Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 46 Confinement

Upon hearing Professor McGonagall's judgment, Malfoy's expression turned grim. Professor McGonagall was renowned for her ruthlessness; he had certainly heard how cold-blooded she was. She would never show favoritism to her students, treating her own house and other houses equally, nor would she consider a student's family background when punishing them. In other words, even bringing up his father wouldn't help; he could only obediently accept the punishment.

Malfoy was simply downcast, while Harry was filled with despair.

He felt like he was about to be expelled. He'd only been at Hogwarts for less than two weeks, and in ten minutes he'd be packing his bags and leaving. He didn't know what the Dudleys would say when they saw him at the front door, but it certainly wouldn't be anything cheering.

Daphne was also a little uneasy, but when she thought that Malfoy and Harry had made much more serious mistakes than she had, she immediately regained her composure.

"Mr. Malfoy, Mr. Potter, given your serious breach of discipline during flight class, I'm punishing you with one period of confinement with Mrs. Hooch. Do you have anything to say?"

Upon hearing that he was only being placed in solitary confinement and not expelled from school, Harry nodded repeatedly, indicating that he had no objections. Malfoy wanted to argue, but he knew it would be futile and could only accept his bad luck.

After dealing with Harry and Malfoy, Professor McGonagall looked at Daphne.

"Miss Greengrass, could you explain how you just did that?"

Malfoy and Harry also perked up their ears, equally curious about how Daphne could fly.

"That's flying magic," Daphne replied, her answer sounding like a piece of nonsensical literature.

Although Rice never explicitly asked her to keep it a secret, Daphne still took the initiative to cover for him. Perhaps it was due to her selfishness—she wanted to monopolize the knowledge in Rice's mind—or perhaps she didn't want to cause Rice any trouble.

"Where did you learn it?" Professor McGonagall couldn't help but ask. Her instincts told her that Daphne wouldn't tell her the truth, but flying magic was so rare that she wanted to find out its source as much as possible.

Upon hearing the words "flight magic," Malfoy's expression immediately changed. He had heard from his father that the Dark Lord possessed a unique secret technique called flight magic, and that he was an extremely rare wizard in the magical world who could fly without a broomstick.

Today, Daphne suddenly claimed to possess flying magic. Could it be that the Greengrass family...

But their stance during the previous Wizarding Wars was clearly neutral, wasn't it? Young Malfoy couldn't understand this.

Professor McGonagall shared the same concerns; she was worried that Daphne's flying magic originated from the Dark Lord, which was not a good sign.

However, Daphne remained silent in the face of Professor McGonagall's questioning.

Professor McGonagall stared at her intently for a while, then shook her head, letting the matter drop—the ancient Greengrass family might indeed possess flying magic in their treasury, but in any case, Professor Dumbledore needed to know what had happened.

"Alright, you two can leave now. Mr. Malfoy, Mrs. Hooch will contact you by email regarding matters related to confinement." Professor McGonagall dismissed Malfoy and Daphne, but kept Harry behind.

This made Harry's heart jump again.

"Ha! That Potter is finished, I bet he's going to get expelled." Malfoy said excitedly as soon as Professor McGonagall and Harry disappeared from their sight.

"You weren't fired, so how could he?" Daphne glanced at him and replied coldly. She had witnessed the whole thing, and she knew perfectly well who the real culprit was.

Daphne's judgment was correct. At dinner time, Harry appeared in the Great Hall of the school on time, and Malfoy looked as if he had been punched.

Judging from the speed at which the detention order was issued, Mrs. Hooch's anger had not subsided. At dinner, an owl brought her punishment for Harry and Malfoy: they would have to come to her that evening to repair and maintain their flying brooms.

Upon arriving at the hut where the brooms were stored, Mrs. Hooch divided the brooms used in class that day into two piles, and then tossed a "Flying Broom Care Manual," two cans of handle polish, and two pairs of gardener's shears to the two men.

"Your task is to wax the broom handles to make them shine and trim the messy broom tails." Mrs. Hooch's voice was quite cold. After giving her brief instructions, she left the broom hut, warning the two men before she left: if their maintenance work was not up to standard, she would apply for additional confinement, so they had better not try to slack off.

Harry and Malfoy sat in opposite corners of the room, trying to keep as far apart from each other as possible.

It's clear that Malfoy didn't have the house-elves in his family maintain his brooms when he was a child. He was incredibly skilled; while Harry was finishing one broom, Malfoy had already maintained three.

"Can you hurry up? I want to get back as soon as possible." Malfoy's face darkened after glancing at Harry's progress.

If Malfoy had taken a few brooms from Harry to fix them and tried to apologize, the bad relationship between the two might have been repaired.

Unfortunately, Malfoy wasn't that kind of person; all he cared about was getting back to the common room as soon as possible. Help Harry fix some brooms? Not even if Harry was his father's bastard son!

"Don't worry about me. You can just leave after you're done and go have some fun with your animal friends!" Harry rolled his eyes and sped up his broom trimming.

"I'm not leaving. What if someone leaves and gets my broom dirty again? Do you think I can't see through your intentions?"

"Draco Malfoy!" Harry slammed his broom into the ground. "Do you think everyone's like you?"

Malfoy shut his mouth and quietly went to maintain the broom. But with his mouth closed, his mind became even more active.

"Potter, have you ever heard of wizard duels?" Malfoy asked again after finishing with the last broom.

Harry hung his head and silently applied polishing agent to his broom. He had never heard of wizard duels, but it wasn't hard to understand from the literal meaning; he simply didn't want to deal with Malfoy.

"It's okay if you haven't heard of it. You can go back and ask Weasley. He'll tell you what a 'wizard duel' is. Anyway, if you two have the guts, we can have a fair duel in the trophy room tomorrow night at midnight to settle things—today's match hasn't even decided who's the winner yet."

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. The second update will be this afternoon.

Sorry it's late—hope you all slept in this weekend!

(End of this chapter)