In the Harry Potter Without Harry Potter

Hermione, of course, noticed Jon's silence.

She pursed her lips, which had lost its original blood colour, and a reluctant smile appeared on her face at this moment.

"You don't have to feel difficult, Professor, I can understand, after all, his strength is too strong, no one can fight him now, we can wait, I will keep telling them, let them believe that there will be hope in the futu-"

Jon suddenly spoke up at this time interrupting her words.

"No need to keep telling them, and you don't have to think much about it either, I wasn't wondering how to tell you that we weren't prepared for this just now, but I was hesitant whether to tell you about the plan or not."

Hermione froze, she looked at Jon, and Jon looked at her, with a smile on his face.

"We already planned everything at the very beginning, you don't need to ask much else, afterwards it will be enough for you to just keep it a secret."

The atmosphere plunged into silence, and only after a good long time, Hermione sniffled, she tried to prevent the tears that are already swimming around her eyes from slipping away and asked in a voice tinged with sobs.

"You you mean it?"

Jon replied softly.

"The Professor of the other Hogwarts never lies."

Hermione raised her hand and used her sleeve to dry the tears she hadn't shed, her eyes turning red, the smile that appeared on her face, at last, wasn't as forced as the last ones, and she said in a firm tone.

"I believe in you!"

Late at night, after coming out of Hermione's dorm room, Jon did not go straight back to his own dorm room.

The emotional outburst of the little girl was pacified, and Jon leaned quietly against the wall next to Hermione's dorm door, holding a Marauder's Map in one hand and holding the invisibility cloak in the other, standing silently, with unknown thoughts in his mind.

The corridor of the underground dormitory was totally covered in darkness, and he stood still in such darkness for twenty to thirty minutes before he finally made his move.

Jon put on the invisibility cloak, looking at the Marauder's Map in his hand and sneaked up to the statue of the humpbacked one-eyed witch and used a spell to open the entrance to the secret passage and went in.

***

The Hogsmeade village was completely blanketed in snow, and the streets were not yet cleared of thick snow. The bright white moonlight was reflected by the solid white surface of the snow, which made the silent wizard village not appear very dark.

Jon paid close attention to his tracks, after he came out of the Honeydukes candy shop cellar, after each step forward he would turn back again to clean up the footprints he left behind, to prevent any possibility of leaving suspicions.

This visit he walked very slowly, and even from a distance, he could see that even though the shopfront looked a little dirty inside the Hog's Head Inn, there was still a faint candlelight, as if specially pointing him the right way.

When Jon approached the Hog's Head Inn and came to the front steps, before he could reach out and knock on the door, Aberforth had already taken the initiative to open the door from the inside.

He welcomed Jon into the warm Inn with a fireplace burning brightly and proceeded to serve him a cup of hot cocoa, which he knew Jon actually preferred over butterbeer and pumpkin juice.

Without taking the initiative to ask, Aberforth just waited for Jon to finish the first sip of hot cocoa, and then Jon spoke up by himself.

"I killed the Basilisk, but I didn't get those things."

This kind of scenario was already speculated before the Christmas operation started, and Aberforth had also predicted with him that it might happen, so he didn't look that disappointed and just asked.

"There were other guards guarding the room where those two items are kept hidden?"

Jon nodded.

"Three portraits, all working together to keep an eye on those two items, pretty much as we suspected before, he still left a trick. Also, before I found the room where the two items were kept, I also saw another four items on the desk in the Headmaster's office, a sword, a cup, a locket and a diadem, I suspect that there must be something wrong with these four items as well, otherwise the Dark Lord would not have kept them at that place openly."

Listening to Jon's narrative, Aberforth had a thoughtful look on his face and pondered for a moment before saying.

"The matter of the portraits is not exactly insoluble, this thing is after all a magical creation, and in the magical world except for those three unforgivable curses, all other magic has a counter spell, the magical world portraits are certainly no exception, except that our current difficulty lies in how to solve those three portraits before they send the message out. As for the four things you mentioned. Those are likely to be magical items of great importance to Voldemort."

"I also got found out while cleaning up the Basilisk's corpse."

"Oh, you got found out... You were discovered!" Repeating Jon's words twice, Aberforth was shocked to realize exactly what he had heard, and he glanced at Jon and asked in an urgent tone, "Discovered by who?"

Jon said silently.

"A student in the same year as me, she didn't just find out about me today, but she spotted something wrong with me way early on. Dolohov, who was supposed to go to the Dark Lord's Christmas Banquet tonight, returned to the castle early and discovered my absence, and it was she who helped me find an excuse to cover up and then located me before I was exposed."

Hearing that the person who found Jon was not some faculty member in that castle, Aberforth was a bit relieved.

"Spotted something wrong with you way early on? What happened?"

Jon originated what Hermione said to Aberforth from the beginning questioning his identity to the back identifying his origin and finally helping him, hearing the end Aberforth could not even help but praise.

"A very smart little girl, if it is a peace era she will certainly be able to shine."

Only after Aberforth's praise was finished did Jon take a deep breath and voice the following words.

"She then asked me lastly if we had any plans to get them out of the Hogwarts castle as a part of our planned task of infiltration."

The Inn went quiet.

So quiet that they could only hear each other's breathing, and only after a long while did Aberforth speak slowly.

"She's threatening you?"

"She was pleading to me."

Jon leaned back in his chair and murmured, his mind now filled with the little girl's face with her lips pursed in anticipation and fear.

Aberforth let out a long sigh, such a decision should actually be made by him, after all, he is nearly a hundred years older than Jon, but he still subconsciously asked Jon.

"So what do you have in mind?"

Jon did not speak out at first, but looked at the ceiling of the Inn, and paused for a few seconds before saying calmly.

"Can you help me get in touch with Professor Dumbledore? I'd like to have a few words with him."

----

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