days at Hogwarts

Chapter 778 It’s Halloween

May 10th, evening.

It's Halloween again.

It happens to be Friday, and the weekend holiday coincides with a holiday, so today's dinner is particularly lively.

It is said that Halloween originated from the ancient legend of Celtic mythology. Every year on this day, they believe that the souls of the dead will return to their hometowns to find a replacement to be reborn. The living are afraid of ghosts, so they come up with various ways to deal with them. Some people extinguish the fire and candlelight and try their best to avoid them; some people dress themselves up as monsters to conceal their identities or scare away ghosts; some people put delicious food in front of their homes for ghosts to enjoy, to please ghosts and prevent them from venting their anger and harming the living. This is also the origin of "trick or treat"...

These measures were gradually passed down and gradually turned into customs in the long history.

In the library.

Hermione sat upright on a chair in the corner, with several large books spread out in front of her. She lowered her head and read carefully with a serious expression.

The girl was reading a book nearby, and Loren was looking at the girl next to her, also with great concentration and seriousness.

Hermione's eyelashes are really long...

She hasn't blinked for so long, I don't know if her eyes are dry.

"call……"

Loren blew a breath at the storybook in front of him, then quickly lowered his head and pretended to concentrate on reading, while secretly glancing at Hermione beside him out of the corner of his eye.

The obstruction of the parchment allowed the air to flow to the side, creating a few breezes, and the long eyelashes were blown, fluttering and blinking like a small brush, which was very beautiful.

"..."

Hermione blinked a few times to suppress the dry and sore feeling, glanced at him, and said speechlessly: "What time is it?"

"It's half past five."

Loren glanced out the window and said, "The dinner starts at seven o'clock. You continue reading. I'll call you when the time comes."

Hermione followed his gaze -

In autumn and winter, the days become shorter and shorter. At this time, the sky outside has become dark and the clouds are thick. You can't see where the sun is. You only know that it has not yet fallen completely into darkness.

"Let's stop reading and go to the auditorium to look at the jack-o'-lanterns."

"You even know how to look at pumpkin lanterns!" Loren's face was full of disbelief. He pretended to be surprised. His acting was artificial and poor. "I thought you only cared about reading books and were a nerd!"

"..."

Hermione didn't want to respond. Madam Pince, who was not far away, had noticed them and was staring at them from the side. So she gathered the books on the desk, put them back on the bookshelf, and turned to leave the library.

Loren followed closely beside him.

Leaving the library, the cold wind in the corridor blew into the seams of my clothes.

"hiss……"

Loren quickly turned up his collar, shrank his neck, grabbed Hermione's hand and put it in his pocket, and walked towards the hall together.

Hermione gave him a bland look.

In fact, the corridor was not that cold, and doing this would not warm up the body. It was just a little trick he used to make holding hands more natural.

Little tricks are certainly useful.

Rubbing her soft palm, Loren took her hand and walked slowly towards the auditorium, telling her the story he had just read in the book. He had only glanced at it, so his retelling was not detailed enough. He just talked about whatever came to his mind, and his language was unsystematic and fragmented, and his words did not express his meaning clearly.

But Hermione listened very carefully and could understand what he was saying.

"Halloween originated from a story in Celtic mythology. In order to avoid ghosts, the living extinguished all fires and candles..."

There were no fires or candles extinguished in the Hogwarts Castle. Instead, thousands of pumpkin lanterns were lit. At the end of the corridors and at the corners of the stairs, pumpkin lanterns floated in the air. The huge pumpkins were carved into skulls and devil's faces, with dark green phosphorous flames quietly burning inside them.

The pumpkins in the school castle were mostly purchased. No one knew when the elves would move the pumpkins into the kitchen, select the best quality pumpkins and bake them into an enticing sweet aroma that filled the entire castle. Others were carved into pumpkin lanterns and Professor Flitwick cast a spell to make them float in the corridor.

The sky outside had not yet completely darkened, but the magic dome of the auditorium was already covered with dark clouds, thunder and lightning, and it looked like a stormy night.

Thousands of bats flapped their wings under the dome and gathered together like a low dark cloud, floating over the dining table and causing the flames in the candles and pumpkin lanterns to shake.

The pumpkins in the Great Hall were provided by Rubeus Hagrid, the Care of Magical Creatures professor, who stood in the corner of the room, slapping the thick shells of the pumpkins, some of which were even larger than the shed.

Professor Sprout, the Herbology professor, looked at the giant pumpkins in amazement and humbly asked Hagrid for the tips and secrets of growing pumpkins.

Before the dinner started, little wizards were going in and out of giant pumpkin lanterns, pretending to be ghosts, cheering and screaming, making a lot of noise. Nick, who was almost headless, got in at some point and scared a group of freshmen so much that they ran out tumbling and crawling, and after they recovered, they kept laughing foolishly.

A new witch came up to Professor Hagrid and tugged at the sleeve of his moleskin coat. The fear she had at the beginning of the school year was gone from her eyes. "Professor Hagrid, can you keep the biggest pumpkin next year and carve it into a pumpkin cottage or a pumpkin carriage?"

Hagrid nodded and agreed with a smile.

“What should we do with these jack-o’-lanterns after the holiday?”

Hagrid looked at Loren, who had stood beside him at some point. He was holding his chin with his hand and looking at the pumpkin lantern, with an ominous gleam in his eyes.

"..."

After nearly seven years of getting along, Hagrid had more or less understood Loren's character. It was obvious from his look that he was planning something. Looking at his thoughtful expression, Hagrid suddenly didn't know how to answer.

"Uh……"

Hagrid answered carefully, "The well-preserved pumpkin lanterns can be stored in the warehouse and used again next year. The damaged ones can be distributed to the animals in the Forbidden Forest. If they can't be given away, they can be fermented into fertilizer."

“That sounds a bit wasteful.”

"What do you want to do?"

"If you have any extra pumpkin lanterns this year, remember to leave a few for me. They don't need to be this big, a medium size will be fine, or smaller is also fine." Loren gestured the size of the pumpkin lanterns.

"Keep it as a souvenir..."

Hagrid breathed a sigh of relief. "After graduation, you should keep some school items as souvenirs. Don't worry, I will definitely pick out a few nice ones for you."

"No, I want to be scary."

"no problem!"

Hagrid patted his chest, his face wide open with a smile.

Loren was satisfied with the assurance, holding Hermione's hand and admiring the pumpkin lanterns. Some pumpkin lanterns had phosphorescent flames that sizzled, which meant there were gift boxes hidden inside. Halloween gift boxes were half surprise and half fright. They could be good things like wizard chess, chocolate frogs, or mice or dung bombs. The harvest depended on luck. A Gryffindor freshman opened a fiery firework, which exploded as soon as the lid was opened. His dark cheeks and hair stood up, making his friends around him laugh.

There is a vague shadow of Simo in his youth.

Many Gryffindor seventh-year students smiled slightly when they saw this scene.

Hermione tilted her head to look at Loren's expression, squeezed his hand, and asked softly, "Why did you ask Hagrid for the jack-o'-lantern?"

"Keep it as a souvenir."

"?"

"But the school didn't leave it to me. I left it to the school."

Loren tried to purse his lips, but still couldn't help laughing twice: "Professor Babel has made some progress on the rune she designed for me. Such a meaningful thing must be commemorated in Hogwarts!"

"What souvenir do you want to keep?"

"I plan to carve a simple teleportation array inside the pumpkin lantern, leaving a few strands of spatial magic, and let the pumpkin stay in the space of the Room of Requirement. Around Halloween, these pumpkin lanterns will appear in the bathroom, the common room after the lights are turned off, the corridor late at night, and the dormitory next to the bed..."

Loren looked mysterious: "And it's the kind that flashes by, appearing suddenly, staying for a few seconds and then suddenly disappearing. It's guaranteed to be scary enough."

Hermione blinked and imagined the scene:
Around Halloween, the castle was dimly lit and filled with an eerie atmosphere. A young wizard couldn't sleep late at night, so he went to the bathroom or went out for a night walk. He was drowsy and relaxed when suddenly a faint green phosphorescent light flashed by, and a pumpkin lantern carved into a hideous smile barely appeared...

"..."

Hermione couldn't help but fall silent.

A new chapter in the horror stories circulating around Hogwarts.

……

By December, the first half of the school year is coming to an end.

Two more Quidditch matches were held during this period, with Hufflepuff playing against Ravenclaw. Hufflepuff was promoted to the winners' group and will wait for the final against Gryffindor in the spring. Ravenclaw entered the losers' group and will have to fight Slytherin after returning to school after the Christmas holiday.

The freshmen's flying lessons have ended, so they don't have to brave the biting cold wind to fly around. Madam Huo Qi started her vacation early, which is really enviable.

The seventh grade curriculum enters a delicate stage.

The professors have finished teaching all the content and are now guiding students to review what they have learned in the previous seven years. The homework is becoming increasingly heavy. It is not a profound and complicated assignment, but rather very basic stuff, with a large number of questions and a high rate of repetition. However, there is no mandatory requirement for all students to complete it, and homework is no longer collected.

The students' states of mind are also different. Some are laughing and joking all day long and doing nothing, seemingly not caring at all about the upcoming Ultimate Wizarding Level Exam. Some have dark circles under their eyes and are listless, and are so nervous that they can't eat when dining in the auditorium.

Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape repeatedly mentioned the problem of stress in class. They did not praise their optimism or relieve their nervousness. They just emphasized that they should not affect other students, and if they really couldn't bear it, they should go to the school infirmary to find Madam Pomfrey.

Hermione would also select valuable topics to recite, and basically spent her weekends in the library, even reducing the frequency of her conversations with Professor Bubbage.

Loren gave up those homeworks to consolidate his basic knowledge, and he didn't have any mental problems for the time being. He stayed in the Room of Requirement in his spare time, sitting in the illusionary underground Potions classroom, studying the new space-shifting device array on the manuscript paper carefully.

Next to it are several intricately carved pumpkin lanterns.

He had received these pumpkin lanterns from Hagrid last month. He had already carved a simple magic circle, poured a few strands of space magic into the core of the magic circle, and completed the short-distance teleportation test. The whole process took a whole month, but Professor Flamel and Professor Barbling thought it was very fast.

Loren planned to complete all the design work of the new device before graduation. After graduation, he would lead that group of guys to start production, promote the new device to the world, and complete this big deal as soon as possible.

The estimated completion time of the entire plan is still uncertain. After all, the future is always full of unknowns and no one can predict it.

For example, if you work too hard these few months and overdraw your future quota, you may have to lie down for two years after graduation before implementing your plan. In the meantime, you can only be Hermione's househusband. How does that saying go? Behind every successful woman there is...

The clock in the corner began to shake slightly, and a crow came out of it, cawing.

Loren pushed away the floating pumpkin lanterns, letting them scatter around the room, then stood up and walked out, leaving the Room of Requirement, going downstairs and heading straight to the foyer.

December is already deep winter and snowflakes are falling heavily.

The torches on the hallway walls cast an orange-red glow, which reflected the snowflakes, making them look crystal clear. Occasionally, a few flakes of snow floated into the house and melted at the door, leaving a trail of water.

There was a graceful figure standing between the fire and the snow, as if she had been waiting here for a while. She was wearing a college uniform robe, with fluffy curly hair draped over her shoulders and a cashmere scarf around her neck. There were some snowflakes on her hair and shoulders, but she didn't look cold, but instead added a touch of softness.

The girl heard footsteps approaching, looked up, a smile appeared on her face, and her eyes were gentle.

"Why are you waiting here?"

Loren walked over and stood in front of Hermione. He naturally took her hand and shook it. It was not cold, but not warm. "It's so warm in the Great Hall. It's cold here. My hands are cold. I'll be fine if I catch a cold."

"It's not cold." Hermione explained softly. The girl's voice melted into the wind, and was particularly soft. "You may not find it in the hall, and I want to come here to see the snow."

"I don't know how many bluebells to put on the flames."

"It's not cold."

"Where are Harry and the others?"

"Already going to Hagrid's hut with the cake."

"You carried it there?"

"Ah."

"A bunch of idiots. They are frozen harder than rock cakes when they get there. How are we going to eat them later?"

"..."

"You are also a fool. You just stood at the door and let the cold wind blow your brain away."

"It's not cold."

Hermione explained quietly.

It was indeed not cold. My hands were held in his palms, feeling warm.

The two of them wrapped their scarves tightly and walked out of the hall, leaving two neat rows of footprints on the snow, all the way to the cottage at the edge of the forbidden forest, where smoke was rising.

The grounds were frozen, the green grass was buried under the thick snow, the bare vines of the Whomping Willow were covered with snowballs, white and glittering like pear blossoms. There were no students on the road, today was Hogsmeade's activity week, the students who wanted to go out were sitting in the three brooms with butterbeer in their hands, and the students who didn't want to go out in the wind were hiding under the protection of the castle fireplace.

They were heading towards Hagrid's hut.

December 1997, 12, today is Hagrid's 6th birthday.

(End of this chapter)