Today was Sunday, the day when the owls delivered the mail in droves.
Inside the Hogwarts Great Hall, students sat in clusters, some reading, some doing homework, and some practicing magic. No one dared to play wizard chess or read comics.
The reason for this was that the Ravenclaws' frantic practice of wandless magic had gotten the attention of the professors of the other three Houses. So, faced with this intense competitive pressure, the professors were forced to assign more homework to their students, causing a palpable wave of resentment to rise from the students and hover near the ceiling of the Great Hall.
At the Gryffindor table, the students had afternoon tea of fruit and pumpkin cake in front of them, but they had no appetite.
Professor McGonagall, the head of their house, was a proud and strict woman, and the amount of homework she had assigned had left the students groaning.
At the moment, Seamus Finnigan, the resident "explosions expert," was practicing magic. He was holding his wand and muttering a spell that no one could understand at a copper goblet. The way he was waving his wand, looking like he was about to break it, made everyone feel anxious for him.
"Eye of rabbit, harp string hum, turn this water into rum…"
"What is Seamus trying to do?" Harry whispered to Ron, who was sitting next to him.
"Turn it into rum. Yesterday, he managed to turn it into a weak tea, but…"
Before Ron could finish his sentence, there was a loud bang! and a flash of light. Hermione, who was sitting next to Seamus, her eyes wide, was startled. Thick black smoke rose from the goblet, and the pungent smell of gunpowder filled the air.
"Hahahaha…" The surrounding students laughed as Seamus was covered in soot from his own spell. Just then, a flock of owls flew in through the windows in the ceiling of the Great Hall.
Hoot! Hoot! Coo! Coo!
Each owl made a different sound. They were all carrying items of various sizes in their talons and flew unerringly to their owners, dropping the packages in front of them.
Pigwidgeon, the Weasleys' owl, delivered a letter and a newspaper to Ron. Ron picked up the paper and, seeing nothing of interest, threw it aside. Harry, however, was intrigued and picked it up. "Ron, can I take a look?"
Ron nodded. Harry untied the white string on the paper. He scanned the contents and saw a huge headline on the front page: Gringotts Break-in, A Security Lapse at Gringotts. Below the headline was a large moving picture of a group of goblins arguing in front of an empty vault.
"Vault 713?!" Harry exclaimed, seeing the familiar number on the paper. He tapped Ron on the shoulder. "Hey, Ron, look at this. This vault that was broken into is the one Hagrid took me to! He was so secretive about what was inside that he wouldn't let me ask."
"What's so strange about that? My mum does the same thing when she takes me to our vault," Ron said with a dismissive shrug. "She always makes me stand outside and not go in, as if she's afraid I'll find out how much money we have."
"I'm just curious why this news is only being reported a month later."
"Don't think about it too much. Look, Neville got a Remembrall!" Ron motioned with his eyes to the direction opposite them.
"A Remembrall? What's that?" Harry asked, curiously looking at the round ball in Neville's hand.
"I know! I read about it in a book. If the smoke inside the Remembrall turns red, it means you've forgotten something," Hermione explained.
"But I don't remember forgetting anything!" Neville was confused, watching the smoke inside his Remembrall slowly turn red as Hermione explained what it was.
"Neville, let me see!" Ron was suddenly interested and reached out to take the Remembrall to play with. But when he held it, the smoke inside was still red. Ron scratched his head and looked around in confusion. "Did I forget something?"
"Let me see, too!" The Remembrall passed from Ron to Harry, but the smoke inside remained unchanged. The red smoke was like an eerie blood-red cloud, obscuring its secret from the students. Just as the Gryffindors were wondering what was wrong, the answer came to them.
Suddenly, a commotion erupted from one side of the Great Hall. A small, blurry shape whizzed through the air, knocking a poor owl out of the sky. It continued on its trajectory and hit a hanging fire brazier on the wall, then ricocheted off of it, hitting the cup in front of Fred with a ding. After spinning around in midair for a dozen or so times, it finally slammed into the table.
With a painful scream, Fred was knocked unconscious by the cup. The students stared in shock and horror at the quivering fork sticking out of the table, feeling a chill run down their spines.
"I think I know what you all forgot. In fact, it's not just you; we all forgot that we shouldn't be so relaxed doing our homework without being on guard against those lunatics from Ravenclaw!" Seamus said in a daze.
It turned out that a Ravenclaw had lost control of a wandless spell at the Ravenclaw table, causing a fork to go flying. A moment later, the Hufflepuff Healing Volunteer Squad happily carted two injured students out of the Great Hall.
Why two? Because in addition to Fred, the Ravenclaw who had caused the incident had half of his ear torn off by the fork. In fact, his target had only been a single grape next to the fork.
As Madam Pomfrey prepared for more patients, Dumbledore was in his office, massaging his temples. He had been away on official business with the International Confederation of Wizards, as a very serious situation had arisen in the East, forcing him to remain there for half a month to stabilize the situation.
He had only returned late the previous night. But to his surprise, upon his return, he found that Hogwarts, which he had been running for so many years, had suddenly gone a little haywire.
The various accidents that the Ravenclaws were causing every day were one thing, but the comic book had him completely baffled. He didn't even have to guess who the author was. He had returned yesterday to find the comic on his desk. He learned from the portraits of previous Hogwarts headmasters that Professor McGonagall had put it there.
At first, Dumbledore hadn't paid much attention to it, but after he read the contents just now, he immediately understood why his old friend had left such a childish thing in his office. To be honest, Dumbledore thought that if the main character's name could be changed, he would be more than happy to send this rare bit of entertainment to Nurmengard.
But…
"Victor Dreyar, who exactly is your teacher? And what is your purpose in provoking him?" Dumbledore frowned and sighed repeatedly. Then he asked the portraits on the wall, "Where is Dreyar now?"
"Him? He's flying around the school right now!" This answer gave Dumbledore an even greater headache.
The scene returned to the Great Hall.
After a brief period of chaos, and following repeated warnings from Professor McGonagall, Ravenclaw had 10 points docked, and the Ravenclaws reluctantly stopped their wandless practice for the time being.
The students continued to diligently work on their assignments from the professors. But this peace didn't last long, and it was soon broken by a voice that was familiar to everyone.
"Ahahahahaha!" Peeves suddenly burst out of a wall in the Great Hall and laughed maniacally, wiggling his bottom in the direction he came from. "Can't catch me! Can't catch me!"
Oh, here we go again… The students all looked up at Peeves and shook their heads in unison. Professor McGonagall, sitting at the high table, looked both angry and resigned.
The reason for their reactions wasn't Peeves himself, because he hadn't been causing much trouble lately. It was the person who was chasing him.
"Peeves, stop right there!"
A voice that was now very familiar to all of Hogwarts rang out.
Victor flew into the Great Hall through the owl window and angrily shouted at Peeves in midair, "Peeves, don't run! I'm going to catch you today, no matter what!"
With that, a silver magic circle flashed in his hand and flew toward Peeves at an incredible speed. But just as Victor's hand was about to touch Peeves, Peeves's body suddenly became translucent, and Victor's hand went right through him. At the same time, Peeves splattered two ripe tomatoes onto Victor's head.
"Black hair turns red hair, hahahaha!" Peeves laughed, pointing at Victor, who was covered in tomato pulp. Then he phased through a wall and disappeared.
Victor, flying too fast to stop, slammed headfirst into the wall. He was like a human-shaped hand-held pancake smeared with tomato sauce, sticking to the wall and slowly sliding down, leaving a long red streak behind him.
"Nice!"
"Ugh…"
Some of the students pumped their fists in celebration, while others sighed. The ones who cheered had won a bet and were excused from their homework. The ones who sighed had lost their bet and now had double the homework.
The chase between Victor and Peeves had now become a daily occurrence at Hogwarts. It all started a little over two weeks ago, after Victor got a clue about the founders' legacies from the Sorting Hat. Yes, the person the Sorting Hat had said knew all of Hogwarts' history was Peeves!
Rewind to a little over two weeks ago. Victor found Peeves one sunny morning, just as he was about to pull a prank, and asked him about the founders' legacies. But to Victor's surprise, when Peeves saw him with the diadem of Ravenclaw, he suddenly shouted, "No! Not yet! You can't catch me!" With that, he turned and flew away, disappearing down the corridor.
At first, Victor thought Peeves was just playing a prank and didn't want to answer his question. So, he decided to use force, to catch Peeves and deal with him later.
Victor initially thought that Peeves would be easy to catch because he wasn't like other ghosts; he had a physical body. But as soon as he started to act, Victor realized something was wrong. He discovered that Peeves was not a ghost, or perhaps he was a special kind of ghost.
Victor found that Peeves had the ability to freely switch between being a ghost and a physical body, similar to the Kamui ability from Naruto, where he could make his body intangible or tangible at will.
When he was intangible, Peeves could pass through any object, and no matter how fast Victor was, he couldn't catch him. And even if he was caught, Peeves could immediately become intangible and escape from Victor's grasp.
Faced with this situation, Victor chased Peeves for more than a week, trying all sorts of methods, but he was unable to catch him.
Finally, he gave up the chase and started poring over every book about ghosts in the Hogwarts library and the Ravenclaw common room.
It wasn't until last night that Victor created a new spell using his Origin magic, a spell that might help him catch Peeves. But it was clear that Victor had failed. The spell had no effect on Peeves.
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