Chương 87: Chapter 87: The Harsh Reality
At the bustling entrance of Flourish and Blotts, Ino watched Ginny's receding figure, feeling a twinge of complex emotions.
Shaking his head helplessly, he squatted down again to pick up the scattered parchment on the ground. Though the person was gone, the things underfoot couldn't be left unattended.
"She's quite pretty, isn't she?" Hermione's voice broke the silence, her gaze following Ino's to Ginny's departing figure.
Hermione had witnessed everything that happened, and when Ino had taken out that set of stationery from the box, an inexplicable discomfort had risen within her, making her inexplicably unhappy.
"Pretty?" Ino paused, then laughed, "She's just a little girl, at most she's like a cute little sister."
"Yes, exactly! Like a little sister." Hermione nodded emphatically, a hint of joy in her tone.
"Hermione, do you think a person's stupidity is inherent?"
Although she didn't understand why Ino was asking this, Hermione still answered earnestly, "I don't think so. There are very few people who are born stupid. I think it's mostly the environment that shapes both their personality and their foolishness."
"So stupidity is a moral failing!" Having gathered the scattered parchment, Ino slowly stood up, saying, "Stupid people can't truly be kind because they can't distinguish between right and wrong and act only on emotions! So, stupidity itself is an incurable evil."
Suddenly, Ino felt a bit disinterested, realizing that arguing with foolish people would only make him foolish too.
"Forget it! Let's not talk about this anymore. Do you still want to buy books? If you queue up now, you might still make it."
Hearing this, Hermione looked at the bustling crowd in the bookstore with a troubled expression.
"I'll buy them in a few days. There are still two weeks before the term starts."
As she spoke, her eyes swept over the suitcase beside them, then she casually asked, "Did you get that set of stationery in Hogsmeade? I've never seen it in Diagon Alley."
"Stationery?" Ino turned back, and once again, he saw that familiar body language.
Hermione's toes lightly tapped the ground, her white sandals wrapped in black straps that wound around her arches and fastened at her ankles, forming a neat bow on her feet.
But despite how pretty the sandals were, she kept unintentionally kicking a stone by the roadside.
"Do you want to check out Hogsmeade? I can take you on the wizarding bus; it'll only take about a quarter of an hour to get there."
…
Tuesday, September 1, 1992. A breezy day.
The Hogwarts Express once again departed from London's King's Cross Station.
In a compartment towards the rear of the train, Ino sat quietly by the window, his head gently leaning against the glass as he watched the countryside scenery fly by.
Opposite him, Pansy was chatting with Daphne about the interesting things that had happened over the summer.
Listening to the occasional bursts of laughter from the opposite side, Ino too fell into a brief reverie.
For most of the second half of the summer, apart from occasionally taking Hermione around Hogsmeade, he seemed to have fallen into a monotonous routine of revising papers, sending letters, revising papers, and sending letters again…
During one of these errands, he discovered that Professor McGonagall lived in Hogsmeade, not far from his little house.
Although he knew her residence, without an invitation, he could only communicate through owl letters.
Fortunately, on the last day before the term started, Professor McGonagall mercifully didn't send his paper back again but replied that she would help send it to the *Transfiguration Today* editorial office.
"Bang!"
The compartment door was pushed open from the outside.
"Something big happened! Hahaha." Draco walked in, laughing before he could even finish his sentence.
"If you don't want to say it, please laugh outside. Can't you see we're having a conversation?" Pansy said irritably, clearly annoyed that her enjoyable storytelling had been interrupted.
"I'll say, I'll say! A lot of people on the train saw it. Potter and his Weasley sidekick just flew over our heads in a flying Muggle car."
Draco described the car, gesturing animatedly to make his point clearer.
"They're done for!" Daphne remarked thoughtfully. "If they were seen on the train, they were probably seen by a lot of Muggles too."
"Yes! They're done for!" Draco said, visibly thrilled.
Ino, who had been listening quietly, finally asked, "Why are they done for? Even if Muggles saw them, isn't there the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad?"
"Let me explain!" Daphne eagerly took the opportunity to speak before Pansy could.
Since boarding the train, she had been listening to Pansy's stories and had finally found a chance to speak.
"Mr. Swinburne, you might not know much about the Ministry of Magic. My brother works in the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, and over the summer, they caught 176 wizards violating the Statute of Secrecy."
Daphne adopted an exaggerated tone as she continued, "Of those, 120 were fined less than 100 Galleons, but the remaining 56 faced heavier penalties, either fines of more than 100 Galleons, a month in Azkaban, or both."
"The worst was a girl who had just graduated from Ravenclaw. She got both the fine and a prison sentence. Apparently, she conjured a bouquet of flowers at her mother's grave, but many people saw it, and they started talking about witches and devils…"
Hearing this, Ino no longer paid attention to Daphne's animated storytelling. His mind was now focused entirely on the Statute of Secrecy.
A girl barely 17, facing Azkaban for conjuring a bouquet of flowers? Even with Professor Flitwick's intervention, just the idea of such a sentence was absurd.
Perhaps all the storylines had been romanticized, making him overlook the realities outside the story.
In the original story, after the flying car incident, Arthur Weasley only faced a suspension and wasn't even fined. Harry and Ron lost points, with Ron getting a Howler.
After that, there were no more repercussions, as if everything was resolved, bygones forgotten.
But today, after Daphne's explanation, it seemed like the true, harsh reality of the wizarding world had been revealed.
If Harry Potter's story ended and everything returned to normal, without the narrative's protective lens, wouldn't that mean the beginning of suffering?
For the first time, Ino considered the future, a future beyond the plot he had been focusing on.
But it was clear this wasn't some fantastical journey where one could simply walk away once the story concluded.
…
Time quietly passed, and the conversations in the compartment gradually quieted down until…
"Ino, are you okay?" Draco asked with concern.
Hearing this, Ino's thoughts were pulled back to the present.
As he returned to the moment, he saw the puzzled faces of Draco, Pansy, and Daphne.
"I'm fine! I was just thinking, do we really need to live in such fear? Why do we learn magic? To live like rats in the sewers, even worse than rats?"
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