As the class bell rang, every Little Wizards held an empty puppet shell without a core.
Kaisen held two… with cores.
The puppet elder brother, born yesterday, welcomed his puppet younger brother today.
He returned to his office on the third floor to resume his research on the semi-finished elemental distiller.
Massive amounts of various elemental crystals and some blocks were placed into the distillation machine, eventually distilled into elemental liquid, which was then channeled into jars.
This was the origin of the small elemental vials he had given to the Little Wizards during class earlier.
At this moment, he was working on the final step of the packaging assembly line. Only when he pulled the lever and the entire machine began to operate silently and precisely did he breathe a sigh of relief and begin to seal it with glass.
The time that followed was the usual period of idleness. With only four classes a week, no matter how busy he was, there wasn't much to do.
...It was time to pick a fight! Pick a fight with Lockhart!
A week later, among the student body of Hogwarts, a campus legend suddenly emerged, though no one knew how.
It was said that the positions of Alchemy Professor and Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor were cursed, and these two Professors could not coexist peacefully.
As the saying goes, when two tigers fight, one must be injured. The same principle applied to the Alchemy Professor and the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.
The two Professors would engage in a magical duel at Hogwarts, and by the end of the term, a victor would be decided. The winner would remain at Hogwarts to teach.
The loser, if lucky, would be injured and leave the school; if unlucky, they would die.
This was something that the younger Little Wizards heard from the older Little Wizards.
After all, before Kaisen came to Hogwarts as the Alchemy Professor, the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor never lasted long. At that time, they already had a slight suspicion, but it was only regarding the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.
It wasn't until Kaisen's first year of employment that, relying on his strong birth chart and magic, he directly caused Professor Quirrell's death that year.
Actually, even then, they hadn't connected the two.
Then time flowed, and in the blink of an eye, it was already Professor Kaisen's second semester at Hogwarts. And the feud of the second semester... or rather, not even the second semester, but just one and a half semesters.
The Alchemy Professor and the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor once again became entangled in a feud.
This conflict was temporarily halted by the defeat of the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.
Then some quick-witted Little Wizards began to connect these two events.
Why did every previous Defense Against the Dark Arts Class Professor at Hogwarts never last long?
The Alchemy Professor was their bane.
Why did the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor in the 1990 school year, the year before Harry Potter enrolled, not suffer any harm, but merely resigned and went home?
Because that year, the Alchemy Professor retired from Hogwarts due to health reasons.
The Alchemy Professor that year didn't even complete a full year, but still, relying on his strong birth chart, he managed to make the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor resign and go home within half a semester.
Time came to the 1991 school year. Professor Quirrell was cursed to death by Professor Kaisen. Although he deserved it, he indeed died.
And then there was this year.
Because Professor Kaisen's birth chart was significantly stronger than the previous Alchemy Professor's, he almost cursed the current Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor to death even before he officially took up the position this year.
Specifically, it referred to burying Lockhart headfirst in the dirt. It was only because it didn't snow or rain; if any passing bird had come to relieve itself, Lockhart would have died right there in the dirt.
Thus, a logically complete and captivating Hogwarts version of a campus legend circulated among every Little Wizards.
Until two pranksters organized it into a document.
Yes, it was the Weasley Twins.
Honestly, their academic papers were never as meticulously put together as this document.
The document contained the causes and effects, along with fabricated Hogwarts school history, various wild tales, and even, more astonishingly, testimonies from ghosts and Professors—which were, of course, also fabricated.
In short, such a document was slipped under the door into the Defense Against the Dark Arts office.
Lockhart picked it up, thinking it was an anonymous love letter from some young Witch.
He used a letter opener to cut open the wax seal, already prepared to bask in the feeling of being pursued and admired, and then he saw this headache-inducing…
Lockhart's face, which was originally a healthy, rosy pink with good color, had somehow turned a frightfully pale, deathly white at this moment.
No matter what, Lockhart was a Ravenclaw. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't be scared by such a fabricated campus Strange Stories.
Unfortunately, to his ill fortune, poor Lockhart was born late; by the time he enrolled, the Defense Against the Dark Arts position had already been cursed by Lord Voldemort.
It was then that he retrieved those dusty memories. In the seven years from his enrollment to his graduation, he had indeed gone through a full seven Defense Against the Dark Arts Professors.
And the Alchemy Professor had truly always been that old man who had just retired two years ago.
"... It can't be such a coincidence, can it?"
Lockhart looked at the parchment letter in his hand, now damp with sweat that had trickled down from his forehead, and couldn't help but contribute to global warming in his own way.
After a full minute of silence, Lockhart slowly stood up. It wasn't any other problem.
It was just that his numb legs finally regained a bit of sensation.
Dragging his legs, which felt like a television screen with no signal and static, poor Professor Lockhart shuffled step by step, grimacing, towards the Headmaster's office.
At this moment, he strongly suspected that Dumbledore had tricked him.
Just as around this time last year, a certain Alchemy Professor had the same thought.
"Dumbledore!"
Lockhart burst into the Headmaster's office, sitting down in the chair opposite Dumbledore.
At this moment, his hair, which he had meticulously gelled that morning, was now damp and plastered tightly to his scalp, adhered by sweat.
He handed the letter to Dumbledore.
"Is this true?"
Dumbledore took the letter and read it from beginning to end...
"You are a Ravenclaw, aren't you? How could you believe such nonsense?"
"But... I've truly never seen a Defense Against the Dark Arts Class Professor last for more than a year," Lockhart said, steeling himself.
"Believe me, Lockhart, this is all nonsense..." Dumbledore said slowly.
"But... how can you expect me to believe you!" Lockhart said, somewhat trembling.
"Oh... don't worry about that. I am the Principal, of course I have a way to make you believe me," Dumbledore said, pulling his Elder Wand from his sleeve.
Ten minutes later...
Lockhart walked out of the Headmaster's office. After Dumbledore's friendly persuasion, he finally believed that the so-called nonsense about Alchemy and Defense Against the Dark Arts Professors clashing was indeed nonsense.
Until, at the corner of the corridor on his way back to his office, he found a black-covered notebook...
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