Chapter 374: The Rise of the Snake Academy

When Shaylin returned to Hogwarts from Bath with Dobby's Apparition, it was already dark and dinner time had long passed.

Shaylin looked at the empty dormitory and sighed deeply. He sat quietly on the bed and cleared his mind of all kinds of distracting thoughts.

He really hadn't experienced the kind of leisure and even boredom of not having to think about anything for a long time.

He suddenly understood Dumbledore's feelings.

Ordinary people always look up to and envy those heroes who are high above, but they don't know that the greater the power, fame, and strength they have, the heavier the responsibility they bear. In fact, being ordinary is also a kind of happiness.

He took out some snacks from his pocket space, dealt with them casually, then took a hot bath, and lay on the bed and fell asleep.

The next day.

It was June 28, the fourth day after the Goblet of Fire, and there were still four days before Hogwarts' holiday.

At breakfast time, when Shaylin walked into the Great Hall, he found that the atmosphere was a bit depressing.

He had just sat down next to Daphne when Daphne whispered, "Today's Daily Prophet came out. It reported that our former Care of Magical Creatures teacher, Professor Kettleburn, for some unknown reason, trespassed into the forbidden area of ​​the centaurs without authorization. Not only did he offend the centaurs, but he was also crazy enough to try to attack the centaurs first. As a result, he was killed by the centaurs in the battle. His body was only delivered to the headmaster last night."

"This matter was spread among the students this morning. I heard that Hagrid and the centaurs had a big fight at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, and the noise spread to the castle," Daphne said solemnly, "Since this morning, students can be seen discussing this matter everywhere."

Schelling glanced at the professors' seats. Professor McGonagall and Professor Sprout were discussing with serious expressions. Professor Snape's gloomy face still made it difficult to see through his thoughts. Dumbledore's seat was vacant.

"So..." Xielin used a knife and fork to elegantly cut the bacon toast into several small pieces, "What is the school's reaction?"

Daphne followed Xielin's gaze and glanced at the empty principal's seat, then said: "After the Daily Prophet reported this matter, the former Hogwarts professor died in the Forbidden Forest adjacent to Hogwarts. This matter is undoubtedly enough to provoke the sensitive nerves of many parents who are worried about the safety of their children. It has caused an uproar in the entire wizarding community. It is said that the principal rushed to the centaur tribe in the Forbidden Forest early this morning to try to investigate the whole story, but was turned away. The angry centaurs did not even show Dumbledore any mercy."

Xielin sneered in his heart. Dumbledore might have lost more than he gained this time. He originally planned to use Kettleburn to monitor the movements of the Forbidden Forest for him, but ended up attracting hostility from the centaurs. Coupled with the alarmist statements of the Daily Prophet, parents will once again question Hogwarts' ability to ensure the safety of students, which is undoubtedly a heavy blow to Dumbledore's image of wisdom and resourcefulness.

"Inform our companions in Slytherin and other colleges that the Forbidden Forest may not be peaceful in the near future, and everyone should not go near it." Sherin ordered.

"Well, I will tell Murray, Luna, and Susan." Daphne nodded in response.

"Don't worry about it later, it has nothing to do with us. Okay, after breakfast, we have to prepare for today's class." Sherin put the last piece of toast with cheese sauce into his mouth, calmly wiped his mouth with a tissue, and stood up.

Today is Wednesday, there is a Transfiguration class with Hufflepuff, and a Charms class with Ravenclaw.

Professor McGonagall is not very satisfied with the progress of Transfiguration this year. Nearly half of the students in the two classes combined still made mistakes when casting the conversion spell, and their mastery of the conversion spell was not proficient enough, not to mention the cross-species conversion, which was even more difficult.

In this class, she severely criticized Goyle, Crabbe, and Justin because their performance was the lowest among the crowd. Then she praised Draco, Daphne, and Susan. Even so, these three people only performed well in the conversion spell, and they still needed more work to master the cross-species conversion.

Ernie Macmillan and Zacharias Smith looked at each other meaningfully, as if they had tasted something.

Hufflepuff students have always been united, and there is almost no phenomenon of different small groups in the same grade. For example, if Hufflepuff and Gryffindor in a certain school year are close, under the influence of this group unconsciousness, there are almost no badgers who will make friends with Slytherin.

This is the case with the batch they enrolled in 1991.

Ernie, Justin and Harry are close friends, while Hannah Abbott and Megan Jones often hang out with the girls from Gryffindor. Even if the rest of the group doesn't have much contact with Gryffindor for various personal reasons, they don't have any relationship with the other two houses.

Until recently, a rare outlier appeared among them - Susan Bones.

For some reason, Susan suddenly became very close to Slytherin. Even though Hannah and Megan, who used to be like sisters to her, tried to find out the reason many times, they couldn't get any information from her.

As a year passed, the fourth grade study career came to an end, and something interesting happened.

Apart from their savior aura, the Harry trio did not appear to be anything special from the other students. Hermione finally still has the title of "Miss Know-It-All", and her achievements are dazzling enough, but the performance of Harry and Ron is far from matching everyone's expectations of him.

Among the Hufflepuff students who are good friends with Gryffindor, except for Ernie and Zacharis, who have good grades due to their family education, others such as Justin, Hannah, and Megan have not done well this school year. There is an almost obvious decline in their grades. However, this is not because they are really regressing, but because they simply cannot keep up with the progress of other students in the same grade.

In stark contrast to the two of them, it was Susan Bones who hung out with the Slytherin circle. Although Susan was born in the Bones family with a profound heritage, the entire family had been slaughtered long ago during the last wizarding war, leaving only her and her aunt to depend on each other.

Susan's academic performance has been mediocre since the first grade, even behind Hannah, Justin, and Meghan. Even in the isolated Hufflepuff House, she is among the bottom batch.

But since she began to alienate her original friends and became interested in various activities of the Slytherin circle, her progress was almost like riding a firebolt ten times more powerful, and her speed was unbelievable. , in just one semester, she had surpassed Ernie and Zacharis and became the leading academic representative of Hufflepuff.

What does this mean - Ernie and Zacharis both know it tacitly, and they have a premonition that Hufflepuff is going to change.

After the Transfiguration class, there was a Charms class with Ravenclaw.

Although the main content of the Charms class this semester only covers summoning spells and banishing spells, Professor Flitwick actually assigns two to three extracurricular readings before the end of each class, requiring students to read them in their own spare time. Although the amount may not sound like a lot, the amount of reading accumulated is quite amazing. This is why in the original book, the spells mastered by Hermione who has read all the extracurricular readings are so different from those of Harry and Ron, who are just getting by. Huge reason.

Flitwick is one of the tutors with loose requirements and easy-going personality who is loved by the students. Most of the students got excellent grades in this course, but the students in this school year, including Hermione from another class, No other students except Schelling were invited to join the Charms Club.

Xie Lin knew this very well. Although Hermione was born in a Muggle family and had never been exposed to magic before the age of 11, she was very talented in learning magic and had an in-depth feel for using magic. However, her personality Being too straightforward limited her to learning and using magic, and was unable to innovate or improve in any field of magic.

When Professor Flitwick decided to invite students to join the Magic Club, what he valued most was the creativity of innovative magic.

During lunch time, the little snakes gathered at the Slytherin table and discussed their respective results with excitement.

The 4th grade students have achieved results in almost all subjects. Except for the slightly unsatisfactory results in Magical Creatures, the rest of history, astronomy, alchemy, herbal medicine, transfiguration, and magic are almost all Slytherin's unique achievements; The only results that are unknown are the Defense Against the Dark Arts class on Thursday and the Potions class on Friday.

They have received notice that Thursday's Defense class has been cancelled; and Friday's Potions class is the subject that Slytherins are best at, and they are full of confidence in the results of this class.

Sherrin, as usual, sat between Daphne and Astoria.

"Brother Xie Lin," Astoria said with pride, "Look, these are my scores in all subjects. This year I should be number one in the whole school year again. Please praise me!"

Xie Lin stroked her golden hair dotingly and said softly: "My Tory, I knew you would not let me down. How are the others doing?"

At this time, a gust of fragrant wind came from behind Xie Lin, and the Carlo sisters also gathered around Xie Lin. They looked at each other, showed sweet and bright smiles, and said in unison: "We are the second and third best in the whole grade." ”

Xie Lin nodded with satisfaction. Among the second-year students, Slytherin took the top three.

I heard that the situation is similar among third-year students. Although Luna from Ravenclaw is firmly ranked first, the second and third rankings still fall to Slytherin House. What's more, the students from Sleeping Dragon Club Students all know that Luna is actually one of their own.

As Gryffindor's powerful characters graduate one by one, it can be predicted that Hogwarts in the next few years will be led by Slytherin in terms of academic performance.

As for his performance in the Quidditch competition, Schelling didn't want Slytherin to be compared with other houses, but he didn't want to interfere in this matter, leaving everything to Draco!

After all, he is his brother who grew up with him. He has confidence in Draco, and under his influence, Draco's character is much calmer than that in the original work.

Schelling had seen Draco practice Krum's trick "Wronsky Feint" in private. Schelling could honestly say that Draco's accomplishments in this move were not inferior to Krum at all - —With the addition of the Firebolt, the Hogwarts seekers have no match other than Harry Potter, who bears the halo of the protagonist and also holds a Firebolt. (End of chapter)