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Chapter 255: The Calm Before the Storm

“The course went smoothly, and he showed us a Banshee, a very interesting Dark creature, always making a shrill, miserable sound. However, there was something inappropriate, even though it didn’t cause actual harm.” Hermione explained. “It was Sirius, he didn’t hide his disgust with Slytherin students in class and deducted them a lot of points, maybe over a hundred…”

“Sirius is not to be blamed, Malfoy was too provocative.” Harry argued, “He messed up in Sirius’s class and didn’t do what he was told to do.”

“I know, but Sirius is still too emotional. He is now a professor and should treat every student as fairly as Professor McGonagall does.” Hermione pouted, which made her look like Professor McGonagall.

“Bloody hell, do you really know what you are talking about?!” Ron shouted in surprise. “A professor who is biased towards Gryffindor is the greatest expectation of my life. Now you tell me you hope he could be fair!”

“Sirius did not do too much. Think about Snape, how he treated everyone before, if it was him…” Harry added.

“Snape deducted at least two hundred points from Gryffindor this morning, and even scared a few girls to tears.” Evan talked about what had happened in the morning Potions class.

“I knew it would be like that. Damn old bat,” Ron said loathing.

In short, because of Snape’s duel with Sirius, their unreserved disgust, and other long-standing grievances, the hostility between Slytherin and Gryffindor reached its highest level ever.

In the following week, the students of the two Houses were all cautious. Everyone walked in the castle in pairs, in fear of any accident.

Although they were on the alert, nothing actually happened.

With the intervention of Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall, the castle had strengthened its management, and neither Harry nor Malfoy had the opportunity to wage their so-called House war.

As time went on, Snape and Sirius also held back, and their deductions to Gryffindor and Slytherin slowly ceased, but Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts became the two favorite and most hated classes for Gryffindor and Slytherin students.

Compared with the heavily differentiated Potions class and the Defence Against the Dark Arts class, Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures class was unexpectedly well received.

At the suggestion of Evan and Hermione, Hagrid chose a salamander fire as the magical creature for the first class of the new semester. He had provided a bonfire full of salamanders for their enjoyment, and they spent an unusually good lesson collecting dry wood and leaves to keep the fire blazing while the flame-loving lizards scampered up and down the crumbling, white blazing logs.

Almost everyone reflected that this was the best lesson Hagrid had ever taught.

A week after the start of school, Ravenclaw and Slytherin played a Quidditch match, Slytherin won the game, but the score was very close.

According to Wood, this was good news for the Gryffindor team, because otherwise, even if Gryffindor won Ravenclaw, they would still be ranked second.

This game allowed everyone to turn their attention to the Quidditch match, and compared to the illusory House war, they found that it might be more practical to score the outcome in this way. Gryffindor lost to Hufflepuff before, but because of Harry’s Firebolt, they were still the favorite team to win the title this year.

Currently, Gryffindor’s Quidditch team had to train at least five times a week.

In the cold wind of January, Harry flew outside for five or six hours almost every day, and he didn’t even have time to finish his homework.

Evan also felt he was in lack of time. He had reached a plateau in his magic research and needed to invest more time. Tom Riddle’s diary gave him guidance last year. Evan had done all the research related to it. And now he was working hard to study the Dark Magic books he had taken from 12 Grimmauld Square.

Those magic books, especially “Secrets of the Darkest Art” were very esoteric and complicated. There were many things that Evan couldn’t understand at all.

He couldn’t ask Dumbledore or Sirius about those Dark magic books. He had to do some research on his own. He spent more and more time in the library, and Madam Pince, the librarian, looked at him more and more strangely.

With the approval of Sirius, most of the books that Evan borrowed and referenced were very old and unpopular magic books, all of which were books in the Restricted Section. These books were not to be in the hands of twelve-year-old wizards. Even adult wizards rarely used them.

The only one busier than Evan was Hermione. She had chosen so many classes that the immense workload finally seemed to be getting to her.

Every night, if she was not studying in the library with Evan, she was definitely to be seen in a corner of the common room, several tables spread with books, Arithmancy charts, rune dictionaries, diagrams of Muggles lifting heavy objects, and file upon file of extensive notes.

Besides Evan, she barely spoke to anybody and snapped when she was interrupted.

“What happened to the two of them?” Ron finally couldn’t help but yell at Harry one night. “I have never seen anyone busier than Evan and Hermione, not even Percy, who is preparing for the Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test. The books they read in two days are much more than I have read in a semester.”

“I don’t know!” Harry didn’t look up. He was finishing a nasty essay on Undetectable Poisons for Snape, “What if we borrowed Hermione’s Potions class homework?”

“We better not, she won’t agree.” Ron looked up again at Hermione. She was barely visible behind a tottering pile of books.

“Hermione is so strange, how can he get to so many classes?” Ron continued. “I heard her talking to Professor Vector, that Arithmancy witch, this morning. They were going on about yesterday’s lesson, but Hermione can’t have been there, because she was with us in Care of Magical Creatures! And Ernie McMillan told me she’s never missed a Muggle Studies class, but half of them are at the same time as Divination, and she’s never missed one of them either!”

Harry certainly knew why, but he had to keep it secret.

He couldn’t talk about the Time-Turner, and he really needed to get on with Snape’s essay at the moment.

Although the confrontation between Snape and Sirius had seemingly calmed down, it was still a raging undercurrent. Harry had to be more careful. At this time, if he had any leads falling into Snape’s hands, it would be hard to see.

“What if we asked Evan for help? He’ll borrow Hermione’s homework for us. She will certainly not reject him.” Harry transferred the topic.

“That’s a good idea, but only if we can find Evan,” said Ron. “In addition to Hermione, I also want to know what Evan is doing these days. He is in the library every night, I saw him there several times. He’s always there with a thick magic book that nobody could understand.”