Chapter 407: Absurd Speculation

On Sunday night, when Harry finished Quidditch training and soaked comfortably in the bath with sweat, his thoughts gradually detached from various bludger tactics. Only then did he remember that he still needed to find Draco to set up a fight for Ron.

Harry hurriedly finished his bath and rushed to the secret base of Torchwood. He was already nearly half an hour late. Just as he was about to break through the phantom wall and walk into the venue, he heard a sharp female voice, it was Ginny: "You've had enough, everyone knows Harry is the Prince, we're just watching the fun."

Intuition told Harry that if he entered the door now, he wouldn't hear more explosive content. So he sat along the wall, put on the Invisibility Cloak, and put a Rita's eavesdropping spell on his ears. After doing this set, he still felt a bit guilty. Why was he so proficient at doing this kind of thing?

Soon, Cui Ge's voice attracted his attention again. "Don't believe it, I spent a thousand hours collecting evidence, completely Sherlock Holmes-style logical deduction, and finally solved the deepest narrative trick buried in the rumors, proving that Snape is the Half-Blood Prince!"

"First, let's talk about the origin of the Half-Blood Prince, that Potions textbook. Who would write their nickname on a Potions textbook? Naming a thing after a nickname means that this thing is a person's masterpiece. So who is the modern Potions master? We can say there is and only is—"

"Everyone knows that textbook was taken by Hermione from Ron's hands," Ginny retorted unceremoniously. "You can't say Snape would give his textbook to Ron!"

"But Snape could give his textbook to Harry..."

"But Snape wouldn't give the textbook to Harry," Pan Xi also joined the rebuttal. "We all know that in Potions class, the level Harry showed was far beyond the textbook. He doesn't need it at all. You can't say Snape just gave him an old textbook as a souvenir!"

"Then let's talk about the Levicorpus spell. According to my investigation and research, the actual inventor of this spell is Severus Snape. When he was in school—"

"Yes, but the one who used this spell best was James Potter," Ginny interrupted Cui Ge's deduction sharply again. "Some people from their year said that this spell was very popular twenty years ago, and Harry's father was the most proficient one, which just shows he has this talent."

"Then how do you explain the Sectumsempra spell? You know—"

"Objectively speaking, that's just an ordinary obscure curse," this time it was Pan Xi who interrupted him. "It was Potter who first used it in the Triwizard Tournament that brought it into everyone's view. You know there was no talk of a Prince back then."

"Assuming these make sense, but the most important point is that Harry has no royal status, whereas Snape's mother—" having been interrupted repeatedly, Cui Ge's tone had started to become weak.

"This is the real narrative trick, and I have finally completely dismantled the image of the Prince and the meaning behind it," Ivy said with a confident tone, interrupting Cui Ge for the last time. "The so-called Half-Blood Prince is, one hundred percent, Harry Potter."

"We skip the factual evidence in front and go straight to the conclusion: the title of Half-Blood Prince was not taken by Harry Potter himself, but was forcibly imposed on him by Hermione—after seeing through this point, everything becomes clear."

"First, why did Hermione give Harry a nickname? The answer is clear: she has a crush on Harry, but is worried about being targeted and retaliated against by the narrow-minded Zhang Qiu, so she made up this Prince theory, and the result became more and more intense," Ivy added in a decisive tone. "Before continuing with my deduction, let me answer the most curious question: where did the Prince title come from, and why is it a half-blood rather than a pure-blood Prince?"

"Where does the title of King come from, and what is the reason for being King? This is Hermione's first layer of cover. If you are still speculating about the Prince's bloodline because of Britain's historical inertia, then you will only get further and further away from the truth. Hermione, who is well-read in the history of various countries in the Muggle world, has glimpsed the logic behind power. The claim of a King stems from power—we also know that Dumbledore was once called the uncrowned King of the Wizarding World. So, does this King need any bloodline? No, right? Then for Harry, who is Dumbledore's designated successor and whose magical strength is already comparable to the old King, does he have the qualifications to be King?"

"Very good train of thought, I thought of something to add," Pan Xi interjected. "The Dark Lord is also a King, he has no royal bloodline, but everyone has no opinion—and Harry has defeated the Dark Lord."

"Who says the Dark Lord has no royal bloodline?" Ivy's tone carried a hint of cunning. "Since you mentioned it, let me dismantle the word 'half-blood' for you. Half-blood, whose blood is mixed?"

"If we start from the perspective of power as King, anyone who is enough to suppress an era in the Wizarding World can be called King. Then the most widely known is Merlin, followed by the four founders of our academy. From this layer, Salazar Slytherin's bloodline can also be royal blood."

"But Harry has more than just Slytherin's bloodline, because Salazar Slytherin's only daughter, her husband's name was Cadmus Peverell, from the Peverell family that once made the Deathly Hallows—and the Deathly Hallows were the foundation for another Dark Lord, Gellert Grindelwald, to become King."

"Possessing two noble bloodlines, the ordinary term 'prince' is insufficient to represent this. That is why Hermione drafted it as 'Half-Blood Prince.' This 'half-blood' does not refer to a mix of royalty and commoner, but a mix of royalty and royalty—a fusion of the essence of two generations of Dark Lords, each being a king in their own right."

"Of course, someone will ask at this time, then why call it Half-Blood Prince, rather than Half-Blood King? There are two reasons. One is because of Dumbledore. If you adopt the title of White King that some people call him, it is three qualities of being King gathered in his body. Prince is to represent the White King legal system he inherited from Dumbledore."

"The second reason is to return to the original intention of Hermione fabricating the Half-Blood Prince. Fabricating this character and using so many narrative tricks is to express her love for Harry under Zhang Qiu's nose. Then Prince, compared to King, is more in line with a young girl's sexual fantasy. This is why the concept of Half-Blood Prince spread rapidly among the female group, because this is a character fabricated by Hermione based on Harry to satisfy her own fantasies. Harry was a hero in his youth, plus Hermione's fantasy embellishment, it is no wonder that the Half-Blood Prince is so popular."

"According to that, the so-called Levicorpus or Sectumsempra are both Hermione seeing Harry use this spell first, and then fabricating it as the Prince's invention. It's an inverted relationship," Ginny added. "She does this, perhaps also hoping to see Zhang Qiu's explosive reaction when she discovers the truth one day."

"Right, even the words on the Potions textbook might have been written by Hermione herself," Ivy said. "Harry doesn't have old textbooks. He buys brand-new textbooks carefully according to the book list every year. And Harry isn't very good at roundhand, whereas Hermione has practiced roundhand calligraphy."

"So the textbook is probably Ron's," Ginny took over. "Fred and George gave him a big box of old textbooks. He probably didn't notice there was a Potions textbook in it, so he bought another one when buying books. And Fred and George, you all know, they would use textbooks to pad the table, but they would never write even a single word on them, so they just let Hermione whitewash them."

"I surrender," Cui Ge said weakly. "You are right. I actually can't explain Hermione's attitude problem, and the circulation process of the textbook."

"Then the situation is probably like this, or we might have also cracked the reason why Snape is so popular," Lu Na said lightly. "If decades later, someone goes to interview those girls who fantasized about the Half-Blood Prince, and they all realize that the prototype of the Half-Blood Prince is Harry, and coincidentally Harry is a big shot at that time, they will definitely say something like 'I had a crush on Harry back then'."

"So we'll just keep watching the fun, see when Zhang Qiu will discover this, and what response she is prepared to make," Ginny said gloatingly.

"The whole deduction and conclusion are indeed well-founded and convincing," Draco said while clapping and agreeing. "However, from the perspective of deconstructionism, the concept of Half-Blood Prince has been running wildly in the direction away from Harry after being mixed with Hermione's fantasies. Now the Half-Blood Prince that people pursue has become a sexual fantasy object shared by girls. For the current Hermione, perhaps even Harry Potter himself cannot compare to the so-called Half-Blood Prince."

"There is an old saying in Tianchao: even the 'white moonlight' herself cannot compare to her in memory. If you hope to see Zhang Qiu's joke, I'm afraid it's unlikely, because she must understand this truth. The more Hermione fabricates the story of the Half-Blood Prince, the less likely she is to fall in love with Harry Potter himself."

Draco finally gave such a quite rational conclusion, appearing objective, but Harry could still hear the faint sourness in his tone.

When the topic started to turn to Christmas and the dance, Harry felt it was about time, so he broke through the phantom wall, pretending he hadn't heard anything, and walked calmly into the crowd.

"Sorry, I fell asleep while taking a bath, I'm a bit late. Didn't miss anything interesting, right?" he asked feignedly.

"No, we've been talking about the old bat's lovers," several people said in unison. ===== CHAPTER 408 =====