Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 68 This must have been done by someone from Gryffindor!

Theft! They even set a trap in the storage room before they left!!!

Snape vowed that if he could catch the potion thief, he would handcuff him and hang him from the ceiling of the Potions classroom.

He has narrowed down the suspects to a few—it must have been those Gryffindor rascals!

Snape was a master of potions, and he could tell the criminal's purpose by which ingredients were missing. For example, if the African tree snake skin was missing, the criminal probably wanted to make a compound potion. But this time, he was missing a little bit of every ingredient! Moreover, according to his calculations, the missing percentage of each ingredient was about the same, about one-third of each.

Clearly, this thief wasn't stealing to make potions; he was just there to provoke me!

In his own potion pantry, he leisurely took away a third of each ingredient, treating it like his own kitchen. Snape asked himself, given his considerable influence in the school, what kind of audacity would it take to do such a thing in his pantry? Who else could behave so "Gryffindor"? Only those energetic little lions of Gryffindor with nowhere to vent their frustrations.

Moreover, those who dare to do such a thing are not just ordinary Gryffindors, but only a few troublemakers...

Fred and George from Gryffindor suddenly felt a chill run down their spines, sensing a strange malice.

After Snape suppressed his anger and shared his experience with Professor McGonagall, Professor McGonagall was also shocked.

"One-third of each potion ingredient was stolen?"

"That's right, from unicorn stomach stones to ordinary bezoars, exactly one-third of them have disappeared." A cold smile appeared on Snape's lips.

Professor McGonagall: ...

She felt guilty.

Just from the description of the problem, it sounds like something someone from Gryffindor would do! This attitude shows they don't treat Severus Snape like an outsider at all—even a daughter robbing her own mother's refrigerator wouldn't be this bad.

"Ms. Minerva McGonagall, do you have any clues?"

Professor McGonagall was sweating profusely.

So, shortly after lunch, as Fred and George were about to leave the Great Hall arm in arm to find some fun, they were cornered by Professor McGonagall.

"What were you two doing at dinner yesterday?" Professor McGonagall stared intently at their faces, her eyes filled with authority.

"Uh, Professor, we're eating in the auditorium," Fred said, completely bewildered.

"Okay, so what are you doing before dinner?"

Fred and George didn't even need to look at each other before they both said in unison that they were playing Wizards Chess in the common room.

Snape appeared, holding a small bottle in his hand.

"Minerva, this is my newly concocted truth serum. Just one drop is needed—"

Fred and George: ?!

They just planted a dung bomb outside Filch's office door, is that really necessary?! They've done this before, why are the two professors reacting so strongly today?

The two had no intention of challenging Snape's potion-making skills with their own bodies, and obediently confessed what they had done before dinner. Under Professor McGonagall's questioning, they told the two professors about their whereabouts throughout the day.

After hearing Fred and George's "confessions," Snape's brow furrowed even more.

It wasn't that the twins were lying; Snape's concern stemmed from the fact that he discovered both of them were telling the truth.

"You two, you two, very good, very good!" Professor McGonagall was so enraged by the confession that she was about to lose her temper.

"Twenty points deducted from Gryffindor, Fred and George, you will spend the rest of the Christmas holidays in jail." She delivered her verdict on the twins.

After the twins left dejectedly, Professor McGonagall felt a little better: at least Fred and George were cleared of suspicion.

Aside from these two troublemakers, Professor McGonagall felt that no one in her department had such drive and mental fortitude.

This is stealing from Snape's potions pantry!

"It could have been done by the person who killed the troll or lured it into the castle. Could it have been for money?"

On this matter, Snape agreed with Professor McGonagall's opinion.

He had already spoken to several familiar herbal medicine shop owners, and if those extremely rare potion ingredients appeared on the market, he would make sure the culprit spent a few days in Azkaban.

The owner of the potions shop still had to give him some face, because Severus Snape was a potions master who could make highly difficult potions.

"Please accept my condolences. On the bright side, there are still two-thirds left, aren't there?" With her own students cleared of suspicion, Professor McGonagall straightened her back and even dared to tease Snape.

Snape's face was so dark that one might suspect he had African ancestry.

Late at night, as Snape was sorting through and taking stock of his remaining collection with a feeling of grief and indignation, he suddenly discovered a very shallow serpentine relief on the bottom of a shelf that he had never paid attention to before.

"Was there something like this here before?" Snape racked his brains, but found no recollection of it. He hadn't noticed this corner before—who would bother to look at the bottom of a storage shelf?

He gently stroked the snake relief, and a magical thing happened: his storage shelf "grew" a shelf taller. Snape, taking precautions, carefully opened the newly grown drawer at the bottom and found several small boxes inside, their exteriors gleaming as if they had just been placed there yesterday.

He opened the boxes, each containing some seeds, with the names and uses of the seeds written in Latin on the inside of the lids.

Snape's breathing suddenly became heavy: the container was filled with extremely rare or long-extinct magical plant seeds! This was very likely a treasure left over from the Slytherin era!

Suddenly, Snape wasn't so heartbroken about the potion ingredients that had been stolen.

Inside the Slytherin first-year dormitory, Rice was taking stock of his "gains" in the empty room, a smile on his face.

We can only make progress by sharing what we have! Look at these African tree snake skins, they're just gathering dust in your cabinet, why don't you lend them to me? And some of my seeds aren't very useful to keep, but you might find them very useful.

As for some of the institutions within the school, Rice felt it necessary to remove the restriction that only "parrots" could be used, which might benefit everyone.

Today was a very fruitful day for the two Potions Masters of Slytherin House!

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, next update tomorrow morning.

(End of this chapter)