Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 433 Ravenclaw Shares Slytherin's Unspoken Secrets with Gryffindor

"Huh? Ah, you are—? Okay, I might have misunderstood..." Godric, who was originally grumpy from being woken up, immediately became listless after seeing the face of the person opposite him.

The person who summoned him was not one of his old friends, but a strange woman.

However, he noticed that the woman was holding the resurrection stone ring. So, he had developed a connection with this ring, allowing him to be summoned whenever someone used the resurrection stone? Godric quickly analyzed the situation in his mind.

"There's no misunderstanding, Godric," Rowena said calmly.

Upon hearing the woman before him call out his real name, Gryffindor narrowed his eyes.

"You are...?" Godric scratched the back of his head.

It's so annoying, I feel like I need to grow a brain.

Using the process of elimination, he first ruled out Salazar, and then, based on a bit of information provided by Salazar, he ruled out Helga—Salazar told him that Helga still retained her original appearance, only that she had aged a bit, and the woman in front of him looked excessively young.

"Are you Rowena, or a descendant of Rowena?" Gryffindor pondered for a moment and came to a conclusion.

"It's me, Rowena Ravenclaw."

Godric: !!!

"Wait... isn't this a bit too much? Is this how you use magic?" Gryffindor couldn't help but complain about his old friend. In his opinion, Rowena had clearly used magic to change her appearance, turning herself into a young and beautiful girl—something she was certainly capable of doing.

Rowena: ...

"I possessed this little girl's body, which allowed me to escape the seal in the dungeon." To protect her image, Rowena had to refute the rumors.

She told Godric very seriously that she had not used magic to change her appearance, at least not after becoming a ghost.

"This magic sounds evil." Godric's words plunged Rowena into silence once again.

This person is so annoying! Is there any magic that can harm ghostly phantoms?

"She voluntarily offered her body, and I will provide her with free refuge. Moreover, her soul itself has not died; it has simply fallen into a deep sleep," Rowena defended herself after organizing her thoughts.

"Isn't your soul merged with hers?"

Rowena changed the subject: "By the way, are you bound to the resurrection stone? Why can I summon you even when I spin the stone?"

"Don't change the subject!" Godric's eyes widened. "Don't think I don't know that once souls are fused, they're not so easy to separate!"

"Why does this phenomenon occur?" Rowena suddenly developed a strong research interest in Godric's life form.

As for the matter of soul fusion, she didn't take it too seriously. She'd see how things went in the future. Salazar would perform the procedure whenever he had time, separating her soul from Aries's. He claimed he'd already done something similar before, and practice makes perfect, so Rowena believed Salazar's success rate would be high.

If Salazar is unavailable, she has her own ways of dealing with it, but for someone like Godric, her actions are indeed a bit underhanded.

Seeing that Rowena seemed determined not to continue discussing the topic of soul fusion, Godric was helpless. He was merely a summoned phantom, unable even to cast spells; what else could he do?

If the person in front of him were Salazar, he would be confident that he could persuade him with words, but the person in front of him was that guy Rowena.

"Could you tell me in detail what your last memory was?" Rowena began to ask Godric about the details before his death.

"Okay." Godric spread his hands and shared the last memory of his life.

"He gained some insights into the field..." Rowena narrowed his eyes, "but gradually 'fell asleep' during the process. Hmm, interesting..."

"When I woke up, I saw Salazar—he had become very young, almost identical to when I first met him," Godric recalled.

His first meeting with Salazar was quite amusing, and afterwards they fought side by side, eventually embarking on a journey together. Looking back now, it's truly a story full of tales!

Rowena didn't care about the story between Salazar and Godric; she only cared about how Godric "died."

According to his description, it seems that something went wrong during the second awakening of the domain, but something doesn't seem quite right—if it really was a failed awakening, Gryffindor should have already merged with the elements of heaven and earth.

Although Rowena had never seen what a failed second awakening of a domain looked like, she had seen the state of a failed domain awakening, in which the person and the domain completely merged into one, and could no longer be separated.

If his domain were a fire, he would become a wildfire, burning across the mountains and fields until extinguished by rain; if his domain were earth, he would merge with the land, even his soul dissolving within its power. The fact that Godric could still summon him is extremely rare.

Is it because he already has a domain? Rowena thought it was unlikely, because it didn't make sense in principle.

So there's only one conclusion left: Godric didn't die as everyone thought. His second awakening of his domain neither succeeded nor failed, leaving him in a state that was almost "stuck".

Rowena’s powerful imagination instantly conjured up a scene in her mind: Godric was stuck in a hole in the floor, his hands on the ground, shouting: Slytherin, I’m stuck!

She immediately shook her head, banishing the bizarre scene from her mind.

Sometimes having too much imagination isn't good either.

Thinking of this, Rowena, almost without thinking, asked Gryffindor, "Godric, what do you think of the staircases I designed in the castle? Are they a good design?"

Rowena's thinking was unconventional; she connected the stuck design to the Hogwarts-style staircase, and then recalled Aries's sharp criticism of her staircase design.

Finally, she decided to ask again to see how others truly viewed her design.

Do you want to hear the truth?

"certainly."

"I feel like I'm absolutely stupid." As if he were already dead, Godric simply let loose and gave Rowena a sharp critique that he wouldn't have dared to say in his life.

Rowena's face gradually turned the color of the wind.

"Thank you. You can go if there's nothing else." Rowena said curtly.

Godric: ...

What kind of person are you?! Didn't you want to hear the truth? You can't take a joke!

"Fine, I'll go then. Who's afraid of who? No matter how powerful you are, Rowena, you can't possibly beat me, can you?" But before leaving, he did have something he wanted to ask.

"Wait, what time is it now?"

"11:00 AM."

Gryffindor: ...

"I'm not going to argue with you anymore. It's September 4th, 1994."

Gryffindor counted on his fingers and realized that it hadn't been long since he was last summoned.

"Salvazar mentioned to me before that you were going to host a super-large tournament? How's the progress now?"

Rowena's interest was piqued when the Global Young Wizards Championship was mentioned.

"It hasn't started yet, but other schools have already received invitations and are on their way. I've prepared a few projects for them, and they'll definitely be satisfied."

"That's wonderful!" Gryffindor's face lit up with a bright smile. "Our dream is about to come true!"

Rowena nodded. Founding the world's number one magic school was their shared ideal. To achieve this goal, each of them had been working diligently on their own path. While it was difficult to say who was the most successful, it was obvious who had failed the most.

"I, Helga, and Salazar's heirs will earn the honor Hogwarts deserves."

Gryffindor scratched his head: Something about what he was saying just doesn't feel quite right.

He narrowed his eyes, then keenly realized that Rowena's words seemed to be missing a certain academy.

"Ahem!" Godric coughed twice. "Gryffindor will also play a crucial role, won't it?"

Rowena felt that all she needed to do at that moment was to keep smiling.

Gryffindor: ? ? ?

Of the four houses, only one does not have a successor to its founder. Godric, can you guess which house it is?

Gryffindor tugged at his beard, then remembered what Salazar had once told him about the current state of the school: Hogwarts had now eliminated knowledge of the flow of magic, which meant that the soil for the birth of domain wizards had been completely destroyed.

If everyone had fallen to the same starting line, that would be fine, but Salazar, Helga, and Rowena secretly jumped the gun and gave their students extra training! This immediately widened the gap in high-end combat power between the various academies.

Without special instruction from the founder, Gryffindor was clearly not a main player in this competition.

Godric's brow furrowed immediately: This seemed a bit awkward.

Gryffindor said helplessly, "I thought Anna would be training my successor in my own private classroom—"

"Anna and Adrian had a fight and then left Hogwarts together. This happened shortly after you left," Rowena explained to his old friend, explaining the reason for the interruption of his legacy.

"It's a good thing there's no heir. Anyway, I feel that Salazar is actually quite envious of you—he probably wouldn't have liked those guys who called themselves Slytherin's heirs in the past."

"Oh?" Godric perked up. This was something Salazar hadn't told him, and he was eager to hear Rowena elaborate.

"Looks like Salazar's keeping his mouth shut! But Helga has dug up all his secrets—do you know how bad Slytherin's reputation is right now?" Rowena blinked, a look of pleasure on her face that she only showed when sharing gossip.

"Hmm?" Godric's eyes were practically brimming with curiosity. He begged Rowena to stop keeping him in suspense and quickly tell him the little secret that Salazar was unwilling to reveal.

Rice naturally kept silent about Slytherin's "family misfortune." Even when his old friends occasionally asked why Slytherin's reputation seemed worse than before, he would vaguely gloss over it with phrases like "the house took some detours," "it's all Voldemort's fault," or "the Sorting Hat's Sorting Model had major problems," before changing the subject.

But he overlooked one thing: Helga was now working at Hogwarts, and had been there for a full year. Although she had spent most of that year making dolls, she still had quite a few spare moments, such as having lunch with the other professors at noon.

She heard plenty of gossip while having lunch or dinner with other professors.

Then she learned of the magical legend: the Slytherin heir and his Chamber of Secrets.

Aside from Snape, the other professors unanimously agreed that the legend of the Chamber of Secrets severely damaged Slytherin's reputation—of course, the pure-blood supremacists also played a significant role; the two were interdependent, somewhat like fire and oil. Pure-blood supremacists needed a Chamber of Secrets as a gimmick, while Slytherin's "heir" needed the support of pure-bloods to enhance his status. The two sides hit it off, instantly plunging Salazar Slytherin's already tarnished reputation into complete ruin.

At first, Helga thought these people were making a mountain out of a molehill, talking as if none of them didn't have a secret room. But when she learned about the slogan "Purify Hogwarts," she was completely stunned.

Salazar's heir is playing such a big game? She instantly understood why Salazar's reputation was so bad; he deserved it all.

Who told him to fail in disciplining his heir?

Upon hearing this, Godric laughed so hard that his entire illusion became somewhat unstable.

"Purify Hogwarts? That's hilarious! How dare they? I'd wager my sword on that! Salazar would probably faint from rage if he heard that slogan!"

It's such a pity we didn't get to see Salazar's expression when he heard that slogan.

"Hey, wait a minute!" After laughing his fill, Godric suddenly noticed a blind spot: why did no one else leave an heir, but Salazar's heir was preserved? Although this didn't seem like a good thing to him.

Upon hearing Godric's question, Rowena's facial expressions gradually became uncontrollable.

"Helga told me that she also found it strange at the time, so she conducted an in-depth investigation. She found an opportunity to corner the little girl from the Greengrass family named Daphne, who was Salazar's chosen heir, and then got a very, very, very interesting thing out of her..."

"That so-called heir to Slytherin is an imposter!"

Godric: ?

His expression kept changing, and finally—

"Pfft!"

(≧≦)

Godric finally broke down.

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.

Update delivered, goodnight everyone~

(End of this chapter)