Chapter 64: The Mists of Avalon

After Harry said this, Neville also began to hesitate. If they went to Snape to confess their mistake, they could obtain a portion of potion ingredients they hadn't managed to steal; but this meant he would have to bear the risk of being expelled, and Gryffindor would also lose a lot of points because of it.

And Harry had originally been thinking that, after all, Deng Buliduo had said Snape was on their side; if he took the blame for Neville, he shouldn't be expelled. But this way, Snape might not necessarily agree to give the potion ingredients to him again, which made the matter very difficult to handle.

In the end, Harry decided to leave the choice to Neville. If Neville didn't have any further ideas, then he wouldn't say anything to Snape.

Early Saturday morning, Harry habitually woke up early and rushed to the pitch with his broom. Perhaps he had arrived a bit early; only Wood was flying back and forth around the goalposts, and the other team members hadn't arrived yet.

Harry adjusted his sitting posture and flew high into the sky. Just then, he saw a sight he would never forget.

Thin mist had risen over the Heihu, shrouding the originally clear lake surface in the morning sun. And in the center of the mist, a small island appeared, shadowy and indistinct. Looking down from the air, the island was covered in lush trees, and in the center of the island, there seemed to be a shallow inner lake.

"Wood, Wood!" Harry shouted. "Come look, what's happened to the Heihu?"

"My god?" Wood, who had ascended high into the sky, also discovered the anomaly of the Heihu. "I've never seen this sight before. In my impression, this island shouldn't exist at all."

"I have to go notify the Professor," Wood said.

Only then did Harry remember that Deng Buliduo had once told him that, according to Tang Tang Nade's research, the Avalon Hidden Realm was very likely to descend into the Heihu. If the small island before him was the legendary Avalon, he needed to notify Luo En and Neville.

In the blink of an eye, Wood was already gone. Harry thought he must be in a hurry to find the Professor, so he rushed back to the castle himself, ran back to the dormitory, and said to Luo En and Neville, who had just woken up, "Get up and look, Avalon has descended!"

"Really?" Luo En looked very excited. He hurriedly grabbed a sweater and pulled it over his head, almost not noticing which side was front or back.

And Neville looked at the two of them with a scrutinizing gaze. It wasn't until Luo En had dressed and rushed out impatiently that he said slowly, "You go first, I'll come later."

When Harry and Luo En arrived at the edge of the Heihu, many people had already gathered there. Most of them stood far away, and very few people leaned forward.

"Strange, why don't they walk closer to look?" Luo En said, squeezing to the front of the crowd.

At this moment, he was surprised to find that the original mist and the island that appeared and disappeared in the mist had vanished. In his eyes, there was only the sparkling water surface under the morning sun.

"So that's it, this is the Mist of Avalon," Luo En said while retreating, popularizing science to Harry. "Legend has it that after King Arthur died, Avalon was also shrouded in mist; that was the loss of an era."

"Is this mist the first test of the Hidden Realm?" Harry looked toward the Heihu, puzzled. "How should we reach Avalon?"

"I remember it was Merlin who guided King Arthur," Luo En recalled the stories he had read. "After the Sword in the Stone broke, Merlin took King Arthur to the Holy Lake for the first time, but they didn't reach Avalon; the Lady of the Lake gave the Holy Sword to him. It wasn't until after he died that he truly reached Avalon under the guidance of the fairy. Therefore, Avalon is also described as the paradise after death."

"But I remember that the soul after death should reach the afterlife," Harry recalled his experience in the afterlife last year. "What does this have to do with Avalon? I always thought Avalon was simply the place where King Arthur obtained the Holy Sword."

"Yes, precisely because ordinary people cannot reach Avalon after death, it is described as a utopia far from everything," Luo En said. "In legend, the enchantress Morgan, who was an enemy of King Arthur, guarded Avalon; the mist should also be her handiwork."

"Assuming Morgan is a real person and a powerful witch," Harry tried to use the real situation to understand these legends, "Morgan cast a powerful Confundus Charm, making it impossible for people to reach Avalon. But why would it descend? What is the meaning of it appearing here?"

"To be honest, I'm not quite sure either," Luo En shrugged. "Tang Tang Nade told me that the reason Avalon appeared again is to find the successor of the Knights of the Round Table, but I don't know what the significance of this inheritance is; it seems as if it's purely for the sake of inheritance."

"The significance of the Knights of the Round Table is to guard the island of Britain." Someone interrupted their conversation. Harry turned his head to look; it was Professor Haipu.

"It is recorded in the classics written in Ancient Runes that if the British Wizarding World faces the crisis of overturning and collapse again, the Knights of the Round Table loyal to Britain must return," Professor Haipu said mysteriously. "I think the current Wizarding World is indeed in jeopardy; the Iron Curtain is shrouding Europe, and the King who does not understand the human heart has lost his scabbard."

"Is the King you are talking about Deng Buliduo?" Before Harry could speak, Luo En asked first.

"That's right. After that great war, Grindelwald locked himself in Nurmengard, and Deng Buliduo locked himself in Hogwarts," Professor Haipu said. "When truly powerful wizards stay away from politics, then politics will be controlled by clowns."

"Do you have an opinion about the Ministry of Magic?" Harry asked, puzzled. "Also, what does the Iron Curtain mean?"

"The previous Fudge could still be considered to respect the cabinet; perhaps that is precisely why he was assassinated," Professor Haipu's mouth kept popping out things Harry hadn't heard of. "After being replaced by Scrimgeour, the Ministry of Magic completely turned into a money-grabbing machine with an unclear stance; Churchill's warnings were completely treated by him as wind in the ears."

"If Deng Buliduo were willing to take power, then the Wizarding World would still have a chance to be saved," Haipu said indignantly. "The current Ministry of Magic is too soft externally; Britain's independence cannot even be guaranteed, let alone democracy and freedom."

"Uh, you mean, the significance of Avalon descending into the Heihu," Harry pulled back the topic that was running further and further away, "is to select qualified Knights of the Round Table among the students, so as to support Deng Buliduo to become the new King of the Wizarding World?"

"I didn't say these words," Professor Haipu glanced at the surroundings nervously. "Sorry for letting you children hear too many of my complaints; I have to go first."

"What a strange person, is he a professor?" Luo En asked curiously.

"That's right, Professor Haipu who teaches Ancient Runes." Harry patted Luo En on the shoulder with some amusement and whispered, "Elective professors only have four classes a week, so they probably often scold the Ministry of Magic while reading newspapers in their offices."

"Is there a problem with the Ministry of Magic? I don't quite understand; what Churchill, what cabinet? By the way, does the Ministry of Magic have any external work?" Luo En's impression of the Ministry of Magic came entirely from his father; he felt that the Ministry of Magic was really a good place to go, doing easy work, receiving a generous salary, and having employee benefits from time to time.

"Churchill and the cabinet are the leaders of the Muggle world in Britain," Harry popularized science for him. "However, with the existence of the Statute of Secrecy, the Ministry of Magic could originally not care about their opinions. As for the so-called external work, I don't think there is anything worth doing; after all, the British Foreign Office in the Muggle world has always had nothing to do."

"Forget about these; I think Professor Haipu might have a point," Luo En seemed to be inspired. "If Avalon is preparing to select the successor of the Knights of the Round Table, perhaps it not only tests the ability of the knight himself, but also tests whether the King they choose is worth entrusting."

"If you choose Deng Buliduo, perhaps it's really not that worth it," Harry recalled the operations Deng Buliduo did last school year. "He might be a powerful wizard, but he is not a qualified King. I think Deng Buliduo is more like Merlin's role."

"Perhaps I have the confidence to pass Avalon's test," Luo En glanced at Harry, then looked back at the mist. "But I also have to have a way to reach it..."

"Harry, what are you doing?" Harry turned his head sharply and found Wood standing behind him with a broom. "The professors will handle this; now let's hurry to training!"

"I was thinking, what do the knights of the Wizarding World ride?" Harry didn't forget to say a few words to Luo En while walking. "If it's riding magical creatures, that's fine; if it's fighting on brooms, I think I can also be a Knight of the Round Table."

For the rest of this Saturday, Harry had to stay away from that Hidden Realm and instead put his thoughts and energy into Quidditch training. When he returned to the dormitory exhausted, Luo En and Neville were studying something in front of a book. Harry no longer had the strength to join them; he pulled down the bed curtains and fell asleep.

Early the next morning, Wood again hurriedly tapped on the window to call Harry up, because the Ravenclaw team, which had originally booked the pitch, had all gone excitedly to study Avalon at this time, so they gave the "precious training opportunity" to Gryffindor. The overjoyed Wood hurriedly gathered the players to continue practicing tactical positioning and operational thinking.

Harry, who returned from the pitch, almost only had time to fill his stomach in the Great Hall before he had to hurriedly put on his Invisibility Cloak and rush to the abandoned classroom from last time to listen in on the self-inspection meeting organized by Malfoy.

Oh right, he seemed to have changed his words to call that a "Roundtable Meeting," Harry thought. It seems that everyone likes to play the game of acting as knights. Of course, any British child who has heard the legend of King Arthur should yearn for the Knights of the Round Table. ===== CHAPTER 65 =====