After unilaterally bidding farewell to the probably-still-fuming Draco Malfoy who was hopefully too preoccupied with cleaning himself up to pursue his attacker, Morris walked all the way to the Great Hall for his much-delayed lunch.
Time had grown rather late by the time he arrived. The usual midday rush had long since passed, and all four house tables were now essentially empty except for a few scattered students still lingering over their meals or studying while eating.
The enchanted ceiling above showed gray afternoon skies, and the Hall felt strangely quiet without the usual hundreds of voices filling the space.
Morris approached the Ravenclaw and picked out what appeared to be a rather nice-looking sandwich from the remaining selection. He took an enthusiastic bite and immediately furrowed his brow in confused disgust.
The sandwich tasted like soap. No wonder no one had touched it despite it sitting there for who knew how long.
Either the house-elves had made some terrible mistake in the kitchen, or someone had sabotaged this particular sandwich as a prank. Either way, it was completely inedible.
Morris distastefully tossed the offensive back onto its plate and wandered over to the Gryffindor side of the Hall, hoping their remaining food options would prove more palatable and less likely to poison him.
At the Gryffindor table, he spotted a familiar cluster of redheads and dark hair. Harry Potter was huddled close together with the Weasley twins, all three leaning in and whispering intensely about something.
The atmosphere around them definitely didn't look very relaxed or cheerful.
Morris sat down casually next to George, helping himself to what appeared to be a normal chicken leg from a nearby platter, and asked with curiosity, "What are you three plotting about so secretively? You all look like someone just cancelled Christmas."
Harry looked up from the hushed conference, and sighed heavily.
"The Quidditch match," he said simply, as if those three words explained everything.
Morris took a bite of chicken, mercifully normal-tasting with no soap flavor and observed, "Doesn't sound like good news from the way you're all looking. What happened? Did the match get cancelled?"
"It's not just bad news," Harry lowered his voice further, leaning in so his words wouldn't carry to other tables. "It's a complete disaster. Snape has been appointed to be the referee for the next Quidditch match—the big game between Gryffindor and Slytherin next week."
Morris's eyebrows rose with surprise. That was unexpected and very problematic.
Fred chimed in with bitter cynicism, "We're worried that Snape will completely favor Slytherin during the match."
Morris couldn't help but laugh at their worried expressions.
"Your worries are completely unnecessary," he said with certainty, taking another bite of chicken. "Because Snape is one hundred percent guaranteed not to be fair or impartial in any way. You can completely count on him being thoroughly biased."
The three Gryffindors stared at him, clearly not having expected such blunt confirmation of their worst fears.
What kind of person was Snape?
In Potions class, even if a Slytherin student farted, he could somehow find a creative reason to add a few points for 'excellent potion vapor distribution' or something equally absurd.
Meanwhile, a Gryffindor could brew a perfect potion exactly according to instructions, and Snape would still find something to criticize and deduct points for. 'Your stirring was too enthusiastic' or 'you breathed too loudly and disturbed others.'
So, Morris was absolutely certain that Snape would favor the Slytherin team completely.
George rested his head on the table in despair.
"Then why even bother playing the match?" he groaned. "Might as well just polish up the Quidditch Cup trophy right now and hand it straight to Slytherin with a nice bow on top. Save everyone the trouble of pretending there's going to be competition."
Just then, Fred's eyes suddenly lit up with mischievous inspiration. He slapped the table with his palm, making the plates jump.
"Wait! I've got an idea!" he announced excitedly. "What if we find a way to send Snape to the Hospital Wing before the match starts? Just for a day or two—nothing permanent. Morris, do you want to join us in this noble endeavor?"
"Hmm?" Morris tilted his head, observing Fred with amused skepticism.
Children, he thought with resignation, your thinking is quite dangerous and likely to get you expelled.
While he appreciated the creative problem-solving approach, he didn't particularly want to get permanently expelled from Hogwarts just yet.
So, he'd have to pass on participating in whatever scheme they were concocting.
Fred continued enthusiastically, clearly working through his plan as he spoke, "You have Draught of Living Death that you brewed, right? I remember you mentioning it. Lend us some! Before the match, we'll find a way to mix it into whatever Snape's drinking—his morning coffee or pumpkin juice or whatever. He'll fall into a deep sleep, wake up the next day completely fine but having missed the match. Problem solved; no permanent harm done!"
It was actually not a terrible plan, Morris had to admit.
"I'd be happy to lend it to you," Morris said, crushing their hopes immediately with his next words. "However, there's a rather significant problem. Snape knows that I can brew Draught of Living Death. If he's mysteriously knocked unconscious by that exact potion, he could very easily trace it back to me as the most likely supplier."
He paused, then added the other fatal flaw,
"Besides, although Draught of Living Death doesn't have much of a taste, given Snape's familiarity with potions and his paranoid nature, he'd almost certainly detect something wrong with his drink before even swallowing it."
Hearing this reasonable analysis, Fred clicked his tongue with regret and disappointment.
"What a shame," he said, deflating. "It was such a good plan too."
No matter what schemes they might devise, the twins would not put Morris in danger.
The Draught of Living Death plan would have to be permanently shelved in the "good ideas that won't work" category.
Harry looked directly at Morris, his expression was somewhat puzzled and surprised.
"Morris, don't you care that Snape's becoming referee?" he asked with curiosity. "I remember there's still a match between Slytherin and Ravenclaw later this term. Won't he be just as biased against your house?"
Morris shrugged with acceptance. "I'm not on the Quidditch team myself, so it doesn't affect me personally. And besides, since Snape becoming referee is already a done deal that we can't change—there's no use in me caring about it or getting worked up over it."
He took another bite of chicken. "Worrying about things you can't control is just wasted emotional energy. Better to accept reality and adapt."
Hearing this pragmatic if somewhat resigned response, Harry and the Weasley twins all sighed simultaneously.
The conversation about Quidditch having reached its depressing conclusion, Morris decided to change subjects.
"Fred, George," he said, getting their attention. "Do you two happen to know of any hidden, spacious rooms anywhere in this castle? Preferably somewhere no one goes regularly?"
"Spacious and hidden?" George repeated.
"Yes," Morris nodded and explained without going into too much detail. "I need a place with no people around where I can conduct some potentially loud magical experiments without being interrupted."
His gate energy crystals were already prepared and accumulated—sufficient quantity for the advancement rituals for both Sparkles and Tin-Tin that would elevate them to the next tier of undead creature.
The current priority was finding an appropriate location where he could safely set up the complex magic circle required for the ritual without risk of discovery or interruption.
Last time he'd performed such a ritual in the clearing by the Forbidden Forest, the magical commotion had been quite substantial. Because the disturbance was too great and too visible, he'd been accidentally discovered by Dumbledore.
Clearly, that location couldn't be used again.
George rubbed his chin thoughtfully, considering various options he and Fred had discovered in their years of castle exploration.
"How about that large empty classroom on the fifth floor corridor?" he suggested after a moment. "There's nothing inside and is pretty spacious. Fred and I hid two large boxes of premium Dungbombs there last term, and no one's discovered them in months. Seems pretty secure."
Morris winced slightly and sighed with sympathy.
"So those Dungbombs were yours," he said. "I was wondering who'd hidden them there. Let me remind you of something you apparently don't know yet—just two nights ago, I personally watched Filch drag both boxes away from that room."
"!!"
Fred and George's faces changed simultaneously. Both twins sprang up from their chairs with such force that they nearly knocked them over.
They left behind a quick "We need to go check Filch's office" and rushed out of the dining hall in a panic.
Morris watched them go with amusement, shook his head at their predicament, and turned his attention to Harry, who remained at the table.
"Oh, are you still eating that cake?" Morris asked, eyeing the untouched slice of what appeared to be excellent chocolate cake sitting on a plate in front of Harry.
Harry blinked, seeming to return from his worried thoughts about Snape and Quidditch, and looked down at the cake as if noticing it for the first time.
"No, go ahead," he said, pushing the plate toward Morris with complete disinterest. "I'm not hungry."
His mind was clearly completely occupied with thinking obsessively about how to deal with Snape as referee. He really had no appetite for dessert.
Morris accepted the plate gratefully and began eating the excellent cake while trying to offer some consolation and perspective.
"Relax a bit, Harry," he said between bites. "Try to maintain some optimism here. At least Snape is only the referee, not an actual player on the Slytherin team. He can't exactly pick up the Quaffle himself and throw it directly into your goal repeatedly. There are limits to how much he can affect the outcome."
Harry forced out a bitter, unconvinced smile.
Actually, he thought privately, he genuinely did think Snape would do exactly that if he could get away with it.
Moreover, what Harry worried about most wasn't even obvious biased refereeing or unfair calls.
After all, during the previous Quidditch match, Snape had already attempted something far worse—he'd cast a curse on Harry's broomstick mid-flight, nearly making him fall from the sky to his death. Only Hermione's quick thinking and counter-curse had saved him.
In the next match, with Snape having both motive and opportunity as referee, there would definitely be even more terrifying attempts waiting for Harry!
The man might actually try to kill him this time.
But Harry didn't say these dark thoughts aloud.
After finishing the chocolate cake, Morris bid farewell to the still-worried Harry and left the Great Hall.
Taking advantage of the afternoon's free time before dinner, he decided to continue his search around the castle, looking for a place suitable for setting up an advancement ritual magic circle.
If he really couldn't find anything appropriate inside the castle itself, he'd have to resort to picking a time probably very late at night or very early morning to sneak into the Forbidden Forest to complete the ritual.
So Morris began wandering with aimlessly through Hogwarts's network of corridors, staircases, and passages.
Although he had lived at Hogwarts for several months now and explored quite widely during his free time, this massive castle seemed like it could never be fully explored or completely mapped. There were always new rooms, new passages, new secrets to discover.
He slowly paced along a particularly narrow corridor on the fourth floor that few people seemed to walk.
Morris carefully checked various rooms along this corridor, opening doors and poking his head inside to assess each space.
Most rooms turned out to be either completely filled with discarded items like broken furniture, old textbooks, damaged magical equipment, the accumulated junk of decades or so small they could barely fit a single person standing, let alone a complex magical circle.
None met his requirements for space, privacy, and emptiness.
Just as Morris was about to give up on this particular corridor and head toward the next section of the castle to continue his search, the scene visible through the doorway of the very last room made him stop abruptly in his tracks.
A strange-looking little creature was curled up in a tight ball next to a pile of old, dirty mops and dented metal buckets, sleeping soundly with soft snoring sounds.
The creature was approximately one meter tall quite short by human standards, coming up to perhaps Morris's waist. It was gaunt and thin to the point of appearing malnourished, with visible ribs showing through tight skin. Its entire body was covered in wrinkled, leathery skin that had a grayish-brown tone, like old parchment or dried leather.
Most distinctively, it wore what appeared to be a colorful tea towel wrapped around its body like primitive clothing.
A house-elf, Morris immediately identified with certainty.
Although he knew from his reading that many house-elves lived and worked at Hogwarts, this was actually the first time he had seen one in person.
Morris stood in the doorway and observed the sleeping house-elf with genuine interest and curiosity.
Then he spoke aloud. "Hey, wake up."
The elf's thin body trembled at the sound of a voice, as if electrocuted. It slowly opened enormous tennis-ball-sized eyes that seemed far too large for its small face, blinking with confusion and looking around with disorientation.
When its huge eyes finally focused on Morris standing in the doorway, the elf let out a short, shrill scream of absolute horror as if Morris were some terrible monster.
"Aaaah! Bad Bobo! Lazy, shameful, worthless Bobo!" the elf immediately began wailing. "Sleeping during work hours! Caught sleeping by the honorable young master sir! Bobo doesn't deserve to live! Bobo should stuff itself into the toilet and flush itself away! Bad, bad Bobo!"
Without any further word, the house-elf named Bobo immediately began banging its own head against the hard stone floor.
Morris fell completely silent for two seconds.
Then he decisively turned around and lifted his foot to leave the room as quickly as possible without actually running.
Although he had already briefly learned about house-elves' personalities, tendency toward self-punishment, and extreme servitude from various books he'd read, he still wanted to say one thing based on this direct observation—
Completely neurotic.
When dealing with this kind of bizarre, self-harming situation, Morris firmly believed the best and most sensible approach was to simply ignore it and remove himself from the vicinity.
However, just as Morris was about to step completely out the door and escape this uncomfortable scene, he suddenly felt an unexpected physical resistance preventing his movement.
His leg wouldn't move forward properly.
He looked back with confusion to see that Bobo had somehow already scrambled across the floor and was now kneeling by his feet, clutching desperately at his thigh.