Chapter 82: Hogsmeade
This gathering ended before the Halloween dinner above came to an end.
Due to being caught once last semester, Hermione became much more careful as the new organiser. Once she takes a wrong step, it won't be just her, but all the second years as well as the first years, too, will be implicated.
Just as Jon thought, this kind of assembly is not organizing the mudblood students to carry out some kind of act of rebellion, if they really want to do that, not only there is no point in doing that, but it will also get everyone killed.
The students gathered together just to tell the younger students the real truth, about what they had learned in class was all deception, there was nothing more than that.
The bustle in Hogwarts Castle stopped after 10 o'clock, and Dolohov performed his caretaker duties, sending all the purebloods and half-bloods who wanted to linger in the corridors back to their dorm rooms.
And by midnight, the whole Hogwarts went quiet, and it was at this time, Jon opened the Marauder's map in his dorm room.
After making sure that no one was wandering around in the castle, he put on the cloak of invisibility, left the underground dormitory, made his way to the ground floor, and walked straight through the entrance hall, then sneaked out of the castle.
As he approached the Quidditch pitch along the lawn, he followed the same route as he had taken on previous trips, walking quickly towards the gate by sticking to the wall that enclosed the entire school.
When he reached the place where he had left the note, Jon knelt down, plucked away the weeds, and using the moonlight, he finally found a bag in the dirt that was exactly the same as the one he had gotten in his hands a month ago.
This time he did not immediately put the sack away, but directly opened the closure, fumbled around inside, and subsequently really fished out a palm-sized note from it.
Jon drew out his wand and whispered the incantation.
"Lumos."
The faint light that suddenly lit up at the tip of the wand illuminated the darkness inside the invisibility cloak, and at the same time allowed him to see the contents recorded on the note.
There were no words on it, just a hog's head with fangs drawn in black ink.
After seeing this pattern, Jon's mind instantly came to a clear understanding.
Before he was still guessing, who is the person sending him a batch of potion materials every month, but after seeing this now, it couldn't more obvious.
The wizards in the whole magical world who are aware of the relationship between this person and Dumbledore can be counted in one palm of the hand, if he did not have time to provide any help in the battle of the fall of Hogwarts seven years ago, then Dumbledore most likely would let him continue to conceal his identity and lurk around Hogwarts Castle.
After thinking clearly about these, Jon immediately stuffed the note and the cloth bag with potion materials into his pocket, then put away his wand, and returned to the castle as he tightened the invisibility cloak.
After returning to the castle, he did not go back to the underground chamber of the Mudblood immediately, but hid under the cloak of invisibility, while looking at the marauder's map in his hands, and went to the Gunhilda of Gorsemoor Corridor on the third floor.
There is a statue of a hunchbacked, one-eyed witch placed in this corridor, and because there are no classrooms or professor's offices around, coupled with the fact that the statue itself looks a bit spooky, few students usually come here.
Jon went around behind the statue of the old witch, he raised his wand and tapped it against the hunchback witch statue.
"Dissendium."
The next second, the humpback one-eyed witch opened up, revealing a stone slide.
After giving a final glance at the information on the marauder's map to make sure there was no one around, Jon put away the map, gripped the wand tightly in his hand as he dove into the secret passage and slid down.
This is an extremely long slide, after entering the secret passage he used the wand-lighting charm, but the winding and undulating way ahead of him simply didn't allow him to see the destination.
The slide lasted for more than ten minutes before Jon re-stepped on the solid ground, and there was a stone staircase in front of him that led upwards, probably hundreds of steps, and the light of the wand-lighting charm was not enough to illuminate the end of the stone staircase.
Jon began to follow the stone steps all the way up, he did not carefully try to count, but it felt like walking through more than two hundred steps before arriving at the end of this secret passage, overhead there is a wooden flap door.
After opening the door, Jon came out of the secret passage, and at this moment he was completely out of Hogwarts Castle and came to the wizard village outside the school - Hogsmeade Village!
If the stores in this village have not changed much, then the chamber he is in now should be the cellar of the Honeydukes sweets shop.
Looking around the messily placed barrels and boxes, Jon did not linger much in this cellar, he approached the door, used an unlocking charm on the locked door, and then came to the village for the first time from the back door of the sweet shop.
He did not know if it was an illusion, when looking at the wide, straight streets, Jon could feel his breathing had become much easier.
The oppressive atmosphere in Hogwarts Castle can only be felt after coming out of it.
Even after arriving at Hogsmeade, Jon still didn't take off the invisibility cloak he was wearing and started looking around the streets of this wizard village, and soon got some results.
There is a small pub, with a battered wooden sign hanging from a rusted bracket on the door, on top of which a severed hog's head is nailed, and in the night, blood can be faintly seen penetrating the white cloth wrapped around it.
Still, without removing the invisibility cloak from his body, Jon gently knocked on the closed door of the bar.
The knocking sound echoed in the quiet night, but there was no movement coming from inside, his hands did not stop moving, but continued to knock on the door.
It didn't take long for a response to come from inside the bar, a gruff and impatient voice sounded.
"Don't you know the rules? No accommodation is accepted after 10 o'clock! If you don't have a place to sleep, lie down at the door and wait for me to open the next day! Even if you're a pureblood lord, if you knock on the door once again I'll turn your head into the size of a troll!"
Jon, however, remained unrelenting, as if he was going to knock the door down if it wasn't opened.
Soon there was a "thud, thud, thud " sound of someone walking quickly down the wooden stairs, accompanied by annoyed cursing.
The door to the bar was opened from inside, and a cranky old man in pyjamas with ponytail hair and a short but bushy beard held up his wand and stared out at the empty entrance.
"Excuse me, do you sell phoenix tears in your place?"
A slightly childish voice rang out of nowhere, causing the blue pupils of the old man, who was covered with the smell of goat foul smell, to jolt.
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