From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 180 Speculation
"There's a monster! There's a monster!"

"Help! Help! Someone save me!"

"My legs are weak and I can't run anymore..."

"My head! Watch out for my head! You're stepping on me!"

The dungeon is filled with ghosts running around, guests at Nearly Headless Nico's death anniversary party.

The sudden intrusion of some giant monster threw them into a panic. They completely forgot the fact that they were dead and ran around in the underground space of Hogwarts.

"Mr. Barrow." Snape called out to a ghost who had remained calm. He looked haggard, his collar was stained with silver blood, and he had a pair of rusty shackles on his hands.

Barrow stopped in front of the three professors with a dull look in his eyes.

Dumbledore asked, "What happened in the dungeon? Did you see the true face of the monster?"

“I saw it,” The Bloody Baron nodded, “but there was only a dark silhouette, at least 10 feet tall.”

The Bloody Baron raised his arm and directed everyone's attention. "The Deathday party was being held, and the ghosts were dancing on the dance floor. The monster suddenly broke through the wall and rushed out. It rushed around the classroom, knocked a big hole in the wall, and then left."

Looking in the direction of his finger, broken bricks and broken tables and chairs were scattered all over the ground. There was a huge hole in the wall of the underground classroom, and you could see that the room behind it also had holes of similar size.

"Excuse me, Mr. Barrow, have you seen Potter, Granger and Weasley?" Professor McGonagall stepped forward with a tense expression on her face.

"The three students that Nicholas invited?" The Bloody Baron's tone remained unchanged. "They have made full preparations for the party and all wore fur cloaks..."

"Where did they go?" Professor McGonagall interrupted his recollections rudely, which was rare for her.

"..." The Bloody Baron glanced at Professor McGonagall and continued slowly, "He left after making Myrtle cry, and didn't even watch the show of the Headless Hunter..."

Professor McGonagall turned and walked away, with Snape and Dumbledore following her.

After walking around the mess on the ground and passing through several underground classrooms that had been crashed, the professors saw three furry balls huddled in a corner near another staircase.

"Potter! Granger! Weasley!" Professor McGonagall stepped forward and lifted the gray fur cloak, revealing the three little ones with terrified faces.

"It's really hard to find you!" Professor McGonagall's expression became lively, but still angry. "Are you hurt?"

"No, Professor…we can explain it…" Harry whispered.

"Go ahead, Potter. We're all listening." Professor Snape stood in the shadows with a sarcastic smile on his face.

The three of them explained in a flurry that they were going to attend the Deathday party.

"There are hundreds of ghosts out there! They are all witnesses—"

"We already know that you made Myrtle cry - but what happened after that?" Snape's dark eyes flickered in the candlelight, "Why didn't you go to the party? Instead, you were wandering around in the dungeons?"

Ron and Hermione's eyes were focused on Harry, because he had said before that he would take them to find a "talking armor", so the three of them stayed away from the dungeon where the Deathday party was held.

But in the end, he didn't find the armor, but was frightened to death by the giant beast that broke through the wall.

"Because - because -" Harry felt that if he told the real reason, he would definitely be laughed at by Snape, "Because we are tired and want to go to bed early, so we went back from the stairs here..."

"No dinner?" said Snape, a smug smile flashing across his gaunt face. "I suppose the food served by ghosts at the Deathday party is not fit for the living."

"We're not hungry!" Ron shouted, but his stomach was growling louder than he was.

At this moment, the three of them began to regret why they didn't listen to Ivy and pack some food for the party.

The smile on Snape's face became even more twisted.

"It is clear, Headmaster, that Potter has not been telling the whole truth," he said. "Perhaps we should consider revoking some of his privileges until the truth comes out of him. For example, removing him from the Gryffindor Quidditch team..."

"That's enough, Severus," Professor McGonagall glared at Snape, "I don't see any reason to let this child quit the Quidditch team. The dungeon wasn't destroyed by Potter riding a broom. Instead of asking them what they were doing in the dungeon, they should ask them if they saw where the giant beast that appeared here went!"

"We were all terrified..." Hermione said timidly, "There was a loud noise in the classroom, as if two giant monsters were fighting, and they were getting closer and closer... Fortunately, the noise stopped soon."

"So you didn't see its true face?" Dumbledore's blue eyes stared at the three of them, and they shook their heads together.

"Well, let's examine the scene." Dumbledore left the door of the classroom closest to them.

“…This is so weird.”

Everyone who sees this scene will say this.

Unlike all the previous underground classrooms, this classroom had only one hole, as if the giant beast that broke through the wall and rushed in suddenly turned into a harmless bubble and disappeared without a trace.

"If the beast is so big that it has to break through the wall to move freely, where can it go?" Professor McGonagall asked the question on everyone's mind.

Dumbledore walked to the hole that was broken by the giant beast, examined it intently for a long time, and then cast a spell to restore the wall to its original state.

He turned around with a smile and said to the two professors and three students, "It seems that some big guys have also regarded Hogwarts as their home. Ladies and gentlemen, it is very late now. Go back to your beds and sleep. Leave this place to me."

"Albus..." Professor McGonagall looked at him suspiciously, hesitated to speak, and finally shook her head and went back with the three second-year students.

Professor Snape stood still, even when Harry shot him a suspicious look.

When the Gryffindors' footsteps completely disappeared, Snape whispered to Dumbledore, "Is it him?" "What?" Dumbledore turned around, then realized what he meant, "Are you talking about Voldemort? No, not really. I'm pretty sure we won't be disturbed by him again this year."

"What on earth is that basement..." Snape was interrupted.

"I can confirm that it is not a monster hidden in the Chamber of Secrets, nor is it dark magic." Dumbledore said, "Go back and see your students, Severus."

Snape undoubtedly looked annoyed. "As you wish, Headmaster."

After Snape left, Dumbledore began to slowly repair each wall of the dungeon.

Only after all the repairs were completed did he say to the empty staircase, "How's your dragon, Ivy?"

"As bad-tempered as ever, perhaps a little scared?" Ivy appeared from thin air wearing the emerald green Slytherin relic robes.

He had listened to the conversation between the three professors and the three students, and took advantage of Dumbledore's time to repair the wall to take a look at the map chamber. Both Norberta and Xiaoyan were good, but they looked a little bored.

"The dragon-raising permit will be delivered by early next year at the latest. Then we won't have to worry about it setting the castle on fire."

"Our Minister is indeed susceptible to the influence of gold." Dumbledore sighed. "The speed at which he was corrupted by power is beyond my imagination. But it also reminds me that power may be more terrifying than the most evil black magic in the world."

Dumbledore was a typical reformist wizard. Although he advocated that Muggle-borns, pure-blood wizards and half-blood wizards should enjoy the same status, he did not take any measures to change the status quo, whether he was making suggestions to the Ministry of Magic as the Chief Wizard of the Wizengamot, or spreading this idea in the school as the headmaster of Hogwarts.

Perhaps, as he said, he feared power more than dark magic. So he was very careful about using his influence, and just sat in this thousand-year-old castle, quietly watching the changes in the magic world.

Ivy had no intention of evaluating Dumbledore's claims. He just wanted to study magic, nothing more.

"Sometimes, society still needs some power, especially when it comes to combating crime and maintaining order." Ivy responded casually and waited quietly for his next question.

"You are right, Ivy. We all need order." Dumbledore smiled, then asked, "What do you see about the events in the castle?"

Ivy shook his head solemnly.

He never doubted that he was a master of magic, but in the recent incidents related to magical creatures, his speculations and responses seemed to be of no use.

The black dog suspected to be Sirius Black no longer appeared; the basilisk in the secret room was motionless; the evil bird that once appeared in the forbidden forest was told that it was impossible to survive in the climate of the Scottish Highlands; and the giant beast that broke through the castle wall tonight made him smell a hint of something unusual.

"It's certain that there must be magic involved." Ivy has tried many methods to try to figure out what exactly happened in the underground classroom.

There was no sign of ancient wizarding magic, nor was it ordinary dark magic, let alone Apparition. Hogwarts Castle was set with an anti-Apparition spell that could only be broken by the headmaster himself.

Although the mage's 1st level spell Detect Magic gave Ivy an extraordinary magical vision, it could only confirm that magic had indeed been performed in the underground classroom. Ivy couldn't even tell from the residual magical aura on the ground what kind of magic affected it.

There are only two possibilities for this to happen.

First, this magic does not belong to the DND magic system, such as wizard spells.

Second, the difficulty of identifying this magic is far beyond Ivy's cognitive system.

Considering that Ivy might be the only DND wizard in the entire British wizarding world, he is more inclined to the first result.

Dumbledore stared at the dim corridor in the basement for a long time before speaking: "You know what, Ivy? I remembered an old friend."

"Newt Scamander." A smile appeared under his white beard. "When he was young, he always carried an inconspicuous suitcase, but there was actually a lot of secrets inside."

Get the bag!

Dumbledore's words woke Ivy up. Since he woke up in the Chamber of Secrets, the bag beside him had disappeared.

"It looks like you have thought of something?" Dumbledore looked at Ivy with an inquiring look.

Ivy nodded and said, "More than a hundred years ago, I had a magic tool that I used to save magical creatures."

"Like Newt's magic suitcase?"

"Yes, I call it a bag. It's a square, inconspicuous cowhide bag. But it has been cast with the Traceless Extension Charm and the Flying Charm, so a lot of messy things can be put in it." Ivy stretched out his hand to gesture the size of the bag.

"It contains the magical creatures I rescued from poachers. I will then take them back to the Room of Requirement, where a house-elf will help take care of them."

The house-elf who takes care of magical creatures for Ivy is named Diego. He is Professor Matilda Weasley's house-elf. It is she who gives Ivy the task of taking bags and rescuing magical creatures.

As for Professor Matilda Weasley herself, she was the head of Gryffindor more than a hundred years ago, and was also the vice-headmaster and professor of Transfiguration at the time, holding exactly the same position as Professor McGonagall at Hogwarts, so it is difficult to say who was imitating whom.

"Normally I would carry it with me, but after I woke up a year ago, it disappeared." Ivy began to tell his speculation, "At first I thought the house-elf took it and released the magical animals in the Room of Requirement. But now it seems that there may be a follow-up."

During the more than 100 years that Ivy was unable to move, it might have been Professor Matilda Weasley who asked Diego to take the bag away and release all the magical creatures inside.

It is possible that the Weasley family is in such a state of decline because Professor Matilda Weasley spent all her family fortune to save magical creatures. After all, more than a hundred years ago, the Weasley family was a pure-blood family that could be served by house-elves.

"Perhaps after the bag was used up, it was thrown back into a corner of Hogwarts. If someone found it and discovered its use, it is entirely possible to create such a series of events." Ivy added, "Even if it is not a bag, similar magic props are possible."

Only space props involving the storage of living things can make it possible for magical creatures to suddenly appear in a corner of the castle, complete the destruction, and then suddenly disappear.

"It seems that we do have the same idea." Dumbledore nodded, "But this kind of prop is too well concealed. Opening it rashly may cause unnecessary chaos... Perhaps, we can check the students' luggage during the Christmas holidays? If there are no similar props inside, it means that other wizards have sneaked into Hogwarts."

When Ivy heard Dumbledore talking about other wizards, the first name that popped into his mind was Sirius Black. He was an illegal Animagus, and the big black dog was also the first to appear in the castle.

Maybe the four robbers found Ivy's bag when they were at school, and only used it to cause trouble now?
(End of this chapter)