Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 271 Rice: Hufflepuff is perfect for experiments

Seeing Helga's insistence, Rice stopped trying to stop her, but told her that if there really was no chance, she should sneak out of the castle and find a place to "stay hidden".

Helga: I don't know where to begin complaining. Just a few months ago, she was one of the founders of Hogwarts, and now she has to be subservient to others even when she goes to work at the school.

Rice could tell what Helga was thinking just by looking at her face, so he said in a teasing tone, "Once you reveal your true identity, Dumbledore will definitely step down, after all, you're the legendary wizard Helga Hufflepuff!"

Helga glanced at him.

"If that day ever comes, I'll expose your and Rowena's true identities first, and then we'll achieve four-house co-governance in one fell swoop," she said coldly. Since neither the old viper nor the old raven had any intention of revealing their identities, she wouldn't either, to avoid an awkward situation in the end.

This is the herd mentality.

"Don't worry, there's a high chance there will be a vacancy next year. You can try teaching the students Defense Against the Dark Arts," Rice said confidently.

Hufflepuff: Hmm?

When Rais told Hufflepuff that the Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors had been "cursed," Hufflepuff was speechless: Salazar, how old are you? You still believe in this stuff? A wizard of your caliber would believe in such things? Did your body become younger, and your mindset became younger too?

She examined Rice closely and felt that her guess made a lot of sense; the physical condition could indeed affect a person's mental state.

Having figured this out, Helga nodded perfunctorily, adopting an attitude of "Oh, right, right, right."

Rice wasn't in a hurry. He figured Helga would believe in the existence of the "curse" in a few years anyway. He didn't believe it at first either, but after investigating the experiences of the previous Defense Against the Dark Arts professors over the past ten years, he felt that Voldemort might have actually invented a magical curse.

Curses are a type of spell. They can range from causing a rash to causing someone to die instantly upon touching a medium. However, most curses are directed at a specific person or attached to a real object.

Voldemort's curse was neither of those two things. He neither cursed a specific person nor attached his curse to a specific thing. He cursed the abstract concept of "the person who becomes the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts," with the teaching position of "Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor" as the medium.

This is very counterintuitive, very unmagical.

Rice sometimes wondered if the curse would transfer if another course were named "Defense Against the Dark Arts," or if the original course were renamed. For example, if the headmaster of Hogwarts renamed "Defense Against the Dark Arts" to "Self-Defense," would the professor of "Self-Defense" still be cursed?

Thinking of this, he had a flash of inspiration and decided to persuade Hufflepuff to conduct an experiment.

"Helga—" Rice's words were on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them back down—he had an even more strange thought: Helga Hufflepuff was powerful enough, could she withstand this "curse"?

He had originally intended for Hufflepuff to go to Dumbledore and change the name of the course after becoming the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, but now he changed his mind and decided to have Hufflepuff try to break this pattern that had lasted for more than ten years.

Let's see if our old friend is tougher, or if Voldemort's curse is tougher!

If Helga knew what Rice was thinking, she would throw him out the window and then bury him in the sand.

Kress was also out of necessity: the best candidate for this kind of experiment was Godric, but now they couldn't contact him!

"What is it?" Hufflepuff asked, puzzled when Salazar called his name but then fell silent.

"You need to spend more time preparing. The content of magic instruction has changed a lot in the past thousand years," Rice changed his tune.

Hearing this, Helga laughed: What kind of person is she? What kind of situation hasn't she seen? Of the four founders, she has devoted the most energy to teaching. She feels that she really doesn't need to do any preparation. She could just be taken to the classroom to teach right now.

"In the current magical world, no one understands the flow of magic anymore—no one teaches it, no one learns it, and it has simply been lost."

Hufflepuff: "Huh?!"

She was utterly shocked: How come the little wizard a thousand years later doesn't even know how to flow magic?

"This field of study has become obsolete; modern wizards have found a truly excellent alternative." Rice gave Helga a brief overview of the development of Spellcasting.

Helga fell silent: Spells are so convenient; it's no wonder the study of magic flow has been lost. But if one doesn't even understand magic flow, trying to comprehend a domain is simply a pipe dream. And a wizard without a domain can only be considered a second-rate wizard—so, is the upper limit for wizards in the magical world now only second-rate?

In short, after learning that the students didn't even understand the flow of magic, her thoughts began to waver. She felt that she really needed to prepare her lessons properly and figure out what schools were teaching these days.

Hufflepuff had no intention of going against the tide and fully launching a magical arts curriculum. In her mind, there must be a reason why a discipline had fallen into extinction.

Moreover, she believed that the old viper and the old raven must have found their own solution—she didn't believe that the two of them would still be helpless with such a simple matter two years after they had awakened.

"Your two little apprentices must both know about the flow of magic, right?" Hufflepuff asked tentatively.

"Of course." Rice couldn't help but show off his student in front of his old friend.

Hufflepuff selectively ignored the latter part of his sentence and only listened to the main point: Rice would teach magic flow to students who were talented enough.

This is indeed a good method. The drawback of magic flow is its extremely high difficulty, but its advantage is its extremely high potential. Having a few geniuses study this subject is indeed a brilliant solution, however…

Helga glanced at Rice. How could he judge whether a child's talent was "good enough"? The magical world didn't have a crystal ball that could show a child's talent level simply by having them place their hand on it.

Those two children probably benefited from their surname, right?

Hufflepuff felt she had to find her own way—she couldn't be like Salazar.

However, she wasn't afraid that such a crystal ball couldn't be made; Helga felt her inspiration flowing like a spring. She decided to return to school and begin researching how to make the crystal ball she needed.

"Would you like a cup?" Rice didn't continue their conversation about business, but instead poured Helga a cup of coffee.

"grateful."

Amidst the aroma of coffee, the conversation gradually shifted to casual, everyday chatter.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The first update is here!

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The next update will be a little later~

I'm just humbly asking for monthly votes... If we reach 1000 votes, the main character will get three extra chapters.

(End of this chapter)