Harry Potter and the Great Old Ones

Chapter 235 Final Exam (Two chapters combined)

Winning the Quidditch trophy plunged the entire Gryffindor school into a state of sustained frenzy and excitement. Harry seemed to have instantly become the hero of Gryffindor, with people cheering for him wherever he went.

This made Harry feel somewhat uncomfortable, even while enjoying the fame.

Fortunately, this situation didn't last long, because by mid-May, all students had to put aside their other tasks and immerse themselves in the intense and demanding preparation for final exams.

Even Fred and George are studying hard; they're about to take their OWLs exams. Percy is preparing for NEWTs, the highest degree Hogwarts can offer.

Percy wants to work for the Ministry of Magic, so he must have the highest level of education.

He became increasingly irritable and easily angered, and would severely punish anyone who disturbed the peace of the common room at night.

But in reality, the only person more anxious than Percy was Hermione.

As final exams approached, Hermione seemed to revert to her usual irritable self, speaking in a harsh and unpleasant tone.

As the final exams approached, Tierra finally received the good news he had been waiting for—

“This…this is from Hagrid,” Harry said, handing the note to Tyella, Hermione, and Ron during dinner. “Buckbeak’s appeal is scheduled for the 6th.”

“That was the day our exams ended,” Hermione said, looking around for her arithmetic and divination book.

“They’re here to hear an appeal,” Harry said. “Someone from the Ministry of Magic…and an executioner!”

Hermione looked up, her face clearly showing intense panic:
"They brought the executioner to hear the appeal, and it sounded as if they had already made their decision!"

“Yes, that’s right,” Harry said sadly.

“They can’t do this!” Ron roared. “I’ve spent so much time reading materials for him, and they can’t just ignore it all!”

Clearly, the Ministry of Magic's decision to bring executioners to hear the appeal was a huge blow to Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

Of course, this also had a significant impact on Tierra.

Hagrid's text message finally confirmed with Tierra the start time of her plan.

Therefore, Tiera also became busy, which made him feel as if he had returned to the days of preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination with his days and nights reversed.

Tierra studies for her exams during the day, but every night, she switches to her alternate account, logs onto "The Parasite," carries a briefcase, and passes through a portal of light to Azkaban—

Now that the cell that Azkaban used to imprison Sirius was empty, Tiera dealt with the few prisoners living nearby. Tiera then combined the empty cells to form a huge room, and in the very center of the room, Tiera began to set up a complex ritual altar with a six-pointed star as its main feature.

Meanwhile, Tiera also needs to periodically travel to that uninhabited planet tens of thousands of light-years away using Merlin's ring—

Tierra left Salazars Lytrin there for almost a year.

While a year wasn't enough time for Salazar Slytherin to explore the entire planet, it was enough for him to explore the area surrounding the library.

Even so, Salazars Slytherin's gains were extremely substantial—

He not only discovered fifty-four magical plants that could be used as potion ingredients, thirty-seven magical animals, and seventeen types of trees that could be used as wand materials in the surrounding area—

After the ritual arrangements in Azkaban were nearly complete, Tiera, Salazar, and Dobby worked together to transplant ten of the seventeen wand trees to a barren desert west of the library. They arranged them in a three-four-three pattern, with twenty-two lines connecting the ten giant trees. Each tree was inscribed with the name of a great demon. The ten trees, the ten great demons, together formed Qliphoth—

The Array of Blasphemy.

While Tyrell was busy preparing for the ceremony, the time Hogwarts had allotted for the young wizards to review was quickly coming to an end, and exam week began. An unusual silence fell over the entire Hogwarts castle.

Third-grade students emerged from the Transformation Classroom at lunchtime on Monday, looking disheveled and listless. They compared their grades and lamented how difficult the tasks assigned to them were, including turning a teapot into a turtle.

Hermione made a big fuss, saying that the turtle she conjured looked more like a soft-shelled turtle than anything else had ever made, and that her complaints were quite annoying.

But what's even more enviable is Tierra, who got the highest score in the class. He turned a teapot into a perfect tortoise, with every detail just like a real tortoise. It could even eat vegetables, swim, and climb onto the windowsill to sunbathe.

This earned Tiera a near-perfect score in her Transfiguration class—

In fact, Hermione felt that if it weren't for Tierra missing so many classes and assignments last semester, and throwing a catnip-scented bomb into Professor McGonagall's office, he would have gotten a perfect score in Transfiguration.

Nevertheless, Tiera seemed to be in a rather tense state of mind since the start of exam week—

Harry noticed that Tyrell kept biting her lip, and whenever she had a spare moment, she would constantly squeeze her knuckles.

After lunch, the students returned upstairs to take their Charms exam, which tested Happy Charms. They had to cast them on each other in pairs.

Harry and Tyella teamed up, and Tyella's Happy Charm worked wonders. Harry felt all the burdens in his heart suddenly lift, as if they had vanished instantly. He even temporarily forgot about Buckbeak's possible execution. Harry even smiled at Tyella—

But when it was Harry's turn to use the Happy Charm on Tierra, he encountered difficulties—

Tierra smiled too, looking quite happy.

But Harry could still tell from Tyella's subtle movements—

Tierra was still very nervous.

The next morning, Hagrid presided over the exam on protecting magical creatures, but he seemed preoccupied and his mind was elsewhere. He gave the whole class a large bucket of fresh Flobber caterpillars and told them that to pass the exam, their Flobber caterpillars had to still be alive an hour later.

If left unattended, the Flobber caterpillars multiply rapidly, making this the easiest test they've ever faced. This also gives Tyrell, Harry, Ron, and Hermione plenty of opportunities to speak with Hagrid.

“Buckbeak is a little frustrated,” Hagrid told them, pretending to check if Harry’s caterpillar was still alive, his body bent low. “He’s been locked up for too long. But we’ll find out the day after tomorrow whether he wins or loses.”

That afternoon, they took their potions test. Snape was so engrossed in praising Harry that when it was Snape's turn to check Tyrell's potions, he simply glanced at them and gave Tyrell a high score.

The astronomy exam was held at midnight, and everyone had to go up to the top floor and line up one by one to point out the constellations they observed to Professor Sinister.

Wednesday morning's exam was on the history of magic, and the questions required us to write down all the instances of witch hunts in the Middle Ages.

This was the only written exam subject besides the arithmetic divination exam that afternoon.

We had a herbalism exam on Thursday morning, which meant we had to stay in a greenhouse under the scorching sun. By the time we got back to the common room, everyone's necks were sunburned.

Thursday afternoon was their Defense Against the Dark Arts exam, their penultimate exam. After finishing a Divination class the following morning, they would be completely free. Professor Lupin's proposed exam was unlike anything any of them had ever taken before, and utterly unusual: it was an outdoor, sunlit obstacle course where students had to wade through a pond with Grindylows, navigate a series of potholes riddled with red hats, crunch through a swamp, ignore the erroneous instructions of a Hinkpunk, and then climb into an old chest to fight a new Boggart.

It was less of an exam and more of a slightly scary adventure game, but everyone had a lot of fun.

After the Defense Against the Dark Arts exam, Tyella parted ways with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. After hesitating for a moment in front of the gargoyle statue on the third floor of Hogwarts Castle, she resolutely stepped into Dumbledore's office—

This was the first time Tierra had voluntarily entered the principal's office since enrolling.

However, his timing was very unfortunate. When Tierra finished climbing the spiral staircase and arrived at the door of Dumbledore's office, his superhuman hearing was able to detect conversations coming from inside the office.

So Tiera had no choice but to stand obediently outside the door and wait quietly.

About ten minutes later—

The oak door to the headmaster's office opened from the inside, and the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, wearing a pinstripe cloak, walked out, followed by two wizards. One was very old, seemingly withering away before their eyes, while the other was tall and well-proportioned with a sparse mustache.

“Oh my God, you are…you are Tyella Lockhart, aren’t you?” Cornelius Fudge hadn’t seemed to have a very pleasant conversation with Dumbledore. When he came out of the headmaster’s office, he appeared to be wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, but when he saw Tyella, his expression immediately changed—

“Hello, Mr. Lockhart Jr.” Cornelius Fudge smiled, bent down, and shook hands with Tyella.

“Hello, Minister,” Tierra replied politely.

“By the way, Mr. Lockhart,” Cornelius Fudge said with a smile, “I heard your father has gone on another trip? I wonder when he will be back. To be honest, I have some things I would like to discuss with him.”

“My father… oh yes, my father… if you… if you’re not in a hurry… tomorrow? How about tomorrow night?” Tyella thought for a moment and then said, “Around midnight tomorrow, in our last conversation, he promised to pick me up after my exams. He said he’d be back at Hogwarts to pick me up at midnight tomorrow. Would it be convenient for you to stay at Hogwarts until midnight tomorrow?”

"Tomorrow night at midnight..." Connelly Fudge scratched his head and thought for a moment—

“Okay, no problem,” Cornelius Fudge agreed. “Then midnight it is.”

After that, Cornelius Fudge politely said goodbye to Tyella and then descended the spiral staircase with the two wizards behind him.

Tierra gazed thoughtfully at Cornelius Fudge's retreating figure.

While Cornelius Fudge is portrayed as incompetent and despicable in both the original novel and the film, it must be said that he was indeed a skilled politician.

He was so polite to a Muggle-born wizard.

After Cornelius Fudge and his group disappeared from her sight, Tierra turned and knocked on the door of Dumbledore's office.

"Who?" Dumbledore asked.

“It’s me, Headmaster.” Tierra’s voice was distorted with nervousness. “It’s Tierra.”

"Tiera!" Dumbledore exclaimed in surprise, followed by the sound of a chair being moved and dragged across the floor.

A few seconds later, the oak door in front of Tyella opened from the inside, and Dumbledore appeared in the doorway.

"Tierra, did you have some trouble with your final exams?" Dumbledore stepped aside to let Tierra in.

“But I heard from Minerva that you did perfectly on your final exams,” Dumbledore said after Tiara was seated, waving his hand to present her with a cup of hot tea. “Would you like sugar or milk?”

“Oh…no, no need, Headmaster,” Tierra said nervously. “I’ll be leaving soon. I…I’ve made up my mind…I’ve decided to do as you said…embrace my talent.”

"You mean... you're ready to embrace your talent?" Dumbledore was taken aback.

“Yes, Professor Dumbledore,” Tyella said nervously. “I have thought about what you said carefully, and I think you are right. I can no longer run away from my fate. That would be a cowardly act, but I am a Gryffindor lion, and I should bravely face my destiny!”

"Well said!" Dumbledore said, looking at Tyella with satisfaction, as if to say that she was indeed the one he had chosen.

"So, shall we begin in the summer?" Dumbledore asked impatiently, yet with an air of unwavering composure. "Or shall we begin in fourth year?"

“Summer vacation can begin, but… Headmaster Dumbledore…” Tierra changed the subject, “I want to give it one last try before I learn how to master my talents.”

"Finally... an effort?" Dumbledore's relieved smile froze instantly. With over a hundred years of life experience, a sense of foreboding suddenly rose in Dumbledore's heart.

“Yes, I just saw a prophecy a few days ago…” Tiera said.

"What prophecy?" Dumbledore asked excitedly.

“I can’t say… I don’t want to say… but…” Tiera said sadly.

“But I want to overcome it, I want to overcome that damned fate.” Then Tierra’s expression suddenly became resolute and determined, her brows relaxed, and her gaze became firm—

Dumbledore paused, and for a fleeting moment, he saw a resemblance to Gellert Grindelwald in Tyella's still somewhat immature face—

"I want to defeat death! I want to defeat that damned fate!"

In the barn that summer, facing that almost certain death prophecy, he had the same expression and said the same words.

"How do you plan to defeat it?" Dumbledore asked absentmindedly.

“I need your help, Headmaster Dumbledore,” Tyella said.

“I need your help, Albus,” the boy in the barn said.

"What...what kind of help?" Dumbledore asked unconsciously.

“I wish to borrow your blood and the sword of Gryffindor,” Tierra said.

"Let's form a blood pact, come on, Albus, let's go find the Deathly Hallows together!" The invitation from that boy seemed so vivid in my mind.

Today I'm combining two chapters into one, totaling 4,000 words, updating them together!

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(End of this chapter)