Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 307 Hufflepuff: Voldemort doesn't sound like anything special.

To Helga's surprise, less than five minutes after she sent her letter, Dumbledore pushed open the door to her office.

"Professor White, I heard that our Professor Trelawney has made a remarkable prophecy?" Dumbledore's expression was no different from usual, but his appearance here in such a short time spoke volumes.

"Yes." Helga described to Dumbledore everything she had just witnessed in the West Tower.

"Are you free now? I'd like to go to the Headmaster's office with you to talk about this, what do you say?" After hearing Helga's words, Dumbledore decided to take her to the Headmaster's office and use the Pensieve to recreate the scene from her memory. However, if White was unwilling, Dumbledore could simply ask for her memory of that particular moment.

The Pensieve is a rare magical artifact that allows wizards to extract memories from their minds and place them in a pensieve to relive past events.

Generally, the Pensieve, a highly private magical artifact, is buried close to the body like a wizard's wand, but the Pensieve at Hogwarts is an exception.

Ever since it was unearthed from the ground by the founders of Hogwarts, it has been passed down from generation to generation as a family heirloom of the school, along with the Sorting Hat—yes, the Pensieve in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts was dug up from the ground by Salazar and his colleagues when they built Hogwarts.

Hufflepuff had intended to hand over her memories to Dumbledore immediately after her speech, but she changed her mind after hearing Dumbledore's invitation: what founder could resist the temptation to visit the headmaster's office a thousand years in the future?

In their time, the headmaster's office was more like a storage room. The founders would pile up magical items they had acquired by chance, which they didn't need but would find too bulky to store in their offices or storage rooms, such as the Pensieve. They usually worked in their own offices—Godric once spent a night drunk in the headmaster's office, and the next day he was "respectfully" addressed as "Headmaster" by his three old friends, led by Slytherin.

Since then, Godric has refused to spend the night in the principal's office, even if it means having students carry him back.

With Godric's example, others naturally kept their distance from the office. Nobody wanted to experience what Gryffindor went through. This bothered Godric for a long time: Working in the headmaster's office is such a wonderful thing, why don't you all stay there?!

I wonder what the principal's office looks like now.

The thought, once it took root, spread like wildfire through Hufflepuff's mind, and she accepted Dumbledore's invitation without hesitation. However, she was also puzzled: why would Dumbledore be so interested in an ordinary leader of dark wizards?

"Professor Dumbledore, you seem quite concerned about Voldemort?" On her way to the principal's office, she couldn't help but ask Dumbledore this question.

Upon hearing Hufflepuff's words, Dumbledore glanced at her first, and then slowly began to tell her the story of Voldemort.

"Professor White, you didn't experience that era, so you don't know how terrifying it was."

About twenty years ago, he gathered a group of wizards and witches, naming them the "Death Eaters." Among the Death Eaters, some supported Voldemort's rule over Muggles and Muggles-born, some hoped to gain power from him, and others were simply driven by fear. In Voldemort's eyes, the Death Eaters were not friends or family, but merely his servants. They indiscriminately used Unforgivable Curses, slaughtering innocents and taking pleasure in tormenting them. The entire wizarding world was shrouded in his shadow.

Hufflepuff nodded: Judging from his style, he's a typical dark wizard leader, but is there anything special about him? Is it that his methods are extremely cruel?

"During the Wizarding Wars, he recruited a large number of werewolves and giants to serve him. Some suspect that the goblins were also involved, but there is no evidence. It's quite terrifying," Dumbledore continued to tell Professor White about Voldemort's horrors.

Hufflepuff: ?

It doesn't sound like anything special, does it?

"Hundreds of wizards have died because of him, and the entire British wizarding world is gripped by fear." Dumbledore concluded his introduction to Voldemort. He hoped that through this introduction, Professor White would clearly understand the terror of Voldemort and begin to take this enemy seriously.

"So his activities are limited to the UK?"

Dumbledore nodded again. Voldemort's influence overseas was relatively weak, and most of his Death Eaters were wizards from the British Isles.

Hufflepuff: This...

She didn't know what to say.

"Okay, well... well, killing over a hundred people with accomplices is indeed extremely serious. Is this his total number of kills in his lifetime, or just the total number within a certain period?"

Dumbledore: ? ? ?

What do you mean?

Hufflepuff didn't mean anything by it; she simply felt that Voldemort wasn't all that great, a dark wizard with not much influence and whose downfall was incredibly abstract. She didn't understand why Headmaster Dumbledore valued him so much.

The two arrived at the eighth floor of the castle and stopped in front of a gigantic, hideously ugly stone monster.

"Iced grape juice!" Dumbledore uttered the command, and the monster instantly came to life, leaping to the side. The wall behind it split in two, revealing a spiral staircase that was slowly moving upwards.

After the two stepped up, the stairs automatically led them to a gleaming oak door.

"It's so nice not having to climb stairs," Hufflepuff exclaimed sincerely. The stairs in other parts of the castle weren't this convenient, and standing on them just now, she had an urge to replace all the stairs in the school with escalators.

"This is a little treat for us old folks," Dumbledore said, winking. Despite the urgent matter at hand, he didn't forget to crack a joke.

He descended the spiral staircase, tugged at the griffin-shaped brass door knocker, and the door opened silently, revealing the spacious and beautiful principal's office behind it.

On the office desk lay many strange and unusual silver objects, spinning incessantly and occasionally emitting wisps of smoke. The wall opposite the door was covered with portraits of the former male and female principals, all of whom were now dozing in their frames.

What caught Hufflepuff's eye most was the tattered, wrinkled Sorting Hat sitting on a partition.

She raised an eyebrow at the filthy hat. She'd wanted to ask this since the Sorting Ceremony: was this hat never washed?

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.

Sorry for being so late.

These past two days have practically been spent serving Umbridge in Azkaban...

Thankfully, we've made it through and are back to normal updates! I'll put the updates from the last two days on my watchlist and try to make up for them later.

The next update will be tonight.

(End of this chapter)