Chapter 403: Concealment

"This is impossible. I have class with her almost every Saturday," Harry said decisively. "Her eyes are emerald green. I remember this very clearly."

"What I saw was also emerald green, seems like it," Luo Nade added.

"Hmm..." Xie Nuofeiliusi was silent for a moment. "That is to say, something caused her pupil color to change? Could it be that after she learned about Snape's past, she deliberately used magic to change her pupil color?"

"But there is no point in doing this," Lu Na said. "Since Snape has already seen her wine-red eyes, wouldn't changing them to emerald green make it seem deliberate?"

"That's exactly what's needed—deliberateness," Zhang Qiu, who had been eating melons and watching the show, suddenly spoke up. "She can implicitly show her feelings to Snape by doing this, and Snape not objecting means he has already begun to waver and hesitate."

"Then how should our article be written?" Luo Nade asked. "Write the situation clearly, and then point out that Mia has a crush on the old bat?"

"Are you planning to push all the responsibility onto a girl?" Lu Na said with dissatisfaction.

"And Professor Snape may not necessarily agree with us doing this, because as Zhang Qiu said, he may be falling into some kind of hesitation..." Harry said, feeling very troubled.

"How about this, Editor-in-Chief Lovegood," Zhang Qiu made a pertinent suggestion. "Let's change our thinking. Pretend you have never seen Mia and Snape in Diagon Alley, and all the information in this last section comes from an interview with Harry Potter."

"Doesn't this mean that once the report deviates, it's Harry's responsibility?" Luo Nade looked a little uneasy. "Why don't we write it more vaguely?"

"Let's do it this way. We will only reveal two pieces of information: one is that Mia is participating in a new project of Snape's, and the other is that Mia's pupil color is emerald green. Just write these two points, and then add some bold speculations to stir up excitement. I think this is a compromise plan. What do you think, Mr. Editor-in-Chief?"

"Children, I have no opinion." Xie Nuofeiliusi agreed with Harry's opinion, and he immediately set about modifying the manuscript.

Before long, Xie Nuofeiliusi had completed the rewriting of the last paragraph. He was indeed a veteran editor, and his grasp of the final draft was very good—it was the kind of degree where readers could laugh out loud, and Snape would not feel offended.

After reading the manuscript, Harry also took the opportunity to ask about the information of the initial submitter. Reasonably, the signature on that manuscript was written as Kaven Sangster. Indeed, no matter which force was laying out the layout here, they would not let Harry catch their tail so easily. The only thing that could be determined was that the submitter was someone who knew Kaven Sangster, which at least ruled out some possibilities.

When Harry returned to school, he noticed that Snape was standing at the school gate, and his eyes were staring straight at him.

"Idle Potter?" His tone was a bit heavy. "Just came back from Xie Nuofeiliusi's, huh?"

"Ah? How did you—"

"Do you think I would be completely unconcerned and ignorant about the public opinion field?" Snape swept a glance at the others with an unhappy face. "Come to my office yourself later, Potter."

"It's broken, I seem to have disrupted the professor's plan," Harry said, looking at Snape's receding figure, scratching his head somewhat belatedly.

"But that's not right. The original manuscript didn't include Mia," Luo Nade shook his head. "And how did he know we went to Lovegood's house?"

"I thought of it!" Zhang Qiu suddenly revealed a mysterious smile, which immediately attracted everyone's attention. "The plan Snape disrupted was actually not aimed at the person behind the scenes. In fact, he originally wanted to test Mia's heart."

"Ah?" Harry and Luo Nade were extremely astonished, but Lu Na's eyes suddenly lit up.

"Yes, if it were just a normal move-by-move response, the professor wouldn't be so secretive. He would have told you," Zhang Qiu said, lowering her voice. "There is only one reason for him to do this, and that is that he still wants to take this opportunity to see Mia's heart."

"According to this, the professor is also truly... moved this time?" Harry asked, also lowering his voice.

"Eh!" Zhang Qiu suddenly straightened up and raised her tone. "Don't talk nonsense. I'm just guessing randomly, it can't be taken seriously."

"Okay, okay," Harry smiled helplessly. "I'm going to the Headmaster's office now—I'll try to forget what you just said."

When he was on the road, Harry followed up on Luo Nade's question: Why did Snape know that they had been to Lovegood's house? This question was of course easy to answer, which was that Mr. Lovegood and Snape had private contact. This meant that Snape should have read the original manuscript, and Lovegood didn't mention this at all in front of him. What were they covering up? Zhang Qiu should have derived the answer based on this logic.

Moreover, she deliberately skipped the reasoning process, probably to take care of Lu Na's emotions, because this fact would make Xie Nuofeiliusi look a little... opportunistic.

When Harry arrived at Snape's office, the professor's mood seemed to have eased a lot. He greeted Harry to sit down in a flat tone, and then began to tell his original plan.

"... The reason I let that article be published and reported was to cover up the importance of this project, Potter."

"You should know that in order to fight against the Knight System, we have set up different projects in different places, and this project seems to be the most promising."

"When Xie Nuofeiliusi made Mia's blunder, I realized that this was a good opportunity to lure the opposition to take action, and then we could make this project public. According to the general line of thinking, this means that the project between you and Mia is not important, and when we expose the true content of the project, others will only sneer at it, and even suspect that this project is just a pretext I use to train you."

"I deliberately pretended not to know Xie Nuofeiliusi and pretended not to have read the manuscript, just to strengthen this misunderstanding."

Harry listened to this explanation with half-belief, but with Zhang Qiu's analysis first, he was more suspicious of whether this contained some kind of special feelings for Mia.

"But, Professor," Harry asked somewhat hesitantly. "Is our project, using the logic of Dark Magic to improve ordinary spells, etc., really not that important, and is it indeed just a form of training for me?"

He neither wanted to expose Snape's little thoughts nor wanted to appear stupid enough not to see such an obvious loophole, so he only expressed some doubts euphemistically.

"You are very right, Harry, you are very right. I think Yanayev must think so," Snape suddenly smiled. "Because there is a very important information gap here, which is Mia Karnstein herself. How do you know she is not a master of magic?"

"She looks younger than me," Harry was stunned for a moment. "And I, uh, Mr. Lovegood suspected that you were just taking care of her because you liked her appearance..."

"She is a vampire who is good at Blood Magic," Snape said calmly. "The true content of our project is actually researching how to make Blood Magic usable for ordinary wizards."

Harry's head felt like it had been hit by a sledgehammer, but soon, he found that this unexpected hammer had actually cleared all his thoughts—

What Snape was actually doing was developing magic with a vampire who was proficient in Blood Magic. This was the true project he had high hopes for.

However, under this series of operations, the world thought he was in love, and incidentally training Harry. According to the original plan, almost everyone at home and abroad would have this misunderstanding, and after Harry disrupted the situation, perhaps only a small range of people would think of this.

Thinking of their course content again, almost all of it was about Dark Magic of flesh and bone, rarely involving the soul. And the reason Mia didn't say a word was because they wanted to keep Harry in the dark—at this moment, although he was a little unhappy, he could fully understand.

And Mia's pupil color, she of course used magic to cover up her original pupil color. The vampires Harry had seen all had wine-red pupil colors, which explained why—

No, if Mia chose emerald green when covering her pupil color, this makeup that had special significance in Snape's heart, then no matter how many excuses of "major plans" there were, this matter itself was an insurmountable point.

When Harry raised his head again, there was already a bit of cunning hidden in his heart. At this moment, no matter how Snape described the plan, he could be certain that there was definitely some kind of ambiguity between Snape and Mia. Even if the diversionary tactic he spoke of was not false at all, at least this ambiguity also existed in the tactic. Snape did not have only one purpose of confusing the enemy.

"Uh, then are we going to ask Xie Nuofeiliusi to change back to the original manuscript now?" Harry asked deliberately.

"No need. Misleading the public is meaningless to us. Yanayev must already know that you went to Lovegood's house," Snape shook his head. "But this is also good. With your most authentic reaction, it is easier to make him believe it."

"Ah, is that so?" Harry nodded pretentiously, but in his heart he was thinking, if that's really the case, what were you angry about at the school gate just now? That was obviously because the original manuscript could also serve the purpose of testing Mia, and the new version directly removed Mia.

Whether he guessed it or didn't understand it, all Harry could do at this time was play dumb, so he took a turn and began to inquire about the progress of Blood Magic research. ===== CHAPTER 404 =====