yeah, got it.” Harry said.

“I can’t believe you got it after failed soooo many times before. What is it about, Harry?”

“What are you guys talking about?” Ron looked at the two with a puzzled look on his face.

“Don’t interrupt.” Hermione said, as her eyes remained focused on Harry.

“Headmaster Dumbledore got a memory from Mr. Slughorn.” Harry looked around to see if someone heard him and whispered at them, “I guess it involves Voldemort, or something similar as Headmaster was quite excited to get that memory.”

“Maybe it’s a way to defeat Voldemort,” Hermione guessed, “According to what you said, that old gentleman and Headmaster Dumbledore were colleagues, which means he taught the You-Know-Who as well, didn’t he? He must know something about him.”

“That’s what I thought,” Harry shrugged and continued to wolf down his food, “Compared to Headmaster Dumbledore, Mr. Slughorn was in a less than wonderful mood, he threw us out and didn’t even respond positively to the Headmaster’s suggestion that he should move.”

“Move?”

“Headmaster Dumbledore wants him to live at Hogwarts and continue his Potions research. Hogsmeade would be fine – being a neighbour to Honeydukes – I can see he was a bit tempted.” Harry said casually.

Hermione’s chewing slowed down, “What could it be? Since it’s a memory, it can only be a piece of the past …”

At this point, Dumbledore stood up and tapped his glass and the great hall went quiet.

“Welcome back, I know you can’t wait to run to the warmth and comfort of your quilts, but please be patient for a little while longer and listen to my few words … This year we have two changes in our teaching staff. The first is the Care of Magical Creatures class, our gamekeeper needs to attend to some personal business and will be absent for a few weeks … In the meantime, Professor Grubbly-Plank would fill in the vacancy, so let’s give her a warm welcome.”

Professor Grubbly-Plank rose from her seat, nodded toward the students with her prominent chin, and sat down as the great hall erupted with polite applause.

“Next we will introduce our new teacher for the Defense Against the Dark Arts class, Professor Black has extensive experience fighting against dark magic and has been working as the Minister of Magic’s advisor for the previous two months, he will be joining as a member of our faculty this year.”

Sirius stood up gleefully, and waved at everyone, before failing to restrain from whistling loudly twice at the end. The atmosphere in the great hall came to life, and Fred and George responded to him with a similar whistle.

Dumbledore waited for the applause to calm down and continued.

“There are some small, interesting attempts going to be made in this school year, and I’m sure some of you may have heard about them, and there are two things that are closely related to you.”

“The first one is that the examination of the ancient rune will be divided into two parts: a theoretical examination and a practical examination, and the specific assessment criteria will be introduced to you by Professor Hap in the classroom.”

Felix waved his hand lazily as the students exchange glances below.

“The second matter is, the school will include some spells into the scope of the annual assessment, which requires every student to clear to graduate, if there are special circumstances you can apply in advance, of course, I will not admit the reason such as ‘allergy to specific words’… … We will post the assessment spells for the different grades within the first week of school.”

“So, before we all go to bed, let’s all sing the school song.” Dumbledore said loudly.

The great hall stirred, and Felix’s face seemed to freeze, the school song will not be sung every year at Hogwarts, and sometimes the student orchestra will be arranged to sing, but it is clear that this year Dumbledore is quite interested in being a conductor.

A long golden ribbon floated out from the tip of his wand and twisted into words.

Headmaster Dumbledore wore star gloves that matched his robes and hat, and he held his wand as he waved his hands, like he is holding a baton, while Felix hummed along with the crowd.

“Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,

Teach us something please~

Whether we be old and bald,

Or young with scabby knees,

Our heads could do with filling,

With some interesting stuff …”

After the end of the chorus, Dumbledore wiped his eyes emotionally.

“Music always moves people. Okay, now everyone can go back to their dormitories, and Prefects please lead the freshmen to their rooms.”

————

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