Harry Potter and the Great Old Ones

Chapter 535 School Opening Letter
Shortly after their disheartening birthday party, Harry and his friends received a letter and a book list from Hogwarts.

Harry's letter also brought him a small but pleasant surprise—

He became the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team.

"This gives you the same status as officers of all ranks!" Hermione exclaimed excitedly. These past few days, Hermione had been frequently visiting the Burrow. Although she claimed it was to get news about the war faster, Harry knew she was just looking for a place to secretly practice magic—

Harry had encountered Hermione more than once secretly practicing Apparition and making various magical items in the grove of trees less than ten minutes' walk from the Burrow.

Clearly, she felt that Hermione could help Tyella in the impending Wizarding War.

“You can now use our special bathroom and everything!” she said, hiding the book in her hand.

“Wow, I remember Charlie used to wear this,” Ron said, looking at the badge with delight. “Harry, this is awesome, you’re my captain… If you let me back into the team, I think, haha… I mean…”

“When you receive these, I don’t think I can postpone a trip to Diagon Alley for much longer.” Mrs. Weasley sighed, looking at the long list of books that had come with the back-to-school letter. “We’ll go on Saturday when your father is temporarily off work, and I’ll go with him.”

On the opening letter—

Or rather, the new school opening letter contained much more content than the letters George, Fred, and the rest of the Weasley family had received before—

This was almost entirely predictable.

Tyrell ruthlessly smashed many traditions of the British magical world, especially by establishing a magic university. How could he not target Hogwarts' education?
First, the Defense Against the Dark Arts class was split into "Dark Arts Class" and "Defense Arts Class".

The Defense Against the Dark Arts class will use the same textbook and classroom as the previous Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and will be taught by Severus Snape, Head of Slytherin House.

The "Black Magic Class" is undoubtedly taught by one of the countless Tyellas.

There is no designated textbook for the Black Magic class. Any student who is interested can attend the class at the Black Magic classroom (formerly the abandoned girls' restroom on the third floor) every Saturday evening at 6:30 pm. Handouts will be distributed on the spot. Students can attend or leave at any time. There is no attendance check and no final exam.

However, students who intend to participate need to prepare a well-preserved corpse before the start of the semester for use in classroom experiments.

Of course, Mrs. Weasley would never allow her children to participate in the class, but according to Harry's observation, Hermione seemed somewhat interested.

Harry considered persuading Hermione to drop the course, but he didn't know how to bring it up.

"Mom, you don't really think that we're strolling around and singing songs and suddenly a war breaks out, do you?" Ron said with a smirk.

“Florin and Ollivander are on vacation, aren’t they?” Mrs. Weasley immediately flared up. “If you think security is a ridiculous thing, you can stay here and go buy things for me myself…”

“No, I want to go! I want to go to Fred and George’s shop!” Ron said hastily.

“Then you need to improve your cognitive abilities, young man. I will not allow you to come with us until I think you are mature enough!” Mrs. Weasley said angrily, grabbing her clock, all the hands still pointing to “Dangerous”, and placing it on a pile of freshly washed towels. “That’s so that we can go back to Hogwarts. At least Dumbledore is there to watch over things, and the war won’t spread there.”

Ron turned and stared at Harry in confusion. His mother picked up the basket of laundry and the wobbly clock, tucked them into her arms, and stormed out of the room. "Oh dear! You can't joke around here anymore..."

But in the following days, Ron carefully avoided showing any flippancy in matters of war.

Ron even started doing chores so that Mrs. Weasley could quickly forget his inappropriate joke that morning.

This is an easy thing to do.

Because in the next few days, there was not a single news item about the war or the Magical Alliance in the newspapers, as if the British magical world was currently in a state of peace and prosperity.

Fortunately, Saturday dawn finally arrived, and Mrs. Weasley did not erupt again, although she seemed very nervous during breakfast, chatting with Bill, who had been at home on his annual leave after finishing his work at the Ministry of Magic.
He also handed Harry a full purse of money.

"What about mine?" Ron asked immediately, his eyes wide and his face filled with longing.

“That was Harry’s all along, you idiot,” Bill winked at Harry and said. “I took it from your vault for you. It’s really not easy to get anything out of Gringotts’ vault these days, you know, Tierra has taken over Gringotts in Diagon Alley… I mean, Gringotts is now only run by Tierra. If you want to get something out, you’ll have to wait in line for at least twenty or thirty minutes, so I took the liberty of getting some for you.”

“Thank you, Bill,” Harry said, putting the money in his pocket.

“He’s always so considerate,” Fleur whispered admiringly, gently tapping Bill’s nose.

Ginny pretended to vomit in Hibiscus's food from behind.

Harry choked on a piece of tortilla chip, and Ron patted him hard on the back.

It was a gloomy, cloudy day. When they came out of the house and put on their cloaks, the Ministry of Magic vehicle that had once driven for Harry was waiting for them in the front yard.

“What a good father who brought this back to us,” Ron said gratefully.

“Don’t thank me, thank you Tierra,” Mr. Weasley said. “He passed the Muggle Items Enchanting Act almost on his first day in office. This car, along with several other enchanted vehicles, was assigned to several other members of the Bureau of Prohibition of Misuse of Muggle Items, including myself. He wants me to drive these cars and then make further modifications and optimizations based on their performance and strengths and weaknesses.”

“Thank you, Tiera,” Ron said sincerely.

“You must be very happy,” Mrs. Weasley said with a gloomy face.

“Of course… ah… um… actually, I’m not that happy…” Mr. Weasley realized that Mrs. Weasley’s tone was a bit off, so he quickly changed the subject. “Alright, kids, get in the car, I’ll take you to Diagon Alley.”

As the car smoothly drove away from the Burrow, Bill and Fleur waved to them from the kitchen window.

Ron, Harry, and Ginny sat in the comfortable, spacious back seat, watching the view outside the window rise higher and higher, the Burrow behind them shrinking smaller and smaller until it became an invisible vertical line.

(End of this chapter)