Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

Chapter 533: Step by Step

Finally, Evan accepted Hermione’s proposal and agreed to become the president of the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare.

Although it seemed almost impossible to succeed, on second thought, Evan seemed to have been doing the impossible and taking what seemed to most as foolish all the time.

Whether it was Voldemort or the evil spirits, it was much harder to defeat them than to defend the rights and interests of the house-elves.

If the results were to be directly judged by simple strength comparison, Evan would better give up quickly and not resist.

It was enough to work and try hard. Not everything had to be done thinking about the end result from a practical point of view. 

Evan and Hermione discussed it for a while. Unlike Hermione’s eager approach, he thought the matter should be dealt with step by step. After all, these were concepts that had been passed down for centuries in the wizarding world, and it was not practical to change them all in a short time.

Fortunately, as the proportion of Muggle-born wizards and mixed-race wizards gradually increased, many of the inherent concepts were changing.

Hermione’s view was not to be without supporters. On the contrary, it could represent the voice of some wizards.

What the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare needed to do now was to develop its member-base. Evan helped her revise her articles to win more people’s understanding and approval.

Judging from Hermione’s thoughts, she seemed to have other plans to do something for the house-elves with her own efforts.

The next morning, the unpleasantness between Ron and Hermione was quickly resolved. They both apologized to each other and thought that they were a little too agitated last night.

Eventually, Harry and Ron, like Evan, paid two Sickles as admission fees.

The dull school life continued to move forward, but the development of participation of other wizards in the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare did not go smoothly.

Just to stop Hermione’s constant persuasion and sullen anger, Colin, Ginny, and Neville had also paid up, but were reluctant to take a more active role in campaigning. Instead, they regarded the whole thing as a joke.

Everyone’s negative attitude had done nothing whatsoever to curb Hermione’s determination to pursue justice for house-elves.

It was true that they had paid two Sickles for a S.P.E.W. badge, but they had only done it to keep her quiet. Their Sickles had been wasted, however; if anything, they seemed to have made Hermione more vociferous.

She had been badgering Evan, Harry and Ron ever since, first to wear the badges, then to persuade others to do the same.

She had also taken to rattling around the Gryffindor common room every evening, cornering people and shaking the collecting tin under their noses, asking them to pay for the badge, and Join the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare.

Despite Hermione’s hard work, there was little interest in the matter. Several meetings were held to listen to Hermione reading the charter of the Society.

Shortly afterwards, Hogwarts Magic began to publish her articles on protecting the rights of house-elves.

This seemed to have played a role, and readers constantly wrote to Hermione.

Many people thought that she was insane having this absurd idea of paying the house-elves, but there were still a few people who supported her.

They thought Hermione’s approach was ethically correct, which gave Hermione great encouragement and motivation to continue.

As she often said to Evan, this was good enough for a start. Her badges and the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare were no longer limited to Hogwarts.

In terms of the school’s curriculum, Moody had begun to use the Imperius Curse on every young wizard in the Defence Against the Dark Arts class.

At present, there was only Evan in the school who could completely break the curse and defeat it.

After many attempts, Harry and a small number of senior students could successfully resist and were not easily controlled by the Dark wizard.

Ron was the worst performer in this respect, and he had no resistance to the Imperius Curse. It was probably because of the impact of his previous experiences.

He had much more difficulties than others in dealing with this curse, and was the easiest to control.

In Professor Moody’s words, Ron lacked strong will power.

This made Ron feel very dissatisfied, and every Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson became a torment.

He complained that Moody was like a paranoid, and no wonder people wanted to kick him out of the Ministry of Magic.

Moody was speaking as if someone might break into the school and attack them at any time.

But Evan believed that it was necessary for everyone to learn to resist the Imperius Curse as soon as possible.

Until now, he had found no trace of Bartemius Crouch, Jr. hiding in the dark. Either Barty Crouch Jr. had not yet arrived at Hogwarts, or the Marauder’s Map was not working. The first supposition was very likely. As Caresius said, Crouch was planning to start by the Triwizard Tournament.

By that time, Hogwarts Castle would have removed most of the protective magic and its defence would be the weakest. Moreover, there would be many outsiders coming in.

Bartemius Crouch, Jr. might be among these people, waiting for the opportunity to act.

After confirming that it was impossible to quickly find out Barty Crouch through the Marauder’s Map, Evan put this matter aside.

He was now devoting most of his energy to the study of ancient magic texts and had also begun to try to learn the language of the Merpeople.

The pressure of the third year curriculum was obviously much more than that of the second year, and Evan now was busy every day.

As for Harry, Ron and Hermione, they were even busier, and the amount of homework to be done in the fourth year was overwhelming them. It was because upon entering the fifth grade next year, they would take the Ordinary Wizarding Levels.

In Professor McGonagall’s words, this was the most important phase of a wizards’ magical education, and had to be given appropriate attention.

However, it was obvious that everyone’s performance could not satisfy the professors.

Their homework was becoming more and more difficult and demanding, which kept Harry and Ron’s dissatisfaction rising.

The only thing that made them feel happy was that they had received top marks for their homework in their Divination class. Although this sounded a bit ironic, it was one of the few good news they got.

In fact, Evan was also praised.

Professor Trelawney even read out large portions of his predictions, commending him for his unflinching acceptance of the horrors in store for him.

Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures was still a mess, especially as part of their “project” suggested that they come down to his Hut on alternate evenings to observe the skrewts and make notes on their extraordinary behavior.

These Blast-Ended Skrewts were growing at a remarkable pace given that nobody had yet discovered what they ate.

Hagrid had placed them into separate boxes, and a hundred wooden boxes kept shaking in front of his Hut.

It might not be long before these Blast-Ended Skrewts would come out of their boxes.

It was foreseeable that no one would dare to approach them except Hagrid.

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