Chapter 303: Inspiration

Obviously, excluding Snape the headmaster, the teachers in the school can be roughly divided into three types. One type is McGonagall, Hagrid, and others who are Deng Buliduo's confidants, who are willing to help the Order of the Phoenix for Deng Buliduo's legacy; the second type is teachers like Haipu and Arnold who have their own thoughts, which is a minority; and the truly most numerous ones are teachers like Trelawney who don't care about the world outside the window and are immersed in academic and teaching.

Then, for the people of the Order of the Phoenix, Snape himself can also belong to the first type. They complete teaching work while quietly providing help for the Order of the Phoenix, which is completely fine. However, in the eyes of the Death Eaters, Snape is almost alone in the school.

In successive Death Eater meetings, Snape has always performed very indifferently, as if he doesn't care about anything, and is biased toward one corner. This is largely perhaps also because he has no power of his own, so it is difficult to speak loudly.

If Snape really wants to recruit a few subordinates, the most cost-effective way is of course to subdue and pull in those neutral professors and put Snape's own label on them.

Treating the events of these two days as a play directed and acted by Snape himself, the matter is easy to explain: first, dismiss Trelawney, a neutral person, in public, implying that there is some "outside force intending to intervene in Hogwarts," and this outside force can also use the Ministry of Magic to persecute neutral teachers.

Then, relying on the twin sister trick, pretend to be bearing all the pressure for the sake of innocent teachers. Doing so is undoubtedly providing a chance for those neutral teachers who are worried about the rabbit's death and the fox's sadness to seek protection. By borrowing a non-existent foreign enemy, Snape is also going to truly form a force of his own.

As for whether this plan will be seen through, it doesn't seem so easy. First of all, it is easy for people to suspect that it is the Ministry of Magic's problem, which deceived the vast majority of people who don't know the truth; people who are well-informed enough to know that Arnold's status is transcendent and the Ministry of Magic doesn't need to send other spies easily suspect Regulus; and Regulus himself and those who know his secrets are mostly busy with other affairs and don't have much heart to pay attention to the fate of Hogwarts teachers.

And Harry didn't see through this plan all at once. One of the crucial things was Arnold, this old fox who understood and cooperated with Snape's actions, who ran to Hagrid's hut and used "Hagrid is Deng Buliduo's confidant" to give Harry some inspiration and reminders.

People like Arnold shouldn't help themselves for no reason. The greater possibility is that Snape exchanged a secret with himself: he knew Hoffa's true identity, so as an exchange, he also told Harry who the mastermind behind the Sybill incident was. It can be said that doing so is quite looking up to Harry.

The Sybill matter just caused some small-scale discussion, and another exciting good news spread throughout the school: Snape announced that the Christmas dance would continue to be held this year, and allowed any teacher and student to participate.

Regarding this, although Neville was also very happy, he calmly reminded everyone: "This is Snape throwing out another topic to divert everyone's attention in order to suppress Sybill's popularity."

However, in Harry's eyes, this news had other mysteries. The key lay in the words "any teacher and student." Although it was almost always stipulated like this in previous years, Deng Buliduo had never emphasized this unwritten rule.

This might be a manifestation of Snape preparing to further pull in neutral teachers. He couldn't wait to raise his status among the Death Eaters. And Harry soon thought that if Severus, who had always played the good guy, suddenly started to be loud, Lu Xiusi would definitely be quite headache-prone. At this time, it should be a case of leaking roofs and raining, letting Pan Xi also stand up and talk back to him, giving him a little Hogwarts shock.

Thinking of this, a flash of mischievous pleasure flashed in Harry's heart: it would be better to set this time point before the festival, letting Lu Xiusi have a worried Christmas.

Just when Harry started to enable the groundwork he had laid before, preparing to guide Pan Xi to make trouble for Lu Xiusi, Zhang Qiu found him and told him that Tang Tang Nade was in a hurry.

"Tang Tang Nade? What is he in a hurry for?" When talking about this, Harry still didn't quite understand.

"Hermione went to the Lightweight Photo Studio and already knows about Cassandra's existence." Zhang Qiu said. "And, girls of this age don't dislike changing clothes and taking beautiful photos. Hermione will go again sooner or later."

"This was all started by you." Harry said with a smile.

"Ah right, so Tang Tang Nade is a bit resentful of me." Zhang Qiu touched her face a bit embarrassedly. "If Hermione patronizes many times and gets familiar with the proprietress, it will be easy for her to hear the story of Dark Fontroy. After all, this is a story placed on the table. As time passes, it will reach Hermione's ears sooner or later."

"If Cassandra doesn't tell it in such detail." Harry pondered. "She might only think this is a tragic story of a lover dying accidentally, and the story of Tang Tang Nade taking care of orphans and widows will also become a beautiful story."

"But the bad thing is that the story of Sybill and Sybill being twin sisters is placed in front of her. As long as Hermione sniffs a trace of suspicion, it will be easy for her to start suspecting whether Tang Tang Nade and Dark are the same person." Zhang Qiu spread her hands helplessly. "Tang Tang Nade has been stirring up trouble in the Muggle world and hasn't paid attention to the struggle in the British wizarding world for some time. How could he have thought that when both sides of wizards use their means, they could so coincidentally trap him in danger?"

"Indeed, this is an unprovoked disaster." Harry held back his laughter. "Then what does he plan to do?"

"I don't know, he just wrote me a letter questioning whether I intervened in this matter." Zhang Qiu raised her chin. "Of course, I didn't participate in it, but his questioning might not mean this. He just hopes I won't intervene next."

"Anyway, you didn't intend to do so originally, eh?" Harry touched his chin. "But I really can't imagine what method Tang Tang Nade should use to deal with this matter. No matter what lies he plans to weave, he can't explain all the doubts clearly, and it's hard to make people believe."

"What you said reminds me of the story of Aurelius. At that time, the Order of the Phoenix also faced this dilemma," Zhang Qiu said, her voice becoming smaller all of a sudden. "... and Tang Tang Nade has investigated Aurelius, he must have been closely following the development of the situation."

"Oh? Perhaps, the story of Aurelius will also give him some inspiration?" Harry was stunned. "Do you think he will find someone to pretend to be his brother?"

"If he didn't already have a ghost idea and was preparing to implement it, why would he strongly demand that the Heavenly Dynasty not intervene?" Zhang Qiu asked back.

On Friday night, Sirius sent a letter telling Harry that the Order of the Phoenix would make a major decision tomorrow and hoped he could be present. When Harry took out the second letter paper to check the detailed explanation, he couldn't help but sigh: Tang Tang Nade really did so, but he looked a bit anxious.

"... The important thing we are going to do tomorrow is to hold a meeting to vote on accepting a new member to join the Order of the Phoenix. His name is Dark Fontroy, you should know his brother Tang Tang Nade. Importantly, we unanimously believe that Dark's joining means the Order of the Phoenix has received the attention of the White House. I privately don't think this is a good thing, but for Doge and Aberforth, being able to get the assistance of the Magical Congress is undoubtedly exciting.

It is said that Dark is a person with a lot of sympathy and justice. He has been carrying out humanitarian rescue in Africa before, and only finished his work recently. And for some reason, he is prepared to come to the UK to support our cause. It is also because the previous resume is very beautiful, so Doge proposed to skip the assessment period for him and accept him directly into the Order.

I think there are quite a few doubts in this matter, but don't worry, the most important things we have are not in the Order of the Phoenix. If you have any discoveries or guesses, we can communicate before the meeting tomorrow. I expect to wait for you at the Three Broomsticks around 10:30."

Harry finished reading this letter, pondered slightly, and saw through all of Tang Tang Nade's plans. If viewed from the perspective of the Order of the Phoenix, Dark's story is of course a bit suspicious, but in order to express their goodwill toward the Magical Congress, they can only pretend to be blind and pretend to be very welcome to invite him in.

And this fell into Hermione's eyes, adding very conspicuous credibility to Dark's story. And if she happened to hear Cassandra's story again, this would induce her to think that Dark might have chosen to return to the UK for the sake of their mother and child.

As for why he didn't return before? Tang Tang Nade could easily weave several stories that couldn't be verified. First, it must be that Dark didn't know about Cassandra's pregnancy, then he encountered this and that in Africa, such as amnesia, accidents, encountering curses, and other dog-blood plots—just like people couldn't go to the Heavenly Dynasty to verify the story of Nix Tang, people couldn't go to Africa to verify the story of Dark Fontroy. Tang Tang Nade only needed to arrange a few backhands to make the authenticity of this story solid.

Harry saw through his trick quickly, but he wasn't prepared to expose Tang Tang Nade. "Dark," although it was a move where the drunkard's heart was not in the wine, could at least provide a little help to the Order of the Phoenix; and, if there really was someone willing to play "Dark" all the time, then Cassandra might also feel better; as for Hermione perhaps being deceived and unable to see Tang Tang Nade's true face, Harry could only regretfully choose not to meddle in other people's business.

Because after all, nothing had happened between him and Hermione yet. ===== CHAPTER 304 =====