Who let this Dementor into Hogwarts!

Chapter 294 If they can't even put someone in solitary confinement, what right do they have to call themselves Gryffindor? (doge)

"Are you free this afternoon?"

“I have class this afternoon, but I’m free tonight.” Cohen put on his dragon-skin gloves and pinched the swollen abscess on Babo’s tuber.

It's a bit disgusting, but also very stress-relieving—especially when you watch the pus inside being squeezed out with a "plop".

“I am… that…” the Death Eater disguised as a student whispered to Cohen, seemingly somewhat afraid of him, “…that one…”

"An identity that can't be revealed?" Cohen asked.

Cohen remembered his name: Wayne Hopkins of Hufflepuff.

The other party nodded immediately.

"Then why are you saying it in class?" Cohen said in a low, menacing voice. "Would you die if you waited until tonight?"

Where did Voldemort find those lowly Death Eaters?!
Sooner or later, Dumbledore would discover their infiltration of Hogwarts in this way—of course, it's also possible that Dumbledore had already discovered them long ago...

Sure enough, even Voldemort's house would fall apart without Cohen.

“Oh, yes, yes…” Hopkins nodded and shut his mouth.

"Pus! Mr. Hopkins! Catch the pus in a bottle!" Professor Sprout noticed that the students were somewhat distracted and immediately reminded them.

Following Professor Sprout's instructions, the students squeezed out all the baboon tubers in the area.

“The pus from the babo tuber is the best medicine for treating stubborn acne, which will stop students from using drastic methods to remove their pimples.” Professor Sprout plugged the last bottle opening with a stopper.

After class, Hopkins mentioned to Cohen the meeting place for the evening: a classroom on the fifth floor—there were no portraits there, which he thought would allow him to avoid Dumbledore's surveillance.

However, Cohen felt that Dumbledore wasn't stupid; even a fool could figure out what Cohen and a Hufflepuff student were up to in the middle of the night on the fifth floor.

"Who was that Hufflepuff student again?" Harry asked, sidling up to Cohen after class.

“My dad’s friend’s son.” Cohen could tell lies with ease.

"Do you think Hagrid will bring that spider to class again?" Ron asked anxiously as they walked from the Herbology Greenhouse toward the Forbidden Forest.

"probably not."

Cohen knew that Aragog was unlikely to be invited to be a teaching aid again after the "scare incident" last semester. Last time, no one had told the old spider that Cohen, who smelled like a snake, would be sitting on its back.

"But didn't Hagrid say last semester that he wanted to try hybridizing fire crabs with other creatures to create a new species to teach us?"

"The fire crab sounds pretty normal." Ron breathed a sigh of relief.

“If it’s just fire crabs…” Hermione had a bad feeling. “Our course objectives include a section on ‘Methods for Feeding and Cleaning Fire Crab Colonies,’ but what is Hagrid trying to crossbreed with it?”

They'll know the results soon.

Hagrid was already waiting outside the cabin, holding Awful's collar in one hand (because Awful was barking wildly at some open wooden crates) and waving to the students who were rushing in.

"Good morning!" Hagrid greeted the Gryffindor students cheerfully. "We'd better wait a little longer; the Slytherin students haven't arrived yet—they certainly don't want to miss this—Blasttail!"

“What?” Ron frowned.

Hagrid pointed to the box next to him.

They all peered inside, and there was a bunch of wriggling creatures in the box. They looked like deformed, shell-less white lobsters, slimy and with many legs sticking out of their bodies in a haphazard way, and their heads were nowhere to be seen.

Since they are still in their nascent stage and are not very big, a single box can hold almost a hundred of them.

They climbed on top of each other, occasionally bumping into the box walls in a daze, causing sparks from their tails to blacken the inner walls of the wooden box.

“They just hatched!” Hagrid said proudly. “You can raise them yourselves, and we can do a big project.”

“Why raise these things?” the Slytherin students asked. “They look… disgusting.”

"Slytherin's Parkinson said with disgust."

"What use is it?" asked Blaise Sabine of Slytherin.

“It can be used to feed the dragons and lion-like creatures,” Cohen said, coming to Hagrid’s rescue. “It effectively replenishes their sulfur bags, or you can simply take their fire-breathing organs to light the fireplace.”

Hagrid, who had just been racking his brains, gave Cohen a grateful look.

“Yes, that’s it,” Hagrid said. “Okay, you’ll have to try feeding them something. I’ve never raised them before, so I’m not sure what they’ll eat… I’ve prepared ant eggs, frog livers, and a green snake. Try each one and see if they’ll eat it…”

"You really know this stuff?" Hermione asked Cohen incredulously as they began trying to feed the Blasttails as Hagrid had instructed.

"I don't know, I was just making it up." Cohen scooped a handful of ant eggs from the box, "Suck, suck, suck—"

No farmed creature could resist the "sucking" sound. In the wooden box that Cohen and his group were occupying, all the tadpoles rushed toward the source of the sound.

"Putting aside their appearance and danger level, they are actually quite cute when they are young," Cohen commented appreciatively.

The little basilisk has been complaining lately that catching sheep and rabbits isn't challenging enough, so Cohen plans to bring in some new creatures for it to play with—the blast-tailed snail would be perfect.

This should be useful for dealing with the little basilisk's bad habit of "biting anything it touches." If this thing gets bitten, it will definitely breathe fire, and in the basilisk's eyes, it should be like a running ghost pepper.

Besides, I'm planning to move out of the wooden house anyway, so these fire-breathing things won't cause too much damage to the house...

"Ouch!" Dean Thomas cried out as his hand was burned by the suddenly exploding tail of the Bombtail.

Hagrid rushed over to treat Dean's wounds. "Perhaps you should wear dragonskin gloves..."

“First it was pus, and now this…” Simon muttered.

"How disgusting!" Lavender withdrew his hand, which had just tossed the frog liver into the wooden box. "Hagrid, what are those sharp points on their bodies?"

“Ah, they have thorns,” Hagrid said excitedly. “The ones with thorns are the males, and the females have sucker-like things on their bellies. I think they probably suck blood…”

“Those are genitals, Hagrid,” Cohen said helplessly, because the spikes and suckers of two of the blast-tailed snails had already adhered perfectly together.

It is hard to imagine that a hybrid species could maintain its fertility while being able to mate in its juvenile stage.

However, Cohen discovered that these blast-tailed snails did not seem to actually start giving birth during their larval stage. The two blast-tailed snails that were stuck together seemed to be just coincidentally—they now felt that the other was taunting them, and after separating their bodies, they used the impact of their exploding tails to crash into each other, trying to kill each other.

"How do you know so much!" Harry exclaimed in surprise.

“Maybe it’s a talent,” Cohen said. After the class, Cohen suggested that he take a box of them—his suitcase had more space, which might allow them to grow more smoothly.

Before get out of class ended, these blasting snails were already showing signs of wanting to kill each other (a number of broken blasting snail legs were found in the box).

“Of course.” Hagrid happily handed Cohen a box. “If you find anything new, be sure to tell me—and whatever you do, don’t let Norber eat them.”

“I don’t think Norber would eat this kind of thing.” Ron looked at the box floating next to Cohen with awe.

As they returned to the castle, Harry tried his best to stop Cohen from telling Hagrid about his subsequent experience with feeding the Blasttail.

“At least they’re still very small.” Ron moved away from the wooden crate next to Cohen. “Besides, they didn’t eat much during the whole class.”

“Because they seem to have no mouth at all,” Cohen said.

“But if Hagrid figured out how to feed them, I bet they’d grow to six feet long in no time,” Hermione said uneasily. “Our wisest course of action is to nip them in the bud before they attack us, Cohen must be thinking the same thing, right?”

"Tell my little snake monster about the dangers."

Cohen said, not really caring,
"Hagrid's breeding plan will fail. I haven't seen many hybrid organisms that can reproduce stably. These blast-tailed snails are mainly for my little basilisk to amuse itself."

Before lunch, Cohen took all the fried snails back to his suitcase.

The little snake monster was very excited about Cohen bringing a bunch of new friends to play with it.

"Are you sure this will teach her not to bite things randomly in the future?" Sissoko asked Cohen again, somewhat uncertainly, as he watched the little snake monster chasing the blasting snail across the grass.

"It looks awful, and it'll burn your throat." Cohen shook his head. "It's like a pacifier dipped in chili water; whether it's a snake or a human, they all have to go through this step..."

The little snake monster quickly caught up with the blast-tailed snail and bit its tail.

As expected, the blasting snail "exploded," and the little snake monster uncomfortably spat it out.

The flames were no match for the basilisk, but having a firecracker stuffed in its mouth certainly annoyed it.

The little basilisk hissed angrily at the blasting-tailed snail a few times, then bit down on it again—

"You just wait and see, I'm going to eat." Cohen sighed.
-
In the afternoon, Cohen and Harry arrived at the Divination class with the "death prophecy" they had prepared beforehand.

“Today we should be studying the stars,” Professor Trelawney said with a tragic expression. “The movements of the planets and the mysterious signs they display—only those who understand the rules of the celestial dance can decipher their mysteries…”

After a long and mysterious introduction, Professor Trelawney demonstrated how to use astrology to predict the past and future.

“Child, you were clearly influenced by Saturn’s ominous influence at birth,” Professor Trelawney said to Harry and his table with a pitying look, as if looking at a dying person. “Unfortunate…so unfortunate…black hair, a thin frame, and the fact that you lost your parents in infancy…you must have been born in winter, right?”

“No, my birthday is in July,” Harry replied.

Ron pinched his mouth hard to stop himself from laughing.

Professor Trelawney seemed to want to save face.

“No, no, no, child, I’m talking about him—” Trelawney pointed to Cohen.

Cohen also has black hair and is very thin.

“I was born in July too,” Cohen said.

However, if we look at it from the perspective of "when I will leave the laboratory", it seems that I was indeed born in winter.

But what could be more satisfying than thwarting a conman like Hu Meng?
"Ha—" Ron couldn't help but burst into a short laugh.

Perhaps for this reason, Professor Trelawney assigned them a very heavy assignment—to analyze in detail the planetary movements that would affect everyone next month, based on their respective charts, and it had to be submitted by next Monday.

"That nasty old bat!" Ron said angrily after class. "Now we'll be stuck in there all weekend."

"If you can't finish writing, just make it up."

Cohen urged,
"If she can't make it up, she shouldn't hand it in. At worst, she can be put in solitary confinement. If she's so capable, she should be put in solitary confinement for a whole semester. When she comes out, she'll still not hand in her homework. If she doesn't even have the courage to be put in solitary confinement, how can she be a good Gryffindor?"

“That makes sense.” Ron seemed to have made up his mind.

"What kind of weird lifestyle are you teaching Ron!" Hermione caught up with them on her way to the Great Hall after finishing her arithmetic and divination class. "Professor Victor didn't assign any homework."

“Professor Victor is too kind,” Ron sighed, “but I will not learn arithmetic and divination—I would rather be in solitary confinement.”

"Even in this situation, isn't your 'prefer' to do a ton of homework...?" Hermione pursed her lips, covering her forehead with a helpless expression.

“You can just bear with the solitary confinement,” Cohen understood Ron’s mindset perfectly. “But homework requires thinking, because if you don’t do it right, you’ll have to spend time doing the homework and get solitary confinement again…”

“Yes, yes.” Harry nodded supportively.

“Boys…” Hermione sighed and shook her head.
-
After the dinner, Cohen sneaked into the meeting place he had arranged with Hopkins.

Hopkins was already there, sitting quietly in an empty seat, avoiding Cohen's gaze.

“Speak,” Cohen said, casting a spell toward the door to prevent eavesdropping, before sitting down at a table.

As for why they don't sit in chairs—

Simply because he looks cool sitting on the table with that arrogant expression.

"I am... sent by the Dark Lord..."

Hopkins' legs were trembling—because he wasn't sure what the spell Cohen had thrown at the door meant; Cohen looked less like he was preparing for a secret interview and more like he was preparing to secretly kill him…

Damn it, if he had known he was going to be facing a monster with mixed dark magic, he wouldn't have accepted Lucius's invitation—even if Lucius was backed by the Dark Lord.

At worst, I can just run away... Damn Lucius, he only revealed that his contact was "Cohen Norton" after I had already infiltrated the school, and even gave me a special reminder not to get into any conflict with Cohen.

"Is it time to start the kidnapping plan now?" Cohen raised his eyebrows. "I thought we'd have to wait until after the Triwizard Tournament."

“No, no…” Hopkins said somewhat embarrassedly, “it’s…could you give me a place to stay?”

"?" Cohen's eyebrows, which had just been raised, furrowed.

“I can’t get into Hufflepuff’s common room,” Hopkins said, wiping his brow. “Who knew they had some kind of intruder deterrent... Slytherin’s common room doesn’t have that…”

(End of this chapter)