Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 42 will turn into Malfoy-chan

After quickly turning off the password projection, Rice glanced guiltily at Daphne, thankfully the girl didn't seem to mind. Perhaps she hadn't seen the full password, or perhaps she thought the statement made sense.

After using his privileges to change the password back, Rice said the statue's password for the third time: Open.

This time, something has happened.

The enormous stone face came to life, its mouth opening to form a huge black hole. From within the hole, a rustling sound could be heard, as if something was moving inside the statue's mouth.

Rice's expression changed; he immediately recognized it—the snake king he had left in the secret chamber had been awakened. He immediately issued new orders: Go back, hide. Only then did the sounds in the cave gradually subside.

"What is that?" Daphne wasn't deaf, so she naturally heard the sounds of the snake king moving around.

After Rice gave her a brief explanation, Daphne fell silent.

So there's a snake over twenty feet long hidden inside the statue? Daphne doesn't want to crawl in now.

Whether a filthy sewer pipe is disgusting or a tunnel hiding a large snake is more psychologically unsettling is a matter of opinion.

Rice was unaware of the girl's change in mindset and led Daphne straight into the statue's mouth.

Contrary to the first impression given by the exterior, the tunnel inside the statue was spacious and flat, with even a candlestick installed every few steps on the walls. However, the candlesticks were currently empty, and Rice could only summon a flame for illumination.

There were large snake tracks on the ground, clearly left by the snake king. Daphne was still a little worried, afraid that she might encounter that terrifying beast around some corner. Fortunately, the snake king was very well hidden, and she didn't find any trace of the basilisk monster even when she reached the end of the tunnel.

"Actually, the spells cast here are similar to those on the walls of the Leaky Cauldron's backyard. You'll be able to detect them when your mastery of magic becomes more profound," Rice said to Daphne, standing in front of a thick stone wall.

After he said that, Daphne became curious about what the world looked like through Rice's eyes.

"Me? Just like an ordinary person, but I'm a bit more sensitive to magic. Of course, if I sense something unusual and focus my magic on my eyes, what I see will indeed change; I can see the flow of magic."

For example, right now, to an ordinary person it's just an ordinary wall, but to me, the whole wall shimmers with a magical glow.

Daphne stared intently at the wall, her eyes bulging, but she couldn't sense any flow of magic within it.

"You're still a bit lacking in experience, but you'll definitely be fine in the future." After offering the little girl a few words of comfort, Rice rested his wand on a stone brick.

"Count down seven blocks, then count seven blocks horizontally." With a flick of the wand, the stone bricks sank in and disappeared. Then, as if in a chain reaction, the entire stone wall vanished, exposing the exit.

Emerging from the tunnel, Daphne recognized their location: next to the underground dock where they had arrived by boat on the day of the opening ceremony.

On the way back to the common room, Daphne couldn't help but ask about tomorrow's lesson. Rice told her that he planned to have her review today's flying magic and then teach her a practical protective spell.

In the modern magical world, there is a simplified version of this spell called the Ironclad Charm, which is a more advanced spell that many Hogwarts graduates do not know how to use.

In Rice's view, this spell was far less useful than the defensive magic he had taught Daphne—it was too rigid. Due to the high demands on the caster, beginners couldn't use it, and for magic masters, its potential wasn't high enough; it felt somewhat flashy but impractical. Unlike his own defensive magic, which beginners could use after some practice, albeit with relatively weak defense, but whose defensive power could be stacked almost infinitely as the caster's skill increased.

As Rice had predicted, Daphne learned the spell in just one day. She could manipulate her magic to form a thin protective shield in front of her. Although it might not even be able to stop a brick thrown at her, it was still a breakthrough from zero to one. The rest was up to time.

This surprised and delighted Rice: he felt he had struck gold, and his skills had finally found a successor.

After attending classes diligently for a week, Rice began to adjust her lifestyle to a state that satisfied her.

What? Only one History of Magic class on Monday? Great, from now on my weekends are three days long. What? The professor assigned a lot of homework? No problem, Daphne, come here for a second, I'll check your homework...

Back at Hogwarts, Rice's life was much better: he no longer needed to prepare lessons every day, worry about the stupid and insane medieval semi-literate wizards, or deal with the messes caused by his energetic students.

After comparing the two situations, Rice felt a strange sense of happiness. Especially when he saw Professor Snape cursing and busily cleaning up the mess left by the students, he was glad that he wasn't the head of the house now.

Malfoy, with whom he had previously clashed, apparently complained to his father, but Lucius Malfoy didn't seem inclined to stand up for him for the time being. Unable to gain his father's support, Malfoy quickly forgot about his minor conflict with Rice and turned his attention to the boy named Harry Potter.

Rice could tell that he initially wanted to be friends with Potter, but Slytherin's reputation held him back, nipping any potential friendship in the bud.

Of course, the academy's bad reputation was only a secondary factor; Malfoy's terrible personality was the main reason. He was flamboyant, ostentatious, and repulsive, and if he hadn't had a good father, he probably would have been locked in the bathroom and beaten up by the upperclassmen long ago.

During the first week of school, Malfoy constantly boasted to those around him about his "illustrious" family background. By the second week, the topic had shifted to Quidditch, and he spent his days talking at length about flying and loudly complaining at the dinner table that first-year students weren't qualified to join the school's Quidditch team.

He loved to run near Daphne and loudly boast about his childhood flying stories, which varied in detail but always ended the same way: Draco Malfoy, a skilled flyer, narrowly escaped a Muggle helicopter.

Having already experienced the wonders of flight, Daphne was initially unconcerned, but Malfoy was simply too annoying, so she finally couldn't take it anymore.

"At that time, my hair was only inches away from the propeller, and I could even feel the powerful whirlwind..." Malfoy's story was coming to an end as usual, but it was interrupted by a girl's voice.

"Are you sure it's only a few inches?" Daphne glanced at him.

"Of course!" Malfoy assured him, patting his chest.

Daphne didn't say anything. She had heard of helicopters, Muggle vehicles. After she briefly described the structure of a helicopter to Rice, Rice transformed a set of cutlery on the table into the shape of a helicopter and a piece of grilled steak into a little man riding a flying broomstick.

Under Malfoy's bewildered gaze, Daphne maneuvered the little figure toward the helicopter floating in mid-air, and then...

Splat!

The little man was sucked into the propeller and instantly turned into mincemeat.

Meat sauce and grease splattered everywhere, with one drop landing directly on Malfoy's face, who was completely stunned.

"So how did you manage to hold on? Or is it that the Malfoy family's medical technology is so advanced that they can restore the mincemeat back to a human body?" Daphne looked at Malfoy with a smile.

Malfoy: ...

Daphne killed the discussion.

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.

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(End of this chapter)