The Prisoners of Hogwarts

Chapter 36 The Cards in Chocolate Frog

"I'll keep a close eye on him."

Snape made a grim promise to Dumbledore.

"I believe you can do it, Severus."

Dumbledore walked behind the headmaster's desk and sat down in the chair.

His gaze fell upon Snape, who remained standing in the middle of the office, and he continued in a grave tone, "But now I need to tell you something, something Lynch just told me, about... Voldemort..."

Snape turned his head sharply, his gaze fixed on Dumbledore.

......

The next morning, Lin Qi had just finished breakfast when there was a rhythmic knocking on the door.

Totz ran over to open the door.

Lin Qi sat on the sofa and looked over.

Standing outside the door was a tall, black-haired witch dressed in a bright green robe.

Upon seeing the witch, Lynch smiled again.

"Professor McGonagall," he stood up from the sofa, "a rare guest indeed, please come in."

Professor McGonagall stood outside the door, her gaze quickly sweeping across the room over the doorframe, lingering for a moment on the sofa with its distinctive Gryffindor colors left by Dumbledore.

She pursed her lips: "There's no need for that."

I'm here to inform you that Professor Dumbledore has approved your course application.

She paused, her sharp jawline tightening further: "As per your request, your lectures will be held every Friday afternoon at 16:00 PM, and will be two hours long, open lectures. Please arrange your course content accordingly."

After she finished speaking, the witch gave Lynch a salute: "That's all I have to say."

Goodbye, Mr. Lynch.

See you at our castle.

"Goodbye, Professor McGonagall," Lynch replied.

Then the witch turned around decisively and walked along the stone path towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

However, as she walked, she kept glancing at the stone path beneath her feet, seemingly lost in thought.

Over the next few days, Lynch's days became regular again.

Every morning after waking up, I wash up.

After breakfast, Totz accompanied me for a walk around the house.

Back in the stone house, I read and ate lunch.

After lunch, I went back to my room for a short rest.

I continued reading in the afternoon, then had dinner.

After dinner, I sat down at my desk to refine my teaching plan.

Then he will swallow a small piece of dung bead and go back to his room to rest.

It's worth mentioning that Lynch didn't use magic even once during this period.

He seemed to have forgotten that he was a wizard, living like a Muggle, with his daily life being taken care of by Totz.

Time flew by, Lin Qi's health gradually improved, and the day soon arrived at September 1st.

......

On the train that goes directly to Hogwarts, Harry sits alone in his compartment, excited about the unknown future.

A little boy with red hair opened the door and came in, telling Harry that all the other places were full.

Harry just heard his name was Ron at the train station.

He invited Ron to sit down, and the two children, who were the same age, began a pleasant conversation.

This was Harry's first time making a friend. He bought a lot of food for lunch and enthusiastically shared it with Ron.

The two of them sat in the private room, devouring a huge pile of strange and unusual foods.

Until Harry picked up a bag of chocolate frogs: "These aren't real frogs, are they?"

"No." Ron swallowed a large mouthful of food with difficulty. "But there will be a wizard card inside. You can try your luck."

Harry opened the package, and just as Ron had said, it wasn't a real frog, but a chocolate shaped like a frog.

But this chocolate frog from the wizarding world could hop just like a real frog. Before Harry could react, the chocolate frog jumped out of the window and was blown away by the wind.

Only one card, which looked to be very well made, was left in the packaging.

Harry took out the card. The card had a golden background, and when he spun it in his hand, the exquisite patterns printed on it could be seen through the refraction of light.

The front of the card depicts an old man with long, silver hair and beard. He has a crooked nose, and a pair of half-moon spectacles sit on the bridge of his nose. Below the card is his name: Albus Dumbledore.

"Wow! A legendary card!" Ron exclaimed in surprise as he came closer to the card, seeing the golden luster reflected on it.

"It's a pity it's Dumbledore." After seeing who was printed on the card, he sat back down. "His power is decent, but he's not a very strong card."

"What kind of power?" Harry asked Ron, puzzled. "And what are Legendary Cards?"

Ron seemed surprised that Harry didn't know the answers to those two questions. He stared at Harry in astonishment as if Harry had just asked what a wizard was.

"Power is the effect of the cards during battle," Ron answered Harry's first question.

Then he pulled out a stack of cards from his pocket and showed them to Harry: "These are Wizarding Battle Cards, which can be used for game battles. I collected them little by little. Legendary cards are a rare category of Wizarding Battle Cards. Don't tell me you don't know Wizarding Battle Cards."

When Ron uttered the words "wizard battle cards," Harry remembered the magical battle game he had witnessed at the Stone Tower Merchant Guild on his birthday.

"I know." Harry nodded. "I saw someone compete at the Stone Tower Merchant Guild a month ago. One of them won with a card called Merlin, and everyone around was very surprised."

Ron's eyes widened: "You've seen someone use Merlin cards in a battle?! You're so lucky! That's a limited edition legendary card, only one hundred in the whole world! I wish I were there."

Harry held up the Dumbledore card he was holding. "You just said this is also a Legendary card, but the easiest Legendary card to obtain?"

"That's right." Ron grabbed a handful of candy from the table and stuffed it into his mouth, mumbling indistinctly. "The Dumbledore Card... is the most common Legendary Card issued by the Stone Tower Merchant Guild, with no limit, almost everyone can collect it."

As he spoke, he took two cards from his deck and handed them over, saying, "Look, I have two of each."

Harry took the two cards Ron handed him, and they looked exactly like his own.

He looked through his cards again.

"He's gone!"

Harry screamed.

“You can’t expect him to stay in one place all day,” Ron explained. “He’ll go out for a walk and then come back.”

As Ron was speaking, Dumbledore on the card indeed returned, and even smiled gently at Harry.

Harry was amazed that the paintings in the wizarding world could move, which was completely different from the Muggle world.

Ron took his two Dumbledore cards back from Harry, put them together with the rest of the cards, and then put them back in his pocket.

"This game is very popular right now; almost everyone plays it. There will even be a World Wizards Card Battle Championship this year! The winner will receive a huge Galleon reward!"

As he spoke, an expression of envy appeared on Ron's face.

"I suggest you start collecting too, so we can play together when we get to school," he suggested to Harry.

Harry thought Ron was right, and he also wanted to play this trendy wizarding game, so he grabbed a few more Chocolate Frogs and started dismantling them.

Soon, he had Hanges, Parasher, and Kriona, a Druid female follower.

He opened a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, popped one into his mouth, and then resumed unpacking.

He had fallen in love with the feeling of opening different cards from the packaging, and he didn't care that a few chocolate frogs were jumping around in the private room.

Suddenly, a dark golden light reflected into Harry's eyes.

His movements slowed down; his intuition told him that this card was different.

He slowly removed the card. The exquisite patterns still surrounded the center, but the overall color of the card was different from the golden Dumbledore card from before. It had a darker hue, turning into a dark gold.

Harry held the dark gold card in his hands and examined it carefully. The box that should have shown the person on the card was a black blob. No, it wasn't a black blob. Harry rejected his previous judgment. In the middle of that black blob, there was a thin gray mist flowing, but he still couldn't see the person.

Harry didn't pay much attention, after all, Ron had just told him that the wizarding world's portraits could travel around, but looking at the card, he instinctively felt a little uncomfortable.

He looked curiously at the words on the card: Mist Executioner.

"Ron," he asked Ron, "who is the Mist Hangman?"

"What?" Ron looked up from a pumpkin pie. "What did you say?"

Harry repeated his question: "What is a Mist Hanger?"

Ron finally saw the dark golden luster in Harry's hand.

"Merlin's beard!" he exclaimed suddenly, nearly choking on the pumpkin pie in his mouth.

He coughed violently a few times, his face turned bright red, his eyes widened, and he suddenly leaned close to Harry.

"What did you say you offered?!"

Harry was startled by Ron's reaction; he didn't understand why Ron was so agitated.

He showed the card in his hand to Ron: "This is it."

Ron stared at the cards in Harry's hand, then looked up at Harry's face, and finally looked down at the cards in Harry's hand again.

"Merlin's briefs! No wonder he's the legendary Harry Potter, he's got amazing luck..."

Ron sighed softly.

Harry listened to his words and realized that this card was unusual.

He couldn't help but lower his voice as well: "So, who is the Mist Executioner?"

Ron looked up at Harry with a strange expression. "Come to think of it, he's somehow related to you."

"What!" Harry's eyes widened in surprise at being in the story too.

"You know what the person who gave you that scar, the Mystic, did in the wizarding world, right?" Ron pointed to Harry's forehead.

Harry unconsciously reached up and touched the lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead.

He nodded: "Hagrid told me it was a dark time."

Ron nodded. "Yes, my mom said it was a terrible time, everyone was terrified."

Then he became excited again and said mysteriously to Harry, "But George and Fred told me that during that time, there was a very powerful wizard who was specifically working against the Voidman."

He would attack lone dark wizards at night and hang them in mid-air, as if they were being hanged.

Because he always appeared in foggy weather, people called him the Fog Hanger!

Harry was captivated by the mysterious hangman in Ron's story, his eyes fixed on Ron.

Ron continued in a low voice, "Nobody knows who he really is, all they know is that he is a powerful wizard."

Many people suspect that he is a retired elite Auror from the Ministry of Magic, and a secret weapon for the Ministry of Magic in its fight against the mysterious man.

Some speculate that he is a powerful wizard who has gone into seclusion and came out to fight against the mysterious man because he couldn't stand his ways.

He disappeared after the fall of the Void, so most people believe he was a wartime fabrication by the Ministry of Magic to boost morale, and that he never actually existed.

At this point, Ron turned and looked around, as if worried that there might be a third person in the private room eavesdropping on their conversation.

He leaned closer to Harry, lowering his voice even further: "My dad works at the Ministry of Magic, and George and Fred once overheard him talking to a colleague about their work on the Mist Hangers, confirming that the Mist Hangers really exist!"

"Wow!" Harry exclaimed involuntarily.

But then he scratched his head: "But I don't understand what he has to do with me."

Ron stared at him wide-eyed: "Because you brought down the Mystic, the Mist Hangman disappeared! You're the one who made the Mist Hangman disappear from this world."

Harry lowered his hand, which was scratching his head, and his fingertips touched the scar on his forehead.

He felt that Ron's explanation was somewhat far-fetched, but he didn't want to argue with a friend he had just met.

So he picked up the dark gold card again and asked Ron, "Is this card very valuable?"

"Rare?" Ron clenched his fists excitedly. "This card is priceless!"

Do you remember the World Wizards vs. Card Championship that I just told you about?

Unfortunately, registration has now closed.

Otherwise, use this card as the core.

You'll definitely get a good ranking!

"What good is getting a good ranking?" Harry still didn't understand Ron's excitement.

"Every contestant who gets a place will receive a huge sum of Galleons!" Then, looking at the cards in Harry's hand, Ron's expression became one of blissful ecstasy. "And they'll become famous...flowers...cheering..."

"I don't know how to play this game yet. I can give it to you if you want!"

Harry's words jolted Ron out of his reverie.

"No, no, no..." Ron waved his hands repeatedly, "I can't take it, you keep it!"

"Here you go, it's a waste for me to keep such a rare card."

Harry shoved the cards into Ron's hand.

Ron swallowed hard, but still reluctantly pushed the card back into Harry's hand.

"This game is easy to learn; you'll see how powerful this card is once you learn it."

You'll regret this; I can't have it.

Just as the two were pushing and shoving each other, the door to the private room was pulled open with a clang.

Harry and Ron turned to look at the door.