The days at Hogwarts

The water column watered the bushes and then sprinkled on the grass, drawing an arc in the air that swayed back and forth.

Walk slowly, water slowly, and everything will be fine ahead.

Hermione didn't know how she was bewitched by Loren. She blocked the water outlet with her fingers, and water splashed from one end to the other.

"Higher, higher!" Loren commanded from the side.

Hermione nodded happily.

The water in the pipe soon became taller than the trees, splashing everywhere and creating a slight mist.

The two of them soon had a lot of fun.

Most of the sun had sunk below the horizon, and there was even a shadow of the moon in the sky, but it wasn't completely dark yet.

"time to eat!"

Monica's voice startled them from their joy.

The two looked at the flooded courtyard, looked at each other, and felt a little embarrassed.

Loren felt sorry for having led Hermione astray as soon as he arrived.

Hermione felt embarrassed about her crazy behavior.

"The sun is shining brightly in summer, so we won't need to water the plants tomorrow." Hermione raised her chin and spoke with the attitude of a host.

"That makes sense. Just let it rain."

The two agreed not to mention this matter again, and not to let the Grangers know. After washing their hands, they went into the house one after the other.

Hermione saw the dinner on the table, remembered what they had done before, and said quickly, "I'll be right back!"

She ran to the bathroom, leaving Loren alone.

"Sit here! Treat this place like your own home and do whatever you want." Wendell patted Loren's shoulder and led him to a chair at the dining table.

Loren smiled unnaturally.

Monica brought out the fish and chips from the kitchen and said with a smile, "Just treat this place as your own home."

The Grangers were very enthusiastic, but there was a hint of awkwardness in their enthusiasm.

Monica prepared a very sumptuous dinner, but all of it was homely food, and the taste was just right. The atmosphere at the table was warm yet a little strange.

Loren swallowed a piece of barbecue and looked up to meet Wendell and Monica's eyes.

The two of them quickly looked away again.

Loren ate another piece of pie and looked up.

I didn't meet their eyes this time, but their quick movements of turning their heads left afterimages.

Loren felt that the host was more nervous than he, the guest.

This was indeed the case. Hermione had few friends since she was a child, and she would never invite her classmates to her home. This was the first time that the Grangers had entertained Hermione's classmate, and a classmate with a miserable life.

The two were worried that they had not taken good care of him, and they were also worried that their excessive enthusiasm would make Loren feel uncomfortable. They had agreed to get along naturally with him outside during the day, treating him like Hermione, but they couldn't do that at the dinner table.

Hence the above behavior.

Hermione, who was completely ignorant of the ways of the world, was completely unaware of what was on the table and thought everything tasted good.

Loren picked up a piece of beef with a fork and put it into his mouth. A satisfied smile instantly appeared on his face: "It's delicious!"

Without waiting for Monica's reaction, he chewed it twice and swallowed it, saying, "It's roasted to the perfect tenderness, tender enough without the fishy smell of blood. This requires the right amount of heat."

Monica smiled faintly, while Hermione and Wendell were a little confused.

Loren ate another piece. "It tastes better than the food at Hogwarts. You know wizard food?"

"Just shout out the name of the food and the food you want to eat will appear in front of you."

Hermione stared at Loren blankly. Why was this guy so weird? What was he talking about?

Wendell's eyes widened as he listened to Loren's follow-up.

"Many of the menus at Hogwarts were left by one of the founders, the legendary wizard Hufflepuff. The house-elves are responsible for cooking. They use magic to cook, and the food will cut itself and be put into the pot."

"But I have to say, Ms. Granger, your cooking is ten thousand times more delicious than those magical chefs!"

After these words, Wendell's curiosity and thirst for knowledge were satisfied, and Monica was praised so much that she smiled from ear to ear.

The hint of strangeness mixed in with the warm atmosphere on the table was thrown away and replaced by another kind of strangeness.

Loren could find something to praise in every dish, from the cooking time, the sauce to the choice of ingredients, and all of them could be linked to the magical world.

It hit both Wendell and Monica's hearts at once, and after the meal, they both felt they were treated.

Hermione was stunned. She couldn't understand it, she couldn't understand it at all.

Loren poked the rosemary garnish on his plate with his fork and said in an exaggerated tone: "This rosemary is really used perfectly. The aroma of the spice and the aroma of the oil are perfectly blended, which solves the greasy smell of the oil."

Monica grinned, "If it tastes good, eat more. Treat this place like your own home. Just tell me what you want to eat."

"Tell us more about the process of using magic to peel potatoes." Wendell hadn't touched the tableware for a long time. He just listened to Loren. This was his spiritual food.

Hermione: ...

After the meal, the Grangers were no longer restrained and completely fell in love with Loren.

After dinner, Monica stacked the tableware and smiled like a flower: "You guys watch TV and chat for a while."

Loren took the opportunity to perform magic to wash dishes, which solved Monica's most arduous task.

Monica and Wendell sat with Loren in the living room, with the TV turned to the lowest volume, just as background noise. They mainly wanted to chat with Loren.

To be honest, Hermione felt a little redundant.

This feeling was very strange. Hermione, who had no brothers or sisters, felt for the first time in more than ten years that her parents' love had been taken away.

No matter how she looked at it, she felt that Loren was the Granger family's biological child, and she was the classmate who was invited to visit.

And Loren was still trying to gain favor with the Grangers.

"Your house is so tidy and your meals are so delicious that I almost thought you were a full-time housewife. No, you're better than many full-time housewives." Loren didn't even look at the 480p color TV.

Monica couldn't stop smiling. She covered her mouth with her hands and smiled for a while before saying, "Like Wendell, I am also a dentist who graduated from medical school."

Loren's expression became more sincere. "For a girl to go to medical school in the 70s, that's pretty remarkable."

This touched Monica's heart.

At that time, less than 5% of women who were admitted to medical school could complete their studies. In the 70s, women only accounted for a dozen or so dental professionals, and this figure was supported by dental nurses and dental assistants. Formal dentists like Monica were truly the best of their time.

"Girls will encounter many invisible obstacles when studying in medical school. Some come from society and some come from family." Loren looked serious.

Monica nodded in agreement. "I wanted to give up many times, but..."

The three of them had a great conversation. Loren asked them about interesting things that happened in medical school, guided them to complain about the professors, and used the professors at Hogwarts as an analogy to complain together.

Loren also revealed his situation from the conversation. He was born in a Muggle family, and the orphanage helped him find his grandfather.It's just that Grandpa Bates is still traveling, so it will be a little later before he can go home.

Then the Grangers began to praise Loren for being outstanding, handsome, and having a good character.

Hermione huddled on the sofa, looking invisible, her eyes fixed on Loren's face, which was full of sincerity and joy. It seemed that the conversation with her parents was all from the heart.

Finally, Monica said, "Loren, you can stay here as long as you want."

Hermione felt both happy and strange.

……

Loren changed into the pajamas he brought in his suitcase, lay on the bed and recalled his experiences of the day. In the end, he felt that except for some discomfort in the beginning, his performance afterwards was simply perfect.

After two weeks, it was estimated that the Grangers were considering adopting him.

But adoption is not allowed, and Loren doesn't want to become siblings with Hermione.

"Dong dong dong"

The sound of knocking on the window.

Loren looked outside and saw an owl tapping its beak against the glass.

Who would write to him at this time?

I used the little candy I had left to tip the owl and watched it fly out the window and disappear into the darkness.

Only then did Loren open the letter and read it.

The letter was an urgent one from Dumbledore.

The letter mentioned that Nagini had woken up and something unexpected had happened. The healing effect of the magic stone and the ritual was not permanent, and Nagini said that she had restarted the process of transformation into a snake.

But this process will last for several years, and Nagini is very satisfied and thinks that the effect is already very good.

Dumbledore comforted Loren in the letter, telling him not to worry, Bates's condition was different from Nagini's, and blood-cursed orcs were more stubborn than werewolves. Even if the effect of the ritual was not permanent, it could be used as a periodic treatment method like using wolfsbane potion.

Outside the window, the night is as cool as water.

Loren looked at the night outside the window, folding the letter paper again and again in his hands, and finally crumpling it into a crumpled ball of paper.

He comforted himself that Dumbledore was right, and that it was good to use the ritual as a periodic treatment. The effect of one time would last for several years, which was enough.

But there was a feeling in my heart that I couldn't get rid of or retreat.

He began to recall if there was any loophole in his question to Mary, whether he had not added any qualifiers related to timeliness.

Or maybe it was a problem with the ritual, or a problem with the spell to restore the human form.

Loren couldn't think of a solution, so he took out the fantasy book from his suitcase and immersed himself in it.

In the bright library, Flamel sat leisurely on a stool, with books about bel canto and opera at hand.

"Flamel!"

Loren sat down directly opposite him and began to tell the story: "I found a ritual that uses the properties of the two-horned beast and two-eared grass through the Philosopher's Stone to perfectly achieve the conditions for the use of the human-recovery spell. Dumbledore and I used the method on a blood-cursed orc, but..."

Loren was a little anxious: "The ceremony was obviously perfect, what went wrong?"

Flamel listened to Loren's story quietly, and waited until he calmed down before saying, "I can't find the cause of the problem either. Whether it's the blood curse or the human-recovery curse, these are very mysterious magics. Modern wizards can no longer analyze the mysteries."

"But I can show you a way," Flamel said.

Loren looked up at Flamel.

"Refine your own magic stone, which has the properties of being made from living things!"

The sound echoed in the empty space, clear and loud.

Chapter 126 The next day

When Loren heard this, he felt a little uncomfortable.

Because of the ritual, he had been planning to study happily with Flamel, and maybe he would refine the Philosopher's Stone when he reached middle age.

As a result, after going around in circles, I ended up back where I started and had to go back to the old path of refining the magic stone.

Flamel piled up all the books at hand. "You haven't been very active in your studies recently. I thought you really planned to take a summer vacation and were studying the introduction to bel canto. It turns out that there are other ways to cure werewolf disease."

He looked extremely regretful.

Loren looked at Flamel's actions and asked in confusion, "At school, once I was slacking off in my studies because of Professor Snape, and you looked very anxious."

That was the first time he squeezed out the snake venom. He was so exhausted that he had no energy to study. Flamel's expression was distorted and his voice was distorted with anger.

Loren said: "Why is it that now you seem to want to take a vacation?"

After the books were neatly stacked, Flamel gave a gentle push and the books floated up to the bookshelf.

Flamel explained slowly, "I originally hoped that you could refine the Philosopher's Stone as soon as possible, but then I realized that you are just an underage wizard and cannot do many things. There is no point in being anxious to interpret the book and refine the Philosopher's Stone."

Loren looked at Flamel carefully. His situation was very unusual.

Loren often jokes that Flamel is an artificial intelligence that can be restored to factory settings. This is because although regular magic portraits have the memories and personality of their maker, they will not change once the settings are completed.

Although the subsequent portrait experiences can become memories unique to the portrait, they will not affect the character or concepts.

Just like the portraits of past headmasters in Dumbledore's office, they always quarrel. The headmasters from Gryffindor House always hate the headmasters from Slytherin House. It never changes.

And Flamel really seems to be able to think independently, and memory will affect his views and personality.

"So you plan to have fun with your education?" Loren asked with wide eyes.

Flamel said calmly, "I just realized that I shouldn't force you. Life is long, but good times are always short. You should do the right thing at the right age."