บท 109: Chapter 109: Ryddle in a hurry (Edited)
Lockhart's suitcase had good sound insulation. With the lid closed, Lockhart could barely be heard from the outside as he howled from the inside, and all Lockhart could do was bang the case as hard as he could to make it shake slightly.
Tom sat back in his desk chair, leaned back, and took a moment to relax. The conversation he had just had with Lockhart had left him feeling not-understood-but-surprised. It was hard to imagine that a man could say something like that.
He pulled out Ryddle's diary, he still had a thing or two to learn about Voldemort.
He found some cockroaches and fed them to the diary.
In this conversation with Ryddle, Tom could feel Ryddle getting a little more anxious, and every time he talked to him, the conversation moved on to the Chamber of Secrets and sacrifice, but Tom always said he would do it next time.
At the same time, he urged Ryddle to continue teaching him various spells.
Under Ryddle's tutelage, Tom's skills improved by leaps and bounds over the years, and he has kept several notebooks of just the lessons.
[Expelliarmus Charm, skill advancement successfully]
[Current status: Expelliarmus Charm Level 1 (0/200-17%)]
[Diffindo skill advancement has been successful]
[Current status: Diffindo level 1 (0/200-21%)]
...
"Thank you, Treviso." Tom's Occamy slowly climbed onto the table, then spat a few cockroaches out of his mouth and they landed on the journal.
Ryddle's journal was low on energy now, needing to be fed every few minutes, and the memory was failing without a meal. So Tom let his Occamy out to hunt a few roaches, and to get some exercise, instead of being cooped up in a kettle all day.
Tom felt that, if it weren't for the Occamy's ability to get smaller, Treviso would have been too fat to go outside.
Treviso was well tamed, very low profile, always catching roaches as fast as he could and then returning to the kettle to rest, it cost Tom a price to get the Occamy out of the kettle: a chicken leg for at least five roaches.
"Really, I can't remember much of this stuff, and if we went to the Chamber of Secrets, surely we could find more detailed material." Ryddle changed the subject back to the Chamber of Secrets.
Old Tom couldn't be blamed for being too anxious, but things seemed very strange to him!
He had been talking to the little wizard for a long time, but he still hadn't opened up to him! Although Tom Yodel was an interesting little wizard, Ryddle didn't want to talk to him wholeheartedly, it was too exhausting to communicate with him, just like giving a lecture.
There was one very important way for Ryddle's diary to regain its power, and that was to get the other person to open his soul, so that if the possessor's soul was opened to Ryddle, Ryddle could feed on the possessor's worst fears, his deepest secrets, until Ryddle's soul became more powerful than the diary holder's own.
At that point, he would be able to manipulate the person who had opened his soul to him.
But that didn't work with Tom. Every time Ryddle felt he had opened Tom's heart a little, but the next time he looked, the crack had healed!
It was so bad that Ryddle could only hope for a sacrifice, but with that little input, it would take who knows how long to control his mind and body. By then, that Tom Yodel could fleece him!
At the thought, Ryddle had a strong sense of crisis, he felt that Tom would probably destroy him after he had exhausted his courage! For a man like Tom would never want anyone else to have access to the treasure.
But today's class was interrupted by an uninvited guest.
The flames in the fireplace in Tom's office suddenly turned green, and Dumbledore's voice came from inside, "Professor Lockhart, please come to the Headmaster's office, the password is 'cockroach pile'."
Upon receiving the summons, Tom could delay no longer, put the diary away in a drawer and left the office.
Some time after he left, a sparrow flew into the office, hopped to the floor and pecked at the crumbs left by the sandwich on the floor.
A wisp of black smoke, thinner than a strand of hair, rose from the corner of the desk and enveloped the sparrow, which didn't notice, but concentrated on pecking at the crumbs.
After eating for a while, it flew away.
A few minutes later, several sparrows came in through the window and began poking around the office in search of food. At first they just pecked at the crumbs, but then they became greedy and some flew up to the desk to eat the unfinished sandwiches Tom had left behind.
They did not realize that they were being much bolder than usual: normally these sparrows would not have had the guts to fly through the small opening and into a confined space.
Each sparrow has a very fine thread wrapped around it that gets slightly thicker as time goes on.
After sweeping the sandwiches off the desk, the sparrows flew out of Tom's office. However, almost half of them fell head first out the window and lost their breath in midair.
Tom was out for a little while longer.
A few first-year Ravenclaw witches arrived at his office door.
They were chattering like sparrows, making a lot of noise, jostling each other and looking very excited. The only thing they had in common was that they all had in their hands were Professor Lockhart's things: posters or books.
"Hit the door!"
"You first!"
"No, you first!"
"What's up, knock on the door and ask Professor Lockhart for some autographs so we can cover that brat's head. I can't stand that cold look on her face."
"But she really does have a lot of beautiful clothes. I'll ask my family to buy the red one when I go home."
"That's enough, hurry up and get your autograph, remember to be quiet and polite, that's what mom said."
The girl they were referring to was, of course, Peggy. Peggy had shown a great talent for magic since she started school and had become a favorite of the teachers, just like Hermione. With her pretty face and new clothes every day, she naturally became the center of attention for the boys in the class.
Every day, little boys walked in front of her, trying to get her attention, but she ignored them. Some boys tried to get Peggy's attention by making jokes, but every time a joke was made, another boy would step in front. Peggy just watched from the side, as if she were watching a monkey show.
The combination of her usual coldness and indifference to her roommates' advances had resulted in Peggy's isolation in the dorm.
Today, the girls in the same dorm are trying to get Professor Lockhart's autograph to keep her in line.
Then they knocked on the door of the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor's office, but there was no answer.
They were all dumbfounded, as they had not thought it possible that the professor could not be in his office. For a moment, the group's morale sank and they returned to their Common Room with their heads hanging. One of them even pushed on the door, but it was securely locked.
One of the girls, Victoria Brown, was not happy, she remembered the spell she had mastered at home and an evil thought came to her mind.
This evil thought was like a spark in a dry forest, it grew rapidly and finally became uncontrollable like a prairie fire. She quietly got up and left the Common Room. The girls in the Common Room did not notice this.
He ran into Professor Lockhart's office, pulled out his wand and pointed it at the lock, "Alohomora!"
The door flew open. He walked in, his heart pounding and his eyes blackening.
He entered the office trembling and approached the desk where there was a large basket of letters: letters sent from all over the world by fans of Lockhart's books.
Sensing something in the drawer calling to her, Victoria Brown proceeded to open the lock with a spell and found only a tattered diary inside.
At that moment Ryddle was so weak that he had used all his stored power to provoke the little witch before him, and if she left, he would suffer a loss.
There was nothing Ryddle could do at this point, he was at the mercy of fate, so weak he couldn't even sense the outside world.
Fate threw an olive branch at Ryddle.
Victoria Brown finally picked up her diary and ran out, eager to see what Professor Lockhart thought, even if it meant being punished.
Tom, in Lockhart's form, was sitting in Dumbledore's office.
Dumbledore looked at Tom through his half-moon spectacles, a look that seemed to see right through him and made him shiver.
"Would you like something to drink?" Dumbledore waved his wand and two silver cups appeared in front of them.
"Black tea, please. Nothing else." Tom wasn't used to pumpkin juice, a staple drink at Hogwarts, and butterbeer wasn't really appropriate for the occasion.
"Fine." With a wave of Dumbledore's wand, the cup filled with steaming black tea out of nowhere. Tom took a sip, and it tasted good.
"Gilderoy, to be honest, I'm surprised at how much you've changed, I didn't think you'd improve this much since you were at school."
Tom smiled: "The blows of society make people mature. At first I opted to go into business, making shampoo..."
He told Dumbledore briefly about his post-graduation experiences, from the Occamy egg shampoo failure, to wandering and adventures, to becoming a writer and, of course, ending up as a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts.
Dumbledore just listened quietly to Tom's speech, taking a sip of tea now and then.
"It is similar to what I learned. I'm not calling you here today to find out about your past. I just want to hear your plans for the next class." Dumbledore placed his teacup gently on the table, "Don't get me wrong, you won't be fired because it doesn't suit me, but as a former teacher, I might give you a little advice."
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