Bab 284: Chapter 284: Old Acquaintance Peeves (2 in 1) (Edited)
Anthony Goldstein didn't dare to stay at the end of the group but immediately quickened his pace and caught up with the group ahead. In three steps, he reached Michael Corner. By the time he was beside his roommate, his sense of urgency had naturally dissipated.
"What's wrong?" Michael felt curious seeing his roommate's suddenly pale face. "Do you have a stomach ache?"
"No, Mike, listen..." Anthony hadn't finished his sentence when he felt someone blowing on the back of his neck.
"Ah!" He shouted and jumped up.
It was a scream that made the other students look at him. Professor Lupin abruptly stopped, turned his head, and asked gently, "Is something wrong, student?"
Michael, with a bitter expression, recounted what had happened.
Lupin listened, looked thoughtfully at the empty corridor behind Michael, cleared his throat, and calmed the restless young wizards.
"There are four possibilities," Professor Lupin said softly to Michael Corner, "One, it's an evil spirit."
The young wizards grimaced in pain.
"...But it's daytime, and it's still in Hogwarts, so it can't be an evil spirit." Lupin didn't continue selling the story, lest the students become frightened. "Another possibility is that it's some magical creature that can turn invisible, and there's a spell that works well for that."
He took out a wand from his shabby robe and looked behind Michael. "Of course, the biggest possibility is that I've come across an old acquaintance: Aparecium!"
He shouted without warning, a breeze came out from the tip of his wand and traveled down the corridor, and a small "figure" appeared before everyone's eyes, with sinister black eyes and a big, small mouth, dressed in a bright red suit, a furball hat, and an orange bowtie.
"Peeves!" One student recognized the figure.
"You idiot, Lupin, madman, big fool!" Peeves wasn't the least bit alarmed to see his disguise undone, instead, he cheerfully sang, as if he had encountered someone familiar.
The students were slightly surprised: although Peeves was always rude, he rarely provoked the teachers of the school. For him, it was more fun to taunt Filch and mess with the young wizards. Today, he didn't know where he got the wrong idea, but he had clashed with a professor: could it be because Professor Lupin teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts? Some of the young wizards had a hint of sarcasm in their minds.
But it was interesting for the students, who were eager to see what the new professor was capable of and what kind of "sparks" would fly between him and Peeves...
"Peeves is going to be in trouble." Tom whispered in Hermione's ear. Hearing Tom's voice, Hermione felt a sense of anticipation, even though she didn't know where Tom got his confidence from.
Contrary to what the students expected, Professor Lupin showed no anger, instead, he smiled as if he was recalling something good.
"Still so full of energy, Peeves," he twirled his wand and cast a spell at Peeves, "Incarcerous!"
A thick rope sprouted from the tip of Lupin's wand, tightly binding Peeves, causing him to fall from the air to the ground.
"It's not enough to know the spell, you have to learn the proper combination of spells, like the revealing spell to make the enemy visible, and the confinement spell to incapacitate them, you see, now I can do whatever I want with him."
Upon hearing this, Peeves immediately struggled, but the more he struggled, the tighter the bindings became.
"Lupin..." he opened his mouth to say something, but Lupin had already raised his wand to shoulder height and was aiming directly at Peeves. "This is a small but useful spell, please pay attention, Waddiwasi!"
A gum stuck to the floor flew like a bullet and hit Peeves in the nostrils.
Peeves gasped for breath and then cursed.
Lupin, still smiling, said to the students, "You can give it a try if you want, but it's best for beginners to aim at stationary targets first, and then you can try the moving targets once you're familiar with the spell."
Peeves: !!!
He made eye contact with the young wizards and realized something was wrong, but before he could say anything, Tom raised his wand high and said, "Waddiwasi!"
A small stone hit Peeves on the head, causing his hat to fall off.
The other students, guided by him, also tried the new spell on Peeves. The spell was quite simple, I must say, and although it was the first time any of the young wizards had done it, almost all of them succeeded.
They kept throwing all sorts of things at Peeves, and some clever young wizards even opened a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and scattered them on the floor as ammunition.
Peeves, shrieking under the barrage of projectiles, rolled in a straight line and hid in an empty classroom, hooking the door with his foot and staying inside.
Hermione's eyes also sparkled with surprise; she hadn't expected Professor Lupin to solve the problem in that way.
Seeing that the young wizards had done well with their spell, Professor Lupin didn't hesitate to applaud them all. "Well done!" he said with a smile, "Sometimes that's what you have to do with Peeves."
At that moment, the young wizards looked at Professor Lupin with a little more reverence. Due to Lupin's shabby clothes, they hadn't thought much of him before. But the battle against Peeves had completely erased any trace of disdain towards Lupin, replaced by a feeling of admiration and goodwill.
Lupin had simply reversed the negative impression the young wizards had of him.
Lupin led the students again, through two corridors, to the door of the staff common room.
"Well, today's lesson is about to begin, and believe me, the kids in here are much tougher than Peeves." Lupin stood in front of the door, observing the young wizards behind him with great interest.
At that moment, the door of the staff common room suddenly opened, and Snape emerged from behind it.
Young wizards: this is much harder to deal with than Peeves...
As soon as the door opened and Snape saw Lupin, he frowned, showing an expression of absolute disgust, as if he had opened the door to his room only to see a big cockroach on the floor.
"What are you doing here?" Snape asked in a disgusted tone.
"I'm here for my lesson, and I have the 'teaching materials' I need." Lupin remained calm in the face of Snape's undisguised malice.
The young wizards in the room remained silent amidst the verbal battle between the two professors, not wanting to get caught in the crossfire.
"Fine," Snape said, restraining himself. "Come to my office tonight for your medicine."
When he said "medicine," Snape raised his voice so that the students could hear him clearly.
"I look forward to seeing what you'll do in a year," Snape said, suddenly leaving the common room, his back to Lupin. Instead of speaking to Lupin, he was addressing the Ravenclaw students.
"Is it due to poor health, or have the students found out about your...?"
"Severus, Dumbledore asked me to come here, and no matter how long I teach here, and for whatever reason I leave, it's none of your business." Professor Lupin's emotions wavered for a moment, interrupting Snape's speech.
He brought up Dumbledore as a reminder to Snape of Dumbledore's admonition to him. It worked indeed, and Snape kept his mouth shut, smirked maliciously, and left.
"How long do you think you can keep it a secret? A month, half a year, or a year?" Before leaving, he whispered a damning statement in Lupin's ear.
Upon hearing these words, Lupin's body swayed slightly, and he took a deep breath to recover, observing the students' reactions. He noticed that the children didn't seem to notice anything strange and continued to support him.
From the perspective of an ordinary wizard, it was simply the evil Snape intimidating the kind and gentle Professor Lupin. And the medicine? Professor Lupin looked sickly and must be suffering from some illness.
Lupin felt relieved to see that the students were responding normally and led them to the staff common room.
It was a long room with wooden paneling on the walls and piles of unused old chairs. The young wizards were surprised to see that the teachers' room was so rundown.
At the end of the staff common room, there was a closet where the teachers kept their spare robes. When Lupin approached it, the closet began to shake, hitting the wall with a dull thud, and the doorknob clicked as if something was trying to get out.
Startled, the young wizards came to a sudden stop, staring unwaveringly at the closet.
"Boggart!" Lupin tapped on the closet door, and the sound from inside stopped, only to tremble more violently afterward.
Upon hearing the term, Hermione looked at Tom beside her, knowing full well that her boyfriend had inherited the ability of a Boggart.
"Well, I remember that Professor Lockhart introduced you to the Boggart before... but I asked some students, and it didn't seem like he showed you the real Boggart, so I took some trouble and found this guy in the castle." Lupin looked at the silent students and felt satisfied. His eyes scanned the crowd, and upon seeing Hermione, he suddenly remembered something.
"In case you don't know, Miss Granger wrote an article about the Boggart in the Magic magazine last year. It was very well written, so Miss Granger, could you briefly tell us what the Boggart is?"
Young wizards: !!!
"Magic magazine?!"
There were a few young wizards who had heard of the name, and they immediately looked at Hermione in astonishment. It was the most important magazine in the magical world, and she was publishing in it in her second year? What were they doing in second year? How could they be so different from each other?
Hermione smiled somewhat embarrassedly, "I didn't expect to be included in the magazine either. I had a lot of help from Professor Lockhart at the time..."
"As a subject of study," Tom mentally retorted. It was like a joke. "What kind of research are you doing in the university?" "They study me from the inside."
Hermione explained a bit, but she found that not many of her classmates believed her. They all thought Hermione was being humble.
She had no choice but to give up on explanations and start answering Professor Lupin's question. "The Boggart is a dark creature that changes shape and becomes what we fear the most. And since it turns into what people fear the most, nobody knows what a Boggart looks like when it's alone."
That's the best way to summarize the Boggart.
But that's not all, Hermione continued: "Boggarts like dark and enclosed spaces, so they hide in closets, under beds, or in cupboards. And the easiest way to deal with a Boggart is to do it with several people, in pairs, so that the Boggart doesn't know what to turn into. There's no need to fear, there's a simple spell to repel them..."
"Excellent, Ravenclaw gets twenty points." Hermione's answer was very comprehensive, not only describing what a Boggart was, its habits, and characteristics, but also its weaknesses, something even Lupin himself couldn't have done better, which made him nod in satisfaction.
"If he let you go on, I'll be out of a job," Lupin joked, making Hermione's face light up with joy. Even after three years of school, Hermione still delighted in answering questions to earn extra credits.
"The spell to repel the Boggart is simple, the same one as the Waddiwasi I just taught you, but it requires great strength of will, and you'll have to force it into an image that you find funny."
"Take out your wands and repeat after me... Riddikulus!"
The class repeated it a few times.
"Very good," Professor Lupin said. "But that spell alone is not enough. Miss Granger, please come up here and show us."
Nervously, Hermione stepped forward, and Professor Lupin gestured for everyone to step back, giving Hermione plenty of space.
Hermione stood in front of the closet, a little unsure of herself, not knowing what she was more afraid of. She saw a silent gesture of encouragement from Tom on the stage, which reassured her, knowing that Tom supported her no matter what.
She nodded to Professor Lupin to indicate that she was ready.
Professor Lupin gripped his wand and aimed at the doorknob of the closet. "Three... two... one, go!"
The tip of his wand sparked, striking the spherical doorknob, and the closet door swung open.
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