novelnext Chapter 121 Duel Club [2 chapters combined into 14K]
Chapter 121 Duel Club [2 chapters combined into 14K]
Chapter 121 Duel Club [Two-in-One 4K Chapter]
dong dong dong...
As Lockhart's voice faded from the office, Kane walked in.
"Kane, you've come at the perfect time. I just happened to have something to say to you." Lockhart walked out from the direction of the bedroom, sat back in his office chair, and held a piece of parchment in his hand.
He handed the parchment to Kane, who glanced at it; it was a proposal about a dueling club.
"Hmm, you? The Duel Club? With whom?" Kane glanced at Lockhart, then looked up and asked in a low voice.
"Of course it's your duel. I'm just acting as the host. Of course, I'll need a little help from you." Lockhart said, then looked apologetically at Kane.
"Someday I might have a little sparring session with you."
"Ah, I get it, adding a little water is fine, right?" Kane said, raising an eyebrow.
"No, I need you to give it your all," Lockhart said with extreme confidence.
"Um?
Seeing Kane's puzzled look, Lockhart shrugged: "After all, I've had so much private tutoring from Dumbledore, I should have made some progress by now."
Kane nodded. Indeed, Lockhart's performance in class these days was not as good as during the holidays. But was Dumbledore's extra help really that effective? How come he didn't know?
Or is it...?
"Wasn't Dumbledore the only one who taught you those things?"
As soon as Kane finished speaking, a bead of sweat suddenly slid down Lockhart's forehead.
"Uh... how could that be?"
Kane shrugged. Well, Lockhart really does have a master backer. Although he doesn't know who this master is, well... why should he be curious about other people's privacy?
As for Lockhart's dueling club... Lockhart himself said that if he were to give it his all...
"Then why don't you challenge an older wizard to a duel? Would you be proud to win against a second-year wizard?"
"Of course it's not just you. I've decided to beat up everyone from first year to seventh year so they'll know what a professor really is!" Lockhart's expression was so exaggerated that he didn't look like a normal person.
Kane's lips twitched and he nodded. Since Lockhart had asked for it, he naturally agreed to do so without hesitation. Only then did he begin to explain the real purpose of his visit to the office.
"Do you still have that black notebook that you showed me before, the one that was confiscated from Ginny Weasley?"
"She suddenly came to me during dinner today, asking me to ask you to help her get the notebook back. Maybe that notebook holds some special sentimental value for her." Lockhart shook his head decisively after Kane finished speaking.
"I sold it to Flourish and Blotts as waste paper along with the corrected assignments."
"Ah, that's a bit of a shame." Kane shrugged helplessly and left Lockhart's office.
Back in the Gryffindor common room, Kane told Ginny that Lockhart had sold the notebook to Flourish and Blotts. Ginny's expression immediately changed; she looked as if her best friend had been sold to work in the mines in Africa, looking as pitiful as could be.
Of course, Kane didn't know how to comfort her. Should he find her a new notebook? That probably wouldn't make up for the emotional void in Ginny's heart.
Given this special situation, Kane tentatively believes that the possibility of it being cured by a couple of naps is not very high, and he can only leave it to time to heal.
The announcement of the extended holiday appeared on the Gryffindor common room bulletin board the following day.
It seems Dumbledore doesn't plan to resume classes until the glasses are finished and delivered to Hogwarts. Well, the young wizards are quite happy, but their happiness didn't last long before Dumbledore received an urgent letter from Lupin via owl.
It's time for Kane to set off.
Soon, Kane, summoned by the origami cranes to Headmaster's office, received a thick wad of pounds that Dumbledore pulled from under his desk...
"Hiss... Dumbledore, tell me the truth, does the Dumbledore family have two vaults?" Kane asked quietly.
"This is all money I've saved up. Give it to Lupin for me. After all, you've obtained the Shadow Codex, so Lupin naturally needs to compensate you. I don't believe he'll let a little wizard like you pay for everything." Dumbledore hesitated after saying this.
"If he asks where the money came from, say it was reimbursed by the Ministry of Magic. Don't say it has anything to do with me, and remember that employment contract."
.
Kane nodded, took the pounds, pulled the mantis shrimp out of the little pumpkin's mouth, and straddled it: "Don't worry, I'm going now."
As a streak of black light shot out of the Headmaster's office, Dumbledore smiled and began to imagine how vibrant and dynamic the Defense Against the Dark Arts class would be next year.
In a small alley in the corner of that familiar suburban manufacturing plant.
Kane pulled a thick wad of Galleons from his pocket and handed it to a middle-aged man with a weathered face and tattered clothes.
After receiving the money, the man took out a small cardboard box from his pocket.
"All three hundred goggles are here. You can get them out using the Curse Stop."
Kane nodded, then took a letter out of the little pumpkin's mouth and handed it to Lupin.
The latter glanced at it and said, "I won't accept this. You may not know what's going on with me, but Dumbledore knows that I am not a qualified candidate to be the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor."
"Hmm... well, that's not my job. I'm only responsible for delivering messages. But I still have to say, how bad can the Defense Against the Dark Arts professors at Hogwarts be these days?" Kane finished speaking, then mounted his broom again and disappeared into the alley in an instant.
Back at Hogwarts, Kane and Dumbledore first removed the protective glasses. Actually, thanks to the factory's decent craftsmanship, the glasses were quite well made.
From the outside, they are a pair of sunglasses that are a bit wide and a little thick, with an overall classic and elegant look. They may have used an unknown coating or a special lens assembly method.
Kane tried on the sunglasses and could clearly feel that what he was seeing was secondhand... or even thirdhand, but the overall field of vision and clarity were not significantly affected.
"Well, overall it looks pretty cool, but I wonder if it'll look like a gangster school when all the professors and junior wizards wear them." Kane looked up at Dumbledore, who was also wearing sunglasses, and said with a bit of a laugh.
"That's not within our scope of consideration. You can leave now, Kane. Prepare for tonight's dinner party, and we'll distribute these glasses then." Dumbledore said, waving a mirror in front of him. He looked at the cool old man wearing sunglasses in the mirror and nodded with satisfaction.
Yes, I really should take a picture of myself looking like this and put it in the newspaper so that all my old friends can see it.
By dinnertime, all the young wizards had come to the Great Hall with their prefects. This time, Dumbledore was not sitting in the professors' chair, but instead appeared behind his golden owl podium, wearing a pair of very old-fashioned sunglasses that looked somewhat like those of a gangster.
He hadn't listened too closely to Dumbledore's speech, but he got the gist of it: the mysterious dark magic creature that had petrified Filch had been found.
Basilisk.
A word that sent chills down the spines of most young wizards and all professors came out of Dumbledore's mouth.
Just as most of the young wizards were about to pick up their pens and paper to send letters home to ask for leave, another piece of good news came from his mouth.
By probing Lady Lorris's memories, they have now found a way to prevent the basilisk from dying.
Next, Dumbledore took out his wand from his pocket and waved it gently. One by one, sunglasses flew from all directions and landed in the hands of each young wizard.
According to Dumbledore, wearing these special sunglasses can weaken the death magic of the basilisk's eyes, turning your fate from death to petrification.
Upon hearing this, the young wizards quickly put on their sunglasses.
In just a moment, the atmosphere at Hogwarts changed completely.
At this moment, Harry noticed that Kane's face was still blank, and he was about to raise his hand to remind Dumbledore that he had overlooked Kane.
Hermione, on the other hand, had absolutely no other thoughts. Having played the clown so many times before, she knew all too well what kind of terrible things Kane would do to her.
Sure enough, as Kane took out the magic mirror he had acquired long ago from his pocket, Hermione immediately felt a strange sense of satisfaction, as if she had predicted a question from the college entrance exam.
That makes sense!
In an instant, good news and bad news turned the atmosphere of the entire hall into a mess. The bad news was that there was a basilisk monster in the castle that could kill people as easily as drinking water and whoever it glared at would die. The good news was that the basilisk monster could no longer kill people by glaring at them. If it wanted to kill someone, it could only do so by biting them to death.
Therefore, nowadays every young wizard is prepared to do some abstract, suicidal things if they unfortunately encounter a basilisk, such as deliberately looking into the basilisk's eyes and petrifying themselves in order to save their lives.
To be fair, this can be considered a kind of living towards death; Professor McGonagall's provocation at the beginning of the semester didn't work.
The other two magic schools? Durmstranger Busbarton? Ha! Little Doyle.
Could their Defense Against the Dark Arts class also hide a basilisk in the school castle and play a survival game where mistakes mean certain death with the young wizards?
Soon after the dinner ended, Dumbledore announced the official end of the three-day holiday, with classes resuming as usual starting tomorrow.
Then, prompted by Lockhart's frantic gaze, Dumbledore reluctantly revealed another piece of news.
Professor Lockhart, the most dedicated, excellent, and wonderful professor among the young wizards, has reopened a dueling club at Hogwarts. The dueling is scheduled for this Friday afternoon, and he hopes all the young wizards will attend.
Well, he also wants to personally select seven representatives from all the junior wizards from grades one to seven to have one-on-one battles.
After Dumbledore finished speaking, he returned to his seat with a very strange feeling.
The students didn't know what the professors were thinking, but they were all quite happy.
My opinion of Lockhart rose a little bit more.
Regardless of Lockhart's actual teaching level, although his teaching was initially rather superficial, the quality of his instruction improved significantly as the class progressed.
They don't yet have the authoritative aura that Professor Quirrell had last year. Most importantly, the younger wizards aren't particularly concerned about the professor's teaching level; as long as the professor's classes are interesting, that's enough for them.
This is why Lockhart had the best reputation in his first year; who could resist an immersive live-action stage play after a week of classes?
Of course, it's about the same for second and third graders; it's definitely enough for teaching and instruction.
As the dinner ended, the students returned to the common room in twos and threes, went to sleep, and woke up the next day.
When class started, both students and professors sensed the change in atmosphere. To put it simply, it didn't feel like a class at a magic school; it felt more like a meeting of a magical mafia.
This eerie atmosphere is even more pronounced in upper-grade classrooms, since third and fourth-grade students have all grown quite tall, and their height is not much different from that of the professors.
The first and second year students, on the other hand, were magical scouts trained by the mafia, which gave Professor McGonagall a strange sense of guilt when she taught them.
Forget it, I can't think about it anymore, it's too dangerous.
Time passed slowly, and Kane wore his precious raincoat, hand-sewn by Mrs. Weasley, every day to combat the eerie dampness of the English rainy season.
Until Friday afternoon, Lockhart somehow managed to get Dumbledore to cancel all other classes that afternoon, so that all the young wizards in the school could gather in the Great Hall of Hogwarts to support his Duel Club.
Then each young wizard had to write down on a slip of paper who they thought was the strongest young wizard in their year. After an anonymous vote, the winner would then have a real 1v1 match with Lockhart.
Sitting in his professor's seat, Snape coldly observed Lockhart, disgusted by the fool's vile tactics of bullying children to enhance his own reputation.
On one hand, he hoped that his seventh-grade students would give Lockhart a little dark magic shock.
Ever since he learned that Lockhart was hosting this dueling club and hadn't invited him, intending to humiliate himself, he had been giving his academy's young wizards extra lessons. He had been waiting for this day.
Soon, the situation unfolded almost exactly as Snape had predicted. Although Lockhart had disrupted the order of the seven house representatives, thanks to Merlin and a bit of luck, the first person to duel Lockhart was still a seventh-year Slytherin student.
"Amos, don't embarrass Slytherin." Snape used magic to compress his voice into a thin line, which then echoed softly in the ears of the seventh-year Slytherin.
Amos nodded slowly, though he didn't know if Professor Snape could see it, but he still had to nod when it was appropriate.
Most of the professors and the sixth and seventh graders knew the true level of these two: one was a gifted pure-blooded heir, and the other was a fraud who could only write articles and plagiarize adventure stories. Although he seemed to have reformed recently, it had only been a few months.
The outcome was already decided in their minds; the so-called competition was merely...
With a bang, Amos was sent flying off the dueling platform by Lockhart in just a few moves.
In an instant, the atmosphere in the entire hall changed completely, with the younger wizards cheering.
The senior students and professors all fell into an eerie silence.
Something's not right! This is very wrong!
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