Chapter 117: Black's Secret

"You know her?" Professor Doudou turned his head abruptly to look at Trig. "Why do you call her Kasan? Does this mean her full name is Cassandra?"

"This is my mother." Trig said in English. "I don't know why she would appear here, and before today I didn't know she could be an Animagus."

"It doesn't matter, then let's wake up Ms. Cassandra and ask." Deng Buliduo said gently, then waved his wand to lift the petrification on her.

"Ahem." After the woman on the ground coughed a few times, she looked around and explained in English with a slight accent: "Sorry, I'm not a bad person."

Under the children's gaze, she stood up slowly. Harry felt she actually looked very young; it was entirely possible to say she was a seventh-year senior, completely unable to imagine that her child was almost the same age as himself.

"This... Mr. Gandalf." She bowed to Deng Buliduo, "I am Trig's mother. Because I remembered I hadn't signed his Hogsmeade permission form, I wanted to come specially once."

Deng Buliduo said with a smile, "It doesn't matter, Ms. Cassandra, that signature form won't take effect until next year."

"I am still suspicious." Professor Doudou examined her scrutinizingly. "You don't look like the mother of a twelve-year-old child at all, and how did you get in?"

"I think we'd better change places to talk about these. By the way, I am Deng Buliduo." Deng Buliduo made a gesture of invitation.

"Oh oh, sorry, but my English name isn't Cassandra either; you can call me Daisy." Daisy said while walking.

"Kasan is a private term; in the Yingzhou dialect, it means mother." Trig explained belatedly.

"A big misunderstanding." Harry couldn't help but laugh.

"I'd better stay here." Professor Doudou pulled open the wardrobe door of the hospital wing. "Black won't give up the assassination plan just because we discovered Cassandra."

After Deng Buliduo took the professors away, Harry lay back on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. At this moment, he suddenly remembered that it seemed to be like this at this time last year; he was injured in the first Quidditch match and had to stay in the hospital wing for a night.

Zhang Qiu said there would be intruders that day; he didn't expect that after a year, the prophecy would finally be fulfilled. Just don't know if Black has any possibility of coming to attack again; Professor Doudou hiding in such a narrow space in the wardrobe is probably quite hard.

Amidst all kinds of wild thoughts, Harry fell asleep in a daze. What woke him up was the warm sun of Sunday morning. Regardless of whether Halloween and the Saturday after it had any curse, at least they had passed. Harry regained his spirit. As soon as he was discharged, he went straight to Lu Ping's office, strongly demanding that he teach him the Patronus Charm.

Under Harry's repeated requests, Lu Ping also had to give a definite statement: "At the latest next term, maybe a bit earlier, I will popularize the Patronus Charm for everyone in Defense Against the Dark Arts class. I say this because I need to systematically sort out this spell and related knowledge, and I am not very proficient myself, so I need some time to recall."

"I promise you, I will finish it as soon as possible. After all, Dementors are now entrenched around the school, and the children certainly need this spell." He said.

Lu Ping had said it to this point, so Harry couldn't continue to force him, and turned to the library to slowly write the four-thousand-word werewolf essay stipulated by Snape.

By evening, when the Torchwood gathering happened, almost everyone had their eyes on Trig, unable to wait to ask about his mother, which made him very embarrassed.

"Alright, I'll explain to you one by one." He said. "My mother is a Yingzhou person, her English name is Daisy Fontroy. From the time I could remember, we had always lived in Yingzhou, and she secretly taught me magic at home. It wasn't until last year that Uncle Tang Tang Nade picked me up to America, but I didn't live there for long before he brought me to Hogwarts to go to school."

"I feel very strange, why does your mother look so young?" Ivy asked.

"And very beautiful, and dressed very strangely. I mean, she looks like a naive girl." Jin Ni added.

Harry recalled Daisy's attire: white sailor suit, magenta pleated skirt, and white thigh-high socks. It indeed didn't look like what a dignified mother should wear.

"From the time I could remember, she had always dressed like this." Trig said. "Actually, she also has a white wizard robe, but she almost never wears it. I think it might be because wizard robes aren't very good-looking; my mother is a woman who loves beauty very much."

"White wizard robe, I remember that's called Hanfu. Zhang Qiu wore it; it actually looks quite good." Harry said.

"No, that one is the British-style wizard robe like the ones on us." Trig said. "White Hanfu or Kimono she also often wears."

"By the way, how old is your mother?" Crabbe asked.

"Don't know." Trig shook his head.

"Actually, what I care more about is, how did your mother get in?" Ma Erfu frowned and said.

"Oh, because of this amulet." Trig flipped out a small square cloth bag from the inside of his robe. "There is a spell on this that can let her sense my location."

"No, I believe Ma Erfu isn't talking about this." Pan Xi said. "What we care about is, the school is currently under martial law because of Black's matter, every intersection is guarded by Dementors, and she should also know nothing about Hogwarts' secret passages."

"Isn't that obvious? She can turn into a pigeon." Crabbe scratched his head. "Just flew in like this."

"Yeah, such a simple conclusion, we could all think of it, but Draco didn't think of it?" Gao Er put down the snacks in his hand and rarely expressed a remark mocking Ma Erfu.

"It is precisely because it's too simple that I find it hard to believe." Ma Erfu sighed. "Who could imagine that the best magical defense in the British Empire was so easily broken through by a pigeon."

"Deng Buliduo must say, this is the power of maternal love." Lu Na said with drifting eyes.

"However, this reminds me of one thing: if Dementors have no vigilance toward animals." Harry said. "Could it be that Black also escaped prison and sneaked into Hogwarts by relying on Animagus?"

"Impossible, absolutely impossible." Ma Erfu exaggeratedly threw his hands outward. "Every Animagus in England must go to the Ministry of Magic to register. If he were, they could easily check from the records."

"But Black doesn't need to consider these." Harry remembered Peter Pettigrew; obviously, that was a living, illegal Animagus. "He was originally an outlaw; it doesn't matter if he secretly practiced Animagus and didn't report it to the Ministry of Magic, it's even possible he learned Animagus in prison."

"Right, think about it." Pan Xi pulled Ma Erfu's sleeve and whispered. "Illegal Animagus will be locked into Azkaban, but Black was originally going to enter Azkaban, so he doesn't care at all."

"Can we stop talking about this terrible person?" Jin Ni said in a low voice.

"Right, Trig, why don't you talk about your father?" Ivy tried to change the subject.

"There's nothing to talk about, I only know his name is Dark." Trig said. "Mother said she met him during a study exchange, they were in love for a period of time, and then he disappeared."

"Then did Tang Tang Nade tell you anything?" Ivy pursued.

"He said my father didn't return to the country after the study exchange ended, and the teachers said he disappeared in Africa." Trig sighed. "Tang Tang Nade feels he might still be alive, but so many years have passed, even if he wanted to find him, he couldn't."

In the idle chatter of hitting east and west, the children mentioned their parents more or less. Harry, based on the idea of seeking common ground while reserving differences, only talked about his father's achievements in Quidditch, and Ma Erfu only restrainedly boasted about his father's aristocratic demeanor.

Only Lu Na kept introducing "The Quibbler" edited by her father, and only Trig kept listening with great interest.

Finally, Crabbe and Gao Er ate all the snacks on the table, and the salon was declared over. When Harry left, he recalled the content of tonight. Actually, only "Black might be an illegal Animagus" was worth noting, and the rest were just gossip to be laughed at.

When Harry returned to the dormitory, Neville had also just returned, and he looked a bit listless.

"By the way, Neville, what was the interesting discovery you mentioned before?" Harry remembered he had said he discovered a secret that had been circulating for a long time in the hospital wing.

"Let's talk later, I'm exhausted." Neville threw his robe on the ground messily, then fell asleep.

"One or two are not very normal." Luo En shrugged; he was reading a thick book.

"What are you saying?" Harry asked.

"Hermione, no matter when you see her, she is always in a hurry, as if she would miss the train the next second." Luo En complained about his friend. "Neville, ever since he talked to Hermione last time, he falls asleep as soon as he returns to the dormitory every day, as if he is also busy without a moment's rest."

"If you put it that way, Zhang Qiu is the same, no matter when she is full of worry, as if the world would end if the divination didn't come true." Harry sighed. "Luo En, besides Ma Erfu, I feel the only normal people left are the two of us."

"Your state isn't very good either." Luo En commented objectively. "I feel you are too affected by the Dementors."

"That's fine, after Christmas, Lu Ping will start teaching the Patronus Charm, and everything will get better." Harry said optimistically.

"Want to take a look at this?" Luo En raised the book in his hand. "I borrowed it from Professor Binns; it's hard to imagine such an old ghost still hiding such good things." ===== CHAPTER 118 =====