Dumbledore looked at Professor White's aged face, feeling deeply moved.
The founders truly had grown old and drifted apart over the course of their travels.
Everyone at the table was thinking something different.
Trelawney, upon hearing "burned a basin of herbs," nearly burst with excitement—she had been trying to get close to Professor White all this time just to learn the recipe for those herbs!
The ancestor's story? She honestly didn't care much. It was nice to hear, but missing it wouldn't have mattered to her.
No matter how impressive, ancestral glory belonged to the ancestors—not to her. But the herb recipe? That was extremely important.
"Professor White… in the legend, was it ever mentioned… mm, what herbs the Seer Pythia burned?"
She wanted to directly ask what Professor White had ignited in her office that day, but she was a bit too embarrassed to say it outright.
Seeing Professor Trelawney's expectant face, Helga suddenly remembered the conversation the four founders had with Pythia right before parting ways.
...
["By the way, I remember you burned a basin of herbs before doing your divination?" Helga had asked in curiosity. "Do those herbs have some kind of special effect?"
"Actually… not really," Pythia said, scratching the back of her head in embarrassment. "It's a recipe passed down in my family. Most of the time, it's just a little trick to make customers feel that what they paid was worth it. But they do seem to have some calming and sleep-inducing effects. I often fall asleep in the smoke. People say I make prophecies then, but I don't remember any of it."
Helga blinked.
Pythia slapped her forehead, fetched a thin wooden board, and quickly scribbled the herbal recipe onto it with a charcoal pencil.
"Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme???"
Helga stared at the four extremely common herbs written on the board, utterly stunned. If Pythia hadn't said these were used by Seers during divination, she would've thought it was a cooking recipe!
"There are also special requirements," Pythia added. "The four plants must be grown on snow-capped brown mountains, fertilized with graveyard soil, watered with tears, and reaped with a leather sickle. After harvesting, the dried herbs must be tied tightly with heather."
Helga: "…"
"…Alright then."
Half dubious, she accepted the gift Pythia had given her.
"Don't underestimate this recipe. It's been passed down in my family for generations." A touch of pride appeared on Pythia's face. "To prevent it from being lost, we even turned the recipe into a song! It describes the herbs and the methods for planting and harvesting them!"
To prove she wasn't making it up, Pythia even sang the entire song for Helga, leaving an extremely deep impression of the recipe on her.
After that, the four of them continued their journey, while Pythia Trelawney returned to her homeland—Scarborough.]
...
"The Seer used parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. There are also specific planting requirements—I'll write them down for you."
To Trelawney's shock, Professor White had absolutely no intention of making things difficult. She simply took out a roll of parchment and wrote down the herbs used during the prophecy as well as the key points of their cultivation.
For a moment, Trelawney didn't know what to say.
"Come now, eat! If you don't start soon, everything will get cold!" Helga didn't linger on such "small matters" and instead turned her attention to the feast in front of her.
Professor Trelawney felt tears gathering in her eyes, her eyelids turning red.
The atmosphere at the table grew warm and lively. Everyone ate until their stomachs were round before finally putting down their knives and forks.
In the latter half of the feast, they all began opening Christmas crackers one after another. Rhys was no exception—he opened his cracker and found a Santa hat inside.
Amid laughter and cheerful chatter, the feast came to an end. The students, pleasantly dizzy from food and excitement, wandered off toward their respective common rooms. Rhys gave Helga a small wink, then followed the crowd out of the Great Hall.
After escorting Daphne and Astoria back to their room, Rhys stepped out again and headed toward the dungeons—he was going to visit A criminal in prison!
Just kidding.
If Rowena ever found out, he wouldn't see a peaceful day for the next ten years.
At the entrance to the dungeons, he indeed ran into Helga.
"Students wandering around the castle late at night instead of sleeping—Slytherin, minus twenty points!" Helga announced loudly, full of righteous authority. "And Mr. Lint, you will serve detention as punishment!"
Rhys: "???"
A delighted smile bloomed across Helga's face. As far as procedure was concerned, there was absolutely nothing wrong with what she'd just done, and Slytherin really was docked twenty points.
She was a fully authorized professor now—giving detention to a third-year student was as easy as breathing.
Rhys was completely stunned by Hufflepuff's maneuver, and the worst part was… she was absolutely justified in doing it!
Thinking of that, Rhys almost saw stars from sheer frustration.
Happiness and anger must remain in balance: Salazar's happiness decreased and his anger increased—so naturally, Helga Hufflepuff's happiness increased and her anger decreased.
Truly magnificent—the great law of conservation.
Rhys took several deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. He silently added this incident to the "little notebook" in his heart, then acted as if nothing had happened while he opened the seal leading to the deeper parts of the dungeon.
"Professor Whiiiite~ I also opened the underground seal of the school. Are you going to expel me?" he asked in a deliberately sarcastic tone.
"That requires the Headmaster's approval," Helga replied with perfect seriousness—but the curve of her lips was harder to suppress than the lid of a boiling cauldron.
The two of them entered the sealed area one after the other. They intended to visit Rowena during Christmas break, making sure she was actually staying inside the seal obediently and wasn't performing any sort of strange experiment.
They found Rowena quickly—she was completely absorbed in playing with her miniature sandbox figurines.
Compared to their last visit, the sandbox she'd built was even more detailed, and the behavior of the little clay people was even more lifelike. In Rhys's eyes, this was nothing short of a magical miracle—if someone were shrunk and dropped into that sandbox, they could genuinely live an entire lifetime inside it.
They might not even notice anything was wrong and could easily mistake it for having transmigrated into medieval Europe.
"What are you two doing here?" Rowena promptly noticed the arrival of her two old friends.
She found their appearance somewhat unexpected.
"Rowena, Merry Christmas!" Rhys and Helga said in unison, pulling out food boxes filled to the brim with dishes.
_____
12 Chaps ahead at Patreon.com/HornyFBI