Chapter 168 - 168 Overly Hasty Dividing Ceremony
Chapter 168: Overly Hasty Dividing Ceremony
The corner of Newt\'s mouth twitched a little as he turned his attention to the old, white-haired principal.
"Albus, why are you starting to gloat too?" He asked suspiciously, "Is it so funny that your side\'s assistant teacher was injured?"
"Ahem ... I didn\'t mean to gloat." Dumbledore forced himself to regain his serious expression, yet his facial muscles still twitched strangely from time to time, "I just thought of something happy."
It wasn\'t really Dumbledore\'s fault that he didn\'t hold back his laughter.
It was really that the curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor that had plagued Hogwarts for decades had actually ended up taking effect on Tom Riddle himself, and the matter was too comical!
Even if this Riddle was just one of Voldemort\'s Horcruxes and not the man himself, that was enough to keep the old Headmaster, who had had a headache over this for ages, happy for many days.
Unable to comprehend Dracula and Dumbledore, both of whom had smiles pervading their faces, Newt shook his head in perplexity and decided that it would be better to leave the two inexplicable people alone.
He looked at Rolf once more and raised a hand to knock him on the head, holding out a hand with a stern face:
"Now that the truth is out, take it out."
"Take out what?" Rolf blinked his eyes and began to play dumb.
"You kids have learned to play dumb with me now, haven\'t you?" Newt said glumly, "With only you, a little wizard, not even getting close to Assistant Professor Riddle, how could you possibly have the chance to put the Poison Horns horns close enough to blow away his guards on your own?"
Rolf was still putting on a show, with an expression of not knowing what he was asking. This infuriated Newt.
Newt had actually guessed what magical animal Rolf had taken, and had seen the bulging pocket he had been holding back with his arm from start to finish.
So, with a wave of his wand, Newt summoned a special sheep brain for curled-winged demons out of his old suitcase.
As soon as the goat brain left the suitcase, the curly-winged demon in Rolf\'s pocket smelled the tantalizing scent and immediately began to struggle in his pocket.
Rolf, such a small, tiny little man in his early teens with thin arms and legs couldn\'t hold down the Curlywing Demon with an extremely high danger level, so he could only let it tear his robes apart with the spikes on the outside of his wings, and then couldn\'t wait for it to fly out.
"Sure enough, you snuck this Curlywing Demon away."
Newt held out his hand, letting the Curlwing Demon land on his hand to enjoy its meal, while turning his head to glare at Rolf, "Do you know how long I searched for the Curlwing Demon after realizing that one of them was missing, and do you know how much workload that increased my workload?"
Seeing that the curled-winged demon flew out on its own, Rolf had no way to play dumb anymore.
He used his hand to cover his robe that was partially torn and had already exposed part of his belly, and smiled awkwardly, "Grandpa, I wasn\'t also trying to retrace your route at that time!"
"You see, when you helped the U.S. Magical Congress arrest Grindelwald, it was Curlywing Magic that helped seize his wand - in case I ran into any dark wizards or something, I could use Curlywing Magic to defeat them too!"
"So you ran into a dark wizard?" Newt asked with a grimace.
"No ..." Rolf shook his head.
"Who was the last one you defeated?" Newt asked.
"Asst. Coach Riddle ...," Rolf said weakly.
"And it was only through a series of coincidences such as a sneak attack, luck, the help of other magical creatures, and the explosion of a poison horned beast\'s horn, that you finally managed to cause trouble for Assistant Professor Riddle." Newt said with hatred, "At this level you still think you can defeat the dark wizard?"
Rolf fell silent and didn\'t say anything.
He admired his grandfather too much, and wanted to be unique and become a good magical zoologist like his grandfather too much, but he ignored his age and the time he had been exposed to magic, and ignored the law of growth of magic power ...
"Actually, I know, you just want to prove yourself, Rolf." Newt sighed and his angry expression gradually calmed down, "There\'s no need to rush, after a few years, you\'ll slowly grow up."
"Your future achievements will definitely not be worse than mine. When I was at your age, I never got top grades like you on my exams!"
Newt squatted down and pinched Rolf\'s tender cheeks, smiling.
"You\'ve been at Hogwarts for quite a long time, now it\'s time to go back to Yinfamoni for a proper lesson." He said seriously, "When you\'re a few years older, I\'ll make you my assistant again and take you on adventures in various parts of the world, okay?"
Rolf\'s eyes seemed a little touched, but he shook his head anyway.
"I don\'t want to go back to Yinfamoni, I want to stay at Hogwarts." He said, "I assume you want me to attend Hogwarts as well, Grandfather?"
"Well ...," Newt hesitated and let out a bitter laugh, "Stop it, have you forgotten all the friends you made in Unfamoni that whole first year? And neither Tina nor your mother would approve of you changing schools."
"Then I don\'t care, you can help me convince them!" Rolf said stubbornly, "I\'ve made several friends in the month or so I\'ve been at Hogwarts too!"
"And I\'ve never seen as many magical creatures as I have in the Forbidden Forest and the Black Lake in Imperium, I love it here so much!"
Hearing Rolf\'s approval of Hogwarts, Newt couldn\'t help but see a glimmer of joy cross his eyes, only to be followed by helplessness.
"I don\'t know how many more howler letters I\'d get from Tina if I agreed to you staying at Hogwarts." Newt shook his head, "You should know, I can\'t convince either of them."
Newt turned his attention to Dumbledore and Dracula, giving them a pleading look, hoping that the two professors would help him convince Rolf to go back to school.
"You\'re a second year at Imperatori?" Dracula saw Newt\'s look of help and spared a few steps forward, moving closer to where Newt and Rolf were, "Yet from what I understand, you were a first year at Hogwarts for over a month."
"Because first years are so easy to fool ...," Rolf said very honestly, "If I say I\'m a second year, but no other students know me, then my identity will be revealed immediately. Pretending to be a first year would be a bit more of an excuse."
"Yeah?" Dracula hooked up the corner of his mouth, "I thought you joined the first year specifically for Miss Lovegood of Ravenclaw!"
"Professor, I didn\'t meet Luna until after I entered first year!" Rolf made a big red face.
At that moment, the House of Branches hat suddenly made a noise:
"See, I told you he wasn\'t right for Hufflepuff! What kind of young wizard from Badger House would say something like \'first years are good liars\'?"
"But we\'re all from Hufflepuff as a family." Newt frowned, "And Rolf has been loved by magical creatures since he was a child, that\'s a characteristic of Hufflepuff students."
Before Newt could finish his words of defense, however, the Branch hat was grabbed by Dracula and slipped over his hand and swung it around in a circle, shaking the hat in a dizzying fashion.
"Ignore him, let\'s get on with it." He looked over at Newt and Rolf with disinterest as he swung the centurion hat around, "This hat just lifts from time to time sometimes, just spin it around a few times."
Newt froze for a moment at the sight of the clean, unpatched, pointy hat Dracula had slipped over his hand.
"Wait, this is a ... Branch hat?" He asked, his eyes widening in shock, "I don\'t remember it looking like that when I was at Hogwarts!"
Newt hadn\'t realized this just then, thinking that the hat was just a random and interesting alchemical product that Dumbledore had come up with.
After all, the original tattered, dusty, and patched up House of Branches hat had been transformed into an exquisite bowler hat that was clean, with few creases and no patches, and was really far from Newt\'s memories.
He turned his head to Dumbledore, "Albus, could someone really give this hat a bath?"
The whole thing of bathing the House of Branches Hat had actually become one of the biggest goals of Hogwarts students long ago, but no one had ever been able to do the job.
Basically, every single attempt to clean the Hat was easily dispatched, either by the Hat\'s flirtatious words, or by the Hat\'s spirit magic, which changed their minds ...
Few people know that as a magic hat that has stored the magic power of the four giants, the level of its magic is still quite good.
Only an existence like Dracula, who was deeply respected and feared by the Branch Hat and was also very powerful, was able to effortlessly change the image of this old antique hat.
"The matter of whether or not there is anyone who can bathe the Branch Hat, I think you can ask Professor Dracula." Dumbledore laughed, "Professor Dracula cast a cleaning spell on the hat just last year and tinkered with it along the way to make it as good as new."
"Speaking of which, after so many years of looking at dirty, tattered and tattered Branch hats, it was a bit of a shock to see this clean and tidy one this year." He said.
"But I\'m used to it." Dracula shrugged, "That\'s what the hat looked like when Godric first wore it. Who knows how the hat has managed to bend itself into such a human look over the course of a thousand years!"
Dumbledore and Newt both laughed helplessly.
They just remembered that this Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts was clearly an existence of the same era as the four founders, and it was completely understandable that he wasn\'t used to an originally brand new hat turning into a dirty appearance.
At the same time, Dracula was swinging the hat in his hand, which had already passed out and woken up several times.
It woke up once more and immediately opened the slit in the brim of the hat, its voice breaking as it begged for mercy from Dracula:
"Bur...Jenn...Lord, I was wrong ... I...shouldn\'t have...minded my own business, can...can you put me ...put e?"
Dracula glanced at the Branch Hat in his hand and casually tossed it up.
The Branch Hat spun in the air for two seconds before landing squarely on Rolf\'s head, covering his eyes in the process.
"I thought you said little Scamander wasn\'t fit to go to Hufflepuff?" He leaned against a nearby locker and looked at the divisional cap on Rolf\'s head with interest, "Giving you this chance to judge which academy he\'s really better suited for?"
"By the way, remember not to talk out of your ass. If you make any more Azkaban Academy out of it, I\'ll burn you immediately."
Dracula snapped his fingers.
A cluster of morose white flames emerged at his fingertips, causing the Branch Hat, who had just been gibbering and shredding, to instantly quiet down.
The hat resolutely stopped swooning and very quickly switched to its working state.
"Well, let\'s see, it\'s hard, very hard ... " Branch Hat, as always, first said a bunch of condescending words, while observing Rolf\'s character with his regal fetching thoughts, quietly muttered.
"Is this what my grandfather once said about the Hogwarts\' House Dividing Ceremony?" Rolf asked in a curious tone as his eyes were covered by the wide brim of his hat, "Seems a lot more interesting than the four moving apocryphal statues of Yinfamoni!"
Newt walked over to Dracula with some concern, looking at the refreshed Branch hat and his grandson.
"Professor Dracula, Rolf is after all a student of Yin Fa-Moni, isn\'t it too hasty to just let him go through the separation ceremony?" He asked in a low voice.
"What\'s wrong with that?" Dracula gave him a look, "Let alone a student, I won\'t lie, I myself was a bit curious before about which founder I would be more in tune with, so I put on my Dividing Hat and let it divide me."
"And?" Newt came on as well, "I was rather hoping that you would be sorted into Hufflepuff."
At that, Dracula suddenly froze in his face and Dumbledore laughed at the same time.
"Newt, don\'t even think about it." Dumbledore had a tolerant look on his face, "Hufflepuff was the first to be ruled out by the divisional cap."
"Yeah, I actually probably could have figured that out." Newt laughed as well, "So in the end which academy did Professor Dracula get assigned to by the Sorting Hat? All three of the other colleges seem likely, I\'m personally leaning towards Slytherin."
Dumbledore glanced at Dracula with an inscrutable expression.
"None of them." He said.
"Neither?" Newt was confused, "Could it be split up into anything other than these four colleges?"
"You\'ll never guess." Dumbledore laughed, "It\'s actually Azkaban."
"What?"
"Professor Dracula was sorted into Azkaban Academy!" Dumbledore let out a laugh, "I don\'t know if I remember correctly, it seems that it was because of this incident that Professor Dracula took a personal vendetta to give a clean bill of health to the sorting hat!"
Dracula\'s face darkened even more.
"That\'s enough, you guys don\'t need to say anymore." He said to Dumbledore and Newt with a dark face, "It should be about time, enough time for the Branch Hat to judge Mr. Scamander Jr.\'s Academy."
Only then did the trio turn their eyes to Rolf\'s location once more, except that Dumbledore couldn\'t hide the smirk on his face, and Newt still had some doubt on his face.
Just then, the Branch Hat suddenly opened the slit in its brim and shouted-
"Hufflepuff!"