HP: For a better world

After leaving the Astronomy Tower, I ran into Harry on my way back to the dormitory. Behind him was the Defense Against the Dark Arts office. He was just coming out of Professor Lupin's office.

The door was not closed yet, and a smoking goblet could be seen through the gap.

Winster greeted Harry, pursed his lips to signal Harry to look at the smoking wine glass, and asked, "Did you run into Professor Snape delivering medicine to Professor Lupin? How was he feeling?" If he looked in a good mood, Winster would go and check on his cauldron, but Winster thought of the rumors that had not yet subsided in the past few days, and did not hold out much hope.

But Harry hesitated for a long time and said that Snape might be in a good mood: "Well... after all, although his face looked a little gloomy when he came today, he didn't take the opportunity to deduct points or say something mean - but you know he hasn't been good to Professor Lupin in the past few days, and he came to deliver medicine today. I suspect he has shifted his target and is preparing to drug Professor Lupin." As he spoke, Harry began to worry. It was rare that Snape's face looked good, but the werewolf rumor had not yet passed. He was still glaring at Professor Lupin a few days ago, but today he didn't even get the chance to say a few words to him.

Harry watched Lupin drink the steaming cup of medicine without any precautions, and felt very uneasy. But Lupin repeatedly assured him that Professor Snape would not drug his colleagues and students.

Harry was still a little skeptical. Winster thought for a moment and said, "I saw him finishing the potion today. Apart from adding a bunch of weird and disgusting things, it tastes terrible, so it shouldn't be poisonous." He comforted him, but since Harry said that Snape's mood was not that bad, it was okay.

Winster was going to the office to take a look, because Blake was coming soon. The teacher's mood would only get worse. If he didn't ask about the spider silk problem now, he didn't know when he would have to wait.

After thinking it over, and saying goodbye to Harry, Winster went to knock on Lupin's door, intending to give himself another layer of insurance. Having participated in the brewing of wolfsbane potion for two months, Winster figured that if he was asked, he would say that he saw it from Aconitum and Firefly Grass - this way he shouldn't be scolded, right?

Lupin turned and took a look. "Come in, Mr. White."

Winster pushed the door open.

Lupin asked curiously, "Kid, is there something wrong with you? Um - are you having trouble with the Patronus Charm?" He remembered this student who asked a bunch of advanced spell questions when he got on the bus. At that time, he thought that all Hogwarts students could improve to that level.

"No - I just heard Harry say that the teacher brought you medicine and came to take the cup away." Winster explained.

Lupin was stunned for a moment, and his tone became a little awkward: "Ah, it's right there, you take it." He pointed to the smoking high-heeled wine glass that Winster saw.

Winster took it and left, not wanting to stay any longer, for fear that Snape would pop out from somewhere and see him in Lupin's office and make another petty note - after all, the source of the rumor was Winster's Boggart, so he had to live with his head down.

After taking the goblet, Winster went directly to the potion office next to the cellar. Snape was putting a few fiery red feathers into the private storage cabinet, and on the table was a plate of fresh phoenix feathers that were being dried - good guy, Winster thought, the reason why Fawkes cursed was found.

"Teacher——" Winster hesitated to speak. Was he going to find Dumbledore to pull Fawkes's hair?

Snape put the dried phoenix feathers away carefully. Seeing Winston holding the goblet for Lupin, he just snorted lightly without cursing.

Is this just a rumor? Winster carefully glanced at Snape's face. Harry, who had been targeted for many years, was right. The teacher was not in a bad mood today. It was possible that Dumbledore had to make up for the rumor. After all, the real werewolf was actually Professor Lupin, and one of the things Snape hated most when he was a student was werewolves.

"Got a bundle of spider silk?" Snape snorted lazily, "You have also been exposed to some advanced potions. I see you have already guessed one of them -" He glanced at the goblet that Winston had placed on the table, "Then you should know that some potions contain the results of hard experiments by many potion masters. Not all potion materials are recorded. Some potions add smelly socks to the crucible, some require participation in rituals at the beginning, and some require the addition of the pharmacist's own blood to each one - they are all the result of continuous attempts, and may not be recorded in books circulated on the market."

The potion gurgled in the cauldron and the logs crackled in the fireplace.

Winster's face wrinkled and he asked curiously. Snape told him that it was a niche potion, a trap used to capture elves.

Well, potions have strange ingredients. He listened to Snape continue.

"What your potion needs now is a neutralizer." Snape raised his hand, and a green potion bottle floated out of the cabinet next to him and fell into Winster's hands. It was the experimental potion that Winster had recently replaced with wormwood infusion. Although it eventually corroded a crucible, it was much less intense than the previous drug reaction. "I don't care what tone you set. The drug has fluctuating properties, and you have to keep adjusting it yourself."

Winster thought of the failed experiments and his dwindling wallet.

"I can only tell you that this potion still has some bias in its properties. In addition to finding the neutralizer materials, you should also be careful." Snape held a soft-bristled brush in his hand and carefully processed the feathers. Next to him was a thumb-sized bottle containing a thin layer of golden-red blood.

Winster couldn't help but raise the spider silk a little higher, "That spider silk——"

Snape forced a smile and said, "Check it yourself."

What! Winster left the office angrily. After talking for a long time, he still didn't tell me. Snape is a super petty person. He is still holding a grudge and spreading rumors that it was caused by my Boggart. Check the clues, check the clues. If he finds out, what will he ask?

At this moment, a ginger shadow rushed past Winster.

"Crookshanks?" cried Winston.

The ginger cat ignored him and ran away, but its long ginger fur and flat cat face were definitely Crookshanks.

"It must be a bad day today." Winster complained, and resigned himself to chasing after him. Before Hermione went to Hogsmeade, she temporarily gave the cat to Winster and asked him to watch the cat and not let it run around. Winster put the cat in his dormitory and even put away all the bottles and jars, fearing that the cat's claws would itch.

The Gryffindor common room has a window, so it's understandable that the cat escaped. But there's only a black lake outside the window of the Slytherin common room, so how did it escape?

Winster bypassed the moving staircase and chased through the portraits that were dozing with their eyes closed, causing a burst of curses.

"Damn it, who is it!"

"No running in the corridor!"

"Scared me……"

"Which college's crazy kid?"

"Looks like a Slytherin..."

"Castle Keeper! Castle Keeper! There's someone running around in the corridor!"

"Sorry--" Winster shouted, panting and chasing into the auditorium with his robe in his hand.

But Crookshanks had already quickly jumped into the bustling crowd and disappeared among the tables and chairs.

Winster slowed down and saw that the hall was full of people. Professor McGonagall, Hagrid, and Professor Flitwick were all gathered here, waving their wands to enlarge pumpkins, hollow out the pumpkins, light candles, and hang rows of banners.

"Winster!" Hagrid saw Winster looking around and greeted him with a smile, "Are you going to help prepare the dinner too?"

The four long tables in the auditorium were filled with odds and ends of decoration and hollowed-out pumpkin fillings.

Professor Flitwick stood on a high stool, directing each bat candy to transform into a bat and fly onto a pumpkin lantern or flap its wings among the floating candles.

Professor Flitwick also smiled and called Winston to help, "There are so many decorations that we can't handle it with just a few of us." He pointed to the senior students who were also decorating the hall. The Slytherin prefect was also there, as well as a red-haired Gryffindor - probably Percy from Weasley.

Never mind. Anyway, Hermione was worried that Crookshanks would run around because she was afraid that he would catch Ron's rat, Peter, the traitor.

"I, what should I do?" Winster stared at the pumpkins floating in the air and the groups of bat candies that looked like living creatures.

This was Winston's first time attending a festive banquet at Hogwarts. Both of his eyes lit up like a lake bathed in sunlight.

"Use your imagination." Professor Flitwick winked at him, waving his wand and giving a pumpkin lantern in the air eyes and a grinning mouth.

Winster thought for a moment, took out his magic wand and pointed it at a pumpkin next to him - the golden pumpkin stretched and turned black, and transformed into a half-human-high snake head. Obsidian-like snake scales adorned the huge black snake - Winster waved his hand again, and the glass pot filled with pumpkin juice next to it turned into two pie-sized golden snake pupils embedded in the snake head, and two tubes extended from it that turned into sharp fangs, sitting at both ends of the long table, opening its mouth to bite.

"What a clever idea!" Professor McGonagall exclaimed, and a group of prefects nearby looked over and saw that the two objects turned into still lifes combined to form a huge, lifelike black snake head.

A vivid black snake poked its head out from under the table, spitting out its tongue. Its golden eyes looked towards the wizards on both sides from time to time, and its sharp fangs were salivating. But as long as you dared to put the cup under its fangs, the delicious pumpkin juice would flow out like venom.

"I'm looking forward to your final exam, White." She tapped her wand, and animals representing their respective houses appeared on the other long tables.

"Maybe I can get more surprises." Professor McGonagall showed a smile on her usually stern face.

A honey badger appeared on the Hufflepuff table, poking its head out of a chocolate hole and stealing fruit from a plate.

There was a bird's nest floating on the Ravenclaw table, and an eagle was hovering above, occasionally trying to grab some food from the table and feed it to two little eagles in the shape of roast chickens.

——At the long table of Gryffindor, which was the most valued by Professor McGonagall, a group of little lions who had just grown manes paraded across the table with a roar, jumped off the edge, grew golden wings and turned into griffins flying in the air, biting Professor Flitwick's group of bats. Every time one was bitten, a sugar bat lost its magic and fell into the plate of the student below.

Professor McGonagall looked at her work with appreciation and nodded.

"Hey, hey! Minerva, stop your little lions first! They're going to eat all my bats--" Professor Flitwick shouted, waving his wand vigorously.

The sugar bats that fell on the plate, under Flitwick's command, took advantage of the griffins' inattention and spread their wings, gathered into a black group and flew into the sky of other colleges.

The Ravenclaw eagle was preening its feathers on a nest made of bread loaves, and was eyeing another eagle's nest that had just been conjured up - the nest was full of boiled goose eggs.

The pumpkin pulp on the table disappeared, and was replaced by a baked pumpkin pie, but now half of it was missing - Professor McGonagall had taken it to make wings for the little lions.

Winster turned his head to look at the snake head that could only stay where it was, sticking out its tongue and rolling its eyes, and then looked at the wonderful "decorations" of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw next door.

Suddenly, a sentence popped up in my mind:

——Lost.

When the students who went to Hogsmeade came back, they saw this scene: a group of little griffins were playing with dizzy bats on the Gryffindor table. Two eagles were fighting in the air above Ravenclaw, and there was also a fight in the floating nest in the air. From time to time, a little eagle and eggs would roll down and land on the plate on the long table.

There was a dark hole on the Hufflepuff table, and a family of honey badgers were hugging each other and taking away a lot of fruit.

Slytherin's style suddenly changed. Two huge snake heads bit the two ends of the long table. One snake had golden pupils, and the other had green pupils. Their black scales glowed coldly. They stared coldly at the people who came, and groups of bats flew over their heads.

Above the auditorium is a night sky with a brewing storm.

The students who entered the auditorium all showed expressions of amazement.

Loial handed Winster a package of licorice wands. "So after you decorated the snake head, you didn't think of any other ideas?"

Winston took the candy and replied, "Yeah, this is obviously a Halloween dinner, and Gryffindor's looks more suitable for Christmas." He emphasized, "This is in line with the theme!" Then he put a cup against the teeth of the green-eyed snake and took a glass of cucumber juice.

Jenny was giggling, Mike and Carl were sharing a plate of beef pudding, and Colen was reading a Muggle novel while eating.

On the other side, Harry and Ron kept trying to tear the pumpkin pie wings off the little griffins, while Hermione picked up the fallen candy bats and stuffed them into her mouth.

Except for Snape, who occasionally glanced at Lupin who was chatting animatedly at the teachers' table.

The banquet ended with a performance by all the ghosts of Hogwarts, but the Bloody Baron still sat in the Slytherin seat and watched coldly.

Other ghosts came out from every corner and formed various queues to perform sliding performances. Finally, Nick, who was almost headless in Gryffindor, re-enacted his beheading experience, which was very popular.

Everyone finished the dinner with laughter, and Crookshanks came back, squatting in Hermione's arms and pulling off her robe.

Winster, Luo and the others laughed and talked about the next club gathering place as they followed the Slytherin group to the cellar, preparing to return to their respective dormitories to rest.

Until ten minutes later——

The Slytherin prefect suddenly burst into the common room and hurriedly announced to all Slytherin:

"——Principal Dumbledore asks all students to return to the Great Hall!"

he said seriously.

"Now, immediately, right now!!!"