Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 196 The Strange Food Box

"Ron, did you hear that?" Harry stopped and asked Ron.

"What?" Ron was still immersed in the wonderful vision of arriving in the kitchen and having a feast, and didn't react for a moment.

Harry ignored him, pressed his ear against the stone wall, and listened intently.

However, the voice seemed to have faded away, so much so that he could only faintly hear it, but couldn't make out what it was saying.

Harry made a quick decision and ran in the direction of the sound.

"Harry, what's wrong with you?" Ron was completely baffled. He initially thought Harry was hallucinating from hunger, but he had to hurry to catch up—Harry was wearing an invisibility cloak, and if they were separated, it would be troublesome if Filch caught them.

Harry took off running, down the stairs, through the hallway, and finally dashed to the vicinity of the first-floor restrooms.

Upon arriving here, Harry was somewhat confused. Too much time had passed, and he couldn't be sure if this was the source of the sound he had just heard; he could only be certain that the general location was correct.

"You really didn't hear anything?" Harry asked Ron, who was following behind him, panting, unwilling to give up.

"I didn't hear anything, Harry. What's going on?" Ron wiped the sweat from his forehead.

A look of confusion flashed in Harry's eyes: Ron's words were so convincing that they made him waver a little.

Just then, Ron sniffed: he smelled a faint aroma of food.

"Can you smell it?"

"Huh?" Ron's question caught Harry off guard.

The dinner party was long over, so how could he still smell food? Was Ron hallucinating from hunger? If it was just the lingering smell of dinner in the air, wasn't Ron's nose a little too sensitive?

"There must be food around here, let me see..." Ron's nostrils flared as he circled the corridor twice before finally finding a heavy food box under a vase stand.

"Just as I thought!" Ron had completely forgotten about the "voice" Harry had mentioned—could anything be more important than eating?

He placed the food box on the windowsill, then opened its lid, revealing a very tempting-looking braised veal shank.

Ron's Adam's apple bobbed: This dish looks really tempting, completely different from the usual British food on the table.

"Harry, there really is food in here, and it's so exquisitely prepared and tempting! Merlin must have appeared to us!"

Harry, however, felt something was very wrong: why was this food box here? Its very existence was highly unusual.

Maybe it's just a prank by Mischievous Ghost?

He looked around, trying to find something amiss in this seemingly ordinary corridor, and sure enough, he saw something that shouldn't be there: a magic wand, lying quietly in the gap between the wall and the floor, easily overlooked if you weren't looking closely.

"Ron, look!" Harry punched Ron on the shoulder, forcing him to look away from the food box.

"There's a magic wand there!"

Ron raised an eyebrow: Huh? Double the luck! He just happened to be missing a wand.

Ron's wand broke accidentally when he crashed his car into the Willow. Although he wrapped it with several layers of magical tape, the wand was clearly ruined, and his spells were not working very well.

Ron has been troubled by his wand lately, but he unexpectedly found a new one at school!

Seeing Ron's expression, Harry knew exactly what he was thinking. He shook Ron's shoulder hard to calm him down.

Late at night, in the magic castle, in the deserted corridors, with food boxes overflowing and wands lying on the roadside, Ron, don't you have any sense of unease?! Even I, a little wizard raised in a Muggle family, feel something is wrong!

Distracted by Harry, Ron regained his senses—the joy of finding food and a wand had clouded his judgment.

Now that I think about it carefully, it is indeed very unusual.

"Do you think there might be something wrong with the food in this food box? The greedy little wizards disappear after eating it, or turn into other animals!" Harry suggested a chilling conjecture based on the fairy tales he had read.

Ron shuddered, immediately put the food box aside, and took several steps back.

However, he still said, "It shouldn't be that bad... I don't think I've ever heard of a similar curse..."

But Ron couldn't be sure. There were tens of thousands of spells in the world, and who knew if one of them could achieve the effect Harry had just described? He knew that his twin brothers seemed to be researching some kind of prank candy that would produce various reactions after being eaten, and it was hard to say whether this box of candy had been drugged or cursed.

Then it dawned on him, "If that's the case, then a student has already met with misfortune? Shouldn't we give this wand to Professor McGonagall?"

"No need, thank you for finding my wand." A voice suddenly came from behind the two, startling Ron and Harry so much that they jumped to the sides and drew their wands at the same time—Ron was even dual-wielding.

"Calm down, it's me, Rice." Rice immediately reassured the two, preventing them from accidentally escalating the tension.

He wasn't afraid that Harry and Ron's spells would hurt him; he was afraid that the two of them would make too much noise and attract Filch's attention, which would require him to put in more effort.

Too much had happened tonight; he just wanted to calmly take his lunchbox back to the lounge and enjoy his meal.

"Rice, it's you! What are you doing here?" Harry breathed a sigh of relief; he had really been frightened by that atmosphere.

"This is my wand and lunchbox. I made something to eat, but then my stomach suddenly started hurting, so I went to the bathroom. And then... well, when I came out, I saw the two of you huddled together here." Rice made up an excuse on the spot, and it sounded pretty convincing.

Harry and Ron nodded at the same time. Harry had a vague feeling that something was not quite right, but he was still fooled by Rice.

"What's wrong with your wand?" Rice noticed the tape wrapped around Ron's wand as she took it from him.

Ron explained the whole story to Rice.

Rice looked at Ron's wand and nodded silently.

"Could you let me try to fix it?"

"Of course, it can't get any worse anyway." Ron handed his wand to Rice.

After carefully removing the tape, Rice frowned: In his opinion, was there any need to repair this wand? He should just get a new one!

The damage to the outer wood was minor; the inner core of the staff was also damaged, but fortunately, the situation wasn't too serious, and Ron could still make do with it after I repaired it myself.

After carefully repositioning the unicorn tail hair inside the spell, Rice reattached the broken part of the wand and then cast a restoration spell on it. The broken part was now perfectly joined together, and the wand was repaired.

"Here you go. It's usable now, but I still recommend you get a new one whenever you have the chance." Rice returned Ron's wand to him.

(End of this chapter)