Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

Chapter 526: Blast-Ended Skrewts

It could be seen that Ron hated Malfoy terribly, and what happened just now was really excessive.

Ron had been in a bad mood recently because of his series of unpleasant experiences. Evan, Harry, and Hermione had to comfort him. Malfoy was punished anyway. He had been turned into a ferret, thrown high into the air to fall again and again on the stone floor. 

Not surprisingly, Malfoy should be acting better, at least for now.

When the four returned to the Great Hall for dinner, the topic shifted to Moody’s first Defense Against the Dark Arts class.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione asked Evan about what had happened in class. They had heard a bit of it.

Evan told them everything except that Moody was a fake and the memories he had seen in his mind.

“That’s cool!” Harry exclaimed, “It’s an Unforgivable Curse!”

“The Imperius Curse?!” Ron’s face grew extraordinarily pale; he had particularly bad memories of this curse.

“How could he use the Imperius Curse on you?” said Hermione sharply. “This is not allowed. Do you have…”

“Don’t worry, I cracked his spell, he probably didn’t think I would be so strong,” Said Evan in a relaxed tone.

“How did you do it?” asked Harry hurriedly.

“Resisting the Imperius Curse requires strong willpower, or the Occlumency I taught you.” Evan explained, “This magic can prevent your mind from being invaded by any outside force. Not only the Imperius Curse, but also all other spiritual Dark magic, such as the dreams you’ve been getting recently.”

“Occlumency is too difficult. Is there any easier way?”

“Easier way?!” Evan thought for a moment, “If your magic is stronger than the caster’s and you have great willpower, then his spell will not work on you, and it can even be reversed.”

“But then improving magic is even harder than learning Occlumency…”

“Harry, our focus shouldn’t be on this. It’s an Unforgivable Curse. Professor Moody should never use this Curse on a young wizard,” said Hermione. “If the Ministry of Magic knows about it, Moody and Dumbledore would be in great trouble!”

“Yeah, probably!” said Ron absently, as if still thinking of the ways Evan had just mentioned to resist the Imperius Curse. “But Dumbledore’s always done things his way, hasn’t he? And Moody’s been getting in trouble for years, I reckon. Attacks first and asks questions later… Look at his dustbins. Balderdash…”

“And Professor Moody has a good point. It’s better to resist the black magic in class than to first encounter it outside against a Dark wizard, isn’t it?” said Harry, “He’s teaching us how to deal with true Dark wizards.” 

Hermione didn’t say anything. It was obvious that she could not help but agree with this.

Although Moody’s approach made her feel uncomfortable, she had to admit that she did start looking forward to it.

A few minutes later, they sat down at the Gryffindor table, and there were not many people in the Great Hall.

Seeing the delicious food, Ron’s bad mood had somewhat subsided. The four of them started to eat lamb chops and potatoes.

Hermione swallowed her food and ate fast, and Evan, Harry, and Ron stared at her in amazement.

“Hey, Hermione! Is this the new stand on elf’s rights?” Ron couldn’t help but ask, “You’re going to make yourself puke instead?”

“No,” said Hermione, with as much dignity as she could muster with her mouth bulging with sprouts. “I just want to get to the library.”

“What?” said Ron in disbelief. “Hermione, it’s our first day back! We haven’t even got homework yet!”

Hermione shrugged and continued to shove down her food as though she had not eaten for days. Then she leapt to her feet, said, “See you at dinner!” and departed at high speed.

Behind her, Evan, Harry, and Ron were looking at her with surprise.

“Evan, do you know what she is going to do?” asked Harry.

“No, I don’t know. She maybe wants to write an article for Hogwarts Magic, about protecting the rights of house-elves.”

“She seems to be very concerned about this matter, and really wants to save the enslaved house-elves.” Harry nodded. “She has no classes in the afternoon and she will probably stay in the library for the whole time. By the way, Evan, what’s your afternoon class?”

“Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures. I have no idea what magical animals he will show us!”

“We just finished, absolutely very exciting, I promise.” said Harry, “you will know when you see it!”

“Yeah, a group of pets that can burn, sting, and bite all at once!” Ron nodded. “Hermione thinks they might be useful, like dragons, although they look ferocious, dragon Blood is amazingly magical.”

A few minutes later, Harry and Ron returned to the Common Room to take their copies of ‘Unfogging the Future’. 

They had Professor Trelawney’s Divination class in the afternoon and needed to learn how planets worked.

Evan, on the other hand, walked off the castle and followed the slowly descending lawn towards Hagrid’s Hut on the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

He was still thinking about Caresius and the monster, and who would Barty Crouch Jr. pretend to be?!

Evan arrived at Hagrid’s Hut, and just as he approached, he heard a series of minor explosions that woke him up.

Before he even understood what was going on, a massive black creature rushed over to him.

It was Hagrid’s huge Boarhound, Fang, which whined, threw Evan on the grass and licked his face.

“Come on, Fang…” Evan struggled to stand up.

He led it to the side of the Hut, where Hagrid was busy in front of a lot of shaking crates.

Inside was a very strange rattling noise, and the minor explosions that Evan had just heard.

“There you are, Evan!” said Hagrid happily. “Come and have a look at these Blast-Ended Skrewts. Harry liked them very much.”

Immediately, Evan knew what Ron meant by a group of pets that could burn, sting, and bite people.

They were a large group of Blast-Ended Skrewts that looked like deformed, shell-less lobsters, horribly pale and slimy-looking, with legs sticking out in very odd places and no visible heads.

There were about a hundred of them in each crate, each about six inches long, crawling over one another, bumping blindly into the sides of the boxes. They were giving off a very powerful smell of rotting fish.

Every now and then, sparks would fly out of the end of a skrewt, and with a small phut, it would be propelled forward several inches.

Disgusting, these things were the most horrible abominations… Well, they were not nearly as bad as the one Evan had seen in Caresius’s memories…