Chapter 480 - 31: Happiness

Chapter 480: Chapter 31: Happiness

"Slytherin’s Locket..." McGonagall adjusted her square spectacles and turned the wreckage over and over in her hands.

Her brows drew tightly together. Then she looked up at the little one reaching for the sweets on the table and wondered whether she ought to warn Dumbledore to hide the Sword of Gryffindor somewhere safe. At this rate, who knew whether this little thing might break that someday too?

But that was secondary. Sirius had actually taken the little one out without so much as informing her, and—

"Why did you ask for the Black family’s house-elf?" McGonagall looked at Kreacher. The house-elf looked so old that one had to wonder whether he could still work at all.

At the moment, he was struggling to transfer the ladybug out of a jar packed full of aphids and into another glass container. The ladybug itself lay completely motionless, as though it had lost all desire to live and no longer had the strength even to resist.

Hearing McGonagall mention him, Kreacher bowed toward them. "Kreacher willingly serves his current mistress. That is much better than serving Young Master Sirius, that wicked son."

He muttered the final part under his breath.

"He even insults people?" McGonagall stared at Kreacher and pointed at him.

"No insulting people anymore," Yimi told Kreacher.

Kreacher closed his mouth.

"Where did you find this one this time? At the Black house?" McGonagall asked, pressing both hands firmly onto Yimi’s shoulders.

The little kitty nodded.

McGonagall was completely baffled. "How did it end up in the Black house?"

Yimi did not know, so she threw the question to Kreacher. "How did it get into the Black house?"

"This was the final thing Young Master Regulus entrusted to Kreacher." Kreacher did not especially want to speak about it, but a house-elf could not disobey an order from his master, so he began recounting what had happened.

He showed not the slightest dissatisfaction at seeing the locket in McGonagall’s hands destroyed. If anything, he looked so emotional he might burst into tears. When Sirius’s younger brother Regulus had given it to him, his order had been: "Destroy this thing, and do not tell my mother about it."

Regulus had been among the earliest Death Eaters to follow Voldemort after the Dark Lord extended his claws toward the Black family. Of everyone in the family, he had treated Kreacher the best.

At first, Regulus had not recognized Voldemort’s true nature. He had simply been drawn in by Voldemort’s idea that "wizards should stop hiding and rule the Muggles." Then Voldemort said he needed a house-elf. Regulus regarded the request as an honor and offered Kreacher to him.

Voldemort only needed a house-elf because he wanted to test how secure the protections around the locket were. He forced Kreacher to drink a potion. The locket was hidden beneath that potion, and the only way to reach it was to drink the liquid away, yet drinking it caused terrible suffering. There were also Inferi guarding the lake along the way.

Voldemort never intended for Kreacher to return alive. But Kreacher did return. Magic that prevented Apparition did not work on house-elves.

It was because of that incident that Regulus finally saw Voldemort for what he truly was. He ordered Kreacher to take him to the place where the locket was hidden and had Kreacher replace the real locket with a fake one. The reason Regulus made Kreacher do the exchange was that he did not make Kreacher drink the potion inside. Regulus drank it himself. Afterward, he was dragged beneath the lake.

For all these years, Kreacher had tried every method he could think of and still failed to destroy the locket.

Until Yimi stabbed straight through it.

"Merlin’s beard. You absolutely have to come with me to see Dumbledore," McGonagall told Kreacher. Then she looked at Yimi. "You stay right here and don’t run around. From now on, if anyone wants to take you somewhere, you have to tell me first. Do you understand? How can you have no sense of caution at all?"

McGonagall left with Kreacher.

The study was empty except for Yimi again.

She first moved the ladybug into a different glass jar, then immediately ran out as though she had not heard a word McGonagall had said.

To be fair, she was not simply running around for no reason. Destroying one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes gave her another gacha draw, and Yimi had never developed the habit of saving up draws, so she used it immediately.

The result was yet another thing she had no use for: men’s three-in-one shower gel.

"What is this?"

Inside Snape’s storeroom, Snape stared expressionlessly at the thing Yimi had dropped into his cauldron.

"Shower gel. It’s for you. Thank you for letting me read your textbook." Yimi clung to the edge of Snape’s desk and looked up at him. "It says you can wash your body, wash your hair, and condition your hair with it."

The corner of Snape’s mouth twitched twice. He had never agreed to let Yimi read his textbook. Yimi had grabbed it and run so quickly that he simply had not gotten it back.

Snape lowered his eyes to her. "Some ingredients from my collection were shamefully stolen a few days ago. Do you have any idea what happened to them, Miss Yimi?"

"What ingredients?" Yimi looked genuinely confused.

"It seems you truly don’t know. Naturally, that means you didn’t do it, because I already know who did. Why would I suspect you?" Snape used his wand to move aside the hand Yimi was stretching toward a jar of lizard tails on the desk.

"You should understand that you are the most idle person in all of Hogwarts. Why not spend that time on something meaningful? For example, you might think carefully about which House you’ll be sorted into in the future. That way I can know in advance which House I’ll be taking points from."

Yimi planted her hands on her hips. "Doggy Person said I’m Slytherin."

Sirius had previously said he had thought Yimi was a Slytherin student.

"Is that so?" Snape smiled without warmth. "Do you believe there is any quality about you that would make Slytherin happy?"

"Mm." Yimi tilted her head and did not answer. Instead, she looked up at Snape and sought permission for something else. "Can I take what you wrote and rewrite it into a book? What you wrote makes more sense than the textbook."

"..."

Snape did not answer that either. He simply threw her out, though he still did not ask Yimi to return his textbook.

After Yimi left, Snape studied the product description printed on the shower-gel bottle, checked whether the word "Potter" appeared anywhere on it, then opened the cap and sniffed it to identify the ingredients.

Yimi thought this Prince had a very strange temper. The kitty had given him a present and he still had not shown her the slightest pleasant expression. Unfortunately, Yimi also hoped to use his help to complete her Main Quest.

She thought back to what Snape had just said.

Something about making Slytherins happy.

Yimi walked toward the Great Hall while thinking about it. Coming the other way, she saw Malfoy and the others whispering among themselves. Their conversation stopped the moment they met.

"Well, look who it is." Remembering that Yimi was the one who had provided Harry’s group with metal equipment, Malfoy seemed to immediately forget that she was Professor McGonagall’s granddaughter and prepared to mock a girl who looked several years younger than he was.

But he had barely finished his greeting when Yimi aimed her wand at him.

There was a Slytherin serpent crest on Malfoy’s clothes.

She cast the Cheering Charm, a spell that made people feel happy.

Yimi simply used a little too much force.

...

That afternoon, Snape entered the classroom.

"What is this?"

He found the Slytherin students sprawled all over the place, huge grins on their faces as though they were completely high. Some of them could barely walk straight.

At the other table, the Ravenclaw students stared at them in horror.

Snape took a deep breath.