Chapter 977 - 400: Can Men and Women Really Be Friends? (2)

Chapter 977: Chapter 400: Can Men and Women Really Be Friends? (2)

Every now and then, the ceiling would start tracing dragons and serpents, purple lightning crawling through the clouds with a rolling rumble.

Suddenly, the doors of the Great Hall swung open.

"Harry," Hermione whispered, a little excited, "it’s Vivi!"

Harry turned his head and sure enough saw Vivi, dressed in a navy-blue formal suit, walking in through the doors, with her new secretary, Miss Rozier, following behind.

As Vivi passed Harry, she paused and quietly said "wait for me" to him, then, under the gaze of everyone present, walked up to the staff table.

"Merlin, who is she?" the new students were asking one another. Those first-years who had never seen Lady Grindelwald were incredibly curious; they all wanted to know who this stunning big sister actually was.

"She’s our old alumna from Slytherin!" Pansy Parkinson from Slytherin straightened her chest proudly as she introduced her to the first- and second-year Slytherins: "She graduated from Hogwarts in 1994, and in just one short year she became the Minister of Magic of a country!"

"Merlin!" a new student squealed under their breath. "Don’t tell me she’s Lady Grindelwald?"

"That’s right," Pansy said, basking in reflected glory.

Up at the staff table, all the professors rose to their feet to welcome Vivi’s arrival.

Even though she had once been a student at Hogwarts, her status was now very different; of course one had to show proper respect to the Minister of Magic.

"This is exactly what being a wizard should be like!" at the Slytherin table, a new student with a red ponytail sighed with feeling.

Vivi chatted briefly with Principal Dumbledore, then sat down at the place of honor.

Her secretary, Miss Rozier, stood behind her like a henchwoman.

Harry noticed that Professor Slughorn looked delighted, trying to strike up conversation with Vivi even across Professor Snape.

Professor Snape, stuck in the middle, was expressionless, as if none of this had anything to do with him.

After dinner, Harry was told to stay behind.

He patted Ron on the shoulder and headed for the place of honor.

"I’ve brought the new toy the Ministry of Magic developed," Vivi said with a squinting smile. "Once we go up to the Headmaster’s Office, we can get our answer. According to my guess, Voldemort must have placed the curse in the Headmaster’s Office."

"Really?" Harry raised his eyebrows. "Why are you so sure?"

Vivi stretched out her hand and gave Harry’s head a light knock.

"Idiot," she scolded playfully. "Didn’t we see it in Voldemort’s memories?"

Following Dumbledore, they headed up toward the Headmaster’s Office on the eighth floor.

On the way, Vivi kept asking Harry how his classes were going, whether he was busy, and so on, acting just like a nagging mom.

At least, that was the impression Dumbledore had as he walked ahead of them.

Once they entered the Headmaster’s Office, Phineas, hanging on the wall, raised his right arm at a forty‑five‑degree angle to greet his two most outstanding students.

"That gesture is banned in the German Muggle World," Vivi reminded Phineas. "You mustn’t let German Muggles see it."

"Oh, all right," Phineas actually nodded and agreed.

Then they got down to business.

Miss Rozier took a soft, transparent sphere from a small ladies’ handbag and set it on the floor.

Immediately, the Headmaster’s Office began to grow dim.

In no time at all, black streaks started writhing along the floor, surging straight toward that transparent, squishy sphere.

After a while, the sphere turned from transparent to pitch black.

"Done," Miss Rozier said. "That’s about it—this is the latest Alchemy Product developed by the Great German Ministry of Magic. It can be used to absorb all sorts of curses..."

"That simple?" Dumbledore asked. ℴ

"Exactly that simple," Lady Rozier said proudly.

Dumbledore suddenly felt a prickle of alarm.

He had to admit, this formidable lady... outclassed Gellert by more than an order of magnitude...

Right now the British Magic World was exhausted and weak, and in front of the Great German Ministry of Magic, blazing like the noonday sun... if it ever came to a clash, would they really stand a chance?

Dumbledore didn’t quite dare pursue that line of thought; he was afraid he might think up some fundamental problem that he had absolutely no way to solve...

Once the curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts Class was dealt with, Vivi left Hogwarts with Miss Rozier.

According to Vivi, there were still some matters to settle over in Vienna—apparently a few of the Ministries of Magic of the Scandinavian Islands were also going to be merged into the Great German Ministry of Magic.

"I think you might as well rename it the European Ministry of Magic," Harry’s expression darkened. He increasingly felt that Vivi was going to unify Europe in the Magic World.

And judging by the look of things, success seemed almost within reach—for now, in Western and Central Europe, the only regions that had not yet been folded into the Great German Ministry of Magic were Spain, Portugal, and France.

"That’s a good suggestion," Vivi said with a smile. She really did think Harry’s idea was pretty good.

After Vivi left, everything seemed to go back to normal.

And Mr. Slughorn, Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, often said that the creepy chill on his neck had vanished; the dark cloud hanging over Hogwarts really seemed to have lifted.

Time went by day after day, and just as Hermione had predicted, the free periods in sixth year were nothing like what Ron had hoped, when he thought he could relax and rest as much as he liked. They had to be spent grinding away at the mountains of homework the teachers assigned.

Not only did they have to study as hard as if they were facing exams every day, but the coursework itself was far harder than before.

Recently, Ron could barely understand half of what Professor McGonagall was teaching, and even Hermione had to ask Professor McGonagall to repeat her explanations once or twice before she grasped them.

Incredible as it sounded, Ron’s best subject had suddenly become Magic Potion, and that was all thanks to the Half-Blood Prince.

Hermione found this change unbelievable, but she felt it must be the result of the extra coaching Professor Snape had given Ron earlier.

"Nice work, Ron." Hermione was genuinely happy for Ron; after all, they were good friends now.

Yeah, good friends.

Harry felt the two of them were just fooling themselves. Good friends, my foot.

Gellert had a saying that hit the nail on the head: what’s the point of "friendship" between men and women? You keep up this so-called friendship, and sooner or later you end up together anyway, don’t you?

But Harry thought that only applied to pairs like Ron and Hermione, who were mutually smitten but completely oblivious to it. For someone pure like him, it didn’t apply at all.

Now the classes had started requiring them to use Silent Spellcasting—not only Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Spell Class and Transformation Class as well.

In the common room or while eating, Harry often saw his classmates turning beet red, silently wrestling with themselves like they’d overdosed on constipation medicine.

But he knew they were actually struggling to master the trick of not saying the spell out loud and still making the magic work.

Only when they came out to the greenhouses did everyone finally feel like they could breathe. The plants they had to deal with in Herbology were more dangerous than before, but when the Poisonous Tentacles of the Mandrakes suddenly grabbed them from behind, at least they could shout the spell at the top of their lungs.

"I think life is getting worse and worse," Pansy from Slytherin complained loudly.

But Draco, unusually, didn’t join in Pansy’s griping.

Because he was one of the first to follow Harry into the Dueling House, he had already learned wandless magic from Harry back in third year, Silent Spellcasting included.

These days, the Dueling House had become an advanced training club. Their sessions there even introduced high‑level techniques like Wandless Magic.

Of course, so far no one had succeeded—other than Ron, who could make his Magic Wand twitch a little, and even that was just a twitch.