The Pacifist Necromancer of Hogwarts

As soon as December 25th passed, the researchers returned to their daily routines.

Every morning when he woke up, Anthony could hear the chatter of the researchers, passing lively in front of his window and gradually getting farther away. Charlie became busy, and sometimes they didn't even have time to ask the complete sentence "How are you today?", they would hear him say "Great" in a hurry, grab a few pieces of bread with a hurried smile, and rush back quickly. Exit the restaurant and jump on the broomstick.

Hagrid and Anthony went to the mountains and forests several more times, but never saw Norbert once. Andrea and Delma each accompanied them once, and Delma later convinced Hagrid to help the researchers collect dragon dung in between searches for Norbert.

Hagrid quickly understood the researchers' daily work, often following them in searching for dragon footprints in the snow and woods, or judging the whereabouts of fire dragons through broken branches. He also learned to crouch down and hide in the shadow of the trees when the fire dragons passed by, instead of standing there and admiring their beautiful flying posture. From time to time, Anthony would hear researchers discussing whether Hagrid was the most interesting and powerful of all communication scholars.

One day, Anthony came back from the library and was surprised to find Hagrid sitting on the sofa.

"Good afternoon, Hagrid." Anthony said, "Aren't you going to participate in the observation of the fire dragon hunting area today?"

"Oh!" Hagrid turned around, "Ah, it's you, Henry. You scared me!" He patted his chest, wearing a pair of conspicuous dragon leather gloves, "No, We're going to track down Hayley and her babies tonight. We found out that her eggs have hatched, but we haven't seen the baby dragon yet."

"Sounds great," Anthony said, hearing an ominous hiss. "Um...what are you doing?"

Before Hagrid could answer, something exploded with a bang.

Hagrid slapped his forehead in annoyance, and the leather gloves made a crisp sound on his forehead: "Ouch!" He turned back, picked up a teapot, and started pouring water on something. With a hissing sound, Anthony saw wisps of white smoke floating up.

He walked around to the sofa. There is a pile of strange, wet fragments on the table, like curved stone slabs covered with moss, but the cracks in some of them still have orange-red firelight, which is flickering unwillingly in the water. .

There was water everywhere on the table, trickling down to the floor and spreading into several small streams, one of which Anthony was stepping on. A fragment the size of a fingernail drifted slowly to the side of his shoe and was blocked by him. Anthony bent down and picked it up, looking at it.

"I'm making a lamp." Hagrid answered his question absentmindedly, carefully picking up a fragment with two fingers and blowing on it gently. More water vapor rises. Like placing a freshly washed frying pan on the stove, the dark green bits dried out at an alarming rate.

The fragments in Anthony's hands were getting hot too. He didn't realize this at first until it got a little hot. And then—bang! It exploded in his hand.

Anthony suddenly realized: "This is a dragon egg, right?"

Once you think of this answer, it becomes so logical. He even wondered why he didn't react sooner.

"Hmm," Hagrid hummed in agreement.

He brought the two dry eggshells together, carefully fitting their cracks together, and stared at them until they began to sway slightly.

With a chirping sound, a puff of black smoke came out of the eggshells that were about to explode, and they came together. Hagrid placed it back on the wet table and exhaled.

Anthony watched him do all this: "From the newborn dragon?"

"Hmm," Hagrid said. He picked up another piece and gestured to find another piece to put together.

"Are you going to put these pieces back together?" Anthony said, "and make a dragon egg shell lamp?"

"uh-huh."

"Okay," Anthony said, "I guess you won't be joining our dinner party. So, last question, do you want me to bring you anything back from the restaurant?"

"Hmm... wait." Hagrid raised his big head, stared at the chandelier, and thought, "Let me think... today is Friday... I want two baskets of bread. If there is stew, then Plus a little stew...and tripe soup..."

Anthony nodded: "No problem." He grabbed the teapot and poured water over the eggshells that were hissing dangerously again in Hagrid's hands.

"Oh, thank you," Hagrid said gratefully, "I'd also like some dragon's milk cheese, if any."

His beard was also dripping. Hagrid patted it nonchalantly with his wet hands, making it even wetter.

"Okay," Anthony said, refraining from reminding Hagrid. He secretly felt that if the dragon eggs were to explode again, adding a sprinkler fire extinguishing device might help the situation.

…

Anthony spent the rest of the afternoon surrounded by explosions. His cat once tried to go out to explore what was going on, but after taking the first cautious step, the cat encountered a big problem: there was dirty water mixed with soot and very loud noises everywhere. and very large living beings.

The cat calmly retracted its front paws that had not yet touched the ground, and gracefully jumped back onto Anthony's bed. Both the Wraith Chicken and the Wraith Rat huddled under the quilt, wisely not even trying to go out.

Except for the first two days, his pets were more inclined to stay with Anthony in the temporary room than—he thought with gratitude—going out to find a fight with a fire dragon.

He thought this might be because one night he used his sense of undead magic to cover half of the Fire Dragon Sanctuary before finding them, and seriously told them that day that his undead magic could not afford the corpses of mice burned by the fire dragon. effect.

Norbert's burns were nothing to him, but he wasn't sure he would ever return from the dead if the adult dragon burned himself to ashes (something the undertaker probably should have done).

From then on, they never left each other late at night without saying goodbye. A few times, they would even go looking for Anthony in the dragonology library between walks, roaming from one summer vacation rooftop to another bookshelf, clinging to their bodies with sight, and then jumping onto Anthony's desk or lap, taking them Rub against his body - just like the ginger cat is now rubbing back and forth around the two bulges on the quilt.

"Why don't you go inspect our living room, Your Highness?" Anthony mocked.

The cat continued to lower its head as if it didn't hear it, and rubbed itself against the bulge affectionately.

Anthony put down the book, leaned back in his chair, turned to look at it for a while, and realized that the cat was deliberately ignoring him.

"Why spend so much time on this mediocre quilt?" Anthony continued, "The living room table and couch will surely benefit from your presence and guidance. You will surely rescue them from - well - dire straits." "

His clever puns elicited an annoyed glare, flattened ears and wagging tail from the cat.

There was another explosion outside the door.

"Look, what did I say?" Anthony said, mentally assessing Hagrid's chances of finishing the lights before dark. The cat coldly showed its sharp claws, tore open the quilt, took out the Wraith Chicken, chased it and started fighting.

…

To Anthony's surprise, when he returned to the room with Hagrid's dinner, Hagrid had already pieced together the last fragments of the dragon egg.

The lights in the house were completely turned off, and only the orange-red light came out from between the gaps in the dragon egg, flickering rhythmically, on and off, as if there was a little dragon sleeping inside with slow and regular breathing. Light and shadow flowed slowly on the roof and walls, and the water on the ground also shone brightly. Hagrid's huge figure stood in front of the sofa, and his tangled hair and beard were also coated with a circle of light.

Anthony couldn't find any better words to express his thoughts except a soft "Wow". A pair of yellow eyes turned from the sofa, and Anthony realized that his cat was also there. He then found a wraith chicken and a wraith rat on a shelf not far away.

"You're back, Henry?" Hagrid said in alarm, "Look, how beautiful it is!"

Anthony agreed heartily, "Indeed." He handed Hagrid the bread, stew, and cheese. "No more tripe soup."

"It doesn't matter," Hagrid said, opening the bag and taking a look. "Oh, and there are knives and forks! That's very kind of you, Henry."

Anthony held onto the chicken that flew over his head: "You're welcome."

Hagrid grabbed a piece of bread and ate it. "Charlie told me that after this lamp is finished, we won't have to worry about the fire dragon attacking us because of the fluorescent flash or the oil lamp." He said happily, still admiring the reassembled dragon egg, "We will have five tonight. There are only dragon eggs like this."

"Won't attack you? Because you pretend to be fire dragon cubs?" Anthony guessed.

According to his reading in the past few days, most of the tools that cannot make people run faster when facing fire dragons are designed to make fire dragons mistakenly think that they are of the same kind.

"What? No." Hagrid said, putting the bread into the stew and stirring it, "Because the light from the fragments of the dragon egg will make the dragon's eyes very uncomfortable. The dragon egg shell needs to be as safe as possible from other fire dragons to attack. The dragon egg, or give up the attack after the dragon egg has just cracked a gap."

"Oh fine."

There was a knock on the door. Anthony opened the door, and Charlie was standing outside the door, holding two or three brooms under his strong arms, and holding a pointed dragon egg in his other hand, which also emitted an orange-red light.

"Hagrid, are you ready - ah, you put them together! Nice!"

"Yes, thanks to Henry's cat," said Hagrid.

Anthony said, "What?"

"Every time I pick up the wrong piece, he tries to scratch me," Hagrid said. "What a smart cat, and he doesn't shed."

The cat condescended to jump down from the back of the sofa and walked triumphantly around Anthony's legs.

"Charlie, can I bring the bread--great--yes, I'll come right away! Good night, Henry."

Charlie also said: "Good night, Henry."

"I wish you good luck and successfully find...um..."

"Hailey and her baby," Charlie said, "We haven't given the little dragon a name yet."

"Then I wish you success in finding Hailey and her baby," Anthony said. "Have fun."

Charlie smiled: "Thanks, we will. Hailey is a long-horned dragon that is hard to find."

…

It turned out that Charlie was right.

On that night when Charlie and Hagrid found nothing in the deep forest, Hailey somehow bypassed the security measures and came to their dormitory area in the dark. In fact, it was a rather polite visit, and the reserve lost nothing except the quiet loss of a Pegasus horse from France.

If it weren't for the fact that a researcher happened to be up at night, people might just think that the pegasus broke free of the rope and flew away. The researcher heard strange noises and opened the window and realized it was pitch black. He looked up in confusion, wanting to see if it was going to snow again, but—he swore by the cast of his first fire dragon footprints—he saw two gleaming horns hanging high above the darkness. A Pegasus hung its neck in mid-air, its feathers messy.

Then like a hurricane blowing through, the darkness flew away, taking with it the body of the Pegasus. The researcher stared at the bright moonlight outside the window for a while, and suddenly realized that it was a very quiet and very black long-horned dragon.

The hostel manager of the reserve was very angry and frightened. He took the robbery - or theft - as a provocation to his work, and performed a lot of additional magic next to the dormitory area. Anthony happened to pass by on a walk with his pet and stopped for a moment to admire the dazzling protective magic.

"Good morning, Professor Anthony." The administrator greeted.

"Good morning. Please don't let me interrupt your work," said Anthony. "I'm just curious. If there's anything that needs to be kept secret—"

The administrator interrupted: "No, no, not at all. Do you have any suggestions?"

They then discussed various charms for a while, and then Anthony suddenly remembered the alarm line Madam Pomfrey had set for Sirius. Anyone who steps on it will set off the alarm unless they give her permission.

"Have you tried this magic?" Anthony asked.

"No." said the administrator. "I have known since I was at school that it is of no use. There is a saying in Durmstrang: With powerful wisdom, no one can be fooled; with powerful magic, no one can be fooled. There is no cordon and it cannot be confused." He glanced at Anthony, "Is Hogwarts still using this old method?"

Anthony didn't answer his question.

"A nice sentence," he said, "but I suspect the converse is also true. Wisdom helps you not to be fooled, and magic prevents the cordon from being confused. Otherwise—" He finished before the administrator could say anything. My own question, "I really don't know - well, can fire dragons also do confusion spells?"