Chapter 467 - 18: Prince

Chapter 467: Chapter 18: Prince

"You’ve never attended a single day of school, you little runt whose baby teeth haven’t even finished coming in, and you want to be a teacher? Wait until you grow up."

Those were Professor McGonagall’s merciless words as she carried Yimi away. The little kitty was crushed for the entire day, and only cheered up again that evening when McGonagall brought back some catnip she had asked Professor Sprout for.

The System’s missions were getting harder and harder. Yimi no longer even minded spending a whole year on a Main Quest, but at only two and a half years old, she did not have much of a concept of how long a year actually was.

Yimi thought that since nobody was teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts right now anyway, maybe she could simply run up to the lectern and teach it herself. She had seen how Lockhart taught class while wandering around before.

Although McGonagall had flatly rejected her attempt to become a teacher, there were still things that could make the little kitty happy. For example, she could finally start dealing with the huge snake.

"You know, I’ve always thought cats were very cute creatures."

At the castle entrance, Hagrid wiped away tears with his tablecloth-sized handkerchief as he said that, as though the comment he had made last year about wanting to kick Mrs. Norris whenever he saw her had never happened.

He blew his nose with an extremely loud honk, then continued speaking against his own conscience. "Really. If cat hair hadn’t always made my nose itch, I’ve always wanted to keep some kind of feline. More than fifty years... Everyone blamed Aragog for hurting that girl, and then the Ministry expelled me from school..."

"Comforting you." Yimi stood on tiptoe and patted his belly in consolation, then looked down at the snake whose corpse she had dumped by the entrance for the entire school to stare at all day.

Because of that thing’s presence, very few people had dared leave the castle yesterday or today.

Minister Fudge had come by that morning after Dumbledore invited him over, but at most, all he could do was acknowledge in the official records that Hagrid had not been responsible for the incident back then.

Compensation? What compensation? Hagrid was merely another victim of Voldemort’s schemes.

"None of that matters. At least everyone will know I’m not some monster who hurts people." Hagrid held back his tears, rolled up his sleeves, and tried to hoist the Basilisk. "Dumbledore told me to take this thing over to my hut. I’m supposed to remove and preserve the fangs, venom glands, and eyeballs. The hide too. The rest of the meat is all yours. If I weren’t such a bad cook, I’d absolutely help you all the way through getting it into the pot."

He shouldered the snake’s head and tried to drag it. His face turned red before he managed to move it even a little. "Probably need to use some spells. With brute strength alone, there’s no way—"

"Heave-ho~"

Before Hagrid could finish, Yimi grabbed one of the Basilisk’s fangs with one hand and started dragging it toward the Forbidden Forest, as though she were merely pulling along a long, thin rope. Several girls who had just returned from the Herbology greenhouses screamed again when they saw her.

"..."

This snake had been beaten to death with fists, hadn’t it?

Hagrid strode after her, unable to understand why those short little legs could still run so quickly while bearing the weight of several tons. As a half-giant, this was the first time he had ever felt the dignity of his bloodline slipping away.

In truth, Hagrid was not especially skilled at butchering things like this. His love for magical creatures was hardly focused on that sort of work. Still, faced with a snake this enormous, he did seem like a very suitable choice, didn’t he?

When they reached the hut, Hagrid stared at Yimi’s little arms for a while, as though trying to see whether dense muscles were hidden underneath. But the little girl’s arms looked perfectly normal—soft and fragile enough to seem as if they might snap with a bend.

Apparently noticing his stare, Yimi tilted her head and looked back at him for a moment. "Do you know where, the Herbology teacher, is?"

She remembered Grandma Cat saying yesterday that the catnip had come from the Herbology professor.

"Professor Sprout? She normally teaches in the greenhouses. I think she’d like you, as long as you don’t destroy the plants she grows." Hagrid reached for his tools and muttered, "Let’s hope Basilisk blood isn’t poisonous. I don’t want to bleed this thing out and kill all my pumpkins."

"Where are the greenhouses?" Yimi did not enter the hut. Instead, she found a pumpkin and sat on it. Hagrid’s pumpkins were so large that even after she climbed up, her feet could not reach the ground.

"There’s more than one greenhouse. If you want to find her, it depends on which year she’s teaching... Who’s that?" Hagrid, who had been explaining, suddenly bent down and looked through the hut window in a certain direction.

Yimi followed his gaze and saw a blonde woman wearing glasses walking toward the castle. Yimi had never seen that woman inside Hogwarts before.

Before the little kitty could ask, Hagrid answered on his own. "I think I remember her. Reporter for the Daily Prophet. But I doubt she’s here because I was wrongly blamed for something fifty years ago... I’ve still got some toffee. Want one?"

"Yes." Yimi jumped down from the pumpkin, ran into the hut, and held out her hand for the toffee.

The candy tasted pretty good. It was just extremely sticky, though Yimi could transfer away the bad luck of it sticking to her teeth.

After putting away the candy, Yimi saw Hagrid busy looking for things and rubbed her head against his belly. "Daily Prophet, what is it?"

"A newspaper. That woman interviews people and then writes the news in the paper for everyone to read." Hagrid took out a knife, gently moved Yimi aside, and walked toward the Basilisk. "She’s probably curious why that idiot obsessed with autographing everything got accused by Hogwarts after teaching here less than half a year. If I remember right, that paper loves digging up dirt on people. Of course, Lockhart deserves every bit of it."

"Mm..."

Yimi had no interest in that. She climbed back onto the pumpkin, sat down, and casually took out the Half-Blood Prince’s textbook to read.

After staring at the textbook long enough, her attention always drifted to the notes written in the blank spaces, because those notes often contradicted the printed text. For example, the original instructions for the Draught of Living Death said to stir counterclockwise until it became clear as water, while the note said to stir counterclockwise seven times and then clockwise once.

Yimi lifted her head and thought for a while. Riddle’s knowledge also told her to stir counterclockwise, but that was not what confused her.

What she cared about was what clockwise and counterclockwise meant, and what use this person’s added writing had.

Yimi showed the textbook to Hagrid. "Do you know, the Half-Blood Prince?"

"Half-Blood Prince? Is there someone like that at the school? Wait... this handwriting looks a little familiar." Hagrid took the book and examined it for a while before saying, "Looks a bit like Professor Snape’s handwriting. I’m not certain. I don’t see him write very often."

Besides, Snape had written in this book back when he was still a student.

"Snape!" Yimi remembered him. He was that greasy-haired teacher who wanted to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts!

"It’s ’Professor Snape.’ I know a lot of people have opinions about Professor Snape, but he’s still a professor worthy of respect," Hagrid corrected her.

Yimi, however, hugged the textbook and ran toward the castle, completely forgetting about the enormous snake he was helping her process.

...

Potions classroom.

Snape, who had likewise failed to get the Defence Against the Dark Arts post, was bent over Harry and staring at him. "Potter, what we are making in this lesson is a Swelling Solution, not sewage."

Harry, once again singled out as usual, suppressed his irritation. "With all due respect, Professor, I don’t think I’m the worst one here..."

"Prince!" The voice that drove Snape particularly mad rang out from the classroom’s front door, making his eyelids twitch twice.

Yimi ran over to Snape, held up the textbook, and sincerely asked for guidance. "Why is what you wrote, different from what’s in the book?"

"..."

"Prince?" Yimi tilted her head, puzzled by his silence.

The corner of Snape’s eye twitched violently.