Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

Chapter 529: Snape Afraid?

On Wednesday, Evan and other third-year wizards learned runic scriptures in the first course of the Study of Ancient Runes class.

This is an extinct writing once circulated in northern Europe. Its study belongs to the entry-level “ancient magical text studies”, and it’s represented by black and white runes.

In the past, it had risen with the prosperity of medieval black magic in Europe.

It is said that a dark wizard would leave the specially arranged runes at the victim’s door, waiting for him to pick it up. Or send it directly to the victim. The note was actually a curse. After receiving the note, the victim would show some abnormalities. 

They would always feel something following him, like a dog. But looking back, he couldn’t see anything.

Strange things would also begin to happen around them.

They would persist around the victim until one week before his death, and then all the abnormalities would disappear and everything would return to normal. But by then, he could clearly hear the footsteps of death.

There are many kinds of such curses that use runic magic to cast spells, and they were once very popular.

This ancient magic script is not widely used in alchemy, but because it is relatively simple, it was more suitable for beginners to learn.

Evan had seen the relevant records about It in the book Pictographic Dictionary given to him by Nicolas Flamel, and systematic learning in class was also very interesting, which gave him a lot of inspiration.

Now wherever he went, Evan carried a parchment full of ancient magic words.

He intended to master the simple rune as quickly as possible, and on this basis, learn more profound ancient scripts.

After that, the next few days were flat and there were no incidents in the school.

Caresius’s impersonation of Moody became more and more accurate. No one in the school doubted him at all, but on the contrary, he was more and more admired.

Throughout the castle, voices discussing Moody’s past experiences and the three Unforgivable Curses could be heard everywhere.

Moody was very popular among the young wizards. Although he looked terrible, everyone thought that he knew how to work outside and how to deal with Dark wizards. That gave a very fresh feeling to the young wizards in school.

In fact, the same was true. In terms of black magic and Dark wizards, Caresius was not less proficient than Moody. As an evil vampire, his mere existence was taboo. His perennial life experiences were also in the grey area on the edge of the wizarding world, with frequent contacts with various intrigues, vicious Dark wizards and Dark creatures.

Now, it was completely handy to mention many of these experiences to the little wizards.

Compared with “Moody”, who was getting more and more at ease, Snape’s temper had become more irritable.

He seemed to have attained new levels of vindictiveness over the summer, and every student who dared to make mistakes in his class was severely punished.

Neville, for example, once again melted his cauldron in Potions class, and it was already the sixth one.

After a mean depreciation, Snape rudely gave him detention.

On Friday night, Neville had been made to disembowel a barrel of horned toads. When he came back at nine o’clock in the evening, he was in a state of nervous collapse.

Sitting around the warm fire, everyone was surprised to see Neville staggering into the Common Room with tears on his face.

“Neville, what’s going on?” asked Harry.

“For more than five hours, he kept me in the dungeon to disembowel horned toads,” said Neville weakly in a very low voice, “Those things are disgusting. I’ve spit out my dinner.”

“The blood of these horned toads is slightly corrosive, so wash it off quickly!” said Evan, looking at the frog guts from under Neville’s fingernails. “I know an effective Scouring Charm. You can try it.”

“Snape has gone too far. You know why he’s in such a foul mood, don’t you?” said Ron to them as they watched the miserable appearance of Neville. “I bet it’s because of Moody!”

Since Moody took Malfoy, Goyle and Crabbe to Snape’s office, he had become like this. He entered the state of irritability, throwing all his anger on the young wizards.

It was common knowledge that Snape really wanted the Dark Arts job, and he had now failed to get it for the fourth year running. Snape had disliked all of their previous Dark Arts teachers, and never hesitated to show it.

This situation reached its peak with Sirius, and they fought directly in front of the students.

However, he seemed strangely wary of displaying overt animosity to Mad-Eye Moody.

All the young wizards had noticed more or less that whenever Snape and Moody were together, at mealtimes, or when they passed in the corridors, Snape was avoiding Moody’s eye, whether magical or normal.

It seemed that Snape was a bit scared of Moody.

“I don’t understand. Why is Snape afraid of Moody?” Harry said.

“Imagine if Moody turned Snape into a horned toad,” said Ron, his eyes misting over, “and bounced him all around his dungeon… That would be great!”

Ron had been working hard on Transfiguration recently since Moody had turned Malfoy into a ferret.

He also wanted to learn this spell, but little progress was made. To turn human beings into some kind of animals required very advanced knowledge of Transfiguration, which could only be reached after passing through the Ordinary Wizarding Level.

“Snape is not that weak, he wouldn’t be easily deformed like Malfoy.”

“It’s hard to say, think about it, Moody is very powerful, definitely more powerful than Snape. When he read Avada Kedavra, the spider died instantly, and stopped moving immediately. I never thought there would be such a Dark magic.”

The fourth-years had had their first course of Defense Against the Dark Arts this afternoon; and they were all shocked.

Ron was still talking about it happily, but Harry felt bad about the Killing Curse.

He didn’t dare to think that his parents were killed by this spell, but there was no way for him to talk about this Dark magic in a relaxed tone like Ron or the others. He couldn’t do it. In the eyes of others, it might be a wonderful funny performance, but Harry didn’t think it was all that interesting.

A few seconds later, Ron noticed Harry’s abnormality. He hurriedly shifted the subject. “Don’t discuss these things. Harry, we’d better make a start on Professor Trelawney’s predictions tonight, since they would take hours!”

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