A day at Hogwarts.

Chapter 690 Battleground

The deeper you go, the more graffiti appears on the walls.

Judging from the art style, there is more than one author, and the content mostly depicts scenes of people living together.

"Look here!"

About twenty meters from the entrance, Harry found a "group photo".

The painting depicts forty or fifty members from various races. Each full-body portrait is about the size of a palm, but the area around which should have been a ring of names has been destroyed, leaving only the edges where letters once existed.

The two in the very center look like wizards. Their clothes are very ancient, and they appear to be a man and a woman, but their faces are just a hollow.

Besides the two of them, the faces of the other members were also dented and damaged.

“Let’s go,” Charles said after glancing around. “Be careful, I have a bad feeling.”

In his view, the members in the group photo were deliberately vandalized, resembling a death list.

The group continued walking forward, and after turning two corners, the scenery suddenly changed.

The harmonious atmosphere was shattered from this point onward.

The passageway begins to deteriorate from here. The once smooth stone walls and ceiling are now pitted and uneven, and the ground is covered with pebbles, but there is not a speck of dust.

Many of the torches that were originally on the wall fell to the ground, but they didn't seem to be broken and were still burning for lighting.

Hermione stared in astonishment, covering her mouth and asking, "Was there a war here?"

The passageway before us, now almost a ruin, stands in stark contrast to the warm and inviting murals we had seen along the way.

Harry looked around and suddenly spotted a tiny reflection.

He ran to a pile of rubble and carefully moved a few stones aside.

A torch fell beside the pile of stones, its light shining through a crack, and Harry caught a glimpse of the reflection of a silver arrow.

The arrow gleamed silver and looked extremely sharp, with some strange patterns faintly visible in the light.

“It’s a fairy thing,” Ron said. “It must have been here a long time ago, and it hasn’t rusted yet. It’s probably something made by fairies.”

Hermione examined the arrow closely, her brow furrowed, and said, "Could it be that goblins have attacked this place?"

The murals outside suggest this place was once a paradise, but now it seems it has met with misfortune.

She couldn't help but wonder if the people here, like Charles, had offended the fairies and were captured by them.

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple.” Charles frowned. “The destruction around us isn’t just from goblin weapons, but also from traces of wizarding spells.”

"From a destructive perspective, the attack is primarily from the outside in."

He said that he had lifted a floor tile and found a ring of ancient runes at the bottom.

Harry squatted down beside it, studied it carefully for a moment, and asked, "What's written?"

Hermione also chose the Ancient Runes class, and after looking at it for a while, she said uncertainly, "I think it means... cleaning the ground?"

There are a few characters I don't know.

After she finished speaking, she looked at Charles, who was the only one taking the course.

Harry and Ron stared in astonishment, their mouths agape.

This was the first time they had ever heard this woman say she didn't know something.

“That’s right,” Charles nodded. “It’s for automatically cleaning dust. It’s similar to the doormat I use at the entrance of my seaside villa.”

"The magic here has been working for a long time, so there isn't a speck of dust on the ground."

Hermione examined the unfamiliar characters closely and asked, "Do those characters represent dust?"

Charles said, "Dirty stuff like dust."

As the two discussed ancient runes, Harry and Ron looked around and noticed that there was indeed no dust on the ground. Charles said seriously, "I'm worried that the defensive magic here hasn't completely worn off. You should be prepared."

"You should cast the Ironclad Charm on yourselves first."

As he spoke, he released more than a dozen Shanghai-style human figures from his bag, all fully armed. Several of them picked up torches from the ground and scattered to keep watch.

Harry asked curiously, "Why do we need them to carry torches?"

Charles replied, "Some magic is related to the light source. For example, only a specific light source can illuminate the surroundings, and changing the light source will have no effect."

"A battle took place here. The torches that fell to the ground were not damaged, which means they were likely left there intentionally by the attackers."

The trio nodded repeatedly in agreement.

Seeing that they were ready, Charles went first and continued deeper into the area.

The deeper you go, the more damaged the corridor becomes; you have to climb over small hills of rubble and cross deep pits in the ground.

A large dent in the wall caught Charles's attention.

In the middle of the crater, there is a particularly deep human-shaped imprint.

“It looks like a goblin in armor,” Charles said, stroking his chin. “He was slammed against the wall with great force, leaving this mark.”

Harry tapped the stone wall and said incredulously, "To be able to make such a deep crater in such a solid stone, the force must have been immense. The goblin that was hit must be dead."

Ron nodded in agreement.

Suddenly, Charles said seriously, "From what we can see now, this is a war, a war in which one careless move could cost you your life."

"Just like the war we're currently waging against Voldemort."

Ron suddenly shuddered and muttered in a low voice, "Don't say that name."

Harry was taken aback, wondering why Charles would suddenly bring this up.

Charles offered no further explanation and continued walking.

The broken corridor soon came to an end, revealing an extremely spacious hall.

However, a large section of the ceiling collapsed, and the rubble piled up into a small hill.

The many exquisite stone pillars and statues around the hall have now turned into rubble and are scattered all over the ground.

Just then, two Shanghai-style figures carrying torches flew into the hall and suddenly crashed into a barrier with a "thud".

The barrier was transparent; it would have gone unnoticed had it not been for the ripples it created when it was bumped.

Charles walked up to the barrier and began to examine it closely.

Hermione asked from behind him, "Is it the thing that's blocking Myrtle's way?"

Charles nodded and said, "It should be."

He didn't say anything more and began to analyze the magical barrier.

"The fighting here is intense," Harry suddenly noticed something strange. "Why aren't there any bodies?"

It was only then that Hermione and Ron realized the problem.

Charles gave a wry smile and said, "The bodies outside the barrier were probably taken away by the attackers, while the bodies inside were likely disposed of by cleansing magic."

The trio wore expressions of terror. It sounded horrifying, but upon reflection, it made sense.

Ron asked nervously, "What's next?"

Charles was focused on studying the magical barrier, and Harry and Hermione couldn't answer.

(End of this chapter)