Hogwarts: From Little Wizard to White Lord

So happily decided!

Harry must be very happy.

"Ah!"

Harry had been sneezing non-stop since the morning of the first day of January.

He went to the hospital wing early in the morning, but Madam Pomfrey said he didn't have a cold.

This made Harry anxious, and Ron told him: "In the wizarding world, sneezing is not a good thing. It means someone is talking about you."

Then they looked at each other, and simultaneously thought of their socially unsuccessful experience last night. They quickly turned their heads away to avoid embarrassingly digging holes in the floor.

Today is the last day of the Christmas holiday.

In the morning, Harry and Ron used all their concentration and strength to finally finish writing (copying) their homework. They decided to cherish their last free time and have some fun.

Unfortunately, the weather was against them and a blizzard started blowing outside the castle again.

In the end, they could only huddle in the common room and waste the last half day of vacation.

Ron took out the wizard chess, but he didn't play himself. He had been playing against Harry for more than ten days during the holidays, and he was almost sick of playing chess - playing chess with a novice was a very painful experience.

Until Hermione came back.

It turns out that no one is omnipotent. Even someone as smart as Hermione has areas that she is completely weak at.

Sitting around the fireplace, Harry and Hermione, two terrible chess players, were playing chess to a standstill, sweating profusely.

Harry's queen had her hair disheveled and was beating the king violently. The two bishops were riding on the chariot and rampaging across their own chessboard. They didn't care at all even though Harry was shouting at the top of his lungs.

The two knights on Hermione's side completely ignored the enemy pawns right in front of them and drew their swords to hack at each other, cutting off arms and legs. Then they suddenly reconciled and prepared to crawl back to cause trouble for the chess players, because the excited Hermione cursed them as cowards.

Ron was watching with such a jolt that he almost had a heart attack: "Merlin - why haven't you made any progress? If you had made the right move just now, all your key pieces wouldn't have betrayed you!"

"Ron, shut up!" x2

In the end, the game ended in a draw between the two - it was impossible to go any further, Harry's queen killed the king, and the two disabled knights on Hermione's side suddenly changed their minds halfway up the game, and staggered to kill both the king and the queen. They decided to revolt.

After ending this torturous game, Hermione pushed the chessboard away and decided to ban this entertainment activity from then on.

Harry was unconvinced and wanted to continue.

Hermione quickly changed the subject. She looked around quietly and asked, "Has there been no news from the black-robed man during the Christmas holidays?"

Harry and Ron shook their heads: "No!"

"I wonder if Dumbledore has any suspicions about anyone..."

Hermione frowned worriedly. She was not as carefree as Harry and Ron. The thought that there was a malicious dark wizard hiding among the professors' team made her feel uncomfortable.

But she had considered all the professors during her vacation, and most of them were ordinary wizards who had worked at Hogwarts for a long time.

She had even asked Professor McGonagall about it, mainly asking people who seemed to her to be mysterious and suspicious, such as Shelby Trelawney, the Divination professor.

Hermione still remembered Professor McGonagall's expression at the time. She frowned deeply, as if trying to hold back something as she said, "Miss Granger, you know, I'm not one to speak ill of others, but Shelby...she's really not the candidate I'd expect for the Divination professor."

"You mean she can't predict the future and is a liar?"

"No, she can predict the future, but she's also a... well, I wouldn't say a liar. She just likes some more dramatic performances..."

Professor McGonagall's defense was halting.

Hermione didn't quite understand.

But at least she found out that Professor Trelawney did not seem to have the powerful magical ability of the "black robe man".

Although she was reluctant to admit it, after thinking it over, Hermione realized that...

The only person who best fits the characteristics of a man in black robes is Snape!

She asked Harry, "Has Professor Snape been giving you any trouble lately?"

"Hermione, we're on holiday, how can he still bother me?"

Ron continued, "He seemed very busy recently. At least, we rarely saw him before Christmas... Come to think of it, Vaughn was acting very secretive during that time. Could they be working together on the Wolfsbane Potion?"

Hermione thought for a moment and said to Harry, "Harry, you're still studying Occlumency with Vaughan, right? I think you should find a chance to ask Vaughan if he's noticed anything unusual about Professor Snape... Why do you look like that?"

In fact, if she hadn't mentioned it, Harry would have forgotten about it today...

He really didn't know how to face Vaughn.

Harry and Ron exchanged a look, Ron's expression sympathetic.

Hermione looked at them suspiciously: "Are you hiding something from me?"

The two shook their heads repeatedly: "No, absolutely not!"

Ron pinched Harry's arm: "Harry, you're going to find Vaughn, right?"

"You..." Harry's eyes widened after being betrayed by his best friend. However, facing Ron's pleading and threatening gaze, Harry, fearing that Ron would explode and drag him down with him, had no choice but to swallow his anger and nodded: "Okay, I'll ask him tonight."

Hermione temporarily put aside her suspicions about the two men's strange behavior and said, "You ask first. If there is no result, I will find a chance to talk to Vaughan."

That's how it was decided.

At night, although Harry tried his best to delay, Ron was afraid that if he continued to delay, Hermione would find the boys' dormitory, so he pushed him out of the Gryffindor common room.

"Ronald! You're such a good friend!"

Harry kicked the door angrily a few times, which made the Fat Lady scold him so much that Harry had to run away quickly to avoid being besieged by the portraits.

I jogged all the way to the Room of Requirement and found that Vaughn had already arrived.

It was still the same cozy little house suitable for reading. Vaughn was holding a large book, "A Journey Through the Past and Present of Memory Magic", which Harry remembered.

He greeted awkwardly, "Hi, good evening, Vaughn..."

To his relief, Vaughn didn't laugh at him. Instead, he casually pointed to the sofa across from him and said, "Good evening, Harry. Sit down."

Harry sat down, determined to quickly ask the questions Hermione had asked him to, to distract Vaughn from bringing up yesterday's events.

"Vaughn, you and Snape have been together all the time. Have you noticed that he..."

To his surprise, before he could finish his words, Vaughn, who was flipping through a book, replied, "Are you still guessing he's the man in black?"

Harry scratched his head. "Well, we thought about it for a long time, and we still think Snape is the most suspicious."

Vaughn shook his head, but this time he didn't defend the professor. Instead, he said, "I can help you investigate, but how are you going to repay me?"

"Repay?"

Vaughan smiled brightly. "I've made some progress in my mastery of Legilimency. Now I can try to modify memories. Harry, would you mind giving me a trial?"

Harry: "..."

He wants to say that he really cares about it, but is that okay?

The vacation is over, the crazy and free time is gone, and the little wizard is facing another hellish study life.

The professors, who had been idle for half a month, seemed to be fed up. On the first day after the holiday, they assigned a large amount of homework, using this method to force the little wizards to break away from the casual atmosphere.

The results can be said to be very significant.

The little wizards who were often seen playing and fighting in the courtyard a few days ago are becoming fewer and fewer. Now almost all of them are holding textbooks, muttering spells with stupid looks on their faces.

Or hide in the library and sweat over the paper.

In such a tense atmosphere, a rumor quietly spread - the famous Harry Potter was crazy!

It is said that many people have seen that sometimes when he was writing a paper, he would suddenly raise his index finger and touch his hair in a very charming way.

Some people also saw that when he was eating in the restaurant, he would occasionally make frog-like sounds while eating.

Neville swore that he had seen Harry imitating frog jumps in the bathroom.

At first it was just some unfounded rumors, until the Potions class on Friday of the first week of the new year.

Professor Snape, as usual, floated around Harry, spewing venom and sarcasm.

However, Harry, the poor student who usually endured his anger, was like a madman that day, or rather, like a different person. He answered Professor Snape's deliberately difficult questions fluently, and even imitated Snape's tone of mockery at the end -

"Severus Snape! The famous Potions Professor, that's all he asked? Tsk tsk, I really feel sorry for these students. Meeting a mediocre and incompetent teacher at the beginning of their student career is the greatest misfortune of their lives!"

Everyone in the classroom at that time, except Vaughn Weasley who was absent from class, both Gryffindor and Slytherin were stunned.

They watched Snape's face turn from white to blue, and then from blue to black.

No one expected that Snape, who had facial paralysis, could have such wonderful expressions.

The final result can be imagined. Although Harry was quickly frightened and apologized to Snape in panic as if he woke up from a dream, Snape was still furious and deducted 30 points from Gryffindor.

Of course, no one in Gryffindor blamed Harry. Hermione would earn back the mere 30 points.

They just felt sorry for the poor guy.

"He must have been driven crazy by the heavy workload," Hufflepuff student Justin Finch-Fletchley swore. "I've seen students like that in Muggle schools. You know, before I received my acceptance letter to Hogwarts, I was preparing for Eton College."

This was the umpteenth time he had spoken of Eton College, and he would bring up any subject.

Even if no one knows what it is.

"Potter might be cursed!" During a meal, Malfoy and his followers ran to the Gryffindor table and said maliciously, "A cruel dark wizard has cast a curse on him, and his madness has only just begun. Potter, you'd better be careful, because one day he might really turn into a frog, or a raving lunatic!"

Only Hermione and Ron knew what Harry had been through.

On Friday night, Harry, exhausted, came to the Room of Requirement again.

He looked so weak that he seemed to have been played with.

He looked at Vaughn with lifeless eyes: "Women, frogs, an arrogant potion genius... I'm really tired, Vaughn, what kind of false memories do you want to make up for me? I don't care!"

He was indeed tired. No one could get away with angering Snape.

Harry was left in the Potions office all afternoon, cleaning up the mountains of potions materials for Snape and having to endure his incessant venomous chatter.

He now felt like his head was about to explode, and at the same time he regretted very much why he did not firmly resist Vaughn's proposal a few days ago.

Vaughan said nothing, but placed his wand against Harry's forehead.

Harry didn't move, letting him pull out a strand of silver thread from his head.

After looking at the silver thread for a moment, Vaughn threw it away and shook his head. "Harry, your willpower is too weak. Normally, after practicing for so long, these false memories shouldn't bother you anymore."

"Blanking your mind, or focusing on heavy schoolwork, or useless thoughts, these are all techniques of Occlumency. They can ensure that you are not affected by false memories. Why can't you persist?"

"I……"