The Old Ones of Hogwarts

Chapter 137, Section 136: Gods Clash! The Little Wizard Suffers a Calamity!

Chapter 137, Section 136: Gods Clash! The Little Wizard Suffers a Calamity!

The hatching of the phoenix egg has finally made progress, which is definitely good news for Ian.

What dissatisfied him was that the phoenix egg absorbed the dragon egg and the other eggs rather slowly; it had a huge appetite but seemed to be able to swallow just not enough "life force" in one go.

"If you don't hatch tonight, I'll stew you and eat you!" Ian chose to put some pressure on the little guy in the phoenix egg; of course, he wouldn't be so extravagant as to want to use the phoenix egg to make soup.

Even the book "Fantastic Beasts in a Pot" couldn't imagine such a recipe—or perhaps it was because of Ian's words, but the life force inside the phoenix egg did indeed absorb life force at a faster rate.

It mainly absorbs the life force from the dragon eggs. The life force in the eggs of other magical creatures is not very strong, after all, very few creatures are active while they are still in their eggs.

Even a hybrid dragon is still a dragon.

While keeping an eye on the situation with the phoenix eggs, Ian took out his books and began studying Morgan's knowledge. His Potions skills were about to reach level five and awaken extraordinary traits.

"This assignment hidden in the aphrodisiac formula seems to contain some kind of ultimate question." The more Ian studied, the more he felt that the information Morgan was hiding was not simple.

Sometimes, he really couldn't understand these old guys. It seemed that the longer people lived, the more they liked to be riddles. Dumbledore and Grindelwald were definitely rising stars among riddles.

Take the time loop as an example.

Now, as Ian recalls and ponders, he can sense more and more clearly that something is wrong between the two of them, and he has a strong intuition that they have been secretly doing something else behind his back.

"The mystery surrounding Professor Ronnie Ehrlich hasn't even been solved yet—" Ian was curious about the runes on Professor Ronnie Ehrlich's body, and also about how the two old men had dealt with Professor Ronnie Ehrlich.

What kind of magic could dispel this state of being neither alive nor dead? Is it a modified version of the Curse of Annihilation? Ian knew that all his doubts had been swallowed up with the dissipation of the cycle.

Here and now.

He was the only one who remembered every detail of what happened in the loop, and there was no way to find the answers anymore. The matter of Professor Ronnie Ehrlich had already been relegated to the fate of being abandoned.

[Through diligent study, your Potions Mastery proficiency has increased by 3.]

[Through diligent study, your Potions Mastery proficiency has increased by 2.]

[Through diligent study, your Potions Mastery proficiency has increased by 3.]

Time passed second by second.

Ian leaned against the wall next to the desk, a posture that made him feel very relaxed. Apart from looking a bit ungraceful, it was an extremely comfortable position.

Since he's the only one in the dorm now, he doesn't need to worry about his image.

The next two weeks of Christmas break will be the same. Even if he does something shady in the dorm, his two roommates probably won't find out when they come back.

"I still need to work it out a bit. This formula that can awaken desire... I feel like it could be applied to awakening dormant magic? Could a dud like Filch be saved?"

"Even if it works, Filch should be ruled out. He may be a dud, but he certainly doesn't have the money to buy my work." Ian demonstrated the speed expected of an action-taker.

He placed the phoenix egg, which was absorbing the life force of dragon eggs and other eggs, into a box that had been previously blessed with an expansion charm, and then left Ravenclaw's lounge with the box in his arms.

"If I didn't dare put it in my purse for fear of affecting the hatching of this little thing, I wouldn't be working so hard." Ian held up his wand and used the Levitation Charm to control the wooden box.

He ran down the corridor and arrived at the Room of Requirement downstairs.

"Process the materials for me."

Ian pulled out his good Palu, making the Dementors work overtime in the middle of the night. His money bag was like Doraemon's pocket; after a few rummages, he pulled out a pile of potion ingredients.

Having raided Snape's office several times, Ian now possesses the most abundant material reserves Hogwarts has ever had, which should be enough to support his repeated potion experiments.

An experiment can't possibly succeed on the first try.

"Gurgle gurgle gurgle~"

soon.

The stacked pots began to swirl with mist.

To be honest, Ian was prepared for the cooking to fail, but he failed to cook dozens of batches in a row, which was definitely beyond his expectations.

Ian not only failed, but his potion-making proficiency also increased very slowly.

"The technique is fine, but the color and taste are very problematic—is it due to the medicinal properties of the ingredients?"

1

Ian frowned as he looked at the few rare materials he had collected. He didn't have many of these few materials in his cycle, and the efficacy of the materials he collected would decrease as the cycle progressed.

He wanted to verify whether his magic awakening potion was truly effective. Of course, he couldn't use the materials from the later cycles, since some things can be completely different by the slightest margin.

The worst quality materials are best sold in Flip-Flop Lane.

"If I took these things to Knockout Alley and sold them, I'd be voted the best conscientious seller of the year." After putting away the low-quality materials, Ian energetically rushed out of the Requirement House.

He first went to the library, intending to check if there were any alternative materials to replace the missing ones, but he couldn't even find a cat in the empty corridor.

The library doors were also tightly closed.

However, nowadays, Mrs. Pince's departure from get off work is no longer a problem for the young wizard—of course, this does not mean that Ian's unlocking charm can now break down the library's doors.

He simply used the time within the cycles to learn, rather than just the time within those cycles.

"I also learned how to be incredibly audacious without being discovered!" Ian first confirmed Mrs. Pince's location; she was currently in the infirmary with Filch.

Presumably, Filch, who had been severely reprimanded by Aurora, couldn't bear the loneliness alone. It's unclear how these two managed to persuade Mrs. Pomfrey to allow them to share a room late at night.

The names were all overlapping in the infirmary, which meant either Filch's injuries weren't too serious, or Mrs. Pomfrey's medical skills were truly excellent.

Perhaps both.

"Twilight romance is just too... hard to judge, too hard to judge!" Ian drew his wand, pointed it directly at an area on the wall, and released a spell that he had mastered in the loop.

"Thunderous explosion!"

As soon as Ian finished chanting the incantation, a large hole blew open in the library wall. This was an excellent spot that he had found after many trials.

It wouldn't trigger any alarms at Hogwarts, nor would it damage the books in the library. It's unclear whether it was a surprise the founders deliberately hid for students who weren't good at unlocking charms.

"Anyway, I found it!" After Ian crawled inside, he immediately turned back to repair the damaged wall. His [Explosion Charm] and [Repair Charm] were both close to level four.

It can be said.

In a loop.

Ian has bombed every part of Hogwarts. He's good at timing things to happen when the cycle is about to end, doing things that would be absolutely impossible or forbidden under normal circumstances.

"Fluorescent lights!"

Ian lit his wand, and the quiet library fell silent. Rows upon rows of books appeared even more solemn and mysterious under the light emanating from his wand. A night breeze slipped through the crack in the door, causing the pages to turn softly, producing a long, lingering rustling sound.

It stood out exceptionally clearly in the boundless silence.

Choose me! I will guide you through the laws of the dark world!

"I am the true Dark Bible! Learn from me! You will trample the world under your feet!"

"None of you are as appealing to aspiring wizards as I am. My books don't contain profound magic or complicated spells; they only contain so many beautiful things you could never finish reading in your lifetime."

On the bookshelves in the restricted book section.

These whispered, seductive forbidden books were commonplace for Ian; he only lingered for a few seconds in front of one of the books before moving on to his familiar area.

Because he often comes here to find substitutes for the rare ingredients in ancient potion recipes, the areas Ian is most familiar with, besides the alchemy area, are the potion area.

The reason the books he was looking for were placed here was because many of the materials that could be used to replace ancient materials were not materials that could be found in nature.

The creation process requires the use of alchemy, and many materials used in this process violate ethics and morality, and some even violate the harsh laws of the Ministry of Magic.

"It's all Mr. Morgan's fault. He made me break the school rules again, and I might even break the Wizarding Law." Among the books Ian was looking through were many alternative medicines that required infants and teenagers to be used.

The illustrations made Ian feel quite nauseous, but he still forced himself to read on. Although Professor Morgan had read many modern books and Ian could find substitutes for most of the ingredients in the recipe in modern times, the witch, who had never worried about money, probably didn't realize that some of the ingredients she wrote in the recipe were worth as much as gold.

Ian could only choose cheap materials to replace the alternatives that had already been determined by Professor Morgan, well, alternatives to alternatives. I wonder if the legendary Black Witch was doing this on purpose.

"Okay, not bad. It made me give up on that book I just passed by. The final result didn't disappoint me." After confirming a few options in his mind, Ian chose to leave.

The magic to pass through walls had no effect on the library, but the explosion spell would work without any problems. After repairing the wall he had blown open, Ian returned the way he came.

"I still have a lot of dragon blood left, but I need to purify it first and then brew a new potion to replace the function of borneol. The more complicated part is extracting nightshade grass."

"It can replace the original Moonshadow Grass, so the two plants must have come from the same family many years ago." The young wizard buried his head in his purse, studying the implementation process of the alternative.

however.

"Puff~"

A helmet of armor suddenly flew towards him, but fortunately Ian reacted quickly enough to dodge it. He was about to curse angrily, thinking that the mischievous ghost had eaten the dragon's heart and the phoenix's gall.

.....

When the little wizard saw the person controlling the helmet flying towards him, his eyes immediately cleared, and the annoyed expression on his face slowly froze and transformed into a forced smile.

"Good uncle."

The little wizard spoke nervously.

Yes.

Snape caught Ian, who was out at night.

"Even if it's not class time, you still have to call me Professor Snape!" Snape's expression wasn't too bad; he just looked at Ian with displeasure.

"Yes, Uncle Professor Snape." Ian was weighing whether Snape would hold him accountable after the start of the semester if he ran away now.

"I heard you muttering about materials you shouldn't have. Are you trying to 'pick up' some more somewhere?" Snape's displeasure was clearly due to his misunderstanding of Ian.

"Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. I was just reviewing the book I read today while I was sleepwalking." In the end, Ian didn't choose to turn around and run away.

He knew very well that other professors might only settle scores later, but his good uncle would settle scores with interest compounded, and his future should not be punished by usury.

"Let me see your bag." Snape, of course, couldn't believe the little wizard's nonsense, and his sharp eyes were already fixed on the money bag in Ian's hand.

The contraband inside was so plentiful that Ian could spend the rest of his life in Azkaban. Of course, Ian wouldn't hand it over to Snape for inspection. He wasn't afraid of Snape reporting him to the Ministry of Magic; he was afraid Snape would confiscate it directly.

"I really didn't intend to do anything bad tonight. I have more than I can use myself. If you lost something, I think it must be because there are other things in the school—no, there are rats in the school that you haven't noticed." Ian almost let slip, but thankfully he corrected himself quickly. Whether Snape believed him or not, he believed it himself.

"Tonight? Ha, should I praise you?" Snape was so suspicious after being robbed that he certainly wouldn't believe Ian's sincere words now.

"Do I look like someone who's lacking in materials?"

To change the subject and to increase the credibility of his words, Ian threw out all the materials from Snape's office from the last two loops.

They were everywhere.

The number is more than twice the number of offices Snape currently has.

This proves with absolute certainty that he had no designs on Snape's office! Just as Ian was about to take the materials back, Snape unexpectedly rushed up and stopped him.

"Do you want them? I can give them all to you. After all, I've always remembered how kind you were to me!" Ian looked at the weak potion ingredients on the ground with some reluctance.

They also have value.

Perhaps he can't concoct any magical potions with medicinal effects, but if you look at them from a different perspective, the value they can create is no different from their medicinal effects. Ian may not always have morality, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know what is moral and what is immoral.

"Um?"

Snape, instead of being pleased by Ian's flattering words, frowned deeply and squatted down to pick up a shriveled fig from the ground.

"You call this stuff potion ingredients?"

Snape was not fooled by appearances. He didn't even bother to smell it; he simply squeezed it hard and crushed the wrinkled fig into crumbs.

"They look like potion ingredients and have the effects of potion ingredients, just not as good. How can they not be considered qualified potion ingredients?"

Ian looked at the crushed, shrunken fig with a pained expression.

"Was that what those wizards in Knockturn Alley said to you? I thought you were a smart man, but I didn't expect—" Snape clearly thought Ian had gone shopping in Knockturn Alley.

He chuckled, but before he could finish his sarcastic remark,

"No, Uncle, the dark wizard in Knockturn Alley can't fool me, and I didn't go to Knockturn Alley to buy any fake medicine." Ian shook his head and interrupted Snape.

How do you explain these things?

Snape believed that Ian was being ripped off by an unscrupulous merchant but was still being stubborn.

however.

Faced with his sharp gaze.

Ian hesitated for a moment before responding.

"These are fake medicines I plan to sell in Knockturn Alley—" the little wizard said softly, knowing that this was hardly something to be proud of.

"??????"

Upon hearing this, Snape's expression immediately froze.

He was just worried that Ian would be fooled by the dark wizard in Knockturn Alley, but it turns out that this guy is actually planning to rebel against the heavens! Hogwarts really has been turned upside down this year!

"That's absolutely out of the ordinary!"

Snape swallowed hard, then straightened his face. "You think your stuff can fool the people in Knockturn Alley? You think your counterfeiting skills are better than theirs?"

1

"I can tell you definitively that even if you brew these things into a concoction that looks quite professional, the people in Knockdown Alley will be able to easily tell the difference!"

"Don't assume that the wizards in Knockturn Alley are all fools. They sell fakes, not because they lack skill or expertise. The methods required to make fakes are no simpler than those required to make real ones." Snape glanced disdainfully at what Ian had poured out. To him, these materials, lacking medicinal properties, were obviously fake.

of course.

This is based solely on the potions master's eyesight; it should be enough to fool ordinary wizards, given how realistic the appearance is. However, he didn't quite understand how such an appearance was created.

However, the lack of medicinal efficacy is obvious.

How will they verify if my items are genuine?

Ian asked, seemingly out of curiosity.

Snape frowned and glared at him. He didn't want to answer the question at first, but then he thought that Ian was already at a point where he was hard to teach any worse.

"Appearance, smell, and even feel—these can all be used to distinguish the authenticity of potion ingredients." Uncle Good finally spoke up, picking up another sleep bean from the ground and preparing to continue discussing how to differentiate finished potions.

"good!"

Ian suddenly clapped his hands.

Just as Snape was somewhat bewildered, Ian shouted, "You touched my stuff! If you touched it, you have to buy it! I can't sell anything that's been touched!" Ian didn't care how to identify counterfeit goods.

He was simply demonstrating his drug-selling strategy to Snape.

...

Snape could certainly see what Ian was trying to say. It was precisely because he realized how thick-skinned the young wizard was that he fell silent for a moment and couldn't say a word.

"You want to force a sale? Do you think those thugs who run rampant in the alley will obediently pay up because of your twisted logic?" Snape's lips twitched slightly.

"Of course they won't."

Ian nodded in agreement, then pulled out his wand. "So, isn't this our reason for learning magic? It'll definitely make the dark wizards in Knockturn Alley pay up."

Ian finished speaking.

Even Snape's eyes started twitching.

He added another sentence.

"Really, I'm definitely being very honest, even selling them something with medicinal properties." The young wizard's tone was full of certainty. "I bet even if I sold them sugar water as Felix Felicis, they wouldn't dare to report me to the Ministry of Magic or anywhere else."

"That's Knockturn Alley, and they're dark wizards—" Ian had clearly tasted the pleasure of ripping off dark wizards during the Christmas activities he did with Aurora today.

"This is not something a guy your age should be doing!" Snape said earnestly, his voice filled with helplessness towards Ian.

This person must be born a bad seed.

Voldemort probably wasn't this bad when he was in school.

"Of course, so I plan to entrust this to the elders in Aurora, who have their own shops in Knockturn Alley." Ian's words were, of course, just something he made up on the spot.

He was fishing.

And the fish took the bait.

I also have a shop in Knockturn Alley—

Snape spoke in a low, drawn-out tone, his expression somewhat awkward and unnatural. He already disliked Grindelwald's Saints, so he certainly wouldn't watch Ian cooperate with them.

As a renowned potions master.

Needless to say.

He is certainly an expert in counterfeiting, and an expert who has practiced it many, many times before. After all, if you can sell fake medicine, why would you think of brewing real medicine?

He understood the reasoning behind Ian's words.

"Alright, alright! Now we don't need to ask anyone else! You just need to do the work of boiling them all up, and we'll split the profits 50/50!" Ian didn't wait for Snape to reply before throwing the remaining, less medicinal ingredients out of his purse. Why would he bother doing something himself when someone else could do it for him?

Snape wanted to scold Ian, but there were just too many fake medicines on the ground—he quickly took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes, and mentally prepared himself.

This was all so that Ian wouldn't get too close to those saints.

I don't want to earn gold coins.

It wasn't that he was itching to experiment with these dubious fake potions. Yes, that was it. Having convinced himself, Snape opened his eyes.

however.

The little wizard has vanished without a trace.

"How did that bastard manage to make this fake medicine?" Snape carefully collected the materials that were missing their medicinal properties, without even thinking of keeping them for himself.

After all, just as the young wizard knew the ways he liked to punish his students, he also knew just how serious and vengeful that guy would be about Galleons.

Even he himself was tempted by the amount of gold coins, but Snape dared not gamble on it, because winning would only increase his gold coin inventory, but losing would likely ruin more than just his lifelong reputation.

There are aphrodisiacs.

Snape already knew quite a bit about Ian, that his nephew might actually be feeding magical creatures and stuffing them into his bed in the middle of the night.

"strangeness---"

Back in his office, Snape spent half a day studying the counterfeit medicine, but he still couldn't figure out how it was made. The fake medicine's properties and its incredibly realistic appearance were truly incongruous and jarring.

"How did he do that?" Snape had suspected that Ian had only extracted the medicinal properties of the real herbs, but after checking, he found no trace of the medicinal properties being extracted.

They seemed to be inherently less potent, yet they looked almost identical to potent medicines. Snape opened his cupboard and took out a shrunken fig for comparison.

"How can even the patterns be the same?"

Snape's expression showed a hint of surprise.

It is clear.

Some low-probability coincidences occurred.

He stared at the shrunken fig in his hand, which was identical in every way except for its medicinal effects, with an extremely shocked expression, as if he had witnessed something that could never have happened.

"Just as there are no two people exactly alike, there should never be two pieces of material exactly alike." Snape was about to reach the table with the lit candles to compare them carefully.

"Hiss~"

He suddenly gasped.

I suddenly felt a sharp, intense pain in my head, as if it were having a spasm.

*Smack!*

Many of the reagents on the tables were quickly propped up to prevent Snape from knocking them over as he fell. Some of the corrosive potions began to hiss and bubble.

"What's going on?! I'm cursed?!"

Snape ignored the spilled potions on the ground. His mind was trembling, or rather, vibrating, with fragmented images flashing through his mind one after another.

They're all related to him.

But it's something he hasn't experienced.

Hogsmeade Village.

The chess players under the shade of the trees seem to sit here at any time.

It was as if the middle-aged man's hand, a wanderer, was gently stroking, and the ring on his finger was emitting a very special fluctuation, but after a moment, nothing happened around him.

"That's more interesting."

Under the tranquil shade of the trees.

The middle-aged man seemed to be muttering to himself. Winter snow was falling from the sky, but the area around him remained completely dry.

Not only was it untouched by snow, but the temperature inside was also quite high, and you could even smell the fragrance of blooming flowers that are usually only found in spring. The overall feeling was completely detached from the surrounding winter.

"After all, fairness is important."

The middle-aged man seemed to be speaking softly to someone.

His eyes reflected a chess piece on the chessboard.

Albus Dumbledore.