บท 406: Chapter 405 The Sorting Hat (2 in 1)
Jon didn't hesitate this time, he took a step forward and kept walking until he reached the wall directly behind that desk before the voice in his head called out to him to stop.
"It's this wall in front of you, reach out and push against it, a gentle push is all you need, you are qualified to do this already."
Following its words, Jon's hand touched the cold wall, and just as he placed his hand on it, just as he pushed, the whole surface began to tremble.
Immediately afterwards the bricks on the wall in front of Jon suddenly began to split, and soon an entrance opened up before him for people to pass through.
The candlelight from the headmaster's office shone into the dark chamber and Jon saw a pile of tattered frames, tossed parchments and notes and a tattered hat in the corner as if it had been used as a dump.
As soon as Jon entered the chamber, his eyes fixed on the tattered hat, a grey, patched and dusty peaked cap.
"Is that you?"
He asked as he opened his mouth.
The voice rang in his head once more.
"Aha, I never thought I'd see a living Hogwarts student after all these years!"
The top hat voice sounded a little emotional, and Jon certainly noticed the hidden meaning in its words.
"You have seen Hogwarts students before, but they're all dead."
"It was about seven or eight years ago, I think, when the daring lad stumbled in by mistake and was then swallowed alive by that great serpent, and I could still vaguely sense something happening out there at the time."
As if the hat itself didn't want to talk much about the subject, it quickly moved this conversation elsewhere.
"I suppose even if the Hogwarts you went to wasn't this castle, you would have heard of my existence? The Sorting Hat, the one once used to give new students the choice to decide which house they should attend."
There was certainly no way Jon couldn't recognise it, and he walked over to the side of the Sorting Hat and picked it up off the floor while patting the dust from it.
"When I first enrolled, the upperclassmen told me about how there were once four houses at Hogwarts and you were the hat used to sort the students into them, but school tradition doesn't usually tell new students that sorting into houses is as simple as just wearing a hat."
"Of course, it's a good tradition. After all, when the little kids know that the Sorting is just about wearing a shabby hat like mine and not duelling with trolls or dragons they usually just breathe a long sigh of relief and think about how wearing me on their head will mess up their hair that was so well groomed last night."
The Sorting Hat looked like it hadn't spoken to anyone in a long time, it was a bit talkative and hadn't stopped talking since it saw Jon.
But Jon obviously couldn't continue to carry on wasting time here, although he had a good three-hour advantage over Emil at his disposal, for one person to search the entire castle, let alone three hours, even thirty, he wouldn't necessarily be able to finish searching every part of the entire Hogwarts castle.
"Would you like to come out with me, Mr Sorting Hat? I'm still in the middle of a tournament, and that tournament is about whether Hogwarts Castle will remain in the hands of that Dark Lord or return to Professor Dumbledore, and there's no time to waste."
"Why not?" The Sorting Hat replied dryly, "I've been thrown in here for so long that I certainly wouldn't turn down the chance to get some air. Although I've also been kept in a cupboard for most of the year before, there's always a day when I'll come out and sing and chat, and now I haven't spoken to anyone for a long time."
Seeing that it agreed, Jon solemnly folded it up and finally tucked it into the pocket of his robe.
And that didn't stop the Sorting Hat from being able to continue communicating with him in his head.
After leaving the headmaster's office, Jon descended the stairs with a clear objective and started walking towards the great hall on the ground floor.
By normal reasoning, the Triwizard Cup certainly couldn't have just been placed in the great hall in such a clear and straightforward manner, but as the place with the highest concentration of students in the entire castle regularly, and the first place that came to mind upon entering the castle, Jon felt sure that Matthew and the others would have left some sort of clue in the great hall.
"What kind of competition are you in? How can it actually decide who gets to own Hogwarts?"
The voice of the Sorting Hat rang out in Jon's head.
Jon answered as he descended the stairs.
"The Triwizard Tournament, before the tournament began the Dark Lord and Professor Dumbledore made a blood pact together that two separate Hogwarts and champions from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang would come to compete, whichever side won would be the only rightful Hogwarts and would also have the legal right to occupy the castle."
"Using the Triwizard Tournament for such a wager?" The Sorting Hat's voice sounded a little odd, "Did you guys know that that Dark Lord, he has never actually gained control of the castle and can't even stay here for more than a day or the castle will either crumble on its own or he'll get the hell out."
It was the first time Jon had heard what would happen to Voldemort if he stayed in Hogwarts for an extended period of time, but he soon asked again.
"But we also found out that he is trying to wear down the original consciousness of this castle and then impose his own."
"Of course, he's going to do that anyhow, and it's actually already sort of working, all that's missing now is the final step." The Sorting Hat said so matter-of-factly.
Jon subconsciously stopped in his tracks as he frowned.
"Only one final step left? What do you mean?"
The Sorting Hat seemed to know everything about Jon's question, and it quickly replied.
"I have a deep connection to this castle and can sense what he is doing more intuitively than anyone else. He has actually sort of succeeded, the only thing left to be done is that the original 'will' of the castle still hasn't been completely worn away, so that means he's only missing the final step, that is, the final step would involve the Triwizard Tournament you're engaged in right now."
Jon couldn't help but hold his breath, he felt like he could uncover the purpose of why Voldemort was holding this Triwizard Tournament in the first place.
"So this tournament will help him take complete control of the castle?"
"Of course, it will." The Sorting Hat acted like it snapped a finger, "Don't think that just because the Triwizard Tournament was a tournament that only began to arise after the death of the Four Founders that it won't have any effect on this school, just like when this castle was first used by them as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, it was just a normal magical castle with some enchantments placed on it during that time, far from having a consciousness of its own extent."
"Almost every wizard in the whole of Britain for the last thousand years has graduated from this castle, and they have spent the whole seven years from the age of 11 to 18 here, which is equivalent to this castle having witnessed their entire youth. So while the students were performing magic at the school, the magic that dispersed through the castle also continued to affect the castle; the magic of a single young wizard was of course limited and would not have much effect at all, but over the years, the changes just happened slowly over time."
"Sometime after this school was first started up, the Peeves appeared. At first, both the students and the professors thought he was just a ghost that had wandered into Hogwarts by chance, but he became more and more unusual and showed amazing abilities."
"Peeves Ghost?" Jon was certainly no stranger to the name, knowing that he had once been one of the ghosts at Hogwarts.
"Yes, Peeves Ghost." The Sorting hat patiently continued to tell Jon, "It is a spirit that presents itself as a ghost, or you could call it a castle spirit, it is a manifestation of the consciousness that this castle has created, except that it represents the naughty and nasty side of the students of this castle throughout time, I don't know if you have heard how much the caretakers of this castle loathed it and how hard they tried to banish it from the castle."
Jon shook his head.
"Well, that was actually back in 1876 when the caretaker of this castle was still Rancorous Carpe, who had carefully laid out traps, using various weapons that he thought the Peeves could not resist as bait, and then prepared a huge bell-shaped enchanted hood reinforced by various Containment Charms, ready to catch the Peeves when he walked up to the trap."
"And the result?"
"The result was that Peeves not only escaped easily but also sprinkled broken glass all over the corridor and even evaded a trap consisting of several scimitars, crossbows, a musket and a small cannon. The Peeves Ghost put everyone's lives in danger by randomly firing at windows for its own amusement, resulting in the evacuation of everyone from the castle and a three-day stand-off between the entire castle faculty and him, which finally ended with Headmistress Eupraxia Mole agreeing to sign a contract granting the Peeves Ghost additional privileges."
"The privileges included permission for Peeves to swim in the boys' lavatory on the ground floor once a week, priority in bringing in and throwing out any bread that wasn't fresh from the kitchen, and a new hat made by the Madame Bonhabille of Paris, and from that point on, no caretaker or headmaster ever entertained the idea of expelling Peeves, no matter how annoying it might be. "
"Just think how a normal ghost could possibly do all these things? That fool Carpe would never have thought of it, how could he drive the castle itself out of this castle? The Peeves Ghost is the spirit generated by the students' magic and also represents this Hogwarts castle itself."
"But also just after the Dark Lord took over this castle, within a few days Peeves ghost disappeared. There were many rumours at the time, some said that it had angered the Dark Lord himself and was killed by him with the most powerful killing curse, and others said that it was because Hogwarts was no longer the original Hogwarts that Peeves Ghost had disappeared. But in fact, it was the Dark Lord who imprisoned it, plus oppressed a portion of the students in this school, allowing that repressed emotion and magic to work against the 'will' of the castle itself, constantly erasing its powers and existence."
Jon had arrived at the great hall by now.
"So what does this have to do with the Triwizard Tournament?"
"Not so fast, I'll get to that next. As much as the magic and emotions of the students affected the castle, around the thirteenth century, not even three hundred years after this school was built, the Triwizard Tournament, a tournament used to bring together young wizards from all over Europe, was brought up and held every five years, with the venue being held on a rotating basis by the three magic schools. The competition was suspended only in 1792, after 500 years. Do you know how many times Hogwarts has won the Triwizard Tournament in those 500 years?"
Without waiting for Jon to guess, the Sorting Hat itself had already spoken the answer.
"Sixty-three times, the most times a school has acquired the championship. The imprint of this tournament is etched into the castle that was given the name Hogwarts itself, and no one can erase it; like magic, it is the 'will' that makes all the difference. And it is for this reason that the Triwizard Tournament has an extremely unique significance for the castle, especially once a student competing in its name has won the championship. And to top it all off, the Dark Lord has made a bet with the 'will' of this castle that a Hogwarts student will never win this Triwizard Tournament."
Jon suddenly seemed to think of something as he asked immediately afterwards.
"What if it's the student representing Hogwarts who gets the title?"
"Then his plan would be over, especially if it was you, the student named Jon Green. The fact that you were able to wake me up means that the castle itself is extremely favourable to you, and if it is you who gets the championship, then all the efforts the Dark Lord has made over the years will all be in vain, and the 'will' of the castle itself, which he has worn down, will be restored, and you will become the new master of this castle."
Hearing such a reply, Jon did not have any half-hearted surprise or any kind of excited psychological fluctuation but continued to ask.
"And what if it was another student who represented Hogwarts under his tutelage that had got the title?"
"It wouldn't be good for him either, I don't know how the castle feels about that student, but as long as the title is won in the name of Hogwarts, it would be a huge boost to the 'will' of the castle itself, a boost, yes that should be the word. But once this tournament with Hogwarts as the main venue, especially if the tournament is still played in the castle and the tournament ends with the victory of the other two schools, especially if it is a reintroduction of the Triwizard Tournament which has been discontinued for over two hundred years, this is a terrible consequence for the castle, because the obstruction that the castle has pressed down on itself by itself will simply vanish on its own if the students of Hogwarts do not win, and it will no longer be in the position to be resistance to the Dark Lord."
It was at this point that Jon finally realized!
Understood why it was Draco Malfoy who was ultimately representing Hogwarts Castle in the tournament, and why it was Emil Lestrange who was expected to win!
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Crazy_DarkSide_Cat Thanks for all your love and support.
Read advance chapters on P@treon. If you have some extra pocket money, Support me at P@treon: www.p@treon.com/Crazy_Cat.
Happy Reading!!!
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