Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 277 Rice: No one understands the Big Four better than me (Bonus Chapter)

Rice's gaze pierced through Banban's dark eyes, seeing right into his heart.

The story behind this rat shocked Rice. The shock wasn't due to his betrayal of his friend—Rice had seen this all too many times; during the conquest of Asgard, there were many instances of fathers and sons killing each other among the Norse gods.

To his shock, the rat was actually from Gryffindor? This truly astonished Rice. He had always thought only Slytherin students would do such a thing.

Although it is extremely difficult to admit, under the influence of Voldemort's pernicious influence, Slytherin House has become a den of iniquity, like a dumping ground for Hogwarts, sheltering countless problem children and contributing more than half of the Death Eaters.

Even more critically, after Voldemort lost power, the Ministry of Magic's purge of the Death Eaters was not thorough. Coupled with the Sorting Hat's biased sorting, Slytherin House remains a stronghold of villains, with pure-blood supremacy rampant.

In this context, Slytherin is responsible for almost every bad thing. And yet today Rice actually caught a Death Eater from Gryffindor?

"What? You Gryffindor have bad guys too!" Rice suddenly laughed with relief, and the more he laughed, the happier he became.

Banban: ?

Why did that little wizard suddenly start laughing? How scary!

After laughing for a while, Rice stopped laughing and stuffed the rat, Spotted, back into the cramped little cage.

Banban: ?!

It struggled fiercely, making its unwillingness to be locked in a cage crystal clear, but Rice didn't seem to care about its thoughts at all.

He needed to carefully consider how to deal with the rat. Letting it roam freely like it did in the Weasleys' house was out of the question. Killing it seemed a waste. After reading its memories, Rice felt an extremely strong urge: he wanted to show this thing to his friends and then modify the Sorting Hat's sorting method.

Stop sending pure-blood wizards with personality problems to Slytherin!

Today, the Sorting Hat's method of sorting houses has completely deviated from Rice's original intention. It has become that brave pure-blood wizards go to Gryffindor, wise pure-blood wizards go to Ravenclaw, gentle pure-blood wizards go to Hufflepuff, and the remaining pure-blood wizards are all packed up and sent to Slytherin. After being filtered out by the first three sieves, what good seedlings are left for Slytherin House?

Fortunately, the Greengrass sisters were able to preserve a shred of dignity for the Academy; otherwise, Rice would have truly broken down to the point of summoning the Basilisk and carrying out a massive purge of the Academy she had left behind.

Of course, Helga and Rowena might not support his idea, because in their view, the Sorting Hat's method of sorting houses was quite reasonable...

If you really have to blame someone, Salazar, blame pure-blood supremacy! Rice could almost hear the two of them talking right next to his ear.

Thinking about this, Rice felt increasingly frustrated: reforming the academy's atmosphere would not be accomplished overnight, and he could only be patient for now, hoping things would get better in the future.

At this moment, Banban in the cage started squeaking and banging against the cage, seemingly very dissatisfied with its situation.

The noise only irritated Rice, and he quickly made a decision: Spotty would remain in its cage indefinitely, and if it didn't like it, Rice would make it so.

Rice pulled out his wand.

Seeing this, Scabbers immediately became obedient: it didn't know what the little wizard in front of it wanted to do, but it obviously shouldn't provoke him further.

"Stun him." Rice used a simple Stun Spell to solve the problem of Scabbers being too noisy. Then he quickly pulled out a cauldron and a bunch of crystal bottles and began to prepare a potion for Scabbers.

Feeling emotionally unstable? Just take a potion, that's how Rice deals with it.

He could concoct a potion for Scabbers that would keep its emotions stable and its desire to move minimal, making the mouse want to sleep all day long. This potion would have serious side effects, but Rice didn't care—its actions were worthy of the suffering it was meant to endure.

Besides potions to stabilize emotions, Rice has many novel experiments that require Scabbers' participation. Such experimental material is very precious, and opportunities are rare. Once its value is exhausted, Rice can also entrust Mr. Henry to hand Scabbers over to the Ministry of Magic, thereby freeing that descendant of the Black family.

Thinking about this made Rice feel much better. He pushed open the door and went outside.

……

For the next few days, he stayed at Greengrass's house.

The entire Greengrass household, from the patriarch Henry down to Daphne and Astoria, was extremely welcoming, and Rice spent a very comfortable time there.

Halfway through the holiday, Greengrass Manor suddenly received a visitor.

That day, Rice was sunbathing on the terrace when he saw Mr. Henry leading a hunched old wizard down to the garden. The wizard was also an old acquaintance of Rice's, Mr. Borkin from Knockturn Lane.

When Rice first woke up, he earned his starting capital through him. To be honest, he always felt that he had sold those few items a little too cheaply. But he didn't really care; they were just some unimportant trinkets anyway.

Mr. Bokin seemed to have something important to discuss with Henry, and the two walked together to a stone table under the shade of a tree and sat down.

"What brings you all the way to my house to talk?" Henry got straight to the point, asking Bokin's purpose without any beating around the bush.

"I recently acquired a set of rare treasures, exquisite gems... Only you, patriarch of the Greengrass family, are worthy of them..." Mr. Borgin said with a fawning smile, pulling a black leather-wrapped box from his pocket. "They are treasures left by the founder of Hogwarts."

When the word "founder" reached Rice's ears, he immediately became interested, stood up from his recliner, and prepared to find out more.

At that moment, Daphne also came over, and with her sharp eyes, she immediately spotted her father and Bokin in the garden.

"What are they doing?"

"Bogin is trying to sell your father some treasure left by the founder of Hogwarts."

"Huh?!" Daphne was also immediately intrigued by the legendary treasure left behind by the founder.

Looking at the two people downstairs who were having a great time, Rice stroked his chin.

He felt it would be best for him to go down and observe from the sidelines, since no one understood the Big Four better than him, right?

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.

Here's the third update! I'm giving you all a make-up chapter now, and I'll catch up on the rest later. The holidays will be here soon, won't they?

Tonight's update will be (if possible) at midnight.

(End of this chapter)